fanstudying

Please note: reblogs do not imply endorsement of any views.

[ao3commentoftheday]

I reply to every person who comments on my fic, but at some point it begins to feel like Im "artificially" making my fic look better because there are, for example, 8 comments instead of 4 because half of those are mine. Do readers fell jipped if so many comments are from the author? Or do they like seeing the interaction? Help! I don't want to seem fake.

(anon may not know this but the term “jip/gyp” is actually an ethnic slur against Romani - in replies to this ask, please do not repeat it)

Anecdotally, based on replies to this blog and my own habits as a reader, “comment inflation” or “artificial comments” are an idea only in writers’ minds. Readers generally see replies as a positive thing. They appreciate an author who engages with them on the same level (commenter to commenter rather than artist to appreciator). They also appreciate writers taking the time to say thank you or to answer their questions or otherwise have conversation with them. 

If you like to reply, reply. I’m sure your readers will appreciate it :)

-Mod Pi

[ao3commentoftheday]

questions on comment replies

Is replying to comments ‘cheating’ or ‘artificially inflating’ the numbers on a fic? Are you annoyed if you click to read the comments and half of the comments are replies? Do you feel tricked or disappointed?

Edited to add: These questions came up as a result of an earlier discussion on this blog around replying to comments. I have personally always loved replying and having discussions in my comments sections, but another side of the conversation was bringing up these points. I asked these questions in order to learn more about this side of things (the “I don’t reply to comments” side) because it is so different from my personal experience and from the general situation in my fandom. 

When I asked these questions, I had fewer than 50 followers, many of whom had participated in the original discussion. I didn’t think to add the context to these questions because I had no idea the post would gain traction the way it did. 

That said, I think if you have the time you should read through the responses on reblogs. It’s been a great conversation, from both writers and readers. I tried to reblog them here, but eventually the posts were too long and there were too many for me to continue doing so. 

I do read all of the replies, though, and I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to read or add to the various threads.

[olderthannetfic]

AO3 comments, feedback wank

darkness-befriended mentioned you on a post “Been reading fanfics on AO3, and so far I enjoy how lax the website is…”

gonna tag you both because I want your thoughts on this @olderthannetfic​ and @fiction-is-not-reality2​

@darkness-befriended

Dude, it’s a lot easier to respond to a reblog than a comment on tumblr. ;P

But of course I am always happy to weigh in.

There’s so much what seems imo toxic conversations about the stats/ ratio at AO3. I heard people say writers shouldn’t reply to comments not to “inflate” the metrics (!!??), berating people who use comments instead of kudos to sort fic, berating authors who feels discouraged due to their stats…It’s a really fraught topic. I have a friend who’s writing a story that has a completely bonkers ratio (thousands of comments, half of that in kudos and a third of that in bookmarks) and constantly she finds herself having conversations about what do those numbers even mean. It all seems rather subjective though I’d think all creators want/value/need positive feedback? I wonder if the policing of that want/need is part of the problem of social networking sites & fandom being indelible now? So the heuristics bleed together?

The inflation thing is hilarious. I’ve heard that for years.

AO3 comments were designed to mimic what was good about Livejournal comments. It was expected and desired for people to have threaded conversations in them.

However, by the time we finished building AO3 and getting it popular, the LJ era was quite dead, and many people who find AO3 now were never familiar with the social mores of LJ comments.

But, for anyone on tumblr who’s wondering, YES, FEEL FREE TO HAVE CONVERSATIONS IN THE COMMENTS ON AO3.

–

Wank about how one searches for fic is not new to me, but it always confuses me.

Why would I sort by comments? That’s the way to find conversations, not good fic necessarily.

Why would I sort by kudos? I’m not into a/b/o or coffeeshops.

–

Stats have always been a source of wank and angst. AO3 is neither better nor worse than prior fandom hubs. Stats are easier to see than on LJ or Tumblr, so it comes up more, but it came up on FFN and everywhere else like that.

The actual suckiness of the stats never changes much. It’s like 1 comment per 100 hits or something.

–

“How dare you demand feedback?” wank is also eternal. AO3 is nothing new there.

I haven’t seen this stuff being especially more toxic than in previous eras. Maybe I’ve missed the wanks?

[konkoa]

This has been a PSA.

[reapersun]

I’m trying not to reblog posts on this blog but I feel that this is important to post here.

[enigmaticagentalice]

on a related note:

[princecharmingtobe]

And for the people asking “Well if you don’t support it irl then why would you like it in fiction?!” Because when it’s happening irl real people are suffering and dying and that’s horrible and I’d never want that. But when it’s fiction, when no real people are being hurt or killed, it’s interesting to explore the experience, the effects it may have, and to an extent experience the emotions involved without actually having to experience the horrible thing. You explore scary, dangerous things from a safe distance.

[wrangletangle]

Yes, you can tag your dark or triggery work on AO3 with the characters and ships that are in it

Okay, so I’ve seen enough purity wank at this point to notice a common slip of the fingers among multiple wankists that admits the main complaint: some people feel that tagging a work that has dark themes or triggery content in the ship or character tag that they follow on AO3 is akin to posting in a tumblr tag as an anti.

I’ll go ahead and clearly state: that is not true.

The tags on AO3 literally mean “X content is in here.” X may be a ship, a character, a trope, a setting, a fandom, a gender category, you name it. But that is literally all it means: “X is here.”

That doesn’t mean you’re going to like the X that’s in a given work. You might hate it. It might include your squicks or even your triggers. That’s okay - you don’t have to open it. The point of having multiple tags plus summaries on works is to help you make an informed decision. I break out into chills just thinking about opening a high school au. In some fandoms, that means there’s barely anything left. That’s okay. It’s not up to creators to make stuff that I like. It’s up to them to tag clearly and accurately so I can avoid stuff I won’t like.

(For the record, that includes both underage and character death, but I will absolutely stand up for anyone who wants to make those things in ships and for characters I love, because I don’t have to open them. Someone else out there does want those works, and that’s great. More power to ‘em. I’ll be over here buried in fluff and curtainfic, which I’m sure someone else out there hates.)

I have much more sympathy for those who complain that posters are tagging with ships or characters or concepts that don’t appear in the work or are only mentioned once, because that’s a case of tagging something that isn’t there on the screen, just in the creator’s head. But if something is there on the screen? Doesn’t matter what else is there with it. The work belongs in the tag.

Tags on AO3 don’t belong to a specific group of people. I have seen people be run out of tags by harassers dogpiling them, and I’m here to say that is not on. No matter how much you like a thing, the tag for it is not yours to decide who gets to use it and who doesn’t. Don’t like, don’t read. You have a scrollbar and filtering. Use them like a responsible adult.

(If you’re not an adult, don’t lie about your age to get through the age filter and then complain about what you find on the other side.)

The “anti” problem arose because Tumblr has no functional community structure, meaning people started using the tags themselves to replace the communities from back on LJ. In that context, tagging a negative post with the tags that apply was making the posts show up in the only viable community structure, which was a violation of LJ etiquette (where communities were self-selecting and moderated). This was exacerbated by the lack of functional cut tags, so everything was all completely visible, and you had to scroll past every post in its entirety. The culture of “don’t post anti in the tag” was a social concept developed to deal with Tumblr’s non-functionality for fandom purposes.

That’s unfortunate, but it’s Tumblr’s problem, not AO3′s. AO3 is not a blogging or social media platform. It’s an archive. It relies on a fairly unique tagging system that only works properly if posters tag fully. Don’t import Tumblr social norms about what belongs or doesn’t belong in a tag onto AO3; they don’t fit. All they do is break the tagging and filtering system by bullying people out of tagging fully.

Yes, Hydra Trash Party works belong in the Bucky/Sam tag if they are about Bucky/Sam (filter for removing all 8 htp works from Bucky/Sam). Yes, works about Derek Hale being Superman belong in the Supergirl tag (filter for removing all 2 Teen Wolf crossovers from Supergirl). Instead of dogpiling people, learn how to use the filters to your advantage. Here’s how to remove Hux/Kylo and Kylo/Rey and similar ships from the Star Wars TFA results, or remove the above plus Hux entirely. Seriously, I could go on all day. Ask me for any filtering need you have, and I will show you how to do it.

We need to stop harassing people for making what they love instead of what we love. That makes fandom a more awful place for everyone.

[wondersmith-and-sons]

I have honestly lost count of how many self-serving, self-congratulatory essays there are out there, both in academic media studies and mainstream journalism, that love to uphold white-dude slashfic as some sort of feminist myopia free of the ramifications of male-gaze patriarchy or whatever.

And I cannot begin to tell you how fucking sick to the back teeth I am of the lack of critical thought that they present. Maybe when slash was first beginning in the 60/70’s it was revolutionary - when women first started to take back a male-dominated space, when female gaze in scifi and popular fiction was uncatered to and unheard of, when women finally created media texts that they wanted to see for themselves. But guys. It’s been almost

50.

goddamn.

years.

And we still haven’t progressed much in terms of inclusiveness. Slash between two white men that prioritises white male emotions and vulnerability to the point of fetishism is literally the least progressive and groundbreaking form of media, especially when it collectively erases female characters, any other forms of queer identities, along with desexualising, villainising and punishing people of colour on a massive scale. It’s exactly what mainstream media has been doing for decades, only difference being that the intent of the gaze having changed.

we talk about fandom in the context of the female gaze free from the male-controlled mainstream media, but that doesn’t mean it’s absolved of the social injustices and prejudices of the mainstream media.

if fandom is, in essence, a free market of creation/consumption where we are free to make and distribute the type of work we want to see - it is, then, a very clear indicator of the directions that female gaze is focused at…and it is still on white men.

conversations surrounding internalised misogyny and blatant to overt racism has been ongoing for years, and has been a problem in slash fandom ever since it begun. In the last few years, thanks to being able to spread information on a larger, wider scale, we’ve been talking more about the more nuanced forms of racism, ableism, gender binarism, bi erasure, etc. etc., which only shows how deeply entrenched casual microaggression fandom is in.

furthermore, fandom discussions have a way of self-validating itself, in which conversations about the lack of focus on women and people of colour find reasons and circles of logic to circle back on justifying not focusing on women and people of colour because focusing on white males make them more comfortable.

every criticism, every complaint, every time marginalised fans speak up about it we’re dismissed as ‘BUT IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FUN!’ as if it were a carte-blanche that excuses the exclusionary behaviour of white fans.  

by all means, have fun with writing about two white dudes making eyes at each other, but for the love of god, don’t stop there and believe that it’s some form of icon for progressive media or that you’re revolutionising media consumption.

It’s important that we protect fandom as a mostly-female space from, say, middle-aged male reporters looking to do a scandal piece, but there is literally no point in self-congratulatory essays on how slash is essentials and revolutionary from within the fandom, as it doesn’t really accomplish anything but validate the marginalising and othering behaviours. 

if we can’t turn the intense analytical focus of looking at Tom Hiddlestone blink for seven frames on ourselves and critically examine how toxic, exclusive and unwelcoming this attitude is and how it only perpetuates the exclusion of women and fans of colour

then what is the fucking point?

[kommunisti]

honestly I don’t even care why ao3 was created, if you defend their policy of not deleting horrible works, or are otherwise completely uncritical/forgiving of their mistakes because “but they’re by fans for fans”, you’re a piece of shit

horrible tropes and abuse have always been a part of fandom and fanworks, but it’s super gross that a bunch of fandom elders (who are most likely at least in their thirties) continue the tradition of citing “don’t like don’t read” as a good enough excuse to write child porn, abuse, rape, sexual slavery, etc. AND they collect thousands of dollars each year to fund this through donations

like. they are literally putting money into abusive content being published on their site. where people of any age, even pre-teens, can access it. for example, I could never report people posting alec/women stuff despite it being homophobic, because it doesn’t violate their terms. I can’t report pretty much anything, because as long as you’re not plagiarizing, it’s all good

yeah, ao3 is great as a concept, but allowing abusive, homophobic, racist, etc. material to be published on your site because “fuck the pc police/moral crusaders” is appalling and fuck ao3 tbh. not to mention they’ve had really disgusting people as members on their board, so it’s pretty obvious what kind of people are in charge of this site

[yourshipisfine]

If you do not like AO3′s policies, don’t donate to them, don’t publish your fic there and don’t read fic there.

AO3 was created because people were unhappy with the policies of other websites and fanfiction archives.

If you are unhappy with AO3′s policies, there is nothing stopping you from setting up a fanfic archive of your own where you can decide on the policies. 

As for pre-teens accessing the site and reading porny fic… yeah. They’re gonna do that. And you know whose responsibility that is? Those kids’ parents.

If I post explicit fic on AO3, it is my responsibility to categorise it as mature/explicit, to tag the relationships and to mention in the tags/summary that it contains sex. That’s it. 

[fuckfuckfuckfuckfucjvjcjdb-deac]

The entire reason AO3 was created was to give all those “horrible” fics OP hates a safe place to be posted. Most antis seem to be too young to remember what it was like on LiveJournal. Hell, I’m too young to have been there but fandom elders are well aware of how difficult it was to have fandom communities anywhere after all that Strikethrough nonsense. What antis are doing is literally along the same lines, but worse. Strikethrough targeted the same types of works OP has a problem with, along with plenty of other things we would object to being removed. Instead of doing anything good, it just fucked people over. It literally infringed on their rights- and yes, depicting whatever horribly immoral things you want in fiction is, in fact, a right that everyone has. So yeah, fuck the moral police. All this movement has ever done was hurt people. AO3 was created to get away from that. And if you don’t want to read something, you don’t even have to fucking see it. There are warnings for a reason. I’m really sorry OP finds it horrible that things they don’t like exist, but they and everyone who thinks like them needs to get over themselves and really think about what good it’ll do. Is it worth stealing resources from people who might need them? Is it worth taking away fiction survivors use to cope? Is it worth denying the fact that many abuse victims learned about their abuse through fiction and taking away future victims’ chance at realizing that the way they’re treated isn’t normal? If the answers to these questions is yes, congratulations, you’re an abysmal excuse for a human being and you’re actually worse than all the ~horrible~ people who write about abuse and other deplorable things. At least the people they’re hurting don’t exist.

[octopuscato]

how difficult it was to have fandom communities anywhere after all that Strikethrough nonsense. What antis are doing is literally along the same lines 

This. Back in 2007 with Strikethrough (link to the fanlore article here) it was conservative Christians targeting any works they found distasteful, these days it’s young “progressive” people clamouring for precisely the same censoring of fan content in the name of social justice. It’s the same kind of policing, the same conflation of fiction and reality, and although the arguments are different on a superficial level, the reasoning behind them is, in essence the same.

[just-a-jay-really]

It’s not even a matter of putting things in the perspective of ‘means of coping’/’resources that someone might need to recognize future abuse’ and so on, in my opinion.

They are absolutely valid reasons for keeping those works where they are, of course, I’d never say the contrary.

But the core of the matter here is that I have the right to write whatever the fuck I want, for the sake of fiction, and I have the right to publish my work online, to share it with people who enjoy the same kind of fiction. 

In a system like AO3, with a very wide range of filters, tags and tools to narrow your access to stories, it is my responsibilty as an author to tag and classify my work sensibly, but what to make of those tags is up to you. I can’t and will not be held accountable for distressing you with a graphic depiction of assault if you willingly opened a one-shot of your otp tagged rape/non-con. 

As for minors stumbling on unsuited content: it’s still not my responsibility. As long as my work is marked as mature, if you kid lie about your age, browse it anyway and get upset over it it’s still not my fucking business. Not when you actively chose to not follow the rules. You wanna complain? I’ll have a talk with your parents, then.

You want a safe, sheltered space to suit your demands? Go build it yourself, or customize the already existing archives to your fancy, because guess what? You can do that. (sincerely, an author that mostly writes harmless vanilla sex and has far more squicks than kinks)

[desert-neon]

Reblogging for that last comment, because I agree wholeheartedly. Censorship is a great evil. It doesn’t matter why an author chose to write it – past trauma, secret kink, honestly just wants to help start a dialogue about the issue – all that matters is that they want to and that, in any free society, it is their right to do so.

Lolita is a classic. Though many misinterpret it as a romance, it isn’t. It was never meant to be seen that way. It was meant to be a character study, a discussion piece. An eye-opener.

Is every fic a Lolita? No, of course not. But the danger of censorship is: Where do you draw the line? Why is Lolita okay but not a 20K sexual slavery fic posted on Ao3? Because it’s in book form? Because Nabokov got paid? If we banish the slave fic, how do we tell the moral police who want to “protect their children” from all things gay that they’re wrong but you’re not? If you crusade to shut down Ao3, what’s to stop other “watchdogs” from banning book they find offensive, curating school reading lists and libraries to only include what they deem acceptable? 

Because it still happens. Did you know To Kill a Mockingbird still gets challenged? Morality police throughout the country try every year to ban a work that educates kids about racial history in America. 

So does Of Mice and Men, which teaches compassion and empathy for those who aren’t neurotypical, and points to the falsehood of the “American Dream” for anyone who isn’t in the majority.

Or what about 1984, a book warning about overreaching governments. Note the irony.

If you in any way agree with OP, I suggest you read Fharenheit 451, and cherish the fact you live in a society that still allows it on the shelves.

[stitchmediamix]

I’m so tired of people in fandom flipping the fuck out over their “right” to write slavefic in fandom.

If “freedom of speech” is why you get to write slavefic (like in general, but like I saw that T'challa story and OP is going to get theirs for sure), then it’s also going to be why Black people cuss you out until you cry because #whitefragility.

You can’t call criticism censorship when you think you’re being silenced for writing fanfic that is ridiculously racist… Even as you actively go out of your way to silence people of color talking about how racist your shit is. Again, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Look, censorship is when your government stops you from doing a thing/creating content that it doesn’t agree with. It’s NOT when many Black people in fandom are like “hey, why the fuck would you write literal USian South slavefic? Fuck you and I hope bad things happen to you.”

Like… The lack of empathy fandom has for Black people never fails to astound me because like we totally try to be nice and explain why slavefic and other forms of fandom antiblackness are beyond awful, but literally the response to Black people writing about why x thing isn’t just problematic, but harmful to us is either:

Trolling responses where they do the thing and mock us for being upset

Crying because they’re being censored because they can’t make slavery erotica without getting yelled at

Those ridiculous pseudo academic “I’m x, y, and z and this is why writing slavefic is me using my first amendment rights and totally empowering to women” (usually from other poc, sexual assault survivors, or queer people - bless your heart but like… I didn’t ask for your traumatic backstory. Trauma vomit is so not my thing.)

Honestly, we’re all on the same internet (give or take a few countries) and fuckers still don’t seem to get that slavery was literally a horrific period in history that serves as metaphorical and painful scar tissue on the souls of black folk across the diaspora…

Because they just really can’t figure out another way to do bdsm-esque power exchange beyond literally writing stories where the transatlantic slave trade is sex…

Like… I’m really REALLY not looking forward to writing that piece about slavery and slavefic in fandom because I don’t have time for tears but I mean… Y'all… It has to happen in 2018

People keep defending writing porn backgrounded in the traumatic treatment of Black folks’ ancestors on the basis of empowerment and I swear im going to mcfricken lose it if I have to keep seeing people share those “ah, fandom is supposed to be for freedom of speech” posts that ignore the fact that hmm… Maybe writing slavery porn where

White people experience the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade (because they’re alphas or omegas, because they’re mutants, because blah blah blah)

Fucking black characters are enslaved (and assaulted) but then conveniently fall in love with a white savior or God forbid, one of the white people enslaving them

Is really fucking racist and only empowering if like part of what empowers you with these stories is Black suffering or Black anger (because fuck, none of y'all are new, y'all know y'all don’t have to write literal slavefic to get your bdsm power imbalance on… Y'all just do it anyway…)

Read some fucking Toni Morrison or the entire Black Atlantic, you fucks.

[hijadepavlov-deactivated2017012]

Trauma is a White Thing™

#nazi mention cw, #rape mention cw, #abuse mention cw

An updated version of this post from my previous blog.

Thanks to this post by @autisticschntgai​ I started thinking about this subject again, and recent fandom trends have made me realize that we have advanced nothing in the year since I originally wrote about it. So…

We (collective we, as people raised in a white supremacist society) tend to find it easier to empathize and sympathize with white characters than with non-white characters, and with light-skinned characters than with dark-skinned characters. It takes actual self-examination and a willingness to unlearn that racism, to be able to read a narrative without any kind of racial bias, just like it takes self-examination and unlearning to live life without racism or any other kind of prejudice.

The issue is that we are not willing to look at ourselves and see why we prefer certain characters over others, and so we make excuses. We yell “it’s not about race!” and, to back that statement, we say “it’s because she’s a woman”, “it’s because they’re queer”, “it’s because they’re neurodivergent”. And I’ve already written about the “oh, it’s because they’re queer, not because they’re white” argument, but the mental illness/trauma argument is just as prevalent.

White characters who’ve experienced some sort of trauma (from their parents’ divorcing or moving towns as a child, to assault or a violent accident); who are canonically disabled or who are coded as neuroatypical (or sometimes not even coded, just have a few Quirky Character Traits™ that we, desperate to see ourselves represented positively in any kind of media, might cling to) can get away with being racist, misogynistic, ableist to other characters, abusive or just plain assholes.

And, of course, white characters who are in no way mentally ill or coded as such have mental illnesses and traumas invented for them by the fandom, just so they can become “tragic” enough for their misdeeds to be ignored.

If a white character is mentally ill/traumatized (or if White Fandom™ has decided they are, based on even the flimsiest canon evidence) they deserve all of the attention, all of the screentime, they can never do no wrong and anytime a character of color dares to disagree with them it’s ableism, just as it is ableist for fans of color to dislike this character.

In Teen Wolf, Kira and Scott are just as patently coded as mentally ill and traumatized as Lydia, Derek or Stiles (whose “canon mental illness” is a joke about ADHD in the first season). Yet Scott is called whiny, has all of his trauma reduced to “obsessing over Allison” and is expected to bend over backwards to conform to every single one of Stiles’ or any other white character’s wishes; and Kira is forgotten or used as comic relief while fandom cries over the white characters.

In the 100, Raven suffers from PTSD, chronic pain and physical disability; while Bellamy is obviously deeply traumatized. Yet only Clarke and Octavia’s trauma matter; and Raven “deserves” to be disabled for sleeping with “””Clarke’s man””” (?), just like Bellamy deserves to be violently abused by his sister.

In The Flash, Cisco is expected to forgive Barry instantly after finding out that Barry is the reason his brother is dead, but Barry is allowed to try and save his mother as many times as he wants. Caitlin’s metahuman arc is taken more seriously and given more attention (both by fandom and by canon) than Cisco’s ever was. And Caitlin’s loss of Ronnie is never forgotten, but Iris can’t grieve for Eddie for more than five minutes.

In HTGAWM; Wes, Annalise and Michaela have all had lives full of trauma and loss, and the three of them were suffering way before the plot of the show started, yet fandom only cares for Connor and, occasionally, Laurel. A mentally ill afro-latino was violently murdered when he was about to find happiness and White Fandom™ didn’t say a word, yet they were ready to start fires if Connor was the one under the sheet.

There are endless other examples (and feel free to add more):

In Pacific Rim; Stacker Pentecost’s chronic terminal illness and PTSD, and Mako’s PTSD; vs. Hermann canon’s disability or Newt “neurodivergent coding”. 

In the MCU; Sam and Daisy’s PTSD vs. Tony and Bucky’s. Elektra’s, Luke’s or Malcolm’s trauma after being abused vs. Jessica Jones’. The fact that the Stand With Ward people still expect people to empathize with a literal murderer, rapist N*zi because he was abused as a child.

In Scandal, Abbie and Mellie’s PTSD versus Olivia’s.

In Star Wars, Finn’s trauma versus Rey and Kyle’s; or Cassian and Bodhi’s versus Jyn’s.

In Person of Interest, Root’s neurodivergence versus Shaw’s.

In FDTD, Kisa and Scott’s trauma versus Kate’s trauma and Richie’s neurodivergence.

Just imagine how many people would be hauling Rosewood as revolutionary for its portrayal of chronic illness and mental illness if the two leads weren’t a black man and a brown woman. Or how little fandom would actually care about Wendy Maximoff if she was actually played by a brown Rromani-Jewish actress.

Or don’t even image. Look at how fandom rushes to excuse Ward’s actions because of his childhood trauma and then they turn around and condemn Melinda May and Daisy Johnson for every single thing they do. Look at how fandom treats Winn vs. how they treat Cisco, despite the fact that they are the exact same type of character archetype.

Critical fandom can’t call Kyle Ron a fascist or Ward an abuser neo-nazi or Stiles a misogynistic racist or J*ssica J*nes an abuser because they Are Suffering™! Meanwhile, disabled characters of color don’t get to be in pain, don’t get to lash out, don’t get to have ugly symptoms. No matter how much unapologetic assholery white characters are guilty of, they can always be redeemed (re: the Peter Hale, Derek Hale and Theo Raeken* fandoms) but neuroatypical characters of color might suffer through ages-long arcs of growth, recovery and redemption and still they never deserve fandom’s forgiveness.

Nobody can police how you identify with characters or forbid that you project on a character that might behave like you, nobody is asking that you only identify with perfect, Morally Upstanding™ characters; but the simple fact is this:

Fandom only cares for disabled and/or neuroatypical characters if they are disabled/neuroatypical and white.

Any discourse about ableism in fandom that ignores this is flawed.

*A good time as any to remember that Cody Christian is Native American. Theo Raeken, however, is never acknowledged as such and the family we know of him in the show (biological sister, maybe-biological parents) is entirely played by white people. As I said in [a previous post], acknowledging biracial actors’ identities is important, but recognizing the way canon and fandom white-washes them is also important.

[diversehighfantasy]

This is all so spot on. I’d like to add that this extends to fans themselves. Cope shipping is considered sacrosanct in shipping circles. And while it isn’t a term specific to whiteness, it excludes those who use shipping as a way to cope with the racism they face (which may be in conjunction with disabilities, mental illness, history of interpersonal abuse, etc), who gain self-acceptance through shipping (considered a particularly uninteresting and valueless kind of self-care next to kink). People who struggle against racism aren’t seen as survivors. Racism isn’t considered abuse. So shipping to cope with racism isn’t “cope shipping” (and therefore untouchable), and there is no word in fandom culture that protects fans of color who ship as a coping mechanism. The only exception is when a fan of color ships a popular all white ship to escape the racist treatment of characters of color in non-white ships. That is seen as valid and worthy of protection. And I’m not saying it’s not. But there’s something seriously wrong when the least controversial reason to discuss race in fandom is when it defends all-white ships.

[solacekames]

The only thing I’d add is that in my opinion, the most insulting and horrifying thing white fans often do is appropriate the trauma of people of color, especially women of color.

Slavefic is a perfect example of this. It wraps up both anti-black racism (tropes of chattel slavery) and Orientalism (tropes of harem slavery). The suffering involved in real slavery isn’t particularly exciting to white fans… unless that suffering is displaced onto heroic white male bodies. Then it becomes meaningful, emotional, and sexually exciting. 

[lkeke35]

solacekames: 

Oh, you ain’t never been wrong, as there is a clear line between fandom and Hollywood.

 There are tons of popular media examples for white fans to choose from when borrowing the trauma of PoC and giving them to white characters; Hollywood has been appropriating the trauma of PoC to tell its stories since its invention and the only examples many White fandom has is the centering of others like them in the middle of other people’s traumas.

The Handmaid’s Tale for example is Black women’s slavery trauma visited on White women.

War of the Worlds is an example of colonization trauma visited on the main white characters in the movie.

Just about any movie that involves robot rebellions as a slave allegory, from Westworld, to Bladerunner, are all  examples of taking something that has actually happened to PoC and displacing that event onto White bodies. This is especially relevant, since robot bodies in the movies are almost always coded as White people (portrayed by White actors.)

Even the X-Men movies appropriated the struggles of LGBTQ people to tell a story about straight White mutants. (We haven’t seen a single “film canon” gay mutant since the creation of the films despite the existence of such characters   in the comic books.)

I still maintain that White fans are not being the slightest bit imaginative when it comes to the  fanfiction and meta they espouse. They are just  reproducing the examples they have seen in pop culture since the invention of movies. 

I’d love to offer you some links to flesh out your ideas here, as you are not the only person to notice what white fans are doing:

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/why-sci-fi-keeps-imagining-the-enslavement-of-white-people/361173/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-fantasy-film-plays-on-the-black-experience-while-erasing-black-people_us_583f36e6e4b09e21702c5de2

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-fantasy-film-plays-on-the-black-experience-while-erasing-black-people_us_583f36e6e4b09e21702c5de2

[daeluin]

wanting to be in the stormpilot fandom as a latinx person is such a wild ride (but w/o all the fun)

like FOR YEARS I wished we could have a good latinx character in mainstream hollywood that fandom cared about. the main reason I liked TFA so much was bc of the new trio and Poe is everything I have ever wanted in a latinx character. he’s good, courageous, the best at his job and an actual nice person. he’s not a thug/narco nor a goddamn mexican stereotype or the latino sidekick. hell I wish I had a character as Poe when I was growing up, maybe it could have saved me some years of denying my heritage. so I was THRILLED when fandom seemed to embrace Poe/Oscar, which ofc made the subsequent realization that the (mostly white) fandom doesn’t really care about latinx people hurt even more. 

going into finnpoe/poe fan works is like an awful russian roulette: is it going to whitewash poe? or hypersexualize him? are ppl going to write him as a racist mexican stereotype or as a basic white boy in this au? and then you sum to that all the shit tied with finn (slave!fic/infantilization/antiblackness racism*) and it just becomes a CHORE. 

I wanna enjoy this fandom and these characters and this ship with other people. and there are good things out there. but it’s really tiring and it drains me having to wade through all that SHIT, through people disregarding and/or disrespecting my identity just to get the good bits. I don’t want to dread going into the finn/poe tag in ao3! I don’t want to refuse to reblog fanart bc poe looks whiter than rey! I don’t wanna feel left out of the fandom that I was hoping for bc I’m latinx! or having to choose between said fandom and my latin identity!

I don’t say people are doing it on purpose. I still believe in the good of mankind and I do believe these things come out of a good but ignorant place. but you guys must realize these microaggressions are hurtful to us. that not all of your favorite tropes from your white ships can be applied to MoCs. u may love slave!fic but the moment you put the black guy as the slave there is a problem. that ‘person A of your otp is a smooth talker/gets all the boys and girls’ trope is cute but apply it to a latinx character and it raises eyebrows. and I could keep going with all the stereotypical borderlining on racist stuff I see daily. just stop for a second and think about what you are putting out there, chances are it could be hurtful for non-white people  

tl;dr: it doesn’t take much to acknowledge latinx characters, researching about latin american culture and being respectful of our heritage. maybe you could hold your thirst for how exotic or unique~ Oscar may look for you and maybe try to make this place not so toxic for latinx people.

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

okay like. supposedly being interested in m/m relationships, or even a specific m/m relationship because you like the specific dynamic depicted is fetishizing. because it’s only acceptable to take an interest in any m/m relationship if you’re a man who likes men, apparently. BUT then also m/f relationships are supposedly relatable and accessible to everybody???

or maybe.

just maybe.

that’s a bullshit argument used to shut down enthusiasm for anything that isn’t heteronormative as well as to shame a group of what is perceived to be young women and girls. because any time young women like anything at all, however harmless or even positive and uplifting, that thing is relentlessly mocked and derided as shallow and ridiculous.

[anakinsbugs-archive-blog]

this post has so much going on that i guess i gotta write a whole essay so here we go

as a gay man, i can say with full and total confidence that more often than not, women’s consumption of our relationships, and our sex lives, and our trauma is fetishistic. it’s not about fighting heteronormativity. it’s really not that deep.

finding another man loving man in fandom is incredibly difficult, especially in shipping circles. i’ve been in the tumblr business for almost seven years, and i’ve met maybe 1 or 2 guys total who write slash besides me. slash fiction is dominated almost entirely by women and woman-aligned people, and it’s been this way for a very long time. even a good amount of smutty slash fanzines in the 70s-90s were written by women who liked to write about boys fucking. when i met another guy who wrote slash fanfic, i was completely shocked. it had taken 6 or so years to meet him, and i was completely bowled over. and i just thought “boys don’t write about boys loving boys, that’s not our thing”. but what i wanna know is why isn’t it our thing???

why aren’t most slash fanfics written by boys who love boys? why isn’t a genre, a subculture ABOUT US, something that we’re seemingly not allowed to participate in? why do we feel like outsiders when writing our own stories? why are some of them most praised “gay shows” and “gay books” (for example, the song of achilles and yuri on ice) all written by women, and read by women, and aren’t really catered towards gay men at all even though we’re the SUBJECTS of the story.

when you go through websites like goodreads and look under the “gay romance” section, you see names like madeline, jane, abigail, marie, amy. i mean, abigail roux’s writing alone probably takes up half the list! you might see a sean or a david thrown in, but for the most part, stories about men loving each other are written by women. ones that are written by men often don’t get the attention reigned in by the foxhole court and cut and run. that’s where the issue lies. in a community supposedly dedicated to us, our love, our sex, our relationships, we take the back seat. we don’t get recognition. we don’t get control. we don’t get to tell OUR stories OUR WAY.

not to mention, much of slash has always been smut. and that smut, for a lot of questioning boys who love boys, that’s our first exposure to sex between two men. i know it was for me. but when it’s written by someone who’s never been a man having sex with a man (and no, if you’re a cis girl having sex with a cis man is not the same way trans men have sex with cis men, but y'alls abysmal treatment of trans men will have to wait for another post), it’s often written inaccurately and unsafely. not using a condom? unsafe. spit as lube? definitely not safe. SHOVING IT IN???????? REALLY NOT SAFE. rimming someone without having them clean or use an enema first????

not only unsafe, but also really gross. the general consensus (and yes i asked) about this is that safe sex has been deemed by slash shippers to be “boring”. they want to get right to the fucking, no time for prep (which is literally the most important part), no time for cleaning, no time for lube, no time for protection. this is incredibly dangerous for young men who love men who are trying to figure out all the different ways that we can make love to each other. if this is their only exposure, they’re going to think that doing this is okay. they’re going to think “yeah, i can just shove my tongue into someone’s dirty asshole” or “i don’t have to prepare my partner before shoving very large into something very tiny” which is not the case and will get people hurt. i know fic isn’t supposed to be a sex ed class, but the lack of sex safety is really concerning.

and when men who love men like myself bring up the fact that maybe you guys should stay in your lane a little and let us take the wheel in a genre entirely dedicated to us having sex with each other, you somehow claim that we are “kinkshaming” you and being misogynist by taking away “the one place where women can explore their kinks without judgement”. which is complete and total bullshit because FIRST OF ALL gay people are not your kink. we are not your fetish, we don’t exist for your entertainment or your gratification. if you really think that two men who make love to each other is your “fetish”, then maybe that’s telling you something. human beings aren’t kinks. so fuck outta here with that.

and the obsession with boys enduring homophobic and sometimes transphobic abuse and rape for the sake of ~angst~ and hurt/comfort is uh pretty fucked up. the obsession people have with gay trauma is by far the most disturbing of all. like so many woman slash writers go out of their way to subject gbt male characters to all sorts of injury and abuse just so they can be ~comforted~ and possibly get comfort sex. the idea that you want to see us hurt just because you think it’s cute when we comfort each other isn’t okay. like, didn’t someone want to write a check please fanfic about the pulse shooting??? yeah how can any of you look at that and think it’s okay. it’s not okay. in no world is that okay.

so this brings me to your claim that if gay/bi/pan men (including trans men and male-aligned people) tell you to maybe chill out and maybe let us write stories about us for a change, that’s a misogynistic/homophobic/shallow statement. this just blows my mind. i need a little more clarification about why it’s such an evil no-no for us to want to represent ourselves or speak for ourselves or tell our own stories. because it kinda seems homophobic that you’re so angry about gbt men wanting to represent themselves. it almost sounds like you only think our love and our sex and our lives exist only for you to write and read about. you’re making it sound like we are objects made for your consumption, and by establishing ourselves as real people is ruining your fantasy.

nobody’s saying you can’t be supportive of gbt boys and want to write about them in your stories. but for the love of god, don’t get angry when we want to tell our own stories, and don’t pitch a fit when we express that we’re uncomfortable with being objectified for your own sexual gratification.

tldlr; men who love men have never existed for your consumption. we are not your “escape from heteronormativity”, we are not your “safe space for kink exploration”, we are not your favorite ships, we are not your kudos on ao3. we are real men with real stories who want a chance to express ourselves in a genre that’s about us but that we seemingly aren’t allowed into. we are people, and we deserve to and be seen as people and treated like people. stop speaking over us and invalidating our concerns about how we’re being treated. and that’s the tea. 🏳️‍🌈💁‍♂️☕️

[bussylabor]

@ all you straight fujoshis

[thebibliosphere]

Oh my gods this. This is everything I try and fail to say when people ask me how to explain fetishization vs storytelling.

Do you know how many books by gay men I edited in my time at the erotica publishing house? One.

Out of literal thousands of manuscripts, there was One gay man writing m/m, the rest were all by women, and I feel safe in saying, the majority of them, not from within the LGBTQA+ community.

And boy howdy did they pitch fits when we turned to them and said “your manuscript does not meet our health and safety requirements please revise” because our house had a strict safe sane consensual rule, along with body positivity, which everyone LOVED when they were writing m/f stories. But when it came to m/m we had so many authors say “ew, but that’s not ~sexy~ :/” to which my reply was often a very politely phrased “literally don’t give a fuck Susan, you know what else isn’t sexy? Bleeding assholes, which coincidentally is what you’re being.”

But y'know, nicer. Because I’m a fucking proffesional.

Anyway. Do you want to know what happened to said singular man writing m/m fiction? He got dropped after a year. Because, and I quote, this is a direct line from our then marketing team, about a gay man writing gay erotica: “that’s not what women want to read”

And if that’s not one of the most precise and fucking infuriating demonstrations of what the fuck is wrong with the “but I write gay slash fic! I can’t be homophobic!” “~allies~” (spoiler: you’re not) in fandom and yes, even in “real” publishing, I dunno what is.

There is a Difference between storytelling and fetishization, and all y'all crying “kinkshaming!” when someone asks you to treat them with respect, need to stop.

[gbptboys]

idk im a gay man and im uncomfortable with any&all women reading gay pornographic fic.... its fetishizin & it leads to actual IRL sexual harassment and intrusions into the privacy of gay men/boys by (often times straight) women/girls. This problem especially effects middleschool through highschool age boys.

i mean i’m definitely with you that straight women/girls being “into” m/m porn is fetishizing & a threat to gay men/boys and i hope i didn’t give any impression to the contrary. but it’s a complicated issue particularly in that some people who think they’re straight women may actually be gay trans men & reading m/m fic can help them realise that

the other issues that might draw women/girls to read m/m fic (lack of lesbian representation, huge amounts of misogynistic abuse in media/fanfiction, etc) all boil down to this: there needs to be better media & resources intended for women, created by women. again, there’s been more of this lately, but it’s still difficult when fields like film, television, literature, and music are all still highly male-dominated. these issues can’t be resolved overnight, and it’s our responsibility as men to support women (esp sga women in this case) and allow them to tell their own stories and let those stories be heard

in the meantime, yes, i would definitely ask that women & girls (esp if straight) think VERY critically about whether they should be reading m/m porn (the most likely answer is, they shouldn’t) and also highly encourage them to write/create their own works featuring women if they’re able to (which i would certainly do my best to promote/signal boost if asked), because that will do a lot to help everyone in this situation

(@ any girls/women reading this: i know i didn’t word it very well and i’m sorry if i’ve come across as patronizing which was not at all my intention, i realise it’s not always as simple as “just make your own stuff!” so i hope i didn’t imply that)

[fandomisnotyoursafespace]

I wonder if all the Benevolent Protectors of M/M ever devote this much time to attacking straight men who fetishize “lesbians” in porn? It’s a multi-million-dollar industry, after all, and a notoriously unethical one at that.

Probably not. It’s easier to make up some vague “threat” that women writing and reading m/m allegedly poses to gay men. That permits you to scold “fujoshits” for getting their filthy hands off your pure, wholesome, precious m/m. You don’t want GURL COOTIES all over it, after all. Also, how dare women have sexual fantasies that don’t cater to men’s egos but instead turn them into sex objects. How dare.

Also, I don’t know who ticks me off more: the people who whinge about how m/m is “mostly porn,” which it isn’t; or the people who complain that the icky GURLZ are introducing feelings and emotions into m/m and that’s “stereotypical” (because, y’know, men should be manly, never talk about feelings, just communicate by farting and belching, I guess).

And, yes, you are patronizing. Patronizing as fuck, from how you pretend to read women’s minds (interesting how you never consider that we create and consume m/m because it gets us off) to how you presume to lecture us. Check your goddamn male privilege.

[beiva-omata]

Look, ya’ll, I have to break ranks with my fellow gay men on this one. Yes, there are some really gross things that come from m/m shipping, but the absolute worst of it that I have encountered is women – usually young, and not knowing any better – making some sexually harassing comments or asking my partner and I to kiss for them to watch, and yeah, that is asshole behavior that no one should put up with. But here’s the thing: ask any woman, especially if she’s queer, to tell you about her experiences with that kind of sexual harassment, and I guarantee that she’s had it worse and more often than you.

And another thing: fandom has always been a space primarily by and for women. A lot of gay men participate, but it’s not for us. It’s also small enough that it’s easy to avoid if it makes you uncomfortable, unlike lesbian fetishization and female sexual objectification in general. 

So, yes, call out asshole behavior, call out homophobia when you see it, but you don’t get to throw your weight around and demand that no women participate in a space they created, for reasons that men in general have very little room to complain about considering the treatment of women in literally every aspect of western society.

[songlin]

Better Safe Than Sorry: How replacing squicks with trigger warnings is harmful, why tagging is important, and how shaming creators/consumers of dark content eventually keeps them from tagging it

whiskeyslick answered your post: okay, I think I have itmake your fanfi…

I think just tagging it “abusive relationship” should be enough. I don’t believe in these kinds of disclaimers, because it always leads to other things that “deserve disclaimers”, and ends up with people feeling pressured to post them.

I mean, I feel like you might as well have the other stuff, just in case. Safe > sorry and all that.

[therfm]

“Better safe than sorry” can escalate quickly in this context. Songlin, I’m going to start this with talking about trigger warnings, then I’ll continue on to your call for disclaimers and why I think the disclaimers are unnecessary and perhaps even harmful. After that, I have some things to say about the question of whether dark-themed writing/art even has a right to exist (within fandom) and whether or not the existence of these works normalises the dark themes depicted in the works. I use writing and art in my examples because those are the media we’re having the discussion about, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think the same about other types of creations. This got very long very fast. Songlin, my replying to your post with this doesn’t mean I think you entertain any of these ideas – I think you’ve done great work in this mess and I applaud your ability and desire to stay civil and reasonable against people who seem to want to hurt you. Alright, on to the post. In my opinion, the subject of trigger warnings and the need for them has escalated. It’s absolutely important for people to have trigger warnings in place when they talk about rape or abuse or incest or any other seriously and obviously triggering subject. It’s considerate. People have panic attacks and PTSD and traumas, and trigger warnings (or just tagging our posts) for the major triggers of abuse survivors/traumatised people is the least we can do. However, over the last few years, the term “trigger warning” has replaced “squick warning” in fandom, implying that people need to be protected from things that will trigger panic attacks and the like rather than that most people just want to steer clear of things that make them uncomfortable. I feel like it’s diminishing the importance and validity of actual triggers, trigger warnings and panic attacks. Example: realistic rape in fiction is a huge trigger for me. Watersports et al in fiction are very big squicks. I couldn’t handle the rape scene in the movie I Spit On Your Grave 2, because it was too realistic and triggering and hello panic. When I read a story that involved watersports, I just cringed and shut the tab. I don’t like people confusing my triggers with my squicks, acting like my squicks are something I need to be protected from or acting like my triggers are just “something I’m uncomfortable with”. Triggers involve my health. Squicks don’t. Once we’re at the point where we post a trigger warning for spiders because we knew someone once who had one stuck in his throat and almost died and it’s a huge trigger for him to be confronted with spiders, people simply stop taking the warnings seriously. Arachnophobia is very widespread throughout the world, but we don’t (and shouldn’t) trigger warn for the mention or appearance of spiders in fiction. Watersports is something many people are uncomfortable with. Adding a trigger warning for it, though, goes a step too far. Of course, there are people who have relatively rare triggers. Here’s a recent Captain Awkward letter from a person who was sexually abused by the teacher during an in-the-dark yoga session. Yoga is a huge trigger for her. Does this mean we need to pre-emptively trigger warn for people who might be triggered by yoga? No, I don’t believe so. I do think that if you have a major subject or theme in your story, be it an abusive relationship, a coffee shop AU, a discovery of love for toes or elbows or eating flowers, major character death, a famous trope like sex pollen, or non-con, you can and sometimes should tag it. If your story/artwork is centred on spiders (or watersports, or heights, or people-stuck-in-enclosed-spaces-for-hours), you should tag it. Tags are there for that reason: so that people who like it can find it, and the people who don’t can avoid it. “Abusive relationship” should definitely be a tag. “Non-con” should always be a tag. So should “fetishising [subject]” or even “fetishising”. “Coffeeshop AU” and other tropes should be tagged. “Major character death” must be a tag. Actually, let’s generalise (and keep in mind that I’m generalising and that there’s always room for nuance) and say that if it’s an often occurring trigger to abuse survivors it should be tagged with the subject, and if it’s a major theme or subject or pairing in your story, it should also be tagged. Now we’ve covered both the people who get panic attacks from rape as the people who dislike a certain trope/subject/pairing. I have one more thing to say about tagging. Right now there’s a big taboo in most fandoms on dark works – works that depict paedophilia or incest or rape or abuse or death or major violence. This shames both creators as consumers of these kinds of works. The effect of this shaming is not that the creators and consumers will no longer create or consume. The effect is that they try not to draw attention to it. This means that writing/art that has (“a bit of”) dubcon in it will not be tagged as such by the creators for fear of not being read or of being ostracised as person by the morality knights in fandom. Kinkshaming and subjectshaming only establish that in the end, the abuse survivor has no way of knowing beforehand when they’ve stumbled on something they wish to avoid. I want to be clear: I’m not proposing normalising stuff like rape and incest the way rape culture does. I do propose normalising the existence of these kinds of works in fandom, so that creators and consumers alike can go on doing what they want to do without being ostracised, with the added bonus of them being more willing to tag or trigger warn their work because they no longer fear repercussions. In my opinion, this is something that would help abuse survivors, because it makes it easier for them to avoid things they need to avoid. Moving on to the disclaimers. For the same reason I think trigger warnings for squicks are damaging trigger warnings in general, I think these disclaimers you’re proposing will damage the importance and validity of tagging. Once people assume they need to slap a disclaimer on their work if they have something in it that might hurt or trigger someone (the “better safe than sorry” principle you suggested), these same people will also often assume that if there’s something they’re uncomfortable with, a considerate, likable fandom member will write a disclaimer for it, and they will be furious and upset and hurt if that turns out to be untrue. The thing is, disclaimers are not (yet) a big thing in fandom. It’s not something we’re trying to eradicate. I’m proposing avoiding bringing it into fandom in the first place. I don’t think we need to add disclaimers for the people who ignore tags. If it’s a person who is triggered or squicked by a subject, they’ll know the importance of reading tags. Adding disclaimers muddles that importance. “Oh, the tags mention abusive relationship, but there’s no disclaimer about it so a) it must not be that important to the story or b) that person thinks this isn’t bad enough to use a disclaimer for THAT IS HORRIBLE HOW INCONSIDERATE THIS PERSON MUST BE [fill in the blank].” There’s been talk of putting disclaimers on stories/art to dissuade abusers grooming potential victims from linking to the work in question. The odds of disclaimers (or trigger warnings, or tags) working in the victim’s favour are highly unrealistic and quite honestly just wishful thinking. If there’s someone grooming a potential victim, they can just copy/paste the story in Word and e-mail it to the groomed sans tags and disclaimers. They can even turn it into a PDF. They can even post/plagiarise it on their own or a sockpuppet page. If that’s too much trouble for them, they can google the subject and have a video or story or artwork from mainstream media (whom we all know don’t trigger warn or tag at all, so why are we piling on each other in fandom for not doing enough for victims/abuse survivors again?) for their potential victim in less than five minutes. We can’t do anything about that. There’s also been talk of whether or not this kind of content even has a right of existence (in fandom), and talk of flat-out ostracising creators of triggering works and/or convincing them to stop creating these kinds of works in the first place in order to “save potential victims from being victimised and save already-there victims/abuse survivors from being confronted and hurt by these works”. It is unreasonable to think we should censor ourselves, to not create the art or writing we want to, for the sake of abuse survivors. They are already victims. They have already survived the abuse. We can’t undo what was done to them. Us not writing a certain story will not make them any less or any more of a victim/survivor. We are already doing what’s necessary and considerate by tagging and if needed trigger warning in the work and by having a discourse on these subjects on social media/Tumblr-like sites. Abusers will abuse. Abuse survivors are all around us. Saying that reading/consuming/watching a certain subject reinforces your vulnerability (like Saathi did a couple days ago – thankfully she retracted it) is a victim blaming non-argument in the same vein as “but she was wearing a tiny miniskirt and she walked home all alone at night”. Finally, there’s been said that the dark themes in fiction and art in fandom normalises these themes, causing young people to believe that this is not abnormal behaviour and causing/reinforcing abuse survivors to blame themselves. Personally, I don’t think this justifies ostracising those who have dark themes in their writing/art or doubting the right of existence of the art/writing itself. First of all, darkfic/art is not created for children. In most cases, the works are rated. On AO3, they’re behind a warning page. Blaming creators for the children/teens who bypass these safety measures and consume anyway is like blaming movie producers/directors or the porn industry for the children/teens who sneak into R-rated movies in the cinema or find a way around Google’s SafeSearch in order to consume the R- or X-rated content and porn. We can’t stop these children; what is more, it is not our responsibility to stop these children. It’s our responsibility to make sure they don’t inadvertently come across it, and we’re doing that already by rating and tagging. Rape in fiction/art doesn’t normalise rape any more than watching war movies or action movies or reading the Hannibal books normalises murder. Having rape fantasies or enacting rape fantasies in a safe setting with a consenting partner, two more things some people in fandom keep attacking, don’t make the people having these fantasies or doing these things any more a rape apologist or a rapist (or deserving of actual rape) than fantasising about another person than your partner makes you unfaithful. It’s like in BDSM when a sadist might like hurting people, but doesn’t want to damage them. The way to achieve hurting-without-damaging is acquiring consent (before and during play) and being aware of your partner’s limitations. Being a sadist in a consensual BDSM setting is not the same as being abusive. Rape fantasies are just like that, too. People who have rape fantasies aren’t looking to rape or be raped in real life. If they’re abuse survivors already, it doesn’t mean that they want to relive it or do it again or do it to someone else. Most people with rape fantasies are horrified if they experience or witness real rape. That doesn’t mean their fantasies are invalid or should be repressed. One more thing before I finish this humongous post. None of this means I think acting like things like paedophilia or rape are not a big deal in real life is okay. They’re not. Comparing art to reality hurts art and diminishes reality. There’s always been conservatives and puritans and morality knights who have called authors and readers of these subjects rapists, rape apologists and paedophiles - hypocritically so, because they rarely accuse authors or readers of murder and (graphic) violence in fiction of being murderers or violent criminals. I don’t think they’re right to make these claims. I think rape culture is very real and very damaging. I don’t think writing a story or making art about rape in and of itself reinforces rape culture or says anything about what the creator of the work really believes/thinks about rape. Nabokov wrote a wonderful book, but never did he in real life express the thought that Humbert Humbert wasn’t an abuser.

[havingbeenbreathedout]

On taboo themes in fiction

The whole issue of pornographic legitimacy aside:

One of my huge problems with a blanket condemnation of “people who write non-con” or “people who write underage sex,” is the assumption that there’s only one reason that a sexually explicit scene could possibly exist in a piece of fiction: to arouse the reader and uncomplicatedly celebrate whatever sexual activity is taking place. At best, when this mentality does acknowledge the existence of other types of sex scenes, it assumes that the categories “sex scenes that celebrate and arouse” and “sex scenes that problematize and dissect” are mutually exclusive, and that the line between them is clear, easy to draw, and easy to agree upon. 

Say for a moment, that we as a group are going to prohibit the writing and reading of sexually explicit scenes involving rape or underage sexuality. Does the prohibition extend to writing and reading fiction that depicts rape and underage sexuality in order to condemn them or detail trauma around them? If that’s allowed, does it apply to writing and reading fiction that deals with those themes in order to explore the complexities of individual responses to them? What if those responses are themselves morally dubious? If that’s allowed, does the prohibition kick in if any of the characters experiences arousal? If the reader does? Or does it just kick in when the reader perceives that a character is aroused at a point when, according to the reader, they shouldn’t be? Or when the reader senses, through a hundred intangible narrative cues, that the writer’s attitude toward the events in the story aren’t the same as the reader’s?

If you feel that the location of this line is obvious, are you sure that your boundary is the objectively correct one? Because historically, there is a VERY STRONG PRECEDENT that once censorship/taboos around these issues gain a toehold, people will disagree about the location of that line; that they will in fact challenge and attempt to ban any book which includes the issues in question, regardless of whether it does so to glorify them, condemn them, or something more complicated. If you would take issue with any of the following calls to ban or remove books from libraries, perhaps the line is not so clear-cut as you believed (also, more commentary under the cut):

Keep reading

[ritshoe]

Kudos to fanfiction writers for writing about all the trauma and emotional and mental turmoil that the original content creators dont acknowledge when putting characters through hell

[ritshoe]

Also kudos to writers for acknowledging that a character even exists when they havent appeared in the original content for like a million years yall are saints

[shadowmaat]

Kudos to fic writers who also give anguish-prone characters a break once in a while by writing them into light-hearted and fun situations. Writers who rescue shallow plot-convenience characters and breathe new life into them. Writers who try to “fix” the problems made by the creators. Fic writers are awesome.

[darkstrangevirgilanxiboi]

Tbh as someone who’s suffered mental and emotional trauma I HATE that stuff getting sidelined in Canon so HELL YEAH I’M GOING TO WRITE OUT ALL THE GRITTY ISSUES BECAUSE OTHERWISE IT’S UNREALISTIC

Plus it might help someone going thru shit of their own , you never know

[pearwaldorf]

If I never see another post from Franzeska aka olderthannetfic here it will be too soon. How dare she answer questions about racism and AO3 like she wasn’t one of the people who helped build it into the very structure of the site? I am quoting this directly from her post (emphasis mine): 

We picked the archive warnings from things that were common on older fic archives. Which, yes, reflects what fandom cared about at the time and is not neutral. (And when I say “we”, I do mean me specifically. I can’t remember how much my committee chose those and how much the Board and others drove the exact selection, but I did a lot of the research into older archives at the time. Including something about racism straight up never occurred to me in 2008.)

And sure, our views can evolve a lot in a decade. But Racefail happened in 2009, and none of the topics discussed at the time are different than those we’re focusing on today, 11 years later. For shits and giggles, here is my archived Livejournal post about the entire mess. If you click through to the other links (synedochic’s in particular), I think you will see this is something that didn’t just pop up with Tumblr and the SJW/anti contingent. (I’m not comfortable with conflating antis/fandom fundies/purity wankers with fans legitimately criticizing racism in fandom, but that is how a lot of it gets lumped together as a dismissive tactic.)

Which brings us to That Piece of Shit Meta in 2016. I am linking to the Fanlore entry for context, because the Actual Piece of Shit Meta is archive-locked (you can access it from Fanlore if you really want to read it, but it’s 16K of garbage).

A selection of commentary about it:

Guys, this was the problem all along. I’m doing fandom wrong by falling in love with the wrong source text. If I’d only understood that this wasn’t my space to enjoy non-white and/or non-male characters, because the majority of characters are white men, imagine how much happier I’d be in my life. (allofthefeelings)

they’ve been spouting yt apologia while fetishizing asian culture for years, this is nothing new. i’m pretty sure i’ve read franzeska saying the same things back when racefail ‘09 was going down. like most of this isn’t surprising bc it is exactly what we saw yt lj fandom peeps spouting in 2007-2010 and i’m personally not shocked that these people learned absolutely nothing. they don’t want to learn and being accountable for their actions. (astro-projection [edited to correct quote attribution and link])

Franzeska goes deep into the history of AO3 to talk about why slash is represented heavily there… But in 16,000 words over 13 chapters, there is not one mention of Racefail ‘09. Not a single reference to the time a popular Harry Potter LJ community used a racial slur as a prompt in 2007. Nothing about the Supernatural RPF Big Bang story that used the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a backdrop for a J2 love story (THAT’S A REAL THING THAT HAPPENED). Nothing about the time in 2006 that comics BNF Te pointed out the marginalization black characters faced on two then-juggernauts of white m/m slash fandom, Angel and Smallville. (snarl-furillo, the entire comment is worth reading so please click through)

This erasure of context and history is violent. Because many of the women of color who originally (and still) critique/d and resist/ed fandom’s normalized racism/misogynoir did so to their own detriment and with not insignificant risk to their personal well-being, safety, and privacy. Women of color were ‘outed’ by other fans for speaking out (doxed). They were attacked and silenced from all sides. They lost friends and community. They had to, with great vulnerability, cut themselves open and drag out their own private, internal experiences to air for all the (white) people who disbelieved them. They often found themselves speaking directly to a fucking wall of over-sensitive whiteness that would just as easily topple right on top of them. If anything in fandom is precious, it’s white feelings. And it always has been. (halfhardtorock)

In 2017 she was part of a Kickstarter to do a film about fangirls and fandom. I asked (you’ll need to hit “show comment” to see it) her to publicly comment about That Piece of Shit Meta, which she did. 

But before she did, Chelsea Woods, the co-creator of the project, emailed me about the comment. I don’t remember what exactly the email said, because it was a really long time ago, but she wanted to talk to me about the meta, perhaps to help formulate a response. Chelsea also reached out to somebody else outspoken about the issue at the time, and this is from a DM exchange I had with them:  

I understand why Chelsea reached out, as the head of the project and probably because she thought I would be more likely to respond instead of Franzeska. But tbh it feels like Franzeska’s trying to get somebody else (a woman of color) to do the legwork for her. To the best of my knowledge I don’t have F blocked on Twitter or Tumblr, and it’s not like my email is hard to figure out.  I don’t exactly relish the thought of talking to her, but as the one who fucked up, I feel like it is incumbent upon her to make the gesture…

I basically told Chelsea the same as you, that at this point there is very little she can do to demonstrate she understood what she did was fucked up, and that she has learned anything from the experience.

And when I tried to reblog her response, I found out Franzeska had blocked me, if that gives you any indication of how much she honestly wants to engage in discussion. 

Which brings me to now. I was literally today years old when I learned that Franzeska was head of the Abuse team for A While. (Bess says 2008-2012.) So suddenly a lot of things make sense, especially the lackluster (to put it politely) response about racist nonsense I’ve heard over the years, like in male hockey RPF. [edit: additional context in this post, ty Rukmini]

Certainly Franzeska is not responsible for everything racist about AO3, but she has definitely had a hand in shaping a culture that sacrifices the well-being and comfort of black users (among others) on the altar of “maximum inclusivity of content”. To turn the phrase back on them, who is “our own”? Why is it important to preserve an environment where a racially fetishistic fic that objectifies a black hockey player can stay up but a black fan basically has to go in like Viago checking for sunlight?

There is a balance between draconian content restrictions and letting racism, sexism, transphobia, etc run rampant on the site. I’m not saying it will be possible to find it immediately, or that it won’t change over time. But we have to try, if the AO3 is truly committed to making it a place that includes everybody, and not just the specific group of people who designed the site.

[liandrine]

Masterpost: Fantasies/Fiction vs. Reality

I’ve seen many posts during the recent fandom uproar stating that non-con etc. fantasies = reality = must be suppressed and silenced, and that’s just untrue and a very, very harmful claim to make. It drives people to shame and fear over something they possibly can’t affect. Fantasies can be a way of coping. Fantasies can be a way of handling unwanted desires so that they don’t change into reality, but studies seem to prove that more often people having fantasies don’t want them to actually happen in reality. 

So. I decided to compile this post about some research on sexual fantasies. This is obvious to many, but still it seems that it needs to be said. There is no straight line to be drawn from fantasies to reality. There just isn’t. Saying so is incredibly harmful.

The world is never black and white. Neither are the human mind, fantasies, ethics or morality. If someone states so, claims to be able to tell who is good and who is bad, be suspicious. Ask questions. If in any kind of doubt, don’t attack. These are things that are constantly being discussed and researched about, because there are no ready, simple answers. If someone makes it look simple to just categorise people and their actions and thoughts to either GOOD or BAD ones and never to think of them again, to consider them judged and resolved, they are simplifying too much. Especially when talking about something as difficult to define as fantasies.

It’s appealing, because we would like the world to be simpler, less over-whelming, less subjective. But it’s also an illusion and a very dangerous one, if acted upon - like right now, when the people bringing the fantasies in touch with reality are not the ones actually having them, but others doing it for them, trying to affect their real lives based on fantasies. At the same time shaming people for something they have little or no control over is making things much worse, it’s creating more shame, more fear, more anxiety, more distress. Even more so, when you’re doing that with one of the most common fantasies and so affecting So Many People. You don’t need to be a survivor to enjoy or write non-con fics and there is nothing wrong with you if you do. The reason people enjoy them so much is debatable, but the fault is not in the one having the fantasies. Try to change the society, don’t single out and shame individuals who were possibly made to internalise misogynistic thought structures or use them as coping strategies  - if that’s what behind these fantasies. Sometimes a fantasy is just a fantasy.

You don’t have to take just my word for this, because the web and libraries are full of researches, on fantasies and writing dark fiction vs. endorsing dark things in reality. This post consists (under the cut) only of direct quotes from the materials so that there can be no claims of my interpretations, I’m not making any. Of course you also have to remember that as all research, all these belong to a larger context - and because of that the sources are listed at the end of the post for the interested parties to look deeper. Also: research (especially when researching the human mind) is always about the gray areas, too. As in all science, most of these things can be summarised to saying “it seems to be more likely than unlikely, that…”

Keep reading

[cerberusian]

I’ve actually been thinking of making a post like this: you’ve beaten me to it! Here, have my own links with titles and abstracts:

The nature of women’s rape fantasies: an analysis of prevalence, frequency, and contents.

This study evaluated the rape fantasies of female undergraduates (N = 355) using a fantasy checklist that reflected the legal definition of rape and a sexual fantasy log that included systematic prompts and self-ratings. Results indicated that 62% of women have had a rape fantasy, which is somewhat higher than previous estimates. For women who have had rape fantasies, the median frequency of these fantasies was about 4 times per year, with 14% of participants reporting that they had rape fantasies at least once a week. In contrast to previous research, which suggested that rape fantasies were either entirely aversive or entirely erotic, rape fantasies were found to exist on an erotic-aversive continuum, with 9% completely aversive, 45% completely erotic, and 46% both erotic and aversive.

Women’s erotic rape fantasies: an evaluation of theory and research.

This article is the first systematic review of the research literature on women’s rape fantasies. Current research indicates that between 31% and 57% of women have fantasies in which they are forced into sex against their will, and for 9% to 17% of women these are a frequent or favorite fantasy experience. Erotic rape fantasies are paradoxical: they do not appear to make sense. Why would a person have an erotic and pleasurable fantasy about an event that, in real life, would be abhorrent and traumatic? In this article, the major theories of women’s rape fantasies are evaluated both rationally and empirically. These theories explain rape fantasies in terms of masochism, sexual blame avoidance, openness to sexuality, sexual desirability, male rape culture, biological predisposition to surrender, sympathetic physiological activation, and adversary transformation. This article evaluates theory and research, makes provisional judgements as to which theories appear to be most viable, and begins the task of theoretical integration to arrive at a more complete and internally consistent explanation for why many women engage in erotic rape fantasies. Methodological critiques and programs for future research are presented throughout.

Sexual fantasies, gender, and molestation history.

A total of 314 university students (107 males and 207 females) completed a questionnaire examining reports of childhood sexual abuse history and extent and type of adult sexual fantasies. Multivariate main effects of gender and abuse history were found, as well as a multivariate interaction between these variables. Males had more fantasies of forcing someone to have intercourse with them, participating in an orgy, and having sex with a stranger. Subjects with histories of sexual abuse had more sexual fantasies than their nonabused peers in four of five categories. Finally, sexually abused women reported more fantasies of being sexually forced than did women without sexual abuse histories or men regardless of molestation history. In several instances, fantasies correlated with especially early and extended abuse.

Power, desire, and pleasure in sexual fantasies.

One hundred and sixty-two participants (ages 21-45) wrote open-ended sexual fantasies and completed self-report measures of rape myth acceptance, adversarial sexual beliefs, and attitudes toward women. We coded fantasies using a newly developed scoring system that includes themes of dominance, submission, sexual pleasure, and sexual desire. Men fantasized about dominance more than women did; they also tended to focus more on the desire and pleasure of their partner. Desire and pleasure were more closely linked in the fantasies of men than in the fantasies of women, for whom the two were distinct constructs. Although fantasies of submission were not associated with problematic attitudes for either gender, men’s fantasies of dominance were associated with greater acceptance of rape myths. For women, greater rape myth acceptance was associated with emotional and romantic fantasy themes.

Inferring Sexually Deviant Behavior From Corresponding Fantasies

There is widespread concern that deviant sexual fantasies promote corresponding behaviors. The authors investigated whether that concern is valid in nonoffender samples. Self-reports of nine deviant sexual fantasies and behaviors were compared in two samples of male undergraduates. In Study 1, 95% of respondents reported experiencing at least one sexually deviant fantasy, and 74% reported engaging in at least one sexually deviant behavior. The correlations were all positive and averaged .44. However, only 38% of the high-fantasy group reported acting out fantasies. The effect of pornography use on deviant behaviors was partially mediated by increases in deviant fantasies. Study 2 investigated possible moderators, including eight personality variables. The fantasy-behavior association held only for those high in self-reported psychopathy. In addition, the association between pornography use and deviant sexual behavior held only for participants high in psychopathy. Overall, theoretically relevant individual difference variables moderated the relation between sexually deviant fantasies and behaviors and between pornography use and deviant behaviors.