#problematic things will still occur in fiction whether you like it or not

[fellow-traveller]

A slight rant, I suppose. But it's more frustration than annoyance.

(under the cut because I don't want to spoil someone's day with this discourse)

I'm pretty much active in Twitter/X mainly because of the 1 Day 1 Hol Horse thing, but when I ventured deeper into the JoJo fandom, I realised the anti-proship discourse is just a huge WHY for me.

Like, why does this mess have to exist?

Why does one have the need to not interact with other fans in the same fandom, especially if they also share a similar preference?

Why can't everyone just like what they like, and leave what they don't, without harming actual fans, like sending death threats, trolling, doxxing, rallying hate etc?

To clarify, I've only known about this new definition of anti-proship about this year, when I got active again in the JoJo fandom. And it came to me in the form of being forced into a voting poll without my knowledge, and the fans that voted for or against my account labelled me a proshipper based on "problematic" fanarts from my Japanese friends and moots that I liked and shared.

It was the very first time I learnt what the bastardised definition of a proshipper is to these group of people.

Because during my anime/manga era, some good 20 years ago, proshipping basically means shipping whatever one likes and accepting that others may ship things one dislikes. We had terms like OTPs and NOTPs and BroTPs, and we use them freely to express love and acceptance, while also acknowledge what we prefer and what we don't.

Yes, there will occasionally be fans who will throw a tantrum about what others ship. They were the ones we call antishippers - the most intolerant of fans. They started ship wars, they send death threats, they doxx. They are the unhinged that most likely would kick a baby if given the opportunity.

Proshipper is actually a very positive word, and we love proshippers, because they're very tolerant, they work as middle men in ship wars, and by all things divine, most of them have really great artistic skills. Antishipper, nope, we don't want to be that. We hate that. We despise that.

But somehow the new generation seemed to shift the blame of all things bad on proshippers by changing the definition of it.

Depending on who you ask, proship could be a short to "proactive shipping", "professional shipping" or just "pro shipping" (as in pros and cons). All positive words. Now the new generation who most likely was never thought of how to explore fandoms at a young age, deemed proship as "problematic shipping".

The audacity to simply change the definition is palpable. Especially when I find out the kind of "problematic" things that they try to justify hating on.

Kids. Teens. Young adults. My dears.

Whatever "problematic" things you've seen in a fandom /ship /character now IS NOT NEW. It's not something that just happened to exist in a recent fandom to spite the younger gens. It has been there 20 years ago when I was underaged and older fans were making fanart of their favourites both "problematic" and not. Heck, probably way longer before for them as well.

If only you utilise some reading skills and maybe your library card, you can find the history of anime-manga was filled to the brim with "problematic" topics. It's a way of expression, it's a way of coping, it's a way of criticising certain factors like politics and people. Anime and manga has always been "problematic". That's a hard fact.

Virtue signaling especially if you're from the West is not gonna change that.

Also, I cannot stress it enough that fiction does not equate to reality. At best, it is an imitation of reality, in a form safe for consumption and indulgence that require no harm to real living beings. Once people can differentiate these, trust me, life will be so much easier.

While the definition of proship had seen a pretty twisted change, antiship didn't. They still did the same things, only now, the minors were dragged in.

Despite all, I won't deny there are absolute rotten eggs on both sides. There will definitely be proshippers who are so disturbing it scares even Junji Ito. There will also be antishippers who will do anything to spread more hate in the fandom, making it rather unlivable. And both sides have the capability to influence an attack on each other, or worse, take advantage of gullible, ill-informed fans, especially minors.

But if we stop lumping everyone into "proship dni" and "antis dni" lists, and openly, properly communicate and explore about likes and dislikes and preferences like old times, I'm sure complaints from antis like

"Why is this fanartist who draws / fan who like [insert ship] has to be a proship?"

"I like this fanartist's artwork but they are a proship, so now I can't see their stuff."

"There's not enough fanart of [insert ship/character]."

would be way, way less.

And I always wonder if these antis, who were mostly young teenagers of a sound mind, have a pending curiosity to explore something adult through fictional characters. Hence why, while they despise proshippers and anything not sfw, they still talk about it among themselves and draw lemony drawings, even to a detail I personally wouldn't share so openly. And why they still invade not sfw spaces even with a clear warning.

Because, I get that, I've been there, most likely as early as 12. Exploring sexuality is not wrong at that age, and it's already a correct method to use fiction for it.

But by pushing away people who had been there, who can actually help, is gonna continue making these antis be a hateful, intolerant bunch. And more easily influenced by actual real life predators.

And for the "proshippers", it's also pretty frustrating to see themselves being harrassed, blocked, and talked about behind their back from antis who never thought of maybe, just maybe, getting to know them first. Especially if they are not from the West.

So my advice to these antis and especially the antis who practically had no reason to be an anti, don't confine yourself into a small container and scream why it's too small. Fiction is there for you to explore reality and things that you can and will never do in real life. Exploring it is way better than suppressing yourself, as long as you know your own limits. Preference and discomfort are only evident if you communicate in a proper manner, not by bashing someone without them knowing and shift the blame of the discomfort you caused yourself on them when they had no intention to even present it to you.

We're in the same fandom. Sharing the same love for the same character and ships. I don't see why we should cut it down so meticulously just because one cannot separate fiction to reality.

As a pretty much seasoned anime-manga fan, especially in JoJo (I've been with the fandom since 2001, tbh), keep your mind open. Block and mute are always your friend if things get too overwhelming, but hatred shouldn't be the main motivator. Communication is key. If you want to know more, express your discomfort, discuss on characters / ships / fandoms...always communicate first. Never assume, never stab on the back. You might be surprised how helpful proshippers can be if you're just, for once, be nice.

That's all.

[ao3commentoftheday]

What is a proshipper?

I've seen this question pop up quite a few times recently, and the answer is going to vary depending on when you got into fandom and which fandoms you're in.

You're probably already aware of the idea of a "ship" in fandom - 2 or more characters that a fan or fans think would be interesting to see in a romantic or sexual relationship with each other.

Back in the 90s in the X-Files fandom, proshippers were fans who wanted to see Fox Mulder and Dana Scully together in a romantic or sexual relationship. Noromos ("no romance" fans) or anti-shippers were fans who wanted the relationship between the two characters to remain friends and colleagues. The whole point was whether or not a particular fan wanted a relationship between characters to be platonic.

The fans from X-Files were in other fandoms too and eventually these terms entered new fandoms. Eventually more terms were developed, such as multi-shipper, which means either someone who has many ships that they enjoy or someone who ships the same character(s) with many people. It often means both.

At this point, it was still about whether or not a fan ships something and to what extent. But then the terms started being used during ship wars.

A ship war occurs when a fandom fights about which ship is "better" or "canon" or "right." At first, these wars were fought purely on the basis of what was shown in canon. Over time, in order to be right, people on one side or the other of the ship war would bring in arguments about whether the ship was "healthy" or "problematic." Then terms like "abuse" were brought in. Then suddenly "pedophilia" and "incest" were major topics of concern.

All of these terms are in quotes for two reasons. One, the characters being discussed are fictional and therefore none of these things are actually happening in real life. Two, in order to win a ship war, fans were stretching these terms beyond their usual definitions. For example, in many cultures the term "brother" is used as a common honorific and has no actual familial meaning when referring to a friend, but fans would say the characters saw each other as brothers and therefore the relationship was incest and therefore it was abusive and therefore wrong.

At this point in time, there are still those who see the term "proshipper" to mean someone who generally thinks it's okay to ship what you want and read what you want and ignore the rest. However, in newer fandoms or fandoms with a lot of younger fans the term has shifted to mean "problematic shipper" - or someone who prefers to ship characters in incestuous, pedophilic, or abusive ways.

The term "anti-shipper" or "anti" has also shifted away from meaning "a person who doesn't ship something" to now meaning "a person who judges other people based on what they ship." Anti-shippers are also often equated with people who have difficulty separating fiction from reality, people who harass other fans for what they ship, and people who are strongly tied to American Christian ways of thinking.

The phrase ship and let ship also used to be common in fandom but seems to be less used now. The basic idea of that phrase is, if you don't like it, don't read it (DLDR). This used to be easier when fandoms and sub-fandoms were more separated from each other in private communities and independent websites. In the current social media climate, it's more difficult than ever to separate from each other.

Also, with so many fandoms now using the single website AO3 to host their fic, new users who are less familiar with the search and filter options are seeing things they don't want to see.

I don't really have a conclusion here. This is just the state of things as I see it. Feel free to share your own thoughts in the reblogs, as always, but be aware that I'll be hiding or removing any reblogs or replies that are hateful or harassing anyone - proshipper or antishipper.

[cacodaemonia]

I wanted to thank someone who recently messaged me with information I had been unaware of regarding @leias-left-hair-bun having said some racist and transphobic things and then been dismissive and rude to those who tried to explain to her why those things were hurtful. To be clear, this is not a call-out post so people will go harass her (if she comes back online). Don't do that. But since I didn't know about it, I thought others might not as well, and I'm sure many of you would like to be aware of this kind of thing, as I wish I had been.

I won't name names, but to the person who alerted me, thank you again! I spend very little time on Tumblr, block and filter a lot of usernames, and don't scroll, so I'm very grateful that this individual took the time to have a conversation with me rather than sending vague anon asks, like a couple I've gotten in the past few months and just went ??? at.

I also wanted to apologize for hurting anyone inadvertently with my lack of knowledge. I didn't intend to hurt anyone, but it doesn't matter that I didn't know—I should still apologize. And I realize that's probably worthless, but it's all I have to offer besides letting people know the basics of what happened.

@omiomicron, @leeleebee, @alamogirl80, and I approached LLHB (only one of us spoke with her so it wouldn't seem like we were ganging up) as people who have been friendly with her, though I know others have done the same to no effect. It was made clear that we wanted to help her understand why she had hurt people in order to prevent her from doing further harm, but also that we didn't think she had done harm intentionally. Harm is still harm, whether or not it was intentional, but in any case, she refused to accept any responsibility for the things she's said, and was more focused on semantics and her opinion on other people’s pain, rather than the pain itself.

I'm a firm believer that, when you know better, you should do better, so when LLHB simply insisted we would have to agree to disagree over some very serious, fundamental issues, we decided the conversation was over and blocked her.

As I said, this is not a call-out post, but I think the matter is serious enough that I had to point out who was involved or it would just be another useless vague post. Everyone is racist to some degree or another because of the society we live in, and that's not an indictment of anyone's character, but if you are given an opportunity to change your views and behavior, and don't take it, that's something that shouldn't be overlooked.

The specifics of this instance aside, I want to talk about why this situation occurred in the first place.

The individual who kindly contacted me also pointed out how things become very siloed on Tumblr, since people often have to block others for their own sanity. I, for example, block many usernames and filter those usernames from tags and post content so that I don't see their posts when people I follow reblog from them.

Related to this, a couple months ago a friend of mine pointed out something I hadn't realized: in TCW fandom there's a small group of very aggressive, vocal antis who lumped in "problematic" shippers with racists, pedophiles, TERFs, etc. We were constantly bombarded with vague but abusive messages made up only of buzz words meant to evoke moral panic over fictional writing. The messages were so abusively vague and hurtful that it was a matter of protecting one's mental health to ignore them. I want to make it clear that calling out racism is not harassment nor being abusive. However when antis conflate legitimate criticisms of racism with shipping discourse it is very hard to separate out which were genuine call outs of racism and which were harassment under the guise of performative action. Antis do use racism as a buzz word in their harmful repertoire but not all racist call outs are anti behavior.

It's really unfortunate, too, because I and many people I know started out supporting the unwhitewashTBB movement and those heading it. Most of us have the same anti-racist goals in RL, after all—though I choose not to participate in activism on Tumblr because I personally think it's one of the worst places for it. But when I saw how hateful and cruel many of the people in that movement were to others (including BIPOC with differing opinions on fandom issues), I stopped reblogging their stuff and eventually unfollowed and blocked them. My opinions on racism and whitewashing haven't changed, but because of that movement's obsession with policing others' opinions on fandom matters, and viciously attacking anyone who disagrees on fandom matters, I stopped supporting them.

To be clear, this is not an excuse for my own ignorance of LLHB's behavior, but more an observation of how unproductive it is to try and lump fandom discourse together with RL issues like racism. While fandom racism and racist media is a big issue and people should be educated on it, the problem is people are unable to separate fandom discourse from it. This is the package deal of being in fandom but a clear separation of fiction and reality would minimize incidents like this.

In any case, all this has made me realize that interacting on Tumblr in anything more than a cursory, fandom-only way is a waste of time for me and only opens the door to cause harm. I'll also admit to being pretty damn salty that, while I stood up to the antis to take the heat off others and try to make people less fearful of openly shipping clone characters together, only one person could be bothered to tell me I was associating with someone who had said nasty things and point me in the direction of evidence.

I'm in fandom to escape from the trash fire that is real life, as are many of my friends—BIPOC, white, queer, neurodivergent, etc.—and I recognize that my ability to nope out of this situation is a privilege that many people don't have. But I'm not going to sacrifice my own mental health to be involved in a community that is toxic and harmful towards anyone who has differing opinions on fandom issues. It's not just racism anymore but rather anything that doesn't fit into some groups' ever shifting moral goalpost. I am not on Tumblr 24/7, and I don't feel that anyone should be held accountable for missing out on the avalanche of posts related to fandom discourse and drama. Personally, I don't have the spoons for any of that bullshit.

I still don't condone racism but from now on I'll be filtering anything relating to discourse, RL issues, antis, fandom police, etc. and will probably not read or respond to comments on or reblogs of this post.

[bettsfic]

Hi betts! I hope you’re doing alright and that your semester is wrapping up smoothly. I have a question about genre, I guess? I’ll preface this with the fact that I am not a writer or lit person, but just an enthusiastic reader. But as I’ve been on Tumblr and TikTok (in this case BookTok), I’ve noticed that it’s a lot of the same kinds of books that people get obsessed over. Largely, SFF written by women and often in “new adult.” I’m thinking of V. E. Schwab, Leigh Bardugo, etc. I’ve read a number of these books and enjoyed some of them quite a lot, but they’ve never captivated me the way they do some. That’s fine, people have different tastes. But after being served yet another TikTok about this same category of book, I kinda realized that for some reason they just don’t feel that adult to me. Which is weird because they typically deal with very adult themes. Some are super sexual or violent and the like, but the way they’re written doesn’t feel mature to me. Even The Poppy Wars, which is very adult, falls into this category for me (I did enjoy this one, though). I’ve tried to interrogate this for bias, especially since I know a lot of people like them because they are written by women, (mostly) feature more diversity, and have large female audiences. But then I think about which books did feel adult, but fall in similar genres: N. K. Jesimin and Ursula Le Guin come to mind (even her youth fiction feels more adult to me). So I guess I’m curious what you feel makes a writing style more mature versus simply the content? Why is it that SFF, while often depicting adult events, doesn’t come across as mature? I guess my frustration is that it’s one of my favorite genres, but the recommendations I’m getting across many folks just...isn’t the SFF I want. How does one distinguish between these? Idk if I’ve expressed this well and I definitely am not trying to judge people. I’m just looking for a certain atmosphere in my reading that I find rarely.

i’m so excited i have an answer to this. so first i want to say, i experience this also and it’s why i struggle to get through a lot of books. it’s why i love the secret history but couldn’t get twenty pages into if we were villains, even though everyone told me they had a lot in common. even if the description of a book is compelling and the story is very much to my taste, and even if the writing is totally competent, i’ve found that sometimes there’s just something lacking that makes me set a book down and never pick it back up. 

i was thrilled to find there’s term for this: the implied author.

the implied author was coined by wayne c. booth in his book the rhetoric of fiction which, while dense, is a really fantastic read (if you’ve been keeping up with my newsletter you know how feral i am for this book). as a blanket definition, the implied author is the space that exists between the narrator and the writer. when you read something, you can’t make any factual conclusions about the writer (the author is dead and all that), but the narration often tips you off to the idea that the consciousness behind the writing is wiser and knows more than the narrator. 

that’s a very condensed version of booth’s definition, which takes up like 40 pages. here forward are some conclusions i’ve drawn based on it. 

when the space between the narrator and implied author is narrow, some of us as readers tend to get bored pretty quickly. it’s what you’re referring to as maturity. however, when that space is wide, when it’s clear that the implied author is much, much bigger than the narration, that’s when i’m willing to sink my teeth into something. the wider that distance, the more i’m happy to ignore things like syntactical clumsiness or poor grammar. i would follow a good implied author into hell. 

for example, i could write a story from the point of view of a violent abuser. if you were to read it, you wouldn’t be able to say for certain that i, the writer, was not a violent abuser also. but you would be able to tell via the implied author whether or not there is an awareness of the abuse, whether it’s being written with intentionality. not morality, mind you, but artistic purpose. 

the implied author has an idiosyncratic relationship to the reader. sometimes depending on the complexity of the work and the critical reading skills of the reader, the presence of the implied author can be invisible. this is the catalyst, imo, to a significant amount of the present morality discourse. many (if not all) purity officers and antis don’t have the reading skills to be able to see the implied author, or that the moral trespasses that occur in fiction are written intentionally and for a purpose. they believe that anything depicted in fiction is advocating for or promoting that which it’s depicting. 

lolita is kind of the ultimate classic example of the inability of some readers to see the implied author. nabokov even has a fictional preface from the pov of a scholar doing research, flat-out telling us that humbert is a bad guy and Do Not Trust Him. and yet, lolita has been misinterpreted and vilified for decades now.

in that same vein, the implied author is the reason that some stories put a bad taste in our mouths. it’s how we reach the conclusion that a story is racist or sexist or homophobic outside the literal depictions of racism, sexism, and homophobia. how can you witness racism taking place in a story and know that it’s speaking to the experience of racism and not advocating for racism? that’s the presence of the implied author. sometimes, though, you can’t tell. sometimes a writer tries to speak to the experience of something and fails at making clear their own awareness. or sometimes, they’re just not aware at all. 

in fanfiction, the implied author takes place, in part, in the tags. i remember stumbling upon a fic written by a purity officer which depicted an extremely unhealthy, non-negotiated power dynamic. and none of it was tagged. i had no evidence the author was aware that they were even writing something “problematic.” obviously i support their right to depict whatever kind of relationship they want for whatever reason they want, but i did find it a bit off-putting, that this person who was a known harasser in fandom had no seeming understanding that they were writing the very kind of fic they were rallying against.

but, you know, my hands aren’t clean either. until the MFA, i was a very poor reader. for example, in 2010 i read the hunger games for the first time. in 2020 i re-read the series on my kindle, where all my annotations from 2010 had been saved, and so i got to see all my glaring misinterpretations of the text. every time katniss has to get dolled up in the capitol and made beautiful, i left a note like “ugh,” because i thought all depictions of performative femininity were Bad. even though thg is a YA book and i was an honors student in college, i was still unable to see that katniss’s beautifying was commentary on consumerism. i was oblivious to collins’ implied author, the presence in the book that is shaking you by the shoulders and going, THIS IS WHAT’S WRONG WITH SOCIETY. 

but sometimes, like in your case, the opposite situation occurs: you the reader are wider than the implied author, and so some books have little to offer you in terms of depth or insight into the human experience. i don’t mean that to sound pretentious or anything; what i mean is, we all read at different skill levels and for different reasons, and we all get different things out of the stories we read. we’re all at different places in our reading lives, and we all have room to grow.

i hope i explained this clearly enough! hopefully one day i’ll be able to write a formal essay on this, because booth wrote about it in the 60s and a lot has happened in fiction since then. 

[writingwithcolor]

Space based story with prison camps: problematic parallels?

Trigger warnings:

Holocaust

Unethical Medical Experimentation (in the post and resources)

ivypool2005 asked:

I'm writing a sci-fi novel set on Mars in the 25th century. There are two countries on Mars: Country A, a hereditary dictatorship, and Country B, a democracy occupied by Country A after losing a war. Country A's government is secretly being puppeted by a company that is illegally testing experimental technology on children. On orders from the company, Country A is putting civilian children from Country B in prison camps, where the company can fake their deaths and experiment on them. (1/2)

My novel takes place in one of the prison camps. I am aware that this setting carries associations with various concentration camps in history. Specifically, I'm worried about the experimentation aspect, as I know traumatic medical experimentation occurred during the Holocaust. Is there anything I should avoid? How can I acknowledge the history while still keeping some fantasy/sci-fi distance from real experiences -- or is it a bad idea to try to straddle that fence at all? Thank you! (2/2)

We are far from being the only people to have suffered traumatic medical experiments.. 

--Shira

TW: Unethical Medical Experimentation (in the post, and all of the links)

Medical experimentation in history

Perhaps without intending to, you have posed an enormous question. 

I will start by saying that we, the Jewish people, are not the only group to have unethical, immoral, vicious experiments performed on our bodies.  Horrific experimentation has been conducted on Black people, on Indigenous people, on disabled people, on poor people of various backgrounds, on women, on queer people... the legacy of human cruelty is long. Here are some very surface-level sources for you, and anyone else interested to go through. Many, many more can be found.

General Wiki Article on Unethical Human Experimentation

US Specific Article  on Unethical Human Experimentation 

The early history of modern American Gynecology is largely comprised of absolutely inhumane experimentation, mostly on enslaved women (with some notable exceptions among Irish immigrant women)

An Article on Gynecological Experimentation on Enslaved Women

I  also recommend reading Medical Bondage by Deirdre Cooper Owens

The Tuskegee Experiment 

First Nations Children Denied Nutrition

Guatemala Syphilis Experiment

Unit 731

AZT Testing on Zimbabwean Women

Project MKUltra

Conversion Therapy

Medical Experiments on Prison Inmates 

Medical Interventions on Intersex Infants and Children

Again, these are only a few, of a tragic multitude of examples. 

While I don't feel comfortable saying, as a blanket statement, that stories like this should never be fictionalized, it feels important to emphasize the historicity of medical experimentation, and indeed, medical horrors. These things happened, in the real world, throughout history, and across the globe. 

The story of this kind of human experimentation is one of immense cruelty, and the complete denial of the humanity of others. Experimentation was done on unwilling subjects, with no real regard for their wellbeing, their physical pain, the trauma they would incur, the effect it would have on families, or on communities. These are stories, not of random, mythical "subjects," but of human beings. These were Black women, already suffering enslavement, who were medically tortured. These were Indigenous children, who were utterly powerless, denied nutrition, just to see what would happen. These were Black men, lied to about their own health, and sent home to infect their spouses, and denied treatment once it was available. These were Aboriginal Australians, forced to have unnecessary medical procedures, children given brutal gynecological exams, and medications that were untested.. These were inmates in US prisons, under the complete control of the state. These were prisoners of war. These were pregnant people, desperate to save their fetuses, lied to by doctors. These were also Jewish people, imprisoned, and brutalized as part of a systematic attempt to destroy us. 

The story of medical torture, of experimentation without any meaningful consent, of the removal of human dignity, and human rights, is so vast, and so long, there is no way to do it justice. It is a story about human beings, without agency, without rights, it's the story of doctors, scientists, and the inquisitive, looking right through a person, and seeing nothing but parts. This is not some vague plot point, or a curiosity to note in passing, it is a real, terrible thing that happened, and is still happening to actual human beings. I understand the draw, to want to write about the Worst of the Worst, the things that happen when people set aside kindness, and pick up cruelty, but this is not simply a device. This kind of torture cannot be used as authorial shorthand, to show who the real bad guys are. 

On writing this subject - research

If you want to write a fictional story that includes this kind of deep, abiding horror, you need to immerse yourself in it. You need to read about it, not only in secondhand accounts, and not only from people stating facts dispassionately. You need to seek out firsthand accounts, read whatever you can find, watch whatever videos you can find. You need to find works recounting these atrocities by the descendants, and community members of people who suffered. 

Then, when you have done that, you need to spend time reflecting, and actively working to recognize the humanity of the people this happened to, and continues to happen to. 

You have to recognize that getting a stamp of approval from three Jewish people on a single website would never be enough, and seek out multiple sensitivity readers who have personal, familial, or cultural experience with forced experimentation.

If that seems like a lot of work, or overkill, I beg you not to write this story. It's simply too important. 

-- Dierdra

If you study public health and sociology, it is often a given that the intersection of institutional power and marginalized populations produces extreme human rights abuses. This is not to say that such abuse should be treated as an inevitability, but rather to help us understand, as Dierdra says, how often we need to be aware of the risk of treating our fellow humans poorly. Much of modern medical history is the story of the unwilling sacrifices made by people unable to defend themselves from the powers that be. Whether we are talking about the poor residents of public hospitals in France during the 18th century whose bodies were used to advance anatomy and pathology, to vaccine testing in the 19th century, to mental asylum patients in the 20th century who endured isolation, lobotomies, colectomies and thorazine, one can easily see this pattern beyond the Holocaust. 

Even when we shift our focus away from abuse justified by “experimentation”, we have many such incidents of institutionalized state collusion in abuse that have made the news within the last 20 years with depressing regularity. Beyond the examples mentioned above, I offer border migrant detention centers and black sites for America, Xinjiang re-education sites and prisoner organ donation in China, Soviet gulags still in use in Russia, and North Korean forced labor camps (FLCs) for political prisoners as more current examples. I agree with Dierdra that these themes affect many people still alive today who have endured such abuses, and are enduring such abuses. 

More on proper research and resources

Given that you are going to be exploring a topic when the pain is still so fresh, so raw, I think you had better have something meaningful to say. Dierdra’s recommendation to immerse yourself in nonfiction primary sources is essential, but I think you will also want to brush up on many established works of dystopian fiction featuring themes relating to state institutions and the exploitation of vulnerable populations. While doing so, read about the authors and how the circumstances of their environments and time periods influenced their stories’ messages and themes. I further recommend that you do so both slowly and deliberately so you can both properly take in the information while also checking in with your own comfort. 

- Marika

[orion-nottson]

omegaverse is problematic, so let’s talk about it

A/B/O is fun and all, and I can respect it as a kink, but we have to remember it often:

Promotes and normalizes sexism and misogyny (i.e. femininity = weak/bad/punishment, masculinity = strong/good/desirable).

Specifically objectifies, commodifies, and sometimes infantilizes women/AFAB individuals.

Is hyper-patriarchal and exploits uneven gender power dynamics and weaponizes traditional gender roles.

Fetishizes and sexualizes LGBT+ relationships (healthy and unhealthy).

Specifically fetishizes transgender and intersex individuals (i.e. mpreg).

Glorifies and romanticizes domestic abuse, toxic relationships, and abusive relationships.

Animalizes and bestializes people (especially contextually problematic when the person is a POC).

Implicatively paints rape culture in a positive light.

Idealizes unhealthy, toxic, and/or abusive behaviors (i.e. jealousy, possessiveness, anger, etc).

Creates an implicit racial hierarchy wherein the stand-in for race is the rank/“subgender” (i.e. Alpha at the top (White-coded), Sigma (sometimes), Beta, Omega at the bottom (POC-coded).**

If you like A/B/O, whether as a consumer or writer or whatever, I’m not saying that you support any of these ideas. What I am saying, however, is that there needs to be a conversation held about Omegaverse, and its implications and thematic elements. For most of these, it really isn’t hard to see them manifest in A/B/O works (especially the gender and LGBT stuff), because for a lot of them they have become normalized within the genre. I feel that is irresponsible and unwise. These are issues that affect real world people daily, to varying degrees of harm, and a lot of violence occurs to the often marginalized groups that A/B/O tends to exploit.

All I ask is that you recognize these themes in A/B/O and Omegaverse media, because your silence or ignorance on the matter can perpetuate the problem. To be responsible consumers and producers of content, we have to be cognizant of its inherent problems.

I don’t have a complete or all-encompassing list of solutions, but here are some I’ve thought of:

Avoid gendered roles, obligations, and behaviors.

Diversify your A/B/O subgenders.

Don’t resort to stereotypes.

Frame abusive/toxic/criminal behaviors and acts as completely unacceptable, detested, and wrong.

Avoid portraying rape/sexual assault/violence as a “natural” or “inherent” urge/quality.

Subvert the hyper-patriarchal narrative by not always making The Man™ the head honcho.

Resist the temptation to make your LGBT couple’s only personality trait as “We’re queer and we fuck” (same goes for hetero couples tbh).

Remember that characters are still people, even though the work is fictional.

Please be careful about how you write/portray POC characters.

And for any work that may contain sensitive/offensive content, tag your work properly. Always disclose what your story contains.

Again, this post is not meant in any way to call out or demonize you if you enjoy A/B/O. It’s a valid kink, and I even like certain aspects of it. I just believe that it’s always smart to be conscious of the highs and lows of the things you enjoy.

I’m also happy to discuss this with anyone, so please feel free to reach me in any form to talk about what you agree with, disagree with, or are confused by. I always seek to start conversations, not fights, so I do ask that we keep discussions and arguments respectful.

Take care, everyone!

~

** I put asterisks after this last point mostly due to it being conjecture. I don’t have much concrete examples/evidence for this, as it’s a theory I’ve garnered from implicit themes in some A/B/O media. While I do think it holds weight and can be realistically proven, I still need to polish my thesis and do more research on it.

[rpbetter]

"writes dubcon therefore is a freak who should be bullied off the site" ho boy i'm fed up with people acting as if consenting adults writing [insert "problematic" fictional thing here] is the worst thing in the world. seen way too many people justifying harrassment of REAL PEOPLE by "they write thing that triggers me". ok, and? mute the tags or don't follow! "it triggers someone" is not a valid reason to ban a topic. piano music triggers me yet i don't go around demanding everyone stop playing the piano.

Anon, not only is everything you said absolutely valid, but also, thank you for demonstrating that triggers are incredibly varied and as such, we cannot predict everyone's triggers. Making the entire "point" of banning for possible triggers invalidated as hell.

We should be aware of things like the most commonly occurring phobias (things like arachnophobia and coulrophobia that are, additionally, easily triggered by imagery) and tag them. We should be aware of very obvious triggers, that are, again, easily set off by imagery, like blood, eye trauma, and depictions of domestic violence. And we should always read and be aware of our writing partners' stated triggers so that we can tag them appropriately or even decide that it isn't going to work because our muse, canon story, or interests are going to present an unfair situation in this partnership.

But triggers can be highly unusual, as well as activated differently (even at different times) for everyone. I'm not triggered by seeing hotel rooms in pictures or movies, I'm not triggered by writing scenes that take place in them, but I'm triggered to some degree by being in one. It's outrageous oversimplification to act like all triggers are the same, they all display the same way, they're all going to trigger someone on the same basis, everyone's going to react the same to their triggers. There is absolutely no way to prevent 100% of possible triggers for 100% of the population, 100% of the time.

Add to this that way too many people trivialize triggers by throwing around that term to justify the banning of something that makes them uncomfortable or that they take a personal, moral issue with. "I don't like this" and "I'm grossed out by this" and "this makes me feel uncomfortable" is not being triggered. It's just a good way to weaponize the better nature of other people so that they comply.

Most people legitimately do not want to trigger someone, especially if they have triggers and know what it's like. Just like no one wants to be accused of cruelty towards trauma survivors in general, or be designated a pedo, rape apologist, or fascist. They're all things to weaponize in order to isolate, shame, and control. And that's really fucking gross. These are serious, real things that have no business being trivialized to police content, win internet arguments, or garner popularity.

The potential for someone to be triggered isn't a reason to ban anything; we have tags, we have blacklist.

While I'll be the first to say that tumblr's blacklisting can be as shitty as everything else on the site, the primary issue with running into content you don't want to see comes down to two factors: no one tagging/tagging correctly and actively exposing yourself to that content. Going through people's properly done tags and blog warnings about their content in order to "call it out" is actively exposing yourself by choice. You actual walnuts.

Calling people on on their "problematic" content is bringing those topics to the attention of other people. That's the whole point of this gross behavior: look at the freak pedo abuse apologist I found, they write dubcon!! Don't look if you'll be triggered uwu

Buddy, pal, my guy...you just put that on blast for anyone to run across. Maybe their blacklist catches those words in your callout post, maybe it doesn't. Maybe they think you're a safe space because you promote yourself that way, so they click it anyway. Point is, you just willfully and irresponsibly exposed people because it's more important to you to demonize a rando on tumblr RPing something you take issue with. Good job!

Furthermore, dubcon itself is such a hilarious issue to take. Do they realize that isn't always sexual, or? Not? I'm thinking not. Funnily enough, one of the oldest posts I've been working on for this blog is about exactly this topic, the myriad situations that are dubious consent. That doesn't have to be sexual, and neither does it have to be intentionally predatory. You can come up with some amazing character development with a lot of muses in the RPC with dubcon because almost everyone's muse has some manner of trauma that might negate their perception of their own consent...and what do you do then? Is it removing more agency from that muse to shut them down, or is that always the better option? Can you separate your opinion as the mun from your muse's natural reactions? How does this impact the muses involved not just that moment but the next year?

Point is, dubcon isn't always some rapey situation. Even if it was, even if someone is writing it that way, it's literally not your business or your problem.

There's one mutual-in-law on my RP blog that really bothers me. They write things that I find fetishizing, incredibly rapey, all around shit that bothers me. I don't want to see it, some of the things they write makes my damn skin crawl. This person doesn't know it, we certainly don't speak and I don't think they like me very much, but I've repeatedly defended their right, specifically their right as a person with some long-term callouts on them, to write what they want to. I have them blocked and their urls blacklisted so I never have to see my mutual reblogging their threads. It's not a problem because I don't click "show anyway." Why would I, if it genuinely bothers me so much?

That's how you handle things that bother you; you use the tools available to not interact even by accident. Not by launching a morality crusade.

If any of us want to write what we enjoy, we have to allow others that same freedom. It's always a matter of time before this policing grows to include more and more topics, it's been used multiple times to get well-meaning people who don't fall into the general demographics to police queer, BIPOC, and other marginalized groups off of platforms. We've been fortunate in most of the RPC that it implodes on itself before it gets all the way there, but even so, you can see it.

It starts with things that produce a visceral reaction in the great majority of people, positions this with a repeatedly condemned idea presented as solid fact that fiction is reality, and you've got the start of something awful. Today it's something you don't like, maybe even something that triggers you, so you either support it or you quietly allow it to happen. Who needs to write that "freak shit" anyway, can't they just be gross privately? Six months from now, it's something "problematic" that you enjoy like violence that's canon-typical for your muse, or your OTP because they're gay and that's fetishizing, they're cis male and female but one or both is bi and that's bad representation, or they canonically have a rocky relationship so that's romanticizing toxic/abusive relationships.

If you can't care for any other reason, you really should care about how it is going to impact you sooner or later. In an environment like this, you can stay in your space, put warnings on your blog, and tag properly and you're still going to get a callout if the wrong person finds your blog. Just takes a single person with more time, energy, and skewed ideas of justice than they have reading comprehension or common sense.

Again, I cannot encourage people enough to give warnings, but it's difficult to ignore why those warnings are slipping; they're a way to be found, designated as a Problem, and called out. Look, it's another reason why callouts actually make things worse, not better! People put that shit in their rules so you can avoid content, they're being responsible and interested in promoting a safe RPC. Let them do it, damn.

You can't tag everything, and if you've never experienced what a giant series of repetitive tags is like on a screenreader you probably should before you tag seven paragraphs of possible issues. You can tag for visuals, you can tag for the obvious things, and you can tag for what's in the rules you agreed to when you followed/followed back. But you should also warn people that you write "dark topics" on the tin, and expand on that in your rules for specific things like graphic violence, toxic relationships, dubon, and addiction.

That's how responsible adults, not over-aged children, make better decisions about their mental health and general comfort. Not by appointing themselves the watchdogs of the damn RPC, here to protect you whether you want to be or not, find that incredibly insulting or not when you're in one of their categories of people who must be protected, by forcibly banning Problematic Everything. Problematic, of course, being entirely in the eye of the content police.

It's fiction. No one and nothing real was harmed. It's great that you are so invested in the fictional world and people that make you happy, but take a fucking big step back into reality. The real people you're harming with your bullshit had every right to peaceably exist. If what they're writing is triggering to you, stay. away. from. it.

Without any coincidence whatsoever, that's how you get from the base-point of Problematic Material to Problematic Mun. Yeah, it's just fiction, it's just RP, but I also took something out of context OOC or was upset by their tone on their own blog or couldn't exercise the minimal adult logic to remove myself from their presence OOC as well. So, now, you've got OOC behavior being added to the callout, if it wasn't already. Everyone is now ableist, transphobic, racist, and a misogynist because it lends that visceral reaction to the callout and ups the game from just being "y'all so gross you aged up a cartoon character to ship" to "this is REAL and it won't be tolerated! OP is actually a pedophile, they told a sexual joke in a discord server with a minor present and I have the receipts!"

What are the most storied callouts in the entire RPC? I'm absolutely certain the same names came to mind no matter what fandoms you're in, and one of them was "Matt." Another was probably "Ares/Snow". They're all successful and keep being brought up out of the closet anytime people are bored enough because their primary punch is the mun themselves being a predatory threat to the community. The mun is verified to be a bad person. Well, of course, that's got to be repeated, it worked. (Even if it did not, at all, work and only made it harder for people to avoid any of these muns.)

Are there people in the RPC who are legitimately a problem? Absolutely, yes. We're all supposed to be adults, however. Part of being an adult is having and acting upon one's agency. If someone is coercing you into things you are not comfortable with, shut it down. If you have difficulties being certain of those situations, run it by a trusted, honest friend or available, impartial source in the RPC for a second opinion. If you can't handle any manner of confrontation, there really are situations in which it's perfectly alright to block someone without any discussion. It's just the internet, you're in control of your space. Own it.

Minors are a whole other can of fucked up worms I'm not even getting into right now except to say that because a minor exists in a space they were told to stay out of does not mean we ban all topics inappropriate for their consumption.

tl;dr: banning shit doesn't work anyway, the whole idea is predicated upon some incredibly problematic takes IRL, and no, there's no justification for it outside of intense personal problems with one's own importance. That energy would be infinitely better spent volunteering one's time to help real people in crisis or after surviving one, or even oneself in developing some healthier approaches and thought patterns.

[faranae]

Rant incoming (AO3)

I am very ill today so pardon the rambly formatting. Usual disclaimer, opinions don’t automatically imply support of topics, etc etc. I have a few asks about this mess but they are very... Not nice in their phrasing so I’mma just put this out in a normal post.

So. I see the antis are declaring war on the only ‘safe’ place to post fanfic on the internet. Again. None of these users remember the old purges, I assume? “Go back to FFnet!” they yell, forgetting (or unaware of) FFNet’s bans on genres such as choose-your-own-adventures, songfics, and reader-inserts. Or their purges that overwhelmingly targeted queer* content. 

“But Fara,” I hear, “that was years ago!”

Yeah? And we were still there for it. It’s our history! How long ago it occurred doesn’t change the fact it happened. I was there, and it’s not just FFnet that has had this issue! Fanlore has a comprehensive list, but here are a few of the ones I’ve witnessed:

Back in ‘95 I was young, but witnessed second-hand the fallout of an entire fandom collapsing as Anne Rice had all fanfiction surrounding her Interview with the Vampire series taken down. She continued this assault for YEARS, attacking her own fandom again in the 2000s. MANY other companies and individuals have continued this trend over the years;

FF.Net banned/deleted: Porn AND fics involving real people in 2002, script format in 2004 (yes, they banned a FORMAT), choose your own adventure (??) AND readerfic (?!) AND second-person (???) AND songfic in 2005, did a forum purge in 2005, and another purge in 2012;

Livejournal banned/deleted: in 2007 over 500 people were banned based solely on their listed interests. This included not only journals which wrote fiction based on what we might consider “squicky” content, but also the blogs of LGBT users, assault survivors, and advocacy groups. Most fandom history glances over the fact that the group which got the “bad” stuff banned was also equally advocating for the removal of “homosexual” content, which they deemed “just as bad” as the other topics purged;

DeviantART banned/deleted: Adult-oriented fanfic purged in 2010;

Don’t even get me started on all the “innocent” things China has gone after in the past decade, including arresting authors for the crime of writing m/m etc. This is still ongoing today;

Tumblr banned/deleted: 2018 was our own purge, where some pro-ship (yeah most people forget this part) and 18+ blogs/fic were deleted (At least we got a warning! See you next HOMD!);

Wattpad deleted: 2018 saw Wattpad’s own purge of accounts and fics;

What AO3 offers, whether you (or I) personally like it or not, is important. 

The Organization for Transformative Works is non-profit. They focus on so much more than just AO3. They were founded in part to prevent events similar to those listed above from ever happening again. AO3 isn’t trying to replace other archives - in fact, it’s openly against the concept:

Is the OTW trying to replace all other archives?

No. In fact, we hope that other fans will use our archive software, which will be open-source and free to use and modify, to build their own archives. [...] We’d like to be fandom’s deposit library, a place where people can back up existing work or projects and have stable links, not the only place where anyone ever posts their work. It’s not either/or; it’s more/more! 

It was never meant to be your main hosting, it was meant to provide stable links and safe archiving.

I will take AO3 where problematic content can be (and is!) tagged and easily avoided (if not outright reported, which is still a thing) over a site that bends to the will of over excited virtue-signallers any day. 

It’s never about removing “just one bad thing”. It cascades every time, usually catching victims or otherwise innocent LGBTQ and other marginalized groups in the process. Let me say that again:

When content is policed beyond what is legally enforceable, it cascades. Fandom loses every time. 

Full stop. 

-

*And yes, I know the word is controversial. I’m queer. I’m not calling you or your content queer without your consent. I genuinely hate that I even have to say this in 2020.

/endrant

[duhragonball]

Disinterpretation

I finally finished the Sarah Z video about “pro vs. anti”.   It’s pretty long, and I ended up watching it in chunks over several days, but I think it’s worth watching, especially if you’re sort of partially connected to online fandom, but not enough to be aware of all the lingo. 

As I expected, the whole thing was vague and confusing because the people involved in the conflict made it vague and confusing.   In theory, the full terms would be “pro-shipping” and “anti-shipping”, but it seems like it’s more about particular kinds of ships that could be considered controversial.  But that’s a slippery slope, and apparently the whole conflict mutated into both sides deciding that every hypothetical relationship between fictional characters is either equally valid or equally dangerous.  

Long story short, it’s just purity culture, which was what everyone on Tumblr was calling it around 2012.  But now, if you’re a sane person who genuinely asks: “Who gives a fuck about Voltron?”, these people will jump your ass and accuse you of being on the side of their enemies.  “Children have died over the importance of Lotor/Hagger!   Your callous indifference proves that you yourself must have murdered children!” 

I think what Sarah Z really hit upon in this video was that media consumption has become so ingrained in our culture that people feel like it has to go hand-in-hand with our morality.   That is, it’s not enough for me to watch Star Trek, I have to justify Star Trek as evidence that I’m a good person.  Maybe this is where the expression “guilty pleasure” comes from.   Conversely, it’s not enough for me to not watch Dr. Who, I have to somehow convince everyone that Dr. Who was invented by the devil.

I’m pretty sure the Reylo ship has a lot to do with this, since it’s kind of understood to be a dark, problematic concept, and fans either embrace its flaws or recoil in horror because of them.   Star Wars itself is a dumb story about space wizards, so people try to give the debate more weight by linking it to freedom of self expression and/or enabling real world harm.   Suddenly it’s not enough to just think two actors would look cute making out instead of fighting.   Now it’s this battlefield for the soul of civilization or something.

I grew up in the 80′s, when “concerned parents” and grifters would accuse the Smurfs and metal bands of promoting satanism and witchcraft.   I used to hear stories of teens going out into the woods in the middle of the night to do occult stuff, and all I could ever think about was: “Why would anyone bother wandering out in the woods in the middle of the night?”  Which is why “concerned parents” turned their attention to things that were closer to home, like Saturday morning cartoons.   It had nothing to do with the content; it was just about finding a safe, accessible target for their hysteria.   Some people want to go on a crusade without leaving the house, so they pick a fight with Papa Smurf instead of confronting the real evils in the world.  Even as a kid, I knew this was a con, because I’d watched the show for myself and knew it was too saccharine to be threat to anyone.

The pro/anti folks have tried to disguise this with a lot of terminology.   I wondered why they seemed to reluctant to use the full terms “pro-shipper” and “anti-shipper”, and it’s probably a couple of things.   First, the word “shipper” is basically an admission that this is pointless bullshit that doesn’t matter, and they’d like to avoid that connotation.   Second, they seem to have decided that this goes beyond shipping itself, into practically anything else they want it to involve.  It’s all part of the con, which is to make you believe that it’s “us vs. them”, and you can be part of “us” by curating specific attitudes about Steven Universe.

Seriously, “about Steven Universe” is such an incredible punchline.  You can make anything funnier by adding those three words to the end of a sentence.   “Do not interact if you blog about Steven Universe.”   “Hey, what’s up, YouTube, this is SSJ3RyokoLover69, and this is going to be kind of a serious video about Steven Universe.”   “Mrs. Johnson, the results of your biopsy are in, and I have some bad news about Steven Universe.”   It’s a fucking kids show.   “Oh no, all the characters look like the characters in all the other kids shows!”   Yeah, that’s because it’s a kids show.   Marvin looks like Garfield, this isn’t new.

The common denominator here seems to be that both sides try to wrap themselves in the flag of vulnerable groups: impressionable minors, trauma survivors, harassment victims, etc.   The “pros” want to protect those people so that they can feel free to explore weird subject matter on their own terms, and the “antis” want to protect the same people from being exposed to weird subject matter that they might not want to see.   It’s all about establishing a moral high ground.   Back in the day, it was called “sanctimony”. 

But people get roped into this, because at their core, people want approval, and this stupid conflict offers them a sense of community.  As long as you support the cause, whatever it may be, you’ll have this online friend network that appears to support anything you do.   But if you deviate from their norm, you’ll be cast out.    Does this sound familiar?

To use a more familiar example, I still sometimes find people clamoring about Gochi vs. Vegebul.   I’ve never understood this, because both ships were canon, and I never saw much direct evidence of a war between them, but people would still talk about how crazy the Vegebul shippers were, and how crazy the Gochi shippers were, and it was like some huge thing going on just over the hills.   It’s the same idea, since the idea that you could like both or neither never seems to occur to anyone involved.   I never gave a shit, because I used to see the same dumb agendas in the Harry Potter fandom.

Okay, so let me take you back.  It’s 2005 through 2011, and I’m hateblogging all seven Harry Potter novels, because fuck you, that’s why.  The funny thing I encountered was that occasionally fans seemed to want to pretend like my bashing of certain characters was proving them right somehow.    They were like “See?  He hates Ron Weasley too!  That proves that Seamus Finnegan is the coolest guy ever.”   The Slytherin stans would do this all the time, because I would constantly take the piss out of the Gryffindor characters for being self-important dopes.   I think they just liked hearing it from an outside perspective.   But I had to keep reminding them all that I hated all of them.   Every character from Harry Potter sucks ass. Voldemort was my favorite, but only because he was the one guy who wanted to kill all of the others.   But he sucks too because he failed. 

And the shippers were the same way.   I’d say something shitty about Ron, because Ron sucks, and some smartass Joss Whedon fan would be like “Yes!  Boost the signal!  That is why Harry/Hermione is the best ship!”  And I’d be like “No, Harry and Hermione suck at least as bad as Ron does.  They’re all terrible and I hate them.”   I really do think there was some sort of Stockholm Syndrome going on with Harry Potter books, where everyone secretly knows they suck, but the fans sort of latch on to one or two characters and go like “Well, he’s not as shitty as the rest.”   Like finding spaghetti in the trash and picking out the meatball with the least amount of lint on it.   Then you’d go and start a flamewar with some other starving person over whether your meatball is shittier than theirs.  This is what people mean when they say to read another book. 

Anyway, the big thing I picked up from Sarah Z’s video is “disinterpretation”, a term coined by MSNBC columnis Zeeshan Aleem.   The Twitter thread is worth a read, but the short version is that he once remarked that a Julia Louis-Dreyfus routine wasn’t very good, and someone got mad at him for insinuating that women are incapable of being funny.    They just took his dissatisfaction with one performance by one comedian as being a universal condemnation of women comedians in general.  And this sort of thing is all over the internet.   Everyone sees what they want to see and then they take it as permission to overreact.  

I ran into this myself a while back, because someone saw who I interacted with on Twitter and decided that they’re all bad guys and if I have any interaction with them, then that makes me a bad guy too.   At the time I tried to play it cool, but the more I think about it, the more it ticks me off.   And over the course of that conversation, it was said that I don’t talk about myself much, and that’s kind of funny, because all I ever do on social media is write long-ass blog posts like this one.  I don’t expect anyone to memorize them, or even read them all the way through, but when I write all this stuff and someone goes out of their way to say they don’t know anything about me, the message is that they just didn’t pay attention to what I was saying, and they didn’t bother to try.

So I’m a little jaded from that, because I got called out for a bunch of stuff I didn’t even do or say, and apparently that’s just a thing that happens.   People will reject you for completely arbitrary reasons, not because of anything you actually said or did, and you’re left thinking you made some terrible mistake.   Except, no, I’ve seen it happen to other people, people a lore more conscientious than I am, and if they can’t satisfy the bullshit purity standards, then I never stood a chance.   If the game is rigged so I can’t win, then I’m not going to play.  

And it’s that same condition that probably draws people into these online holy wars, because if you declare yourself for the pro or anti side, at least then you’ll have a posse backing you up.   Only they don’t support you, they support your willingness to support them.    Once your commitment to their agenda wavers, even in the slightest, they will turn against you.   

Sarah Z suggests that both sides of the war drop the pro and anti terms, since they lost all meaning long ago.   But that just invites a new set of useless terms to perpetuate the same cycle.   Her more useful advice is for fandom people to broaden their horizons.   She got a lot of flak for tweeting “Go outside” once, but the ironic thing is that it’s sound advice.   I had lunch with my mom yesterday and it was just nice getting away from things for a while.   People need to do that more often, and unfortunately it feels like it’s harder to do than ever before.

But “go outside” isn’t just a literal thing.   It can mean going beyond your usual haunts, reading the same books, watching the same shows, rehashing the same conversations.   I think the reason this stuff always revolves around “shipping” is because there seems to be this deep-seated compulsion to pair fictional characters off like this, and for a lot of folks it’s the only way they can consume a story, so they do.   And they do it lot, and there’s a lot of them, and they do it the same way every time, and lo and behold the same old conflicts start up.   So maybe “go outside” should mean “go outside of that cycle once in a while.”   Just a thought. 

[mc-critical]

(Okay head’s up, I’m going to be on your blog a lot since I absolutely LOVE your takes and analysis’.) Do you think (strictly theatrically speaking, not in the non-fictional and historical sense) Suleyman really loved Hürrem? As I watched the show I found it very silly how other characters of the show would remark how Suleyman “loved Hurrem so much he refused to ever take another concubine again” because..he did? And multiple times from what the viewers have seen too. Majority of the times the concubines/other women in Suleyman’s life (Isabella, Firüze etc) were only removed from his life via Hurrem’s intrigues, not by Suleyman’s decision. What do you think?

Aww, thank you so much for the nice words! 💕 Be here as much as you wish, absolutely no problem! (there are some takes I've had in the past that are quite passive-agressive in retrospect 😅, so I might as well also give you a heads up.)

As for your question, I think yes, SS loves Hürrem, but in his own, sometimes honestly incomprehensible (even outright toxic), way.

The writers perhaps wanted to hint at love at first sight in the beggining, due to the way she fainted in his arms in the first episode and how he kept thinking about her (that Ibrahim had to tell him that where he was supposed to go was the other direction) and the wave of excitement and anticipation he felt while waiting for her. But when they spent two nights together and he truly got to know her, was where it was at. Her uncanny ability to make him laugh, entertain him in a way no one else had before, was what impressed him first. He felt calm, safe in her presence, and wanted to keep this probably forever, along with him doing whatever else he wanted in the meantime regardless.

I feel the point of contention of whether he truly loved her or not comes from the fact that, the show wanted to make their love story integral to their both historically thematic and narratively soapy story - what I mean is, they wanted to make it the central plotline. And as a central plotline, it creates and/or extends on the other plotlines, having to show the other characters' reactions in excessive detail and even center parts of their motivations around it. You see how S01 and S02 of the series played this aspect of Hürrem and Süleiman's story completely straight - it presented it as The Love, this big, (thematically and narratively) unprecedented thing, this vital aspect of the series' DNA, the very tool that moves the story forward, that is only bound to have consistent narrative opposition: and I'm not referring only to Isabella and Firuze and all the other concubine arcs that force love triangles suited for the genre, it all is also about the continuous, frequent attacks on their love, that only stopped when the show made a complete genre shift by the second half of S04 and didn't have much time left. They worked with the idea that the more this love is attacked and antagonized, the stronger it becomes and the more shall people root for it. That's where the problem comes, because in retrospect, you can honestly see that these attacks played a major part in provoking a bunch of stuff SS did for Hürrem. Mahidevran beating her to death and poisoning her? SS gives Hürrem a chamber only for herself. (the other one she shared with Ayşe.) Them accusing her incessantly? Valide complaining about her? The various attacks? He continues to care even more for her. Valide and Ibrahim arranging that attack with the bandits? He married her. And one would wonder: is this even genuine or does the writing simply use her enemies' failings to lead Hürrem to SS? Is that the only reason he actually cares? What does MC want to achieve?

There are people who say that the entire point of SS loving her was that she was so different from everyone else (and that the concubine arcs ruined it), and yes, it was like that, in the very beginning. First impression is important and he truly began to enjoy her a lot since their first two nights, for her bringing him something new. However, both of Hürrem and Süleiman's characters and their relationship overall, drastically evolved throughout the show. When the first impression had passed and Hürrem gained SS's utmost attention and she became pregnant, she very quickly started taking stuff for granted, considering him only hers (the demonstration of the ring in front of Mahi; the twinge of jealousy towards Ibrahim.) and as a parallel, him still being a Sultan, having to follow the customs anyway, and calling Gülnihal in his chambers twice. Both of their ways of living clash, because Hürrem wants a monogamous relationship and takes every sign of care for him at face value, while SS lives in an environment that wants him to do what is expected of him.

SS both loves and hates when Hürrem stands up to his will. There have been times where she acted rashly, making borderline silly accusations (like blaming little Mustafa for the fire in E10), where she made moves out of jealousy (like stealing Isabella's pendant) and where she was complaining to him for something she didn't succeed to get (like Valide's chambers in S03). Süleiman sees her rebellious nature and goes out of his way to do moves to spite her. (this guy invited Isabella on a halvet out. of. sheer. spite and nothing else! smh honestly..) But there are as many times where he simply covers what she did (like killing Isabella) and caves to her demands anyway! Why would he cave to her demands and close his eyes on so much stuff she did, if he doesn't feel at least something for her?

The different treatment she gets also comes into play, because no matter how many times she's attacked and he seemingly stood by and watched aside from more serious cases, all it honestly does, is trigger his protective instincts. Despite of all the bumps on the road, Hürrem always was his darling, his special snowflake, whom he clearly felt something for. If anything, he wouldn't have freed her and this isn't something he would do to just anyone. (as we see how he refused to free Mahidevran when she desperately begged him to in E45.; and what's important, him freeing Hürrem wasn't provoked by someone else attacking her.) And when she makes all these jealousy fits, he listens, because Hürrem's character development represents full adaption to the circumstances of the harem, and by that, getting just like the others and learning their tricks. This has turned him off numerous times and when she shows that rebellious side of hers yet again, he couldn't help, but listen. What he said to Ibrahim after he sent off the Russian concubines, is especially telling: "No. (I don't love Hürrem as much as she loves me.) But now I fell in love with her even more." This summarizes extremely well what he thinks of her at this point, because while he's ready to cut her some slack, he's still helpless to her.

Though, later down the line, it gets very abundantly clear that if he loves her, he doesn't love her because she's different and she's rebellious, but because she's loyal to him. Infinitely loyal. She loves him this much, that she's not only ready to willingly drink poison and kill herself for him anytime, but she doesn't even want to give up his throne. It is all very well highlighted by his infamous line to Fatma: "Hürrem is not an angel, but she has something that none of you have. Loyalty! Absolute loyalty... / "She never saw anyone else on the throne but me." Over the years, SS began to live with the dramatically increased paranoia of betrayal, turning his natural ego from a strength, to an everlooming weakness. It destroyed every single relation of his, except for Hürrem. She's the only person that wasn't targeted by this crippling paranoid fear, he perhaps found piece and tranquil in her presence, because he knew that she wouldn't ever turn her back on him. And all these times he got mad at her, he had halvets to spite her, he caused her to prove to him how much he loved her, it turned out to be not only because his ego was tempered with, he wanted to test her loyalty the entire time. And all the times he prevented her from digging deeper into him and told her to stay out of political matters, now in S04 he no longer does that, since she actively joins every single conversation. Hürrem and Süleiman's relationship was put in a thorough deconstruction in S03 and S04, because after the slow Cerebus Syndrome transition began occurring and Yılmaz Şahin fully took over the script, the narrative stopped playing the love story completely straight and it put in the impression that it isn't focused on as much as it was before. So its more problematic aspects began showing even more down the line and it all lead into this very realization. The last episodes of Hürrem's life, while seeming like a cop-out, are genuine love letters for the fans and for Hürrem, with having Süleiman realize who he will lose and what will happen next, giving her the attention he never did. (I think the best Hürrem and Süleiman scenes we got, were in these episodes, along with the ones in the beginning episodes and right after the wedding, in E43-44.)

[And the episodes after Hürrem's death also make us question whatever he cares for her, because all he did there was straightforwardly betray her dying wish. Still, we should keep in mind that SS was at the peak of his downward spiral and it was Hürrem's death that sealed everything for him - losing the person who loved you dearly and was the most loyal one to you in your book, only caused catastrophic and devastating results, with SS going in her chambers in E136 and begging her to forgive him, right before the big fight between Selim and Beyezid began. There is everything else he did, yes, but losing HER is what caused him the truly neverending misery and what pushed him to such extremes, the loss of her loyalty broke him and finished him.]

Isabella and Firuze and Nazenin also add to these tests of loyalty, as well as being love triangles, added in for the drama. I feel SS did this not only to spite Hürrem, but also because he liked her unpredictability and he truly never expected for her to be this loyal in his eyes. It is possible he thought at some point due to his paranoia that she would give up on him, betray him, knowing that she also has her own ambitions. But seeing that none of that happened... perhaps all these continuous rifts in their relationship strived to show how strongly she loved him after all and maybe he came to appreciate that, even if it were too late. {note: the others said that SS loved Hü not exactly because of him refusing to take in concubines, but rather not taking concubines in for a long time. It illustrates more their hopes and beliefs (Mahidevran in E61: "Did you really think that his majesty couldn't be with other women?") and arguments presented when they need to win someone over for their cause to get rid of her. (like Hatice with Afife in S03) I always considered the Firuze arc more of a thematic tool than a dramatic one: aside from showing an actual continuous rift between Hürrem and SS, it breaks Hürrem's season two finale victory in half, enforcing even further that there isn't just any true long lasting victory that the themes won't condemn in this franchise. Nazenin was more for the parallels (Nurbanu - Nazenin; Hürrem - Gülnihal), while I never fully figured out what Isabella Fortuna was for, tbh.}

{He regarded Isabella as more of a toy, unfortunately, even with him saying that it was all somehow "a political game" with her and we had only him succumbing to his "manliness", protecting her from the snake and inviting her to a halvet only to spite Hürrem. With Firuze it was, admittedly, a bit more complicated, because he sure was infatuated with her to some extent, recited the exact same poetry to her, as well, but then again, we have the poisoning as a factor, and we have no idea to what extent it began to affect his psyche, besides him having to lay in bed in E78. I don't think Hürrem's intrigues had anything to do with the feelings he had for both of them, and I believe he would at some point have let them all go, exactly due to his ego and loyalty complex.}

I don't say that Süleiman's love for Hürrem is a healthy one, because oh noo, IT IS NOT, very far from it, in fact. Especially with the writers still keeping the status-quo with them the exact same even after he freed and married her, and for a while, it never made an actual difference. However, it is something that he didn't feel for anyone else in this harem and I would say that he indeed cherished it a lot.

[nightswithkookmin]

Maybe people are just triggered by the phrase 'alternative facts' or 'facts'. Its easy to get stuck on a phrase and its negative associations within the wider world. Why they would go so far as to send hatred your way is beyond me (I hope you are ok).

Ahhh I see...

Whatever Jimin said. Lol

That would have to be ignorance and hypocrisy then wouldn't it? They are shippers too, right? Or are these noneshippers?

A fact is something that is actual and proven to be universally true as opposed to a theory or belief.

An Alt Fact: Is a belief you treat as fact.

All and any statement that says JungKook and Jimin of BTS or any other ship in BTS is real, are gay, in a gay relationship, are boyfriends, having sex in their real life is an Alt Fact. Can't answer for shit when they are sued now can they? Lmho.

Statements like these are just delusions, beliefs and opinions that we shippers tend to treat as facts within the shipping industry. Lol.

I legit thought all these 'she treats her opinions as facts' rumblings were coming from nonshippers with genuine concerns but if it's coming from shippers- I can't take them seriously. Lmho.

If such a distinction isn't made then we not only would be opening ourselves up to possible litigations for libel and defamation but to many moral criticisms such as and not limited to assuming the sexuality and gender of these boys- a problem that comes naturally with shipping and is especially profound in shipping same sex OTPs.

I see a lot of these 'shippers' put up 'disclaimers' such as that they 'ship' Jikook but do not 'assume anything' about them to try to disassociate from and mitigate the criticisms that comes with shipping same sex idols in a romantic context- but that's a misnomer or perhaps, at best, oxymoronic. Lmho.

Chilee, how are you gonna claim you 'ship' two men and believe them to be dating eachother but then claim you are not assuming anything about their gender and sexuality? For them to be dating, they'd have to be queer, no?

If you don't want to assume anything then don't ship them at all or ship them but as 'friends' -bros, bros thangs. Lol.

In which case, you have no business meddling in the business of those who ship them romantically. Damn. But it's as simple as that.

Shipping opposite sex couples is not the answer either. It is equally problematic as shipping same sex couples- either way you are assuming the sexuality of these Idols. If it's not normal to assume they are gay, it's not normal to assume they are straight either.

Shipping in general is very problematic regardless of whether you are a trad or altshipper.

What's worse, we spit out lengthy dissertations and engage in arguments to try to disprove that other Male to Male ship within the same group isn't 'real.' Do you see the problem here?

If Taekook or any other ship in BTS, besides Jikook, turns out to be 'real' we would have spent years tormenting and invalidating two gay men, defining their relationship for them through our own lens and dismissing their right to be whatever they want to be with their sexuality. If Jikook turn out to be straight, we would have done the same thing to them. Chilee.

And if you are an Alt shipper such as myself, you get that extra checkmark for wanting to 'out' or attempting to 'out' your OTP if they are in fact a real gay couple- we all suck my guy. Lol.

Seriously though, these are the issues we ought to be concerned with and have conversations on- as different types of shippers, if we want to be woke or fix the shipping community. Not go to war over disclaimers and tags and shit. What goes on! Chilee.

And while we are at it, we ought to talk about one of the main differences between tradshipping and altshipping: Fetishization, Objectification and appropriation of gay life.

As a disclaimer, this is not to defend my opinions or theories- Let the records show. My opinions and theories are just that. But I have read theories and opinions from other altshippers that are very different from mine but they all seem to have one thing in common- How do I articulate this...

Follow me-

Tradshippers are more willing to accept and uWu at Jeonlous and Jimlous- which are alternative facts and theories by the way, but would flinch at theories that suggest or imply Jikook may very well be dealing with microaggressions and other subtle variations of homophobia within the company- catch my drift, I'm trying not to get sued. Lmho.

Do you see what I mean?

Tradshippers who believe Jikook is real tether the line of Altshipping. Supporting Jikook is to see and most importantly treat them as real 'gay' men- which means you ought to understand and see that they can experience serious issues and pains that any and all LGBTQ plus couples experience within a conservative community such as S.K.

To not see this or assume, when others point it out, that they are being 'dramatic' 'spinning wild accusations' 'writing fiction' and all these other slurs people throw around in these streets is to expose the homophobia inherent in tradshipping.

Heteronormativity in tradshipping is homophobic, dismissing possible real life pains and experiences of the OTP you claim is gay is equally homophobic or at best objectifying, fetishizing and treating these queer people as fantasies and not people.

Picking and choosing the kumbaya aspect of their relationship and despising any statement that contradicts your fantasy of them is objectification, fetishization and frankly homophobic- especially if those issues being pointed out go to the root of issues that gay people face on a daily basis.

It's no different from Tuktukkers who define the relationship of their OTP for them and dismiss the pain of one of their OTP when that person have, over the years, expressed discomfort with being shipped with the other OTP in a romantic sense- get out of your imagination, or even expressed his loneliness and longing for a partner- Blue & Grey and the plethora of ways he's expressed that he is single and not in a romantic relationship with JK.

Conversely, they invalidate the relationship of the pair that expresses a desire to be shipped and actually wants to be shipped with eachother and have gone over and beyond to create the impression they are a couple- even if coincidentally. It's the same way they dismiss the desires and experiences of JK- who have time and time again proven that Jimin means more to him than just a brother or friend and yet they keep forcing the bro tag on them. Chileee. In my opinion. Sigh.

It's one thing to disagree with people's opinions, it's another to use dismissive tone and language especially when the other opinion is about issues that real people within the 'community' faces. That can be very insensitive. Know what I mean?

And the fact, people don't understand the difference between opinions curated to pander to followers who just want the good stuff and want to fetishize their OTP without reservations by coming up with bogus theories such as that one of their OTP is a slut and a grinch terrorizing their fantasies; and theories such as that 'a company which has sued a 12yr old child for spreading misinformation but did not sue a shop that owed it's talent a duty to protect his privacy and instead asked the shop to lay low- after issuing a public statement that they were going to sue on behalf of their talent,' that that is a double entendre.

Its occured to me tradshippers worry about their hair and how they look within the shipping community but chileee me my altshippers worry about not getting our ass sued by BigHit for all the things we think is going on within the company. Lol.

The term alternative fact, delusional, delulu, fiction, allegedly and all these other epithets and fine sobriquet that Tradshippers abhor are honestly an altshipper's friend. Chileee.

Jikook is real. That is an alternative fact untill Jikook come out as gay, on their own- if they in fact are. I can't prove it. I simply believe it. I disassociate from anyone who doesn't think that is an alternative fact.

That's not to dismiss the concerns that these people express beneath all the noise- I share some of them as well, especially if I believe it's gonna get me sued. lol.

I worry for people who have been exposed to the normalization of fetishization, objectification and latent homophobia prevalent within tradshipping.

But at the time too, I worry about 'immature" 'impressionable tradshippers' who are new to altshipping or come across my posts in medias res.

I'm still dialoguing with the 'other side' to see how best to resolve this. I'm open to suggestions.

Now can we move on from this topic? I vote more shipping, less hubbub hubbub. Lol.

Oh and as a disclaimer, I'm no expert on anything other than my opinions. I do not speak for the LGBTQ plus community. Everyone has their own unique experiences.

As always, this is just my opinion.

And thank you, Anon for sharing this with me. It's helped a lot. Thanks to everyone that's shed more light on the situation. Think Yall relate better to them than I do. Lol.

Please keep supporting Jikook and think of what it means for them if they really are real. Namaste

Signed,

GOLDY

[lachryphage]

my bnha ships are decidedly Wholesome™ so I’ve found it refreshing to join the Gorillaz fandom and explore 2doc, an inherently “problematic” ship. but this contrast highlights the issues I have with the concept of “wholesomeness” and the reduction of characters and ships to the extremes of Pure~ uwu Unproblematic Fluff or Worst Vile Abuse If You Like This You Should Be Executed.

while I don’t believe that fiction and reality have a direct cause-and-effect relationship, I see similar attitudes increasingly applied to real life situations and I find this deeply concerning. healthy relationships are not devoid of conflict, unhealthy relationships aren’t always abusive, and even the best of people often carry heavy baggage that can negatively impact their interpersonal relationships.

in bnha I primarily ship erasermight (and secondarily, erasermic, or the rare, coveted, allerasermic). although this ship is not devoid of drama, it’s generally accepted that it’s an Unproblematic ship by all but the most zealous of Purity Police. but the pro-ship community surrounding erasermight approaches it in a fundamentally different way than antis would.

while there is plenty of fluff, I would say that the vast majority of the content we produce for erasermight is an exploration of the unhealthy aspects of the characters. both Aizawa and Yagi have been through absolute hell, and their experiences have marred them with flaws fundamental to their characters. these flaws have the potential to fuck up any relationship between the two, and often the way we depict them directly explores this. it’s a wholesome ship because it is two genuinely good people -- who genuinely care for one another -- trying to understand their mutual love. but we do not shy away from delving into what antis consider “abusive” behavior. (anyone up for some impulsive, impromptu, non-negotiated bdsm that goes too far?)

personally, I prefer the realism brought through acknowledging characters’ gray areas but I do of course believe you can like pure, sugar-sweet, tooth-rotting fluff without necessarily being an anti. I’ve just found that in the extremity of this rising issue, it’s that content and only that content that’s considered acceptable.

and thus, we find ourselves now at 2doc.

the Gorillaz fandom is predominantly zealous antis; it’s a radically different climate than the type of fandom I’ve grown accustomed to in my happy little corner of bnha. the most popular ship is the subject of much of this controversy because of the undeniable abuse that Murdoc enacts upon 2D. generally, fans either wholly condemn 2doc, or insist that it’s only acceptable if Murdoc undergoes some kind of therapy during which he learns to become a Good Person capable of a Healthy Loving Relationship with 2D.

whether you want their relationship to (eventually) be “wholesome” or not, I strongly believe that this is a disservice to the complexity of both characters.

whether or not Murdoc is a Good person is highly debatable, and a discussion of that particular topic necessitates a deep exploration of ethics and what it means to be a good person. and as much as we might want such a thing to be simple -- for our own understanding of ourselves and the world at large -- it isn’t simple. but that’s a discussion for a different time. whatever you believe, “canon” (also a highly debatable subject in the context of Gorillaz) depicts Murdoc as both decidedly vile and unexpectedly, genuinely caring. 

I’d like to clarify that I’m not against “out of character” depictions -- I take issue with there being only a few “acceptable” ways to depict a character. and in Murdoc’s case, he must either be condemned as irredeemably evil, or reformable into a fully Good person. this results in the complete reduction of his character and everything that makes him compelling.

both the Unproblematic depictions of 2doc and the complete condemnation of 2doc similarly reduce 2D -- he becomes the Good to Murdoc’s Evil.

2D is considerably nicer than Murdoc. he’s pretty(?) and charming and doesn’t seem to do anything with malice or even bad intentions. Murdoc takes advantage of his trusting, clueless nature. but 2D is still very much a complex character with decidedly shitty behaviors with the potential to contribute unhealthy dynamics to 2doc. 

outside the predominant attitudes of the Gorillaz fandom, people enjoy unhealthy, often depraved depictions of 2doc, pushing the abuses between them to the extremes. in these depictions I have found more acknowledgement of these characters’ complexities, so I do prefer them to the Unproblematic brand, but ultimately they also fail to satisfy my personal preference for realism (I know, I’m really quite boring, don’t @ me!!!).

it is with this context that I’d like to return to the concept of wholesomeness and how I categorized erasermight as a “wholesome” ship:

“it is two genuinely good people -- who genuinely care for one another -- trying to understand they’re mutual love.”

in my opinion, 2doc can’t be defined as wholesome, at least not entirely. I think there is real potential for moments of wholesomeness to occur between them, and to me that’s where the ship becomes the most rewarding. 

I have never seen someone claim 2D is a bad person, and while I wouldn’t say Murdoc is a Good person, he has undeniable potential for good. and so the first “criteria” of wholesomeness is neither fulfilled nor denied -- it’s a gray area, something you could push one way or another depending on your inclination. do they genuinely care for each other? of course, you can interpret characters how ever you please, but I think there is plenty of canon evidence that they do genuinely care for one another. so finally… do they have mutual love? perhaps that is the ultimate ambiguity: love, yet another human concept that necessitates deep interrogation to answer -- if it is answerable at all. but that’s a discussion for another time.

if you haven’t noticed yet, the deeper we go, the more questions we find, the more complex things get, the wider these gray areas become… the more obvious it is that 2doc is neither entirely devoid of “wholesomeness” nor unsalvageably abusive. that’s what makes it interesting. that’s what makes it real. that’s what makes it worth exploring, that’s what allows us to investigate potential real-life relationship dynamics, what allows us to recontextualize and better understand our own experiences. it’s what makes it -- in my humble opinion -- beautiful. 

I strongly believe in the power of fiction to help us understand our world and the people who populate it. of course fiction doesn’t have a congruent cause-and-effect relationship with reality, actually, I’d argue it goes the other way. fiction is a mirror in which we can see the current state of our society -- its ideals, fears, hopes… and similarly we can see our own personal lives.

my fear is that the growing push for purity in fiction is the symptom of people desperate to reduce their own realities into extremes. that perhaps, in their own lives, these people categorize everyone as either an Abuser or a Victim, that all actions are Right or Wrong, that hurting people is a preventable, evil action rather than an inevitability of being alive… but, of course, that is a different discussion for a different time.

[trilies]

Someone tried to come up with a “sfwrarepair week” for a fandom i’m in because they had problems with the mods of the actual rarepair week shutting down wank and being open to all rarepairs

but their interest post was, like. terrible.

and i had to write a super long response to it because it frustrated me so much, with the op clearly not caring about actual csa survivors despite ~wanting to help them~

but then the post disappeared from the main tag and i couldn’t reblog the post even from the op’s original site and so this has just been hanging around in a plurk paste i’ve had open for weeks now, so i figured i should just fling it out there because i’m not wasting that work lmao

This post (and if I’m honest, the base idea) is actually harmful to actual CSA survivors and I’d like to call attention to this, especially since the OP isn’t giving the impression that they’re interested in the words of an actual CSA survivor.

I’m going to go in order of the post to give my criticism.

1. “being a safespace for minors, csa victims, incest survivors, people of color, LGBT individuals, etc.”

If this were just about making people feel safe, then there would be zero need to judge or insult people outside the group as occurs repeatedly throughout this post - the focus would be on the people IN the group.

For that matter, you wouldn't make an open call for a group like this anyway because the people in it would all have different comfort levels, so you can't just go "oh all this content will be safe for you" - you don't even know what their needs are yet. How can you guarantee that?

“Safe” ships, even those defined by the OP, can still be written in a way that is triggering or problematic.

Triggers aren't just in what the relationship is, they can be in the subject matter or the theme or what happens in the fic and it's like...okay, how much are you screening for? How are you protecting your members beyond just screening what ships are allowed?

A group actually meant to help abuse survivors, people with triggers, etc would not just have a flat set of rules set out before it's even got members, it would be organically constructed with consideration to the people in it and what their specific needs are.

That is only speaking of CSA and incest survivors as well... because that’s all this post suggests. It offers nothing in terms of how it would explicitly help queer fans, or fans of color. What it does offer for CSA survivors? (The only one I would say I am qualified to speak of in terms of experience.) Only vague platitudes that, from my perspective, only apply to the ideal of CSA survivors. Not actual CSA survivors, like those who do ship things you don’t approve of because it helps them recover.

Which actually leads us to

2. “this means there would not be ANY pedophilic [...] ships”

First of all, as a CSA survivor: stop using “pedophilia” as a description for fictional ships. This dilutes both the actual meaning and the seriousness of the word, which in turn harms actual victims as that word is robbed from them. Use an actual definition.

Because that’s the second issue with this statement, in that there is no actual definition given. That is a problem in the current fandom climate because, along with diluting the seriousness of the word, the meaning now varies wildly from person to person.

By “pedophilic”, do you mean a ship featuring someone 18 or up with someone beneath that age? What about characters where it’s unclear, such as Xanxus, who was frozen at age 16 and one could argue that he’s still that age? Or that he’s not because anime? What about with a gimmick that features time travel, such as the canon instance of Hana liking TYL Lambo and not recognizing or liking him as 5 year old Lambo? Where do the Arcobaleno fit in any of this?

By “pedophilic”, do you mean any ships featuring characters that are under the age of 18? Is it only pedophilic if it’s an 18+ adult shipping them? How are you going to check for that? What about the canon time travel used as both a gimmick and an arc?

Other types who allege they’re against “pedophilic ships” have said that it’s any ship with a height difference, any age difference at all even if the characters are still both adults, if a character’s boobs are too small, if a character isn’t smart. And, yes, those are all things I’ve actually seen!

Or will you oblige anyone who claims a particular ship is pedophilic?

This vagueness is a problem. Admittedly, the vagueness was not started by you, but it was started by people who claimed the same intentions as you, OP, and if you’re going to make a claim that you want to help CSA survivors, then you need to be far more clear than this.

3. [the same thing but re: incest]

Admittedly, I’ve seen this as less of a problem with misusing incest, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen it at all. You may want to clarify that you mean explicit blood relations (for example, Bianchi and Gokudera) or... Well, I can’t recall anyone explicitly adopted, but the idea is the same there. None of the “they referred to each other as brothers, ignoring how that’s often used in a way that has nothing to do with incest, but so that makes it totally incest”.

4. “ otherwise harmful ships”

This is the largest red flag out of everything, and we’re not even past the first rule in the original post. This has a similar problem to everything else about this list of not-allowed ship, only it’s much worse because it’s target is arguably everything.

What do you mean by “harmful”, OP?

Do we judge “harmful” because of the characters, or because of the ship?

How will you regulate this incredibly harmful descriptor so that it isn’t misappropriated by bullies and harassers to silence fans, whether as them as a person or what they ship? Because I can guarantee you that I could come up with any completely bullshitted reason to hate on every single character or ship combination from KHR, and others easily could as well for malicious reasons.

This is a frankly terrible rule and, considering the kind of rampant bullying that comes from people who like to claim they’re against ““pedophilic”“ ships against CSA victims, I do not trust it. I do not trust it at all.

5. “this blog would NOT be in “competition” or in any kind of rivalry with the original khr rarepair week blog”

Now this is either an outright lie, or someone who has not considered their own words, and I could not tell you which is worse when it comes to a declaration of a “safe space” for minorities or people with trauma like CSA and incest survivors.

The entire original post ABSOLUTELY positions itself as competition to the actual khr rarepair week, not an alternative. Not only does it position itself as “competition”, but it tries to sell itself to people as the “better choice”.

It’s an attempt at a bit of sleight of hand. The post tries to show itself as friendly, just here to help people... But, as I stated before, if it really had an interest in helping people, it would focus on those people.

Instead, numerous times, you see the OP making judgment calls and negative comments to others - mainly implications of people participating in the actual khr rarepair week. There’s a series of connections throughout the entire post:

We start with “pedophilic ships” being banned to “help” CSA survivors in the first rule, and then leap from that to, in the second rule, “people who don’t feel comfortable in an event run by people who support pedo ships”.

(Reminder: still no idea on what ““pedo”“ ships even are by OP’s definition.)

So we’ve already started by associating the people participating in the regular khr rarepair week as the problem, instead of people simply not being comfortable with just the ships themselves - fictional things that are easily avoided.

Then, at the very end, the OP makes the explicit connection between ““pedo”“ ships and “freaks”.

So is the connection clear yet? The way they steadily escalate things until the implication at the very end? How that all does its best to frame KHR Rarepair Week as a negative? As something that Good People (tm) would never do unless they “must”? The implication that their “SFW” rarepair week is better?

So for the OP to claim they’re not trying to start anything, while their entire post ramps up the connection between khr rarepair week and Terrible Things (tm), is a... dubious claim at best.

The rest of the post isn’t that big a deal. It serves perfectly fine as a base interest check for half of it. However, the other half? That other half set off warning flags so intensely for me as a CSA survivor that I couldn’t stay quiet. I’m not saying this to be a “troll”, or to start trouble for no reason.

Additionally, that good half is tarnished by the problems of the bad half. If these are the red flags I feel they are, then that means if there are people in the group who harass others - I can already spot what-the-fuck-khr in there, a notable harasser who has called a CSA survivor a slur - then it weakens the promise to make this a truly safe space.

It’s simply that I’ve seen a lot of people claim they care about CSA survivors, a lot of fans who try to prop people like me up to signal their own virtue, only for them to turn around and lash out at CSA survivors like myself when we do not exist as only a prop, when we step a toe out of line.

If that happens again, then I don’t want anyone to be caught in that, especially some of the wonderful people I’m familiar with in the tags, such as [blank] or [blank]. I see a lot of red flags in there that I’ve seen harm other people when left unchecked.

If people want to give this a shot as run by the OP, that’s their right, and I wouldn’t take that away from them. I believe it is important to help and look after CSA survivors, especially us for one another. However, I feel like these criticisms are something anyone going for this should keep in mind, especially if they’re not CSA survivors.

Maybe I’m wrong about all of this. I will freely admit that the original post set me off something awful. Maybe some of my concerns are merely because this is an interest check post, and there wasn’t time for the OP to go indepth on just what they think “pedophilic” ships actually are, etc.

If that’s the case, then I’ll gladly have a discussion with the OP, if they truly care about CSA survivors and what is harmful to them. I’ll recant if I can be reassured this is all in good faith, and even support this endeavor.

However, as a CSA survivor, this post as it is worries and frustrates me.

[uncloseted]

idk if you know about it, but around a month ago this "problematic" youtuber trisha paytas made a video lying about having DID and harassing another youtuber dissociadid (who actually has DID). lot of people said she did it bc a video w dissociadid and another person was trending and she wanted attention as always, but now dissociadid not only has a new alter but also attempted suicide. ik people say get off the internet if you can't handle it and to an extent i agree -

- but this wasn't someone looking for a fight. dissociadid did NOTHING to trisha and trisha ended up causing serious damage to them just for attention. i'm sorry but that's rlly fucked. like it's one thing to fake having a psychological illness but then to attack someone else for having that illness?? then she told her following that dissociadid was harassing HER and sent them after her. ofc once the video wasn't trending anymore she deleted it but that's just not right... -that she can just get away w it. if anyone should be "cancelled" it's her. i'm not even one of those internet snowflakes but this whole situations just so fucked. she fucked up someone who was already dealing w shit just bc she could... idk i just wanted your opinion on all of it bc you seem like a reasonable person y'know?

So I don’t know a ton about Trisha or about dissociadid, but here’s the thing.  DID is incredibly controversial within the psychiatry community.  There’s debate as to whether it exists at all, and if it does exist, it is almost certainly not in the form people who have made a following from having DID would lead you to believe.  

The main controversy is over whether DID symptoms are caused by traumatic stress that causes the mind to fracture in order to cope (as proponents of the diagnosis argue) or whether it’s an iatrogenic disorder caused by psychotherapeutic practices (basically, that a doctor diagnoses a patient with DID and then attempts to bring the “alters” out, causing the patient to act as if they have “alters”).  

People diagnosed with DID have been found to be more susceptible to hypnosis and are more fantasy prone. A large percentage of DID cases are diagnosed by a small number of psychiatrists, lending credence to the theory that DID is psychiatrist-induced. Further, DID is rarely diagnosed outside of North America, and is almost never diagnosed outside of the Western world.  There are fewer than 200,000 new cases each year.

It should also be noted that the concept of dissociation itself lacks an empirical, agreed-upon definition, and so diagnosing dissociative disorders at all is complicated.  In general, there is very little empirical evidence to support the existence of DID as its own disorder, and the evidence that there is tends to be problematic (small sample sizes, cherry-picking data).

However, the DSM-5 and ICD-10 do continue to include it, although there is always discussion about taking it out. The DSM-5 criteria being as follows:

Two or more distinct identities or personality states are present, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self.

Amnesia must occur, defined as gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events.

The person must be distressed by the disorder or have trouble functioning in one or more major life areas because of the disorder.

The disturbance is not part of normal cultural or religious practices.

The symptoms cannot be due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (such as blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or a general medical condition (such as complex partial seizures).

Roughly 90% of people diagnosed with DID suffered abuse in childhood, with the remaining 10% experiencing other traumatic incidents, like war or potentially fatal health conditions.  However, there are very few recorded cases of children presenting with DID symptoms, and symptoms decline with age after young adulthood. To further complicate things, people with DID are diagnosed with five to seven comorbid disorders on average, with some studies suggesting that up to 73% of people with DID meet the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder alone. This suggests that DID may not be its own diagnosis but rather a symptom of how bad other mental illnesses have gotten in the patient.  In patients who have histories of attention-seeking behavior, it is also difficult to separate DID from facetious disorder or malingering. 

Last thing- contrary to common understanding, alters are typically not fully formed people.  They’re not like, friends who live in your head that you can hang out with or fictional creatures or your favorite TV show characters, the way that Tumblr has often characterized the disorder. 

So.  All that said, my guess is that they’re both mentally ill people in some regard who are using DID to get attention from the internet.  Trisha shouldn’t have come at a person who was just minding their own business, but I don’t think dissociadid is totally innocent, either, and I doubt she suffered as much damage as she’s claiming.

Edit: after watching some of dissociadid’s videos I kind of think she’s also full of shit.  Even for people who believe DID is s thing and the result of childhood trauma, this isn’t how it typically looks, and it lines up way better with the Tumblr interpretation of what DID is.

Edit edit: after falling down the rabbit hole of watching several hours of dissociadid’s videos, I take back what I said about them being full of shit.  Everything I said above still stands, but I’m not sure what I think about their “system” in particular. They do a good job of providing the perspective of psychiatrists who do believe DID is a trauma created disorder, and they do a good job of making sure that the points they’re making are backed by some scientific studies (although I take issue with the quality of those studies). 

[marshmallowgoop]

senketsu raped ryuko in their first scene together. shipping them is gross.

It’s fair if you feel it’s a bad pairing.

However, what does sending this rude ask essentially calling me a disgusting person for shipping them accomplish? I’ve written a plethora of essays about how much I hate Senketsu’s first scene, how I don’t fault anyone for disliking the relationship Senketsu and Ryuko share as a result, and how I wish his introduction had been handled differently. 

Please don’t act like I don’t recognize and acknowledge the problematic aspects of what I enjoy. I do. If you had attempted to look for this subject on my blog at all, you would see that.

If you’re really interested in a discussion on this, I can link you:

Senketsu’s First Scene*Further Analysis*Even More* Final Thoughts* 

What Changes Would You Make to Senketsu’s First Scene?

8 Reasons Folks Can’t Get Down with Pairing a Girl and Her Sailor Uniform Together: Masterpost of Rebuttals to Common Criticisms Against Ryuketsu* (point 5)

Do People Actually Ship Ryuko and Senketsu?

Ryuko’s Choice to Wear Senketsu

Or, to address your main point, I can quote what I’ve already written. From the “Even More” post:

The question of whether or not Senketsu “technically raped” Ryuko is likely something that it is utterly dependent on what you define as “rape.” From what I understand, laws vary everywhere about the issue. Here’s just one article discussing the confusion, for a small, small example of the problem. With a million different definitions about what counts as what and what counts as what where, the terms are blurry. Add in shaky and dangerous ideas about consent, and it’s no wonder so many have to ask, “Wait, was I raped?”

I can only really offer you how I personally view this matter. My definition of “rape” lines up with a generic, dictionary.com definition: “unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim.” Applying this to Kill la Kill, then, I don’t think it’s fair to say Senketsu raped Ryuko. They did not have sex. He is not penetrating her. In my personal opinion, I think it’s almost offensive to define this as “rape.”

Is it a rape joke that’s completely and totally disgusting? Absolutely. Is it what I would consider sexual assault? Yes. Senketsu removes Ryuko’s clothing, gropes her breasts, and forces her to wear him when she doesn’t want to. But I wouldn’t categorize it as rape. It’s like forcing someone into a bikini or a leotard when they don’t want to wear it. Awful, yes, harassment, yes, but it irks me to call that “rape,” which is something very serious in my mind that shouldn’t be made light of.

But, really, I’m just getting into semantics. The real question is: Do you think Senketsu’s actions are forgivable, given the situation? This is fantasy. Senketsu’s created from parasitic Life Fibers that want to hurt humans—just take a look at Junketsu and what happens to Kinue. His actions in his introductory scene follow this line and are completely against his characterization for the entire rest of the show. He’s clearly not in his right mind nor himself when this occurs.

From the “Senketsu’s First Scene” post:

… that first scene? That’s something Senketsu is so incredibly afraid of being. It’s probably his greatest fear of all, a fear that’s even reflected in the battle theme “Before My Body is Dry” with the line, “So help me to stay focused so I don’t fall apart.” He really, truly doesn’t want to be that forceful monster he is then. It’s horrifying to him, and that’s the way I think the scene should have been played—as horrifying.

And it’s not like Trigger is incapable of this. The scene where Satsuki first puts on Junketsu is a scary, powerful scene that really shows the monstrous nature of Life Fibers. The scene where Ryuko is forced into Junketsu is also much the same—scary and frightening.

The only reason I can think of Senketsu’s scene being played in the way it is is to show that Senketsu’s not really evil, since the whole thing’s treated as a joke. But… it’s just so jarring. What he’s doing is just the same as what Junketsu’s doing. It’s not funny in the slightest. Add in the not-so-subtle rape joke and it’s plain offensive.

But it’s not like this is an issue just with Senketsu’s first scene. This is my biggest beef with Kill la Kill in general—it, like a lot of anime and media these days, has a nasty habit of playing off sexual harassment and abuse as something hilarious. Personally, I don’t know why Senketsu’s first scene is always used as the worst example of this, since it’s shown to be pretty OOC for him early on and he never acts remotely like it ever again.

Meanwhile, characters like Mako and Aikuro do similar things to Ryuko when they are in their right minds. Mako gropes Ryuko’s breasts in her Hallelujah in episode 3, takes off her bra in the one in episode 5, and constantly invades Ryuko’s personal space and grabs onto her when it clearly makes Ryuko uncomfortable (see the motorcycle scenes in episodes 8 and 17). Yet, this is seen as funny, cute, and romantic. Then there’s Aikuro, who completely disrobes Ryuko in episode 2, immobilizes her with needles while she’s naked, and flirts with her when he’s her teacher and when doing such is completely inappropriate and brings Ryuko a lot of discomfort. And this, again, is seen as funny.

That’s not to say that I want to bash on these characters or pairings. I just ask why it is that these scenes and behaviors are excused as funny and cute when they’re very clearly not, while Senketsu’s first scene is—as it should be!—almost universally agreed to be disgusting and uncomfortable. Ryuko and Senketsu are one of my most favored relationships in all of fiction, but I would never dream of saying that their first meeting is anything adorable or hilarious. I honestly find it frightening that a lot of similar behavior—unwanted touching and removing of clothing—is brushed aside and laughed at because the perpetrator is a sexy teacher or a cute girl.

Of course, Senketsu’s first scene is a lot more intense, and I’m not stupid. I know exactly what they were referencing with it. It deserves to be controversial, and deserves to be spoken up against. But I think the hate against Senketsu for it is pretty… misguided, to say the least. Again, it’s not that it happens that makes it so bad in my eyes. It’s that we’re supposed to find one of Senketsu’s greatest fears hilarious. We’re supposed to think it’s funny that he’s hurting Ryuko, when his character is so utterly devoted to her and so terrified at the thought of bringing her any harm. This is something that I see as really sad, and it’s so disappointing that we don’t get to see Senketsu grapple with it or apologize for it.

Now, “not being in control!” or “not being in his right mind!” aren’t excuses for what Senketsu does, and it will always be awful and unacceptable. Even if he did apologize for it, it doesn’t erase what he did, and I think it’s a fair argument to say that you should stay away from people who have harmed you in the past. Personally, though, I don’t necessarily believe in that. I think people change all the time. Who I am now is different than who I was five years ago, for better or for worse. It’s the now that matters most to me, so in Senketsu’s case, he’s pretty much a darling sweetheart for the majority of the series, which I place a lot more importance on than his actions in a terrible, OOC-introduction scene where he’s overpowered by primal urges and not himself.

There’s definitely something to the idea that some actions are unforgivable, but when it comes to Senketsu, I lean against that. Still, I’m not going to argue with anyone who does feel that way—that’s just as valid as my feelings.

This got quite a bit longer than I intended. Basically, I hate the scene, but mostly because it’s framed as a joke. As someone who has been subjected to sexual harassment, I can firmly say that there’s absolutely nothing “funny” or “cute” about it, and I think it’s really disappointing and gross that the show plays Senketsu’s nasty behavior towards Ryuko in that way. Not only that, but it’s just so against his character, and is thus something incredibly tragic to me. Had it been played as the nightmare that it is to Senketsu, I don’t think the scene would be so widely hated, but instead seen for exactly what it is: a horrifying moment that must cause Senketsu great pain and fear.

From the “Final Thoughts” post:

I just personally am uncomfortable with categorizing Senketsu’s actions in his first scene as rape. Others may very well have their own valid reasons for defining it in that way.

But if the issue is indeed sexual assault, this is a huge problem in Kill la Kill in more ways than simply Senketsu’s introduction, since the show, unfortunately, falls into this common trend of playing off that kind of behavior for laughs … 

And believe me, I understand and think it’s totally fair if Senketsu’s behavior in episode 1 makes his relationship with Ryuko uncomfortable or unacceptable to some. But I also think that this conversation needs to be extended more often. Senketsu and Ryuko’s friendship—and Senketsu himself—get so absolutely vilified in amounts that I don’t see concerning Aikuro and especially Mako, which, personally, strikes me as unfair and a double standard. These characters also disrespect and assault Ryuko throughout the series—and when they’re in their right minds, too.

Of course, I don’t mean to accuse you of anything, Anon! I just feel that this issue is so, so much bigger than Senketsu and deserves to be talked about more. It really irks me that I retread this argument so many times whilst similar behavior coming from other characters is hardly called out, instead getting hailed as “cute” and “romantic.” In my opinion, if you’re comfortable pairing Ryuko with Aikuro or Mako and believe her relationships with them can grow and be healthy even after past instances of disrespect and harassment coloring their interactions (as I do!), then I don’t see any reason to think differently concerning Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship.

And, finally, from the “8 Reasons” post:

In my mind, there are bigger issues with the series’ handling of assault than Senketsu’s first scene, but beyond that, Senketsu is honestly probably the most respectful character towards Ryuko in the entire show. He never forces her to wear him when she doesn’t want to—and the fact that Ryuko does take him off multiple times across the series when she doesn’t want to emphasizes that her wearing of him isn’t her being a poor prisoner, but her choosing to be with him—and Senketsu values Ryuko’s thoughts and opinions, openly communicates with her, and constantly considers her wellbeing.

As I once put it, “[Senketsu] is nothing like that first scene in all actuality, and Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship is built not on nonconsensual behaviors and violence, but on respect and understanding.”

tl;dr, please stop acting like I don’t acknowledge the problems in Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship. I can like something and understand that it’s not perfect. I can like something and understand that others might hate it and think (fairly) that it’s offensive. 

I don’t want to make assumptions, but considering I’ve only been getting these mean-spirited asks since I wrote out my thoughts on Ragyo and got attacked for it, I figure there’s a connection. Please stop acting like my criticisms of Ragyo were somehow unique to her. I probably have more criticisms about Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship than even the biggest haters of the pairing, and I love them to pieces.

You can like something and also understand that not everyone will and might even find it problematic. Please stop sending me nasty, personally insulting messages about what I like when I have never, ever shamed you (or anons who think like you) for liking Ragyo.

[rpbetter]

a vent (feel free to ignore if it's too much!): so recently i've noticed psd makers getting anon asks on whether they're ok with people who write certain topics (mostly rpf, incest, rape, underage, the usual "problematic" topics) using their recourses. now, i don't roleplay any of these subjects on tumblr, so even if a content creator said not to use their stuff, it's not even something i need to worry about - but, and maybe this is me overthinking it, what if i, someday, write a noncon fanfic on ao3? i'm still not using their resources on the subject or writing it on tumblr, but i'd probably feel weird about it, like i'm crossing some boundary. what if a psd maker whose content i've already purchased suddenly goes "actually don't use my psds if you rp abusive relationships", which is probably the closest to what people consider "taboo themes" of the things that i roleplay. it just feels like a fine line between personal boundaries and a shitty situation for a customer - not wanting to cross boundaries but already having PAID for something previously, when no such rules existed. it's making me want to 1. block everyone i see saying this, because even though i don't personally roleplay the topics above, i don't feel SAFE around people who tell others what kind of fiction they are allowed to enjoy and 2. just quit using people's resources and spend years learning to make my own psds so i won't have to worry about this shit. it's just stressing me out, as someone who has been harrassed and bullied online for speaking against censorship. i've had literal sock accounts made just to spew targetted harrassment at me on twitter. i've been accused of being a pedo and supporting incest and this is??? literally for saying "i don't think real people should be harrassed for fictional shit", i've not even shipped underage or incest ships. both make me uncomfortable. but fuck, antis make me 1000000x more uncomfortable than people who ship these kinda ships. i digress, this got rambley, i just. do you have any advice on what to do with the potential psd situation, or am i really just overthinking it? (always worried i accidentally send stuff like this off anon. help)

I need you to know that I actually had to rush-scroll back up and just double check that you did submit on anon lol! I always get worried I'll miss the one person who accidentally didn't use anon, if it makes you feel any better! When someone does submit with their URL attached, I message them first to be sure they are okay with them having it posted that way/it wasn't an accident ;) That's what I would want someone to do!

Alright, so, anyhow...

I've also noticed that becoming a more common thing and it's been on my (maybe huge) list of things to look into for a bit because I really do try to make sure I'm not just noticing things in my areas of the RPC/failing to notice things that do not impact me. Since I do all my edits and graphics, it falls into the first category for me. So, thank you for moving that up the list and informing me that it really is more prevalent and not my imagination!

My take on seeing it was a combination of business logic and anxiety, not going to lie.

On the first: charging to do a psd that is just that, just a psd file being used as a template/to act as an easier version of a photoshop "action" in a way, that's 100% legal and fine. Absolutely no muddy waters there. However, charging to do things like icons, edits, etc. that include images of celebrities and stills from movies (or gifs) is quite muddy. Legally, it's not legal. It's a thing we're allowed to do and use (on most platforms) because we're not making money off of it, we're not claiming to hold rights to the images, and so on - it's ignored but illegal. Charging money for it, however, even when phrased as "for my time" (which, absolutely valid feeling), is a more serious form of illegal and potentially attention-getting. This all gets more iffy though when we add donation instead of direct commission/purchase when working with these copyrighted materials. You can ask people to donate and suggest a donation based on your time spent, and that is always what I advise people to do.

Okay, so, that preface is necessary because the thing about stipulating use-rights is that they're iffy, too, there are variables present.

Often, these same people are charging for things like icon packs as well, meaning that even if they're only charging you for a template-style psd file sans imagery they don't own, they've kind of shot themselves in the foot. Not to mention, it's exceedingly damn hypocritical to pitch a fit about someone violating your rights when you're literally using other people's copyrighted materials lmao And that does tend to occur to me, yeah, it's a consequence of attorney friends and running businesses.

The other issues with this are that usage rights have to be stated at the time of purchase and morality clause-style shit, as pertains to products, is not legally binding.

When you purchase something like a psd file, that purchase acts as a sort of contract.

Think of like...buying a photoshop brush set - the person selling it puts very simple rules as to its use, such as: non-commercial use only, brush pack cannot be resold or distributed for free, separate brushes from the pack cannot be resold or distributed for free individually. Meaning that you own the brushes you bought, but you are not legally allowed to make real-life money from anything you use them in, and you cannot send the whole pack or files individually to friends for free or charge other people for them. By buying these, you have agreed to these stipulations of use and ownership.

If the person sells psd's and you agree to what they've stated about the use (you can't use them to do commissions you make IRL money from, you can't give them away to friends, etc.), that's binding even somewhere as casual as RP Land. The exchange of real currency makes it that serious.

However, there are limits to stipulations of use! One of those things is when you agreed - this person cannot, even one literal second, later change their terms of use and retroactively hold you to them. If they were okay with you not crediting them anywhere or using them in works you will gift others or charge others something like game currency for at the time you purchased, then that's it. Tough shit for them, not you, when they decide a month later that they want credit given where the work appears, that they do not want finished products gifted, or don't want you to make even in-game currency from them.

And that absolutely would apply to the morality wank, yes.

Except that this very morality wank comes with its own issues. Reality is not tumblr. In reality, at least in most instances and countries, you can't throw in a fucking morality clause regarding the buyer, use of item, or finished product.

Think of this in this way: Chik-Fil-A starts denying chicken and waffle fries to anyone suspected of being queer. They're legally allowed to run their business (as a private business, everything does have variables) with some things that are morally objectionable that they feel morally aligns with their religious beliefs. They're not allowed to deny queer workers a job or queer customers service, however, in accordance with overarching laws.

While "being gross" online in fiction is not like, making anyone a protected status person lol this is just an extreme example to drive home the point. Legally, when it comes to items/products be they digital or physical, your rights and responsibilities as the seller don't include your moral policing.

What your right is, is to make people uncomfortable to a degree, yeah. You absolutely can do that. You can state some nasty shit about prospective buyers you don't want. For example, they should (I mean, they should just grow up and get some real concerns, but) be stating that they would not like to see their psd's used by people on this following DNI list of idiocy, and they will block those users if possible to prevent interaction and purchase. That's really it, that's what they can do and the least immature way to proceed.

On the second: none of this logic would make me feel comfortable about interacting with them and their psd's in the future once they had outed themselves as morally objectionable and dangerous to me with this nonsense. And I would still feel anxious about using things I had previously bought because once harassed...it doesn't really go away, does it? It would just give me some ease about the latter with things I'd already made. Like, I could keep using the icons I'd made with those psd's with a little bit more comfort knowing that they honestly have not a leg to stand on outside of their harassment.

I might have the tendency to respond to harassment without much upset, but that doesn't mean I want to be harassed. Especially when I am not doing anything that draws that kind of attention. Not that harassment is warranted over anything, but when I make a PSA or answer an ask that I know is likely to get their attention and piss them off? That's an acceptable risk I am knowingly taking. When I'm just going about my life as a RPer, it isn't.

So, I don't feel like you're overthinking it or being too concerned! In no way did you sign up for getting unwanted attention, and because it has happened before, of course, you're trying to insulate yourself from having it happen again. That's totally reasonable!

Now, what you could do about it...

It's another of those situations in which we're only truly capable of controlling ourselves. Everyone else is kind of a NPC.

You don't have to do anything I'm suggesting, but these are things I would do!

I would block the shit out of anyone saying these things/trying to make them stipulations, yes.

By that, I mean that I would also visit blogs they appear to interact with and they'd be blocked as well. We can all reblog something like resources or a shit post from a user we do not agree with without realizing it, but when it's frequent reblogs, direct support, and friendly vibes going on, it's safer to assume that they are aware their friend sucks. More importantly, that they do not think their friend sucks and support their views.

Even if that is not the case, do you want someone else's repeated inattention to expose you to bad actors? Nope! So, don't run the risk of paying and otherwise interacting with the one resource blog in the group that doesn't express these views/"requirements," but does involve themselves with those who do.

Try to find people selling these resources, that are not connected to the problem ones, who do not have those views. Once a trend starts, it is very hard to stop until it has run its course naturally, so, this might be difficult and take some extreme effort. You might want to consider asking like-minded friends who use psd's where they got them so you can check those users out for yourself.

If they're all the same, problem, people...

Look for users well outside of your corner of the RPC(s) who are not asking to be paid. I know it sounds wild, but there really are RPers out there who just enjoy making things for others! I can think of at least one right off on my dash. They might not be advertising for doing psd's or psd packs, but either they might be willing to do so (especially if they do not appear policing-positive) if you explain what is going on, or they could at least fill some requests for you for fully made icons and such. Hell, people who love doing this work usually know others who do as well, and anti-policing people quite reasonably stick together. They could have suggestions for someone not vile selling psd's.

Depending on what it is you want your psd's to do, I promise you that it wouldn't take you very long to learn it. I know...I know lol that's both really easy for me say when I've been doing it for over twenty years and am about to piss some people off. The latter because the most common settings on popular psd's are extremely simple shit, a lot of that is the kind of thing you're expressly told not to do in design work. Like ramping up extreme contrast, pixelating the fuck out of an image, and turning up the primary colors only. Once you get to playing with photoshop or an equivalent, you will totally see what I mean. You can accidentally make an icon look identical to something that is on trend in the RPC. If that was what you were going for? You've hit the mark, and it's just repetition and tweaking it here and there!

Once you start playing with it, too, it's actually pretty intuitive when it comes to the basic things like resizing, adjusting colors and contrast, and doing easy effects like blurs and sharpening. Frankly, playing with it is better than half the tutorials you'll find because they get unnecessarily complicated when all you want to do is crop your muse's face, overlay some color, and add a damn dotted border. Listen, like I said, I have a lot of experience...and I find many tutorials frustrating and overwhelming!

It is not just you, you're not dumb or anything. People get very comfortable with something and when they try to explain it to others, they use terms and methods that are more advanced or specific to them than they realize. That's all!

If you have friends who make their own things, ask them some very basic questions about what you want to do. They know you, so, they'll know better how to explain to you, specifically. Just keep it simple until you've had some time to experiment! Ask things like, "I want to take this image, resize it to be an icon, and add an orange tint to the image while sharpening only my muse's features...how would I do that? Easy mode?"

And! You don't even have to pay for photoshop or pirate it anymore! Photopea is as an exact copy as possible entirely located in your browser for free. It's all overwhelming at first, a real case of too many options and ways to do the same thing, but the only way it gets less overwhelming is just diving into it. Dive in, get a little frustrated, have some successes, make some awesome discoveries, it gets a bit addicting in short order. Then, the tutorials and tips are so much easier to figure out and expand on, too.

If you'd like, you can always send me a pm here and ask me. I'm happy to try to explain how to do things, zero judgment or impatience. Just an additional option if you both decide to try learning and would feel comfortable doing that. Zero judgment as well on not wanting to do either of those things!

Okay, this one is much harder than learning PS basics because it's honestly a bit terrifying...the way these people are, they're going to take issue with you no matter what you do, and in the end, if they notice you and feel like bothering you, they will. There's literally nothing you can do about it. All you can do is try to buffer yourself, stay away from them, and be aware that you are not the problem.

Like with the AO3 thing or writing what could be viewed as toxic relationships. You can never write or be interested in a single, solitary thing that they're on about (and accusing you of doing in real life when the burning Eye of Moron turns your direction), but to them, you supporting the right of other people to do so is just as bad as doing it yourself. To them, the toxic relationships not only would be problematic, they'd be problematic enough. Being uncomfortable with their policing and feeling unsafe because of it is, to them, a red flag of how problematic you are. Writing anything they've deemed objectionable (or reading or viewing it, for that matter) anywhere, doesn't have to be on this platform or RP-adjacent, doesn't have to actually utilize any of their materials, is enough.

They're absolutely including you in who shouldn't use their shit. That's part of the "logic" and methodology of policing. Everyone is problematic, so, everyone can be labeled a pedo and harassed without too many people getting up in arms about it. No one is safe, so, everyone better behave. You don't actually have to be engaging with or enjoying things like underage, non/dubcon, rape, abusive relationships, etc.

It's gross, it's bullying, it's actually a problem...and there isn't much you can do.

All that is truly up to you is making an effort to avoid them, though, this is very often unfair and likely to get more unfair as resource blogs of all sorts deal in it more. At least, in this case, you do have some small bit of actionable power - by not ever buying from them. They wouldn't be charging if they did not either need or want the money, not giving it to them is a bigger hit than things like simply unfollowing/blocking, reblogging PSA's, and so on is!

Nope, it isn't like you're denying them some extreme amount of money by yourself, but every three, five, ten dollars is felt pretty hard when you desperately need money and/or are saving for something.

I know, I mean, I personally do know, that it's impossible to "get over" bullying, Anon. I'm in no way telling you to just get over it and move on, find some great well of not caring somewhere! What I'm saying is that there is power in not giving them power. The power to make you anxious, uncomfortable, unsafe, when you have every right to be here doing your thing and are not hurting anyone. And it might seem to be a deeply contrary sort of logic, but realizing and accepting that there are people out there who irrationally dislike you for literally no reason, that you cannot infallibly escape or avoid, despite doing nothing wrong is a bit empowering. Because it puts into perspective the things you can control, and when we know what is in our control, it's easier to just enjoy our time here without constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. If it drops, we can go put it back in the closet where it belongs.

It starts to put a positive spin on the whole, damned if I do, damned if I don't feeling, if that makes sense? I'm probably way too tired to try to be explaining this lol I'm sorry!

Anyway, again, I'm not implying you can or should do any, let alone all, of those suggestions! I just really hope that something will help you feel even a little bit more at ease. It's an unfair situation, it isn't right, and you have every reason to be uncomfortable and stressed. If I could make it happen, you better believe that every policing asshole out there would be writing heartfelt apology letters and sending donations to everyone they've upset lol but...since I can't make that happen, all I can do is say what I, personally, do, would do, or have done.