#censorshippers

[coulsonlives]

"Wah, why aren't fandoms fun anymore?"

Because you keep policing people's headcanons, making fun of them and calling them horrible things, and on top of that, you're somehow claiming to be a safe space for people to express their creativity, yet turning around and harassing them anyways because you've made a billion exceptions to the "don't police people" rule and you think, like everyone else who's made their own exceptions, that your exceptions justify harassment.

So you're making fandom into a field of rat traps where nobody even dares interact with anyone, or shares art anymore, because you still might just attack them for it because they did something as simple as writing a canonically soft character as... a softie.

Let people do their "cringe" y/a romances, let people do their "gross" ships, let people write those characters as jerks or softies. Let them, and mean it when you say you'll let them, instead of soapboxing about it in a patronizing post but not really meaning what you're soapboxing about.

[mikewheelersfanfic]

things i think people should know BEFORE entering or engaging in fandom:

old lingo and definitions: ship and let ship, don't like don't read, block and move on, your kink is not my kink and that's okay, you curate your own experience

the dead dove tag alone isn't enough

ao3 is made to house ANY fanfiction no matter how gross

know what is vent art/fic and how can fiction be cathartic

the basic beginning of fandom: thank the star trek housewives that created us (/hj but seriously, remember where we started and how far we've come)

fandom is considered cringe and embarrassing irl in a LOT of places and context matters, keep that in mind

know homophobic, puritan, conservative, fascist rhetoric (censorship and hatred is fandom's greatest enemy, and while knowing this won't prevent propaganda from working on you entirely, it can reduce your risk of indoctrination and make fandom spaces a hell of a lot more enjoyable)

paraphillias do not equal predators just as disorders like npd don't make you abusers. in fact, there's study that says childhood abuse can increase the chance of having a paraphillia and a study saying not all CSA offenders have pedophillia (this is mostly a current issue thing but still relevant) plus, P-OCD is a real subset of OCD, just as Moral OCD is, which censorship mindset can definitely exacerbate due to the nature of them.

FICTION IS NOT ONE TO ONE WITH REALITY. DO NOT CONFUSE YOUR UNCOMFORTABLENESS OR BEING UPSET WITH GENUINE HARM.

it is heavily encouraged to explore in fiction! make stuff bad, get constructive crit, work on your skills, put in the work to get good and leave! comments! everywhere! think you're annoying? NO! KEEP COMMENTING! CREATIVES LOVE KNOWING THE THOUGHTS OF THEIR AUDIENCE! can't think of anything? a smiley face or a heart is just as good! take ao3's "kudos"!

related; share, spread, talk about, make fan content of fan content, feed the fandom ecosystem!! this isn't a store, don't practice consumerism! anything is good enough! "oh but i can only make memes" amazing! "i can only make stick figures" that's great! "i'm not good at writing" that's okay! you can ask around for help! no man is an island and fandom should be a community that thrives on supporting creators and sharing the love for a media or anything else!

we should not be built on hate, there's too much of that in the world already. be kind, be nice, and if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all.

[coulsonlives]

"i am not proship or antiship i am an adult"

I hope you still say that when you walk outside and see all the ADULTS voting to ban books, picketing outside libraries and schools, and saying certain books "groom children" so they need to be pulled from shelves because something something moral panic.

Just saying.

Brushing off moral panic as a "stupid jobless child fandom thing" is like... Do you also brush off bigots in fandom who radicalize kids into becoming terfs because it's happening in fandom. Do you get that fandom isn't a fucking vacuum. Do you get that just because fandom has words for being against moral panic, and supporting moral panic, that doesn't mean it's a fandom only thing.

Do you have a brain cell.

[coulsonlives]

[coulsonlives]

Is anyone else exhausted?

[coulsonlives]

Antis, after they chase all the people out of their fandom and there's no one left to interact with them:

[mikewheelersfanfic]

we really do hate this distinction of proshippers vs censorshippers a lot because it can, and very much has, desensitized people to callouts and accusations of predatory actions in fandoms because censorshippers call out so much for nothing.

it's not "oh shit that guy was legitimately predatory and was caught cool i hope they get put in jail so they don't cause more harm" anymore for some people.

it's "sigh... is it fiction again? is it cartoons? is somone calling adults minor coded again or slinging accusations for content clearly made for adults, who know what bad things are and to not repeat them? is is veiled/repackaged homophobia/puritanism?" as a first thought.

and honestly, we believe, as like a general theory but it makes so much sense: this is very much a result of consumerism culture and the rising amounts of facist rhetoric targeting minors especially but also gen z and millenials.

kids spaces irl are very reduced, teen spaces are very reduced, kid sites online are essentially gone, and more and more children are parented by screens than ever making them more likely to wander in these spaces and they expect to be catered to unlike the people who had internet safety lessons or computer classes in middle or high school who know how to act and stay safe.

no one is immune to propaganda, but an alarming amount of people have and are falling for it because it preys on anything you care about and adds ideas that make sense to you but you don't realize your want to help is being manipulated because propaganda is That Good At Manipulating You.

it just makes us sad that this thing that so many once had high hopes for... essentially is becoming something that encourages no morality and hatred and rage and skepticism and harassment instead of what the vision used to be. maybe it wasn't always Good, but... there's always been some highlight like websites like club penguin or cartoon network for kids and geocities for older creatives, ao3 and livejournal and fanfiction dot net.

idk... this is mostly just as we think it so yeah. i guess that's how we feel about it currently.