Fandom these days is wild.
I remember how Jaydick used to be the go to vanilla, childhood-crush-to-lovers soft ship for young, first time shippers that wanted something simple and completely unproblematic.
Now going by the general consensus if you ship Jaydick you're a fucking freak of nature and you should repent or burn in hell.
That too.
Brudick is a historical ship and it's not exclusive to fandom spaces. It's a staple of queer culture and it meant so much for queer folks all over the world for such a long time, especially during a time where representation in media didn't exist because it couldn't exist. To name one, to this day there's Brudick graffiti on the wall near a famous gay club in Dublin, on the street where the Pride Parade marches every year.
A lot of folks that hate on Brudick leave me with the same bitter aftertaste of those straight folks or the young lgbt+ which do not understand how different the world was for queer people even just 15 years ago. And that among other things, do not understand those elder queers who define themselves as trannies or fags or dykes or whatever non-sanitized word they perceive as not morally impeccable.
It might sound like a stretch but at the end of the day fandom history is history, and Brudick (or Batman/Robin) is part of the history of a lot of queer people, and the fact that it's being taken away from safe spaces in the name of a vague, virtue-signaled and vacuous sense of morality really feels symbolic of the sanitized, devoid of soul modern times in a lot of ways.
Reblogging it with the picture addition because it's the first of June.
Happy pride month 🌈
I also want to add the reason why Brudick is such a historic ship: specifically because it was used as an example of The Dangerous Gays trying to Recruit Our God-Fearing Children.
In 1954, Fredric Wertham published a book called Seduction of the Innocent, in which he outlined that comic books of his time contained dangerous materials unsafe for children, including violence, alcohol, and (horror of horrors) Gays. He specifically targeted Batman and Robin, claiming that comics portrayed them as gay because they were unmarried, lived together, and (gasp!) wore dressing gowns. Seriously.
The whole argument of Seduction of the Innocent is the same argument antis make now: that showing taboo themes in media will drive people towards acting on those taboos irl. Now it seems laughable that Batman and Robin could turn kids gay, but antis are saying the same shit about the ship today. It's just about incest now.
Remember your queer history. And remember the antis of today are just the descendants of the homophobes of the past.
Happy pride month. 🏳️🌈
READ THIS!! Everyone who tried to argue with me that I was “stretching” and “being manipulative” when I said anti rhetoric is indistinguishable from queerphobic outrage, it literally is though. It’s terrifying how many young queers don’t know any of their history and are “educated” by other kids who don’t know shit and just want to feel self-righteous on social media.
Anti rhetoric is rooted in queerphobia and you should say it.
It's important to study queer history and whatnot but even if you don't. Just look at how antis behave. They target mlm and wlw ships first and foremost, they are anti-kink and anti openly expressing sexuality exactly how homophobic fans do, sometimes even worse.
In the DC fandom no one bats an eye at Dick/Barbara, Tim/Stephanie and Bruce/Barbara (even if these people are exactly as non-related as Jason and Dick, or Tim and Damian). Sure maybe someone does bother people over "Bruce and Barbara have an age gap!" (because they don't know Barbara is supposed to be around Bruce's age and was initially intended to be Batman's love interest), but it's a glaring minority compared to all the rabid censorship worshippers that will call you a monster for shipping Jaydick or Jaytim.
And as everydarkcorner wrote, arguing that an "immoral" ship turns people immoral is the exact same argument that piece of shit Wertham used to push for the creation of that code that erased queerness from media of all kind and still weighs on every form of entertainment.
I literally hate talking about Batcest, but this entire thread has a ton of nonsense in it that has zero reflection in historical reality of DC Comics or DC fandom, a lot of misconceptions about how various ships (het or not) are thought about or treated within the fandom, and weird inter-ship sniping that reads like petty, unfounded complaining instead of an understanding of why certain ships are generally thought about the way they are. So let's go through this a bit and correct the record!