I love starker, I love how cute and hot the ship is but I always read comments about how starker is 'disgusting' and 'full of pedophilia' and that makes me feel conflicted. I simply wanted to ask, is it wrong for me to ship starker?
Firstly; the MCU depiction of Peter Parker is 22 years old in canon. The finale of Endgame took place in 2023, and Peter parker was born in 2001.
Secondly, Peter Parker does not exist. This is a very important distinction because people that do not exist cannot be granted rights or protection. Peter Parker is a fictional character residing within a fictional universe.
He cannot be a victim because he does not exist. The laws put into place in real life do not apply to him because he isn't real. In much the same way that killing animals in video games is not animal abuse. They're not real, they don't exist. They're not actually being harmed.
This post elaborates a lot more on the nuances and connotations of 'X is bad so are all depictions of X bad?' and why harassing people over fictional content is just performance activism and misguided morality policing.
Fiction also does not affect reality the way that antis like to pretend it does. Things like incorrect information featured in fanfiction affect reality; because unless someone fact-checks the information for themselves they're likely to believe it and possibly spread the incorrect information.
I have yet to meet a single person in my 11 years of fandom that read about rape, incest, pedophilia, manipulation, age-gap relationships or any other 'problematic' content who then, solely based on the fanfiction or fandom, concluded that that kind of content was acceptable or valid in real life.
In fact, ask any Starker shipper and they'll beg you not to replicate any of the behaviour or content you see in fanfiction. They'll practically bury you under resources about how to protect against grooming, pedophilia and manipulation. Because we know the disconnect between fiction and reality.
I could waffle on for paragraphs and paragraphs about this, but to conclude, Starker is fictional and a lot of the people opposed to it are not able to disconnect fiction from reality. They're also typically scared of being targeted themselves for not conforming with the pack mentality.
