#kotlc smut discourse

[the-way-astray]

in response to both (because there’s apparently two) discourses, i say one single sentence: ship and let ship.

[cogaytes]

i know it's not directed at me, but my conversation starter is that i personally find fandom as a place for anyone and everyone. i think my genuine confusion for the discourse is that the age limit to use ao3 is 13, and that most of these works in question are properly tagged as well. (if they aren't then that's an entirely different conversation.)

oh and also that teenagers have sex?

if you don't wanna see it that's never a huge problem! of course you should stay within your comfort zone and avoid things that make you feel uncomfortable (especially if you're on the younger age of the spectrum of minors on these websites!)

but arguing that smut shouldn't exist is something i've never truly understood. Sexuality is something that people (yes that includes young people) can and should explore if they want to. Writing and consuming it in fandom is a way for many older teenagers and young adults to do that in a safe and healthy way.

Especially when it is those things like rape and non-con stuff--shouldn't we be relieved that instead of causing harm to others, people are just using their creativity to write about it?

Tumblr has always been the Gay People Site™, and to me and my expression of both my gender and sexuality, sex is a huge part of that. People have sex! Teenagers have sex! Some people even like to read and write about it!

Unfortunately for a lot of people, their self expression is not socially accepted as the norm, and they can--and may already have--faced disgust and discrimination for their private interests. Sites like Archive of our Own and Tumblr were made for the freedom of self expression and exploring personal interests in an anonymous way, especially those that may be considered taboo.

Will you find me reading incest fics? Probably not, that's not my cup of tea. But I won't complain either, because I know that it may be that for the author and some other people. As long as a fic is properly tagged, I personally do not have issue with content as long as it does not cause mental or physical harm to other (real world) people.

These are fictional characters, and I truly believe that censoring authors and artists just because what they're creating is considered problematic or even just openly disobeys what is widely accepted as the norm is silly and reductive of what we've been fighting for for decades. Humans are sexual beings with sexual minds, and in our modern age we use our thoughts to write whatever we feel like. Sometimes that happens to be sex!

It may be uncomfortable, and may not be for you, but the existence of fanfiction as a whole can open up more understanding for people who are looking for connection, not just connection that you yourself deem "acceptable."

Sex is not something that's impure nor dirty, it is inherently human. It's personal and intimate, but it is not wrong.

this ask is mostly applied to what i've found in kotlc as a fandom, but my inbox is open anytime if you (or anyone who may read this) wants me to expand more on fandom spaces as a whole. i have more thoughts on real world people and a lot of other topics, but i tried to keep it to just what applied to keeper. (trying not to write an entire essay in yours haha.)

i'm aware that i may have a more lenient view on this than most as well, so i'd love to hear your thoughts <3

yeah no i agree basically with all of this! it's something i've been really grappling with over the last few years (especially recently as a ship i really find uncomfortable has become big in some of my circles of mutuals, which has been interesting to see how i thought about it when it was first a thing 3ish years ago and how my reactions have changed now). i think as i grew up i just stopped almost. caring about what other people make? like i just. filter shit out on ao3 and on tumblr and scroll past shit i don't want to see. i unfollow or block if it really becomes an issue.

but personally i just really don't like the idea of any art being given a moral value, even when it portrays topics we really don't want to think about or might feel uncomfortable with. like, my parents wouldn't let me read the hunger games until i was a certain age because the mass child death etc were just so fucking horrifying that they didn't want me exposed to it. and even reading it as an adult i'm like. okay. holy fuck. but that doesn't mean it's immoral or gross or disgusting just because it portrays fucked up things as fiction. and it definitely doesn't say anything about the author that she wrote it.

you don't have to read smut if you're not comfortable with it! you're allowed to be made uncomfortable by sex! but as long as it's properly warned for so you can avoid it, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed to exist.

[cogaytes]

okay so i have lots of thoughts about this. (this being kotlc smut)

personally im a huge fan of Don't Like, Don't Read. like, i think it's fine that people are writing kotlc smut. it's so easily avoidable on ao3 as long as it's tagged.

and yeah, most of the main cast are minors. they're also 15-17, which is a pretty normal age to get curious about sex and experiment with it and stuff. and i don't really think its wrong that people are writing smut for them? it's not harming anyone, and they're fictional characters.

plus, smut is a normal thing. it's not inherently wrong or immoral. its just written sex, and i doubt a lot of people here have an issue with it in published literature or in other fandoms.

sure, it might be preferable for some people that it's only written about adults, but again, we control our fandom experiences. the back button AND ao3's wonderful filter system exist for a reason. if you don't want to see it, you have the option to filter it out!

i hope this doesn't come across as too rude or antagonistic. i just have a lot of feelings on smut in fiction (and in art) so yknow

i'm reaching the point where i feel like i've expressed most of my feelings so i'm just kind of. sharing people's responses but yee thank you for your thoughts!

[cogaytes]

Hi, Katie here, about the kotlc smut discourse, and I just want to say that while kotlc smut makes me personally uncomfortable (as someone who is, uhh eighteen and still avoiding sex until I am older?) however I never run into it/didn’t even know it existed because I always have my AO3 results filtered by rating! So my message to people who find kotlc smut uncomfy is to filter by rating. It’s a great way to keep that stuff away if it’s not your thing! If you don’t know how to do that, feel free to message me or anyone you know who uses ao3, and I’m sure they’d be happy to let you know how :) it’s perfectly valid for these fics to be gross to you, but there are ways to avoid it so it doesn’t even pass by in your scrolling through ao3 search results! That way it can still exist without upsetting or grossing you out.

Anyway, just putting this in your ask box because you made the post about hosting discussions about it so. Hello and have a good day

o7 yes totally agreed! i don't tend to be interested in kotlc smut either (except for a few specific adult pairings usually written by friends) and these filtering tips are super helpful! ao3 has a fantastic system in the sense that it allows you to exclude tags/ratings instead of just including them, so you should be able to filter out any sort of fic, whether smut or gore or triggering content, that makes you uncomfortable as long as it's tagged properly!

[cogaytes]

Ok, I’m also not someone who thinks smut is disgusting- in fact I’ve written smut for kotlc before- but i read the post in question and its tags and I have a couple points, I guess.

A lot of the smut is on ao3, which has a notoriously amazing tagging system! It’s very easy to filter out explicit and mature fics. Now I can’t speak for wattpad, because wattpad has a terrible tagging system, and tagging is definitely a discussion to be had, but I also mainly use ao3 anyway, so…

I cannot speak for everywhere, but the age of consent for sex *between minors* in my state is 13. I.E. two thirteen year olds could have completely legal sex. In fact, a 13 yr old and a 17 yr old could have legal sex, provided it was consensual, although there are still probably unhealthy power dynamics at play in that relationship. The age of consent between adults and minors is 16 in my state (likely to account for relationships between older high schoolers) provided that the adult does not hold a position of power over the minor, such as being their teacher or boss

on that point, a lot of the people who *dont* like the existence of smut seem to be infantilizing the characters. In the tags of said post, I saw a lot of “why are they thinking about SEX, they’re 16! Practically toddlers!” or assigning moral value to smut “writing smut is always weird, but if it’s about babies- sorry, minors- then it’s straight up evil!”

Rape and sexploitation are absolutely terrible things to happen to a person. Writing about fictional characters having consensual sex is not inherently abuse. In fact, writing about a fictional person being raped does not necessarily mean the author is a rapist or porn addict. Sometimes people write stories to send a message. Sometimes that message happens to include sex

on that note, sometimes people write stories for fun! Even if that fun includes sex! Even if that fun includes the characters involved being minors! Sometimes it’s integral to the timing of a fanfic for it to take place at a certain time in canon, and the characters might be minors at that point!

also @ people who think smut is gross: please don’t infantilize the fanfic authors too. I saw some “if it’s an adult writing smut it’s pedophilic. If it’s a kid, then they are too young to know any better!” As a transmasc, let me tell you how sick I am of people telling me I’m too young and or stupid to know shit about my gender and sexuality. Just stop.

sex is going to exist no matter what. Even between minors. Even between *adults and minors*. Smut is also going to exist, but if you place a ban on it existing, it’s probably just not going to be tagged. Humans are a sexual species, teenagers in particular. PEOPLE ARE GOING TO HAVE SEX. And you know what? Sex doesn’t have to be disgusting and taboo. Sex can be art. Art can be about sex. We don’t need to become Quakers about it.

and also, if you’re sex repulsed, that’s okay. Many people are, and ace erasure is totally a problem. But don’t attack other people for doing something completely natural

anyway, this got kinda rant-ish, sorry

i don't feel like i have much to add outside of this, so just posting ^^

[cogaytes]

i am not one of the people that said kotlc smut is disgusting, i think it’s perfectly acceptable as long as you do your part to tag/put content warnings and stuff so people know what they’re getting into. tumblr and ao3 are adult sites and random internet adults are not parents. it’s not their responsibility to censor themselves to make you comfortable because you went to an adult site. if you don’t like it, avoid it. but you can’t make any judgment calls about their morality. it isn’t disgusting, it’s morally neutral and a valid form of expression and exploration.

having said that, i would never read kotlc smut. i don’t like it, don’t want to read it, and would like to avoid it all costs. so that means that people writing kotlc smut should be very clear about what exactly is in their fic, so that people like me can avoid it. mistakes happen, but when they get pointed out, it is the responsibility of the writer to fix the descriptions and make them more accurate.

sending you this ask to get the conversation started, i suppose. curious to see what people on the opposite side of the debate will say.

yeah i totally get not wanting to see smut and agree with the above! as long as it's warned/tagged for people to avoid who don't want to see it, i think it should be allowed to exist even on a public site like ao3 or tumblr.

[cogaytes]

as someone who has been in fandom since i was like eleven years old (and fandom-adjacent for even longer) i will always advocate for smut and explicit material.

first i want to get out of the way the notion that explicit content somehow causes harm to real people because ultimately it is the reader’s choice whether or not to engage with the text. at any moment in a story the reader can choose to disengage--wether that’s by not clicking on the fic at all, or reading midway only to think “yikes, never mind” and close the tab. and i understand some things are improperly tagged, but that’s not actually a topic about smut and more about fandom etiquette and respect. (in short: the problem with untagged explicit content is that it is untagged, not that it’s explicit. while it might squick or trigger someone, it wouldn't someone else, hence why the actual content isn't the question here.)

reading and creating explicit material happens for a lot of reasons. fun, coping, writing exercise or any other number of things, and none of those are any less valid than the other. personally i started reading explicit content as a way to explore my own queer identity, and how i felt about gender and presentation. being able to read about queer people (especially gay men, like i am) be in relationships that are not just romantic but also sexual was incredibly important in being able to unlearn the shame and knee-jerk fear response to gay content, especially anything less than perfectly sanitized. with fanfiction especially i was able to curate exactly what i wanted to see which made for a really easy transition. did i overestimate what i could handle sometimes? definitely, but that's not the fault of the author, that's my fault for reading despite being unsure if i'd enjoy it.

moreover, fan content is sometimes the only access to gay media that i could get. i didn't know how to safely pirate content and i sure as hell wasn't going to make my parents aware of the fact i wanted to read gay stories by buying books or asking to go to the movies (which they would have ultimately authority over, anyway.) and because of where i grew up, it wasn't wise to be open about queerness either, and i wasn't able to ever experiment with my own sexuality. going online and being part of fandom and reading explicit fanfic was quite literally my only way to explore anything of a sexual nature in a safe and controlled setting, and i truly believe that i'd be in a much worse place if i hadn't been able to, and if i instead had to hide away that part of me and live with the shame of it.

and i don't buy the argument that explicit material doesn't belong in kotlc fandom because there are minors here, either. as i said before, explicit fanfic helped me discover myself when i was younger and i was grateful for it. but even if someone else finds it personally repulsive, that doesn't mean it doesn't have a right to exist. at the end of the day if you don't like it, you can easily just not read it. but if someone is out there looking for something, anything to resonate with them, having that content out there is incredibly important.

for this fandom specifically, imagining my favorite characters in these scenarios was, again, a way for me to better understand my wants, desires, needs, fears, etc. i was a scared and lonely kid and being able to project onto these characters and make up stories for them where they are able to express their feelings was a saving grace. i don't think anyone should be denied that.

don't have much to add here either so just going to share for other people's understanding!

[cogaytes]

i don’t think i'm reaching the part of the fandom i want to reach so any reblogs would be appreciated :D

okay wait. i've been seeing a post going around about kotlc smut and its "disgustingness" and i would genuinely just love to. have a conversation about it. so if you're interested in talking about it either here or in my askbox or privately in dms please reach out!

[the-way-astray]

revising this to: fandom and let fandom. applies to more than just shipping.

in response to both (because there’s apparently two) discourses, i say one single sentence: ship and let ship.