#discussion of trauma + fiction + consent

[starlitsunday]

[cw: discussion of rape]

i Am talking about a real person's oc when i'm like "why in the fuck did you write your character having sex with angela in the first week". and i'm talking about them for a really good reason.

angela is introduced as the glados of lobotomy corporation, your suspicious robot assistant. you as the player don't even know what sex Means to her, other than that she's just told you "yeah i was designed to be sexually available".

your player character turns out to be her maker, and her abusive father figure if you do not intentionally write him as his own entity. it's a valid alternate reading! but this player didn't know anything about that yet, not even enough to define his character AS a separate entity.

now to anyone who perceives this game for more than five minutes, angela is obviously not okay. okay people do not say shit like that on first meeting a complete stranger. and even if the player character is not ayin, not written to be related to her at all, there would have to be a slow slow burn for things to turn out okay.

so that's the fiction.

all of that would, on its own, be completely innocent. a hypersexual survivor with similar trauma to angela's might write that by accident, or with the intent of having the characters do a weird false start and then they work it out later on. hell, a survivor with similar trauma to angela's might deliberately write it as a kink scenario. none of these are inherently harmful, because they're not hurting anybody.

but then this person turned out to be an whole ass IRL Rapist whose entire predatory MO was based in using fiction to groom and exploit people who did not understand the intersection of trauma and sexuality.

and that is where you cross the boundary between fiction and reality, and that is why i am a ship discourse centrist lksdfghlgh

tl;dr:

[autolenaphilia]

The anti-kink moral crusade rests on a lot of transmisogynistic assumptions.

Of course it’s no surprise, since it rests on ideas from the moralizing arguments about bdsm made by radfems in the 70s. The only change is that they are being massively hypocritical and inconsistent about which kinks are bad now, as I pointed out before. Now it’s only certain kinks, like consensual non-consent and fauxcest, that are bad because they “fetishize abuse”, and not bdsm as whole, despite that being inarguably true about bdsm.

And that’s purely to broaden the appeal of such arguments, so that even self-described “leatherfags” can moralize about fauxcest. The morals and principles are frankly just “It’s okay if gay men call their boyfriends “daddy”, because I find that hot, but if a trans lesbian couples pretend to be sisters it’s evil.”

And you can’t really appropriate the radfem arguments about kink without taking their transmisogyny onboard, since they stem from the same transmisogynist bio-determinist root ideology. Janice Raymond in The Transsexual Empire explained trans women through a lens of pathological sadomasochism. Years before Blanchard’s autogynephilia concept, radfems have seen transfemininity and kink as the same thing.

The image of the trans woman painted by radfems then and now, is of privileged males appropriating the pain and suffering of real wombyn, and playacting this suffering for their own perverted sexual amusement. And that is the same image painted of trans women with incest and cnc kinks in modern callout posts. They just remove the explicitly terfy language to make it less obvious. Instead of making a mockery of misogyny in general, we are instead accused of mocking the experiences of the survivors of sexual abuse.

And that boils down to the same thing. Survivors of sexual assault are often as a group assumed to be afab. This ties into a specific transmisogynist discourse. It’s one that argues that afab children are more often sexually assaulted, and that trans women are not targeted by sexual violence pre-transition, and comes to the conclusion that this proves that trans women are male socialized and privileged. This is the fairly nasty transmisogynist undercurrent here.

And it’s proven when in discussions about the transmisogyny of callout culture, a common cliché line in response is that “clearly some people’s worst oppression is being told they are freaks for shipping incest.” This treats transfems as ultra-privileged and transmisogyny as not real at all.

Of course in reality, transfems are disproportionate targets of sexual violence even in childhood and pre-transition. And many survivors of childhood abuse have these problematic abuse-fetishizing kinks, and use it to deal with their trauma, including many of the kinky transfems being called out.

And even if no one involved in the sexual roleplay and fiction being criticized have trauma, the trauma of other non-involved people is not a good argument for its destruction. It’s a reasonable demand to ask for triggering material to be tagged properly so you can avoid it, it’s unreasonable to demand it shouldn’t exist.

Yet transfems are expected to accede to the latter demand. And I think this is because of what May Peterson calls transfeminized debt. It’s how we trans women in feminist circles are expected to be perfect women and perfect feminists to be acknowledged as women at all, instead of as monsters to be destroyed. Of course because nobody is perfect, this leads to every trans woman eventually being thought of as a monster.

We are treated as having to pay off the debt of male socialization/privilege to get basic human rights. And this in practice means conceding every disagreement with TME people, and agreeing to every demand they make of us. Or else we get the hot allostatic load treatment.

And that’s why kinky transfems are expected to fulfil the ridiculous demand from certain puritanical TME people that “I’m not involved in your kink, but I have trauma relating to it, so you can’t do it.” And are treated as evil monsters for not fulfilling it. It’s clearly transfeminized debt and transmisogyny, we are treated as privileged perverted monsters, inherently exempt from sexual violence. And that is used to justify sexual harassment, in the form of callout posts for our sex lives.

[yinyuedijun]

end notes for zero-sum game (tw: slavery, sexual abuse)

hi if you're here it means you read my deranged aventurine smut. thank you for reading that abomination lmao I hope you enjoyed it 😭 once again I've touched on really sensitive topics and don't want to be misread so I'm writing some disclaimers/explanations below:

In the act of gambling with human stakes, as well as doing business with human traffickers, Aventurine is essentially himself engaging in human trafficking. This is not something he particularly enjoys doing or wishes to exploit (which I did try to indicate in the narrative); he only does this for his role with the IPC. 

The reason I made this a narrative about human trafficking is not because I wish to glamorize this crime. I framed the narrative this way because I wanted to point out how Aventurine actively perpetuates the kind of capitalistic violence that ruined his life by being a Stoneheart. This is something that is implicit in the game but not openly explored, hence I expanded on it here.

Somewhat thematically related: the reader actively engages in self-objectification—using it neutrally as a tool for their espionage work at times, but also positively in order to eroticize their one-sided and exploitative relationship with Aventurine. This was not intended to condone the objectification of human beings; rather, I wanted to show how a lifetime of sexual objectification and extreme dehumanization as a slave has led them to objectify and dehumanize themselves, sometimes even in the capacity of enjoying it. 

Aventurine in canon similarly engages in self-objectification and dehumanization as a trauma response  (i.e. he refers to himself as a chip in a positive manner, clearly as a reaction to how his owner referred to him callously as a chip when he was a slave), though in my opinion he's not really implied to derive any real joy from the idea.

Related to the point of objectification: Aventurine and the reader clearly do not engage in particularly safe, sane or consensual sexual dynamics (specifically referring to how he started undressing them before they fully consented to public sex and just kind of decided what to do with them without prior discussion). This is not because I think this is acceptable behaviour; it is a reflection of their unequal power dynamic that the reader actively encourages and Aventurine is fine with perpetuating. It is also implied to be the result of his own distorted relationship with sex—he has literally been coerced into doing exactly the same thing in the very same establishment, and assumed that the reader would be fine with doing it too because they generally enjoy it when he exercises "ownership" over them, which they both associate with sexual control for traumatic reasons.

I've seen discourse around the fandom where people interpret the act of kissing Aventurine’s commodity code as a purely sexual or fetishizing action. I thus feel compelled to explain that the act of Aventurine and reader kissing each other’s codes in this story served a specific purpose within the wider narrative about dehumanization. I wrote a lot of things in this fic purely because I was ungodly levels of horny for Aventurine (lol), but those particular actions actually had narrative weight lol 

With all this being said, I hope it is clear that the reason I chose to focus on themes of slavery and dehumanization is not because I intend to promote or glamorize them, but because I wanted to explore specific points of Aventurine’s characterization that exist in canon. The theme of sexual abuse (and its psychological fallout) is also something that is a natural extension of his story arc in canon. I have no wish to perpetuate any of these things, and I have faith that my audience can distinguish fiction from reality and thus will not have their perspectives on real life issues be seriously influenced by my dumb horny fic on tumblr dot com. 

Also I should hope this is obvious but do not use your regular everyday gloves to finger someone! I like to imagine that Aventurine’s expensive science fiction gloves has the incredible ability to remain sterile in everyday circumstances 👍

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I liked Kieran, maybe only because he reminded me of myself as a kid. Constantly feeling left out and being both harassed for everything you do do and never being trusted with anything to even proof yourself capable, like the knowledge about the truth about ogerpon. I still am, working on that, but was way more jealous of other people hanging out with my friends simply because I had so precious few. Idk how much it would have fucked with me if my verbally abusive older sister (I do also have one of those) simply decided that one of my friends was now one of hers instead and kicking me out while my friend isn't saying or doing anything to be like "no, actually I want to spend time with [anon] too".

Obviously his obsession with ogerpon and the following Drive to get stronger is pretty hyperbolic but I did also have a bit of that. Just rejecting everything, throwing everything back at everyone since it was, or at least felt, like its always my family and the people around me just throwing shit at me too. Did I overreact a bunch of times? Oh yeah for sure. Teenage tantrums will get ya, but I really did need that. Without it I don't think I would have ever learned to call out my family's abuse and other people treating me poorly. Since as a kid that just radiates low self esteem you seem to get treated like shit from just about everyone.

Anyway all that is to say, throwing around things like "I think this kid would shoot up a school if only he had access to guns" isn't, imho, great. And I don't even really particularly care about your instance rn, like it's a fictional character in a Pokémon game who cares. So sorry for being the one who got my rant lol. It's just something I've been seeing more of lately, people throwing "they'd shoot up a school" not only at fictional characters but actual human beings. Which I think is fucked. Thankfully no one ever said that to me, but I cannot imagine how hurtful that must be, like if we ignore all the other negative effects it has for a second, when your actual school life was hell enough to make you consider ending your own life, like it was for me, to just get thrown another brick at your head that people think you would be monster enough to murder people.

...well there's a lot to unpack here.

So first up, you have my genuine condolences for your extraordinarily shitty school life. You clearly had the very rough end of the stick, and it's clearly still hurting, and that sucks.

However. I am not thrilled that you just trauma dumped in my inbox because you over-projected onto a fictional character, and I'll ask you not to do that again. Particularly when your "rant" is explicitly aimed at trying to make me feel bad for criticising a fictional character that you, once again, have over-projected onto.

Like listen, I too had an extraordinarily shitty school life, and I also had very few friends (and at three separate extended points, a combination of Literally No Friends At All, AND Being Actively Targeted For Bullying; the first time around, the bullying was led by the class teacher, even.) I have very much been there, done that and got an entire t-shirt shop. But I still didn't come away from that feeling that I was entitled to other people liking me or wanting to be friends with me, because no one is obliged to like or be friends with anyone else. I may have occasionally felt jealous, but I didn't throw tantrums and demand perfect loyalty from the few friends I did make, because that would have been abusive as all hell and would have justly made them want nothing to do with me. And, crucially and relevantly to the fictional character in the fictional world that we are discussing, I did not fixate on someone I wanted to be my friend, see that they were afraid of me and wanted to be friends with someone else, and then throw such a tantrum about it that I physically fought that someone else for the 'rights' to that friend regardless of their consent in that matter, apparently with the intention of abducting them if I won. And on losing that fight, I did not storm off and start amassing a collection of stronger and stronger weapons so I could take over my school and prove my dominance over them, emotionally abusing anyone who couldn't keep up with me because of family problems along the way. I presume you did not either!

And if I had, then the trauma and loneliness I received would be irrelevant - actions borne of trauma are still actions, with real world consequences, and you are still responsible for them regardless of how bad you felt.

(I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but school shooters are people who are also lonely and often bullied. It's very interesting therefore that you dismiss them as "monsters" while demanding that all behaviour from such people up to the shooting be excused. But the issue with such people is the entitlement they feel and the abuse they therefore dish out. Shootings are just the most extreme symptom of that - they're far from the only symptom.)

I cannot stress this enough - you are not the fictional character of Kieran in the game Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. You did not make his choices, or perform his actions (I assume). Criticism of him is not criticism of you. No one is accusing you of being about to shoot up a school. You state that you don't care that he's a fictional character, but I'm afraid you very much should, because that is the crucial difference. I am sorry that you're seeing a lot of people accusing real life people of being school shooters, but that is not what has happened here, is it?

You're welcome to write back. But I'll warn you very clearly - I am absolutely not at home to you trauma dumping further, or trying to make me feel guilty for talking about a fictional character because you have over-projected and therefore are taking it personally. That is a You Problem, and I will block you without reading if you do.

However, I am going to finish by reiterating my very genuine sympathies for your school experience. It truly was an appalling time for me, and it seems like it was for you, too. I hope you can process that trauma now, and find peace.

[nomercifulpercival]

taking my tags from a different post and posting them because i do be having A Lot To Say

the thing about current discussions about censorship on ao3, and antis willfully or uncritically claiming that people who dont want censorship are just ‘pedophiles’, is that they are missing the whole goddamn point.

whatever you personally choose to read, if we allow censorship to take hold on ao3 eventually your preferred fic will be eroded. 

to demonstrate i present,

Things Antis Have Claimed Are Problematic and Should Be Banned:

the omegaverse - either for fetishising trans people or introducing hetero dynamics into queer relationships

chidhood friends to lovers - for sexualising children's friendships or shipping 'sibling coded' characters

age gaps between adults - from age gaps of like 40 years to age gaps of like six years (looks hard at anti-sheiths)

furries/anthro - because ‘bestiality’

enemies to lovers - for 'romanticising abuse'

any exploration of unhealthy dynamics done in a way that isnt simply 'one person is the victim and escapes their abuser'. 

mutually unhealthy relationships. power dynamics such as teacher/student or boss/employee that would be unhealthy or immoral irl. 

vent fiction that explicitly describes the writer's trauma - they claim people should just go to therapy instead of processing their trauma through fiction and sharing it online. (The Reality of This: i go to therapy - my therapist encourages vent fiction - i post vent fiction - i get told to die - rinse and repeat)

noncon fics that are written as erotica - i really need to impress upon antis that some people have noncon kinks! it’s not even that rare, according to one study, 62% of women admitted to fantasizing about being forced to have sex. IRL they probably explore this via consensual non consent or simply by fantasizing, and in fiction you can read about eroticised non con, get your jollies and it hurts no one in real life. 

The thing about banning ANY of these things is that everyone will have different opinions of what is 'moral' or 'ok to write about'. Everyone will have different boundaries and triggers and squicks. AO3 allows you to ACTIVELY AVOID things that squick you 

(and before anyone says ‘I’ve seen these things untagged’ - the AO3 rules require works to either be tagged with the relevant warning (Underage/NonCon/Graphic Violence) or ‘Author chose not to use archive warnings’. you can report improperly tagged works; they are literally against AO3s rules)

so truly the best option to keep works you like protected on AO3 is to accept that people will be writing weird shit on the internet, but you actively do not have to see it. Because otherwise they WILL ban YOUR weird shit.

*points aggressively at FFNet*

[romanticizingmurder]

One of the things that comes up a lot in meta on the vampire chronicles is trying to delineate between "this is being treated as a kink fantasy", "this is fictional trauma beinf sexualized", and "this is being treated like real trauma would be" and I think the interesting and almost unique to itself aspect of TVC is that...it's almost always all of the above.

I've been thinking about David and Lestat's respective turnings lately and what strikes me about both is how they don't really neatly line up into "portrayal of horrific trauma", "rape fantasy", or even "cnc fantasy" (hear me out, we'll get there), but are an uneasy mixture of all of them at the same time.

Disclaimer: I am going to be talking about rape in a fictional story both as a traumatic violence and as a fantasy. I am coming at this from the point of view of someone who enjoys kinks, including nonconsent in fiction, and who is a real life survivor.

Using David's turning because most of the discussion around it is neatly in the same one or two places, we see it treated as all of these things in turn.

Lestat undeniably rapes David. That is not only the implication from blood drinking as a metaphor for sexual desire, but explicitly the language used:

There are scenes of genuine anguish after the assault:

At the same time, the scene is, at least in my opinion, pretty sexualized! We linger in descriptions of David's body, of Lestat's pleasure in this monstrous deed.

And if this was all there was to it, I'd feel pretty comfortable putting this (and the many situations which mirror it in TVC) as a dead dove sort of situation. It's erotic horror, and this is both erotic and horrifying. What else did you expect?

And yet.

Let me make a relevant digression:

Up until 2012, when new research started coming out, the most popular theory for why rape fantasies are so prevalent among women was something called sexual blame avoidance. The idea being that women's sexuality and desires are so shamed by society as a whole that fantasies wherein they are forced allow them a guiltless way of experiencing desire.

This actually appears to not be the case for most people with these fantasies, but it certainly still is for many, and, possibly more relevantly: when these books were written, this would have been The theory on rape fantasies. That rape fantasies are a manifestation of desires that one feels ashamed of, so the fantasy of being forced removes one's agency and thus blame.

And here is David, having been raped by Lestat, saying he really did want it, he just couldn't allow himself to want it.

David had a desire he felt shame for desiring, and Lestat took away that shame by forcibly acting upon it.

It's easy to read this as simply rape apologism, and I can't stop anyone from reading it that way. And I don't and can't really know what Anne was thinking in this or in any number of other scenes that encompass erotica and horror and the comfort of fantasy all at once.

All I can do is say that the first thing I thought of when reading David's speech was how it felt directly lifted from any number of conversations I've had with other survivors on the appeal of cnc scenes. All I know is how I felt reading this and any number of other scenes in this series, which was: oh, finally someone understands what the fantasy is about.

But I think what trips people with that is that these stories aren't "just" short or erotica without weight. These are long stories with character development and emotional weight and real explorations of trauma. And I don't think that's inaccurate! I think they are that. I think these are, at least to me, also long explorations of kink fantasies and how the dynamics of those fantasies, removed from the need for consent and risk awareness of the real world.

Lestat can rape David and it can be something traumatic, something erotic, and something he ended up believing he wanted, because it's not one or the other in this universe. It can be an exporation of cycles of trauma, erotic horror, and long form kink fantasies written with real emotion, all at once. We don't have to choose just one - and I don't think Anne did, either.

[runby2]

For setting boundary purposes, is it okay to ask questions about your experiences as a system, or would you prefer not to discuss it?

it's different for each of us, but i personally have no issues with it. i just obviously can't diagnose anyone else or claim my way is the only way to experience DID, as it's an infinite spectrum of contradicting experiences and self trust. -honey but, just as a quick FAQ for anyone reading this:

we have hard memory loss between each switch unless we are cofronting or coconcious. multiple alters fronting at once can cause headaches and amnesia.

sharing memories is hard, but possible if needed.

some fictive alters have dark and disturbing psuedomemories that most likely formed from our irl trauma, but each alter has different feelings about their own and other's experiences. so we cope with it in a safe way, through fictional stories and art.

we have in-system relationships.

klavier apollo and kristoph have consented to being treated like their source characters, and being addressed by their source names, though their psuedomemories may drastically vary.

we are not obligated to be pure clean and perfect, as we have given up on that long ago. we are traumatized and recovering, and dark media we create helps other victims like us have something to project onto. we are merely a tumblr account run by a human, and if you look up to us or think of us as morally pure when it comes to content, we are not responsible for your expectations of us.

[strawberrybananasblog]

questions

hi

i'm antiship, almost pro para/paraneutral, anti c but i have many questions about those things and i was wondering if someone could answer these for me..in comments/asks i suppose, or dms if you feel like letting me annoy you with additional ones - though these are rather nsfw so no minors would be a disclaimer here, im an adult myself...

im not sure if im comfortable with rbs on this, because of overwhelming amounts of notifs i usually get with rb-based interactions.

english isnt my native language, some things might be worded badly. and of course cw for nsfw, SA, discussion of pxrn, common discourse topics in both communities(from anti side), general triggers. and again, since im anti/paraneutral, I will say things that might tick you off, and i'm not sure how to juggle with it - i'm using examples, stances, and personal thoughts to be able to get more clearer examples, stances and personal thoughts in reply, if that makes sense.

FYI i know those things are different and not directly connected, you can be proship and not propara vice versa.

proship:

fiction isn't reality, though i've been of the belief that it can affect it. Such as effects of porn on violence or worse during sex; The brain not seeing difference from fabrication/reality itself; desensitizing et al... which is half the reason I'm antiship, and i wanted to know if there are any counter arguments to that be it studies or something you'd just want to ramble on?

personal experience question: why are people proship? what interests them in this kind of fiction? dynamics?

is there any misconceptions or something alike you see from the general public when it comes to proship? be it from anti, pro, or clueless people

are there any scientific studies you'd like to share that in general talk about the usage of taboo in fiction or morbid media?

propara:

when it comes to paraphilias, are they something that just..happen to ya? random attraction that isn't happening by will, be it mental illness (paraphilic disorder) or not (just paraphilic)? I know about attraction=/= action, but the inner details of what a paraphilia is itself sometimes confuses me or maybe the research isn't that good about it for me to find info on it.

this is something i have trouble being 100 supportive on - how does usage of fiction or fantasy help, or prevent harm when it comes to paraphilias? such as for ex. usage of fantasy or realistic toys if one has one of The Big 3 paraphilias, etc. Though of course there are More paraphilias associated with attraction to Harmful things if acted upon but I hope yk what I mean

whats complex consent?

is there any misconceptions or something alike you see from the general public when it comes to paraphilias? be it from anti, pro, or clueless people

are there any scientific studies you'd like to share that in general talk about paraphilias, how they are coped with, and other stuff alike?

silly ramble ended with another question:

personally, some of my lack of support for bits of both of those things has to do with my personal view of morality, and discomfort.

raised with a high sense of morality + unfortunate experiences/trauma leading to sour feelings about some communties (proship et al) also played into it. in general, since i was a tween i was around people who said if you like fictional xyz, then you're xyzphile (-phile term used wrong too, meant someone who is willingly attracted/seeks out attraction to xyz and/or attempt at sexually offending them) so that also lead to me just following the flow. though as of right now i feel there is still a difference.

Like, yes, this person likes fictional morbid content, but it does not mean that that interest is sexual, and even if it is it does not mean they will commit a crime of those morbid styles in real life. Its just that that interest is....problematic, i guess. so question

While I still believe that being attracted to fictional likeness of something morbid to be a tad problematic on its own, even if the person doesn't do much or think much about the IRL counterpart, i want to know if there are counter arguments to that too?

I see that a lot of my personal feelings about this are "kinda weird, kinda not into excusing it as just fiction" i guess i still want to know or read more of the Pro argument variation of this stance? i think im repeating myself

I hope all of that made sense despite being rambly, thanks for any responses

[thegreymoon]

Hi! Thank you for responding to my question about 2ha haters' bad takes. Your answer helped a lot! It's true that some people will simply never shut up when it comes to blindly hating on 2ha. However, I do wonder if meatbun had focused a bit more on ranwan's sexuaI trauma (especially chu wanning. as in making them talk about it at least once maybe in the post canon extras?), would these horrible takes be a somewhat lower in number...? Anyway, thank you for responding!

Hey, anon!

I'm glad you found my reply helpful!

Honestly, I think Meatbun focuses enough on what was done to them both, considering what the focus of this book is to begin with. This is an erotic novel, not a manual on healthy relationships. Again, people who cannot tell the difference really shouldn't be reading this book in the first place.

I don't see how anything would have been improved if Meatbun had stopped in the middle of the text and put up a warning in bright, neon letters saying, "DISCLAIMER: Don't rape people in real life, kids!" Nor do I see the benefit of the two of them sitting down and analysing it in text bit by bit so that a bunch of antis can be satisfied (spoiler alert: they still wouldn't be satisfied and would still nitpick it till kingdom come anyway). As it stands, they do discuss what was done to them both. Primarily in chapter 279, before Mo Ran's death, when Chu Wanning ends it with "I was willing, I am still willing and will be willing in the future too." We see Chu Wanning having nightmares post-canon. We see him and Mo Ran negotiating consent in the extras for one of their kinkier games and how sensitive Mo Ran in his right mind is to what he's done to Chu Wanning before and how important his consent is now. I am sure there are multiple other instances that I can't remember off the top of my head, but again, like I said, none of this matters.

This whole discussion reminds me of a tragic event some years ago at Yellowstone National Park where a group of people ignored a clear warning, crossed a barrier, went to take a picture too close to the edge of a waterfall, fell in and died. Later, a journalist asked a ranger if they were going to put up more signs and the ranger replied, "No." Rightfully so, because there were plenty of warnings and common sense should tell you that this is dangerous, but if you choose to ignore all that for a cute selfie, then whatever happens afterwards is on you. No matter how many warnings there are, stupid people are going to be stupid, ignore them all and get hurt.

The same principle goes for smaller things, like deciding whether or not to read 2ha. I feel like people have done plenty by spreading warnings far and wide that this book contains non-con. The book itself is labelled as being for adult readers only. Reasonable people understand what kinky erotica is, do not equate fiction with reality and do not get butthurt when two fictional dudes in ancient fantasy China don't have a detailed manifesto in-text about their opinions on the evils of rape. This book is for people looking for erotic fantasy (with a dash of having their neurons rearranged by the story on the side). It is not and never will be a guidebook on safe, sane and consensual sex.

In any case, nonny, my advice remains the same! Block and ignore all antis and bad faith takes. You cannot win this argument and you shouldn't try. Just block, block, block and block some more. You will be much happier, I promise!

^_^

[kimyoonmiauthor]

"You shouldn't put _this trigger_ in fiction *at all*" Censor before publishing discourse.

So, People of Color people aren't allowed to write about racism?

Women aren't allowed to talk about sexual assault, feminism?

Victims of r* aren't allowed to talk about it from their PoV and should leave it to people who've never, ever gone through it?

Men can't talk about how they too have gone through it and sort it in a social justice way and talk about the patriarchy is a way that goes deeper than the basic white feminism of Barbie?

People who know what *abuse actually feels like and would like to advocate against it* aren't allowed to talk about abuse?

When people talk about sex in YA, often the discourse isn't about writing safer sex and consent at all, but "should you write about sex with teens"

But this creates severe issues.

Look, I as one of the fundamentally token red shirts on this planet, queer, PoC, NB not a woman, but often have to fake it for the doctor's office because they won't let me check off NB and give me the form for that, with a history of abuse, history of institutionalization, want to fucking transform my shitty crap into diamonds by transforming my trauma into social justice awareness.

When you say, but you shouldn't write it into books at all, that means you silence the people who have gone through it, and need to talk about it, and wish to make the world a better place.

And sometimes the veneer of fiction is what people need in order to do that.

The reason, as many, many Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror authors have said their genre is one of the best ass places for talking about social issues is because of that ability to create distance from the issue and then dissect the hell out of it. This way it's not because I am left and live in this country... tory, whig, democrat, etc. It's these are the issues at stake, this is how it actually feels as this person going through this thing. This is why you exactly shouldn't do it, because it fucks with your head exactly this way long term.

But if you start labeling the issue in an exact way with the modern/contemporary terms from our world, people will start flipping out, but fiction gives the author super powers to say, this is what transformation of this AWFUL TERRIBLE thing looks like. And maybe this is why it's hard and this is how to do it.

Fiction can divide things into questions.

Instead of the discourse being, should teens have sex *in fiction*. I think the discourse should be, why aren't more writers writing like Norma Klein who was absolutely frank about birth control methods, what consent and safer sex was, and the results of (for her time period) a sexually abusive person that didn't get to go to jail, and marry his teen victim. And instead the reviews of her book are... OMG, she's soooo frank about sex I'm blushing.

Nyahh, you should read her because she's frank about sex, she's doing anti-body shaming initiatives, spends a fair amount of time comparing television to reality, talking about pubic hair as a natural thing, and combating TV images, and the "perfect" body through talking about sex. Maybe more romance could do that?

This guy doesn't have the 10 inch scholong all night long. But is kind, caring, knows what else to do in the interim during his refractory period? Did Norma Klein do that? Absolutely. She talked frankly about sex in order to push sex education. I got things in her 1960's written book that my sex education teachers failed to teach me, like anti-body shaming. Pubic hair is natural. (Romance is far, far from reality, I get that, but still... if you're going to blush at the word penis and think you can't possibly use it in a romance book in a frank discussion, then maybe you should reevaluate a bit. And I do wish Romance books went over consent too and made consent super sexy by having those frank consent discussion and making it oohhh I can't wait until we get through this discussion to *try* that, but we have to wait and oh my god, I didn't know that about you, I'm glad I get to *try* that. Make consent sexy. Make BDSM negotiations sexy. Make the how, "Would you like that?" OMG yes. sexy.).

The fact an ace is writing this about consent, safer sex and trying to ask people to not do body shaming isn't lost on me. But seriously. Also, I'm not sex repulsed, just on the indifferent scale. And aces can be sex positive.

Maybe in order to get queer joy, you need a bit of trauma up front so people know what the issues are. Maybe to get social justice in this area, you need to be able to talk about what people have to think about in order to go through transition and why people might opt out of it and how that too can be queer joy.

In order to transform the shit of the world, people should censor shit like happy slave gets with their master. YES. That probably should not be shared. Write it, keep it to yourself. OMG Nazis were good actually. Write it, don't share it with the general public.

But for the gnarly, for the honestly tricky, for the things that could be made into social justice, let it be written. Own voices preferred, but don't make them write it. But don't censor them either.

If a person who has gone through rape wants to write about rape and how horrific it is, then yes, let them write it. (BTW, I'm saying this as a person who knows what it's like and NO it's not "that's why you are ace, then." I was ace long before then. I was having ace-like thoughts at 5. Some people do, and that's fine. But don't paint everyone with the same brush.) But keep their feet to the fire and make sure they write it in a way that doesn't glorify it, doesn't make it feel "right" and aims it towards social justice. Then trigger warning.

"Precious" does have sexual abuse, rape and all of that, but if you get through that story and the difficulty, she transforms her shit into something positive. And it's an argument against rape, no matter what the book challenger thought. (OMG sex scenes and it's sexy? WTF is wrong with you, dude. Go see a therapist.)

What better way to make the book banners win than to let people who went through horrible traumatic shit never to make it to the bookshelf by shaming them for talking about it and transform their stories of horror into social justice gold?

There's quite a difference, though, when you're glorifying racism as a good thing.

[inuette]

I think something that many anti-RQ folk haven’t really discussed is that much of transx (mainly “transharmful” and “transharmed”) are clearly just fetish mining. Instead of seeking out cnc roleplay, or reading fantasy fiction about topics, they post that they are “transtraumatized” or “transabuser” and ask others to “validate” them - even minors are doing this as well. It’s sickening

Ive realized that as well. transharmed is a bit more understandable because the feeling of wanting to have it worse bc you dont believe what you went through was bad enough is very common in trauma spaces, but transharmful for sure.

I honestly dont like the way radqueers redefined cnc either, it meant roleplay of non-consensuality with boundaries like safe words set but they flipped it to mean "erm you can consent once and whatever happens will happen whether you like it or not."

so Im begging that they should seek out and research actual kink spaces more because that shit is not safe or sane or consensual or healthy. or read fiction!

[threadsun]

Thoughts on non con fics or just people who are into non con in general?

[debaucherri]

as someone who used to be in the antiship community, i don't think i wanna be a part of it anymore, and here's why.

(tw harassment mentions)

let me preface that this is just me stating my personal opinions and as of right now i don't really stand with either side. what i DON'T stand for is telling people to kill themselves over being on either side.

it's insane how many antishippers i've seen under proshippers' posts describe violently and in gruesome, sickening detail how they should kill themselves - it just doesn't make sense to me. isn't the point of antishipping to avoid normalising problematic behaviour, and yet here some of these people are, sending death threats and telling proshippers to kill themselves?

i just don't see what violence is going to achieve in a situation and community that's supposed to be anti-violence - it's not going to change anyone's views, all it does is spread hate, which the world definitely doesn't need any more of. i don't care how bad the ship or content is, those are fictional characters, while you just told a REAL person to violently kill themselves. you don't get moral high ground for telling ANYONE to kill themselves or by describing how you would kill them/how they don't deserve to live for writing a fanfiction.

n my experience, as a (previous) antishipper who was open to hearing opposing points of view, i would have actual civilized discussions with proshippers to talk about why we stood where we stood on the issue. most if not all of the people i talked to were shipping what they did because of past trauma, and while it might not be an ideal coping mechanism, most of our coping mechanisms as humans, especially with trauma, are somewhat maladaptive. it doesn't make it right, but telling people to end their own lives, especially knowing that they're already struggling with mental illness, is worse than any fictional ships ive ever seen.

these proshippers also took measures to ensure that people who may be triggered by the content of their posts as well as impressionable children were warned and had ways to block their content. their intent was not to trigger anyone, but to create a community of consenting adults with similar coping mechanisms to enjoy their fictional ships without bothering anyone else, and while making it clear that they did not support real-life problematic relationships. these people engaged peacefully or did not engage at all with antis, a stark contrast to the community i was accustomed to, which was full of toxicity, violence, threats and accusations 24/7; funny that the side that preaches non-toxicity in fiction does not adhere to the same morality in real life by any stretch of the imagination.

im not saying that i agree with or support shipping incest or pedophilia, but im not going to harass non-toxic proshippers for coping with other consenting adults and engaging with fictional ships they enjoy. im sorry to all proshippers who have to deal with toxic antis day in and day out, who feel the need to send threats and hate your way instead of just blocking you and moving on.

if you're non-toxic and on either side, just know that i love and respect you - keep doing what you're doing and keep enjoying what you're enjoying.

moral of the story, im neutral on the issue and definitely no longer part of the antiship community after what ive seen, however i wouldn't define myself as proship either. im neutral on shipping, and anti telling people to kill themselves.

i have no doubt i'll be harrassed for this post, and i know for certain that my PTSD is not ready for it, but it needs to be said.

antishippers who fight fictional violence with REAL violence have no moral high ground, and if you are one of these people please do not interact with me.

[xythlia]

okay but every dc creator and consumer NEEDS to understand that some people are just gonna think you're a fucking freak regardless. There's people who think I'm a fucking freak and that's just something I've had to accept, everyone is allowed to be into what they're into but we also have to be able to get a grip and realize some people are going to look at you funny for it it's just a fact of life

that said, the definitions of shota and loli EXPLICITLY state it's about sexualizing child characters. I haven't met many dark content creators who don't already know or discuss that distinction within dark content and that's why it is actually important to separate dark content into different categories. Someone using fiction as a safe outlet to explore taboo topics like yandere or cnc or as a controlled outlet to explore subjects related to personal trauma is not on the same level as someone using a drawn child in place of a real one for sexual gratification.

its especially important to have distinctions because of the definition of pornography: material that depicts nudity or sexual acts for the purpose of sexual stimulation and the legal definition of csam which includes drawn depictions of minors in sexual contexts. When someone is creating or consuming shota/loli content it is for sexual stimulation, that goes beyond dark content. That's beyond just "people might think of me funny because I write dead dove or because im into cnc" it's okay there's something extremely fucking predatory going on here because why do you wanna think about kids in sexual scenarios to get off?

I've written some weirdo fucking shit but my dark content is not going to be lumped in with literal predators skirting the legal loopholes of csa because that's a whole separate beast. What I write about is kink between consenting adults, as do the majority of dc writers. I'm always very do whatever you want but I'm also always highly suspicious of the people who are the first to jump out and talk loud as fuck about how "it's just lines it's just pixels blah blah blah" because tbh no it's not. Its been proven there's real predators who hide behind that rhetoric online, like that toonimal person who was literally on a pedo website talking about being "pro contact" with minors. Those people are always hiding out and taking advantage of this misguided defense of "they're just lines!" "block of you don't like it!" bc it's easy to hide behind it when someone else is acting like a rabid dog on their behalf and making excuses for a predators behavior. so no, we should be making distinctions between dark content and csa material because it isn't all created with equal intentions

[investingestincest]

Tw: mentions of CSEM, pedophilia and incest

____

If an anti want to discuss with me how being a proshipper correlates to being a pedophile, i will engage and debate with you ONLY if you confirm the following:

-You are not a minor.

-You have proper reading comprehension.

-You can differentiate between fiction and reality.

-You do not call CSEM/CSA "Child Porn" (The use of the word porn implies that the abused child consents which is FALSE).

-You know what the actual meaning of proship is instead of blindly trusting an unknown source (Your friend and/or Urban Dictionary definitions written by non-proshippers).

-You've never harrassed a proshipper, ever sent a proshipper threats, made a callout post on them, mocked their trauma and/or ever wished trauma upon them, shown them gore/csem nor are you friend with anyone who's ever done so.

-All of your ships are of two consenting adult and doesn't involve underage characters. Yes, even if both are underage and/or if the cast is predominantly underage, because shipping kids is wrong and immoral. Plus, what if they grow up ? That's the equivalent of aging up minors, that's pedophilia !

-None of your ships involve characters who are heavily sibling-coded by the entire fandom. Yes, childhood and close friends count.

-None of the characters you stan are problematic, even if they're the protagonist and are shown to be the "good guys".

-The fandom you're in isn't problematic in any way.

-You don't immediately resort to racism/sexism/LGBTphobia/fake accusations over an online argument (Sentences such as "You ship incest and pedophilia" or "You wanna fuck your family/diddle kids" also count).

-Before linking them, you read your own sources COMPLETELY and THOROUGHLY instead of nitpicking only the paragraphs you side with.

-You are willing to listen to the other side even if you don't have anymore arguments left instead of immediately blocking them.

If you've completed the list, please do PM me and explain to me how a proshipper making two fictional characters kiss in their own space kept away from minors means that they want to abuse actual children in real life.

[johannestevans]

A busy month for your boy!

Good evening!

I've of course been pretty quiet the last month - as I said in my last email, I expected to go pretty quiet as I went through the moving process, and I have now left Ireland and moved back to the UK.

I'm currently Jean-Ralphio voice ~technically homeless~ as I get all my ducks in a row with my apartment paperwork and move through the conveyancing process, but once the keys are in my hand, I'll be writing about and doing TikToks of the decorating process as I go!

Obviously because I'm currently going between friends and family and juggling paperwork, I'm not writing as much at the moment, as I predicted I would be, but I will be making an appearance at BristolCon next month!

BristolCon is a 1-day literary sci-fi and fantasy convention in Bristol City, this year on Saturday October 21st - there are panels and discussions, readings and signings, a marketplace, and so forth.

As well as taking part in some of the panels and maybe reading from my own work, I'll be selling copies of Heart of Stone and Gerald Poole and the Pirates, as well as a bunch of my badges, and of course I'll be able to sign anything you bring along, whether it's a book you buy from me on the day or a copy you bring with you! I'll be able to take payment in cash or by card on the day!

Can't make the convention but have questions about my work, my characters, or my writing process? Send them with the heading [For BristonCon] anonymously to my Tumblr askbox or to my email at contact@johannestevans(.)com without the brackets, and I'll be filming short videos on the day and answering them!

Now that I am in the UK, I'm available for appearances if you'd like me to come talk to your book club, do a reading, join a convention or discussion panel, or even do some stand-up comedy - you can drop me a line at contact@johannestevans(.)com without the brackets for that too! I'm currently based mostly out of Bristol at the moment until I finalise my apartment up north, so hit me up for anything in the South of Wales or the East Midlands particularly, but I'm willing to travel farther afield so long as the travel costs aren't too prohibitive or you're willing to cover it / a portion of it.

New Works Published

Fantasy & Romance Fiction: Jack & The Cat: Part I

A young man becomes entranced by the Lord's personal assassin.

Part I is 10k, rated M, M/M. When Lord Axley's assassin is out, the people of Roam flee inside and don't even dare to look at him. Jack, a tavern boy, lays eyes on him once, and is bewitched.

Violence and captivity are themes in this one, as are sexual abuse and recovery thereof, social isolation, trauma, friendship as well as romance.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

TweetFic: Mercenary Work

A warrior in an adventurer's band becomes fascinated with their resident elvish rogue.

Read on Twitter

Erotic Short: A Bellyful

A wayfaring mage stops for the night, and exchanges services with the innkeeper.

Cis M/trans M, rated E, 2.6k. On his way north from his studies, a mage stops by at an inn and pays for a place in the innkeeper’s bed — all the better to use each other. Overstimulation, oral, anal, and vaginal sex, breeding kink, denial, come inflation, begging, tears, rough sex, size difference, a bit of magic. Pregnancy threats at the end.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

Erotic Short: Brothel Theatre

2k, cis M/trans M, trans M voyeur, rated E. Yvis has never been to a brothel before, but he’s excited to see one of his heroes, the adventurer Amaethon, play a part in a local theatre production: a debauched one, at that.

Consensual non-consent here — the perspective is that of a man watching a play about a prisoner of war being fucked by the warriors who’ve caught him. Featuring voyeurism, huge size difference, public sex, come inflation, CNC, spitroasting, stomach and throat bulging.

Read on Medium

Erotic Short: Paid in Full

A young sex worker is employed by a local lord.

4k, rated E, cis M/trans M. Utterly self-indulgent. A young sex worker is employed by a local lord, who wants to do only one thing to him — and then give him something else. Lots of oral sex in this one, age difference, some power differential, a nervous sex worker.

CWs for referencing to past trafficking / coerced sex work and past dubious / coerced consent.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

Erotic Short: Inescapable

A human and an elf fall into a tentacle trap.

1.7k, rated E. An elf makes the poor decision of doing a magical escape room with a human he doesn’t know too well. They both fall into a trap, but at least it feels good.

Featuring tentacle monsters, oviposition, belly bulging and inflation, overstimulation, multiple penetration, some body horror.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon