repllly

I promise you if game of thrones and all those gothic literature haven't normalized incest — if slasher and horror movies haven't normalized murders or psychological torture, if hot villains haven't normalized manipulation or toxicity by now — then silly fanfiction isn't going to normalize shit.

if someone ever lets fiction affect them enough to the point they think bad things in fiction are good in-real-life because they're portrayed as such, then chances are that, with or without the fiction they consume, they are already troubled and they need help.

there are things you can worry about that are actually worrisome, but what type of fanfiction someone writes or reads is not one of those things.

you can, of course, find some things in fiction unpleasant. you can choose not to engage with fanfics that make you uncomfortable. but you have no right to tell other people what they can or can't create and/or consume. that is not your business.

I was sharing this resource with a friend who's being harassed by antis, so I thought I'd share it again in case anyone needs it <3 It's not just useful for folks making kinky or NSFW art/fics/etc. btw.

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.

You feel this sort of thing is "weird". Ok! You're allowed to feel that! Your feelings are valid - they aren't necessarily based on facts, but they're valid.

I don't actually care if you think dark fiction is weird, as long as you leave me alone and let me do what I want, seeing as how I'm not hurting anyone, and I'm making myself happy, and I'm making the people who read my stories happy.

But the core of this is that no, it's not weird to strap a fictional guy to a thing and do bad things to him. Humans have been writing fantasy about this for thousands of years, and will continue to do so for as long as we exist, I imagine. You can FEEL weird about it, and that's ok. But in reality it is actually perfectly normal and common.

The Internet is full of people doing very, very bad things to fictional characters, and enjoying it and even getting off on it, because fiction and fantasy is a safe place to express thoughts, desires, urges, curiosity, etc, about dark topics. Dark fiction is HEALTHY.

archive of our own is an archive. not a social media.

archive of our own was built with the stance that there would be no censorship, because other platforms already had censorship where some things that were taboo were reported/removed. ao3 was built with the purpose that all of these works, that were not allowed on other platforms, would be allowed on ao3.

the archive will house anything that’s considered fanworks. so no, you cannot report this fic because it portrays in explicit details taboo topics about xyz, you cannot report that fic because it romanticizes and glorifies xyz. ao3 will not remove any of those fics, because whether or not you like it, those fics do not go against ao3’s terms of service.

“but these things are not allowed on other platforms” that’s precisely why ao3 was created, to house and give a platform to these things that were censored/banned/removed from other platforms.

if you have a problem with this, you can use other platforms to post and read fanfics

That’s what I REALLY need people to accept. Yes, that lolisho fic you fucking despise IS NOT CSEM. Because no actual children are involved. A fictional pixelated child-like character voiced by an adult is involved.

My point was only that the behavior of apologizing, and then posting a bunch of other anons that only target that anon and calling their upset at what was acephobic wording “Tumblr being Tumblr” with you joking and agreeing makes the apology seem disingenuous and like you only did it because you had to, not because the acephobic comment was wrong.

I understand you’re a person behind this blog, you deserve to be treated with respect, but so do the asexuals your comment upset.

For what it’s worth, and it may not be because I’m just an anon, I feel your apology is genuine and it was kind that you did in the first place. I know you weren’t trying to offend anyone. The behavior after, and how quick fans and communities are to brush stuff like that away because of how the message was delivered, is just something to think about.

We need to remember, people come in all shapes and sizes and the fact that people can see an adult woman and just go on a tirade calling her a, "literal child" is wild.

Going 'You're all pedos' in response to an adult's picture? Is NOT a normal human observation.

Reporting and harassing an adult human being for entirely sfw pictures of themselves? IS NOT NORMAL HUMAN BEHAVIOR.

Ugh, the leech. I'm lucky I never had to deal with his bs to any major extent, then again I was lucky enough to have known about his reputation for a good bit and blocked his ass the second he started lecturing me in the comments on one of my posts where I bemoaned the state of the modern creepypasta fandom.