anteaetna - Tumblr blog

[anteaetna]

I really don’t get this idea anti’s seem to have where if youre an adult youre not allowed to like cartoons or anime or anything deemed ‘for kids’ like as though as soon as the clock hits 12 on your 18th birthday you’re instantly just like “From this moment on, I will solely watch Midsummer Murders on repeat.” Like hun if adults aren’t allowed to like cartoons who tf gonna make/ write/ animate/ produce/ voice cartoons like who tf do you think makes cartoons bc the answer may shock you 

[anteaetna]

there was a post going around saying ""dldr is meant for things like, “if you don’t like coffee shops, don’t read this coffee shop AU,” not, “i can be as racist as i want and you have to deal with it because i used a disclaimer"". a lot of people in the tags argued that this is what they mean when they say incest/p*dophilia/abuse portrayed in a positive light in fanfic is problematic. whats your opinion? xoxo

… phew. this ask almost passes as a legit question, but the ‘xoxo’ at the end is a little much.  still, what a great opportunity to talk about this ongoing problem of people ignoring warnings that a work contains content that upsets them, then complaining that they were upset when they viewed it.

(first, a side note: don’t censor the word ‘pedophilia’. It’s not a slur - it’s a content warning. If you censor it, the blacklists of people who don’t want to see posts that mention pedophilia won’t catch it and they could be harmed. Just use the word.)

anti-shippers who look at a fic or fanwork’s tags and say ‘this has problematic content! I better go tell the author how problematic their content is!’, I have news for you:

warnings on fanworks indicate that the person creating the work knows the content is ‘problematic’, not for all audiences, and may hurt people if they view it unsuspectingly.stop taking fanwork warnings and tags in bad faith and using them as an excuse to harass and harm creators.

warnings aren’t ‘disclaimers’ (and aren’t used as such). they’re the CONTAINS NAPROXIN. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN sticker on painkillers. The content is good, even helpful, for some people, but for others who don’t need it or are too young to understand what they’re consuming could be harmed. take the warnings seriously and if you don’t like what they say the fic contains, you really are better off not reading/viewing it!

‘they’re not warnings, they’re advertisements!’ they can function as both! people who want to read that content can find it and people who don’t want to read that content can avoid it. everyone is happier, except anti-shippers who are mad that people are enjoying content they don’t personally approve of.

‘If the creator knows their content is problematic, then they shouldn’t have created it in the first place! Or if they did, they shouldn’t have put it on the internet for people to see!’ well that’s a very different conversation. What you’re saying is that you advocate for censorship, and in that case ‘don’t like don’t read’ would be worthless: only things you like would be allowed to exist in the first place.

But let’s talk about how ‘they shouldn’t have put it on the internet for people to see.’ the basis for this is, I know, that it could corrupt the unsuspecting youth who read the bad content. But isn’t this a bit contradictory? if a fanwork is tagged with a warning that it contains abuse, everyone who looks at the fanwork is going to know that 1) the author believes that abuse is bad and needs to be warned for, and 2) the work contains abuse. Taking these points together, no matter how positively the abuse is depicted, a viewer has foreknowledge that it’s abusive and the creator thinks abuse is bad.  It’s simply insulting to imply that viewers will look at the abuse in the fanwork so uncritically as to not think it’s horrible after receiving such a warning.

In fact, I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that people who have been raped or abused (or still being abused) or undergone other harm have read fics with these warnings and because of the warnings, realized what had happened to themselves was not okay.  If anti-shippers had their way, those fics wouldn’t even exist, much less be warned for.

I’m about to say something radical, so brace yourself: 

because tagging warnings is the accepted way to warn people about dangerous content in fandom, the things more likely to cause confusion and harm in fanworks are the things that aren’t warned for.

Even the most positive depiction of abuse would be spoiled by a warning. Can you imagine if the beginning of every copy of Nabokov’s Lolita started with ‘Warning: this work contains depictions of csa, abuse, and child grooming.’ It would force readers who are blind to the hints that the narrator is unreliable to read the work with a very different eye, and I doubt most people would read it and conclude it’s a love story the way many people do today.

Now Lolita was intended to be a kind of monster story from the point of view of the monster - it was never meant to be a positive depiction at all. Nabokov’s work was too subtle for most people, but he was a master storyteller. I think if he could, he’d go back and add a warning so people would stop getting the wrong idea.

In fandom, where we have a widely-accepted tagging system, potentially harmful content that the creator adds deliberately will be warned for. But the potentially harmful content that the creator doesn’t know about won’t be - and that’s the stuff that tends to be a lot more sneaky and insidious.

Let’s take your example: 

“i can be as racist as i want and you have to deal with it because i used a disclaimer".

Racism does crop up a lot in fanworks, but not in the way this implies.  There’s a huge difference between a creator recognizing racism exists and utilizing it as an aspect of a setting or acknowledging it in a respectful, truthful way and a creator who does not recognize their own racist blind spots and therefore ends up perpetuating harmful stereotypes or providing racist narration without realizing it.

The former tends to be warned for; the latter never is because the creator doesn’t even know they’re being racist. The former may be painful, because racism is shitty and harmful and real, but a person can steer clear if they want to avoid it and the warning shows the content is known to be bad. The latter is more painful because it’s not just depicting racism: it is in fact perpetuating racism.

So which is actually worse: the fic that has a warning for racism or the fic that doesn’t?

And this can be applied to anything. A fic that depicts a character being abused but doesn’t warn for abuse tells me that the author doesn’t know the work contains abuse (which is worrying for the safety of the author). A fic that contains dubious consent but the author doesn’t warn for noncon/dubcon/rape tells me that the author has a poor understanding of consent.  These are the fics that are more likely to be dangerous. Fics without content warnings are also the ones most likely to unironically and uncritically depict the bad behavior in a positive light - because the authors have been taught by the rest of society outside fandom that what they’ve depicted is normal/not harmful. They are victims, and they need help, not people yelling at them about how problematic they are.

Two last notes, which I’ll try to keep short:

If a fanwork depicts a relationship that’s canonically unhealthy in a world where it’s fluffy and healthy, they are not responsible for putting warnings on their fic that pertain to the canon version of the ship.  For instance: Kylo and Rey are enemies in current Star Wars continuity and Kylo tried to torture Rey for information. But if a fic is set in a future where Kylo is well-adjusted and happy and dating Rey in a non-abusive relationship, the fic does not need to warn for ‘abuse’. the fic doesn’t contain abuse. Let it go.

No creator is beholden to using anti definitions of words like ‘pedophilia’, ‘abuse’, and ‘incest’ for their warnings. The definition of what antis call ‘pedophilia’, ‘incest’, and ‘abuse’ varies from fandom to fandom - sometimes from pairing to pairing. While tags will always be somewhat subjective, the wide variety of definitions these words have in anti-shipper parlance makes them all but meaningless, so use them when you see fit, not when antis demand it.  If antis have a problem with it, they’ll just have to start treating ship tags as warnings* and avoid all depictions of ships they don’t like. (which is what we all wish they’d do anyway.)

And now for the final irony: every time anti-shippers use warnings as a reason to go yell at people about how their fanworks are bad, antis give creators less incentive to tag warnings. People might start to hope that if they just don’t warn up front for the potentially dangerous content people will stop yelling at them without even looking at the work itself. Or if the work is borderline (’maybe this is abusive but maybe it’s not’), they may opt to go without the warnings so they can avoid the extra trouble. this is already happening with dubious consent depictions. If a noncon warning gets you yelled at, then fics where the consent isn’t completely denied will just not get warned for at all, and that’s fucked up.  And when the warnings aren’t there, people are way more likely to stumble on something of a nature that upsets them! 

So as usual, in their crusade to eradicate all content that isn’t unquestionably wholesome and pure antis make everything a little less safe for everyone. Thanks, guys.  (please stop.)

and creators: please, depict terrible things in your fanworks in whatever light you choose - and warn for them. you might accidentally help save someone from a real situation that’s terrible.

*ship tags also work as both warnings and advertisements, as it happens. Funny, isn’t it?

[anteaetna]

Lmao yeah @ those people who think power imbalance automatically equals abuse. NO. It's what people do with that power that matters. Heck, even a relationship with no power imbalance can be abusive.

Abuse is abuse. Instead of looking at power imbalance, why don't we focus on respective person's actions and words.

I am seriously sick and tired of people saying power imbalance = abuse. Did almost lack of any power imbalance prevent my abuse?? It didn't.

“there’s a power imbalance so it’s abusive”

I dont think you know what abuse is

[anteaetna]

me: I’m not going to fight for a ship on the internet anymore.

* Keith 18 is confirmed *

me:

[anteaetna]

Im not pretending there is no power imbalance EVERY relationship there's a power imbalance. It might seem like the imbalance is bigger in some relationships but that STILL DOES NOT TAKE AWAY CONSENT. Im just saying if they want to have a relationship, let them. So what if there's a power imbalance? It only matters what THEY are going to do with the difference in power. Are they going to use it to manipulate/ abuse/ hurt the other? Or are they going to try to be more understanding??

It's good that you are just going to state your opinion instead of shouting at them. And I am hoping that if they don't take it, at least you back off. Warn them, but if they choose to continue, what can you do? Not everyone has your experiences and they are both adults, they don't need to be babied. Be nice to? Yes, that's human decency. But babying? That's fucking annoying.

Pedophilia is not the same thing as a large age gap between two consenting adults. Things like shipping a 40 year old character with a 20 year old character is not pedophilia guys for fuck sake.

[anteaetna]

"This is my experience so EVERYONE must have the same experience as me" what are you gonna do if someone is of age and is in a relationship with a huge age gap? What are you going to do about it?? Are you going to go up to the couple and yell at this "THIS IS PROBLEMATIC"

Your negative experience happened but that doesn't give you the right to stop ANYONE from having a relationship. Don't even get me started on the definition of grooming and how it is being incorrectly used all the time, diminishing how truly deplorable it is. On the other hand, manipulation in any relationship is wrong.

Pedophilia is not the same thing as a large age gap between two consenting adults. Things like shipping a 40 year old character with a 20 year old character is not pedophilia guys for fuck sake.

[anteaetna]

The point I was trying to make that if it is the 20 yo's choice to date someone significantly older than them. It is their choice. They are an adult and are responsible for their own actions. Also, grooming is a word used only for manipulating those underaged. However, I do acknowledge tho, manipulation in any relationship is not good.

Pedophilia is not the same thing as a large age gap between two consenting adults. Things like shipping a 40 year old character with a 20 year old character is not pedophilia guys for fuck sake.

[anteaetna]

@staff come on I know you can do this I believe in you, staff

@staff

Is there a way to report accounts or messages or posts on mobile? Blocking death and rape threats is nice and all but I’d love to report these sick individuals too

[anteaetna]

One of the funniest forms of anti posts are when they say shit like “Stop making shiro a pedophile you dirty shalashits!!!!” like the only people making shiro a pedophile is y'all gross fuckers calling non-pedophilic ships pedophilia and trivialising pedophilia for your petty ship war lmao

[anteaetna]

Pedophilia is not the same thing as a large age gap between two consenting adults. Things like shipping a 40 year old character with a 20 year old character is not pedophilia guys for fuck sake.

[anteaetna]

Age gap doesn't automatically mean abusive relationship for fucks sake go out and talk to people.

"it's not really consent if you don't even think your older more mature partner could ever be wrong" consent is giving permission to someone else to do something and you. If they are an adult, they can give consent, unless it's impaired consent, but your sentence has nothing to do with impaired consent.

So if a 20 yo wants to fuck a 40 yo what is your issue with that? Power imbalance?? As if a younger person can't be abusive to an older one too?? Who are you to police their relationships? Please try to broaden your knowledge of the world. 🤚

Pedophilia is not the same thing as a large age gap between two consenting adults. Things like shipping a 40 year old character with a 20 year old character is not pedophilia guys for fuck sake.

[anteaetna]

For minors and other vulnerable fandom folk

As an adult and kind of a fandom elder in the current meaning of the word I feel compelled to make this post. This is regarding some of the anecdotes and arguments that are brought up constantly in the “problematic shipping discourse”, for example on subjects like Steven Universe and other cartoon fandoms, and what I’ve seen most in the last year in Overwatch on ships like shimadacest, mcreyes and dva76 and so forth. Not only by self-identified antis, but in general by the “we have morals” crowd, sjw-leaning minors, and others who participate in the fandom discourse. These anecdotes being “but your incest/abuse/problematic content is enabling predators in fandom spaces!”

“I was groomed/I know someone who was groomed with ship content! You’re repeating my/their trauma and supporting abuse!”

I’m here to talk to you about these kinds of situations and predators in online fandom spaces.

Yes, there are adults who are preying on minors online. Yes, there are people looking to harm others. There are people who have lost touch with reality and nurse fantasies of toxic relationship in many senses of the word. There are people who will fake interests and lie to people in order to prey on them. But this is true to every space in existence, not just fandom. When you are online, you are in public space full of strangers.

Anyone can see your public posts and read up on stuff you have said. Anyone can pretend to be anything. This is why you think twice about whether you want to post selfies, your name or any location info about you, and this is why you should be a little bit suspicious about any strangers you talk to. Be weary! 

And the truth is that no amount of censoring and policing fanart, fanfic or what people are “allowed” to ship will remove the predators. There will always be people who seek to do harm to others, and they will find tools to do so, anything can become a tool for them, and those tools are not the problem, the predators are.

SO! Let’s take a fast safety course! 

You see, this is not a post about any of those ships or content or what is right and wrong. This is about your safety and what to do if your safety is threatened.

I grew up not only online, but with the Internet, and when I was a little girl part of my education was online safety. A lot of those rules like “don’t give out your real name or picture of yourself” are pretty obsolete by now, but some still stand, such as your right to feel safe, to cut off people who make you feel anxious or threatened and your right to refuse to say or do anything you don’t want to do. Basics of consent, you see.

But what you need to understand the most is how to get yourself help when you need it. No amount of callout-posts and anti-blogs is going to help anyone, no amount of pulling receipts on artists is going to help anyone, even if the whole fandom decided to suddenly make a turn and become pure and wholesome wouldn’t help anyone. Random people, strangers, in fandom won’t be the ones you should first seek help from.

If something is happening to you, like if an adult keeps harassing you and sending you inappropriate messages, material or something like that, you need to tell an adult in your real life. Tell your mom, your dad, your godmother, your adult sibling, your babysitter, a trusted teacher, your school nurse. Find an adult you know you can trust and tell them the truth. They are the ones who should, can and will help you. You go up to them and say “there’s an adult online who won’t leave me alone and keeps saying/sending sexual things to me” or  just “there’s someone online who scares me and keeps contacting me.” 

Maybe you say “But I don’t want my parents to see my tumblr! I’ll get in trouble!” to which I say that that is a very common thing for a child or a teenager to feel, and the predators know this. They rely on this. Don’t keep secrets and protect people who harm you. Trust me, getting in trouble with your parents is a small thing to worry about when someone is harassing you. Parents might make a fuss or even get angry, but that means they care about you. If you have even passably decent parents, they care if you are being hurt and they want to do something about it.

And if things are not that dire but still you feel uncomfortable…

A lot of things can make one feel uncomfortable regardless of age. Maybe someone creeps you out and they can’t “take a hint” and leave you alone, maybe you saw/read something that evoked a strong reaction. There’s a lot of stuff online that will make you react strongly, and that’s okay, and you have a lot of tools at your disposal in these situation. 

You can always just leave. A great thing about online spaces is that physically you are safe, you are in your own room with your computer or on your own phone somewhere. You can always leave a chat, block someone, lock an account, close a window. You can always step away, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s taking control of your own online experience.

It’s also useful to learn to set boundaries, which means say things out loud and to the person who needs to hear them. You can say “hey, this is making me really uncomfortable, could you change a subject?”, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore”, or “this conversation is over”. Unfollow people. Block people. Post things privately or don’t make a post at all but open a chat window with a friend.

If something you came across online scares you or upsets you, you should process those emotions. Inspect your own feelings and what makes you feel like this. Ask yourself “why am I upset about this?” “what makes me scared?”  Bringing a subject up with an adult might be a good idea too. Just talking about it with someone who has more experience and can offer you reassurance, safety and calm rational angle can help you process.

[TL;DR] There’s a lot of things online you can’t control. You will be exposed to a lot of things and meet bad people. That’s the thing in this world and life in general; you will disagree and be offended, you will meet people you don’t like, people who creep you out and insult you, people who seek to harm you. But you can also control your own behavior, you can set boundaries for yourself, you can help yourself and you can ask for help when you need it. 

And the absolutely most important thing you should take away from this is: Seek help from adults IRL. They are the ones who have the ability and the responsibility to protect and care for you, not strangers online.  

[anteaetna]

mcreyespls:

“#I want you shippers to see this”

Seen it, still gonna ship McReyes.

Not sure how something that happened in real life to real life people should stop me from shipping two unrelated fiction characters in a fictional setting, tho.

Really, where’s the connection here? Unless these antis are now implying that shipping McReyes is akin to real life abuse, which is downright horseshit.

Ain’t no one getting ‘groomed’ over shipping McReyes. Source all the real world examples you want, but if you can’t make the actual connection that shipping a fictional paring has ever resulted in something of that nature (and you won’t)? Keep that shit out the tag, you manipulative fucknugget.

They want us to see it but they refuse to see when a couple of us step up and say WE were in the abusive relationships they talk about, and we don’t see that shit in McReyes at all and they should SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP HARASSING US OVER FICTIONAL FUCKING ADULTS. :)

[anteaetna]

Anti: I don't like straight ships because they're not equal and the woman aren't on the same ground as the man.

Me: That's fine I understand but in canon the ship isn't like that and just because a ship is same sex doesn't mean it's toxic.

Anti: STFU let me have my lesbians you homophobic * everything but a child of God *. You're also a pedophile and disgusting because * insert ship* has an age gap of 1-10 years.

Me: You don't know what pedophilia is do you. * Gives laundry list of reasons why what they're doing isn't making the situation better. * You can't just harass someone and bully them into suicide.

Anti: They shipped *insert ship* and it's abusive/incestual/racist/whatever their twist of pedophilia is. This fandom is supposed to be a safe space for children/abuse survivors/lgbt+/poc/Everyone.

Me: You just made the fandom toxic and not a safe space when you did what you did. I understand that you don't like * insert ship* because of incest/pedophilia/etc. But it's not as popular or dominating so you could've ignored it or blocked the tag you actively searched for something to bully/harass people on.

Anti: * spouts lies about my character and doesn't get the message* They're racist/pedophile/abusive/homophobic/sexist because xyz.

Me: Fuck you I'm going to Ao3 I'm done with your bullshit.

Ao3 Anti: *harasses someone and tried to do what people do on Tumblr*

Ao3: Not on my watch this is a safe space *bans Anti*

Me: I'm safe

[anteaetna]

The main difference I find incredibly striking between adult antis and adult shippers is adult antis straight up tell minors in their community exactly what they should think and say and that unless they do x thing in x certain way they’re a bad person whereas adult shippers give minors in the community resources to make up their own mind and simply give them an opinion and guidance where appropriate and I honestly think straight up that says a lot

[anteaetna]

Basically my argument. Not all incest is forced or trauma. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse.

So what happens when an incestuous relationship is consensual and healthy?

The arguments against incest: 1) ew that's not normal 2) it's illegal 3) if we allow incest next we will allow bestiality 3) children born out of incest will have bad genes

1, 2 and 3 were arguments against homosexuality too. 4 might be the only legit argument but if we don't allow them to procreate then people with cancer shouldn't procreate too. It's gonna be a slippery slope.

I am not gonna murder or hurt incestuous couples cause live and let live. A question to people who are so against it: are you?

One of the things I never understood about the anti community and still don’t understand to this day is this vendetta they have against incest ships.

Now I understand completely why people don’t like incest ships bc I myself don’t particularly like them and we’re taught as a society to treat incest as a taboo for reasons we’re all aware of, but incest does still happen? It’s a fact of life that incest is something that occurs and has done throughout history whether you like it or not? Some of the most popular media franchises at the moment, such as Game Of Thrones, have canon incest in them? People are allowed to explore taboo topics in fiction even if they don’t align with their real life morals? Not doing so is erasure which helps nobody and you shouldn’t be promoting erasure.

Exploring incest fiction is in no way harming anyone and I do not understand this vendetta anti shippers have against the notion of acknowledging real things like incest in fiction. Fiction doesn’t have to be sugarcoated you are allowed to explore taboo issues in fiction like incest and I don’t understand why people actually have such a big hate campaign against exploring real life issues in fiction.