acloudofsparklingdust

[acloudofsparklingdust]

Hiroki Kawanabe aka かわなべひろき aka Kawanabe Hiroki (Japanese, b. 1983, based Kagoshima City, Japan) - 21:12, 2023, Paintings: Acrylic on Paper

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The Beresford. Glasgow, August 2013.

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This still needs ironing, but... we've got a finish! 🪡 ✨

Floriography:

- Goldenrod: be cautious

- Atropa belladona: warning

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𝚂𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚌𝚎: Yes! You Can Cook Microwave (1984)

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Personally I think I'm shockingly normal for someone who has spent every day on the internet since they were 12

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the "chat is a pronoun" discourse is captivating to me because it goes so far beyond ordinary misinformation

like imagine if suddenly there was a wave of posts saying that Dogs Are Birds, like "omg you guys i just realized dogs are actually birds!!!" and any time anybody said "theyre mammals, not birds" dozens of people would get super defensive about it and make snide condescending posts/comments like "KNOWLEDGE is knowing that dogs arent birds, WISDOM is knowing that taxonomy is fake and all organisms are whatever you want them to be forever, peace and love on planet earth," and they would keep posting about how Dogs Are Totally Birds because "well dogs are majestic and have beautiful voices, like birds" and if you pointed out that those qualities are immeasurable (& have nothing to do with being a bird) and that metric could categorize most animals (& several things that arent animals) as 'birds' they would call you a gatekeeping elitist and say "let people enjoy things" or some thesaurused equivalent, and maybe someone would also say "we're just having a Laff, it's just a fun game dont be so Serious" but they (and a non-insignificant number of other people) otherwise speak as if they believe with conviction that Dogs Really Are Birds, and this is Really Big & Exciting News because Dogs Are The First 4-Legged Bird, and then when people who know biology made posts explaining in-depth what taxonomy is & why dogs arent birds theyd start getting asks like "what about cats, are cats birds??" "are hamsters birds?" "what about sharks??" "i think flies are birds because they have wings." and then imagine this all persisted for more than half a year

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2015? that wasnt even that long ago. it was only... [doing the math] ohhh. ohhh..... oh dear...

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Maybe ban is not the right word, or it is the right word but just isn't possible without censorship. Any kind of limitations would be welcomed, though.

I understand and agree with all this nuance you provided.

I guess for me even the fact that AO3 (for example) has an uncritical warning for "underage" content feels like it normalizes and welcomes it. If banning is too hard, then at least have clearer guidelines that denounce this content. I think having it be something that is obviously frowned upon is the least they can do. Like having a pop up when someone checks the underage warning box to remind the writer publishing that work that this material is illegal in certain countries, or that there is no actual age check for readers besides the users self verifying that they're over 18 (which I've been doing on these fanfic websites since I was 13). It wouldn't stop the content being published, but hopefully it would at least help well intentioned people not be a part of the problem. With the ill intentioned ones this would obviously not do as much, but again... I think anything would be better than the current resounding nothing being done about this.

I also wish they would change the warning, so that underage is separate from pedophilia, like labeling the warnings "Underage" vs "Adult/Underage content". That could help improve filtering on the reader side.

I honestly don't think I have enough knowledge about how difficult it is in practice, but all I can say is that "it's hard" shouldn't be an excuse for these websites to take no responsibility about the type of content they're hosting. The truth is that there is written and drawn pedo content on AO3 and they're not addressing it because "free speech". Free speech is important, but my knee jerk reaction is that if your content is literally, on the lines, pro-pedophilia/uncritically depictic pedophilia, there should be some kind of roadblock before you're able to disseminate that content.

If banning is just too hard without going into censorship, what else can we do?

Yes there's a lot of important conversations to be had around fanfiction culture and its effects, but I think child safeguarding should be a top priority. Because otherwise we're just having new generations of traumatized fanfiction readers.

sexually explicit fanfics are incredibly damaging for women and girls imo. and i mean yeah, there's stuff that's actually depicts healthy sexual encounters and is completely fine. but so much of it is full of really toxic things and promoting kink in a way that is completely out of touch with reality. you've got young women who are virgins convinced they want to be spanked and are into "bloodplay" (i.e. being cut up) or anal because fanfic makes in sound sexy and like the women are enjoying it. in fanfic you have women on the verge of orgasm from nothing but physical violence being enacted on them. and this is not reality. the fanfics are not accurately describing what it would actually be like to have that done to you. and these virgins with the whatever kink will say they know it's fantasy and not reflective of reality, but then in the same breath say they want it done to them despite never experiencing it and having no idea what it actually is like. they're basing their real sexual desires and preferences on something that is not real and that can really screw them up if they pursue it in real life.

and that isn't even getting into how it messes up people's views of healthy relationships. so much of the romance fics are damaging outside of the smut.

it drives me crazy that everyone in the fanfic community dismisses fanfic as just fantasy and that readers should know that--readers should know the unhealthy relationship or violent sex the author is glorifying is not actually okay or good or enjoyable.

but i mean. i was 11 when i started reading fanfic. i didn't know that. people will say my parents should have stopped me or paid attention to what i was doing on the internet and "taught me better" but come on. that is not realistic at all. teens often think they know better than their parents and it's impossible to completely monitor what kids are doing on the internet unless you basically keep them off it altogether--which is unlikely. and if by some miracle you do manage to keep them off it, then they go in unprepared at 18 and are still susceptible to this shit because they still don't know better.

not to mention when i was 25 i had to explain to a woman in her 40s that edward cullen watching bella sleep without her knowledge is actually incredibly creepy and not at all romantic or sweet. and she wasn't inexperienced or stupid, for the record. so it's not even just teenagers who can't tell when something is romantic as a fantasy and not in real life so the whole "well it's kids who don't know better and kids shouldn't be reading this stuff" argument doesn't hold water either.

plus individual fanfics do not exist in isolation. you've got heaps of fanfics all portraying the same toxic stuff, and when people read that over and over it screws up their baseline and what they think is normal even if they "know" it's not actually okay. this can be very dangerous for teens and young adults reading about teenagers dating grown ass men, in particular.

the fanfic community loves to point towards things like fanfic depicting murder and go "no one is reading about that then going and doing it!" and it's just such a false comparison because like. yes, everyone does know murder is wrong and illegal. but not everyone knows what's toxic in a relationship or sex. not to mention most people are never going to be even remotely involved in a murder, but the vast majority of people have a romantic relationship and have sex. so one of those things is completely disconnected from reality for people and the other is not, which means one is going to affect you more.

i'm not even anti-fanfic to be clear. i still read it frequently and even write it. i think it can be a wonderful thing and i'm in no way advocating against it. i'm not even advocating for censoring the "problematic" stuff. but i do think authors need to at least acknowledge that a large part of their audience doesn't actually know better and that there is actually a very large problem and their fantasy is affecting reality for many women and girls. i think the community as a whole needs to recognize that people are shaped by the media they consume, and there is a lot of very damaging stuff in fanfic and we need to actually be open to talking about this and raise awareness.

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sexually explicit fanfics are incredibly damaging for women and girls imo. and i mean yeah, there's stuff that's actually depicts healthy sexual encounters and is completely fine. but so much of it is full of really toxic things and promoting kink in a way that is completely out of touch with reality. you've got young women who are virgins convinced they want to be spanked and are into "bloodplay" (i.e. being cut up) or anal because fanfic makes in sound sexy and like the women are enjoying it. in fanfic you have women on the verge of orgasm from nothing but physical violence being enacted on them. and this is not reality. the fanfics are not accurately describing what it would actually be like to have that done to you. and these virgins with the whatever kink will say they know it's fantasy and not reflective of reality, but then in the same breath say they want it done to them despite never experiencing it and having no idea what it actually is like. they're basing their real sexual desires and preferences on something that is not real and that can really screw them up if they pursue it in real life.

and that isn't even getting into how it messes up people's views of healthy relationships. so much of the romance fics are damaging outside of the smut.

it drives me crazy that everyone in the fanfic community dismisses fanfic as just fantasy and that readers should know that--readers should know the unhealthy relationship or violent sex the author is glorifying is not actually okay or good or enjoyable.

but i mean. i was 11 when i started reading fanfic. i didn't know that. people will say my parents should have stopped me or paid attention to what i was doing on the internet and "taught me better" but come on. that is not realistic at all. teens often think they know better than their parents and it's impossible to completely monitor what kids are doing on the internet unless you basically keep them off it altogether--which is unlikely. and if by some miracle you do manage to keep them off it, then they go in unprepared at 18 and are still susceptible to this shit because they still don't know better.

not to mention when i was 25 i had to explain to a woman in her 40s that edward cullen watching bella sleep without her knowledge is actually incredibly creepy and not at all romantic or sweet. and she wasn't inexperienced or stupid, for the record. so it's not even just teenagers who can't tell when something is romantic as a fantasy and not in real life so the whole "well it's kids who don't know better and kids shouldn't be reading this stuff" argument doesn't hold water either.

plus individual fanfics do not exist in isolation. you've got heaps of fanfics all portraying the same toxic stuff, and when people read that over and over it screws up their baseline and what they think is normal even if they "know" it's not actually okay. this can be very dangerous for teens and young adults reading about teenagers dating grown ass men, in particular.

the fanfic community loves to point towards things like fanfic depicting murder and go "no one is reading about that then going and doing it!" and it's just such a false comparison because like. yes, everyone does know murder is wrong and illegal. but not everyone knows what's toxic in a relationship or sex. not to mention most people are never going to be even remotely involved in a murder, but the vast majority of people have a romantic relationship and have sex. so one of those things is completely disconnected from reality for people and the other is not, which means one is going to affect you more.

i'm not even anti-fanfic to be clear. i still read it frequently and even write it. i think it can be a wonderful thing and i'm in no way advocating against it. i'm not even advocating for censoring the "problematic" stuff. but i do think authors need to at least acknowledge that a large part of their audience doesn't actually know better and that there is actually a very large problem and their fantasy is affecting reality for many women and girls. i think the community as a whole needs to recognize that people are shaped by the media they consume, and there is a lot of very damaging stuff in fanfic and we need to actually be open to talking about this and raise awareness.

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my new conspiracy theory is that long fake nails are a completely artificial trend created to prevent women from doing anything with their hands. a form of hobbling, perhaps.

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Ah these children who always create problems for poor mothers....

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“stop traumadumping to your friends tell this to your therapist” my god they paywalled human connection

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apocalypse birdies as animated pfps!

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