#there's something deeply wrong and rotting in them and it compels me in an unhealthy cocaine kind of way <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[lachryphage]

my bnha ships are decidedly Wholesome™ so I’ve found it refreshing to join the Gorillaz fandom and explore 2doc, an inherently “problematic” ship. but this contrast highlights the issues I have with the concept of “wholesomeness” and the reduction of characters and ships to the extremes of Pure~ uwu Unproblematic Fluff or Worst Vile Abuse If You Like This You Should Be Executed.

while I don’t believe that fiction and reality have a direct cause-and-effect relationship, I see similar attitudes increasingly applied to real life situations and I find this deeply concerning. healthy relationships are not devoid of conflict, unhealthy relationships aren’t always abusive, and even the best of people often carry heavy baggage that can negatively impact their interpersonal relationships.

in bnha I primarily ship erasermight (and secondarily, erasermic, or the rare, coveted, allerasermic). although this ship is not devoid of drama, it’s generally accepted that it’s an Unproblematic ship by all but the most zealous of Purity Police. but the pro-ship community surrounding erasermight approaches it in a fundamentally different way than antis would.

while there is plenty of fluff, I would say that the vast majority of the content we produce for erasermight is an exploration of the unhealthy aspects of the characters. both Aizawa and Yagi have been through absolute hell, and their experiences have marred them with flaws fundamental to their characters. these flaws have the potential to fuck up any relationship between the two, and often the way we depict them directly explores this. it’s a wholesome ship because it is two genuinely good people -- who genuinely care for one another -- trying to understand their mutual love. but we do not shy away from delving into what antis consider “abusive” behavior. (anyone up for some impulsive, impromptu, non-negotiated bdsm that goes too far?)

personally, I prefer the realism brought through acknowledging characters’ gray areas but I do of course believe you can like pure, sugar-sweet, tooth-rotting fluff without necessarily being an anti. I’ve just found that in the extremity of this rising issue, it’s that content and only that content that’s considered acceptable.

and thus, we find ourselves now at 2doc.

the Gorillaz fandom is predominantly zealous antis; it’s a radically different climate than the type of fandom I’ve grown accustomed to in my happy little corner of bnha. the most popular ship is the subject of much of this controversy because of the undeniable abuse that Murdoc enacts upon 2D. generally, fans either wholly condemn 2doc, or insist that it’s only acceptable if Murdoc undergoes some kind of therapy during which he learns to become a Good Person capable of a Healthy Loving Relationship with 2D.

whether you want their relationship to (eventually) be “wholesome” or not, I strongly believe that this is a disservice to the complexity of both characters.

whether or not Murdoc is a Good person is highly debatable, and a discussion of that particular topic necessitates a deep exploration of ethics and what it means to be a good person. and as much as we might want such a thing to be simple -- for our own understanding of ourselves and the world at large -- it isn’t simple. but that’s a discussion for a different time. whatever you believe, “canon” (also a highly debatable subject in the context of Gorillaz) depicts Murdoc as both decidedly vile and unexpectedly, genuinely caring. 

I’d like to clarify that I’m not against “out of character” depictions -- I take issue with there being only a few “acceptable” ways to depict a character. and in Murdoc’s case, he must either be condemned as irredeemably evil, or reformable into a fully Good person. this results in the complete reduction of his character and everything that makes him compelling.

both the Unproblematic depictions of 2doc and the complete condemnation of 2doc similarly reduce 2D -- he becomes the Good to Murdoc’s Evil.

2D is considerably nicer than Murdoc. he’s pretty(?) and charming and doesn’t seem to do anything with malice or even bad intentions. Murdoc takes advantage of his trusting, clueless nature. but 2D is still very much a complex character with decidedly shitty behaviors with the potential to contribute unhealthy dynamics to 2doc. 

outside the predominant attitudes of the Gorillaz fandom, people enjoy unhealthy, often depraved depictions of 2doc, pushing the abuses between them to the extremes. in these depictions I have found more acknowledgement of these characters’ complexities, so I do prefer them to the Unproblematic brand, but ultimately they also fail to satisfy my personal preference for realism (I know, I’m really quite boring, don’t @ me!!!).

it is with this context that I’d like to return to the concept of wholesomeness and how I categorized erasermight as a “wholesome” ship:

“it is two genuinely good people -- who genuinely care for one another -- trying to understand they’re mutual love.”

in my opinion, 2doc can’t be defined as wholesome, at least not entirely. I think there is real potential for moments of wholesomeness to occur between them, and to me that’s where the ship becomes the most rewarding. 

I have never seen someone claim 2D is a bad person, and while I wouldn’t say Murdoc is a Good person, he has undeniable potential for good. and so the first “criteria” of wholesomeness is neither fulfilled nor denied -- it’s a gray area, something you could push one way or another depending on your inclination. do they genuinely care for each other? of course, you can interpret characters how ever you please, but I think there is plenty of canon evidence that they do genuinely care for one another. so finally… do they have mutual love? perhaps that is the ultimate ambiguity: love, yet another human concept that necessitates deep interrogation to answer -- if it is answerable at all. but that’s a discussion for another time.

if you haven’t noticed yet, the deeper we go, the more questions we find, the more complex things get, the wider these gray areas become… the more obvious it is that 2doc is neither entirely devoid of “wholesomeness” nor unsalvageably abusive. that’s what makes it interesting. that’s what makes it real. that’s what makes it worth exploring, that’s what allows us to investigate potential real-life relationship dynamics, what allows us to recontextualize and better understand our own experiences. it’s what makes it -- in my humble opinion -- beautiful. 

I strongly believe in the power of fiction to help us understand our world and the people who populate it. of course fiction doesn’t have a congruent cause-and-effect relationship with reality, actually, I’d argue it goes the other way. fiction is a mirror in which we can see the current state of our society -- its ideals, fears, hopes… and similarly we can see our own personal lives.

my fear is that the growing push for purity in fiction is the symptom of people desperate to reduce their own realities into extremes. that perhaps, in their own lives, these people categorize everyone as either an Abuser or a Victim, that all actions are Right or Wrong, that hurting people is a preventable, evil action rather than an inevitability of being alive… but, of course, that is a different discussion for a different time.