I personally don’t like incest or shota/loli. If I make any nsfw, I prefer characters aged up (usually to my own age). When I was 5 an older cousin molested my other cousins who were all around my age. I avoided it. I was fortunate. My mother got a “bad feeling” from him when he yanked out one of my front teeth by ripping a plushy out of my mouth. He was too rough with me, so she barred me from “playing” upstairs with everyone else.
Now, this is clearly a traumatic situation and it fucked up my family a lot, but when people compare fictional pieces with dark content to actual personal experiences, I take offense, because it belittles the importance of real events. Fiction does not equate to reality. People have always written about the perverse and people consuming dark fiction are aware that it’s perverse when they consume it. It’s cathartic. The point of art is to make you react and feel. If your reaction, like mine, is bad, you shouldn’t engage with it.
But it’s not your decision to make for everyone else. That’s how we get book bannings. There would be no academic discussions about Lolita or Edger Allan Poe’s Annabelle Lee. As someone with an English degree, bannings are a fearful prospect.
Poe actually has a short story titled “The Imp of The Perverse”. It makes a good case for why people engage with dark fantasy. People have self destructive impulses. People like things they feel they should not. There’s a fascination with the darker side of humanity.
Sometimes I read dark fic, specifically noncon, but, if I can help it, I don’t write it. This is based on how comfortable I am engaging with the material. On some perverse level, it fascinates me, but I don’t want to empathize enough with the content that I can be hurt by it.
It’s up to readers to know their limits when it comes to dark content. If you are actively seeking it out, knowing it harms you, that’s unhealthy. I usually take a week to get into the right mindset to read dark fic just so I don’t trigger my depression.
Take responsibility for catering your online experience to meet your specific needs, stop needlessly triggering yourself, and stop harassing content creators, most of whom are using art and writing as coping mechanisms for their own demons.
By attacking these people, you are hurting those you are claiming to protect. And, as an added point, it’s awfully cowardly to go after small accounts when there’s more popular media “endorsing” dark fic topics.
If you’re worried about how dark content is being normalized by simply having it exist, then shouldn’t you be going after the content that’s reaching the widest audience? Shouldn’t you be raging against the mainstream machine?
Or maybe the anti campaign is a cover-up, because you needed a shallow reason to bully and harass others. Because you’re insecure and you’ve had a dirty thought or two that made you feel guilty and you need to wash away your sins by targeting people who don’t brandish that guilt.
I grew up Catholic enough to recognize that trend too. You’re no better than the closeted bully picking on openly gay classmates. Much like how the bully isn’t less gay for picking on others, none of you are any purer in your quest for trying to enact a false sense of justice.
And on the topic of anti minors in fandom trying to claim adult spaces to make them safe, that’s like going up to the ticket booth at a movie theater and requesting that all the R rated movies be edited to not show or imply any sex or violence.
It’s not your space to begin with. It’s not content made for you. If you come across it and get upset, block it and keep to your safe circles. Anti adults that try to lure you into circles, claiming it’s safe, are way more dangerous than adults locking you out.
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
