Toxic narratives sipping in the creative space
I want to talk a little bit about this topic because what happened lately rose a lot of concern for me.
As you know, shipping has been around for a looong time in fandom (Spock/Kirk I'm side-eyeing you). As long as a pairing exist, someone will make a fic, an art, or any transformative work about it.
And that is usually fine because these people we make art for are most of the time fictional people. They don't exist. So anything and everything goes without being harmful to anybody because people are free to express themselves and any fantasy on people that aren't real.
Now let's talk about the BTS fandom.
In our fandom there are pairings, of real people, 7 members to ship together, taken seriously or not.
Some believe a particular pairing is truly together, but then there are also the casual fans who just like a pairing for the aesthetic and it springs them to make art about it, without much thought about the reality of it.
It falls into the same process of all the other fandoms making works for creative and entertainement purpose. It's lighthearted and not that deep. It's for fun. Completely harmless. People even multi-ship just because.
I will talk about jikookers here specifically. Jikookers have always made transformative works. It's a thing that's always been part of our fandom culture.
Yet I have to agree with Blue on this (her last reading of jikookers vs taekookers), there's always been a very defined line between fiction and reality for us. I never came accross any jikooker using creativity to spread any negative message.
The medium we are using we keep it separate, contained. A way to explore creativity using Jimin & Jungkook and create new worlds, but the intent as always been benevolent.
Of course none of us assume at any moment that any of these fics are true. We know there is a line. We know these stories are completely separated from the real Jimin & Jungkook. They have nothing to do with them in fact. It's more of a way for us to have more fun but we know this is not real life.
It's common sense right? It's important to make the distinction, don't you think?
We absolutely need it to keep our integrity as supporters and creators.
But here comes taekookers, the ones who brainwashed the whole fandom with a toxic, hateful, harmful narrative that targets the real members. The one who are creating chaos and do not have integrity at all. They absolutely do not care about that. All they care about is feeding their ego, recruiting members of their cult, and doing as much harm as possible.
So what happens when finally this very real life narrative and toxicity sips through creative fandom space? What happens when someone creates a fic that tries to convince people that it's reality to brainwash people further into their cycle of hate?
You see what kind of person this tkker is.
They've made a whole fiction, depicting it as reality, to trash Jimin.
And now that is revealing a whole lot of moral and ethical questions (which I absolutely do not pretend having answers for)
Can you condemn a work of art that is harmful? Can you prevent people from doing so, having freedom of speech?
Where is the line between reality and fiction?When is a fiction not a fiction anymore, but propaganda of hate?
Jikookers have been careful not crossing the line.
But this taekooker has now crossed the line big and loud. And they are proud of it.
This question as been raised on AO3 for years. Many people are trying to censor this plateform for its underage content.
And yet many people are defending the right for people to express even about difficult topics. Because most of the time this is not reality. It comes from someone's head and has no repercussion in real life.
But for this taekooker, they created a story about real people with a toxic narrative that do impact the fans and the members. And they claimed it was real too on top of that, making a propaganda out of it.
So where is the fucking line here?
When the creativity is used to cause harm, should it be allowed to run rampant?
As I said this is morally and ethically very tricky to tackle.
I don't personally care about fics with underage characters (even though I don't read them), or rape, or morally reprehensible things. If people want to explore darker themes, it's theirs, and even if it's not my cup of tea I don't need to read it. Ship and let ship, is the fandom motto.
This tkker went a step too far for me, when their fiction became a medium to spread hate, to slender a very real person, to brainwash other very real people.
Like this sacrosaint line we've been all careful to keep in check in our fandom, it's like they came and stepped all over it. They disrespected our fandom culture and the members. They shamed every other creative out here.
And no, despite the deep respect I have for all forms of creativity, I will not stand by it.
I can't accept something that goes against all the values we hold dear.
And please, let's keep our fandom away from such action that is harmful for everyone.
Let's keep the creative side of the fandom a safe space for people to have fun in a healthy way.
