100% here for hyper feminine autistic characters because we don’t get enough of those.

Man some of y'all need to get a grip on the fact “media affects real life” is about mass media and how it influences how people view the world not that some teenager’s problematic fan fiction is gonna make people think incest is okay. That’s just not how reality works. I think a lot of you are mostly looking for a socially acceptable way to bully people and have convinced yourselves that if someone writes/draws/ships something problematic you have the moral high ground no matter what hateful shit you spew at them.

Some of y'all need to learn “Don’t like, don’t read.”

There’s a lot of things I find distasteful af. Some squicky, some triggery, but I’m the numskull that clicks it. It’s as simple as hitting the Back button and finding something more to my taste.

Lemme put it this way: Tuna makes me gag. I can’t stand the smell, can’t stand the taste… You get the idea.

Solution: I don’t eat tuna. I don’t go up to someone eating a tuna sandwich and start ranting at them. If I ask for a roast beef sandwich and end up with tuna, then yeah, I’m gonna get mad. But never to the point where I’m issuing death threats.

tl;dr: Don’t be a dick. “Don’t like, don’t read” needs to be re-adopted.

Perfect addition

I think OP hit it perfectly on the head: “a lot of you are mostly looking for a socially acceptable way to bully people.” 

No one’s coming after murder mystery writers claiming they’re encouraging people to murder. No one pitched a fit after watching Ocean’s 8 because ‘now people are going to think jewel heists are okay!’ No one’s complaining about superhero movies spreading false expectations because ‘people don’t really have magic powers, this is a toxic misrepresentation of science!’

If you’re capable of making a distinction between fiction and reality some of the time but insist on bullying people about it the rest of the time, then your goal is not to protect anyone, but to harass under the guise of self-righteousness. Just admit that to yourselves so we can block you and move on with our lives.

I agree with this for the most part, but I do have one point to make.

A lot of kids do get their idea of what friendships and relationships are like from reading fanfiction. And a lot of times unhealthy and even abusive relationships are framed as healthy and normal, which can lead to a very toxic view of what relationships actually are. And that can often be because the writer doesn’t realize it, I absolutely want to make that clear, the writer never wants that. 

It’s never okay to bully and harass people, but there is definitely still influence in smaller forms of media.

Ok, but….

1) “Framed as healthy and normal” kind of precludes tags and warnings framing it as abuse, which is a thing I think everyone here is agreed on. If someone’s tagged a relationship as abuse, by definition they’ve framed it as unhealthy.

If it is untagged, it’s possible - even better - to argue that abuse is being depicted and should be tagged/warned for, rather than attacking the author. It’s also a work-by-work issue as a relationship that’s abusive in canon may not be in a fanwork.

2) I don’t think people realize how wrong something has gone when kids are learning about sex and relationships primarily from fanfiction. Like…. they should have role models, they should have places to safely ask questions and get honest answers, they shouldn’t be getting most of their education on one of the most intimate parts of their life from strangers. The very fact that this is so common in the west is a symptom of widespread societal failure. Some stuff is gonna inevitably come from media, but those messages are going to be framed for entertainment and pleasure, not health.

(Also, media that’s accepted and shared by peers will have more influence than media that’s not. Fanworks have social power proportional to how involved someone is in the fandom, because it’s those social ties that give media its influencing power.

long-assed headcanon list

1. What does their bedroom look like?  2.  Do they have any daily rituals?  3. Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?  4. What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?  5.  Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)   6.  Eating habits and sample daily menu  7.  Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time.   8.  Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging.   9.  Makeup?  10.  Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?  11. Intellectual pursuits?  12. Favorite book genre?  13. Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?  14. Physical abnormalities?  (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.)  15. Biggest and smallest short term goal? 16. Biggest and smallest long term goal? 17. Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress.   18. Favorite beverage? 19. What do they think about before falling asleep at night? 20.  Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them? 21.  Turn-ons? Turn-offs? 22. Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen? 23.  How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life? 24.  Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all? 25.How do they see themselves 5 years from today? 26.  Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t work out? 27. What is their biggest regret? 28.  Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy? 29. Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?) 30.  Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies) 31. Most prized possession? 32. Thoughts on material possessions in general? 33. Concept of home and family?  34.  Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?) 35.  What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time? 36.  What makes them feel guilty? 37.  Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making? 38.  Would they consider themselves a Type A or Type B personality?  39.  What recharges them when they’re feeling drained? 40.  Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither? 41.  How misanthropic are they?  42.  Hobbies? 43.  How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education? 44.  Religion? 45.  Superstitions or views on the occult? 46.  Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds? 47. If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal? 48. How do they express love? 49. If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like? 50. Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?

OC questions that helped me with characterization:

Original Character ask meme - Psychology edition~

1: What’s your OC’s biggest insecurity and how would they react if someone pointed it out to them?

2: If your OC wants to buy a firearm, what it might be for?

3: Does your OC behave differently around different people, if so with whom and how?

4: Would your OC want to involve themselves in humanitarian work ? If yes, then for what? If not, then why not?

5: How would your OC generally react to someone being verbally abusive towards them for no apparent reason?

6: Does your OC have a realistic image of their own intelligence?

7: Does your OC have any irrational phobias?

8: How is/was your OC’s relationship with their parents?

9: Does your OC feel a pressure to achieve or are they content and calm with doing what they can at the moment?

10: Does your OC guard their emotions by being tough? If not how would they?

11: How would your OC react to hearing they’re adopted?

12: What is one of the most primary things your OC feels that is missing from their life?

13: What kind of situations does your OC avoid the most?

14: If your OC gets into a fight with their best friend, would they wait for their friend to make up with them, or would they try to make up with their friend?

15: Does your OC consider themselves a good person?

16: Is your OC good at giving others validation of their feelings and making them feel understood?

17: Does your OC suffer from any mental health issues?

18: What kind of intrapersonal values does your OC have? (values about their self, what makes them feel like a valid person)

19: What boosts your OC’s confidence the most?

20: Does your OC hurt others often unintentionally? If yes, how?

21: Does your OC hurt others often intentionally? If yes, how?

22: How does your OC usually show affection? Are they openly romantic or more restricted with their affectionate emotions?

23: Does your OC tend to hide something about their personality/essence when meeting new people? If yes, what?

24: How would your OC react if they got humiliated by someone in a group of people?

25: How would your OC process the grief caused by the death of a loved one?

26: What is the most intense thing your OC has been battling with?

27: Does your OC practise any kind of escapism? If yes, what kind?

28: How would your OC react if a bully stole their lunch money in high school?

29: How does your OC behave on the face of a conflict?

30: What makes your OC defensive quickest?

Everyone please I’m begging you please read Kimberle Crenshaw’s work (definition and application,on violence and intersectionality) to get an understanding of how to properly use intersectionality.

Can’t read dense text? Here is a TedTalk. Y’all gotta stop learning from Buzzfeed videos that cite Huffingtonpost videos. Please value the words and thoughts of Black women because many of y’all just slap the word into whatever context without any care for its application and definition. You guys need to value actually listening to Black women.

Ira Steven Behr and Andrew Robinson in the DS9 documentary What We Left Behind

Me. Where is Andy Robinson?

Me: Bashir and Garak were just friends-

Andy Robinson, shouting from the back of the room: THEY BANGED

Me: There he is.

I do not understand this new generation of kids doing the internet equivalent of going into a clearly marked strip club, showing a fake ID to the bouncer and then being shocked and appalled by it being full of adults and strippers.

Well I had this whole paragraphs-long response I added, and you got it in like. A sentence.

like i get this argument, i really do, and there really is only so much content creators can do to try and stop children consuming content not suitable for them

BUT we cannot trust a thirteen year old to have the maturity and foresight to know what is and isn’t good for them. Yeah, their gaurdians should be the ones looking out for them and trying to stop them from getting hurt, but in your library analogy, when the library chooses to have that content it’s also somewhat responsible for restricting access to it - whether that’s putting those books somewhere the librarian can monitor most of the time, or having a slightly restricted sentence you need to be registered and have a verified age to go into, but there needs to be something - if you knowingly let unmonitored kids into your buisness, but especially if you encourage them like libraries do, you are responsible for their safety- it takes a village to raise a child and we are all responsible for their safety

that said it’s deffo not the authors responsibility, but the host, tumblr, ao3, where ever. they gotta do something

They literally already are. Rating and tagging everything as mature and clearly marking content is the barrier. This isn’t a movie theater or a library. None of those websites are KNOWINGLY allowing children into their business, because EVERYONE IS INVISIBLE.

There is literally no way to effectively bar children from accessing content they shouldn’t have access to, that doesn’t involve gross invasions of privacy. You can ban all children from a website and that STILL won’t work because there is no actual way to accurately determine who is and isn’t a child. In a lot of cases the bare minimum you can do is just outright ASK if they are a child, but then they LIE and there is no way to STOP them from lying or even figuring out IF they are lying. Hell, not even outright banning all icky things will work, as Tumblr’s disastrous NSFW ban has shown us.

‘We all have a collective responsibility to protect children’ only goes so far. If all children are invisible and can be literally anywhere at any point, ‘collective responsibility’ ends up meaning ‘in your day to day life, you must always act under the assumption that there MIGHT HYPOTHETICALLY be a child in the room’. We can’t help raise a child if we literally cannot see them and don’t even have any way of confirming their existence. And it is going too damn far to tell adults they are not allowed to do adult things with other adults because a child MIGHT POTENTIALLY be able to see them do it, even if they’re not supposed to, especially if they’re not supposed to. It’s also going too far to tell all websites that they are responsible for keeping track of legions of invisible, hypothetical, lying children.

All methods of reliably confirming people’s age online are immediately gross and dangerous invasions of privacy. All measures to try and prevent children from seeing things they shouldn’t are flimsy, at best. The MOST EFFECTIVE thing is the thing we are doing already: meticulously tagging and archiving content with extensive filters and multiple warnings, so that every potential viewer can make an informed decision about what they choose to look at.

Which means that, at the end of the day, dumb 13-year-olds and the few people in their lives who can see them as Not Invisible are going to have to take responsibility for themselves, and potentially each other.

Hey so also, just to address part of what lnalovegd said, that thing about libraries being somewhat responsible for restricting access to certain materials…

No, actually.

That is the opposite of what libraries are supposed to do.

Public libraries do not–and CANNOT–restrict materials. At all. You hear every now and again of some that do. It is not a good road to go down. I live in a city with a lot of conservatives (the attempt at a drag queen storytime nearly got the library defunded by a lot). Whose judgement do you use? How do you determine that?

You could say “ratings” but honestly, that’s still not great, since LGBTQ things get rated higher than hetero things. Books don’t really have ratings, and they shouldn’t.

When I worked at the desk of the public library, one thing we HAD to practice was impartiality. It meant handing people hateful books like Anne Coulter’s drek without a side eye. It also meant that if a kid showed up at the desk with a library card and, say… Saw or the Godfather… well. I was going to check it out to them. That’s how public libraries run. Anyone can check out anything, and parental approval is not needed (for us. Parents might have other ideas. I still get mad remembering this woman who wouldn’t let her son check out Calvin & Hobbes or certain other books. But again, I did not say a word. Neutrality).

It’s crucial to a public library that we operate like that.

Libraries do not restrict material. We can organize it. Kids sections, teen sections, adult sections. But no librarian or library tech is going to monitor what children are checking out.

Yeah, kids won’t always know what they’re picking up. The first romance I ever picked up had sex and graphic medieval torture in it. I sure wasn’t expecting it. I stopped reading it. Then when the internet happened…hoo boy, you kids should have seen that wild west.

Comparatively now, I see folks really make every effort to use tags and warnings. Maybe you know what it means, maybe you don’t. But they’re there. They’re the best method we have for keeping content away from people who would be emotionally harmed by it, or who just plain don’t want to see it.

At the end of the day, if you’re old enough to go looking for content on your own, you’re going to have to accept that you might see things you don’t want to see. Yes, even as kids.

There are kid-friendly websites and forums where you can go if you don’t want to deal with that.

a writer who writes the most fucked up “dead dove: do not eat” problematic pairing and fully tags and warns for the content they create will always be worthy of more respect in my eyes than people who call others weirdos because of who they ship. This is because a writer who writes disturbing things but gives me plenty of warning about them has demonstrated, regardless of what happens in the fic, that they value the consent of real people, and that they value my consent to see such content and will always offer me the option to avoid or withdraw. On the other hand, a purity cultist who demands I explain my trauma and exactly why I might be drawn to dark content, regardless of whether they’re the purest fluff writer to ever write, has demonstrated a lack of respect for my boundaries and the attitude that they are entitled to whatever they want to take from me. 

There are a lot of things that bother me about purity culture, but I think the most disturbing is that it clouds the very definition of consent, and then teaches this confusing version (you must consent to deep dives into your trauma and how it affects you for the benefit of strangers who have already decided you’re a bad person, and not consenting to that automatically makes you an abuser, also no one can consent to reading or thinking about disturbing content ever because thinking about it means you want it irl) to young, vulnerable, and often traumatized individuals, thus making it harder to understand their trauma and easier for them to ignore the real warning signs of abuse (like demanding that you agree with the abuser otherwise you’re literally the worst and most harmful person ever) because it teaches that abusers only come in one type, and that all abusers are “nasty shippers”.

This is especially dangerous because real life abusers teach their victims that the abuse is happening because the victim is a bad, evil person. One of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD is literally “Places undue blame on themself or others for what happened”. Teaching traumatized people that consent is a luxury only “good” people are allowed to have is incompatible with support for abuse survivors. tl;dr a writer who tags “dead dove: do not eat” has demonstrated respect for the necessity of consent. A purity cultist who sends anon hate has demonstrated a lack of respect for consent. 

There's lots of talk out there about working through trauma via dark fanfiction. I'm not saying anything against that - there's nothing wrong with it. But I do think there's an unfortunate implication being made in a lot of those posts. Accidentally or not, the implication being made is that trauma is the reason people enjoy dark content. That there needs to be a justification at all.

Guys, trauma is not the only reason to enjoy dead dove do not eat content. You don't need trauma to justify liking it. You don't need anything to justify liking it. You can just...like it. I get the point of those posts is to stop people from harping on others when they might be digging into said trauma, or harassing others for their coping methods, which is definitely wrong - but let's be clear in our intent and not alienate people that are just here for the fun of it. Let's not make people think they need a reason to enjoy what they do.

You don't need trauma to justify liking dark things. You can just like it and if that's all there is to it, that's perfectly okay.

horror movies, serial killer documentaries, splatterhouse-type games, etc - these are billion-dollar industries

there is a real, valid, profitable part of the human psyche that loves dark shit when it’s in a situation we can control

what do you think is the appeal of roller coasters? danger, controlled

i don’t give one single solitary shit what your particular dark fic itch is. seriously, i don’t care. it doesn’t matter. yes, even whatever super gross objectionable thing you just thought of - it literally doesn’t matter. unless real, live, non-hypothetical people are hurt in the making of a thing, that’s just how humans be. sometimes we gaze into the abyss, to see if we can handle it when the abyss gazes back.

Taking It Up The Ass Isn’t Character Growth - A Rant

So, in response to an ask a while back, I said I had a rant brewing on fandom and sex positions, and well, a lot of you wanted to see it, so here you go. You literally asked for it.

Disclaimer: This is going to talk a lot about top/bottom roles in slash fic and fandom attitude towards them and is heavily filtered through the lens of my own tastes and experiences with fandom. I’d also like to be upfront that I am 100% in favor of people writing whatever fictional content they want, and it’s not what fandom does with characters that bothers me but rather how that translates into attitudes towards real, live people. Also, this is the essay version of a slow burn AU because I regurgitate my entire fandom history before getting to the point. Beware.

I discovered fan-fiction around a decade ago, had no clue what the hell it was, got hooked and dived deeper. I started participating in fandom circa 2013, and I was fairly young and also completely inexperienced both sexually and romantically. The fandom in question was Hannibal and my ship of choice was Hannibal/Will. It was/is a very chill fandom in general, but we had our drama. And chief among the contentious topics was—you guessed it—the top/bottom debate. I can’t actually remember any other topic that was discussed and argued for so ardently in that fandom, at least in those days. Even after I drifted away, I came across a few posts on the matter.

Generally, you had two camps—people who supported strict roles and those who were in favor of switching*. And because we’re a society plagued by illogical assumptions, the strict role camp mostly had people who thought Mr. Big Bad Cannibal in the Fancy Suits wouldn’t take it up the ass because he’s older, more experienced, more mentally stable, and of course, more ‘dominant’ in personality. Yes, that sentence is chock full of problematic shit. I am aware. Lots of people were aware and argued strongly against attributing top/bottom roles to personality. I don’t remember anyone arguing as enthusiastically for Top Will, but those voices were also there. But the general idea was that assigning strict top/bottom roles to a male/male couple was casting them in a heterosexual mold and thus, the progressive option was to make them switch. Strict roles also garnered comparisons to “yaoi” and uke/seme stereotypes, which was of course bad and fetishizing and we, the Western media fans, of course had to do better. Stealth racism is fun to untangle.

Anyway, I lapped up the woke juice. Partly because I was a baby queer from Buttfuck Nowhere, Asia, who had zero exposure to LGBT+ communities and what queer folks did with each other. Partly because it was the stance taken by most of my favorite writers so it seemed like a good position to emulate.

Emulate it I did. Most discussions I had about this happened in private with the handful of close friends I had in fandom. Where it really showed was in my writing. I made sure to write switching—maybe not in every fic, but then I alternated between fics. Thing is though, I did have a preference. I liked Top Will. I created and consumed a ton of Top Hannibal, and sometimes it was okay, sometimes it was not, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it made me uncomfortable. Back then, I thought I was a cis questioning/bi girl and once again, the impression I got was that not being MLM, having a preference was automatic fetishization. So I tried my best to justify my preferences, to my friends at least. I think what I said was that fandom was skewed towards Top Hannibal, and I liked the opposite because I’m a contrary fuck. Which I am, to be fair, but this was just me desperately trying to figure shit out without being offensive.

That’s the line I touted all the way until 2018, which was when I fucked off to grad school in A City, finally freed of Buttfuck Nowhere and able to actually date. At this point, I was settled in my sexuality (girls only) and questioning my gender (non-binary or trans guy). I had also tentatively figured out during undergrad that I’m an exclusive top and a Dom. Actual attempts at dating cemented that, yes, those are my preferences, about as flexible as a steel rod. Cue motherfucking epiphany over my fanfic tastes.

And see, over these years, I was engaging intermittently with fandom. I dutifully wrote switch couples. I also continued to have rigid tastes and continued to explain it away as being a contrary fuck—to be fair, until Steve/Bucky, my preference did seem to be the opposite of the larger fandom preference. But correlation, as we know, isn’t causation. Until Steve/Bucky, I continued to write versatile couples because I honestly didn’t have the guts to just say I liked it just one way. I do now but even then, I feel compelled to add that it’s because I want to see my own taste reflected in fic, so I write/read the character I relate to as a top, it’s not that deep etc. Would I be as forthright if I didn’t have that reason? Would I have such strict preferences in fic if I didn’t have strict preferences IRL? The latter’s a mystery, but the former isn’t—I wouldn’t be because fandom is still entrenched in the same ideas that got me to this point to begin with.

In every fandom I’ve been in, I’ve seen some version of this debate go around. Sometimes, it’s one party saying “why would you write Character X as a bottom, he’s so Reason A” and a reblog chain that insults the OP and/or extols the virtues of switching. Sometimes, it’s a general-ish message that says they don’t understand why people have strict preferences when we all know real gay couples switch. Sometimes, it’s blanket statements that accuse anyone with preferences of fetishizing. Sometimes, it’s the same reasoning that gets you “Character Y is a top because of Reason B” transposed on versatile couples except this takes the form of “they switch because they’re equals.”

Ya’ll, I’m fucking tired.

I have long since lost count of the number of stories I’ve seen where an exclusive top learning bottom and liking it is character growth. Where a character who prefers to bottom taking a turn on top is empowering.

Isolated, these are fine. But I’ve seen enough of such stories that it’s distinctly discomfiting and a major squick. Sometimes a trigger, if I’m too immersed in the story. I’m not going to try and burn an author at the stake because they pissed me off. I am just going to close that window and quietly handle my shit. People can write whatever they want. But this one theme hits too close to home, as you can see from this 1.6k rant.

My friend (also my ex-girlfriend) and I had an all-out bitching session about this the other day. Both of us are kinky fuckers who have rigid, complementary roles we prefer and we have both had our grueling days of struggling to reconcile our sexual tastes with our ideologies precisely because of how these things are frowned upon in conservative and progressive circles. Seeing that in fandom, of all places, is both insulting and exhausting. Topping and bottoming aren’t personality traits. Neither is D/s. It’s sexual preference and power play. It really does not have to be that deep. I am not exorcising childhood trauma using the bodies of women. My partners, former and current, have not been brainwashed by the patriarchy. We will not become better, more complete individuals once I magically stop being a stone top and my partners embrace the joys of a strap-on.

I have, with my own two eyes, seen someone say that in a really committed relationship, of course the couple will switch.

Bullshit.

It’s transparent bullshit. This does not get attributed to cisgender M/F couples. Even when the automatic assumptions of woman = bottom and man = top get addressed, switching isn’t presented as the default. No one’s saying “oh, if you really love your husband, you’ll peg him”. I do know butch/femme sapphic couples get their own share of shit. Because it’s all heteronormativity, right? Can’t have any other reason for top/bottom roles.

You have two extremes with “so who’s the woman” on one end and “it’s woke only if they switch” on the other, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re equally damaging. There shouldn’t be a pressure, however subtle, to conform your taste in fiction to some arbitrary idea of progressiveness. People are going to like whatever they want anyway; all this does is create an atmosphere where those likes can’t always be freely expressed without a lot of mental gymnastics. We’re seeing so many versions of this in the pushback against so-called problematic content, but smaller, subtler versions exist too.

Fictional characters aren’t real. They can be whatever you want them to be. And yes, other people will often want them to be the exact opposite of your ideas, but that’s just how things work. Meanwhile, the people behind these usernames? They’re real. No one should be throwing real people under the bus to ‘protect’ characters that don’t exist. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t care whether he gets fucked or dismembered in Author B’s fanfiction, but the discourse that surrounds the dick up his ass? That does affect flesh and blood people.

I am not claiming that this is the only attitude in fandom. Middlegrounds do exist. Plenty of people abide by fic and let fic and there are folks who pipe up to say not every RL queer couple switches. But it’s often the extremes that reach most people. That was certainly my experience, and I’m not the only one.

I don’t really know how to end this post. It is 100% a rant and one that’s been building up for a while. Bottom line is that people’s sexual behavior varies wildly and whenever you attack sexual tastes in fanfic by saying it’s unrealistic - or worse because let’s be real, that’s a very tame word choice - please remember that there’s likely someone out there who practices it.

* I’m using switch and versatile synonymously in this post. It’s mostly concerned with top/bottom debates. A lot of what I’m saying is also echoed in portrayals of and discussions surrounding D/s dynamics, but I’m not addressing that as much for now.  

‘“I have, with my own two eyes, seen someone say that in a really committed relationship, of course the couple will switch. Bullshit. It’s transparent bullshit. This does not get attributed to cisgender M/F couples. Even when the automatic assumptions of woman = bottom and man = top get addressed, switching isn’t presented as the default. No one’s saying “oh, if you really love your husband, you’ll peg him”.’

Welp, there it is

The significance of plot without conflict

In the West, plot is commonly thought to revolve around conflict: a confrontation between two or more elements, in which one ultimately dominates the other. The standard three- and five-act plot structures–which permeate Western media–have conflict written into their very foundations. A “problem” appears near the end of the first act; and, in the second act, the conflict generated by this problem takes center stage. Conflict is used to create reader involvement even by many post-modern writers, whose work otherwise defies traditional structure.

The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general–arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to this belief? Does plot necessarily hinge on conflict? No. Such claims are a product of the West’s insularity. For countless centuries, Chinese and Japanese writers have used a plot structure that does not have conflict “built in”, so to speak. Rather, it relies on exposition and contrast to generate interest. This structure is known as kishōtenketsu.

Keep reading

someone* added these tags to their reblog of this post, which, uh: this is literally the basic, standard fandom anti-shipper position on ships.

 Whether you call yourself an ‘anti’ or not, this is precisely what a fandom anti does: ‘throw down’ if they think someone’s ships are ‘abusive’, ‘pedophilia’, or ‘incest’ (generally with widely expanded definitions, hence the scare quotes).

it’s a pretty solid example of how this works, though:

Anyway. 

I have a lot of sympathy for antis because I think their lives often set them up to favor censorship and abhor education-as-inoculation, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re being jerks to fellow fans on the basis of assuming things about the core of their person because of what they ship.

fandom policing of this sort is assumptive, presumptive, and deeply damaging, both to the victims of anti-shipper cyberbullying and the anti-shippers themselves, who are encouraged in this abusive cycle hellhole behavior by emotional manipulation and coercion.

(I want to end this with a joke about how American this is, but assholes are everywhere tbh. Americans are just especially susceptible to the thinking patterns established by fandom antis at this precise moment in history because of the factors listed above.)

*if you figure out who it is, kindly be a decent person and leave them the hell alone.

To take this the next step which is to say, why does this matter? There’s a phrase that’s hovering at the tip of my tongue, can’t quite remember it, but it’s a word that basically means “a culturally specific passcode.” (Ed. I looked it up – it’s “shibboleth”.) A thing that members of the community will use to challenge you on your authenticity, to verify your right to be in that community, with the specific implication that this kind of verification is essential for keeping the community safe. The classic example is that of an American brigade in the European theater in World War II, suspecting the presence of a German spy, remorselessly interrogating a new recruit about World Series baseball scores. Because of course, any TRUE American would know everything about baseball scores! – and no non-American would, so if someone fails this test you are righteous and justified in declaring them The Enemy.

The overt, performative denunciation of Bad Content has become the “shibboleth” for modern fandom, as managed by the increasing influence of antis. Why is that every time one of these posts come around people so inescapably feel the need to add “but of course I don’t condone the pedo stuff” to their reblogs? Do they have reason to assume that pedophiles are so universal and normative that any reasonable person would assume they were, unless they explicitly state otherwise? Of course not – it’s a passcode. A performance of cultural acceptability.

And as the anti movement is hugely American, that means that the passcodes and rituals are also firmly based in American culture. Why all the focus on who is and isn’t eighteen? That’s the age of legal adulthood in America. There’s no magical transition in America where you go to bed on the eve of your 18th birthday an infant and wake up the next day magically transformed into an adult, any more than this same metamorphosis occurs at 16 in the UK, or at 20 in Japan. Concepts like the age of adulthood are entirely arbitrary and culturally defined – but the only acceptable metric, among antis, is the American one.

All the other Unacceptables are equally foggy as soon as you step outside the USA boundaries. Are relationships between adopted siblings considered incest? What about non-blood related people raised in the same creche? Childhood friends? Step-siblings? Classmates? Second or twice-removed cousins? Ancestors or descendants? Different cultures don’t all answer these things the same ways (nor is there any reason that they should,) and that murkiness provides plenty of foothold to launch an attack from, when someone else is shipping in a way that Just Doesn’t Seem Right to you.

Anyway, a lot of this goes under the surface. Many antis don’t even realize how inherently American their anti-ness is, and how much of their opposition to Bad Fan Content is rooted in opposition to non-Americanness, because very little of this happens out in the open. They don’t say to themselves, “American culture and ideals are better than any others, and anyone who fails to adhere to those must be punished,” – instead it gets sublimated into passphrases and rituals, little things you do to signal that you are one of the Good Ones, you are Doing Fandom Correctly. And outsiders who don’t know the correct passphrases and don’t perform the right rituals aren’t just newcomers or people with different cultures – they’re abuse apologists and pedos and predators. Outsiders against whom the community must be defended, even if it comes to a fight.

“why is saying ‘i hate pedophilia’ a controversial opinion on this site?”

i’ll tell you, it’s because you fuckers literally call relationships between two adults with an age gap pedophilia

#stop abusing serious terms until they lose all meaning ffs

things I have seen called pedophilia on this hellsite with my own two eyes

- a relationship between two adults with the youngest being 25

- a high school senior dating a high school junior

- a college senior being sexually interested in a college freshman

- size difference fetish art featuring two adult characters

- consenting adults engaging in kink with other consenting adults

- writing about 2 teenagers of similar ages having sex

- shipping characters with vaguely defined ages who are treated as adults in canon

- telling kids that asexuality exists

- sex education

like, I shouldn’t have to ask myself if the person being accused of pedophilia is an actual child molester or if they reblog shippy vo|tron fanart

Antis: Why do people hate us for not liking pedophilia :////

Also Antis: *call out everything under the sun that isn’t pedophilia as pedophilia and then wonder why the fuck nobody takes pedophilia claims seriously anymore*

👆👆👆👆👆

I wrote this post on September 4th, 2017. It only took a month. (From that point on.)

False callout posts get hundreds if not thousands of notes (albeit at least half of them confused or rejecting the accusations), while posts trying to draw attention to individuals that might pose actual danger go ignored.

There’s something demonstrably harmful to minors and adults alike, especially to victims/survivors - it’s how much of a rhetorical nightmare shipping discourse is, and how much it actually desensitizes people to the subjects in question. You do not want people to become callous and dismissive, but the individuals continuously fabricating accusations, watering down definitions, making completely outrageous claims, and concentrating their opportunistic activism on ‘problematic content’ do everything possible to erode the patience, understanding, sympathy and empathy of the people around them.

Please, please stop trying to sell your ship wars as literally anything else. You’re doing more damage than any piece of fiction possibly could. This is how you are affecting reality, and the effect your actions have is unquestionably bad.

You have to start taking these subjects seriously again. You absolutely have to. When you’re not using certain terms correctly, you’re not respecting their meaning, and you don’t take what they stand for seriously enough, because in your mind the definition can be changed or applied to different things.

Shipping that deals with entirely fictional characters is inconsequential and amoral in every possible instance. This applies to drawn and written works, as well. Fictional characters aren’t real people. Real people law doesn’t apply to them. You need to understand this.

Here’s an example: Shipping entirely fictional characters -> creates no discomfort for the characters involved, because they are not real; the effect it has on you as a person is your responsibility Creating/consuming explicit/mature content of entirely fictional characters -> creates no discomfort for the characters involved, because they are not real; the effect it has on you as a person is your responsibility

I’m talking about entirely fictional characters. This excludes the shipping of real people - actual living and breathing human people. Not historical figures. People that are alive today. A person. (We still know what a person is, right?) The shipping of real people is a different subject entirely, and it should be approached differently. Still not a crime. Just different.

The bottom line is: Stop treating fictional characters like real people. Stop implying that shipping ‘matters’. Stop involving serious subjects to give your anti-ship arguments more weight and meaning. It’s just a ship. Calm down. Stop claiming that fiction has a direct, constant, measurable effect on reality. (It has an effect, but not like you think it does.) Stop saying “This is abuse/incest/pedophilia/etc” when you really want to say “I don’t like it”.

hey so I have to hear about actual cases of child sexual abuse pretty often in my work and it tears at my heart and accusations of paedophilia over depictions of fictional characters infuriate me, especially if people take them so far that they waste law enforcement time and resources that could have been spent investigating actual crimes in which a real live human child was harmed.

False callout posts get hundreds if not thousands of notes (albeit at least half of them confused or rejecting the accusations), while posts trying to draw attention to individuals that might pose actual danger go ignored.

I’ve seen survivors writing and being told they “write like pedophiles” and be retraumatized by antis a hell of a lot more often than I’ve seen fictional ships actually hurt people. Blacklist exists. Block your triggers. Block your squicks. Save your pitchforks for actual abusers and people who actually hurt children. There are plenty of valid targets out there. Save your high horse for the places you can actually do some good. 

There are a ton of genres I don’t read, lots of tags I just skip. It’s okay to curate your own media consumption. You don’t have to finish everything you start. I have literally walked away from fics that hit my squick spot two chapters in within the last 24 hours. 

The only thing I disagree with is pedophilia in fiction not mattering, it does, fiction can affect reality, just look at how many serial killers base their ideals on TV shows.

However in this case, it’s preventable and there’s no reason it SHOULDNT be prevented.

Just… Don’t glorify pedophilia with your gross ships

Wow. Okay like. Do you know a) how many serial killers there are at any given time in America, and b) how many of them actually base any of their shit on TV shows?

There are approximately 50, btw. At any given time, in the United States. Do you know what percentage of people in the US that is?

0.000015%. That is the tiniest fucking fraction.

hell, I can’t remember his name, but there was one serial killer who was kind of into Dexter (a show about a serial killer who was the good guy, which he sought out because HE ALREADY WAS GOING TO BE A SERIAL KILLER). One guy. Out of 8.14 million estimated viewers. That’s 0.000012%.

The thing is? Even without violent or whatever media, these people were/are still going to kill. The media may heighten their feelings, and they may justify their actions based on it, but the media did not cause it.

Just like no media causes people to become pedophiles. They are already pedophiles. Sure, they may use a certain piece of fiction to justify their actions, or to groom their targets, but if they didn’t have that media, they would’ve found something else to fill that role. Someone who uses a fanfic to justify their abuse/groom their target? If that fic hadn’t existed, they still would’ve abused, they would’ve just used something else as their justification/grooming tool. That’s how abusers work.

“Gross Ships” according to people like you can include relationships between two adults. And you know what? Yeah probably those ships could be used to groom someone.

But importantly, so could each and every one of your so-called “pure” and “healthy” ships. Because that’s the thing: abusers were always going to abuse, and they will use literally whatever is at their disposal to justify/facilitate that. Ships you don’t like are no more responsible for actual child abuse than violent video games are responsible for actual violence. At the most, they’ve slightly heightened feelings that already existed, in a TINY MINORITY of the population, and destroying/censoring them would not stop that tiny minority from the actions they took or will take.

You need to get your priorities in order and care about actual physical people, not the fictional dark stuff that people engage in that is in no way considered acceptable or normal or “romanticized” in real life by anyone other than people who were already doing that even without anything we did with fictional characters.