fandom culture has fundamentally broken some of you.
you are so obsessed with fiction and discussing it in the most surface level, fandom-centric way that you have forgotten how to interact with the real world.
the fact i am seeing multiple people posting baseless theories to “prove” Aaron Bushnell was transgender is fucking disgusting and invasive and inexcusable.
if you look at the story of a man who self immolated while screaming “Free Palestine” in a desperate attempt to combat genocide and think “omg but what if X” or “it’d be even more tragic if Y,” then you need to leave fandom spaces. i mean it. you have to go outside and relearn how to perceive and respond to and care about real human beings and world events.
Aaron was a real man. he had hopes and beliefs and fears and loved ones. he was trapped within America’s imperialist system and was so harrowed by the Palestinian genocide that he saw only one way out.
he was not a faceless tragedy or a character. he was not a toy for you to put in “what if” scenarios or make identity headcanons around. his death was not fictional story beat to make you have “feels.”
and the genocide he died to fight? that’s not worldbuilding. it isn’t a background story or the driving action of a story. it’s real. people are being butchered and starving and dying en masse. we are witnessing a real time ethnic cleansing.
when we say free Palestine, we mean it. this is not a slogan for your favorite show.