Tea✨

Tickle community, I need to talk to you.

If you’re anything like me, you have a reaction to all sorts of tickling, which we can’t help. BUT. We can choose which type of tickling to not glorify.

Tickling is a broad spectrum. It’s something done to babies and intimate, consenting adults. It can be used for play or as a genuine torture method. The two tickle types are so wildly different, but there’s instances where they can overlap: in fiction.

Take the iconic tickle belt episode of SpongeBob. It’s being used as a torture method, but here’s the catch: it’s cartoony. In cartoons, being amused by one’s misfortune isn’t harmful, as that’s what many cartoons are centered around (prime example: Tom & Jerry). So silly tickle torture wouldn’t be much different from an anvil falling on someone’s head. Fine in cartoons, but very not fine in reality.

And here’s another thing: context. When someone is suffering in fiction, the appeal isn’t the suffering itself, but the narrative context of it. That’s why torture and the most atrocious things you can imagine are normalized in fiction. But when a person has an interest in seeing agony because it makes them feel ✨a certain way✨, especially when this agony is genuine but downplayed in its context… I don’t think that’s a good thing.

What made me think to post this was a tickle fic I read in which one character tickle tortured the other, not only against his consent, but against his will.

And people were calling it cute.

At first, I was blinded by it, too. The ler was a mischievous character, but tickling is a very dangerous mischief outlet if done incorrectly. But once I picked up on the fact that the “lee” absolutely did not want to be tickled, his begs for it to stop and the line: “He couldn’t stand it anymore.” Hit me like a frying pan. And then I had an even worse realization:

This was conceptually the same as sexual assault.

And people thought it was cute.

People thought tickle rape is cute.

My dear fellow tickle bugs, I implore you to be mindful of the content you consume and create. No means No can be complicated with tickling, so observe the context and make sure that the content that you’re craving isn’t glorifying non-consent.

Edit: Im gonna elaborate on this take because its gonna turn heads

I am not at all referring to the nsfw community in this reblog. That’s a COMPLETELY different situation that I respect wholeheartedly as long as everyone is being decent and using proper tags and spoilers.

This is the internet. We gotta see what we see and then move on unless it’s a situation that needs to be addressed for the safety and sanity of others.

when I reblog this post, as a sfw blog, I’m targeting it specifically at people in the sfw community who are being careless with their writing and how it may affect others. We should absolutely NOT be using this post to target nsfw content creators who do things on the harmlessly risqué side.