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It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!
Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.
I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.
Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.
Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:
Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.
The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:
Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?
Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?
Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!
If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.
At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.
The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.
Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).
Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works
Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works
Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works
Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works
This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.
How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.
With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.
And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):
The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.
Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.
To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.
Squick is literally a personal thing, you literally cannot know what squicks another person.
Same goes for triggers, by the way. You can't guarantee something is trigger-free because literally anything can be a trigger because the human brain can be weird like that sometimes.
Okay I thought I was being pretty clear but some of the notes seem confused so: I am not making making fun of people for not knowing a word. Blah blah "today's lucky 10,000" etc.
And I don't mind people (actually) asking instead of looking it up, they're just being sociable. You'll notice that I didn't screenshot any of the actual definition-seekers, just people being kinda rude and making silly assumptions, like that it's new, or exclusively used on tumblr, or synonymous w/ cringe.
Anyway! For those who actually want to know what "squick" is or how it is used: Something that squicks you, or is a squick of yours, is something that disturbs you, grosses you out, just ruins the whole experience of whatever you're doing. You gotta close the book, leave the room, backspace out of wherever, because you just can't stand it.
It is primarily used in kinky and fannish circles.
For usage, you might see something like "Any good fic recs for [FANDOM NAME]? No pregnancy or cheating plotlines, please - they squick me."
You don't have to clarify how they squick you, if they nauseate you or make your skin crawl or make you too depressed or anxious or angry to enjoy it. They squick you out, and it would be rude and inappropriate to rec you anything with them.
You don't have to justify your aversion by calling it a trigger. (I know there are times when people will call their actual triggers "squicks" because, well, it's not really anyone's business what triggers them and why! No-one needs to know that!)
Squick has a implicit aura of non-judgement. YKINMKATO, just not my cup of tea, y'all have have fun with that though, just say squicked instead of grossed out or uncomfortable and it's all implied.
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I’m all in favour of LGBT reimaginings of popular media, but with respect to some of the Labyrinth fan-castings I’ve seen floating around lately, there’s really no getting away from the fact that the Goblin King is a sexual predator.
Like, that’s the straight-up text of the film, and it’s not especially subtle about it.*
I’m not saying gay people can’t be villains, but the whole point of Jareth is that his attraction toward Sarah is sick, and her rejection of him represents a triumph of good over evil – it’s very much a film born of the Stranger Danger narrative that was all over popular media in the 1980s. I’m sure it’s possible to do a same-gender version of that without falling down the slippery slope of Unfortunate Implications, but it doesn’t feel like that concern is even on the radar in a lot of these proposals.
* Though the subtext isn’t slacking off, either. Remember the scene where Sarah first encounters Jareth, where he starts fondling a crystal ball, smirkingly invites her to play with it, then snarls and thrusts a snake in her face when she declines? That ain’t the reading-too-much-into-the-curtains kind of symbolism!
I feel like it’s more complicated than that, though? like… I feel like being a cis man there’s some nuance you’re missing?
CW: Long meta, rape mention, frank discussion of Problematic Teenage Fantasy Boyfriends
Labyrinth is pretty clearly a Symbolic Coming-Of-Age Story ™ about the Role Of Fantasy in the life of a Young Woman, right? it’s about how you need to have a healthy relationship with fantasy. you can’t let it push away the people you love, you can’t let it control you or blind you to what’s there. but it can help you make lasting friends, and when you need it most- for any reason at all- it’s there.
it’s pretty much text that everything in Labyrinth is part of Sarah’s imaginary world. Everything in the Labyrinth is either something she sought out and loves- her plushies and statuettes, her music boxes and books- or some part of herself, some want or fear or dream, given form.
And a lot of girls like Sarah- bookish, daydreamy, intellectually gifted but emotionally immature girls who’ve been steeped in a lot of crap about relationships from the world we live in - have a Fantasy Lover who looks and acts a lot like Jareth.
He’s Intense and kind of scary– because when you’re at that age, anything to do with romance or sex is intense and scary. He’s passionately, obsessively devoted to you, because it feels good to be needed and a teenager hasn’t got the life experience to realize that IRL that kind of obsessiveness is a red flag. He’s an older man- sometimes much older- so that he knows what he’s doing and can show you what to do, but he’s as pretty and graceful as an age-appropriate crush would be. He’s Flawed and Broody and a bad boy- but it’s blatantly obvious that he has good qualities; he will gladly make a fool of himself dancing just to make a baby smile.
And the Fantasy Lover is often… yes… kinda predatory. He’s a vampire, or a werewolf, or a Phantom, or a Goblin King. He comes onto you, not the other way around; he chases you, and you run for a while before falling into his arms and being Ravished. He leads when you dance; he tells you “do everything I say, and I will be your slave”.
But there’s a reason for this. in modern American society- and this was even more true back when Labyrinth was being filmed- women are not supposed to want sex. even having fantasies about having a passionate lover you sought out that you want can get a bit ~taboo~. and if you’re a teenager- especially if you’re a sheltered teenager with no female friends or family, no one to tell you that what you want is okay and normal- it can feel weird and bad and scary to fantasize about, well, initiating consensual sex. you don’t feel like you’re allowed to; Nice Girls don’t.
so oftentimes, the Fantasy Lover blurs into rape fantasy territory. he knows exactly what you want and he gives it to you, no matter how many times you say no. you deny yourself any agency within the context of your fantasy, but since it’s just a fantasy, you’re having your cake and eating it too– after all, you can stop whenever you like. you still get to be a Nice Girl, a Good Girl- you didn’t do anything wrong, even in your own head- but you get all the poorly-choreographed Imaginary Romance Bodice-Rippin’ you want.
normally, this is a pretty harmless coping mechanism. the thing is… “denying herself her own agency” is one of Sarah’s big flaws.
She tends to immediately deny that she made bad decisions, to act like bad things just happen to her because It’s Not Fair, to balk when there’s a problem she can’t immediately solve. heck, selling Toby to the Goblin King in the first place is sort of a backhanded denial-of-agency – she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to Toby even though she resents his existence, oh no no no, it was the Goblin King that stole the baby.
And Sarah’s never in any real danger from Jareth. the snake scared her, but it didn’t bite; the poisoned peach would have made her lose her memory and stay in her fantasy world forever, which is something that Sarah knows is bad, but still kinda wants on some level. at their final confrontation, he doesn’t try to kill her, doesn’t try to fight her– because he can’t.
Jareth is Sarah’s Fantasy Lover. He can’t do anything that Sarah doesn’t want him to. he’s predatory because Sarah wants him to be, because then she doesn’t have to accept that she wants sex and romance; she can pretend it’s just another thing that happens to her. the reason Jareth is so out of control in the text is that Sarah has given away all control.
the final confrontation in Labyrinth, isn’t Good Versus Evil in the sense that you mean; it isn’t Sarah destroying Jareth forever, or kicking him out of the land. Hell, he shows up at the end in barn owl form, while all the muppets are having a dance party in Sarah’s bedroom– he’s a part of her inner, fantastic world, and has just as much right to be there as Ludo or Hoggle or the little dudes with the ostrich hats. but he’s only a part of that world, and he’s not the part that matters most, or the part that has say.
their final confrontation is Sarah accepting, and taking responsibility for, her inner life. she is the one in charge of her destiny; she wants what she wants, she needs what she needs, and she will take responsibility for both. she doesn’t need Jareth to do things “to” her so she can pretend she doesn’t want them to happen. her will is as strong as Jareth’s, and her kingdom as great. he has no power over her.
so like…I get where you’re coming from with recognizing the Unfortunate Implications and all. “Gay people are sexual predators” is still A Thing, and in the real world, yeah, Jareth would be a creepy pedo stalker. assuming our civilization survives and all, I hope that someday people look at Labyrinth the way we look at Baby, It’s Cold Outside and completely miss the point. :V
…but c’mon. a kid who grows up being told that they don’t really want the things they want– and if they do want those things, they’re Literally Satan– is gonna have so very much more trouble accepting their own sexuality as they get older.
you can’t tell me that there aren’t plenty of queer teenagers out there who have the same problem denying their own agency, magnified and exacerbated by the fact that they’re queer. or that plenty of us didn’t want the goblin king to come take us away, and didn’t really understand why until much, much later.
There’s another element I might like to add to the archetype of the Fantasy Lover, based on my own experience and observation:
When the Fantasy Lover is not human – vampire, werewolf, or Goblin King – then it comes with the understanding that the way he behaves is simply in his nature. There’s no need to fuss over wondering why he became this way (or whether he might become worse in the future) or whether you have an obligation to try to Fix Him with your love, or whether there was something you said or did to make him this way. He simply is.
(I mean, I Can Fix Him With My Love is also a fantasy, but a different one. Sort of how like “I overcome the oppression” and “I don’t have to face the oppression in the first place” are both important fantasies for many minority groups, I Can Fix Him and I Don’t Have To Fix Him are both important fantasies for young girls.)
For young girls who have grown up with a *lot* of messaging that the good behavior of boys around them is in some way their responsibility and the bad behavior is somehow their fault, this is a *very* freeing narrative.
A LOT of stories would be terrible in the real world (not just romantic ones). But they aren’t in the real world! And this one especially is about the teenage protagonist discovering her own power through the stories she imagines for herself. Of course it would be creepy if the Goblin King was her real-life teacher or older neighbour or whatever. But he’s not! He exists only for her, and has only the power she gives him. And it’s fine if she wants him a bit predatory - she’s allowed to explore any kind of fantasy she wants, she’s allowed to discover what she likes to think about, she’s allowed to grow up.
I know its kind of a meme but there were earnest ‘my mom sold me to one direction’ fics and those are absolutely the same kind of fantasy as Jarleth is - teenage girls often want to have romance and passion but they also dont want it to be their ‘fault’ that they got these things.
it’s such a shame honestly because Actually examining why you enjoy certain things can be very rewarding and illuminating!
it can help you pinpoint exactly what resonates and therefore help you to understand the sorts of things that are personally meaningful to you.
it can uncover things about yourself you were not consciously aware of and help you explore them (how many “realising i liked this thing as a kid bc i was super queer but didn’t know it” posts are there on this website alone?).
it can help you to go on to find more media with those particular themes and concepts that you enjoy more effectively because now you know exactly what you’re looking for.
if you are a creator it can be invaluable in helping to understand how stories function and how to recreate impactful material in your own works.
and sometimes it can help you realise a story that you thought was really hitting you emotionally was actually using cheap tricks with no payoff and that’s why parts of it left you feeling meh without knowing quite why.
or that there were elements there that, when you actually step back, where kind of mean-spirited or unpleasant and leave you feeling kind of soured on the whole thing.
you do not need to go in-depth on everything you consume but when you do you can learn a lot of stuff about the things you love and about yourself and that’s a really valuable part of engaging with art! so it’s really annoying to see people demand examination and critical thinking when they mean nothing of the sort. if it’s something you find yourself demanding frequently then you may in fact need to examine why you feel the need to do that.
Also, I find that a lot of people with “weird” tastes have examined themselves extensively in the past simply because they couldn’t avoid knowing they were different, and it leads one to think about why and how.
And those same people are the most common targets of “please examine” about things they extensively hashed out a decade or two ago.
I've had plenty of arguments on forums where someone demands to know ,"Why do you think..."
And I learned to reply: Do you actually want to know why, or are you looking for an excuse to say "well that's wrong so you have to stop."
Because I'm not going to change. (Or: I'm not going to change because of a single thread in some internet forum.) I'm willing to discuss why I think something, why I do something, why I like what I like (inasmuch as I can figure it out), but... this is not a debate game where, if you decide my reasons are invalid, I'm going to change my mind.
If I've put serious thought into why I like a particular set of kinks in fiction, none of your off-the-cuff reactions are going to result in me saying "why thank you, kind rando on the internet--now that I see that was stupid, I will stop enjoying that kind of fiction!"
(Did you know that God is a girl and Her name is Eris? No? WELL NOW YOU DO! Are you convinced?)
I 'unno, i read a lot of the angry responses to the sarah z tweet, and i just think if your experiences with minors harrassing you are *that* bad, maybe it's time to just walk away and do something else with your time? Like, i would hope nobody's identity is *that* closely tied to the fandoms theyre in that they cant just leave if things are genuinely getting toxic?
It sounds like some people are just outgrowing fandom and are having a hard time admitting that to themselves--its normal! Its normal to grow less interested in this stuff as you mature--fandom is stupid!
That doesnt mean you cant still enjoy the atuff you were in a fandom for, just maybe stay away from other fans! Sly cooper is my favorite videogame series and i *loathe* its fans etc--but i just dont go on the tag and pick fights with the creepier people anymore!
Thats a pretty normal response to toxic media communities, imo? What else can yeh do?
Not super interested in responding to every single person in the reblogs, but i read the responses and i still agree with what i said. You can enjoy a piece of media without engaging with the fandom surrounding said media, and this is in fact the superior way to go about it, every single time.
I went back and checked the tags on the original post--the only way the people who are angry about this couldve even found out this post existed is if they went on the sarah z tag specifically looking for a fight (or the "fandom discourse" tag ig) or if they reblogged from someone else who found the post under those circumstances. So, uh, actually yeah, get a life.
This is a really interesting meta take on how tumblr usage works.
The vast majority of what I read on tumblr, I read in a tag. I don’t really look at my dash except when I’m opening the site to check my messages. I primarily find things through tags. That’s not specific to Sarah Z or indicative of my mood: it’s just a common way to browse tumblr.
“i would hope nobody’s identity is *that* closely tied to the fandoms theyre in that they cant just leave if things are genuinely getting toxic?”
Is insulting and dismissive as hell.
“People should not deeply care about the things that inspire them and bring them joy. They should not have emotions that tie to their opinions. They should not mind if someone attacks them for having interests, and they should be willing to drop those interests - or at least drop any social connections related to those interests - if someone else harasses them about it.”
HOW DARE PEOPLE CARE ABOUT THINGS ENOUGH THAT IT MAKES THEM UPSET WHEN STRANGERS CALL THEM EVIL FOR WHAT THEY LIKE.
“Thats a pretty normal response to toxic media communities, imo? What else can yeh do?”
The normal response to toxic communities is to take action against them - either to change them by social influence, or appeal to an authority to shut them down. It’s not to say “well, haters gonna hate, so you might as well let them own the public side of fandom.”
“So, uh, actually yeah, get a life.”
More victim-blaming. “Fandom isn’t actually your LIFE just because you love it and pour hours into it and let it be your gateway to learning new skills and a network of social connections. If you’re being hurt, it’s because you keep putting yourself in a dangerous place.”
y’know what? This looks like misogyny.
If boys playing sports mention that their local team is toxic and abusive and might be criminal, people don’t tell them, “just fucking walk away. You’re probably not going to be a pro so it’s just a hobby. Don’t go looking for ways to feel insulted, and if you can’t handle being attacked, you probably should find a different hobby. You can enjoy watching it on TV; you don’t have to actually participate to be part of Sports Fandom.”
Fandom toxicity doesn’t happen out of nowhere. It’s not a force of nature that randomly harms some people. It’s done by people who make choices - and it’s not fair to their direct targets nor the rest of the community to say, “well, if someone decided to be an abuser, you can’t do anything about it but leave. Exposing yourself to abuse means it’s your fault.”
“I just want us to have a conversation about why people find problematic fic appealing!” says someone who will definitely shut that conversation down the MOMENT anyone says anything they disagree with.
“I just want you to think through the implications!” says the person who flips the fuck out the moment you bring scientific research on what the implications are to the table.
I’m so sick of people going “waaaaaaah we just want to have a conversaaaaaation” when they don’t want to have a conversation, they just want a bigger soapbox to shout their ideas and denounce all others from.
So much of my LIFE is seriously examining the effect narratives and art have on people but fucking nobody who says “well can’t we talk about how fiction affects reality” cares about what I have to say.
“You are responsible for the consequences of your fiction,” says someone who absolutely does not care about the consequences of their real-life behaviour.
You are free to stop reading, to stop watching, to stop listening. You’re free to stop the *instant* something makes you uncomfortable, or when you get bored, or when you get scared, or when you get turned on, or when you get seized by awkwardness so hard it makes you fold over and groan in pain, or just because you don’t feel like consuming a given piece of media any longer.
You are free, in short, to keep yourself from consuming anything at all, for any reason, You’re not free to keep other people from consuming their own media. You’re not free to save someone else from consuming media that upsets *them*, much less from media that upsets *you*.
tbh I think you completely missed the point, lmao.
Both the writer and the consumer have to take responsibility.
Consumers need to take responsibility of the media they intake and not interact with things that have warnings for things they don’t like. That much is true.
But the writer also needs to take responsibility in their writing, too. Writing sensitive themes aren’t inherently bad, but how the writer portrays and uses those themes is what’s important, not just the mere existence of those themes in literature.
The entire argument is about whether those themes are romanticised/handled insensitively and how they have very real effects in real life. Writing sensitive themes isn’t inherently the writer condoning those themes, but you’d be surprised how many writers do condone those themes or take an unhealthy amount of joy in depicting those themes.
Literature isn’t suddenly exempt from all consequence when we hold every other form of media to a moral standard.
It’s not a call for censorship and no one’s allowed to explore dark themes in their writing, but a call for people who write those themes in an offensive way to take responsibility and deal with the consequences.
Content creators need to take responsibility for the content they produce just as much as the consumer needs to take responsibility for what they choose to consume. It’s not a one-sided thing. Fiction doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
What are the appropriate consequences for artists who offensively depict sensitive themes? What appropriate consequences are visited on the creators of popular works that glamorize violence, like Joker, or eroticize sexual violence, like Game of Thrones?
What are the consequences of insensitive depiction? What provable harms come from fiction that insensitively depicts such things?
How do you tell which works are “romanticized” and “glamorized” and which are “sensitive” depictions? What are your criteria? Is it a test many different people could apply to a work of art and all come to the same conclusion on? Is it a test you could program a computer to apply?
If the focus is on how these themes are portrayed–that is, the approach each individual artist takes when portraying them–why are entire swathes of subject matter, like ships, condemned, and not the individual fanworks that take particular approaches to them?
“Oh but you don’t understand, we only want to make sure things are portrayed PROPERLY” says the person who has no standards for what “properly” is because we all know a Bad Exploitative Romanticizing Harmful Version when we see it, RIGHT?!
What effect on whether or not a portrayal is viewed as “sensitive” or “acceptable” vs “harmful” and “glamorized” will the identity and experiences of the creator have?
How will you determine this relationship?
How will you account for the harm of coercive disclosure and/or erasure of those unwilling to publicly disclose sensitive areas of their lives and experiences, or unable to do so without significant personal harm?
Do you think you would be able to determine who does and does not have the “right”, based on personal experience/ownership of events/identity/etc to create a particular portrayal without such disclosure? How will you be determining/testing this ability?
What does this determination do to the concept of “Death of the Author” and how it is applied to authorial intent vs results and outcomes?
How will you keep the concepts of “sensitive/appropriate” vs “romanticized/glamourized” from being used by those in social, cultural and/or political power to silence content that they do not like?
Have you researched how these concepts have been used to do exact that in the past? What cases can you give as examples? What measures will be taken in order to prevent the same thing from happening?
If you are relying on the difference between formal state sponsored censorship and mere social shunning/opprobrium, what research have you done into the effects of these forces on minority groups, particularly sexual and religious minority groups, and their artistic expressions? What measures will be taken to be certain that this case is different? How will those be implemented?
I am not interested, now or ever, in hearing about why [thing I like/wrote] is “problematic.” I am not interested in “acknowledging” anything, or in “opening a dialogue” in which you get to shit on the thing I like/wrote, and I get to sit there feeling progressively shittier. Fuck the fuck off. Mind your own fucking business. Go create something of your own instead of tearing other people’s creations down.
I mean, I don’t have a standard of how we should judge fiction for portraying things in a problematic light, nor do I think that authors of fiction with problematic portrayals should face “consequences”… but I think it’s fair to want people to be responsible about sensitive themes. Fiction does shape people’s perceptions of reality - that’s why we want more representation of minorities in fiction, for instance.
I think just having a disclaimer - “This is all fantasy and I DO NOT think any of this is healthy irl” - is enough in most cases, tbh. Which I see a lot of authors do. But while I’d like them to add disclaimers and such, I don’t know about making people face “consequences” for not doing so.
Maybe I’m missing some part of the discussion? Are people calling for like, legal consequences for authors of fiction that glorify problematic issues? (If it’s something like that, I think that’s pretty dumb.) What is actually being argued here?
Yeah, you’re missing something. There’s a ton of bullshit going around.
People who find themselves accused of having handled a subject insensitively (and the bar is low, like, “You wrote ship about children from canon being grown up and experiencing romance as adults, you’re glorifying pedophilia because you interpreted children as sexual”) are subjected to harassment campaigns, suicide baiting, being smeared to everyone who interacts with them as “a pedophile”, and being outed as LGBTQ+ (and “a pedophile”) to families and workplaces.
Like I said, I do believe in talking about the ethics of art and representation. But the conversation is being drowned out by the hunting parties trumpeting “THIS SHIP GLORIFIES PEDOPHILIA” all the ding dang time.
And look, I fell in the “conversation” trap on this website exactly once. Somebody clamoured to want to know, ‘seriously, because I just can’t see it!’ why anyone would have a different opinion. When stating mine, as thoughtfully and respectfully as I could, I got back: ‘you are a Terrible Person and People Like you are Terrible People and this is why…’ without responding to any of my points while gleefully putting words in my mouth.
People bothering other people about responsibility in storytelling in fandom rarely contact writers of mainstream fiction to do the same. Are they contacting the writers of Joker about ableism? Bryan Singer about killing off his only Black character in X-Men in a completely nonsensical way? Criminal Minds? Are they discussing Golding or Philip Roth? Saw movies and other torture porn? Seldom. Very seldom. It’s usually fic writers, a very marginalised group of storytellers they can harass.
Also, as we can see in JoKe Rowling’s case im Harper’s Bazaar it’s always people who have been criticised for spouting very harmful and scientifically false opinions who call for an 'open debate’. Really, it’s code for 'I want to insult whomever I wish without criticism.’ Because nobody is stopping them, indeed, from voicing their opinions and insulting whomever they wish. What they are doing is either ignoring them or pushing back. Which is exactly what an open debate is for, but OK. People who know they will be criticised, or far more likely, otherwise won’t be listened to, especially on this site, 'only want to have a conversation’. Because that is what they are owed, they think. But they’re not. A conversation requires two willing participants and a willingness to listen on both sides. You can want to have a conversation all you want, but you can only request one. Nobody is owed a conversation, especially when there is a very good chance that the politedness demanded is not granted in turn. If it were only about getting to understand another’s viewpoint, you wouldn’t need a conversation. You could look these things up. But if you want an extra opportunity to talk and be listened to, you need a conversation. Especially if you want to abuse the other person to their face and then shame them for refusing to submit to that.
So if people 'Only want to have a conversation’, ask them why. Better still, ignore them. Don’t give them an opening. They may pout, sure, but that still looks weak, so they might not even do that, and you can live your life in peace.
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I’m sorry who the fuck is out here claiming they read classic lit to learn how to have a relationship. Chronic shipping brain is truly embarrassing at a certain point
The tweet is a reaction against all the people clutching their pearls about the existence of kink, non-con, and abusive relationships in fanfiction and being mad that the stuff they don’t want to read is tagged on AO3 so they can easily avoid it. The argument these people use for banning content from AO3 is that impressionable adolescents and young adults read fanfiction and we need to curate sanitized content for them so they don’t get the Wrong Ideas about sex and relationships. The absurdity of that argument is shown by substituting fanfiction with a book that is often mandatory reading in high school English Literature classes.
why dont people fact check shit ever??? someone in a discord group im in asked why theres no ao3 tag for 'original nonbinary character(s)' like there is for OFC/OMC, and people were bitching about the tag wranglers. Took me thirty seconds to go on ao3, type 'original' into my work tags and see that the tag exists. just like. brain for about ten seconds rather than bitching about ao3
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TBH, they probably searched for 'nonbinary' and expected it to come up in autocomplete... which it won't because the common tag is 'Original Non-Binary Character' with a hyphen.
Oh man, yeah, there's definitely a tag for NB OCs. There's tags for all sorts of OCs including robots and non-humans, haha.
There are instances of weird NB OC tags that the wranglers presumably didn't know how to deal with—for example, "Modern Girl In Thedas" and "Modern Boy In Thedas" are sub tags of "Modern Character In Thedas," but "Modern They In Thedas" and "Modern Nonbinary In Thedas" are synonyms to it instead. So if you try to filter it you will just get all the "modern girl" and "modern boy" stories.
I figure it doesn't matter to most people since "original modern non-binary character in this video game" is a pretty niche thing and you can search within results to specify if you want to anyway. But that's an example of where there's no nb subtag, even though writers have specified. We're just synned to the broader "character" tag.
It really bothered me when I noticed it while trying to search last year, though, even though it's probably just, like, a single tag wrangler who isn't personally interested in thinking about gender going "oh that means a person I guess," and not thinking any further. I almost sent in a report, but then I spoke to a friend and ended up feeling like "yeah, maybe I'm just being oversensitive."
The specific thing this discord was complaining about isn't a thing, but it is absolutely the case that nb tags do sometimes get treated differently. Waves hand at above example.
yes, you're right, it does mean "rotten woman". but it means "rotten woman" because they were considered unsuitable for marriage by the straight men that originally coined the term, not because they "fetishize gay men".
fujoshi simply means female fan of BL.
that's all.
it's never meant "mlm fetishist".
yes, fujoshi CAN enjoy the sexual aspects of BL if they want to, but not all of them do, and by assuming so, or asking them if they do to make sure that they're not "fetishizing gay men" (because, like, i've actually had one or two people ask me if that was acceptable after i explained to them the correct definition) then you are, whoa, shocker, sexualizing fujoshi themselves.
and you can't fucking sexualize real people whilst complaining about the sexualization of fictional men. it's hypocritical. and just plain stupid.
also... reading mxm smut isn't "fetishizing gay men". reading BL that includes sex scenes isn't "fetishizing gay men". sex isn't a fetish. a sexual fixation is what is defined as a fetish. sex alone can't be a fetish. neither can porn.
there's nothing wrong with being a fujoshi, there's nothing wrong with liking BL, and there's nothing homophobic about it. your homophobic status(?) depends entirely on how you treat real people.
fictional characters — literal objects — do not matter. at all.
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[An Ao3 comment, presumably part of a longer conversation. It reads, "Oh wow, look at that. Peak AO3 user right fuckin' here, literally crying over some fucking nobody's opinion of a fanfic written by a complete stranger spouting the same tired horse-shit of "dOn'T lIkE, dOn'T rEaD" - newsflash, ass clown. Unless I read something: le motherfucking gasp, le shock, le disbelief!? I don't know if I'm going to like it. So kindly do the world a favor and spare that -10 IQ response for some other moron with a widdle bunny wabbit for a fucking avatar. I'm sorry my blandly worded response offended your must-suck-their-virtual-dick levels of "decorum", but that you let it get to you that hard's more a you problem than anything else.
I don't read tags. Tags on this site, in the last five years or so, have become useless. I mean am I supposed to be wowed by the "no beta we die like [INSERT WITTICISM HERE]/men" tag that effectively tells me the author's a lazy fuck who can't even proofread their own content, let alone score the monumental task of finding a Beta (which is simplicity). Between gems like that and the flagrant abuse you'll see like "lol i dont know what im doing" in the tags, they're less than helpful.
You clearly give a shit. You clearly give all the shits, given your response to me. In fact I'd say you gave so much of a shit that you just had-had-had to respond first thing crying over what a massive jerk you thought I was being (another news flash: although my opinion on the story was negative and i inferred that I doubted the author's creativity/talent, I promise that your response was more the assault than mine was). Me, I was just sharing my opinion of the fic. Given that, as I've read it from first word to last, I earned that right.
No. I'll say whatever I please. I read the fic, I can comment on it: even if I didn't like it. I know people like you love insisting that AO3 should be nothing more than a hugbox where nobody ever says anything bad, but given the fact that the author is allowing comments in the first place I'm doing to do so.
And there it is, the fucking crybaby elitism that almost every member of this site has; insisting that if you respond to a story without an account, you're "hiding" and are a "coward." Let me make this perfectly clear, you insufferable fucking irritant of a cunt-scab: there's no benefit to being a member of this site beyond a shitty avatar, your name being underlined, the ability to post fanfiction and the ability to bookmark your favorites and pad the Kudos for a story. Nothing else. Any reply to me still goes through to my email, is still seen the next time I'm on my computer.
But far be it from me to attempt to rob you of the joy of getting overly offended to a nothing review, keep fucking sobbing over it.
it's funny when people say "even in female-centric fandoms there's no F/F and people would rather pair up dudes!" both because I've been in several of those and that's never been the case - there's always a lot of it in any show where there are multiple relationships b/w women who matter, let alone a mostly-female cast - but i feel like the people who complain about this, you look at their fandoms and it's bunch a shows where there is technically more than one woman, and they interact somewhat, but the cast is still majority dudes. and their ships are all these rarepairs of women who barely interact. which is a totally legit way to do fandom, don't get me wrong, but it does make me wonder if some of these people are aware of what a female centric show really *is*. like you just want to lead them gently to the sailor moon or yellowjackets or madoka or killing eve or xena tags and be like, look, this is what we're talking about. and look how much of it is femslash, and how little of it is slash (even in sailor moon, with its canonical M/M couple, it's still femslash and het predominantly IME). like, i'm glad you're trying to make it happen for shows where the women are interesting but underexplored, or where they have brief glances of fascinating dynamics with women that we don't learn much of but could wonder what could have been. but when you have like 7 men in a main cast and only 2 women, you cannot be shocked when most of the fic is slash and/or het. like, avatar the last airbender is not a "female centric" show people just because it has women in it or doctor who (except mayyyyybe the seasons with a female doctor). that's not what we're talking about.
i mean, even in ensemble shows where there are women whose relationships with other women matter, even if it's not the focus and there are more men overall in the cast or an equal amount, you will get a substantial femslash fandom. it might not be the main event, but it will be there. glee was a badly-written mess of a show, but it had plot-relevant relationships between female characters. and so people were shipping rachel/quinn and santana/brittany even long before the latter couple was anywhere close to becoming canon. it was one of the biggest (and most drama-filled) femslash fandoms of the early 10s, even if the slash and het corners of glee fandom were bigger. but there was enough femslash that you absolutely could corral yourself in that corner of the fandom and ignore the rest of it. if you build it, they really will come (in more ways than one, heh)
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Yup.
Glee literally had an offline con for one f/f ship. When canon provides, by and large, fans will respond.
People are terrible about going "But I love my blorbo! Surely, everyone else should!" in contexts where basic logic will tell you that ship or character is probably not going to launch a juggernaut fandom.
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