ZeTH

Redraw from a recent episode 💙💚

not Saw specifically but a slasher with a legit body count. Summer camp slashers are overplayed but I think it really works because it's the type of thing the Scooby gang WOULD get caught up in.

like some of the counselors didn't show up (got got) so the head counselor calls his younger cousin to see if him and his friends can fill in last minute. They show up and they're a bunch of nerds, one of them even has an anxiety dog, and they don't have a big role at first. It seems like the movie is setting them up as cannon fodder.

Fuck the slasher movie just effectively becomes Home Alone but with Four Kevin McAllisters

Dude with all due respect ao3 was literally created because other fanfiction sites kept deleting and censoring stories with rape, noncon/dubcon, incest, etc porn as well as LGBT ship fics. The site does have a required ratings and warnings systems and tags so that you can exclude works that have themes or content within them that you don’t want to see.

The above tagger has subjects they dislike; they need to learn to navigate around them so they don’t need to interact. That’s why tagging is so important: allowing the work to be found or avoided as needed.

The problem with ‘a little censorship’ is…endless. You want to control what other people are doing: how do you not see how that’s fucked to begin with?

You want to remove the ‘gross’ or the ‘inappropriate’ subjects, like that isn’t wholly subjective. Incest bothers you? Don’t read incest.

I can’t typically do fics with cheating, but I am not about to go tell the folks who write it that they can’t, purely to make me feel better. My eldest hates unhappy endings, they don’t get to dig up sad ending fics and yell at the author. My middle kid likes a different ship than I do in pretty much all of our common media. I don’t get to tell him he can’t read it anymore.

Fancy, emotionally charged buzzwords don’t change the fact that yeah, all of those are the same concept. You don’t like it, someone else is writing it, others are reading it, and that bothers you. That’s on you, my dear.

You will never have the right to tell someone else they cannot read or write it purely because you dislike it.

Learn to block, learn to filter, learn to accept that the real world has people who like things you do not.

This is the donut/diet argument all over again: you can’t have or dislike donuts, so you want to make sure no one else can have it either. Hard no, my friend. You have control only over yourself, and you need to remember that.

‘But those are bad things, I’m trying to get rid of the bad things only!’ No. They make you uncomfortable. There is a difference. Just as there is difference between reality and fiction. Just like what you think is bad may not, and probably will not, line up with someone else.

Fiction is not promoting rape, incest, whatever else. Kids aren’t going to go out and recreate things they’ve read for shits and giggles anymore than playing grand theft auto is going to make them join the fucking mafia or whatever it is. Sims players don’t suddenly rip their clothes off and drown in the pool, reading about Vash banging his brother a la Flowers in the Attic is hardly going to make someone knock on their actual brother’s door, etc etc etc ad nauseum.

More importantly: there is no end to ‘a little censorship’. Someone else gets to decide what I’m allowed to read and write, and the organizations with that aim have proven over and over and o v e r to be insane. Anything remotely queer is banned for being Bad or Sexualized (because these people have learned that PROTECT THE KIDS is the easiest way to rally the ignorant masses into believing that the rainbow is somehow preying on children… and thus need to be Controlled…)

You don’t want incest, you don’t want no con, someone else doesn’t want any form of kink, a third busybody can’t stand that boys kiss boys, a fourth can’t handle trans characters, another carves out the ace spectrum, yet more go after the stories exploring gender dynamics in the ABO verse.

That’s not even getting into politics, where it turns into now no one can post stories that explore changes in government, that are anti war, that are hopepunk and show all the ways society could be better. Or, on the opposite spectrum, things akin to the anarchist’s cookbook: how to make weaponry to forcibly make things change.

Oh, can’t have books that talk about different religions, either. Can’t have books that let girls know they should be treated equally, that they can do whatever they please, that they’re more than a walking baby factory. can’t have stories with magic, that’ll lead to evil thoughts. Can’t have stories with explicitly consensual anything, gotta keep the population pure and filled with shame about their desires. (There is a reason so many romance novels have a bit of unsavory shenanigans: the thrill of being wanted so overwhelmingly in a world where feeling that want means you are Not a Good Girl)

We’re living this, right now, again.

This is why knowing your history is so important.

Look at books have that been banned, burned. I’m going to oversimplify but: Picture books (and tango makes 3) because two male penguins adopted a baby, and we can’t let our kids know that’s acceptable, never mind that I, a child of a lesbian, literally bawled my eyes out upon finding that book in my twenties. I would read it every day to my own toddlers, because look! They’re like Awa and Gramma! 1984, because the entire point is how burning books is Bad. Animal Farm, the new government is just as bad as the old and we the people deserve better. Gone With the Wind, for being about the American south and not only making it seem like maybe slavery is kinda meh but also hinting at a woman having a sexuality. The scandal. Harry Potter. Not because JK turned out to be transphobic trash, but because it’ll turn kids into satanists, y’know, because of all the magic. A thing that is totally real and possible to recreate. Are you there god, it’s me, Margaret. Because it talked about menstrual cycles.

As an American, seeing headlines where kids are banned from the library because of policies like this is terrifying. Kids in Florida have zero books in the classroom. They have to be screened to be considered ‘appropriate’. And that means whitewashed, bland, and unchallenging of the norms the neo nazis are pushing. Can’t have anything about the struggles of the non white populace, can’t have anything at all about the queers, can’t have anything that paints the south in a bad light.

There is a bill currently attempting to pass into law, KOSA: kids online safety act. Under the guise of ‘protect the kids’ the government here is literally attempting to sanitize and censor the entire internet, for everyone. AO3 will be on the list of places they’re going to try and nuke. Yeah, even your cute vanilla super straight happy ever afters. All in the name of making sure imaginary little Johnny doesn’t think kissing boys, wearing pink, becoming friends with the Mexican kid down the street, or opposing genocide is acceptable behavior.

Censorship is not about protecting you, me, the mythical children, or anyone at all. It never has been.

Censorship is purely about control.

Censorship is about controlling your awareness, your intelligence, your ability to realize you are living in the worst timeline, and your ability to organize and fight back. Censorship is division. Censorship is deliberate cruelty meant to cripple you and make you malleable.

After all, you’ve given up your ability to explore new ideas, to think outside the box they’ve put you in. You are tamed, declawed, and too stupid to notice now. Don’t worry your pretty little blonde haired and blue eyed head about it now, Julie, the government will tell you want you need to know. Oh, what happened to your neighbor? Sweetie, what neighbor? No one was ever there. Repeat after me, no one was ever there.

AO3 is protecting my ability to read and write whatever the fuck I want, while giving me the search capabilities to NOT run into shit I dislike. AO3 is giving my teens a safe place to read and explore their own sexualities and interests, to engage in uncomfortable situations in a controlled way. AO3 is giving my teens a place to practice being human.

Censorship is always the bad guy.

All I wanted to draw was a sketchdump.... but it got out of hand somehow xDDD

I can't remember my actual age, but it was in the range of 10 to 13 I think. my parents had dragged me to a Pride festival, and walked across the street from the main event, across where the lines were drawn, to where a sea of people in red shirts that read "god has a better way" tried to drown out the celebration with speakers blasting christian music, and shouting and loud praying.

the leaders pulled all us kids to the side and gave us the spiel. they told us how the rainbow had been stolen from us, and that these people were tricked by the devil and just needed prayer, but that if we didn't save them, they were going to hell.

I rolled my eyes because I already didn't believe in god, and although I barely knew what being gay was, I knew my parents were usually on the Wrong side of things, and I shouldn't be siding with them.

"We aren't allowed over there if we're wearing the red shirts," the leaders told us, "so we're sending people over in secret without them so you can pass out tracts and pray for people. they won't talk to us, but they'll talk to the kids. does anyone want to volunteer?"

the people in red shirts disgusted me. the people on the other side of the line were cheering and having fun. I raised my hand.

we were supposed to go in groups with young adults, to make sure we were doing what we were supposed to be. I wandered off the minute I could and stood nervously at the edge of a crowd, watching on as people went by, happy and unbothered by the protests across the street. I felt a little pride myself in tricking the protestors into giving up a witness spot to me, when I was going to smile on and think profanities at god instead.

there was an older woman standing outside the crowd too. she asked if I was here with anyone, a girlfriend maybe? I said no, my parents were across the street. she nodded, and said she was here with her kid. a daughter, that she came to support, but couldn't keep up with in the crowd.

I almost cried. I told her how amazing that was, because I couldn't imagine my mother showing support like that to me over anything, much less something as serious as Being Gay. I imagined if I was gay, and at a pride event just like now, but this time because I Belong.

I knew automatically that my mother, without a doubt, would still be in the same place, across the street.

I got hungry after a bit, and tried to find a good food truck. I had a little money and I was unused to being on my own like this, but I didn't want to go back to the Other Side. I knew now without a shadow of a doubt, this was the Good side and that was the Bad side.

as I was eating the gyro I got, there was a stream of red shirted protestors trickling through; I had reached the end of the boundaries, and the protestors were allowed in here. I backed up a little, spotting my dad among them. I didn't want him to tell me to go back.

there was a line of women closing ranks around the Pride attendees, separating them from the protesters as they walked through. they spread their arms out and told every person the protesters spoke to that they were not obligated to respond, they could walk away and not engage.

my dad spotted me back, and made a beeline over. he couldn't cross over because a butch lesbian stood between us. I didn't know what those words meant, but I never forgot the buttons she was wearing.

he tried to tell me that it was time to go. "you're not obligated to speak to him," the butch said, cutting him off and edging further between us. I smiled at her, a little in wonderment. no one had ever told me that I didn't have to speak to my parents, or do anything other than blindly obey them. I watched my dad get held behind a line by a woman half his height, with no intention on letting him get to me, and I smiled and walked away.

I didn't have a clue who I was then, and I wouldn't for a good few years to come. but I never forgot the supportive mother, who symbolized to me everything a mother should be, that mine, for all her religious self righteousness, would never hold a candle to. I never forgot that she was the person I wanted to be, and my mother was the person I did not want to be.

I never forgot the butch who stood between me and my dad, and for the first time ever, put the idea in my head that I was ALLOWED to make my own choices in my beliefs, and made me feel protected in a way I hadn't known I needed.

the image of her standing between me and my dad, being a physical barrier to protect me against any potential threat, that inspired the image of who I admired and wanted to become. it inspired the version of me who could stand up to my dad - to the point that I could hold my ground and educate him enough that over a decade later, he walked side by side with me at a pride festival, with no intent of witnessing to or condemning anybody.

C'Mon, You Know You Wanna...

This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).