My resolution is to keep caring about petty things forever

[farla]

So this enraged me when I first saw it and I still want to complain about it so let's cap this year off with that.

This is easily half of what I hate about Steven Universe fandom chatter. "A character did a thing I identify with! Therefore it must be for precisely the same reason as I do it, and also they must be exactly like me in all other ways! Peridot knows stuff about a thing? I know stuff about a thing too! It must be because she's super into knowing stuff about a thing for no reason, and not because that was her job, because none of this could possibly have to do with anything but the one way I identify with the character!!! Neither are the ways she doesn't act like this relevant! All of it, every last bit, must be them being LITERALLY ME! While I'm doing this, I'll also completely ignore that the other half of what I'm talking about actually applies to the rest of the characters, because this one is LITERALLY ME and all others are NOT ME AT ALL and it's not like characters can have a variety of traits instead of this binary because representation is important."

2016 prediction: Jasper eventually gets out of the ocean and gets freaked out with things touch or restrain her and this proves she is so incredibly autistic because she has sensory processing problems, meanwhile the rest of the cast continues to be completely terrible at understanding other people's feelings despite good intentions on all sides, it's probably definitely because they're garbage people who are terrible.

Comments

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

When the headcanons come from a character being "literally" the person, it's not even soulbond 2.0, it's basically just mashing up good old soulbonding 1.0 with current fandom trends. The use of the word "literally" is usually a cue that the person speaking is otherkin.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Oh god seriously? I thought it was just tumblr hyperbole.

whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's gotten pretty mainstream in tumblr fandom, to the point that you'll get much, much more flak for publicly saying anything bad about otherkin than for publicly saying that being otherkin is comparable to being trans or having an actual mental illness.

[farla.livejournal.com]

...well, I do think being otherkin is comparable to having a mental illness. The same thing is generally as good a comparison as you can get! Am I tumblr-approved now?

(I guess it's kind of reassuring that it's not that everyone just forgot how to interpret text but that they're actually being straight-up delusional? I mean at least they're not stupid.)

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

See, the thing is, I don't think that most of them are actually delusional in their own right. It's more like a massive folie a deux. Folie a clusterfuck, if you will.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

To elaborate, being otherkin means they're mentally ill, but not the kind of mentally ill that should be treated or mitigated, the kind of mentally ill where they're special fragile snowflakes who need to be constantly accommodated, and their "kintypes" aren't delusions, they're a beautiful expression of their neuroatypicality and the central part of their identity that they should build their whole lives and all of their soical interactions around because that is the most healthy and self-loving thing they can do.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Well, saying people trying to claw their way into psychosis are exactly the same as people trying to claw their way out may be wrong, but there's still something wrong with the first group - or at least anyone who's succeeding at it.

I wonder if one day we'll treat this stuff like any other contagious disease, and if it's even possible to do without stifling legitimate stuff. Pro-ana stuff gets shut down more and more these days and it's hard to see a downside there, but I'm not sure where the line can ultimately be drawn.