Antis: “Some obscure fanfic on AO3 normalizes abuse but us bullying literally everyone doesn’t!”
Antis: “reading fanfic is retraumatizing you!! but me comparing you to your abuser and telling you to kill yourself is doing absolute wonders for your mental health”
Antis: “oh, I don’t condone those other antis who harass or abuse shippers. But have you considered that maybe if you’re shipping an abusive ship, you kind of deserve it?”
because when you’re 16 and unsocialized and looking down the barrel of an unsatisfying college career because you’ve dedicated your entire life harassing people over a crackship in a cartoon series, it’s easier to call strangers pedophiles for liking a ship with a 4 year age gap than it is to admit you’re upset you convinced yourself your crackship would be canon. and when the makers of the show tell you it won’t be, it’s easier to go on social media and make death threats toward the (female) showrunners than it is to admit you’re disappointed.
I am really baffled by the people attacking AO3 for hosting stories that involve rape, incest, pedophilia, and other dark things. Have…have they never been to a bookstore or library? People write stories about all manner of dark, horrible things. This is not remotely new. And at least on AO3 and other fandom platforms, the dark things are generally tagged. In bookstores and libraries, not so much.
V.C. Andrews was freaking popular when I was in jr. high and high school. Her books were in the school libraries. They needed to be stamped with trigger warning: EVERYTHING, but mainly things from the fun list of rape, incest, pedophilia, and child abuse. Her books are still sufficiently popular that there are new ones coming out despite the fact that she’s been dead for years!
Her books are in the library I work at. Her books are in most bookstores. Her books are probably still in the libraries of the jr high and high school I went to. Does that mean anywhere that has her books supports rape, incest, pedophilia, and child abuse?
That’s not how it works. Yes, there are occasionally things that a store or library will decide they don’t want to carry, no matter what. The first bookstore I worked at wouldn’t even special order The Turner Diaries. A lot of bookstores won’t even special order The Anarchist Cookbook. I’m sure there are other books out there that people are reluctant to touch, even with a ten foot pole. But, barring those few exceptions, most bookstores and libraries are not in the business of policing the content of the books they deal in.
Not because booksellers and librarians are all monsters who should be reported to the FBI, but because there’s a long history of censorship going very bad places very fast. Also, free speech is considered an American value. Hell, let me just link to the ALA page on censorship.
I don’t pretend to know why stuff like V.C. Andrews’ books, or the fics on AO3 that some people want to report to the FBI, are popular. I don’t get it. It doesn’t appeal to me. Yet I recognize that different dark things are in kinds of fiction that I do like – violence, murder, torture, war, other things that most of us really fervantly hope never to experience in our lives. I don’t know whether fiction is an outlet for whatever darkness lurks in everyone’s hearts, whether it’s a way of dealing with our fear of bad things happening, whether human culture just finds bad things fascinating, or what. Maybe humanity is just super fucked up and Pluto really is a warning buoy telling other civilizations not to go near the planet with the creepy mammal infestation on it.
But I don’t think going after fic platforms because some of the fic hosted there is disturbing is a solution to anything. (And if the people doing so are not also on an equivalent campaign against bookstores and libraries, I suspect that what’s going on is not what they claim is going on.)
VC Andrews was ABSOLUTELY the first thing I thought of when I started hearing about this, because hoooooo my god. And I definitely remember being able to get my hands on those at a young age.
There’s plenty of shit I don’t want to read on AO3. Luckily, that stuff – or at least most of it! – is TAGGED, so I don’t have to. That’s the ENTIRE POINT. It’s not breaking a law, and you are not being forced to read it.
Fandom purity politics are fucking tiring.
“Have…have they never been to a bookstore or library?”
This!!!
I work in a library. Specifically, I work in the children’s section. Obviously, that’s where we keep age appropriate books.
But nothing is stopping those children from wandering around the library and reading a graphic book. Nothing but their parents, that is, but let me tell you, people treat the library like daycare.
It’s not my job to watch over those children and hold their hand. It’s not my responsibility, nor do I want it to be, either in person or online.
You make your own fandom experience. At least fanfiction is tagged.
I worked at a book store. A kid wanted to read Steven King’s “It”. That book has abuse and sex and sex between children and isn’t appropriate for 13 year olds.
That’s not my call to make since it wasn’t my kid, but I did ask the parent if they’d read the book and when they said they hadn’t I did take the parent aside and let them know there is adult content. The parent then decided they weren’t comfortable getting them that book, so I suggested other Steven King books that are less graphic and more age appropriate for a kid that wants to read adult horror (Carrie, Pet Cemetery) and the Meddling Kids which has a similar plot like to “IT” (people who dealt with a monster as children return home as adults to deal with monsters again) but is more grown up Scooby Doo level stuff.
(Seriously, someone needs to write a YA horror series because kids need something between RL Stine and Steven King).
So the kid got three books instead of one big one, and still got what they were looking fo and I felt good about it but you know what – most book sellers would have probably just sold the book since the job is to make sales. And no library would have stopped a kid from checking “It” out.
But just because “It” is not for children doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be available for anyone. Because after the movie came out my store sold out of “It” for awhile and I had a man come in who bought that last copy in the store. He told me he’d never been in a bookstore before and he hadn’t read a book since he was forced to read books for school as kid.
So many adults just stop reading after High School.
And here is this man who is going buy and voluntarily read a giant book (“It” is a brick and could have been split into smaller books). That’s amazing!
Books are a good thing, even if they aren’t for children or aren’t for everyone and have disturbing things, people enjoying books doesn’t hurt anyone.
And if people are reading stories online instead of books, hey they’re still reading!
Using your brain faculties to analyse what yu read – or do not read and do not want to read – is a thing! Reading something does not equal either supporting that hting, wanting to experience the thing, wanting someone esle to experience the thing. We read – and write – a lot of things for a lot of different reasons that are not in an one-to-one correlation with reality. This is why it is called FICTION. A few facets and purposes of fiction is to allow or make you to think or experience emotions – also those that you might never encounter in reality, or analyse concepts that are safer to analyse in fiction. Dammit, why is it so hard to understand? Why does every generation get their own stupid Fahrenheit 451 zombie acolytes of ‘purity’?
reblogging for
“Fahrenheit 451 zombie acolytes of ‘purity’”
These purity wankers are just on a power trip. They want to exert power over others and they think they’ve found a way to justify making you do what they want you to do. I am doubtful whether they even care that much about the issue; if they did, they’d be donating their time to organisations that care for the needs of real-life victims of child sexual abuse and trafficking. In other words, it doesn’t matter to them whether they force you to take down your fic or force you to roller-skate naked on a tightrope across Niagara Falls: the important thing is making you do it. What they care about is wielding power.
“ship what you want” when used correctly: it’s okay to ship two characters who haven’t interacted that much in canon but you think look cute together. Use your imagination! Additionally, there’s no shame in self-insert. All in all, have fun!
You fucking demons: abuse/pedophilia/incest is ok because it’s fictional uwu
STOP SHIPPING INCEST AND PEDOPHILIA AND ABUSE YOU BAD PEOPLES
i literally came across a severus/harry fic this has to fucking stop
I have news for you:
Not to mention the tens of thousands of Snape/Harry fics on ff.net. Or the communities dedicated to the pairing on LiveJournal. It’s one of the most popular slash pairings of the fandom and has been since day one.
Please get these children out of our fandoms. They clearly don’t respect its history.
Since when does fandom history outweigh the safety of actual CSA victims, the normalizing of pedophilia, and the actual occurrence of predators using this sort of material to groom their victims?
Like I’m really not too deep into fandom discourse or anti-shipping but saying “please get these children out of our fandoms”, as if fandoms for properties literally targeted at children shouldn’t have children in them??? Fandom history is irrelevant.
Fandom is nota threat to anyone’s goddamn safety. Get some facts in hand, some actual, measurable, verifiable facts, and not this vague handful of ‘friend of a friend’ anecdotal urban legends if you expect us to take you seriously. I have no time to go tally up numbers for YOUR assertions, so get cracking, write your proposal, apply for a fucking grant if you need one, and run a damn study, make a survey, choose a proper random sample, one that’s big enough, and crunch some damn numbers. Because all this ‘safety of actual CSA victims’ blather is nothing more than a boogeyman you all are using to bully the rest of fandom. Fanfiction doesn’t groom people. Writing and posting fic isn’t grooming people. Abusers groom people, with whatever they have on hand, but I don’t see you guys trying to ban candy bars.
Since @doctorbrims has joined the ranks of cowardly little truther shits:
Pedophiles exist in every space, genius. What you’re supposed to do is PROVE that there are somehow more of them here than in general, PROVE that they are now turning to fanfiction for grooming in a significant portion of child molestation cases, PROVE that without the fanfiction they would not have abused anyone, PROVE that fandom culture is somehow causing actual criminality that harms real people, PROVE that all the crap you keep accusing fandom of is actually fucking true. Because reasonable adults don’t believe there’s a damn tooth fairy just because somebody said so. Anecdotal evidence is NOT evidence, correlation is not causation and abuse is committed by abusers, not the tools they use. Get over your mainstreamer outrage and your childish culture shock. We’ve been rolling along for decades in fandom like this before you got here and the world has not ended yet.
Heh, well, EU (most of it) is now protecting the children via blocking them from accessing adult spaces aka rising the age required to register on any Internet site to 16. Most antis seems to come from US (sometimes I tempted think it’s lack of war on your own land in the last hundred or so years showing – it’s very sheltered existence, on some fundamental level; no horror stories about war to be seen on every corner, plastered on every monument, heard during every family dinner – but of course it’s not, it’s just another cliche human mind creates), so it doesn’t effect them, but you see, kids, that’s how protection is done – you’re thrown outside of the adult spaces. Go to the bed, stay in your bedroom, the door are slammed before your noses. Not other way round. World is, ultimately, fundamentally, unsafe space. You protect children by blocking their access – e.g. to the kitchenette. You can’t demand the full freedom to roam the lands and then demand to be protected from the things you can encounter there. The world is not a level-scaling RPG (I wish it was, sure; level-scaling exams would be so nice and easy).
It’s more like the old-school one, you go the wrong cage with your level 1 hero and the level 20 bandit kicks your ass.
Somehow, somehow I have a feeling antis wouldn’t like the new law.
(and of course abuse, incest etc. are ok in fiction. just like war, alien invasion, shootings and BIG KABOOMs, and dangerous driving is fine, ok and even wonderfully funny in fiction. I’d not want to ride with James Bond in rl, though.)
Don’t let people make fun of you for liking japanese culture.
I am living in japan right now and let me tell ya:
There are people here who can’t speak or understand English who play nothing but Missy elliot and ludacris, even in businesses like housing offices and restaurants.
There are people who have cowboy hats and dead cow skulls in their home because they idolize what they assume American homes are like.
There are people who learn English strictly through music videos and American television shows.
There are entire karaoke bars with english songs often sung by people who have no idea what the lyrics mean.
Japan often takes American shows like the powerpuff girls and make japanese versions of them.
They often mistake common Americans for celebrities. I have been mistaken for Micheal jordan, tiger woods, Shaquille o’neal, Tyler perry, and saddest of all: queen latifa.
The act of sprinkling English into your japanese sentences is considered cute and cool and is popular with teenagers. Bonus points if you happen to use it correctly.
Japanese stores sell shirts with english on them and people buy them not knowing that most of those word combinations are nonsense.
Don’t let someone shame you for singing an anime opening, using japanese in your sentences, wearing clothing with japanese on it, ect. If anything, this is just one more thing that you have in common with them.
The American/Japanese cultural exchange is so pure and wonderful and I love it so much
If you’re on the receiving end of that “No”? You don’t have to be happy about it. You can feel hurt or angry or whatever. But you still have to accept it.
You have the right to say no, even if you said yes in the past. You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to decide that today you want to set this boundary, regardless of whether you set it yesterday or not.
You have the right to set rules and boundaries in your own space. You decide who can and can’t be in your home. You decide who can call you, text you, talk to you online, and so on. You have the right to tell someone to leave you the hell alone, and to block their ass if they can’t respect that.
If someone tells you to stop talking to them? Stop talking to them! Don’t argue. Don’t whine about how it’s unfair. Don’t keep coming back to explain yourself, or to try to get the last word. Grow the hell up and get on with your life.
To put it as simply and clearly as I can, you don’t have a right to another person.
“Give your male kids books about girls.
Give your white kids books starring POC.
Give your able-bodied kids books with disabled characters.
Don’t think “these books are important for people who need to see themselves represented.” These books are important for all of us.”
These people are bitter, fearful, prejudiced, suspicious, and hateful. Just mean people. They lack empathy and are very self-centred. In short, they are the Trumpers.
does anyone else secretly have that “i liked it before it was cool” complex but wont admit it
it’s more along the lines of “you guys were fucking making fun of me for liking this before it was cool” kinda complex
Also a “I super excitedly tried to show this to you years ago and you brushed it off and now you think you introduced it to me and that is infuriating” kinda complex
I still recall an element of trying to drive people off the internet way back when, but it also felt like there was more exchange of ideas or just lulz than this current crop of nonsense. They honestly think they’re fighting some kind of good fight by even interacting with us for their made up reasons. I still recall one of them blowing a gasket when I pointed out they were being just as abusive as they claimed we were. And all over nothing, which they refuse to understand. But either way they really need to stop stepping into arguments they’re not ready for.
Well, and the thing is, they start this whole fucking mess, kick up the dirt in people’s faces over stupid bullshit, and then have the nerve to retreat to their fainting couches with hankies going, “Oh……this discourse……it is too much……too spicy…..my mental illness is acting up all of the sudden……go pick on someone your own size….you big bullies…..”
And, y’know, it just makes me give them a big side-eye. I’ve seen this happen so often in this sort of discourse that it has all the hallmarks of your typical wounded gazelle gambit.
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