ppl in fandoms here on tumblr dot com are ready in a heartbeat to denounce twilight for romanticizing and promoting abusive relationships to a predominantly young and impressionable audience but the second you do the same about their fucking ships suddenly media exists in a vacuum and they’re not hurting anyone bc it’s not real
I don’t know about most people but my problem with Twilight wasn’t that it was an abusive relationship. (My first problem was that it was horribly written but let’s ignore that for now.)
The problem was that is wasn’t acknowledged as a abusive relationship to begin with and people tried to excuse it from being labeled as such when it clearly was. It was shown to young girls and romanticized to the point it became a huge phenomenon and young girls actually wanted to date men like Edward. That’s the part that is not okay. The fact that it was shown as something that was okay to idealize. If it was shown to be an abusive relationship in the first place there wouldn’t be a problem, and it would read as more of a cautionary tale rather than a romantic one.
I think people get caught up in this idea that we need to eradicate all negative things from media in general, like abusive relationships, rape, sexism, or racism. The problem with that type of thought process is that if we do that we will no longer be bringing awareness to those issues. It’s also a huge detriment to story telling as they unfortunately ARE a part of our lives in in one way or another and so should show up the stories we write and are told. Stories are really just ways to get a message across to an audience and taking away all the bad things in the world isn’t going to actually fix reality. I love ‘bury your head in the sand’ literature just as much as anyone else and when I need to read something that is lighthearted and escapist then I do. But that shouldn’t be all there is.
As far as shipping goes: it depends on the context. If you acknowledge that the ship is unhealthy and are aware of what it’s media impression is, then I don’t see why that’s a problem. I ship several unhappy/unhealthy ships and hate when fans try and take those and simplify them into something sweet and innocent. A part of enjoying that ship is knowing how messed up it is and being able to see the difference between wanting to copy that behavior and seeing the appeal in a fiction world where it’s not actually hurting anyone. Honestly, unhealthy ships are more real and interesting in concept then happy-go-lucky ones ever will be.
Now as for excusing a ship of being abusive because it is media and “won’t affect anyone”, no. No, media does reflect on the population and writers should take responsibility in what they put out there and how they put it out there. That said, Twilight in particular was marketed to young girls. Something like say Jaime and Cersei from Game of Thrones wasn’t targeted at a young audience with the intention of them buying into only the romance and emulating it. It was for older teens/adults and expected for those older people to know better. Because of the maturity of the story, a unhealthy relationship isn’t shown as an ideal but rather an asset to the story telling and a motive behind the character’s actions. That doesn’t excuse the abusive relationship but it does give it context.
In short, stories like Twilight should be told but only if they are taken in a serious context and acknowledged for what they are AND targeted at the proper audience that can get the lesson.
I agree with this, but the longer I'm in fandom or watching things with casual viewers, the more I realize that "mature themes" in things are missed just as much by older people (and normalized/romanticized just as much so their ship can sail!!!!), and you really can't, in true ageist/ableist fashion, act like older people won't buy into abuse culture's bullshit, or that anybody, really, won't use whatever they possibly can (including other ships that are abusive themselves but not as well-noted as such) to make a "healthy" (canon! mutual! x person would have said yes!) ship out of only abuse and rape and call people who argue with it using canon, including but not limited to survivors of those same things, unreasonable, if not slurs.
Abuse and rape cultures are too pervasive and normalized for it to be really anywhere without people acknowledging it's there (and, most helpfully, vilifying it) and of course not being apologist for it and NOT romanticizing/sexualizing it (esp. in the "ambiguous" victims' case) without caveats, without noting comparatively less harmful ships being better (in canon) for characters/people. That includes in fandom and everywhere else, freely, without being vilified for it and silenced with slurs, "be nice", "ship-/kink-shaming", etc. to try to get us all to assimilate into these cultures so they don't have to feel bad about what the reality of the relationship makes victims feel watching it and take responsibility for what they like out of consideration for other people.
(P.S. Because of that last thing, note to large parts of SPN fandom,
"No, this fandom is not a family, because a majority of you are abuse/rape apologist heterosexist allonomative queerphobes supporting those parts of the show and fandom without a thought for helping this institution oppress the rest of us [or yourself included sometimes], and queer abuse/rape survivors resist that shit.
If it is an abusive family, y’all are like the trope of the mom who sees the father, his friends, and the brother abusing the daughter and silences the daughter with apologia, agreement, and teaching her it’s normal cos they do it to you too and you don’t have a problem with it.
So frankly, I don’t want to be part of your "family" while you all try to fucking silence me/us, I want to pull a Castiel in S9 and make it really damn clear that if you’d stop dragging me in with dangerous infighting and/or trying to better some of you and gain allies in a shitty world, and there was no central loyalty I have to the show we all like or people I do respect here and treat like family, I’d choose a far different ~family.")