Boundaries

[redroses2]

We all have them. They may evolve over time, but there's always that one type of thing that you refuse to have anything to do with in regards to shipping.

Ever since I started shipping, I was always freaked out by the concept of IRL shipping. It's the one thing that has creeped me out consistently.

[HikariNoRyuu]

Incest. That's the one place I absolutely will NOT go when it comes to shipping. If 2 characters are related, then I do not ship them. Ever.

[redroses2]

For the most part, that is a huge boundary for me, too.

But I did write an Elricest fan fiction that was 42 chapters long. It was a family drama combined with insane alchemy and complicated situations, including Al getting married to Mei from the manga and Ed getting with Alfons from the movie but there still being issues between Al and Ed and Hohenheim got to be the main character.

My interpretation of Hohenheim was pretty awesome. *basks in glory* I even had people who hated incest reading my story, along with crazy fangirls who told me Ed couldn't be uke. (The idea of a seme Ed when shipped with Al just grossed me out like incest typically does, but I think First-Anime!Al is actually rather manipulative when it comes to Ed's emotions, so it was like a really, really twisted, screwed-up idea that wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. It just happened to churn out 42 chapters.)

I also have a complicated relationship with shota. It really depends on the exact age gap between the characters, how old they are, and how the universe they live in treats them. Like, age differences in one anime may seem larger than they appear in another anime, even if the age differences are the same. My shota shipping has decreased a LOT since I was the age of said underage boys. I have very few surviving shota ships, but I ship them a lot harder once both sides are of age. Like, I still ship Piccolo x Gohan from Dragonball Z, but I find it more interesting once Gohan is a full-grown teenager/adult and has actually had time to go through regular boy stuff instead of constantly saving the world. But in DBZ, it's different than it would be in a slice of life anime because they constantly have their lives in danger (regardless of the ability to bring people back to life) and there is nothing but fights and they go through life-changing events so many times. It's hard to remember sometimes that Gohan has his first saving-the-world adventure when he's four, and that he's barely twelve-years-old once he's facing off Cell - and that's after two days worth in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber so technically he's ten-years-old. (And I once did the math, and Piccolo is four years older than Gohan, so it's not as bad as it could be, but four years makes a lot of difference when you're a kid/pre-teen/teen. So Piccolo would be 14 and acting like he's in his thirties when Gohan is 10 but looks 12 and behaves like he's . . . I actually don't know, but he worries about things that regular 12-year-olds wouldn't think twice about. So in cases like that, a pairing being shota doesn't bother me in the least - especially if the underage one certainly doesn't look like a little kid. (Seriously, he could pass himself off as a really muscular of-age midget and get into bars illegally. Y'know, if he was that kind of kid. Which he's not, which is why he's absolutely adorable.)

But things like shota in Naruto or Black Butler, that squicks me out, since the kids very much feel like they are the age that they are and the adults treat them as such within the confines of their respective universes.

Like I said, it's a complicated relationship. Most of the time, it's a no-no, but sometimes I am able to ship it without feeling all "ewwww."

[weeaboo]

Mmm, IRL ships are kinda creepy. Although I admit that I think the whole NChick/Todd subplot on thatguywiththeglasses is cute. But maybe internet personalities are a little different since they do kinda play characters...

Anyway, sibling incest doesn't bother me, maybe because I'm an only child, but parent/child... I find that so, so wrong!

And I don't like loli or shota, either. I mean... well, if it's something like "Moon Phase," that's kind of cute, because the guy didn't sexualize the girl... the manga did, which is why I stopped reading it, but... Anyway, he was like college age, and she was like 12 or so, so... I didn't want them to have that kind of relationship then, but I still thought it was cute that they liked each other, and it wasn't such a big age difference that something happening in the future would've squicked me out. Also, MeruPuri was adorable, but that was a smaller age gap. The girl was like 16 or 17, and the guy was 12... he was a prince, too, so he was more mature than most kids. They never did anything, either, except for when he transformed into a teenager. That one, I don't even think I'd call it shota.

[redroses2]

Because of my taste in anime, I haven't actually read or watched anything that has loli in it - with the exceptions of Card Captor Sakura, but I watched it in English back then and didn't know that it wasn't "the one you fear" but "the one you love" that was the teacher with the ten-year-old. And even then, the shota was only present in fan fiction - until I got into Black Butler. But I was also a lot older when I watched Black Butler, so I was all squicked out by the sexualization of Ciel when it came to his interactions with grown men. I'm one of the few fans that are "ewwwww, no, Sebastian and Ciel aren't like that!!!" and ships Sebastian with adults only. (Even though Ciel is engaged to Lizzie, Ciel isn't really the type of person who would put any effort into a romantic relationship, so I ship him with no one. He's revenge-sexual as far as I'm concerned.) I let it get away with Alois and Claude because of Alois's back story, but I absolutely hate Claude. Hate, hate, HATE him. With a burning passion. I much prefer Alois with Hannah (because I like Hannah and the end made me ship them).

I guess that any of my boundaries, with the exception of IRL shipping, can be bent if the story that goes with them is compelling and mind-blowing enough that it gets me to support a particular pairing.

IRL, however, incest squicks me out immensely, and any form of pedophilia makes me really angry. Things are just different when it comes to anime sometimes because I know the characters aren't real in the sense that we are and that it's so easy for a story or a character to somehow sway our perception of things within their universe.

That doesn't stop me from wishing to strangle certain characters, though. *glaring at certain Black Butler characters, especially Claude*

[TKB]

I don't support pedophilia or incest.

Yes, I really don't.

[redroses2]

Oh, and how could I forget these two?

I have never and never will ship anything that has anything to do with bestiality or Rape = Love. Never.

[rachel]

Anime. It has the power to turn my previously hard, round wall of boundaries into a gooey amoeba.

It used to be NO INCEST, NO BIG AGE GAPS, NO blah blah blah....

Now it's more... no incest EXCEPT FOR, LIKE, FORTE/SUN, THAT'S PRETTY CUTE, AND THEY ARE ONLY COUSINS, SO...MAYBE?, no big age gaps EXCEPT FOR TAKUTO/MISTUKI - OH! AND I ALSO LIKE CIEL/SEBASTIAN, OOOOOH! AND OZ/GILBERT IS SORT OF LIKE A BIG AGE GAP BUT THERE'S TIME TRAVEL SO THAT'S OKAY?, blah blah blah, so on and so forth...

So, really, if done RIGHT, a lot of things I used to say "no way" to ended up in the "exceptions to the rule" list. But here are some things I don't think CAN be done right:

incest between parents/parental figures and their children/child figure - this one is a huge "NO" for me, sending up a lot of red flags. It's just... gross, and there's no way to pull it off without being squicky.

incest between siblings - I have a sibling. This does not work. <.< Despite the existence of the Westermark Effect, most "cest" does not even take it into consideration, and insists on being icky (going back to the squick of parent/child, as older sibling/younger sibling normally mimics). Even with the FEW animes that have TRIED to pull it off, having a sibling of my own made it... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.

Shota/Loli - NO BOKU NO PICO!!!! Big age gaps has exceptions [such as time travel, being a different species (demon, faerie, etc.), or being a ghost] but Shota and Loli similar to this abomination defiantly cross into squickdom. =n= For shame.

Rape - this is never okay.

Bestiality - ........this one just makes me uncomfortable. With all the rabbit!girls and the dog!boys and the like, it's hard to say it's... "beasty" per say, but it's dang close and.... oh my... there goes my lunch. Not to mention, a LOT of it is just for the sake of hentai.

Couples with absolutely no interaction - I just... wont ship them. I have nothing against them, really, but... no.

[redroses2]

I agree on the shota/loli thing. Stuff like Boku no Pico - just . . . eugh. (I'm pretty upset on how it fetishizes transgender children. The world has no shame, and it is disgusting for it.)

[TKB]

Boku no Pico: BLERGH.

[runewen]

Once I start approaching my boundaries my head just goes into Does Not Compute.

Like how it took me until the 5th re-reading of Red River to figure out that the Prince of Darkness really loved his sister, but my head is still trying to say, "Well, it's possibly with all the concubines that they're not even blood related, and just because they're naked in the same bed doesn't mean they're not totally platonically hanging out... it gets really hot in that part of the world..."

Also, there's a lot of fanfiction I can't read because my mind refuses to process yuri/yaoi. It's not that I'm against it - I'm not! - but the video reel my imagination plays in my head when I'm reading stuff just flashes a big red "ERROR" message in my brain and it's like thunking into a brick wall.

That being said, there's a lot MORE fanfiction I can't read because I take one look at it and Grandma Grammar Nazi tries to leap out of my brain and kill the bad grammar/spelling dead. It's hard to get through a chapter when you're forced to transfer it to Word to make corrections.