My favourite tumblr thing is when fan artists have to type out lengthy apologies explaining they are not a bigot, actually, because they once drew a picture of a fictional alien as an anthropomorphic hamster and put it on their blog for all to see, free of charge! Along comes the Brave Tumblr User, who has layered their own headcanons onto this 20-year-old science fiction TV series to such an extent they can't distinguish their internal perception of the show from reality anymore, and gets upset because 80 years ago some asshole made racist propaganda comparing a real-life marginalized group of people to rats, and rats are related to hamsters, and this user has conflated the COMPLETELY FICTITIOUS ALIEN SPECIES with this group of people in their imagination to the point they see it as undeniable fact, so they bravely send the artist a sanctimonious message explaining their fun alien drawing is Problematic™ and they must stop immediately! And then the artist feels bad, and promises not to do it anymore, and maybe even takes the art down, while the Brave Tumblr User goes on their merry way feeling great about guilt tripping another person into accommodating their extremely individualized view of one small part of a sci-fi franchise, instead of, I dunno, unfollowing the artist or thinking “hmm, perhaps this is an issue that is deeply personal to me and not necessarily reflected in this person’s art” or, I don’t know, DOING LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE
I am NOT SAYING that if you see something genuinely offensive you shouldn’t say anything, but please for the love of god think about it for two seconds and ask yourself, is this actually problematic or do I just feel strongly about it because I heavily identify with this character and in my mind the issues that affect me affect them as well?
Jesus Christ, I had a friend receive DEATH THREATS from some chucklefuck who was telling people not to draw Mr. Spock, an alien with green blood, as having green-tinged skin, because it was “anti-Semitic”. It’s just.....so..... exhausting
