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When you hear people going off about how you’re a horrible person because you can’t explore unhealthy dynamics in fiction, and yet those same people were nothing but toxic and unhealthy and constantly horrible to and cannibalizing each other in their actual lives despite only liking and touching “wholesome media”, and when you watch people be in long term abusive relationships and everyone around them deny it and praise how cute they are, but also go on about only liking wholesome stuff in fiction...

You start to realize most people are in varying levels of unhealthy situations and a lot of people are really not self aware about it. And part of the reason I explore unhealthiness in fiction is because it helped me recognize and make sense of the way these people treated me and others in a controlled environment because most people are unhealthy and so fiction was reflecting that.

It’s so baffling to me because the things I want in real life are so viscerally different than the things I want in fiction. I love shipping za//dr because they are super co-dependendent and possessive and the intense feelings created from a dynamic like that are, kind of awesome to explore in a removed way. But if anyone was say possessive of me irl i’d back out of that fast because I find that kind of unhealthy intensity scares me coming from real people. I only like it if I don’t actually have to be involved because I never want to be. A lot of the things I like in ZA//DR also just vent the feelings from past situations so it’s cathartic to be able to talk about it without retraumatizing myself through my art as opposed to being forced to only talk about myself and what happened to me directly which is triggering, instead I can have layers of removal by depicting it through characters. Then there’s also just the fact that I can learn about situations outside my own and gain a broader underetanding with experiences I don’t have. It’s like, the ship fills several purposes to me.

My point is like, this stuff seems so so obvious to me that fiction can be used in complex ways for individual people but today’s environment is set on it can only be a direct reflection of your real life wants? And I think if that’s the only way you know how to interact with fiction then you’re damaging yourself. There are some ships that are things I want IRL, and others that are more for venting or communicating feelings I’ve had, or exploring things outside my wants that I don’t desire IRL, or being symbolic for other things, and to me allowing myself to use fiction in a multitude of ways has been so healthy. But on the outside people may not always know the context, but I know what I’m doing with the fiction I interact with and so I know I’m not hurting myself.

It’s healthy to use fiction and art. Like normalization of bad things happens when people don’t have a strong grasp of what is and isn’t ok due to lack of education on it, but like that’s why in my opinion it’s more productive and important to have those discussions. Like no matter how much I explore say possessiveness and co-dependency in fiction (and use fiction to understand it) I will never desire it IRL because I already know it’s generally unhealthy and have had bad experiences with possessive people in my past to never want it near me again. If I didn’t know that maybe then it may influence my reality. But that’s kinda how it works. It’s definitely complicated. And again, i’ve seen plenty of people live and breathe these things in denial while refusing to touch it in fiction, while the worst i’ve done is come to understand it through fiction and work to avoid it in my actual life.

Grooming is a discussion people miss the point on by a mile and i’ll keep this brief bc it’s a lot to unpack and I don’t wanna get into all the nuances but people don’t get groomed by art simply existing, they get groomed because the art is used in a personally targetted way or normalizing things to them that gives the abuser more power over them. You can literally get groomed by “healthy ships” too if the abuser convinces you that your relationship to them is like that dynamic or if they make “wholesome” art that encourages you to want to trust them more (speaking from literal personal experience unfortunately). You’d probably be less likely to be groomed by art that you had a strong understanding you didn’t like and would wanna cut contact with anyone that interacted with you through it. So it’s important to know what you do and don’t want because then people have less control over you.

It boils down to understanding what you interact with and why and having important discussions around how to protect yourself IRL and what is and isn’t ok. Your understanding of the world around you will influence how you take fiction in. I’ve gotten wildly different interpretations on some of my art alone because people have different experiences so take away different things from my art. It’s definitely more like fiction relfects reality through our personal understanding of the world more than anything and that’s how that interaction works.