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I feel like newer fans can’t really appreciate what it was like to be introduced to IZ in 2001 and be a ZADR shipper in that early 2000s cultural climate. Openly hating gays was SOOOOO much more normalized than it is today. If you shipped a same-sex pairing, you did so knowing it would never be canon because it wasn’t allowed back then. Antis would constantly screech that the creators of your favorite series don’t support gays or gay pairings and hate yaoi shippers and it was safe to assume much of the time they were right. So when Richard and Andy made their puppets kiss, for us that wasn’t just about scoring a win against another ship we were in some petty competition with. It was a clear message that the people who brought our favorite characters to life don’t hate us and think we’re gross degenerates and perverts defiling their characters or fake fans who don’t respect the source material. They indulged us because we were just as valid as any other fan and they knew it would make us happy.
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