Fandom is not your safe space.

Nor should fandom be your safe space. Fandom is for people to explore all sorts of possibilities in fiction and art. Not all of those possibilities are going to be fluffy, “wholesome,” “healthy,” “uplifting,” or whatever other adjective the Morality Brigade here on Tumblr wants to trot out.

Fiction is not reality. Depiction is not endorsement. No, it may never be “just a movie/fic/artwork,” but that does not make it reality. Fiction serves particular purposes, and one of them is to permit us to vicariously experience certain dangerous or otherwise unpleasant things safely.

If you believe that the purpose of fiction is to “uplift” us and fiction that does not is wrong and bad, congratulations: You’re a right-winger. (Or maybe you’re on the extreme left. When you get that far out to the ends of the spectrum, it doesn’t matter.)

If you think that anyone who writes or reads noncon is a rapist or rape apologist, you are too stupid for words. If you think that anyone who ships an incest ship or an adult/teen ship is an apologist for incest or pedophilia, you are too stupid for words.

It is none of your business what other people write, draw, and ship. Let me repeat that: It is none of your business what other people write, draw, and ship. You do not get to tell them they’re “trash,” you do not get to concern-troll them with passive-aggressive nonsense like “love yourself more uwu,” and you absolutely do not get to harass them off Tumblr or elsewhere.

Also, their past trauma or lack thereof is none of your business, either. Nobody has to present their “cred” as a rape or incest survivor before they’re allowed to enjoy fanworks that don’t meet with your approval. Total strangers don’t owe you their backstories. For that matter, not even your friends owe you every detail of their backstories. Mind your own business.

Don’t want to see all this “problematic” content on your dash or elsewhere? Unfollow people. Learn how to use Tumblr Savior, XKit, AO3 Savior, and similar tools. Control your own online experience. It is not the responsibility of others on this site to take care of you, who are a total stranger to them. Given how heavily female Tumblr skews, such demands are nothing but reinforcement of the expectation that women are supposed to take care of everyone else but themselves. (Yes, women are still oppressed as a class, even before you factor in intersectionalities.)

It’s amusing how some of you have the “courage” to dogpile, harass, and stalk others on this website whose taste doesn’t meet your oh-so-pure standards. People who create fanworks are soft, easy targets to kinkshame, aren’t they? Especially when, again, most of them are not cis straight men. Women have been policed and shamed throughout history for exploring their own sexuality — including by other feminists. The 1980s were full of feminists policing other feminists:

Often conflated with radical feminism, antiporn feminism grew out of radical feminism in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s—as did its counterpart, pro-sex feminism. The feminist porn wars of the ‘80s are largely forgotten to the general public by now, but at the time they were heated, divisive, and intensely personal. In 1982, Bar­nard College’s Center for Research on Women held a conference called “Towards a Politics of Sexuality,” which was picketed by antiporn feminists for including explorations of s&m and overall pro-sex viewpoints along with discussions of race and sexuality as well as sexual history (many of which were published in the 1983 anthology Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality).

Yes, sex-positive feminism was eventually co-opted by patriarchal forces, but it started out because a great many feminists were heartily tired of radfems telling them they were “traitors” and “brainwashed” for liking anything but the blandest, most euphemistic, and most painfully egalitarian erotica. (If you like that sort of thing, more power to you. Your tastes don’t make you better than the rest of us.)

Getting back to the here and now, I don’t see you going over to 4chan or Reddit with these morality campaigns. More importantly, I don’t see you organizing to go after big media corporations, especially those whose TV shows, movies, and books help form the toxic backdrop of misogyny, racism, rape culture, homophobia, transphobia, and similar bigotries behind everyday modern life. The occasional blogpost calling out this animator or that author, no matter how many notes it gets, is not the same thing as an organized campaign.

No, harassing David Gaider off Tumblr doesn’t count, not when Bioware makes more of an effort with social justice in its games than any other game company does. You can scream all you want about how “allies suck.” You need them in the real world, beyond the hothouse environment of Tumblr. If people in general could be trusted to do the right thing for the right reasons all the time, without pressure, there would be no need for any kind of activism at all.

Nor does screaming “pedophile” at John Green and insinuating that any grown man who reaches out to teenage girls is “creepy.” Yes, his “cool dad” act is annoying, and his books leave a lot to be desired. Have you considered that such outreach is part of his job as a YA writer? Have you also considered that stigmatizing men for trying to be mentors to adolescents, when you have no evidence that they’re actually perverts, reinforces traditional gender roles?

Tl;dr: Fandom is not your safe space. Tumblr is not your safe space. AO3 sure as fuck isn’t your safe space. People will post things you don’t like in all three spaces, which they have every right to do. Get over it, grow the fuck up, take responsibility for your own mental health, and stop confusing your oversized sense of entitlement with “social justice.”

This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately.  I am so sick and tired of people in fandom policing each other, saying “stop romanticizing” this, “stop glamorizing” that.  Haha- no, I will not.  

If Character X is evil, and I’m writing from Character X’s perspective as they murder Character Y in cold blood, of course it is going to be “romanticized”.  Newsflash– EVIL characters enjoy doing EVIL things.  For god’s sake, use your discretion.  I am going to be true to my characters no matter what, I’m going to write their evil and/or disordered thoughts just as they experience them- the rush they feel when they pull the trigger of their gun and the how glorious and powerful they feel standing over the other’s corpse.  This does not, in any way, mean that I am telling you it would be a good idea to go out and kill someone.  If you are thinking that taking another’s life is okay after reading a romanticized depiction of murder, then you definitely are not mature enough to be consuming that media in the first place, and probably should not be on the internet at all if your moral leanings are so very easily swayed.  If I’m writing something like that, I am trying to horrify you, trying to make you think “Wow, Character X is a sicko!”, trying to make you want to squirm in your seat and absolutely get the creeps.  Use your brain.  As with a painting, two people can walk away from a story with two entirely different takes.  Remember, fiction exists to MAKE you think, not to TELL you what to think.   

As for those who write violent/disturbing/sexual/etc. content, we are not maladjusted freaks who feel the need to push our warped fantasies onto others.  Not in the least.  We’re explorers.  We like to push the mental, spiritual, emotional envelope- to step into the very darkest corners of our minds.  We want to imagine the unimaginable, to feel the flames hell and the glories of heaven through the astral eyes of our art.  In our physical world where there is little to no (safe) adventure available to most, our minds our a wonderful refuge- and for a good majority of us, testing the limits of our own psyches ends up addicting us in the best possible way.  But even if you can’t relate to wanting to explore the boundaries of your spirit, then at least keep Aristotle’s old saying in mind before judging those who do- “It is the mark of an intelligent mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

Now I do realize some are more sensitive them others- be it because of some situation/event in their life, or just in their nature.  That is perfectly okay too, everyone is different.  No one is faulting you for not wanting to read/write/promote graphic content.  Just do not chastise the ones who do (remember the old expression “Who died and made you king?!” Yeah, that applies here.).  

If there is some topic that you truly cannot handle, that’s where things like trigger warnings come into play.  If the author of the piece is a kind person, they’ll put triggers in the tags, or give their piece an “R”/”M”/whatever rating and list the reasons for it being so (they must be careful with this though, as not to spoil anything for those who are not sensitive and don’t want to know what they’re getting into).  However, I personally do not believe they is any obligation to do this- why should an author be forced to offer comfort or refuge, when they are working so hard to do just the opposite?  I choose to put things like trigger warnings on my work (where they apply), solely because the well-being of my more sensitive readers is important to me (and no smart writer is going to want to alienate part of their potential following by disregarding their reader’s comfort, right?).  

But all in all, we need to stop policing one another’s art.  Period.  If you don’t like it, don’t read it, don’t look at it, unfollow people who post anything at all that you dislike.  But don’t fault them for it.  After all, an artist’s creations do not exist to comfort you or meet your approval- and egotistic, “social justice” martyrs need to stop expecting them to.