🏳️‍🌈Seven!✨ @seven-furr - Tumblr Blog

Anthony J. Crowley. Ignore the wonky everything eyebrows.

you can’t say any properly tagged work is uncritical about its content because tags are a critical frame

Properly labeling something isn’t inherently critical, it’s just stating the obvious! If I call soup ‘soup’, then that’s not inherently critical. If I write a review of the soup, then THAT is critical.

fandomfolly

That’s because ‘soup’ (unless you absolutely despise soup I suppose) is a value neutral word. ‘Unhealthy relationship’, ‘abuse’, etc. are not value neutral terms. No one is going to go arguing that these are not negative words and regardless of how the fic executes these concepts the tagging frames it is bad.

A fic that’s tagged ‘dubious consent’, regardless of how the characters react to the situation in the story itself, is acknowledging that it’s problematic and is far ‘safer’ to the uninformed reader (not that fanfiction is where any one should be getting their understanding of healthy relationship dynamics and consent from, but it happens) than the same fic untagged.

fiction-is-not-reality2

In fact, even the infamous “Choose not to use archive warnings” inherently acknowledges that the content might go in one direction or the complete opposite. It not only frames what you might find in the story (“anything”), but it also implicitly asks the reader’s consent in running the risk of opening up a story that is like a metaphorical mine field. You might be reading a story that walks you through the safe routes, or one that makes you hit every single mine on the path; both happen with the reader’s consent after they have decided to step in despite the warning sign “here be mines”

Fic tags are not shallow labels, they’re windows to entire worlds of connotations. Pretending this isn’t the case won’t succeed in vilifying the author, it will only belittle the reader.

seven-furr

hi I'm sorry could someone please explain im not smart enough