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littlesystems · 6 years

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What are we even arguing about? A guide to controversial content.

So as the pedophilia-in-fandom battle rages on, I wanted to put together a scale of what the hell people are actually talking about. Because sometimes when people say “we need to protect children” they mean prevent CP, and sometimes they mean any sexual content at all.

So! I’m going to give it my best shot with giving a numerical scale to reference, rather than ~pedophilia versus ~censorship because I feel like this conversation is 80% miscommunication and 20% just plain mean-spiritedness on both sides of the table. I am using “fandom” to include fan fiction, fan art, and discussions/headcanons/RP/whatever else.

These are the various angles and desired outcomes that people are arguing, as I’ve seen:

1. Fandom ceases to exist beyond conventions and more socially appropriate “fans” - i.e. your typical dude who likes Star Wars. Fanart is sometimes acceptable outside of shipping, and any fic that exists should be Gen.

2. All fandom should be a safe space for children of all ages, regardless of the rating of the source material. Children of any age might be on Tumblr or AO3, and some of those children may have lied about their age, disabled safe search, and may even seek out adult content. Therefore, all fandom participation needs to be rated G and safe for any children, as that’s the only way to ensure children don’t see adult content. Anything less than this is abuse.

3. Fanworks can have some sexual content, but only that which portrays healthy relationships, practices safe sex, has adult characters within 3 years of each others’ ages, and can be held up as a role model for teens. Characters cannot be “aged up” if they were originally minors. Minors should not seek out any adult material, but because adults cannot prevent that entirely, the next best thing is to only have content available that teaches good life lessons.

4. Dark content is allowed, but only when it is non-graphic and not romanticized. For example, if a character is raped: the act happens off screen, from an unambiguously evil character, and the victim behaves in an acceptable “model victim” way. Subjects such as mental illness, eating disorders, abusive relationship, etc. are all given proper gravitas and everyone involved clearly fits the paradigm of either victim or perpetrator. Characters with sexual content must be over 18, and there cannot be an age gap larger than 3 years between sexual partners. Additionally, everything must be age-appropriate for the media’s intended audience, e.g. adult content cannot be made of adult characters on a children’s TV show.

5. Dark subjects are allowed to be shown, so long as the situation is unambiguously depicted as bad. A rape scene can be written, but only if it’s not titillating and the perpetrator is clearly evil. Sex scenes can be slightly kinky but should still be healthy; one night stands, breakdowns in communication, and dubious consent like sex pollen should be used sparingly, and also portrayed as bad/damaging. Teenage characters 16+ can be written about sexually, but only if done tastefully and following consent laws where the story takes place (e.g. if the characters live in California then the story follows statutory rape laws for that state), all teenage sex must be healthy and unproblematic, and all teenage sex must be created by teenagers themselves (i.e. a 25 year old cannot create teenage content). The only time dark content can be titillating is if a victim writes about the subject, in which case the creator can be expected to divulge that they were really raped/abused, and the work is stated to be for therapeutic purposes.

6. Dark content is accepted (grudgingly) because trying to determine who is enough of a victim to write something will often do more harm than good, and the desire to not hurt real people outweighs the desire to keep fandom pure. Sexual content of teen (16+) characters can’t be “gross”; age differences between characters can be greater than 5 years as long as it’s not a teenager with an adult; consensual adult incest is allowed (grudgingly), like in GoT, but only within the same generation/characters of similar ages; sexual content of adult characters in children’s media can’t be “gross,” shouldn’t be searchable by children, and may be banned on a case-by-case basis.

7. Most content is allowed, without condemning or condoning. Any graphic sexual content of characters 15 or under is banned with no exceptions.

8. Anything that is not actively illegal is permitted - currently AO3’s rules, and maybe also Tumblr to a lesser extent - provided that certain content warnings are included (AO3 has Archive Warnings, Tumblr has flagged NSFW). As these sites are hosted in the USA they are subject to American law, and content creators from other countries will also have to abide by the laws of their country regarding written or illustrated content.

______(floor of common decency)______

9. Anything goes, any time, anywhere. Tagging/warnings are unnecessary, and if minors don’t want to come across disturbing content then they can get off the internet. It’s fine to talk about sex/RP with very young people on the internet, and anyone who disagrees is a prude.

10. People who have actual photos/videos of real CP; actual child molesters.

These are obviously loose boundaries and I tried to group like-minded ideas together, but these are all angles I have seen people arguing from in the past few months (except for #10, though they definitely exist).

I am happy to engage with anyone who wants to argue any point of this list (except for #10, please go die), but I am Tired of people saying “bad content is bad and if you disagree then you’re a pedophile!” when I legitimately don’t know where they’re arguing from. Someone can say “I want to make fandom safe for children” and they could mean #2 or #7. Sometimes people argue in bad faith (if you disagree with my #4 then you’re a #10! If you disagree with my #9 then you’re a #1!!) but as a community we have got to stop talking past each other and start talking with each other.

I doubt this will get enough widespread dissemination to be generally used, but literally anyone having these discussions are welcome to link to this list as a reference point.

#the discourse #I just want these discussions to be coherent

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stupid-jeans · 7 years

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S@oracle0429 asked for Amir (The Brave) and Zoe (Valor) for the fandom ask meme. I’ll do one first, then the other. do I like them: Yes!!!!!!!!!! Totally my unexpected (male) fave.

5 good qualities: Only 5? Ughhhh. 1. He speaks like 12 languages. And he sounds really good speaking all of them. 2. HIS EYES 3. His undercover serious voice. 4. His insane cooking skills. 5. His stupidly dry sense of humor.

3 bad qualities: I’m sorry, he has none. Zero. Zilch.

favourite episode/etc: It’s All Personal. Obviously.

otp: AMIR/HANNAH.

brotp: Amir/Jaz

ot3: You know, I don’t think I have any OT3s in this show yet which is super fucking weird for me (as you well know :-p)

notp: Him and Jaz. I know some people ship them (romantically) and that’s fine, you do you. But nope. Much prefer their friendship dynamic.

best quote: ugh I don’t know. Everything out of this man’s mouth is solid. Him totally ribbing on everyone and fucking with them during Stealth was pretty phenomenal.

head canon: Since he’s been living in my head for the last few weeks demanding I write him at every possible opportunity, I have many, many Amir headcanons. He was a hellion child and a punkass teenager until his sister died. His father never really forgave him. His mother is stupidly proud of him and tells everyone who will listen that her son is off being a hero. Amir hates it but tolerates it because it’s the little bit of happiness she clings to, so he lets her. Since it’s his fault (in his eyes) that her perfect prodigy of a daughter is dead. (Sorry,I realize this particular train of thought is hella depressing haha.) ZOE do I like them: She is my favourite. I love her. Little ray of gay sunshine.

5 good qualities: 1. She is unapologetically out. In the Army. Which is...hella brave. 2. She looks really damn cute in plaid. 3. She beat the hell out of Smitty, was brave enough to tell Gallo he attacked her, and then was also brave enough to go to Haskins and take that fucker down. And THEN she told off Coogan for questioning her. 4. She and Thea having their super causal fling but still being adults, addressing that it was a one time deal (ha), and still talking/communicating/working together/respecting each other? Like WOW, what a concept. 5. Her being a stonecold badass and figuring out what was going on while she had a freshly broken foot and they were in the middle of a fucking terrorist compound.

3 bad qualities: (these are headcanon things, mostly) 1. she gets jealous super duper easily. 2. she doesn’t generally feel she deserves good things. 3. she’s really bad at TRYING to pick up girls. If she’s not trying, she’s got them fawning all over her. But otherwise.

favourite episode/etc: Whatever the one was where she slept with Thea? Or the one where Smitty attacked her.

otp: Zoe/Thea <3 They both need/deserve unproblematic love with lots of hugs.

brotp: Zoe/Nora, as previously mentioned. Being the only two female Shadow Raiders, there’s a ton of camaraderie there and they both just support the hell out of each other.

ot3: Ummm Zoe/Thea/Hannah, as we discussed. :-p Crossovers wheeee.

notp: Literally any guy.

best quote: Her barb to Coogan after his comment about she and Nora being on the same cycle, about how that was a biological function to stop men from being assholes was pretty great. Or the part where she told Nora to go over Gallo’s head to talk to Haskins about flying the mission her way.

head canon: Oh boy, this one’s depressing too haha. Zoe grew up in a military family. Her dad served in the Army. He sustained some pretty serious combat-related injuries so he was honorably discharged when she was 5. He pretty immediately started drinking. In excess. But he wasn’t a violent drunk at all. He loved the hell out of her mom. He never hurt or yelled at Zoe. He just got really quiet when he’d been drinking. And Zoe’s mom didn’t want to hurt his reputation so she kept her mouth shut. Because he was a good husband and a good father, when he was sober. Memorial Day weekend when she was 7, he drove them home from a barbecue and went off the road into a tree. Zoe’s mom died. After that, he got cleaned up for a little while, but he was just...broken. The love of his life was gone. And Zoe looked just like her mom. So he kept her at a distance. By the time Zoe was in middle school, he was back to nonstop drinking. He still climbs on and off the wagon at regular intervals. He still lives in the house where she grew up. He’s stupidly proud of her for enlisting,doesn’t care at all that she’s gay, but half the time when he sees her these days, he thinks she’s her mom.So she really only sees him on holidays. But she calls him once a week.

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elizabethrobertajones · 8 years

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I recently came across this blog that was very anti Dean/destiel. This was apparently because Dean supposedly was "an abusive person". Particularly towards Cas. Personally, I ship it, like.. a lot, but I scrolled down and I have to say that I read some valid points on that blog. Dean really treats him like shit sometimes and like, I could in some way understand why they thought of dean/cas's relationship like that. What's your opinion on this, like, do you think of Dean as abusive towards Cas?

If it was a Cas blog, those are all valid points, and you just let that go no matter how much you might stan for Dean :P Treat it as a free exercise in being zen towards your fellow humans and not thinking shit at them. Cas stans have been through enough, I was in fandom in season 10, I remember watching that despair >.>

(On the other hand there are some people who hate every aspect of the show at this point and are just completely fatigued with caring about it and may have a “Cas deserves better” line - but also hate 99% of everything that happens on screen so much that every aspect of the show is problematic garbage, which, of course, includes Destiel being an abusive trainwreck of a ship before you get to the fans romanticising every punch they throw at each other while gobbling up the queerbaiting and so on and so on)

There are some anti blogs that talk up it being abusive and whether they actually don’t ship it for that reason or not is a lot more blurry and (you can guess by the company they seem to keep) they might have got there via just finding something to “disprove” the ship or to justify hating it. In that case, long angry posts about why it’s so terrible are pretty much loudly agreeing with each other, and maybe hoping someone who ships it will stumble on the post and be convinced their ship is bad and they should feel bad. These same people will argue the ship is homophobic and its fans are homophobic, as well as abuse apologists, racist, whatever, because making a ship out to be unethical is a great way to subtly conduct a ship war while giving yourself high ground. It’s why when stuff like the cucumber water debate blew up, they were accusing us of being homophobic and saying drinking vegetable water made you gay, as if we are the racist uncle who thinks wearing a pink shirt means you’re a “pansy” or something, and that this line of homophobic reasoning is why we think Dean is gay and that they don’t stereotype people.

And there are people who genuinely don’t like the ship whatever angle they approach it because they feel it’s abusive in the sort of way where again you just respect that it makes them feel that way because it upsets or triggers them.

I’m now sure I sound like the next thing out of my mouth is going to be “so I guess Destiel is abusive then” but it’s a big fandom and different groups of people have different versions of the story :P

Lots of rambling about this under the cut:

When I was still fairly new to the fandom I stumbled on a Sam blog that was arguing with a great many examples of how Dean was abusive and of course sympathising with Sam in every fight and turning pretty much every interaction between them into a microaggression. I just wondered how you live like that and still watch the show? Like, if I found something so problematic I couldn’t even watch the 2 main characters who are onscreen all the time interact without getting upset every time one of the opens their mouth, I would just stop watching it. I *have* watched stuff where I then stopped watching because the characters pissed me off.

(I think this show has a secret magic formula to make you extremely over-invested in the characters to the point it’s like fictional character crack, and I may only stop writing meta for this show when I figure it out, take the secret with me, and go write a ton of novels with characters you’re similarly loyal too :P)

Anyway. There’s tons of people who don’t think Sam is abusive to Dean or Dean is abusive to Sam, and after I spent a day or so feeling really weird and uncomfortable about liking Dean so much when he was apparently awful I realised it had never affected the way I watched the show before, and that it had never troubled me about it either, because I never saw it that way.

When *I* thought about it, I thought Sam was very resilient, loved his brother, and had his clear boundaries, such as stomping off in 7x06 when he found out about Dean killing Amy or in season 9 after discovering the Gadreel thing, setting down very clear rules with Dean about where he stood after Dean crossed the line, and that clearly to Sam, he knows his own self, and 99% of the time, he’s fine with what Dean does in the grander scheme. Maybe they have fights and Sam is upset or angry with him for a while but in general if Sam thought he was being mistreated, he’s shown he can identify that for himself and get out and look after his own interest, and return when he and Dean can reach an understanding and have grown as characters from it. (I think altogether too much debate about characters treats them as if they have never grown when we see them learn and change all the time and are quantifiably different from how they started)

I think season 10 was the only time it crossed too far into really seeming a bit too domestic violence-y because of course Dean with the Mark of Cain had an ancient brother killing curse and Sam was still living under the same roof trying to help him, after being nearly murdered under said roof already once that year. But it was all extremely dark and fucked up for everyone, so unless I was stanning Sam, again it wouldn’t upset me any more than any other character’s messed up part in that arc, especially as Sam had his own part in being portrayed in a really negative light, and it seemed like Carver just wanted us to hate both of them at times.

Anyway by the time I ever read anyone complaining about how Destiel was abusive I’d already had to realise through thinking about that (and I read that before season 10 aired) that how we read characters and their behaviour to each other is as subjective as anything else on this show.

If we really, deeply care about Dean, Cas can be seen as abusive - that alley scene in 5x18 put people off because Cas attacked Dean pretty much out of personal anger when he could have just knocked him out with a touch and dragged his sorry butt home, and it made Cas seem cold and cruel to Dean, that he could turn on him like that and not care. Season 6 gives no respite to make Cas seem nice again, and then he goes and breaks Sam’s wall. By 7x17 when he comes back and Dean is all teary eyed about it and has the trenchcoat still you’re like why do you even fucking care, Dean? All he’s ever done is hurt you and Sam and break the world! and Dean’s suddenly in this position where he seems strung along loving someone who has only ever hurt them and been cold to them and his investment seems greater than Cas’s. And then as the story goes on, Cas’s attempts to redeem himself and apologise come across cold and calculating or emotionally manipulative and self-serving and yikes we’ve made it halfway through Carver era and Cas hasn’t done one single thing to earn Dean’s love or to seem truly selfless about his own. (I can’t be bothered to keep strawmanning this but honestly I have seen people who hate Cas argue the latter part, and people who never started shipping Destiel argue the first half about season 5 & 6 and why it never made sense to them)

I think it’s a violent, awful show where people do violent, awful things to each other. Sam and Dean already mutually did enough shit to make it easy to argue either was abusive to the other before Cas was around (eugh, extreme Dean girls hating Sam always feels like such a betrayal but they say some shocking stuff about Sam and how much of a useless whiny leech on Dean he is >.>) and Cas showed up also angry and a creature of violence, built in their exact mould, and they all kicked off from there.

At some point you’ve excused enough of this interpersonal violence and overblown emotional drama (which lends itself to manipulation and grand statements about betrayal or whatever) to watch the show and root for the characters and keep with them for up to 12 years and if you still LIKE the show and the characters, then you may have to consider when and how stuff would be abusive and be aware of not romanticising it, but you can still watch it and enjoy it and NOT find it abusive for your own take on it.

(I tag all discussion of Destiel crypt scene/mirrors of said scene, as “crypt scenes for ts” including gifsets that use their busted up faces in passing, for that reason, so people who find it abusive can selectively avoid it, and as a reminder to self that people see it that way and never to let myself think that these depictions of love breaking through violence are unproblematic. It’s an inherently problematic trope, and saying oh they were controlled by something else and it was romantic that they managed not to kill each other, is just too close to excusing someone who ACTUALLY hits someone and then saying, oh, but they managed to stop themselves from hurting them any more than they did and put down their fists after a while because they LOVE them. And the trope has been used 2 times with Cas and once with Dean so this isn’t saying either of them is more abusive than the other (especially as 10x22 was by far the most shocking, and, as I said about Sam, the Mark of Cain had been a domestic abuse metaphor the whole time))

But - and here’s the big but to literally everything above: if you still LIKE the characters and enjoy their relationship and it DOESN’T upset you too much to watch and you acknowledge where it can be seen as abusive but these things haven’t put you off, then there’s nothing harmful about either shipping them, OR saying you DON’T THINK THE SHIP IS ABUSIVE. And genuinely not thinking it is, overall.

I don’t, and for the same reason I explained about Dean not abusing Sam, especially that Cas still has agency and that his whole story has been about choosing the Winchesters over an INFINITELY more abusive family that HAS done all that shit to him and he’s been struggling to leave including the whole split loyalty still loving for them despite how much they hurt him thing and always being sucked back in despite how he must know by now angel stuff ALWAYS ends with him being hurt and angels dying. Picking Dean as his family over them seems a no-brainer.

For one thing, I don’t feel like there’s any malice in their day-to-day interactions, and that while Dean can be rough and rude to Cas, he doesn’t do it to exert control over him, JUST out of cruelty, or anything else abusive, just a pattern of “when Dean is sad or angry he will say insensitive and horrible things to the people around him” - because he’s human and messed up and angry/miserable (pick your week) and doesn’t think he even deserves their love half the time when he’s really trying to drive people off (his side of 5x18 :P). Your reaction to this pattern might depend on how you’ve been treated in the past and if it rings unfortunately too close to actual abuse to you, but without that trigger I think it is not impossible to read it as not aimed to control or emotionally manipulate the people around him, but normal expressions of emotion, with no intent to harm, and if you read the reactions of the people around him, no lasting damage to them as if his actions were abusive (e.g. Sam doesn’t get flinchy when Dean drinks or gets angry, as if emulating someone raised by a violent drunk; Cas doesn’t react when Dean yells at him but unless he’s in a very bad place for other reasons, gives shit right back to Dean and stands up for himself)

For another, Dean against Sam with the Mark was 100x worse than he ever was to Cas. 9x22 at the end showed a huge difference in how he treated them, and I don’t think that was putting on a nice face for Cas - I think that was meant to convey the Mark twisting Dean up AGAINST Sam and showing that he’d been poisoned against him, but it hadn’t affected how Dean felt about Cas, because he is not his brother, and the curse therefore doesn’t affect them. In the end he did attack Cas, and it’s their absolute low point, but it took a season and a half to hollow Dean out that far, as part of an episode showing in every way that we’d lost all parts of Dean that were good, while Dean took like 15 episodes from Mark of Cain to chasing Sam with a hammer. (And, of course, demon!Dean still retained parts of what made Dean good, making him at least complex, though obviously not “good” any more - Dean in 10x22 was genuinely more evil, empty and broken than when he was a demon, to compare Dean choosing to kill the kid with Dean selectively choosing to kill Lester because he thought his wife didn’t deserve it, never mind all his angsty moping and still deciding what he was and so on, suggesting he was struggling to let go of those last human parts.) Anyway, I didn’t think Dean had any sustained aggression against Cas and the arc was way more about a threat to Sam from Dean - as late as 10x20 Dean was still retaining his humanity and struggling to help Cas and do nice things on his behalf and play cute with Claire, while the season in general kept Cas away from Dean and I think that was a good idea in hindsight, because it both facilitated Dean’s descent (Cas keeps him on the level) and meant Cas didn’t have to take the brunt of Dean’s Mark-related dickishness. Aka, avoiding including Cas properly in any sort of sustained domestic abuse arc with Dean. In 10x18 they play happy families with Charlie, and it’s a fleeting GOOD thing with nice family dynamics. 10x21 laid it on thick that Sam was alone with someone who could swing around to violence and made it clear it was a domestic abuse metaphor between them. (Which, again, in Dean’s defence for THIS relationship, was a metaphor for one season, and I don’t think reflective on how he treats Sam normally, at all.)

As for Dean’s general behaviour, you have to forgive incident by incident on the assumption that Dean isn’t holding up a sustained campaign of abuse against Cas, but considers him an equal but who he often has GENUINE grievances against (and also that Cas is not a woobie and can take it - we may see him hurt a lot but he remains resilient). In season 6, Cas is shifty and won’t come to help them - you could argue Dean’s feeling entitled to that, but he’s upset because Cas is supposed to be a friend and his responses are underwhelming, and, importantly, Dean doesn’t feel like Cas is sharing when he WANTS to help. Dean can tell something’s up but Cas won’t even get into a real conversation with it, and wouldn’t have let Dean help anyway. So he’s pissed off at the start and gets MORE pissed off along the season, so he snaps at Cas and wheedles him to come help not because he feels like Cas is only good to help, but he’s fed up with Cas not coming, being weird, and being unhelpful, when they’re SUPPOSED to be friends.

I don’t even know how to explain how Dean acts towards Cas in season 7 if someone doesn’t get that the repercussions of Cas breaking Sam’s wall aren’t still clear in Dean’s mind, and he can’t talk to Cas about it because he’s never quite himself and ready to have the talk about these consequences. (I mean he sort of can at the end of the season but they’re aggressively not listening to each other even while trying to communicate) When Dean snaps at Cas, he’s frustrated, and angry and missing his friend, and upset on Sam’s behalf and it’s a mess, he’s not just yelling “no one cares that you’re broken” because he wants to hurt Cas. HE cares. He’s so fucked up about it that the entire end of the season rests on him reconciling with Cas, and so they need to show him unable to do that first… There’s more to it than just collecting a moment of Dean yelling at Cas or that bit where he throws the board game on the floor despite how it looks. They’re in the middle of the fight and Cas has as much of his part of it as Dean does, though he’s in a vulnerable state and Dean’s approaching him with anger, Cas knows Dean’s the injured party - this is the arc that starts with “I’ll find some way to redeem myself to you” - and it’s totally fucked up but this is how it plays out with Dean’s reactions to Cas’s avoidance and consuming guilt that won’t even let him face the problem head on until the very last moment. Dean approaches Cas gently, Cas finally makes a gesture to help and in this way their last conversation when they go collect Baby puts them back on EQUAL footing. And before that they were unequal but from both directions - Cas was broken/had no memory, but also Cas had the burden to make it right with Dean and he wasn’t making that move. He fixes Sam, which is the huge important step one, but after that he is “only playing sorry” and the argument goes BOTH ways with the need to reconcile, which means all the pissiness is fair game, NOT Dean being cruel to Cas and kicking him while he’s down…

I suppose I could keep on rationalising stuff they do forever but these are the examples I see the most when reading about it, and I just don’t feel in MY interpretation of it, that Dean has ANY cruelty to Cas, or even a sustained threat to him. That’s not to minimise that Cas took a LOT of beatings over recent times and ended up feeling depressed and alone and with PTSD and so on, but I read this as a carelessness that Dean desperately would not want to inflict on Cas if he knew and understood (and therefore could have reached out to him properly), and that at every opportunity when he even partially understands he reaches out and cares for Cas (like 8x08 and “talk to me” or many of the less dramatic heart to hearts where he tries to understand Cas or to reassure or comfort him about stuff, as well as generally attempting to apologise - I think he apologises 3 times for kicking Cas out the Bunker, though he can only truly repent after telling the whole truth, it ate him up and he WANTED it to not be this way and felt it was out of his control because from the last scene of 9x01 when Gadreel suddenly declares Sam can’t know, Dean immediately loses any control he thought he had over what happens next)…

Anyway, people are ALWAYS going to have opinions or still ship it but think some of my arguments don’t work and some of these examples were abusive but it won’t stop them shipping based on a more ideal version of the relationship, even divorcing from canon altogether and shipping the AU perfect version of the ship where it can always be happy and they never have the issues they do in canon. Some people will ship it because they LIKE that element of it, for one reason or another, and there will be people who write fic embracing really dark elements.

When it comes to reading what others have to say about ANYTHING you like, you have to decide for yourself how much it affects how you see it, and you have to remember people are coming at everything with their personal biases and feelings. You CAN argue Destiel is abusive - you can probably argue most ships are, especially ones with canon interaction, and especially LOTS of canon interaction because tropes like lying and manipulation (even gentle lies and manipulation) are rife in fiction. Writers make characters fight for drama, and once they do, someone’s going to find supporting the characters together is inherently problematic and awful.

If you make it this far in canon and HAVEN’T found the ship abusive in YOUR reading of it and based on YOUR emotional reactions to everything that happened on screen so far, then you are probably safe to keep shipping it at least on YOUR terms.

However, I would listen to what people say and make up your own mind just because if they’re bringing up things that are genuinely unsettling, you should probably work out if you support that or not, and if you ship at a safe remove (e.g. “the crypt scene etc were abusive and I don’t like it but generally I find the ship okay and they’ve made attempts to mend that and aren’t continuing in that behaviour so I can still ship them in canon but don’t want to see anything romanticising the bad bits” or “I find the things they’ve done in canon unsettling enough I would rather ship them in fanon and try to enjoy what they do in canon just for the good bits like when they hold hands” or whatever). As long as you are respectful to other people and understand WHY they see things the way they do, and don’t try and tell people who are genuinely hurt that things AREN’T hurtful.

(I’m not saying you would, but there are arguments in fandom I really don’t think we should be having as arguments, and this is one of them :P)

#Asks #abuse cw

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