#shdldr

Hey, so. There’s been a lot of talk on #Shadowfam twitter of late about how... aggressive the purity police are regarding fic content and pairings (and dark!fic of many sorts, no matter how well tagged) so I made a collection for such things on AO3. There’s an open collection “shdldropen” and an ANOYMOUS collection “shdldranon” for avoiding the dog-piles.

ugHHH i almost feel like i should apologize for that anon since the collection was kind of my idea. but like yeah: there are legitimate conversations to be had about fetishism and racism in fandom (in general, and in this fandom in particular, given that one half of the most popular ship is a moc), but 'who tops who' is not really that fucking conversation, you know? Nuance: it matters!

***

No need to apologize, I... think I knew what I was getting into? Hopefully it will not exceed expectations.

My real problem with the whole “who tops who” conversation is HAVING that conversation is inherently sexist & anti-queer. Just making it a question means you think it *matters* in terms of representation. How I like (or don't like) dick (organic or strap-on) has nothing to do with my worth as a person.

Plus, *even if* a particular fic does use the sexual relationship to support harmful tropes and stereotypes you can’t know that by the tags.

And making the “conversation” about something that could be gleaned from the tags (whether you read the actual fic or not) is not going to encourage writers to examine their writing for racism or sexism or whatever, it’s just going to make them not want to tag things thoroughly. (Or just stop writing entirely.)

And that, to me, is terrifying. I love new writers! (I was one!) I adore tags! There should be more of them! You can know what you’re getting into and if you’re  ready for it, BECAUSE TAGS. (You can find what you want, because tags. They’re just. THE BEST THING EVER. USE THEM. Include using them to BACK OFF WHEN NEEDED.)

Also, like. Obviously I disagree with bullying in reaction to fanworks. And censorship is always bad. I'm not sure when those two points got lost for so many people.

If you're worried about representation in fandom, *talk about it* in general terms wherever you do your fandom stuff. Support groups like @writingwithcolor & find and recommend sensitivity readers.

I'm trying to look in your tumblr for context for this but either my connection is bad or I'm just hopelessly lost lol

probably a bit of both, there isn’t much context to be had? What little I can sort of explain is here: #shdldr/chrono (Basically I made the truly controversial statement that: censorship is bad, and people should not be bullied for writing dark!fic, morally grey characters, or even having themes of rape or incest in their fic, and made an anonymous collection for people to post Shadowhunters fic to avoid the dog-piling of the purity-wank crowds. And then got yelled at a lot here and on twitter! It was a. Something?)

neuromagpie replied to your post “re: the anon - Making someone a dom is bad now? Please explain. —...”

Thank you for clarifying your stance on this. These are unsettling trends and issues that pretty much every fandom faces, but they’re nuanced subjects that deserve to be discussed, not a war to take sides over. I wish that some authors were willing to have discussions with folks that find their content upsetting, and I wish that some folks wouldn’t resort to unhelpful anonymous trolling. Anyways thank you, OP.

I am going to disappoint you mightily, but this is not a nuanced issue. Either you think it is wrong to bully people over fiction and that content cannot be policed because censorship is wrong... or you think there should be exceptions and it’s okay as long as it’s happening to the other guy. That’s it.

Do I think we should talk about the way media is harmful? YES. Do I think *fandom and fanworks* can be harmful. YES. 110%. THAT IS ENTIRELY SEPARATE FROM THIS ISSUE.

I am all for every possible conversation about how trends in fanfic and fandom are racist and sexist and queer-phobic and etc. (because fandom is still part of the rest of the screwd up world!) and how we  can fight against that. But that is NOT THIS CONVERSATION. They are two separate issues, and the tendency of people to combine them is where we get into trouble. That is never ever an excuse to pick a single work or author and threaten and bully them because you think they did it wrong.

dearophelia replied to your post “can you delete the fic”

what is even happening

no one knows. people are dumb™

i just caught up and this is a perfect response

why thank you 💗

loquaciousquark replied to your post “can you delete the fic”

This is infuriating to watch.

ikr? I am. Mostly just flabbergasted. This is the hill they’re going to die on! That writing fiction is bad, and I should feel bad for supporting it *shrugs*

jathis replied to your post “can you delete the fic”

Lol

😘

ohfreckle replied to your post “Okay I'm gonna be honest here. That collection is all about "kinks"...”

Seems like anon's kink is self-punishment if they keep visiting places that clearly aren't for them.

*snerk* TMI from the anons!

lemonsharks replied to your post “Okay I'm gonna be honest here. That collection is all about "kinks"...”

Where are these people coming from and, perhaps more importantly, would they be here if anon was turned off?

Probably some of them? I got a few on twitter too before I blocked them. They seemed vaguely offended, but most of them started the conversation with: this is gross, if you agree with this, block me. So I did?

lemonsharks replied to your post “@glorious-spoon asked: ugHHH i almost feel like i should apologize...”

I don't even go here but YES THIS THIS IS THE PROBLEM I HAVE HAD with the ENTIRE perennial wank over top/bottom in every fandom I've been in.

I have always thought that it was really obvious that the problem was THE QUESTION? And yet. *shrugs* 

junemermaid replied to your post “@glorious-spoon asked: ugHHH i almost feel like i should apologize...”

This this THIS. I didn't get this far or this eloquently on twitter today but this is the core of the problem. Discuss troublesome trends instead of dogpiling single writers!

Yeah. There’s a huge difference between: I DO NOT THINK WE SHOULD WRITE ALEC WITH WOMEN BECAUSE THAT IS QUEER ERASURE 

and

omg look at this particular & terrible author and kill them 

like. obviously? I would have thought?

evilsapphyre replied to your post “*makes you a Bloody Mary after that anon* I think you may need this...”

Oh, yes, drinks someday. Somewhere. But mostly, then so you could sit back and just laugh with a tasty drink while seeing people miss the point of dl;dr.

yeah. like. IT’S NOT A TRICKY ACRONYM. IT’S REALLY STRAIGHTFORWARD

bugsieplusone replied to your post “Hold up, let me get this straight, you are supporting this whole...”

How ridiculous is this. It's fiction. Go pearl clutch about things in the real world that matter anon.

ilu. since I haven’t said that lately 💖

la-muerta replied to your post “Hold up, let me get this straight, you are supporting this whole...”

Woooaaahhh hold up here. Magnus being the dom or written as !dark (because he’s canonically the son of a Prince of Hell??? UM.) is your idea of “fetishising”? Like I’ve heard some nonsense, but this is some fuckery, anon.

IKR? I JUST ARTICULATED THE TOS OUT LOUD AND SLAPPED A ‘POST ANONYMOUSLY IF YOU’D LIKE TO AVOID THE WANK’ ON IT

Which you can also already do. AO3 has an anonymous collection for anyone who wants to use it, for all fandoms! (And people have made several attempted anonymous & kink memes for SH, they’ve just none of them quite caught on, to the best of my knowledge. So that’s not new EITHER.) 

I just attempted to organize things!

Your current wtf situation (what I’ve gathered anyway) actually infiltrated my dreams last night. We’d arranged an in-person RPG session and I kept asking if you were okay with all the negativity you were facing and I was really worried about you.

awwww, I’m sorry your dreams are worried, but I am just fine. (And thank your subconscious for me? I think that’s how that should go? *hugs*)

Tbqh, most of the people who said “YAY” when I made the collection ended up getting a lot more blow-back than I did, for inexplicable internet-group-think reasons of some sort? I got a relatively small pile of people going “ew” but no one’s gonna make me think I’m a terrible person for saying CENSORING FIC IS BAD, so? They’re not very effective.

It was and it wasn’t? This particular Discourse™ had mostly been scattered across a lot of different fics, so it was already there, that was the whole reason I made the collection in the first place, I just made a focus so the Purity Squad could all yell at the same time... which meant now EVERYONE could see what they were doing instead of just the individual authors they’d targeted (and their friends).