Something about people making Remi ship material AS SOON AS SHE SHOWS UP ON TWO PAGES feels so misogynistic and stupid like you really can tell people can't consume media outside of ships
Circe♥
Sorry for late reply. I didn’t want to repeat myself and my brain wasn’t working the day you send me this ask, so I wanted to wait and think in a answer.
“Ships” overall is a huge polemic in every fandom. Everything is valid? What is valid? How to discern what is valid in terms of “ship” and what is not?
What I consider a recurrent problem in how people relate themselves with fiction is the mistake in only think in the content. To understand consumption is important considerer why people chose a type of content over others. What it comes from this reflection is the pattern of identification. To put it simple, your consumptions and how you consume say something about yourself (not everything, nothing define you completely). So, say such a thing like “it’s just fiction” is just to avoid the discomfort of reflecting why we like certain stories, characters, ships, etc.
What it calls my attention regarding Remi x Megumi issue, is not the ship itself but how and when was formed. What I’m trying to point here and previous post is how people romanticize violence in relationship (and of course that is the result of our cultural system).
There is two persons trying to take advantage from each other, willing to kill each other. There is no single interaction that implies kindness, friendship or anything similar. So, again, in what is this ship sustained if is not in violence? The chance to built love from violence is one the myths of romantic love (this is been written in gender studies). This myth serves the idea that violence and love can co-exist. Why is misogynist? Because in order to stay in a relationship where you are abused you must believe that love can co-exist with violence and love has the chance to overcome violence “I can fix him with my love”.
If we analyze the panel of Remi and Megumi, the scene is very tricky. Even if we can excuse Megumi’s violence, since both are in a death game and she attacked him first, the scene has a symbolic charge. How she is on the floor holding the beaten cheek while Megumi’s stand behind, it really resemblance a scene of those classic movies where the men hit the lady and then they kiss. Those types of scene in classic movies are incredible misogynist, but are a point of references. There is a frame of reference operating that allows to read a scene of these characteristics in a romantic way So, I believe if this scene of Remi x Megumi was read as romantic and started a ship is because resemblance this type of scene of classic movies and because we -as society- haven’t dismiss the myths of romantic love or the idea that love can co-exist with violence.
Why Gege chose to draw the scene like that? Rhetoric maybe. If Remi is going to betray Megumi, Gege has different plan for this two that aren’t anything close to love.
