Love, Carol

Giving up already?

What the KH4 trailer didn’t show us: Xehanort still being a major jerk, but this time with an umbrella from Temu

SO HOW ABOUT THAT KINGDOM HEARTS IV TRAILER, HUH??? THAT WAS *NOT* ON MY BINGO CARD FOR NINTENDO DIRECT!!!

You're a fucking idiot if you genuinely can't tell the difference between a cartoon character and a real child and this mindset literally leads to innocent people who wouldn't hurt a fly beating themselves up over their intrusive thoughts 24/7 until they're trapped in constant OCD cycles, and some have even killed themselves because they couldn't live with the guilt anymore.

If you promote this mindset, then you are promoting hurting real people over their treatment of fake concepts that don't exist and you should feel fucking ashamed of yourself. If shooting pixels in Counter Strike doesn't make me a real terrorist, then no amount of thirsting over paper dolls can make you a real pedophile you dumbass selfish piece of shit moron. Maybe instead of sending bullshit like this to me you should work on the fact that you think how people treat Barbie dolls is some kind of real glimpse into a person's moral character instead of literally just mashing dolls together. The way you treat a literal inanimate object is apparently a real pressing issue in a world where Donald Trump became president of the fucking United States and has been using his power to rape real children for decades. How can you even CONSIDER your line of reasoning, especially at a time like THIS???

Start carrying a potted plant with you everywhere you go, please, because that's the only way to replace the oxygen you waste being a shaming tribalistic puritan.

If I write a story about a doctor treating patients, it doesn't mean I want to be a doctor in real life. If I write a story about a murder where the murderer gets away with it in the end, it doesn't mean I have some secret desire to be a real murderer. If I play Guitar Hero for hours a day, it doesn't mean I'm automatically going to be good at playing a real guitar. The violence in video games debate has long since been settled.

And if you can understand why T-bagging someone in a video game doesn't mean you like real gun violence, then why the fuck are the rules so different if someone is thirsting over cartoon characters??? Are you people going to address this fucking ludicrous double standard????

According to your logic, blow-torching a Barbie doll is some Fruedian slip that reveals someone's secret desire to create a real life burn victim.

And of course, let's not forget that this mindset is inherently queerphobic.

Plenty of lesbians have been attracted to male cartoon characters, and plenty of gay men have been attracted to female cartoon characters, and it doesn't invalidate their queer identity. Doesn't anyone remember the way Markiplier kept thirsting over Craig from Dream Daddy despite knowing for sure that he's straight in real life?? Let's also not forget that plenty of aroace people are still attracted to fictional characters, that's called being fictosexual, and you can have F/Os like that while still having no desire to tango with any real person in real life. It's actually quite common!

1, This is not a restriction that any writers in any other venue have to deal with, wtf, or the entire YA genre would be banished; 2, Excuse you, children of Tumblr, no one is thinking about you.

If other people in fandom are older than you, by definition, they have been your age. When fans write about younger characters, we’re not peering through a keyhole at young people now and creeping on them.

We are drawing on our own experiences, thoughts, feelings and memories of what it was like when we were that age.

No one has the right to ask older writers to cut themselves off from their own past just because young’uns don’t want to acknowledge that people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, all of them, were also young once. I’m 41, but I remember vividly what it was like to be 14. If I write a high school AU, it’s about my high school experience, even if I were to set it in the present day and decorate it with some (probably comically out of touch) Stuff The Kids Are Into Now. If I write a high school AU with sex, it’s because I remember that too! I’m not thinking about kids today, why would I– I have my own experiences to draw on. And honestly, sometimes there are things about being young that you don’t really understand until you’re much older and have some perspective– and that’s worth writing about.

1) We’re making them uncomfortable by writing teen characters

2) there are all these adult characters we should be writing about instead

3) they’re here for escapism and don’t like being reminded of ‘things like that’

To which it must be said:

1) if you’re uncomfortable, stop reading it. It’s not our job to babyproof fandom for you. It’s your job to recognize personal boundaries and protect yourself. Fandom is a shared space. Get used to it.

2) we write about the characters we find interesting, same way you do. Age has very little to do with that. I know you don’t believe me now, but I also know you’ll understand when you’re older.

That’s it, that’s the thing that gets me the most.

Here’s one small example that I recall from years ago: someone barely out of their teens raided an adult artist’s private account after gaining their trust, deliberately found adult erotica of animal characters, and shared it with other teenagers claiming it was to protect them and that the artist was dangerous. Then a bunch of these teens fabricated accusations, doxxed the artist, nearly got them fired, and began harassing, bullying, and threatening similar artists. The private art had been properly tagged. It would have had to have been a deliberate act with malicious intent to hack them, steal the art, and then expose it to minors. The bullies backpedaled when caught and decided to double down in the name of “it’s gross and making us uncomfortable so the artists deserve to die.”

That seems to be a trend: Threatening death and cartoonish physical harm to anyone who writes, reads, and even doesn’t mind sexual content, particularly if the characters are attractive to the antis themselves. “If I can’t have these fictional characters, nobody can” taken to a new level. They don’t seem to want to redirect their energy toward reporting actual predators, many of whom are in their own community.