Given the recent resurgence in purity culture and anti-villain sentiment on Tumblr, this feels like a good time to talk about censorship and bullying. This is not a call-out post for anything that's happened recently, just some commentary on what, to me, is a disturbing trend and some general guidelines for how to conduct yourself in fandom spaces.
Essentially, it boils down to this: You have the right to not interact with anything you choose in a fandom. You don't have the right to make that choice for anyone else.
Do you know why AO3 doesn't have content bans? It stems from anti-censorship beliefs and First Amendment rights, and it also comes from a long history of watching things like this go down in fandom. The thing about banning one kind of content--or that kind of mindset--is that it hardly ever stops with one thing, until fandoms are so scrubbed from anything that has the potential to be problematic that they collapse under any perceived threat to their rigid moral standards. If you doubt that, consider how it's taken less than a month for this to jump from Marvel to include other groups of villains and fandoms. Guaranteed, it will not stop there. (And that's to say nothing of how, historically, censorship leads to silencing marginalized groups, but that's a different post.) Conservatism is insidious and takes a lot of forms, but censorship is ultimately a conservative, even a fascist, action.
The fact is that what you enjoy reading or writing is actually no reflection on what kind of person you are. There's even an argument to be made that exploring darkness in fiction a) makes you a more empathetic human and, b) makes you better-equipped to handle those topics in real life (but that's another post too). I don't care what you want to write on your own blog. I don't care how controversial your muse or your ship is or if you write the darkest of dark fic out there. I may not want to write it, engage with it, or even see it on my dash, but I'll defend your right to write it.
Writing fascist characters (HYDRA, Empire, Death Eaters, etc.) doesn't make someone a Nazi any more than writing Hannibal Lecter makes them a cannibal or writing the Punisher makes them an advocate for gun violence. Saying they are breaks one of the primary tenets of roleplay: that mun does not equal muse. It's widely accepted in the roleplaying community that we don't agree with our characters' views, and we would never in a million years condone the things they do in real life. That rule doesn't go away just because you personally don't like the character.
So let's talk about what to do when you come across writing you don't agree with.
What you have a right to do: Feel however you feel about it. Ask for tags and readmores (they have a right to refuse). Decline to explain or justify why it makes you uncomfortable. Decide not to associate with people who write that thing. Blacklist. Unfollow. Block. Add to your DNI list. Vent about it in a safe space with your friends. Take a step back from the internet. Remember that the people on the other side of the screen are real, actual humans, while characters are imaginary. Embrace the fact that engaging in fiction is optional, and you can choose to stop any time you want. Trust that grown adults have the basic media literacy to understand the difference between reality and fiction. Remind yourself of the first rule of fandom, the one AO3 is built on (Don't like; don't read). Recognize that it's perfectly valid to not want to engage with something, but that expecting other people not to write it at all isn't your call to make and can lead down a dangerous path.
What you don't have a right to do: Bully or doxx other writers. Shame them for their choices when they don't agree with you. Demand explanations or justifications from them. Gaslight them into thinking nobody else will write with them if they continue to write this thing. (You don't speak for the entire fandom. You are a very small minority making a lot of noise.) Create call-out posts. Participate in witch hunts. Send anon hate or death threats. Make people feel unsafe in their own spaces. Police other people's content.
If you descend to bullying someone because you don't like what they're writing, you don't have the moral high ground. I can't believe it needs to be said, but real bullies are worse than fictional antagonists. Bullying and censorship are far more alarming threats than people who enjoy exploring dark topics in their writing. Nobody's asking you to like it, agree with it, or even look at it. And if you don't? Now is the perfect time to say nothing about it, block, and move on. Rest assured, we don't want you on our blogs any more than you want us on yours.
