SHOULD HAVE BEEN A LIGHTNING BOLT

some words from my friends:

lastly, a blog thesis:

roughly in order:

“[pyro and maddy] both found that [fans shipping pyro with other people]’s been affecting their lives, and that they needed a change or a way to help them be able to navigate this crazy world, but also looking after their mental health and stuff. so it was a good chat, to see him talking about it and being open about it, because like, it’s not an easy thing to come out and say, ‘hey guys, this is—we understand how the fandom works and like often people look for opportunities to do all the shipping and stuff and whatever it is, and do fanfics and whatever, and then create these fan relationships essentially, fan-made relationships, but it can be quite damaging for creators’ mental health,’ and stuff like that. so it was very very good to kind of like see them openly talking about it with their community.”

“so the thing is, a lot of creators nowadays know how the fan spaces work. so it’s, when people—when creators say, ‘hey, look, we know how to—we can, if you guys don’t respect our boundaries, we’ll know,’ and they will know, because there’s people that come back and support them and let them know and say ‘hey, this is happening here,’ and then they can actually go in and say—then they can go in and react to it and/or deal with it (…) compared to people who have been doing this for a lot longer, who may not be as familiar with, or find it as easy to get into, those spaces.”

“a lot of people nowadays who are in content creation—probably far more people than the OGs, the people who started doing content before the fandoms got into these positions—so far more people nowadays who are in content would’ve grown up in fan spaces. so yeah, so compared to people who are OGs, like say, okay, for example, ldshadowlady or xisumavoid, like these creators have been in the limelight for such a long time. yes, they do know the fan spaces, but it’s been a very long time since they’ve been in any kind of fan space. (…) and at the same time, in the youtube side of things, maybe not quite to the same, they maybe… they would’ve been far bigger, far quicker than, say, a lot of people nowadays. so like things like pyro and maddy, they would’ve both been before they got in, got their careers to where they are now, would’ve been of an age where they probably would’ve been familiar with fan spaces and stuff. so the thing is, a lot of creators nowadays know how the fan spaces work.”

“anyway, the main thing is, that like, creators know. if they want to keep an eye on things, they will. so there was like, there was a lot of people who were asking questions which were like, ‘oh, well, like can we do it in a place where you won’t see it?’ I was like, ‘no, that’s just as disrespectful.’ um, actually tweeted about this a little bit earlier as well; ended up in a conversation with someone (…) and it was like, talking about fans overstepping boundaries and believeing that they’ve got ownership over the creations of creators and stuff like that. and the way I likened it to, is there are people out there who will treat, say, shop assistants or cashiers with utter contempt and just treat them as like, ‘you are doing your job and you have to deal with me as I am, and that’s that.’ like there’s no respect, there’s no manners, it’s all ‘me, me’ and ‘the customer is always right’ kind of nonsense. and it’s that kind of attitude of like basically treating people as inhuman, and it’s those, that’s the same kind of attitude that people would have towards creators. there’s some people like that who’ve got that same kind of attitude (…) so it’s basically the karens of the world. so karens of the world don’t just exist to annoy shop managers, karens of the world also exist online and treat creators as not people, or they don’t realise that they’re treating them as not people. they think ‘oh, well, you’re putting all your stuff online, so… doesn’t matter.’ [reading chat] ‘don’t mind the ban as such, but pyro said something along the lines of I’ll send my people after you if you do, which I do not like.’ it’s… it really like, the thing is, if you are not doing things that they’re… if you’re not pushing the boundaries, shouldn’t be an issue.”

“[fanfic is] not longer being posted in the sbk community discord, but we are not gods, we can’t know for sure that that means that that kind of stuff is not appearing somewhere else. someone could well still be posting stuff that breaks our guidelines in other locations, or talking about it in private. um, we hope that they aren’t, out of respect. like, spending your time and putting in hours into, say, private fanfic is a bit weird, if you understand what I mean.”

“if a group of people are coming together and writing fiction about [ccs] or making art about them, or with other characters or whatever, and they’re doing that in private, it’s still weird. it’s still disrespectful and it doesn’t reflect well on who they are as people.”

“I’ll be honest, it’ll be just like using AI to create stories and stuff with people against their will. so using their image and stuff against their will, that is very similar, and using it for private use or in a small community use. that’s just—that’s—that’s what—that’s where I see it as. and while one can’t specifically police that, it’s not really healthy as human beings to do that kind of stuff.”

“you have to try and encourage people to understand that, even if they’re doing it in private, it’s weird and it’s wrong.”

“and if you really really really want to go ship characters in a certain way, there are people out there that have characters that can be shipped and stuff like that in a certain way publicly, and those people do not mind it as much. so there are people out there who will happily offer up their characters for all sorts of weird things.”

-