#the person i saw reblogging this explicitly enjoys harassing people online

[boomstab-papa]

Yeah filming strangers on public transit, and later posting it online to mock said strangers for doing something effectively harmless... is still shitty behavior EVEN IF they did just come from a tswift concert, sorry

[edoro]

I'm a bit confused with your opinion on DNIs, I mean ofc you can have any opinions on anything, but most people I know use DNIs to try and avoid people who hate them or want them dead and it's the same reason I use them?

(sorry if I sounded rude btw)

well, i mean, for starters the conversation about it is pretty explicitly in the context of fandom, and the original post i was talking about was about people defensively tagging art as "do not tag/interpret as a ship," and how in my experience a lot of times that's just sort of wildly unnecessary to the point where it comes across as at best bizarrely defensive and at worst a frankly ridiculous attempt to control the way other people interpret your artwork once you've put it out for public viewing

(for instance, i just saw a little comic of Eda and Lilith having a conversation that has nothing that could be remotely described as subtext or sexual tension tagged 'do not ship', as if there's an epidemic of incest shippers going around pointing at literally every single sibling interaction and yelling IT'S INCEST - at this point, who's bringing up incest other than op?)

and in that context what i have observed is, mostly, that DNIs function partially as a way for people to signal certain positions (for instance, using proship vs anti as a general shorthand for their opinion on fictional depictions of topics like incest, rape, sexual abuse, age gaps, etc) up front

but also that people who have certain stringent DNI criteria (mostly, again, about what types of kink they think is okay to explore in fiction) tend to end up outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining their own boundary onto everyone else - they supposedly sincerely believe that it's Genuinely Immoral to write certain topics, enjoy certain kinks, or ship certain ships, to the point where they experience moral contamination from the simple act of someone who writes/draws/enjoys/ships those things touching their posts, but instead of doing the work themselves to vet people they follow or whose posts they reblog or interact with, they just insist that everyone else discern exactly where their personal lines are and self-select out of interacting with them.

so it's supposedly important to them, but not enough that they'll actually vet the people they're interacting with? at that point, it comes across as simply performative.

and if you're referring to stuff like "terfs/nazis/racists/bigots of whatever type DNI" type of statements, well - i don't know if i'd call that performative in every case, but at best it's kind of useless, and for some of the same reasons.

do you really think that someone who, in your own words, 'hates you and wants you dead' is going to go to your blog with the aim of stalking or harassing you, but pause to read your carrd and then decide they're not going to because you said "don't interact"? do you think that someone who self-identifies as a Nazi is going to be deterred by you saying "Nazis go away"? like, for real?

do you think people who self-identify as bigots or who may not self-identify that way (because i would argue many, if not most bigots do not think they are bigoted or would certainly never admit it) but who are dedicated enough that they want to harass and hurt people online, like... care about your boundaries? that they are going to respect your boundaries?

do you think the terfs and radfems who admit, over and over again, that they infiltrate fandom spaces in order to subtly spread radfem rhetoric and terf values from secret sideblogs care if you say "terfs dni"?

and do you think that the majority of bigots - the un-self-aware ones, the ignorant ones, the ones who justify and deny and insist that they're in the right and there's a convenient excuse for all of their bigotry and it Isn't Really bigotry - are going to look at that message on your carrd or in your header and have some kind of epiphany about their personal conduct?

the answer is no. you're expecting people whose entire fundamental deal is that they don't respect or recognize your humanity to demonstrate considerate behavior and respect your boundaries.

the thing about making those people unwelcome in your space is that it has to be an active process. you can't just say "btw go away <3", the ones who really want to take over your space or harass or follow you or try to infiltrate and convert you are not going to listen or care.

so, i mean, if someone decides to harass you then there's not a lot you can do to prevent that bc it's fundamentally not something you caused to happen but is instead an action on their part, and you can't control other people. you have imperfect tools at your disposal in terms of being able to block/mute/practice various types of online safety and privacy and information security (not publicly listing your marginalized identities and triggers is one good way to not hand every passing bigot who wanders by a roadmap of exactly how to most precisely hurt you, for instance)

but when it comes to the broader trend of curating online space, and the like, online version of the Nazi Bar Problem: you have to, personally, actively, make the effort to understand what, say, terf/radfem rhetoric is when it isn't blatantly anti-trans, and how it's packaged up in ways that are often initially very palatable to young queer people online. or what racism looks like in fandom spaces. or what crypto-fascist symbols, slogans, and ideology look like. and you have to take it upon yourself to vet the people who you are interacting with regularly, to watch out for and notice and respond to instances of bigotry (whether that's by pushing back against it or blocking/disengaging from people who espouse it or removing them/having them removed from moderated spaces)

but like. just telling them to leave you alone? is not going to work. they're not going to respect that. and it displays imo a lack of understanding of the actual seriousness of the stakes here if you think that just saying "btw if you're a bad person don't interact w me" in your bio is going to seriously keep people who want to hurt you from trying to do so.

if that's what you think, then you don't actually know what steps you need to take to genuinely keep yourself as safe as possible, and it also comes across like you don't actually know how to recognize and respond to and not fall for subtler, disguised bigotry that gets paraded across social media and fandom spaces all day every day.

[butterflyinthewell]

I’m gonna lose followers. Oh well... a rant by me.

People who harass others about SHIPPING FICTIONAL CHARACTERS are irksome.

Preface: if you say you don’t want someone role playing a NOTP with you or sending asks about it, or you don’t want secret Santa stuff containing it, if you ask people not to suggest fics with that pairing for your fic collections, if you stay out of your NOTP’s pairing tags, if you choose not to interact with material related to your NOTP, if you blacklist the pairing tag and ask people not to tag your fanwork with your NOTP, if you heed warnings and don’t click something with material you don’t like, I do not have a problem with you.

But if you write novel long posts about why a ship is gross to you and tag the pairing so shippers see it, send people hate over their ships, reblog fanworks of your NOTP with nasty messages to the op of the post, if you make a blog all about hating that ship and anyone who ships it, claim it must be grooming, or if you call people pedophiles or abuse apologists because they wrote something morally heinous in fiction that they will most likely never do irl, I’m not gonna have much respect for you beyond you being a fellow person.

Guess what? Shit you hate is going to exist on the internet. If someone tags their work appropriately or tags with appropriate warnings, you should not be clicking on it and harassing them! They have done what is necessary to protect those pearls you want to clutch.

Banning all questionable material is not going to save people who are targeted by predators and criminals.

Calling people pedophiles because they ship a fictional minor with a fictional adult gives actual pedophiles who go after actual minors a hiding place. These days you can’t tell if someone is an actual pedo or got called one over a ship they ship. Pedos are totally banking on that.

Fiction is supposed to break rules and let people explore dark subjects that are morally messed up because you can close a book or close a website if it gets too weird for you. A child with a predator’s hands on them right this moment can’t click an x or close a book to stop it.

Think about that.

No one is forcing you to go read morally messed up stuff. Not clicking on someone’s creepy fic with your NOTP is nowhere in the same realm as turning a blind eye to actual predators predating on someone.

Running someone off a website because your ass is on fire about them writing a pairing you hate or whatever is not going to stop the bad shit happening in the real world.

Predators and criminals will use anything, so someone’s freaky babyfur smutfic that they wrote to troll a fan website in 1999 is hardly going to normalize bad behavior.

I swear some of you insult the intelligence of people with your moral abuse garbage.

Teaching people to recognize predatory behavior and what to do about it will actually help. Teaching people what is and isn’t a healthy relationship will help.

Remember how people called out Twilight for how unhealthy Edward’s behavior towards Bella was? I’m sure a lot of preteen and teen girls learned to open their eyes a bit more. And I’m sure others still enjoyed the books and movies anyway because it’s fiction. It is the job of parents and guardians to teach their children what is and isn’t healthy in a relationship, but the unfortunate problem there is that can fail if the parents aren’t in a healthy relationship.

That’s why there needs to be more discussions about “this is healthy, that might be fun in a story, but that is not healthy in the real world and anybody who treats you like that is waving abuse red flags” rather than attacking somebody by saying “you’re a monster for shipping that”.

The whole point of art in any form is to create an emotional reaction in the audience.

Fucked up fictional shit exists on the internet. Get over it. I think the fact that people get freaked out by weird stuff in fiction is a clear indicator that it’s not being normalized by that piece of fiction. Flailing about it is not helping anything except your ego. It’s not gonna help survivors who write messed up stuff to cope, it’s going to make them go more silent.

Imagine being someone with an abusive pedo parent who takes comfort in the SessRin ship and being called a pedophile for it, or seeing people in the tag call Sesshoumaru a pedophile. That’s triggering as fuck for somebody.

Imagine being a Starkster going through sexual abuse who takes comfort in the ship, and being called a pedophile for it. Imagine seeing people in the tag call Tony a pedophile. That’s triggering as fuck for somebody.

Imagine having the heinous thing that happened to you being turned onto you as an accusation by people on a moral high horse who forget what pedophile means. That is triggering as fuck for somebody.

Nobody owes you a trauma history in order to be ‘allowed’ to create and post morally messed up fanworks. It’s on YOU to check for warnings and keep scrolling if it’s so offensive to your sensibilities.

What’s better? Discussion of tropes that are harmful if done badly. That’s a place to start. Save the accusations for people who are knowingly doing harm to people and not caring that they’re doing harm.

Go after shit that is actually exploiting actual people right now instead of harassing creators whose trauma you don’t know. Tell pedos their attraction to kids is not a sexuality and they have no place in the LGBTQIA+ community. Warn minors away from MAPs/NOMAPs. Expose predators who have exploitative materials of actual real children. Teach people to recognize predatory behavior like grooming. Find ways to get people out of human trafficking. Question adults if you see them touching or treating a child in a way that doesn’t look right. If you’re a minor and somebody keeps sending you porn material or pictures of their genitalia after you said stop, remind them that you’re a minor and expose the shit out of them. If you’re an adult and know somebody is doing that to a minor you talk to online, help them expose that person. That’s not all you can do, but I can’t think of everything. There’s a lot you can do that will actually help people!

But telling someone not to create something questionable because a predator might misuse it is utter horseshit.

I can bet you anything that every single person who hounds others about their ships has a whole bunch of fucked up stuff they read and never talk about because they know it will get them run off by the same people they use as shields against scrutiny.

I’ve read fucked up shit that I enjoyed because it was done well, but I can grasp that it is not okay to do the same thing in the real world and I would be horrified if I saw somebody doing the same thing in the real world. I am able to experience that moment of being horrified, sit with it and see where the fanwork takes me with that feeling.

I say this after I have just read an awesome morally gray Inuyasha fanfic called “Devour Prometheus” by ladybattousai on AO3. It’s gorey, there is murder, there is abuse, there is exploitation, there are allusions to animal trade and it’s the darkest thing I ever laid eyes on. My stomach twisted several times. It’s a fantastic lens on society right now. (Sesshoumaru’s speech about “don’t hold me to your hypocritical human morality” was epic af.)

And some of you are going to think the author is some kind of violence glorifying freak based only on that.

I feel like a lot of anti shippers and antis in general can’t get past that horrified feeling. They yell that they can’t enjoy the fandom if the material makes a hated pairing canon, so it’s like they don’t want anyone else to enjoy the fandom or the pairing. It’s very immature and scorched earth, and it hurts everyone.

Hey, guess what? I have written pairings with hella huge age gaps. Oh, the horror!

OptimusxMikaela? I headcanon Optimus as being 10 billion + years old, and Mikaela was 18 when they hooked up. Mikaela ages as the stories carry on through the years as my Danceverse series, so she’s in her 30s currently. They fucked and still fuck explicitly.

UnicronxStarscream? Unicron is as old as the universe, so 13 billion + (headcanon), and Starscream is probably 11 million or so (headcanon). They fuck explicitly.

Whouffaldi? The 12th Doctor is 2000+ and Clara is in her 20s. They fuck explicitly.

BeastGojixMiki? Godzilla has been alive for probably close to 65 years in the story, but he acts more like he’s in his 20s and he looks to be in his 20s when he turns back into a human. Miki is 18. They fuck in the story, but it’s written non explicitly.

Bowser JrxOC? Cherry is an oc who is 19. I aged Junior up in that story to be about 20. Their ages aren’t specified, but they’re mentioned to be adults. They fuck in the story, but it’s written non explicitly.

I have written fanfics with rape, abuse, murder, manslaughter, bdsm, stuff that’s morally messed up, etc, and I’m not a murdering rapist who eats children now, am I?

No, because I have no desire to do those things in the real world (because some are not possible...cuz I would date Optimus 😛) and I can distinguish fiction from reality. I can grasp the concept that fiction / art is not always endorsement.

Now get a grip on yourselves, put the pitchforks down and stop policing people’s imaginations.