Incendiary, but you can call me Sen

Fictional characters are objects.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

I was groomed as a 15 year old by a 20 year old man without the involvement of underage fic. I didn't even know what fanfic was. He and I met in an anime-themed chatroom and roleplayed as characters from Gundam Wing. Should we ban anime themed chat rooms? Obviously not. What happened to me was entirely on that man's disgusting shoulders.

I am saying glorifying these things and portraying a child X adult story as a good thing perpetuates the harm of children and if you genuinely advocate for shipping children with adults and consume NSFW content of children X adults then you are doing real fucking harm.

I am a victim of CSA. I write stories about CSA. I have read stories about CSA. But when CSA is portrayed as a consensual and happy thing from the CHILDS perspective and the adult and child end up in a life long happy relationship where everyone supports them and it's all sunshine and fucking rainbows while it's insisted the child consented - that does legitimate harm.

Like, for a real literature example, the book Lolita was meant to make people uncomfortable and it wasn't glorification of pedophilia. Books showing real world horrors are necessary to help people process, move forward, educate themselves ect.

Conversely, there are books that exist to glorify pedophilia and SA. Those do nothing but real world harm. How many teens read about toxic relationships in YA books and think that's what love is like, only to be abused? It's one hell of a lot, unfortunately.

Writing about dark subjects, or even thinking about them, isn't bad. But being irresponsible with whatever platform you have, is. I often write about very heavy and dark subjects, but when you deliberately glorify them and force the narrative that there's nothing wrong with CSA for example (and you're not writing from the pedos perspective, no one questions it ect) you're just being a shitbag.

I'm deeply sorry that you were abused as a child, but that has no bearing on this discussion.

Writing about something in a fictional story, even if characters and/or the narrator explicitly advocate for that thing, is not "glorification" or "advocacy", and the characters do not reach off the page or screen and do "real fucking harm" to anyone.

People are responsible for their own choices and actions, no matter what fictional media they consume. And the parent or guardian is responsible for teaching their own child how to spot and report unacceptable behavior from adults, full stop.

No person can actually show a direct causal relationship between media that depicts terrible, horrible acts that would be illegal if they were to happen in the real world, and those acts actually being carried out, except among those who SHOULDN'T HAVE UNMONITORED ACCESS TO MEDIA IN THE FIRST PLACE: very young minors, people with frontal lobe damage/deformity that impairs their ability to make decisions, and so on.

Attempting to mandate that authors design their stories to always have themes, endings, and didactic morality baked in is, frankly, pointless. You seem to be fully convinced that there is legitimate harm caused by the existence of stories where real-world laws and morals are violated, and this is presented as positive within the context of the story, and this is a sign that perhaps you need to have a trusted adult curate your media experience for you.

There is no such thing as "a step below CP", and anyway it would be better to use the term "CSEM". Let me make this absolutely clear: the thing that makes CSEM terrible and evil is NOT the fact that it depicts a minor in a sexual situation. The evil is in the fact that an ACTUAL CHILD WAS ABUSED TO CREATE IT. The only reason that some forms of fake CSEM are also illegal in the U.S. is because it looks identical to the real thing and could be used as a cover for people abusing children.

"Glorifying" is a useless buzzword with no real, objective definition. If you show ten people the same fanfiction wherein Rick is shipped with Morty, for example, maybe three will call it "glorifying pederasty" and four will call it "not glorifying pederasty" and another three will say "what the fuck are you even talking about?"

Consuming gorey content ≠ murder.

Consuming content where a minor is in a sexual situation ≠ pedo.

Portraying a pedo in a good light, promoting child and adult sexual relations, pushing the idea children can consent and writing porn of child however can do real world harm if that is the ONLY PURPOSE for the story.

Glorification isn't a buzzword but for arguments sake let's rephrase.

YA stories which promote abusive ideals, as well as portray abuse of women as normal and okay, and romantasize violent men have been shown to do damage to those young adults the stories are aimed at.

The fact you cannot see that fiction has any real life consequences is a problem.

You can write and read whatever you want but when you promote the idea that stories written to sexualise children or portray abuse in a positive light can't do any real world harm you are just fucking delusional.

Fictional characters are objects.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

I was groomed as a 15 year old by a 20 year old man without the involvement of underage fic. I didn't even know what fanfic was. He and I met in an anime-themed chatroom and roleplayed as characters from Gundam Wing. Should we ban anime themed chat rooms? Obviously not. What happened to me was entirely on that man's disgusting shoulders.

I am saying glorifying these things and portraying a child X adult story as a good thing perpetuates the harm of children and if you genuinely advocate for shipping children with adults and consume NSFW content of children X adults then you are doing real fucking harm.

I am a victim of CSA. I write stories about CSA. I have read stories about CSA. But when CSA is portrayed as a consensual and happy thing from the CHILDS perspective and the adult and child end up in a life long happy relationship where everyone supports them and it's all sunshine and fucking rainbows while it's insisted the child consented - that does legitimate harm.

Like, for a real literature example, the book Lolita was meant to make people uncomfortable and it wasn't glorification of pedophilia. Books showing real world horrors are necessary to help people process, move forward, educate themselves ect.

Conversely, there are books that exist to glorify pedophilia and SA. Those do nothing but real world harm. How many teens read about toxic relationships in YA books and think that's what love is like, only to be abused? It's one hell of a lot, unfortunately.

Writing about dark subjects, or even thinking about them, isn't bad. But being irresponsible with whatever platform you have, is. I often write about very heavy and dark subjects, but when you deliberately glorify them and force the narrative that there's nothing wrong with CSA for example (and you're not writing from the pedos perspective, no one questions it ect) you're just being a shitbag.

Fictional characters are objects.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

I was groomed as a 15 year old by a 20 year old man without the involvement of underage fic. I didn't even know what fanfic was. He and I met in an anime-themed chatroom and roleplayed as characters from Gundam Wing. Should we ban anime themed chat rooms? Obviously not. What happened to me was entirely on that man's disgusting shoulders.

I AM NOT SAYING YOU CANNOT WRITE CSA STORIES. I AM NOT SAYING CENSOR THE INTERNET FOR MY COMFORT.

I am saying glorifying these things and portraying a child X adult story as a good thing perpetuates the harm of children and if you genuinely advocate for shipping children with adults and consume NSFW content of children X adults then you are doing real fucking harm.

I am a victim of CSA. I write stories about CSA. I have read stories about CSA. But when CSA is portrayed as a consensual and happy thing from the CHILDS perspective and the adult and child end up in a life long happy relationship where everyone supports them and it's all sunshine and fucking rainbows while it's insisted the child consented - that does legitimate harm.

Like, for a real literature example, the book Lolita was meant to make people uncomfortable and it wasn't glorification of pedophilia. Books showing real world horrors are necessary to help people process, move forward, educate themselves ect.

Conversely, there are books that exist to glorify pedophilia and SA. Those do nothing but real world harm. How many teens read about toxic relationships in YA books and think that's what love is like, only to be abused? It's one hell of a lot, unfortunately.

Fictional characters are objects.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

I was groomed as a 15 year old by a 20 year old man without the involvement of underage fic. I didn't even know what fanfic was. He and I met in an anime-themed chatroom and roleplayed as characters from Gundam Wing. Should we ban anime themed chat rooms? Obviously not. What happened to me was entirely on that man's disgusting shoulders.

Fictional characters are objects.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

Fictional characters are objects.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this: Fictional characters are objects. They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

made me immediately think of character such as Astarion in BG3:

Astarion is a character with severe SA trauma, who was forced to use his body to sexually appeal to others - by all means his character arc is about realising he is not an object for others to use, and he needn't allow others to sexualise him or objectify him. The player even has an SA option (coercing him into sex) at a point where he is very emotionally vulnerable about his trauma.

Now, when people take this character and create overly sexual media of him, I can't help but feel extremely uncomfortable thinking what is the intention of the creator. Is it for their own healing of trauma, or is it for their sexual gratification? I cannot fathom looking at a character whose story is all this ^ and then just writing explicit porn or non con about them, or making explicit fanart of the same theme, mostly because of the character's backstory and trauma. Similarly I'd heavily side-eye anyone who enjoys Colleen Hoover's books. Or someone who takes a canon masc4masc gay couple and makes one of them extremely feminine, or writes a trans character like a cishet man would write a woman. Side-eye.

Of course there's the "don't like don't read" rule (although people still fail to tag things properly, half the time). I don't like dead doves so I don't approach dead doves, simple as that.

But, but. Let's be honest, which one of us in our tweens didn't look at a toxic romance book thinking "oh i want love like this" or "i want to be like this" without realizing how unhealthy, toxic etc. the media is? Like damn I'm glad I never got into a relationship in my teens, while I was still influenced by all the YA romance novels, because I know I'd be excusing some shady behavior.

this conversation needs nuance. Both extremes (as often extremes are) are harmful. Saying "it's just characters so it doesn't affect real life" is untrue and harmful. Saying "if you write this dark thing then you support it" is also untrue and harmful.

Like, for a real literature example, the book Lolita was meant to make people uncomfortable and it wasn't glorification of pedophilia. Books showing real world horrors are necessary to help people process, move forward, educate themselves ect.

Conversely, there are books that exist to glorify pedophilia and SA. Those do nothing but real world harm. How many teens read about toxic relationships in YA books and think that's what love is like, only to be abused? It's one hell of a lot, unfortunately

Fictional characters are objects.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

the original post

This was one of many comments on a video claiming someone was stealing system terms, either "source" or "sourcemate."

Source is very obviously not an exclusive term. It's just a word... a very basic English word.

As for sourcemate, I've traced its use in the kin community back over half a decade. This post was from early 2017: