#because no matter how many overused tropes you want to include it still deserves to be told

[walruna]

Nullum est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius

It's impossible to say something that hasn't already been said

- Publius Terentius Afer

[deadlyanddelicate]

tbh i get queer fans being mad/sad about kavinsky being killed off in that yeah, bury your guys can always be upsetting no matter the character. but it's weird to me when people go the 'he didn't DESERVE it blah blah' route because like, that has nothing to do with the trope. like i agree with queer characters always getting killed off being exhausting, but i don't get people going hard for this particular character lmao

hmm i… sort of agree. i guess i can understand fans being sad about kavinsky being killed off if they empathise with him, even though personally i just… can’t imagine relating to a character like that. but i honestly, genuinely don’t believe he’s an example of Bury Your Gays. it would be BYG if kavinsky was the only queer rep in the books, or even he killed himself specifically for being gay… which, no matter what people argue, he didn’t. but rather than give my opinion on it, i’m gonna take this chance to go through the trope systematically and explain why the shoe doesn’t fit. it’s meta time!

Why Kavinsky Dying is Not “Bury Your Gays”

[All quotes are taken directly from TvTropes, though the emphasis is mine.]

The Bury Your Gays trope in media, including all its variants, is a homophobic cliché. It is the presentation of deaths of LGBT characters where these characters are nominally able to be viewed as more expendable than their heteronormative counterparts. In this way, the death is treated as exceptional in its circumstances. In aggregate, queer characters are more likely to die than straight characters. Indeed, it may be because they seem to have less purpose compared to straight characters, or that the supposed natural conclusion of their story is an early death.

Kavinsky is never viewed as “more expendable than his heteronormative counterparts”. If you see Kavinsky as simply Ronan’s foil, then the reasoning doesn’t apply, because Ronan is gay himself, so he can’t be a “heteronormative counterpart”. However, Kavinsky apologists like to latch on to Gansey’s “We matter” quote to prove Kavinsky is treated as unimportant – but that’s a fallacy for several reasons. First, you’re taking Gansey to speak for the author, or for objective truth, when Gansey is one of the most unreliable narrators in the book, and his world view is extremely biased. Secondly, Gansey isn’t Kavinsky’s counterpart. Kavinsky is an antagonist, so you have to look at what happens to the other antagonists – his actual heteronormative counterparts. And, well: they pretty much ALL get killed off. Not just that, but they often get killed off in a way that does not have the emotional/narrative impact implied in Kavinsky’s death. By that reckoning, he gets the better shake. Additionally, we get 4 heteronormative villains killed off - Whelk, Neeve, Colin, and Piper. So in the series, queer characters are not more likely to die than straight characters (even among the protagonists, Gansey and Noah are the ones who “die”, where Ronan and Adam do not).

The reasons for this trope have evolved somewhat over the years. For a good while, it was because the Depraved Homosexual trope and its ilk pretty much limited portrayals of explicitly gay characters to villainous characters, or at least characters who weren’t given much respect by the narrative. This, conversely, meant that most of them would either die or be punished by the end. 

This is not applicable to TRC, as portrayals of explicitly queer characters are not limited to villainous characters; Adam and Ronan are both explicitly queer and they are treated with huge amounts of respect by the narrative. So Kavinsky isn’t being killed for being the odd one out/the Token Evil Queer; plus, there are other reasons why he doesn’t fit the Depraved Homosexual trope (while sexual molestation is a part of this trope, TVTropes encourages you to “think of whether he’d be any different if he wasn’t gay” – and Kavinsky wouldn’t. Not only because DHs are usually extremely camp while Kavinsky’s mannerisms aren’t particularly queer-coded, but also because he is not shown to have any more respect for women than he does for men, and his abuse would look the same if he was straight).

However, as sensitivity to gay people became more mainstream, this evolved into a sort of Rule-Abiding Rebel “love the sinner, hate the sin” attitude. You could have sympathetic queer characters, but they would still usually be “punished” for their queerness in some way so as to not anger more homophobic audiences, similar to how one might write a sympathetic drug addict but still show their addiction in a poor light. 

Again: Neither Ronan nor Adam – the two sympathetic queer characters – are punished for being queer, hence subverting this form of the trope.

This then transitioned into the Too Good for This Sinful Earth narrative, where stories would tackle the subject of homophobia and then depict LGBT characters as suffering victims who die tragic deaths from an uncaring world. The AIDS crisis also contributed to this narrative, as the Tragic AIDS Story became its own archetype, popularized by films like Philadelphia. 

Okay, this is DEFINITELY not Kavinsky’s case. Kavinsky’s death isn’t specifically connected to being gay (e.g.: a hate crime or an STD), and he’s never depicted as some innocent suffering victim. As for the “uncaring world”… eh. Kavinsky may not have a valid support system, but that’s just as much by choice as by chance - and when Ronan extends a helping hand and tries to save him, Kavinsky rejects it. Too Good For This Sinful Earth is definitely not in play. 

The only trope that kind of fits the bill is Gayngst-Induced Suicide… but only on the surface. As TVTrope puts it, Gayngst-Induced Suicide is “when LGBT characters are Driven to Suicide because of their sexuality, either because of internalized homophobia (hating themselves) or experiencing a miserable life because of their “deviant” gender or sexuality: having to hide who they are, not finding a stable relationship, homophobia from other parties, etc.”. Kavinsky certainly has quite a bit of internalized homophobia, but he is absolutely not experiencing a miserable life because of his sexuality – i.e. he’s not being bullied or taunted or subejcted to hate crimes. He doesn’t have to hide who he is: his parents are effectively out of the picture, his cronies worship him, and he constantly makes gay jokes to Ronan and Gansey. As for “not finding a stable relationship”… well that’s not exactly the problem, is it. He’s not looking for a stable relationship – he’s pursuing Ronan specifically, obsessively, through stalking and abuse. So even this trope is not applicable. 

And then there are the cases of But Not Too Gay or the Bait-and-Switch Lesbians, where creators manage to get the romance going but quickly avoid showing it in detail by killing off one of the relevant characters. 

Once again this is not the case with Kavinsky, as 1) there was no romance going between him and Ronan, and 2) he is not killed off before the nature of his obsession with Ronan is revealed – he gets the chance to both admit (sort of) he wants Ronan, and to confront Ronan about his sexuality, to which Ronan admits that yes, he is gay, but he is not interested in Kavinsky. So, there is no But Not Too Gay nor any Bait-and-Switch here. 

Also known as Dead Lesbian Syndrome, though that name has largely fallen out of use post-2015 and the media riots about overuse of the trope. And, as this public outcry restated, the problem isn’t merely that gay characters are killed off: the problem is the tendency that gay characters are killed off in a story full of mostly straight characters, or when the characters are killed off because they are gay.

This is a very good definition of the trope and why it doesn’t apply to Kavinsky: he’s not killed off because he’s gay, and he’s not killed off in a story full of mostly straight characters; TRC is definitely not overwhelmingly diverse, but 2 of the 4 protagonists are queer, giving us a solid 50% ratio (I’m not counting Noah because his “character” status is vague, and I’m not counting Henry because he came in so late, and also because his sexuality is the matter of much speculation).

For a comparison that will make it even clearer: take a show like Supernatural. Supernatural’s range of characters is almost entirely presented as straight white cis men (as of canon – despite much of the fandom’s hopes and speculation). They’ve had problems with diversity in general, with a lot of black characters dying immediately, and a lot of women getting fridged for plot advancement or male angst (a different problematic trope altogether). Now, apart from minor inconsequential cameos, Supernatural had ONE recurring gay character: Charlie Bradbury. And they killed her off for no discernible reason other than plot advancement and male angst, in a context that had elements of Too Good For This Sinful Earth (Charlie being a fan-favourite, ~pure cinnamon roll~, being killed by actual nazis, who historically targeted gay people). See, THAT was Bury Your Gays, AND Dead Lesbian Syndrome, AND Fridging…

However, sometimes gay characters die in fiction because, well, sometimes people die. There are many Anyone Can Die stories: barring explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight deaths in these, it’s not odd that the gay characters are dying. The occasional death of one in a Cast Full of Gay is unlikely to be notable, either.

…But that is not the case with TRC. As I’ve said above, there are no explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight villain deaths. Kavinsky’s death is not Bury Your Gays; it’s Anyone Can Die – even a protagonist’s foil who has magic powers and is present for most of the book.

Believe me, I would not be cavalier about this. As you rightly said, queer characters always getting killed off is exhausting, and as a bi woman myself, I am deeply affected by instances of Bury Your Gays. When Supernatural killed off Charlie, I wrote a novel-length fix-it fic and basically stopped watching the show – a show I had been following, flaws and all, for 10 years. I don’t take it lightly. But Kavinsky’s death isn’t Bury Your Gays, nor is it homophobia. Sometimes, a character death is just a character death.

[allbeendonebefore]

Hypothetically, if someone were to try and revive IAMP again, but including American and Mexican states this time, how would you feel about it?

Hi there friend,

I have to put my personal feelings aside and ignore the root of the question for a moment here. I think, and I mean this with extreme sincerity and kindness, that hypothetical someone would be in way over their head to try this. I’m speaking from a place both of heartfelt attachment to the project and from a place of stressful administrative experience in its first revival. I first joined IAMP in 2009 and have more or less watched its entire rise and decline and participated in every facet of its renaissance, so I am extremely aware of where things are likely to go off the rails.

Here are some of the challenges you would hypothetically have to be aware of that I’ve outlined below. Read on, if you like. Aside from that, my take home message is this: if it isn’t fun or worthwhile and it becomes a chore, don’t do it. Do things because you enjoy doing them, because they strengthen relationships not break them. As always, ask if you have more questions because I’m happy to be a fandom auntie.

(And to answer your original question, my feeling is “exhausted”.)

1. Character Depth

For what we were trying to do (that is, writing, voice acting and art with editing on top), having 14 fully fleshed out characters was an enormous challenge. I cannot imagine having to balance nearly 100 characters. Back in the original IAMP, we had such a challenge getting the focus beyond Quebec and Ontario that even they weren’t given the character depth they deserved. Filling the spaces for VAs was an enormous challenge, and we technically had double the amount of roles because we wanted understudy positions in case one of our main VAs was ill or busy. There is a point right at the beginning when you have to ask what kinds of stories you want to tell and why you are doing this; without thoughtful attention, characters will become flat and fall back on overused tropes extremely quickly if they aren’t flat out ignored because no one can put in the work to understand and develop them.

2. Material

IAMP was running during a time when the fandom was at its peak. There was no lack of content about APH Canada that we could adapt and artists were very easy to get in touch with to ask about using their work. This is simply no longer the case. For Project Canada, this meant creating all material from scratch ourselves. We had no rigorous process for writers to workshop things and collaborate and try things out, and rather than being a creatively supportive environment it felt like a factory floor where no one had the same idea of what we were supposed to produce. It was all about matching the pace of the old IAMP with no actual creative substance. Instead of being fun, it was a chore. People would also fall back on their own ocs rather than developing the ones we had in front of us because they enjoyed it more, and I can’t blame them. 

3. People

This is the crux of the matter. People are the driving force of any creative endeavor. No matter how good your intentions or how well you get along, you will lose people along the way. Sometimes people drop off the face of the planet with zero explanation, that’s literally how I got my VA position as Alberta the first time. Sometimes people fall out with others- in the old IAMP, we lost one of our original admins because they wanted to bring in state OCs and make the project a little more America-focused, which was against the mission statement that our director was going for and this disagreement ended up costing friendships. Sometimes, people are well meaning but don’t have a direction or don’t feel like they can contribute even if they desperately want to, and eventually real life takes priority. Even when I had a ton of free time in my last degree where i was only taking one class and working on my thesis was my full time job, managing the project and taking on all the jobs no one else wanted to do including the work of my two other admins was a full time job and it started to impact my health. 

It’s an extremely stressful thing to keep track of other people let alone have energy left over to kickstart creative material. And it sucks when you have to turn down well meaning people who want to help because what they’re doing doesn’t match your endgame, its hard work trying to steer a creative project AND just moderate a forum, it’s hard to coordinate people with ideas to match and encouraging people without hurting their self esteem. It’s hard work doing research and interpretation and trying to keep characters consistent without making a dogmatic or trope-reliant one-size-fits-all version of history. And it’s especially hard to keep politics out of something all about politics. 

And this is just internally, I won’t even touch on dealing with people outside your project who don’t get what you’re doing or have problems with your interpretations. IAMP is ten years old this year, not all of it has aged well, and we were not fast enough to make good and thoughtful decisions on how to ‘update’ it for ProCan. I’ve seen so many people make ignorant comments about us when I occasionally go out looking for a nostalgia trip that it’s exhausting to deal with. I’ve run into several people I’ve had to avoid or unfollow because they seem to think our “popularity” is stifling their own ideas and who build their own OCs up by tearing us down. It’s really exhausting and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, which is why I prefer to do things in my own corner and just develop fun or interesting ideas on my own in my spare time when I can do my own research and come up with my own interpretations and then take responsibility for them. 

But this is why I encourage you to play and experiment on your own with people you enjoy talking to. I know I sound like a major downer with all these problems, but this fandom has honestly brought together some of my best and most enduring friendships. I’ve gotten to see so much of this country and meet so many people because we had this in common, and I even was able to persuade people to visit me in the subarctic backwater city I call home and show them what I loved about it. Don’t let this discourage you from creating, from talking to people, from trying on different hats. After all, I’m still here, I’m happy to be the fandom auntie, and I’m happy to chat about interpretation whether it’s about IAMP or otherwise. I’m just not willing to throw my soul into something that I know is going to be that much work again, especially now in my final year of my masters. It’s not worth the struggle to pour all your ability into something unsustainable. Plant the seeds, and water them where they take root, and let it be organic and messy and fun.

[deathbycoldopen]

*vitual hug for all my spn folks*

I've (obviously) eased off of my involvement in spn stuff lately, partly because irl stuff got in the way and then because I realized I wasn't too concerned about falling behind on the show so I didn't bother catching up again. But, I still love all of you in the fandom very deeply, and I'll never forget or dismiss the impact this show and this fandom has had on my life.

That said, I am incredibly disappointed with what I've heard about 12x21 and Eileen's death. I won't make judgements about the quality of an episode I haven't seen (the majority of reviews I've seen say it was exposition-heavy and plodding, both of which are hallmarks of buckleming but not necessarily deal breakers), nor can I comment on how Eileen’s death fits into the overall narrative of the season when I’ve only seen half of it.  What I can say, though, is that character death to “”””””raise the stakes”””””” has been so overused in television today that I cannot imagine a situation where I would approve of killing off Eileen.  The fact that Supernatural just killed off a dynamic, interesting female character who represents a facet of society that is even more rarely represented than the queer community, and on top of that did it in the first five minutes of the episode, makes me want to change my handle to “No more death by cold open” instead.

So on that note, I wanted to share a paper that I wrote only a few weeks ago that is (sadly) appropriate to this situation.  The paper was a continuation of a discussion on the Bury Your Gays trope controversy that exploded last year, but I feel like the entire thing is pretty applicable to this situation as well.

Let Them Live: A Proposal by Hazel Howland

(read on google docs, or continue under the cut)

We Deserved Better

On April 21st, 2016, a single document began circulating the internet, among television fans and television creators alike.  The seven-point document had a simple point: “We deserved better.” (Carbone, Hosko, Tass, & Mama, 2016)

The pledged, dubbed “The Lexa Pledge” on Twitter, was a direct response to the sudden rash of lesbian and bisexual female character deaths on television.  The controversy began with the death of popular character Lexa on the CW’s The 100, an outcry centered around the TV trope called “Bury Your Gays,” and continued as more and more lesbian and bi female characters were killed over the course of just a few months.  In such a tense standoff between fans and creators, the Lexa Pledge was written by several writers and producers of the Canadian TV Show Saving Hope, in an attempt to offer a solution to the Bury Your Gays controversy.

But just how viable is the solution offered by the pledge?  The obvious option, that TV creators just don’t kill off LGBT characters, certainly lacks the nuance that the Lexa Pledge reaches for.  Simply not killing off LGBT characters would mean that in an Anyone Can Die situation, suddenly all queer characters are magically immune- and while as a queer woman the thought of immortality is appealing to me, in practice it’s not the most exciting of narratives.  It changes the stakes of the narrative from “anyone can die” to “anyone except this one character because they’re queer can die.”  Not only that, it might also encourage television creators to limit the number of LGBT characters in their shows- which, given how underrepresented LGBT characters are (Stokes, Bradford, & Townsend, 2016), would be fairly detrimental to the queer community.

The Lexa Pledge itself proposes a much more deliberate approach to the problem.  Of the seven promises included, two are concerned with the issue of representation above and beyond the Bury Your Gays trope; one acknowledges the need for informed consultants from the LGBT community itself; one even pledges to never mislead fans on social media.  The broad yet detailed approach ticks off all the boxes of the controversy- and yet, in the year since the pledge was first written, it hasn’t had much success.  One of the creators of the Lexa Pledge, Noelle Carbone, has even stated that “In retrospect perhaps it should’ve been a single more general statement pledging to do better. More people would’ve signed on to that version of the pledge.” (Liszewski, 2017).  The text of the pledge was intentionally exhaustive, she went on to explain, which limited its appeal (Liszewski, 2017).  It’s not hard to imagine that writers and producers not inclined towards the progressive would be hesitant to sign such an ideological and restrictive pledge.

The solution then needs to be something simple and general enough that it has wide appeal, perhaps not instead of the Lexa Pledge but in addition, something much more subtle that still results in fewer LGBT deaths.  After all, queer women aren’t the only characters on TV who are dying in droves- Vox lists two hundred and forty-two character deaths in the 2015-’16 TV season alone (Franmke, Zarracina, & Frostenson, 2016).  With this oversaturation of character death on television, death is no longer really an effective way to heighten the drama of any given show.  In that case, it seems like the best course of action is to kill (or perhaps revive?) two birds with one stone: press creators to focus on avoiding character death in general.  This will not only sidestep the Bury Your Gays issue, but it will also increase the emotional and financial impact of any given television show.

Don’t Kill Your Darlings

An oft-repeated piece of advice to aspiring writers is to “kill your darlings.”  The phrase itself has been attributed to many different sources over the years (Wickman, 2016), but no matter the originator, it’s usually referring to favored sentences or word choices that are ultimately unnecessary to the text, that the budding writer needs to trim from their work.  However, television writers and producers lately seem to be taking this advice far more literally, and killing off any fan-favorite character they want.  The usual excuse is that death “raises the show’s dramatic stakes,” but for the most part, “You’re doing it for shock value, even if what you’re trying to convey is that everyone in this [fictional] world can die.” (VanDerWerff, 2016).  Viewers become desensitized to the neverending barrage of death, especially when the character death isn’t particularly meaningful or well-done.  “In isolation,” VanDerWerff (2016) writes, “a death that is adequate, though not particularly stirring, becomes harder to take when there’s a whole wave of mediocre deaths around the programming grid.”

Character death does tend to create a lot of much-needed buzz around TV programs, but the Bury Your Gays controversy proves that not all publicity is good publicity.  The episode of The 100 that began the controversy, “Thirteen,” was rated a 5.7 on IMDB with wildly disparate ratings on either end of the scale- 60% of reviewers gave the episode a one out of ten, while 28% gave it a ten out of ten (IMDB, 2016).  Meanwhile, the ratings for the show dropped by 14% the episode after Lexa’s death, and with a few exceptions has been lingering around one million viewers since then, only about half the number that watched the first season (Wikia, 2016).  In fact, research has shown that “brands advertised in violent media content were remembered less often, evaluated less favorably, and less likely to be purchased than brands advertised in nonviolent, nonsexual media” (Lull & Bushman, 2015).  Given that television is a business based on advertisement revenue, that finding should be particularly relevant to any TV writer, producer, or executive pushing for character death.  Ultimately, they need to be asking themselves if the potential shock value is worth potentially alienating their fan base, crashing their ratings, and losing advertising revenue.

Getting There

We are living in the Golden Age of television, and the industry has changed rapidly and momentously in the past few years, thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.  With so much change comes opportunity for more- but in order to create a format where death isn’t stuffed into every episode of every TV show on air, both fans and writers need to put in some work.

It’s easy to forget with the structure of television, where episodes are written and filmed months before they’re aired with no time to change plots based on fan reactions.  But the fact of the matter is, the viewers are the ones who have purchasing power in television.  If the controversy and outcry is big enough, then fans can have a fundamental impact on the shows that we watch, from bringing a favorite character back to an entire show.  In order to do that, however, the push for change has to be huge and constant.  Fan outrage over Lexa’s death may have done considerable damage to The 100’s ratings, but the conversation about Bury Your Gays has long since petered out.  Most of the articles and fan reactions covering the controversy are from spring of 2016, and yet lesbian/bi female characters are still dying.  There might be still more as the TV season enters the home stretch, when most TV deaths tend to occur.  The conversation about Bury Your Gays and character death in general has to continue in order for the medium to change, and so that falls on the fans to keep the momentum going.

It’s the job of the fans to educate TV executives and creators on what they’re doing wrong.  It’s not enough to just quit any one show- they have to know why their numbers are suddenly dropping.  In this day and age we have more access to creators through social media than ever, and so it’s our responsibility to utilize those platforms to our fullest advantage.  Additionally, television is meant to elicit an emotional reaction from the audience, and the goal of any character death is to generate shock and buzz.  That means that in order for any message to the executives to be successful, it has to be smart; it has to explain that this is the wrong emotional reaction, and causing them to lose viewership.

Of course, fan response can only make so much of an impact; the brunt of the labor is on those actually working in television.  Readers, if any of you happen to be involved in the industry, this is for you.  As we move into the end of the 2016-’17 season and you begin work on the next, we TV fans, both casual and devoted, straight and LGBT*, have a simple request: let them live.  It doesn’t matter if the character you’re about to kill off is gay, straight, black, white, male, female, or none of the above- let them survive.  When characters are dropping dead left and right, it’s no longer raising the stakes when yet another one bites the dust; all you get from that is another stale narrative.

There’s an infinite number of conflicts and narrative arcs that can develop characters other than grief and death.  In fact, with the overwhelming number of shows chasing the Anyone Can Die format, it’s actually shocking and original when a show takes a different route.  It might seem restrictive to ask you not to kill of your characters, stifling your creativity, but if the arc you’re developing has been used so frequently, it isn’t really creative.  Your job is to think outside the box and create something dynamic and new, not just rehash the same plots over and over again.

Sometimes, character death is driven not by creative inspiration but by necessity, because an actor is leaving the show or some other mitigating circumstances.  But in that case, character death only precludes that character ever returning to the show (in most cases- some shows are fantastical enough that coming back from the dead isn’t an impossible occurrence).  Killing the character off in that case just means that options are now even more limited in the future.  Furthermore, actors leaving for other roles or because their contract is up are often well-publicized- meaning that any shock value in killing them off is doubly nullified by predictability.

Of course death and grief are very powerful and important life-changing events; it’s not fair or reasonable to ask that they be left unexplored in television.  In fact, some of the best episodes in television have been focused on the death of a loved one- personally, “The Body” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes to mind, but there are many, many more.  However, there are many other potential storylines that have a similar resonance with real life, like childbirth, first love, trauma, and so on, that can develop a character just as thoroughly as grief.  And the power of the death narrative is, by its nature, limited if it’s constantly used.  One death is a person; a hundred is a statistic.

The Lexa Pledge was on the right track in its call to action.  “We deserved better” and the seven pledges reminds all of us that the work to change the world of television.  But more than the toxic Bury Your Gays trope, television has given us a vision of a violent world, where lives- especially women, especially people of color, especially the queer community- are expendable.  We can’t just ask the industry to keep from killing queer women when others are considered just as expendable, and when death itself seems trite from overuse.  Exploring options other than killing off a character not only avoids the pitfalls of the Bury Your Gays trope, but also brings something fresh and exciting to a medium dominated by death.  It’s only a first step, of course.  Even keeping characters alive and well has very little impact on the representation of minority groups on television.  But at least, if the grim reapers of television can relax their scythes, the representatives that we do have won’t be dropping like flies, and that’s a start.

#LetThemLive

References

“Bury Your Gays”. (2010). TV Tropes. Retrieved from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays

Carbone, N., Hosko, S., Tass, G., & Mama, M. (2016). A pledge to the LGBTQ fandom. Retrieved from https://lgbtfansdeservebetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/pledge2.1.3-originalsigned.pdf

Franmke, C., Zarracina, J., & Frostenson, S. (2016).  All the TV character deaths of 2015-’16, in one chart. Vox. Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/a/tv-deaths-lgbt-diversity

IMDB. 2016. User ratings for “The 100” Thirteen (2016). Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4731502/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

Liszewski, B. (2017). How Saving Hope lived up to the Lexa Pledge. The TV Junkies. Retrieved from http://www.thetvjunkies.com/saving-hope-live-up-to-lexa-pledge/

Lull, R., & Bushman, B. (2015). Do sex and violence sell? American Psychological Association Journal. Retrieved from http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/45488561/Lull_and_Bushman_-_Do_Sex_and_Violence_Sell_PB2015.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1493153456&Signature=3Kh2mVnkiD3GYWNpXqv%2FWGzqiNo%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DDo_Sex_and_Violence_Sell_A_Meta-analytic.pdf

Stokes, Z., Bradford, R., & Townsend, M. (2016). Where we are on TV. Glaad. Retrieved from http://glaad.org/files/WWAT/WWAT_GLAAD_2016-2017.pdf

The 100 Wikia. (2016). Ratings.  Retrieved from http://the100.wikia.com/wiki/Ratings

VanDerWerff, T. (2016). TV is killing off so many characters that death is losing its punch. Vox. Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/2016/6/1/11669730/tv-deaths-character-best

Wickman, F. (2013). Who really said you should “Kill your darlings.” Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/18/_kill_your_darlings_writing_advice_what_writer_really_said_to_murder_your.html

[discoursecatharsis]

““safe blogs put constraints on artists wahh”

…

like dude if you and your fellow artists are drawing/writing about pedophilia, rape/romanticized rape, homophobic tropes, & racist shit

then GOOD you deserve to be constrained jfccccc””

———

I gotta go in on this, oh my god. I hope you’re in for a read lmao. I am in a shit mood so I am going to be vague tonight. Time for me to debunk this shit ( • ̀ω•́ )✧

—"Safe blogs put constraints on artists wahh"

Well of course they do. Like those with0ut-theshit blogs for example, those blogs not only say which people they shouldn’t reblog from because they drew a ship you don’t like, it actually labels them as a shitty person because they drew something for that ship. Whether it was a gift art for a friend, a commission, or even just a thing for a online group project, that blog labeled them as a bad person for drawing the pairing you deemed as unhealthy. It’s fine if you do not want to reblog a particular ship from an artist, but to blatantly refuse to support an artist, new or old, is just immature and really shitty behavior if I am being honest here. Which I am. No one deserves to be cast out of a “safe blog” for their shipping preferences. Whether one ships 0tayur1 (which is the main reason I am going so hard rn), sh@l@din, Sh31th, or even s@ngb*m, it does not make them a bad/unsafe artist and person.

—“like dude if you and your fellow artists are drawing/writing about pedophilia, rape/romanticized rape, homophobic tropes, & racist shit, then GOOD you deserve to be constrained jfccccc“

Okay. Since you did tag an*i 0t@yur1, I am going to debunk all of what you claim it to be. And defend my fellow artists and fanfic writers everywhere.

First things first, the whole pedophilia accusation… 0tab3k is in no way a pedophile. That word has been thrown around way too much for it to have any goddamn meaning at this point. He isn’t five years older than Yur1, he is barely an adult, Yur1 who is 16, is not a prebuescent child under the age of 13 which is the cut off age for pedophilia. I won’t delve into this further because I’m sure many people, CSA victims included, have told you an*is time and again, in depth, what pedophilia actually fucking means. And with some of the victims relaying their own experiences to you to prove it.

Second, 0tab3k….is….fucking….eighteen. He just turned eighteen two months prior of meeting Yur10. While it does mean, by law he has reached the age of majority in both Russia, Kazakhstan, and in 75% of the United States, he is still a teenager like Yur1. Reaching the age of majority in whatever country you reside from and live in does not mean you are an adult. Human brains do not finish developing until one is 25 anyway.

The age difference between 0tab3k and Yur10 is that of a Sophomore (10th grader) and Senior (12th grader) in high school. There are literally lots of couples who have the same age difference that 0tayur1 has and 99% of them were still the healthiest relationships they ever had. There is nothing abusive about an 18 year old and 16 year old dating. At all. Abuse can happen in any relationship no matter what age dynamic. It isn’t always the older person abusing the younger, or the man abusing the woman. LBGTQ relationships have the potential to be abusive if one or both partners have underlying problems from their past or mental health. It doesn’t happen with someone who is an adult preying on someone younger and vulnerable. It can happen with fucking anyone. Stop projecting abuse that aren’t there in the first place onto ships you hate.

Rape/romanticized rape. Okay as much as I do not wish to touch on this, I’m going to just a little. People can write about rape/noncon if they want. Like it or not, dark themes in fiction is a healthy way of exploring as long as you don’t try to condone or do that shit to someone in real life. Rape is a vile, degrading act no one deserves to go through. I don’t like it and I don’t like to write it (I wouldn’t even dare draw it either), people can explore that aspect of fiction if they please. As long as they tag their shit appropriately so people know to avoid it, I don’t see it as an issue. I don’t think anyone should romanticize rape, but it happens. 0tayur1 is not one of the fictional ships that happens in at all, my guy.

Now I’m going to talk about the homophobic tropes. My question is, fucking where is it?? Are you talking about ABO? Yur10 being grossed out by v1ktuur1 being all lovey dovey? Male/female roles inserted into a M/M ship? V1kt0r not doing the dishes or some shit? These are barely homophobic. You just have a stick so far up your ass about overused fandom tropes, you’re tasting it for next 84 years. And you don’t realize that 90% of the fandom is LBGTQ like yourself because you’re probably screaming "those straight, homophobic white girls” everytime you see some shit you don’t like that is barely an issue.

The racism thing, the reach is so far with this one, man. Tell me, where is the racist shit in this or any pairing??? I don’t see it. None of us do. Again, you are fucking projecting the problematic stuff that isn’t there in whatever you’re complaining about. Are you actually going around and looking for the shit so you can bitch to whoever listens and get them on your side? That is completely fucked of you.

“then GOOD you deserve to be constrained jfccccc“

Fuck off with this. Seriously??? You honestly think we artists who actively try to stay in our lane with our ships, having good fun, tagging what needs to be tagged deserve to be constrained, treated like a bad criminal because of the content of what we draw or write? People are so done with your “purity” complex that the ones on your safe list are actively trying to get off of it by drawing the things you, by your dumb ass morality standards, deem as bad and unsafe. When you make people on your “safe” list angry that you have done that while alienating a great deal of the fandom you’re in, then the real problematic person here is you. And when you run out of safe artists and people to support, your purpose to make fandom safe will be for naught. I’m sure deep down you know this. Maybe not. Whatever.

If you really want to avoid what squicks you, then actually learn to use the resources provided on the internet for use at the availability of your fingertips. If you are on mobile, use Washboard and don’t use the app. If you are on desktop, use xkit or tumblr savior. No one deserves to be constrained. You do not have the authority to do so in any fandom no matter how hard you try. Tumblr is not your safe space, fandom is not your safe space. The entire internet is not your safe space. No one on there or in the real world is going to cater to you. Ever. Your behavior as an an*i is abhorrent. Stop.

(submitted by crystallinekai)

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