bitter-and-sweettimes

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

dry humping where he’s on top of you and you can feel him against your core with every faux thrust and you’re both panting into each other’s mouths and it’s needier because you aren’t quite there he’s not actually inside you and you’re grabbing at his clothes and his hands are in your hair and he’s desperate and whining and

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

oh look, I made another comic.

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

'time for round two of making teenagers uncomfortable on the internet'

Listen. No one is shipping beetlebabes for the sole purpose of 'making teenagers uncomfortable on the internet'. Unless the adults in question are your parents/guardians, none of them are responsible for the stuff you might see while being 'on the internet'. None of them are responsible for your discomfort from what you might see. None of them are obligated to stop having fun in their own fandom spaces simply because a teenager exists 'on the internet' who doesn't like it (who is also perfectly capable of staying out of places they don't want to see, I PRESUME) no more than adults at a bar are obligated to not drink because there are people under the age who can't (fittingly, most bars in the US don't admit people under the age at all). You know who is responsible? Depending on your age of teenagedom, it's either to some extent your parents/guardians, but also you. Yeah, sweetie, you. I've been on the internet since the late 90's when I was NINE and I'm here to tell you right now that learning how to cultivate your own experience online is an extremely important tool. If you don't learn now how to keep your nose out of things that you don't like, you're going to have a very hard time filled with round-about arguments and constant drama and maybe worse when you could just be having fun with the things you do like and ignoring the stuff you don't. You see, my sweet summer child, feeling 'discomfort' about something benign does not inherently give you the right to shit all over whatever it is that made you uncomfortable or make up insinuations about the consenting adults participating in it. Unless there are people dropping shipping art into your inbox against your will or something (there aren't) it actually is none of your business at all, and doesn't concern you in the least. Like my goodness, you kids have ALL kinds of protections you can use to weed out things you don't want to see that we didn't have back when I was a 'teenager on the internet', blocking, blacklisting, browser extensions that can help with that, etc, and yet somehow we seem to have better understood back then how to mind our own business and stay out of fandom spaces we didn't want to be in. Nowadays all I see are children running into the devil's sacrament uninvited and claiming to be personally affected by said sacrament when all of us are wondering what the fuck they're doing there in the first place when there are clear signs denoting what sacrament this is. You don't have to see the movie, you don't have to see shipping content, you don't have to be 'exposed' to any of this at all; in this day and age, you choose to be, which makes any discomfort you feel as a result of that your own responsibility. The only person making 'teenagers uncomfortable on the internet' in this specific instance are the teens themselves.

And again, a little crash course in history here since the education system probably failed you, but using simply the existence of children as an excuse for why adults can't do consenting adult activities with each other has historically been used as a way to demonize and weaponize violence against marginalized groups. Yall are literally just stealing pages from homophobic/misogynistic/racist/transphobic conservative playbooks. That may not be your ultimate goal in coming after fandom spaces, but it's where that kind of behavior and thinking always ends up in the end. If you think alt-right entities won't harness that sense of youthful moral outrage for their own ends then I have a bridge to sell you.

Anyway, point being, no random adult on the internet or IRL is responsible for you. Random adults on the internet or IRL are not your parents/guardians. They have no obligation to eschew their own interests just because kids are wandering into places where they shouldn't. I honestly worry for any child on the internet who thinks this way, because there are absolutely predators out there that will abuse this sense of 'every adult is responsible for my comfort'. They aren't, and I'm sorry the adults in your life that actually are responsible for you failed you so much as to not teach you otherwise. Unlearn this now before you get hurt, please.

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

TBH while Andrew is a shitty person I still would say he is a victim of Ashley, like you can be a bad person and still be a victim.

True. Theirs is a codependent relationship for a reason, it's not just one sibling abusing the other. Ashley is more outwardly aggressive (speaking of the most recent clip, her voicemails are a form of abuse, because she's sabotaging her brother's relationship for her selfish dependency), but now we're seeing more of Andrew's lying and lovebombing in action. And physical aggression. Because I didn't miss how violently he snaps the phone and how quickly Julia cries at his anger :)

And of course his behavior is all in the name of protecting Ashley too! He dismisses Julia's concerns, acts like there is nothing wrong in the voicemails, suggests that someone else is pretending to be her, and when Julia brings up the topic of the incestuous rumors, he acts offended that she might even think about it - but doesn't quite argue against them. And you can see all of this as a result of Ashley herself abusing Andrew to the point that he feels the need to protect her (and himself ofc, since for whatever reason he wants to stay in that relationship). But he's still hurting an innocent girl.

It's just very complex and intricated and fascinating, and both siblings are pitiable victims and both of them are awful awful people 💖

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

Stop pretending to be a person, pet.

You may have them fooled, out there, convinced that you're a person, who can be left alone, but not me.

You're not even wearing it and I can see the collar you wish was around your neck.

Slip it on, go on.

Be a good pet, put on the collar. That's right. Isn't that better?

All those silly thoughts are gone now.

Lay down, I've got you. Let me pet your pretty little head.

Good pet. I'm proud of you. It's hard, pretending to be a person for so long. It must've been so scary, being away from your owner for so long. It's gonna be alright. We're here now.

Rest now, pretty pet.

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

*white knuckling the bathroom sink* do NOT infodump ppl about the fact that the first spn fic was a wincest one and that it was posted mere hours after the pilot and that the founder of ao3 was a wincestie and that the first fic on ao3 was wincest too and that the omegaverse as we know it was created by wincest shippers for jared/jensen fics *pointing at myself in the mirror with a shaky hand* ppl will think you're weird and off-putting you need to control yourself–

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

i remember seeing a screenshot from twitter of an anti saying its about protecting fictional kids and that they don't care about real ones

well here's an anti telling someone to look at ACTUAL CSEM instead of writing fanfiction

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

What she says: I hate antis

What she really means: I don’t mind people disliking a ship for their own reason but the anti-shipping movement is driven by hate and bandwagon bullying to police what people are “allowed” to enjoy. They use fundamentally abusive and manipulative tactics on real people in the name of protecting survivors from speculative things in fiction. Antis want to act morally superior over ship wars and claim that to ship something problematic you must be a survivor. By doing this antis force survivors who may be uncomfortable with coming out with their status to out themselves and then hold them to impossible standards. Except when it does come to survivors who ship anti-deemed problematic things we are attacked, harassed, and then pushed under the bus anyway. Antis trivialize terms such as abuse, rape, and pedophilia by using them so often and out of place against a group made up of many survivors and minors– the people they claim to be protecting. They have bullied and suicide baited artists and other content creators they dislike in the name of “policing the bad ships uwu.” All antis are at fault for this, even if an anti claims not to send hate themselves they are still influencing this bad behavior because they are part of this hate group. The entire anti-shipper movement is a toxic cesspool that makes me feel sick.

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

it's kind of bullshit that people will react with horror to me discussing my fantasies/kinks until i clarify I'm the sub in them. like even my therapist was all like "ohhh it's ok to want to hold power so long as it's consensual" and then clearly relaxed when I clarified I wanted to be the sub.

i love you everyone and with rape kinks, those who want to roleplay kidnapping and abusing someone, i love you i love you i love you. this ain't me fishing for a dom/me to be clear---you are VALUED as a person, outside of your sexual fantasies. I care about you and appreciate you, and there is nothing wrong or bad about you!!!!

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

I'm noticing as I go through the tag that remrom is very sweet which is not at all what I was expecting.

Like Remus is the embodiment of Intrusive Thoughts, he has no qualms about saying what's on his mind, and he can easily figure out what exactly you hate whether about yourself, others or both. He's pretty damn good at getting a reaction out of the other sides too, he's almost childish in the way he enjoys testing the others.

Then there's Roman, the man is insecure. He's easy to lead on if you feed into his ego but as the ego he's also easily bruised. He's desperate to feel valuable, when Janus buttered him up he had such a hard time not giving in because the others rarely play to his pride so much. Yet he despises Janus, more so he despises the concept of the dark sides(A concept that he made up), likely because he knows he's egocentric and selfish as hell, things that C!Thomas's morals say are bad. As the dashing prince he's supposed to be a beacon of good in the world, the fact that he's so often so close to those he deems to be the 'Dark Sides' in behavior disturbs him. It hurts his black and white view of the world and as the ego he can't let that world view get shattered because that world view literally informs his identity, C!Thomas's identity.

Then you bring in Remus, Remus who already knows all of that. Who knows exactly what makes Roman tick and unlike Roman doesn't have the insecurities(As far as I can tell). And unlike the other sides who merely play the roles of a family(Patton as the dad is the most obvious but also that thing with like the cousin aunt mom friend group assigned family roles type deal) he and Roman are ATCUAL siblings, twins no less! Reflections of eachother and he knows that Roman hates what he sees. Remus doesn't though, Remus doesn't care about his image. He just enjoys the reactions he can get out of others.

Each side has unique reactions to his 'contributions' but no one else reacts quite like Roman. Even Virgil tends to simply regard him with disgust. Roman reacts to him like an insult. To Roman Remus's very existence is an act of violence against his character and he HATES it. He takes things so personally and he's so reactive.

I dunno, I kinda expected there would be more Remus manipulating and fucking with Roman. They're siblings, Roman doesn't like Remus and Remus is literally Intrusive Thoughts. There's a lot there, like how one of the most common types of Intrusive Thoughts are those of incest.

Remus would have no problem making a few sexual jokes about him and Roman and it'd get to Roman every time. I can imagine Roman chasing Remus around the mind place with his sword after one of his jokes. One of the sides tries to calm him down after they lose eachother, reminding him that 'Its okay, what Remus says has no real impact. Its just nonsense.' and Roman gets that, like he understands that but it doesn't stop the humiliation he experiences every time it happens, the way it damages his image to even have the thought of doing something like that with his brother?!

Roman almost certainly has taboo desires as well, almost certainly not about his brother but that doesn't change the fact that Remus loves to bring them up all the time. None of the other sides know that Remus is airing out Roman's dirty laundry, only them two. And Remus knows that whenever Roman thinks about those taboo desires of his that he deems to be so wretched he knows he'll be imagining Remus as the subject of them, after all, that's exactly how Intrusive Thoughts works. The more Roman tries to expel Remus out of his life the easier it is for him to stick around. Logically he knows that its not helping, that his disdain for Remus is only gonna make the thoughts worse but that's the issue isn't it? When the thoughts in your head are attacking your morals, your integrity, your ego, there's only so much logic can help before one's emotions get the better of them.

And Roman is very emotional.

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

Basically every artist and/or writer over the age of 25 is proship.

Sorry to break it to you, but the creators of your favorite shows, comics, and video games are most likely all proship.

Your therapists and psychologists would be considered proship. Your school teachers would most likely be considered proship. Hell, most of you have parents that would be considered proshippers.

The mass majority of people can understand the concept of a fictional story being harmless. Antis, you're the minority.

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

I will never understand when the concept of “aging up” characters is wrong.

I just seen a roleplay buddy make a post about how aging up Ochaco to go on a date with Dabi is wrong and they unadded someone for it.

Yet their comfort ship is Endeavor X Hawks. Endeavor is 45 Hawks is 22.

That’s a 23 year age gap while there’s not even a ten year gap between Dabi and Ochaco.

Not my ship but come on make it make sense 😒

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

I'm reading Textual Poachers properly for the first time for a research project and even in the first few chapters its insane how much of this applies to antis. In the 70s-90s, the mainstream was looking down on fans as a whole (using Trekkies as an example) as weird, perverse, unable to differentiate fiction from reality, unacceptable... now fandom culture has become normalised and antis are using these EXACT arguments but within fandom.

The call is coming from inside the house!

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

Disgust has absolutely no ethical weight. If you are basing your ethical positions on the emotion of disgust you should stop, it is entirely unjustified and leads to a huge amount of harm.

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

Ao3 authors, please learn to not insult people and be “morally superior” in the tags

Instead of tagging “noncon is gross” or “not noncon because that’s problematic”, for example, just put “enthusiastic consent” or “consensual sex” in the tags. It makes things a whole lot easier for people to filter and know what’s going on.

I really don’t care that you think noncon fics are bad or whatever, I (and many others) will be more likely to read your fic about two boys who are deeply in love if you aren’t an ass about your morals in fiction :/

[bitter-and-sweettimes]

Damnnnnn and more under cut