#rambles.

i briefly touched on how the readers in this fandom are treated in terms of their mannerisms, personality, and general mindset. according to the fandom, we are the kind of girls who would be revered on alpha male podcasts, conservative news outlets, and the ever-prevalent ed-twt. i won’t be shy when i say that a lot of the readers that seem to be heralded as the ideal woman for these men are nothing short of vapid, insipid, and completely lacking in any illusion of a personality that goes beyond birthing hips and eyes that are privy to studio ghibli-esque tears every five fucking seconds.

except that’s not us. that’s not the reader. that’s not the person reading your work. that’s your untouched daddy issues and anxious attachment style with gorgeous legs, given the title of reader to make yourself feel better about using these men as your escape.

and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. i’ll be frank with you when i say that i am privy to projecting onto the girl i call reader very often. while i don’t write smut (nor will i ever), i give her pieces of me because i believe that is what it is to write. to produce a work that is entirely human is to give a bit of your own humanity to it in the process, and this is something i’ve always upheld as a core belief in my writing career.

i see this in other writers in the fandom, too. even the ones guilty of oversexualizing these men until they’re essentially booktok tropes given life. my only problem is that the latter is what is being pushed out by the algorithm and force-fed to everyone who refreshes their once carefully curated for you feed; and who feeds the algorithm but the people?

how, then, can you expect your work to connect with the reader at all? if all you’re doing is getting thirty-something year old military men to plow the embodiment of your insecurities until her spine breaks, who is that going to reach besides equally insecure people who have been hard-wired by a miasma of patriarchy and internalized hatred to consume and produce the same three pornhub tags until it’s clogging every cod-related tag on tumblr like an artery?

i am not white, although comments on my appearance would beg to differ. i am not a woman completely. i am not skinny; at least, not in the ways that seem to matter. none of these fics call out to me because it is damn near impossible to transplant myself into the shoes of this girl they call reader, and so i have to scour and dig and pluck at the endless mound of cod content with my perfectly manicured nails and my slightly callused but nevertheless well-kept fingers until i find something that finally, finally speaks to me. and it seems like such a self-centered issue, but i know there are people who feel the same, who are also digging for that something that will speak back.

it’s just not fair.

and what baffles me about this is that somehow, inextricably, it all comes back to the hatred of women one way or another. the unquenchable and almost feral thirst for dad bods and weathered older men in this fandom is not lost on me—and neither is the actual thirst; as a lesbian, i promise i get it. most of the time, it does feel like genuine appreciation for the variety of human beauty.

but when the thirst in question is for a reader—usually a female reader—with love handles and hip dips and blemishes and a flat chest, suddenly the character’s love (read: thirst) for her is an act of bravery, an eleven-part masterlist of blatant fetishization, a groundbreaking moment of this specific kind of reader finally being deserving of love because she’s getting it from a conventionally attractive military man, or all of the above.

and oh, god fucking forbid the reader in question is a fat woman.

i want to make it clear that i don’t really care what people write about. of course, there’s writing that’s incredibly personal and dear to an author’s heart, and i can appreciate that. and then there’s writing for readers to explore different fantasies and ideas with, and i can appreciate that too. harsh kink and taboo fics aren’t always my cup of tea, but i’m not condemning anyone for writing them and i don’t think that those kinds of fics should be censored, ever.

what i care about is when fics written by self-proclaimed activists and feminists proudly tout the romanticization of misogyny, racism, fatshaming, and all manner of harmful and frankly conservative stereotypes and ideologies. it’s one thing to write a fic about getting choked and spanked, which personally i don’t care for but won’t bash on because who’s that even hurting? it’s another thing to proclaim very adamantly that your writing is meant to ‘show love to the chubby girlies’, then proceed to dole out two thousand words of simon riley yelling ‘hey, fatass’ at the reader during her 9-5 shift before deciding to ask her out because she’s rightfully irritated at him.

(real fic, by the way. don’t harass the author if you happen to find it or the divine death ray will be coming for you.)

i honestly don’t even want to think about what kind of reader i might see if she was intended to be southeast asian. hell, if she was intended to be asian at all. race and ethnicity neutrality is a bit difficult in reader-insert fics, on the basis that there’s some nuances of our culture that are exclusive to us, just like there are for every other culture across the globe. it’s a head-tilter to hear “i’m not that race/ethnicity, so i wouldn’t feel comfortable writing for them”, when the ability to do your research has always been available to us and always will be. it’s not a crime against humanity to ask your poc community if something you’re writing reads as respectful to the culture or not.

(i might be stretching with that one a little, but it does bother me that the only two labels for reader that i see are “poc” and “unlisted”. does that not read as a little weird? i feel like i’m going crazy.)

my point is that it’s not weird to write fics about dark, taboo topics. who even cares? my point is that when you’re using the progress we’ve made in destigmatizing fics with that content to promote messages of oppression and prejudice under the guise of ‘it’s only fiction’, you don’t exactly have room to protest when your work is criticized.

ask yourself, very carefully; what about those topics and beliefs in these men are you so attracted to?

there’s no graceful way to end this. i’ve been so frustrated at what i’ve seen left and right that it’s all come full circle and now i’m just tired. i feel like this fandom has sapped the energy that usually comes with a new hyperfixation out of me, and all i want to do is scroll through edits in my camera roll and pretend tumblr isn’t even an app. i’m just sick of seeing misogyny, perpetuated and internalized, be brushed under the rug with proclamations of ‘i’m just a girl’ and ‘it’s all fiction anyways’.

because the truth is that fiction affects reality, to an extent. why do you think it was so revolutionary that queer and feminist media finally escaped censorship in a number of countries? the message lies in the media. we put out what we consume.

and if what we consume is a slew of messages that only serve to further oppress the minority, then what do you expect we’ll be putting out there for hundreds to consume and produce in turn? the answer is simple; more hate. more prejudice. more of the same oppression that we’ve fought against for years—the same fight that gave us the freedom to even be publishing our works like this in the first place.

so ask yourself; where and when does the cycle end?

all of my love to the following:

@rubyfrankenstein, for sitting with me on call while you drove home and being frustrated with me. you have such an articulate way with words that completely eludes me, and i wish i could have put this in as clear of words as you did. thank you for matching my freak x

@seraphimsentinel, @constantlyunconstant, and all the anons who expressed similar grievances in my inbox and on their own blogs. i am a little bit in love with you all and i appreciate you so, so much for being vocal about it. we need more of you and your work.

the shitheads (i would not put them through being tagged in a huge list all at once, but they know who they are and somehow i think they'll know that they have a place of honor here), for putting up with my semi - regular appearance in the hating channel whenever i have these kinds of things to talk about. it's an important topic but i know i can get exhausting, so thank you for bearing with me.

all my love,