Cryptid's Rambles

The Missing Episodes

Wizards

Anti admits to wanting to write actual CSAM.

Everytime a proshipper says “fiction doesnt affect reality” its usually in the context of “just bc i indulge in this doesnt mean im this bad thing”

everyone knows that fiction can affect reality, it can affect your personality and your beliefs, but rarely does it ever make you do bad things, if youre compelled to do bad things because of fiction, youre alr mentally ill and thats not the fault of the media.

so if shipping/writing about child x adult makes me a pedo

then anyone who draws, writes about, reads, or watches Horror or Slashers is a murderer. if you like bad characters, that means you committed their crimes apparently

if you like this piece of media it MUST mean you condone every single aspect of it!!!!!

“but a lot of us see ao3 as a safe space to get away from that kind of nasty content” - lol you can see the middle of a busy interstate as a safe space all you want too but that doesn’t mean that you get to walk into the road and scream at all the cars going by that they’re the ones infringing on your safe space either

You might think those sites were correct and some kinds of content shouldn’t be allowed in public anywhere. In which case, you might want to stay away from AO3, because it was explicitly and directly created to host stuff that was unacceptable elsewhere. That’s its core purpose.

Fics that aren’t tagged according to the archive’s rules can be reported. However, there’s not much tagging that’s actually required: Just the warnings (including the option of “choose not to warn,” meaning “not telling you if any of these things are here”) and a fandom. They can leave off the rating, and it’ll be sorted as if it were explicit.

There’s a difference between wanting to share writing with a community and “needing public acclaim.”

We knew damn well when we set up AO3’s terms of service, that there would be people who decided, “I am NOT putting my writing on a site that hosts THAT AWFUL STUFF.” (At the time, we kind of assumed “That Awful Stuff” was “Voldemort victorious; Death Eater orgies abound” fics, not “Harry/Draco underage” fics, but we also knew that what’s considered “wrong” changes over time.) (Some of us remember when just saying you read slash could get you kicked out of a fandom’s locked email list.)

We weren’t really expecting demands that AO3 change its policies, because… those weren’t after-the-fact decisions? It wasn’t, “hey, let’s build an archive, and oh, I guess we’ll let the icky smut in too.” It was, “The icky smut keeps getting banned/ deleted/ forbidden/ removed because the mods got into a fight about what to allow…. what can we do about that? How about… an archive?”

Complaints that AO3 allows the stuff that AO3 was created to host will get zero results. No changes in policy; no open consideration; no public discussions.

Because it’s not art; it’s evidence of a crime. Namely, the rape of a child.

You might find fics lavishly describing underage Slytherin orgies disgusting, but the participants depicted are not actual people. It’s not child porn, it’s not illegal, and your disgust doesn’t give you the right to abuse the author or insist the site archiving the work take it down.

It's about supporting BDSM in fiction, "cringe" queer art/fic, "cringe" stories, badly written fanfic, rare pairs, ships that are unpopular, fanfiction that ignores canon, people being able to post their stories online without being bullied, being able to be in fandom without being bullied over everything I listed above and more, not to mention basic pro-fiction beliefs (like knowing you can read something without it corrupting you) and being against anti-fiction outside of fandom too (fuck book bans). 

The block button

The AO3 tagging system

The block button

Blocking keywords on twitter and other social platforms

Not clicking on fanfics that have blatant warnings on them for triggering topics

Nuanced agree.

I do think that for a lot of people there's a significant concern about how they're perceived by their peers, and that it fuels a lot of misguided "activism" but this stems from fear rather than something like laziness, deliberate manipulation, ect.

It ties into what I talked about on another post where people also place misguided responsibility and demands on people they deem as "capable" or "obligated." And where some people are also just point blank dickheads about moral signalling and knighting.

If you're constantly facing harassment and pressure to be seen as doing X, pretty soon you're going to get overwhelmed and you're going to try to prevent it by doing X in an overly visible, performative manner. You're going to want to stop people coming after you by visibly waving a neon sign saying "I'VE DONE THIS THING!"

We saw it with the social media blackouts. We saw it with spamming Free Palestine and Palestine flags. We saw it with the BLM logo. We see it with Facebook profile banners.

Being Known As Not A Bad Person becomes almost tantamount to actually not being a bad person.

But then, of course, you've also got the other side of the coin where there's people are genuinely do just want the recognition and clout of being deemed as an activist and a good person over actually wanting to be an activist and good person.

(Like that female influencer who was caught pretending to pick up trash, and the man who goes around shoving a camera in homeless people's faces and forcing them to perform for his audience if they want help.)

Because you’re right. I’m a living example- I’m a person who just feels so much guilt if they don’t participate in this ritual of self-sacrifice in the way of helping others. And I feel like tumblr activism has come to a point where it’s not even about helping each other or mutual aid, it’s about guilt-tripping people and saying “well, you wouldn’t want to be Mr evil terrible guy, right? Right? So signal boost this! Or else you’re literally an evil transphobic homophobic racist Zionist fascist bigot”

we all have to be selfish sometimes. We have to. Selfishness is inherently neutral and we need it to survive. I’m a real example of what happens when a person tries to live a life without selfishness- guess what, I’m the worlds biggest doormat and I’m basically miserable because I’m too afraid to tell people that I just can’t do it anymore.

I’m a person who needs help right now. I’m a person who needs assistance right now. But I don’t think any of them really care. They just want someone to make into their strawman. The world isn’t black and white like that, though

The majority of Tumblr activism isn't about helping other people.

Its about giving people an outlet for their own emotions, and showing other people you're not a bad person. I have no doubt a lot of the people falling victim to this actually believe they're helping, and likely have good intentions, but realistically I see so many people just using "activism" to lash out at others and moral grandstand.

Weaponizing activism blatantly defeats the purpose of activism. There's no standard to the people who need help, and just because someone can't necessarily be an extreme activist doesn't void them from being the recipient of it.

I hope you get the help and respite you need and if I can help you or facilitate finding people to help you I'm happy to. I can also gather some resources for self-help and methods to reduce stress if those are beneficial.

And remember:

Fandom is not inherently political.

The point of activism is to make change, not to get notes on a post.