“why are you so mad about Pearl???!! caricatures happen all the time in cartoon shows and it wasn’t canon anyway!!”
ok. ok. ha. haha. this is why
a lot of fans headcanon Pearl as autistic or as having anxiety or being in some way neuro-divergent. ok, got that?
a lot of the fans who play with these headcanons are themselves neuro-divergent. got that too?
So say you’re autistic, and you see a character you identify as being like you autistic, being played off as a painfully exaggerated version of themselves and not only is that played as something everyone else can laugh at, but it’s the same painful exaggerated stereotype you see every day of your fucking life
embarrassingly over-the-top panic attacks, screeching over nothing, massively over-reacting, hiding behind other people, clutching their head and screaming
like not only is that a stereotype of your own behaviour that gets pulled out for laughs over and over and over again, but it’s a total devaluation of your own experiences, of fear and intense worry and a feeling that something is so wrong that it makes your skin crawl
and what is front of you is not only an insult to the stuff you have to deal with in everyday life, but a representation of what you constantly fear you look like to other people - something to be downplayed as “not really a big deal” while in your head what’s happening is incredibly important, and something to be laughed at
so, a summary/TL;DR
if you headcanon Pearl as someone you can relate to about a specific experience or facet of your identity
and then that part of Pearl gets overplayed and ridiculed
it’s really painful to watch
it’s really painful to see no one else stand up for you
it’s really painful to see that everyone finds that pain hilarious
“this canon moment in a show makes my headcanon that has never been proven look ridiculous and that’s a bad thing and everyone should stop liking the canon moment in the show because of that”
