#ok i'm sick of sensible tags now

[feshsticks]

yoooo if i’d have known drawing with pressure was SO MUCH FASTER than without then i mighta invested years ago 🤔 anyway a LONG overdue doodle inspired by this post but like....i also had a few concepts of all 4 lords along the way that imma put under the cut

pirate au ig

(this is probably already done idc my ignorance means it’s original to me)

Heisenberg: gigantic steel dreadnought/frigate. Self-sustaining, can remain at sea for years, takes shipwrecks and the dead into its hidden bowels to empower itself. Watch for black fumes in the sky

Dimitrescu: 16th/17th/whatever century they were born in galleon-style ship, famous for being a getaway for women on land in dire straits. Rules over tropical waters aggressively. Signalled by the sea turning red

Few have seen the ship of Beneviento. Some say it's jet black, probably no larger than a yacht. Some say it’s a sizable brig run by a crew not of flesh but of wood and hinges. In either case, she always appears in mist; don't trust any area infamous for mirages

Moreau has less a ship, and moreso wears a marshy island with a solitary, broken lighthouse. This is actually the biological shell of a leviathan, who uses it as a lure to the desperate or brave. Thankfully, he's relatively easy to outsmart. The sky rains acid in warning of him

And fuck MM she doesn't get shit lol

[dabistits]

So...I'm just curious where you stand on the discourse of victims of abuse writing about topics of rape and the like as a way to cope with what happen to them and explore their experiences in a safe way? Like...unless you have been raped yourself, do you really know what goes on in that person's head? I'm actually wondering how many of the tumbles that have been delightfully called out have written about their own experiences under the (cont)

(cont) guise of writing Yandere or other non/dub con just to be told they're sick or wrong or promoting rape by doing this. Many of the people tagged in this are former sexual assault/sexual abuse survivors. I'm sure there are (unfortunately) survivors on both sides, but who decides which coping mechanisms are valid? And why are we holding fanfiction responsible for potential rape and attitudes towards them? This entire side of the discourse confuses me and I have yet to hear a sensible answer.

some of your wording makes me super suspect that you’re being genuine, but sure, i’ll give you a shot

i’ve already clarified that i’m not an expert, so i can’t give an expert opinion on coping mechanisms, nor do i intend to. i don’t intend to armchair diagnose anyone, or tell people that they absolutely aren’t allowed to fantasize about this even if their therapist has told them it’s ok. 

however

the answer to whether this is therapeutic is not really what i’m talking about

i can and will criticize certain norms that people want to predominate in fandom, which is that rape/incest/pedo/abuse fic should be allowed to proliferate in very public spaces as long as it’s tagged. that’s a stance i strongly disagree with, as i believe this material is sensitive enough that we should do everything in our power to keep it away from kids, other survivors, and people who just don’t want to see it. simply tagging the fic and expecting others to do the work of avoiding it prioritizes the availability of these fics over the user experience that other people should have, which is the ability to browse the internet easily and safely, without needing to take the precaution to avoid things like fetishized rape fantasies. i think the default setting the internet should be on is “doesn’t want to see rape or pedo porn,” and i think it’s reasonable for me to think this.

frankly, not all coping mechanisms need to be shared or treated like they’re “normal.” even though self harm blogs and “pro ana” blogs can be a source of community for those suffering from those mental illnesses, they ended up promoting self harming behaviors. experts were concerned with the romanticization of suicide in 13 reasons why, because depression and suicide being portrayed didn’t mean it helped anyone cope, and possibly heightened suicidal thoughts. i’m not saying these are psychologically ‘the same’ as writing rape fic (we just don’t know), but this is to say that coping mechanisms are not all necessarily good to share or reinforce.

i think it’s especially unhealthy for a community when ‘coping’ becomes the reason for these fics to be so available, as though fandom is one big coping mechanism and we somehow become reliant on other people to let fetishized portrayals of these things just... be. as though we either say good things about it or pretend we’re unaware of its existence. coping mechanisms and mental illness are managed in tandem with our relationships to other people; if coping harms another individual, then the reasonable thing to ask is to cut it out, and find a better way to deal with it. if your s/o says no, i will not pretend to rape you wtf, then you drop it. so then why does fandom, which is an entire community, need to accept not only these fics, but these attitudes unquestioningly? without being able to say ‘no, i don’t want to see this’?

let’s be clear, the general attitude towards these fics isn’t that they helped readers process something. it’s that they’re hot and sexy. maybe some people genuinely get help through these fics, but somehow the culture that developed around them is one where we discuss how much a rape scene turned us on. the rest of fandom gets to hear about how rape is portrayed as sexy, rape is portrayed as desirable, and are expected not to say anything about it. imagine that for a second: a quarter(?) of the fandom is talking about how hot fantasy rape is, while the other portion is dead silent about our opinions. how must it look to someone who is just getting into fandom? what kind of community norms are we showing them?

fanfic may not be the cause for this, but the ardor with which we defend it has elevated it to something untouchable, unable to be criticized. that attitude, plus the types of fic we churn out in conjunction with that attitude, shapes our community and the way we respond to real life tragedies. recognizing and naming abuse and sexual assault is already difficult enough for victims, not to mention society; it’s already enveloped in complicated feelings of love, maybe pity, fear of failing your s/o, attachment, etc. do we really need another space that says ‘imagine your partner beating you; isn’t that fun’? what kind of belief does that reinforce?

i’ll be honest. none of this feels survivor-oriented or recovery-oriented. it feels like survivors are a convenient way to lambast people who are critical of certain sexual desires. yes, i know there are survivors who say this helps them, but we have issues to address beyond whether or not rape fic helps. i think it can be overly-simplistic to just say ‘if you find this thing sexy, you’re a bad person,’ however, we are always in control of what we decide to do when we think something is sexy. the argument doesn’t just end with ‘i’m not a bad person.’ not being a bad person doesn’t let you dodge responsibility.

in the end, we control what kind of information and fiction we deliver to fandom, what we decide to showcase publicly, and we can choose to accept criticism. if we interact with other people, we have a responsibility towards other people. right now, a lot of people don’t want to take this into account, and it’s this eschewing of responsibility (beyond ‘tagging’) and self-reflection that i’m taking the harshest stance against.