also when I say “fiction cannot cause bodily harm to real people” I am talking about fiction that glorifies bad things too.
a fanfiction or a piece of media can depict things that make you uncomfortable in a glorified manner, but at the end of the day it is fiction, it’s your job to use your common sense, as a grown adult, and understand that “hey, these things are bad in real life, but a fanfic is all fiction and play pretend, so it’s fine”, even though the bad things in fiction are glorified, it is still fiction. nobody in real life is harmed by the way it is being portrayed.
you have the power to stop consuming it any time you want. it cannot hurt you the second you turn off your tv or click out of a fic.
but you do not have the power to tell other people what they can or can’t create/consume.
also, no, ao3 will not remove a dark fic because it glorified rape or whatever. anti-censorship stance aside, whether or not a fanfic glorified bad things is entirely subjective. you cannot demand ao3, a site created by freaks for freaks, to remove something because you think it’s too disgusting for your personal comfort.
a gentle reminder that the entire point ao3 was created in the first place is to host “fucked up fics that were banned from other platforms with censorship, fics that glorified taboo things and portrayed them in explicit details”.
I have talked about this like, a hundred times on here but “if seeing bad things in fiction alone is enough to make someone hurt real people in real life”, then the actual problem is that person’s inability to separate fiction from reality, and chances are that they are already a danger to themself and other people, with or without the fictional things they consume.
I have been enjoying the cannibal aesthetic, and the romanticization of murders and cannibalism, from nbc hannibal for decades, and so do millions of other people worldwide. guess what, the show didn’t actually turn their fans into actual murderers or cannibals, despite how it glorified and romanticized bad things.
it’s okay for you to be uncomfortable by taboo things in fiction or how they are portrayed, but just because you are personally uncomfortable by it doesn’t mean other people have to share your personal views.
it’s okay to enjoy fucked up things in fiction and embrace your dark fantasies. wanna glorify and romanticize your dead dove fic? go ahead and have fun. that fictional character looks hot covered in blood anyway 😋