tw: discussions of fictional pseudo-incestuous/pedophilic shipping (batcest) (against it)
This may sound surprising but bear with me: I don’t CARE if anyone ships batcest. Truly. I just want it kept FAR away from me. Far far far. I want it to be properly tagged. I don’t want to run across it on tumblr, find a random twitter and be surprised, or GOD FORBID, find it untagged in a fanfic because the author writes it elsewhere! (All of these things have happened to me ) So if it’s properly tagged/informing the audience, I don’t give a shit what you consume. Do I think it’s wrong? Yes. Am I judging the HELL out of you because there is PLENTY of DC yaoi slop to choose instead? YES OF COURSE. Keep that shit away from me and we’re okay.
Most batcest shippers I’ve encountered have this mindset that since the batkids aren’t *technically* blood related, they’re not siblings. OR that since they weren’t raised as children together, it’s okay to ship them. Some cite the fact that Batman and Robin were closer in age and had a more ambiguous relationship in the 1950s/1960s, and that the book Seduction of the Innocent uses the two of them as an example of corrupting homosexuality, implying that since audiences saw the two of them having queer subtext, that it’s alright to ship.
While I won’t dispute the fact that Dick Grayson specifically has a place in fictional queer history, I don’t believe that a. Comic authors at all intended to treat the two of them as ambiguously gay (see: Dick repeatedly being referred to as Batman’s WARD) and b. that just because a homophobic psychiatrist wrote a book claiming that Batman was a gay pedophile it’s okay to ship them! I digress.
Batcest shippers that vehemently refuse to see the Waynes as family, the ones that jump through hoops to prove it’s “not incest actually because x, y, and z…” are, surprisingly, not that bad in my books. Of course, I know they’re pretty much the cognitive dissonance final bosses, and that they’re not only media illiterate, but also DELUSIONAL, but they’re not that *bad.*
My problem, the REAL one, truly arises with the shippers that recognize that the Waynes ARE a family, each of them have been legally adopted by Bruce, view him either as a father or as something akin to a father figure, and that most of them see each other as siblings BUT STILL SHIP IT ANYWAY. I’ve found that these shippers mostly reside in the camp of shipping (gag) Bruce and the batkids (with the exception of Cassandra, because even in pedophilic incest ships, women are erased. Thanks DC fandom! But for once I’m not mad about it.). Saying it outright: I HATE brudick shippers. They are some of the slimiest, gleefully disgusting people I’ve ever encountered in fandom. When they proudly post about intentionally misinterpreting text to make Bruce a creep, when they make “silly little posts” about Dick feeling sick and wrong for his crush on Bruce, when they KNOW DEEP DOWN that what they’re writing, fantasizing about, and drawing is not only MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE but downright ILLEGAL. THAT is what I hate more than ANYTHING. I cannot fathom why you would want to consume that kind of content, spread it around, and find shared spaces with other like minded people. For these people, it is apparent that they’re aware how wrong this truly is. It’s seen through their reclamation of proship/darkship labels, their caveats and defenses in the tags of posts, and even their own words: “I KNOW X…but Y…😏”. UGH.
And truly, I do not care if someone says they consume these things as catharsis for past traumatic reasons. That does NOT WORK, is not healing, and truly is a form of self harm! Go to therapy. Get off Ao3. THAT is what will help.
TL;DR (which you should’ve): idgaf if someone ships batcest while not considering them to be family, so long as it’s properly tagged and away from me. I DO care if they see them as family and ship them anyway. Disgusting. The DC fandom needs to be better.
