Honey, Whatchu Waiting For?

Then they’re just crimes.

Word for today: wisdom of repugnance

my fetish

my friend's fetish

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!

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.” 

“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.

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*.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

Therapist: What seems to be the problem? Patient: I had a bad thought Therapist: That makes you a bad person Therapist: *pushes the red button on the bottom of their desk that calls the police to have patient immediately thrown in jail* Therapist: You have a $25 co-pay