sexual objectification is just as bad as mangling a complex character personality into a neat little trope

I can enjoy shipping as much as the next person but lately I’ve seen a lot of “so-and-so is so hot oh god! and omg here’s an idea :D let’s ship them with this other reasonably attractive character that we, as a highly dedicated subset within a fandom, have trimmed, demented and exaggerated into physical perfection and/or max selective audience appeal that the original was covering up with their placement within a storyline and author-chosen design/flaws/quirks!”

of course, to our dear highly dedicated, highly loving fandom subset, the latter half is a sometimes an unseen effect (and that by the way is called being delusional)

but it’s typically worse when folks are consciously supportive of character bastardization because it’s like

I get that you absolutely need something from your fandom to touch yourself to but is there a legitimate reason why you decided to literally ring your hands around this character and squeeze out everything that made them them just so you can fangasm over them carrying out your seediest fantasy like a lobotomized sex slave

how can you be a fan of that