big congrats to rdr fandom for having some of the worse moral posturing around shipping iāve ever seen. like congrats for shipping the canon hetero pairings and your 1 or 2 allocated gay fanon pairings. also congrats for inventing the word āpsuedoincestā to scare the crows off any pairings you deem unacceptable.
like iām sorry, but the van der linde gang are not a family and if you believe that, dutch has manipulated you too. dutch uses the family framework to keep those he manipulates loyal. hosea and dutch are not the āmum and dadā, thatās fanon characterisation. arthur and john are not the sons or brothers, they were both boys groomed by dutch into a lonely and selfish life, robbing and stealing. and though they are close and brotherLIKE, they are not brothers.
another newsflash- you can have messy romantic feelings with a friend that is so close you consider them a sibling. itās not wholesome, itās a bit weird and intense. but thatās kind of the point. thatās why people ship it. weāre not getting off on incestuous dynamics because the incest is not in the room w us rn. idk how to make it any clearer.
it just upsets me to see a lot of good rdr artists getting smeared on twitter by fans who think theyāre a better person for not touching the morally dubious pairings. personally, it makes sense for me that this group of outlaws in the 1890s, whoāve lived so close to each other, would have intimate relationships. theyāre not a cute family living out in the country, theyāre a group of criminals whoāve done a lot worse than fuck a guy that theyāve grown up with. itās so odd to imprint 2024 shipping morality politics onto a bunch of cowboys from 200 years ago. i guarantee your not winning any awards for playing it safe in fandom.