pepper shark

In our latest, @bookshop reports on growing creative censorship—and criminalization—around the world, from Australia to China to the U.S.

In Russia, a writer was recently sentenced to 18 months of forced labor for writing Stray Kids fanfiction. In this piece, Aja talks to Russian fans about the current climate of fear for many fans there.

Read or listen to an audio version:

pain & purity

What began as a protective act may yet render Miss Granger the next target of his ruin. Regency AU | A bit of Austen, Goethe, Schiller and Lessing | He stumbled first, but she fell harder.

Tomione Barbie Fest

One month away Fics Due ➡️ July 23

I’ve read many of your fics over the years, and I’m always amazed by your level of creativity. All of your stories are well-crafted, with thoughtfully developed plots and chapters so unpredictable that it’s almost impossible to guess what will happen next. Peremo was one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever read.

I’m writing about Spit your pity in my soul. I was curious when I saw that you were going to continue this fic. But I genuinely don’t know how to react to the direction you’re taking Hermione’s storyline.

I believe that, in fiction, an author - an artist - has every right to take a story wherever they want. I’ve been reading fanfiction for over fifteen years, and I’ve come across plenty of dark and controversial content. But this feels different.

Everything becomes more complicated when the story involves a former victim of sexual abuse. Today, we know that virtually every woman has experienced some form of harassment, and what Hermione went through in this story goes far beyond “simple harassment”

Dark romance is already a controversial genre, but what troubles me most is the way it often fetishizes violence and abuse against women. This kind of narrative can be deeply misogynistic and harmful.

I cannot imagine women who have experienced abuse reading something as extreme as this fanfic. Hermione’s behavior here is deeply disturbing, and I’m sure a writer of your caliber can surely recognize the damage that stories like this may cause, especially to young women.

Not everything on the internet should be without limits. If we abandon all consideration of morality or boundaries in the content we create, it opens the door to the normalization and fetishization of truly abhorrent subjects (including things like pedophilia, human trafficking, and other forms of abuse).

Because of how sensitive this subject is, I think it’s important for us to reflect on the boundaries of art and on the messages we choose to put into our work. Not every portrayal has the same impact, and some narratives can be deeply harmful while others can be healing or thought-provoking.

When dealing with material as delicate as sexual abuse and its aftermath, I believe creators have a responsibility to consider how their work may affect those who have lived through similar experiences.

This is not a negative comment about you as a writer, but about this particular work. There’s no need to answer this ask. I’m not going to interfere or spread hate in your comments, I simply wanted to get this off my chest and share my concerns with you. Ultimately, you have every right to move forward in whatever way you feel is best.

Take care.

I was going to leave this unposted, but then I thought that there were a couple of things in your message that I thought would be important to address for (A) my own peace of mind, and (B) maybe for other people as well.

Firstly, look— I hear what you’re saying. There are a couple of subject matters that I, too, don’t have an interest in consuming in literary works. But I, personally, don’t believe in the censorship of art, and I also believe that what you’re talking about is entirely the function of the tag options on AO3, and for the Archive warnings—to warn people ahead of time that a work may contain triggering subject matter. I have tagged these on this particular story and also its prequel. I have warned readers in my author notes about the content of these stories several times. Yes, I do agree with you that creators have a responsibility to consider how their work will be interpreted… but I also believe that readers have a responsibility to assess potential reading material before they read it, and decide whether they would like to expose themselves to that, as well.

Secondly, there are a couple of words in your message which make me concerned that I might be being misinterpreted. The first is ‘dark romance’— I want to be clear (as I felt I have been in my tags), that BYAMS and its sequel are most certainly NOT romances. These are of the thriller/horror/erotic horror genres, and should absolutely in no way be interpreted in through the lense of dark romance.

The second term is ‘fetishization’— I want to be clear, that I am in no way trying to fetish-ise sexual abuse and violence towards women by telling these stories. In fact, I have tried particularly hard to insert a level of nuance into these to make it clear that I as the writer, am trying to highlight how awful I think it is. I am trying to highlight the injustices in our societies surrounding sexual violence towards women, the inherent injustices of the legal and professional systems in place to protect women from sexual violence. I am trying to tell a story of someone overcoming their past trauma, of someone who has experienced a complete stripping of their control trying to get that control back. Yes, these stories are confronting—and they are supposed to be, just as these sorts of events that happen in our real world everyday to real women are confronting. I want these works to evoke a sense of rage and revulsion in the reader, to highlight that these are real issues happening in our world today; that’s what I’ve tried to go for here.

IMO the internet’s performative brand of morality is itself a risk to humanity’s actual moral progress, because people online regularly think they’re doing the work of understanding sexual ethics by limiting their storytelling to very simplistic, Disney-style portrayals of good and bad. As we can see in the high rates of sexual violence in previous generations, avoiding talking about or posting strict rules around sexual expression/content has never moved the needle toward less violence.

I want to gently push back on this anon’s perspective, particularly when they say, “I cannot imagine women who have experienced abuse reading something as extreme as this fanfic.” 

…Well, as an SA survivor, I’m regularly drawn to dark, in-depth portrayals that give me new language or a new understanding of my feelings. For example, and I’m being really vulnerable here, I have often felt overwhelmed by the idea that most people probably like the person who hurt me and think he’s a good guy, which makes me feel insane. Darkfic offers an intense relief for this feeling, particularly when the narrative exposes the aggressor’s true, horrific nature. There’s a clarity there that feels like Tylenol to me: a reminder that I'm not crazy, even after justice and accountability systems failed me.

I read darkfic when I feel like I can handle it, and lots of times I can’t. That’s fine. It’s not an author’s responsibility to manage my feelings. They have already done me a great service by telling their truth, by creating a nuanced piece of art grappling with difficult feelings and experiences, which I can empathize with even if I can't personally relate to the specifics.

I guess it boils down to the question Dev put in the tags: what is the moral purpose of art? Is it art's job to prescribe a bullet point list of boundaries and behaviors? Maybe sometimes. Fundamentally, though, I think the artist's main job is to create a portrayal, to tell a story that's true to itself.

Some stuff

Bonus:

fanart of IKON by @dillpicklepanic

I haven't done this style before, i just went all out with my new brushes (you can probably tell) but it was a TON of fun to make!

Yo chill Tom I’m easy