🗑️ TO THE “MORAL POLICE” HARASSING AUTHORS: YOU ARE THE VILLAIN HERE.
I’m actually losing brain cells watching this fandom implode. I need you chronically online performative activists to sit down, shut up, and listen for once in your miserable lives.
I’m seeing amazing authors deactivating, deleting their work, and leaving the fandom because a pack of rabid hyenas decided to bully them over FICTIONAL CHARACTERS.
Let’s get a few things straight, because apparently, critical thinking is a skill you lot didn’t spec into.
1. HARASSMENT IS NOT ACTIVISM.
Bullying real, living, breathing human beings over a fanfic about a video game monster doesn’t make you a “good person.” It makes you a piece of sh*t. You are not “protecting children.” You are literally traumatizing real people in the name of a pixelated antagonist. If you tell an artist to kill themselves over a ship, YOU are the problem. Not them. You. 🤡
2. IT IS A HORROR GAME.
We are talking about Poppy Playtime. A game about body horror, murder, and dark experiments. But suddenly, writing dark fics or shipping the Prototype (an eldritch abomination made of wires and meat) is where you draw the line? Stop applying real-world laws to a fictional wire-spider. “Oh, but he’s Oliver!! He’s coded as a minor!!” SHUT UP. The Prototype is a fictional entity. A monster. Authors have been writing about him since before the lore drop. Even if the lore changes, FICTION DOES NOT EQUAL REALITY. If you can’t separate a fanfic from real life, you need to log off and go to therapy.
3. “DON’T LIKE, DON’T READ” IS FREE.
The block button exists. No one is strapping you to a chair and forcing you to read Pro-ship fics or Prototype content. You are actively seeking it out just to be offended. That’s pathological behavior.
To the antis/moralists: You are not the morality police. You are just bored bullies looking for a socially acceptable target to abuse. You ruined the fun for everyone because you’re incapable of curating your own internet experience.
To the authors: Please, for the love of god, DO NOT STOP WRITING. Do not let these jobless losers win. Block them, lock comments, but keep creating. You are the backbone of this fandom. The rest of them are just noise.
R.I.P. adequacy in this fandom. You've broken the bottom.
"Why can't the freaks on AO3 just go and make a site for all the gross stuff and leave AO3 alone."
Because AO3 is that site. Because AO3 was that site long before you decided AO3 was better than the sites you bullied us off of before, and I can promise you if someone somehow comes up with a fanfic site you like better specifically for the 'gross stuff' you'll try to bully us off that too so you can benefit from it.
AO3's specific core purpose is to preserve fanfiction, yes, but it was also instigated as a host site for the fanfiction that kept getting yeeted off other platforms like Wattpad. Its designed to preserve all fanfiction, not just the fanfiction you, personally, think is 'allowed' to be written.
AO3 is the site for all the gross stuff the freaks make. We've been there just as long as you. We've been funding it just as long as you have. AO3 has specifically said you have a place here. The timeline was literally:
Wattpad/FF.net/LiveJournal purge fanfics > AO3 is born > The people who's fics got purged moved over to AO3 > AO3 gains popularity as the best functioning site > The people who pushed for the fics to be purged off Wattpad move to AO3 > The same people try to push for AO3 to purge fics.
AO3's source coding is open-access. You go make a polished, strict, rigid site where nothing 'icky' is allowed. You go make a site where you can control what is hosted. We already have our space.
Got strain brained from writing so I'll rest it by... ranting making educational posts for the young souls and the old souls that are also unaware of the not so new terms in fandom, which are misused abundantly.
I got back on Tumblr, Twitter and Fandom spaces in general after almost a decade, just to be faced with the following terms:
antishipping / proshipping.
I had no idea what those terms meant, but by only looking around and catching some hints, I understood (wrongly) that proshipping stood for 'problematic shipping', and I've seen a lot of people explaining it as exactly that, no further elaboration, done.
Previously I thought it meant professional shipping, which made as much sense to me as it makes to you, don't judge ok.
So I asked a friend who has been around fandom spaces for longer periods about it, and they kindly explained to me that the term is not actually meant as problematic shipping.
It is pro-ship as in "pro all ships."
In a sense of you being able to ship whatever you want, and you're not a bad person for shipping the fictional characters, much like like how being "pro-choice" means believing everyone has the right to safe abortions if they want to, not that they are in favor of problematic choices like, wtf.
Antishipping, however, means being against whatever that individual anti deems a problematic ship, and thinking that other people should also oppose it, as well as generally being in favor of censoring "problematic" content in fanfic. So they wrapped the original meaning to mean problematic shipping when that's not really what pro ship people mean when they say they're pro-ship.
You can be a proshipper and only ship the most basic, normal, vanilla, fluff things ever. It only means you won't go after other people who ship couples that you don't.
You see?
And instead of asking about it on tumblr or twitter, where a lot of people are being awful at explaining, and doing it oh so wrong, if you google it you find the actual origin and meaning of the terms.
Even the google AI, the damn gemini who sucks, got the term explanation right.
So, spreading misinformation is really a choice nowadays, as is being ignorant.
This also borders the subject of anime characters being minors, and it splashes in the selfshipping/yumeshipping area as well.
It seems to be a recurring theme in every single fandom space, that when you, — a person, a human being, flesh and bone, soul trapped in the mortal shell that you are — grow up and age, you can't ship yourself with the character you used to ship yourself with as a minor, because — shockingly — the character does not grow up with you, since it is a drawing, a bundle of words, a concept of your imagination, an amount of pixels, an amalgamation of the author's wildest fetishes, etc.
So, the moment you hit your eighteens you can no longer draw yourself, imagine yourself, ship yourself with that character.
"They are fifteen, they are minors." "It is immoral. It is criminal. It is unholy. It is problematic."
Right? So, this is the background I can provide you if you have never in your life opened twitter, tumblr or TikTok to stumble upon some of these fandom discourses and miss concepts.
And these are a few of the things going on and on and on, and of course I blocked the whole names, handlers, everything ffs it's the bare minimum, I cannot care less about the individuals here, I'm talking about the main thing.
This is, to the date, one of the biggest not-issue I've ever seen in the whole fandom aspect.
Dearest, and I will hold your hands as I tell you this, my sweet, sweet darling, you do not need to feel guilty about liking the PNG.
"But she is 70 years old and she likes this character that is depicted as being 14 years old!"
Baby. Sugar. My summertime sadness.
Look at me.
this, right here, is Jotaro Kujo. This, this man, this tall, large, broad shouldered man. This bricked motherfucker. This character that can be YOUR dad, is a minor.
And this other character here is ALSO a minor. Shiryu. And all the other damn saint seiyas or whatever the hell they are. Saori is a minor AS WELL.
So I ask you now:
Do they look like minors to you?
They do not, you can try and twist it as you may, but they do not look like children nor teenagers.
They also do not ACT, think or are portrayed as such — they act like damn adults, young adults on their 20s to say the least.
You are not being a terrible person for being attracted to these characters. (this is the paragraph you come back to if you don't understand why it's okay to ship fictional characters)
You are attracted to them because of their design, their physique, their background/history, their personality.
You are not attracted to them because they are said to be a fucking minor.
Can you see the difference? Can you understand such a complex concept? Can you wrap your head around it?
So go ahead and keep shipping yourself with that twink, with that BNHA buff shredded character, with JJK long lean annoying character and whatnot.
I promise you they won't be disgusted at you, and I say with confidence that this is because they do not exist, so they are not capable of being hurt, nor feeling anything.
That's the beauty of it, isn't it.
The beauty of fanfiction, fanart, fandom.
Fiction.
You can enjoy things.
You can also enjoy seeing the twinkatron that looks like he's 25 but is said to be 17 making out with the 600 years old gay ass bara.
You can ship the character that is 40yo with the other character that looks like he is 26yo but the author swears he is 17yo.
⚠️If you don't really get why, go back a few paragraphs and rewind, it's explained right up there.
You won't be sent to jail for that.
And you won't be deemed inferior, filthier or a predator because you enjoy such things with the fictional gay little dolls.
And, newsflash, there is no space for prudes and bullies and conservatives nor antis on fandom spaces.
Oh but I don't think it's right for people to like a character because they're adults and the character is not.
Get fucked.
Try and use that smooth brain of yours to think that the world does not, in fact, revolve around you and your opinions.
I'm giving you the small mercy of explaining the obvious thing that fiction is not reality and vice versa.
Why would you feel entitled to harass someone because you, dumbass, think they shouldn't be able to enjoy their comfort PNG?
Fandom is dying because of you and yours.
There is no crime being committed and no correlation with real life, you dense motherfucker.
You all sound like the satanic-panic people from the 90's big media telling parents that Yu-Gi-Oh, Dungeons and Dragons, Pokémon and Digimon are things that are used to worship the Devil and that they will make your children become satanists.
That's how dumb you sound when you try and forbid someone to enjoy a character kissing other character or even their fictional persona.
Like, damn, go find something real to worry about.
You're worried about predators on the internet?
Or are you worried because your online friend is liking that fictional anime couple you deem PROBLEMATIC?
So you really need to go after the real issue and act on it.
Log off twitter and tumblr and go research institutions that actively combat predatorial behavior online and offline, or that helps SA survivors perhaps, it's way better and way more effective than being some entitled moron that tries their best to rip off the little comfort some people find in their silly png dolls and harass them out of a fandom.
Or are you just doing this shit because you, little star, don't like when other people like different things?
Let me grab another spectrum of this for you, because I know people act and speak with malicious intent and love to twist and talk about things that have nothing to do with the subject.
And this will get worse as we go, so bear with me.
Look at this character. This is a dragon of hundreds and thousands of years. An adult, if you may.
Does it LOOK like this toddler is an adult?
Because I see people, mostly men sigh, justifying nsfw art of this big headed infant due to their age being over 500yo.
This character is, at BEST, a 6yo.
It is portrayed as one, it BEHAVES as one, it LOOKS LIKE A TODDLER.
So, here we go again, if you are attracted to /the character that is the representation of a toddler/ you oughta seek therapy, you may want to work this shit out and understand EXACTLY "what, in a 6yo, is making you want to do whatever you want to do with them."
Age in some medias, specifically anime and manga, is arbitrary.
It just is, there's nothing we can do about it.
So what matters, and I'm being crude, is the appearance of the character + how they behave + how they act and think.
Rebeca, from Cyberpunk Edgerunners, is an adult. She is short and lean, but she presents herself as an adult since the first episode. She is childish, bratty and crude as well, those are personality traits. Still an adult.
Shipping Anya, from SpyxFamily with Loid, for instance, should also make you go seek some checking and therapy to understand what, in this scenario, arouses you.
She is portrayed as an infant, thinks like an infant, looks like an infant and behaves like an infant. And he is, looks, thinks and behaves as an adult.
I'm being as didactical as I can so everyone can follow, but there's only so much I can do. I can't magically make you understand the most simple things if you're not willing.
People are in desperate need of depth understanding. Of text interpretation classes sometimes. Of... thinking. Really thinking.
You don't need to be Einstein to understand or think a little before talking about things you don't know, you just need to live the real life, research subjects, you need to know people outside of the internet, interact with your surroundings, with colleagues in school, college, workplace, the supermarket, with real people, live your life, gather knowledge and experience things.
It's not black and white as many, many people think it is.
It's very fucking gray, it's something worth debating OUTSIDE of the internet mostly, with the friends you have that are inside fandoms, the people that know how to discuss the nuances of character creation, artistic choices, and such.
Hell, I spent hours debating the reason behind characters looking like middle aged dads and then turning out to be sixteen years old because the author says so.
Culture, in Japan for instance, sometimes is a big reason behind their aesthetic choices. As is age of consent in the country behind the canon content.
There are even some debates here and there on the internet talking about these things, I may link them below, but I just wanted to rant and put in actual words that antis/prudes/entitled fans are really fucking stupid, and kids/teenagers are becoming more and more like that, not to mention they are becoming conservative?? therefore reflecting a reality that existed before they were even living in the ballsack of their parent.
Like, babes, you were supposed to be chill and smart, how the fuck did things get so backwards that teenagers are just straight up trying to purge kinks from Ao3, like?
And before you think, consider and decide to comment/ask anything rude, dumb or slightly out of context because you can't comprehend, interpretate or understand words put together in a text, remember that I am not above telling you to give your parents a smidge of happiness and end it all.
Fandom discourse: If they look like an adult and act like one then whatever arbitrary age placed by the author doesn't matter.
r/FanFiction | wowowowthrowaway44
r/CharacterRant | nihilnothings000
If people say that the arbitrary age does not matter then wouldn't that mean that the appearance of the drawing is all that matters in the end? In spite of this, people seem to be up-in-arms on drawings that already look non-suspect enough even though most people said that an arbitrarily placed age rating should not matter. They look like adults, sound like adults, and they act like adults so they are more less adults.
Though you might also say:
"There are teens who can pass off adults too so is this not trying to justify ephebophilia?"
Regarding that I suppose these are one of the rare moments where the statement "it's just a drawing applies". The main difference between IRL teens that pass off as adults and fictional ones are solely the fact that the latter aren't real. Fictional arbitrarily labelled teenagers aren't going to be affected by the comments made by horny teens and young adults regardless of sex/gender.
Think of it like this, when people are attracted to Zandaya's character in "Euphoria" (mentally sound) people are not attracted to the characters because they're teens but because the character that Zandaya (the legal adult) is playing is attractive. Apply this logic to fictional characters and it's more or less the same, most are attracted to the drawing that looks like an adult, not the arbitrarily place age by the author.
Since this debate tend to persist a lot in shounen targeted series I suppose there are additional reasons to make the characters attractive as possible:
• Attractive characters sell to get teens regardless of sex/gender to thirst over them as well and at this age most teenagers are pretty hormonal. Stories are in the end the most important but having an attractive looking character does help keep in increasing attachment.
• However, due to anime and manga being a medium with a periphery demographic it probably attracts those who're above teenagers like college students and young adults. They also have a larger spending power for merchandise, physical books, and DVDs considering that they have jobs at that point so it's best that the characters made don't look like literal kids to make it less iffy (some weirdos might not care but at least if the characters look like adults then it'd probably garner less side-eyes and looks of suspect)
• It also doesn't help that anime/manga characters tend to be drawn as age ambiguous as possible, with only wrinkles and sharpness of eyes (sometimes) being an indicator of them being older.
These debates wouldn't have happened if Japan could stop romanticizing high school and have them be set in college, but considering the target demographic being young teenagers we're gonna have a lot of settings be in HS than college.
I really hate how the ones who usually say that it's just a drawing are the ones trying to justify attraction to lolis which makes it difficult for this side to be talked about, nuance in the Internet truly is dead.
How I feel ranting about this, but then I remember dumbasses exist.
I deadass am NOT kidding my first thought when I click on the page of someone who draws Rick and Morty art is: Please PLEASE don't be a pro||shipper. The amount of times I found a good artist who pulls the rug from under me in the cruelest way happened more times than I am willing to admit.
What happens:
Me: Awww! This art of Rick and Morty bonding is so cute! *Likes it* I wonder what else they made! *Clicks on their page*
Me 2 seconds later: FUCK-
I also HAVE the tags muted, people need to tag their ship, I won't harass you but I don't wanna see that.
i think some antis need to hear that you're allowed to be disgusted by things. you don't need to make something "problematic" or "evil" to dislike it.
me personally i don't fw lolisho, but i don't think the people who do are automatically pedophiles (i've posted about this before, but the characters are not in any way comparable to real people), nor do i harass and threaten people for enjoying it. i recognize that i'm allowed to dislike lolisho content, and i don't need to make the creators into these evil caricatures to validate that dislike.
another common example i see is antis posting that they're trying to find ways to make a ship they don't like problematic so that they can dislike it. i mean... you can. it doesn't have to be something objectively hateable or morally unjust for you to have an opinion. you're allowed to dislike a ship for no particular reason. there are plenty of ships – canon, fanon, rarepair, most-common-in-fandom – that i just don't rock with and that's ok. there's nothing "wrong" with these ships, and there doesn't need to be.
soo anyways. point of the post = you're allowed to dislike things that aren't problematic, that's normal, people have preferences, you can dislike whatever you want just don't harass other people over it, yyyea
The black butler fandom is actually so funny bc you have two warring factions, the sebaciel group and the dadbastian group. Both groups think the other is absolutely disgusting. Both groups are inherently wrong about the nature of the relationship.
One of my biggest issues with proshippers is how they try to make themselves seem like the "leftist"/"radical"/"queer" whatever ones, like being a proshipper is some grand moral stance when in the end... They just want to post rape fanfiction about random anime character and jerk it to incest porn.
If proshippers just used the label as just "pro freak shit" (I'm not even going to entertain the anti-harassment or anti-censorship stuff. get real, proshippers have never been anti-harassment, and this is fandom discourse), and didn’t make some big community of people on their high horses acting like they're so enlightened and mature for liking incest I wouldn't care nearly as much. I probably wouldn't care at all if they kept to their little corners on the internet.
Another issue I have is how the ones who are like 30+ act like eternal victims due to the fact that there was some old definition of antiship (which im 99% sure was made by proshippers, long after the first usecases of it but don't quote me on that) that was a harassment thing, and now want to pretend that a person having proship dni in their bio is some kind of huge act of harassment against them. But that's an issue for another post after I read up even more about it
Ya know, i loved Naruto as a kid and never understood why anyone would simp for Kakashi. As an adult I am a total simp for Gojo. And I realized the major difference between those.
Because I am now an adult simping for another adult, and in Naruto I simped for Sasuke as a kid.
In JJK I love Yuuji and Inumaki and Yuta and they are good looking boys but that's just it. They are boys. I am a woman in my 30s.
And I find it disgusting when people ship a character who is a teacher with their student. And I get it, writing is an art form, but so many things are just blatant fetish content.
And I am so glad that the only things I think of when I see Itadori Yuuji are "aww he's so sweet" or "so cute" or "i wanna hug him and give him cookies" and not "he's so hot" or "him and Gojo look so good together"
Unless you are another 15 year old and think he is attractive thats fine.
