yeah you know what? I'm going to get into this. "don't humanize villains"/"this abuser is a monster" is some of the worst character discourse in fandom. abusers are not other. abusers are not always easy to recognize. othering someone who's done terrible things from humanity is an arrogant, poisonous idea.

that is a person who is doing those things, and you want so badly to be unable to fall into such patterns of harm and abuse that you will force that person into another category of species altogether, and in so doing you spare yourself from introspection and you give yourself a pretty little pedestal to stand on and you shame everybody who fell for a red flag that is surely so easy to recognize. and you give into prejudice you assign moral values to attributes outside of yourself and you think you are so above doing harm that you could never act in such a way, even as it is a capability within all of us to do so.

get off your self righteous high horse for a moment and use your fucking brain. I'm sick of people in fandom claiming to be the most moral members that are the "only people willing to discuss this" and then every statement out of their mouth is harmful and pervasive word vomit.

I'm going to try to say this without sounding condescending. But every time I see someone coming into the critical/anti tag to defend LO, specifically the gross maturity/power difference and it's implications, the blog is almost always run by a child. Like, their bio will say 14 or 15, or you can just tell that whoever wrote it is either an actual child or very immature adult. I think it's a testament to the fact that LO very quickly falls apart with any real scrutiny that someone who is immature/young and inexperienced won't apply. And it's also disheartening, because the comic is obviously appealing to a very young audience (mostly young girls), so while an adult with maturity and worldly experience will be able to discern "hey, even though this story is trying to paint such a gap in age and power as something both healthy and romantic, this isn't okay in reality", a child probably won't. It makes me angry with RS and honestly a little sad when I see a comment from a young girl saying that Hades is "goals" or that "Persephone is an adult so it's a-okay". I just have to hope that they have other influences, so if a predatory person comes around trying to be "their Hades", they won't think it's okay.

Not condescending, but definitely concerning. And I say this as someone who's been chronically online since age 14, sometimes the adults around you do have a point when they say "be careful on the Internet". It's not meant to be condescending, it's not meant to be putting anyone down for their age, it's just the reality - there are a lot of shitty things advertised to younger audiences that really shouldn't be consumed by younger audiences. Especially when it comes to things that are easily internalized (like romance, relationship dynamics, etc.)

It's why I've gone on about how LO is basically morally bankrupt at this point, along with many other comics in the romance genre on Webtoons - so many of them are problematic, promote unhealthy relationship dynamics, put a lot of emphasis on normalizing otherwise shitty people and attitudes, and outright objectify women in a very fetishizing if not often sexist way.

Unfortunately WT has figured out that these sorts of stories sell to their main demographic - because their main demographic are made up of literal children who don't know better, and emotionally immature adults who never LEARNED better. It's not a problem that's exclusive to romance webtoons, nor is it one that's solely on RS' shoulders, but it's definitely one Webtoons and RS themselves have capitalized on in a very manipulative way.

It also doesn't help that when you go back far enough in RS' art history, you can see there's a very obvious pattern of her fetishizing innocence and youthfulness, particularly in girls and "little girl" relationship roles (see: she read Lolita and clearly completely missed the point of what it was trying to say). Not enough for me to outright call her a p*dophile, but still enough to make me raise some eyebrows and wonder why she hasn't been called out for it in a more extreme way. I guarantee you if a man were writing this comic, it would have been crucified for its bullshit years ago. Her being a woman doesn't mean her work is automatically less prone to sexism or misogyny or the male gaze than what it would be if the genders were reversed. And I say that as an AFAB creator.

TL ; DR: no, I'm not surprised in the slightest that most of the people defending all the weird and gross infantilization and fetishization crap in LO are literally children. They don't know better, and it's technically not their job to know better because they're children, it's the responsibility of creators like RS to look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves what the actual fuck they're doing. Unfortunately if the creator herself has internalized and normalized creepy and gross relationship "goals" like this for herself, she's not gonna see the glaring issues in peddling it to children.

Look, i know I’m about to kick a wasps nest, but I need to say it.

I don’t really care for fandom shipping discourse, I don’t take Sides religiously as both have good points, and ultimately I’m just anti-censorship…

…but that doesn’t mean I think the pro side is all right and the anti side is all wrong

Both sides harass the shit out of each other, both sides extremists are bad and need to go touch grass

But y’all also need nuance in these discussions your having

Because let me tell you, as someone who was groomed by multiple predators (one would go on to abuse me Irl for 7 years of my life btw, starting when I was a tween) because of fandom, the pro side of the debate has made it quite clear that they don’t actually care to understand the ramifications of the type of abuse I went through, or to actually listen to survivors of CSA who’s abuse occurred through fandom.

The pro side will be quick to point fingers at adults of kids in fandom, but the adults in charge of me were told by therapists I was seeing at the time that I was “being a normal tween” for believing I wanted to be in a relationship with an adult at 13/14. That I was “over dramatic and should be responsible for what happened” at the hands of this adult when I disclosed the first time about the abuse. I also got in trouble for the evidence of the grooming that was found by my parents, instead of them realizing I was being targeted by a creep.

Part of this was because I was a lonely, bullied, and ostracized kid.

It’s almost like sexual predators bank on adults failing to act and blaming young girls for the abuse. It’s almost like they’re right when they tell young girls that no one will believe them when they disclose. The pro side proves this too by how they justify their romanticization by pointing fingers at parents “not parenting kids” as if they can never do anything wrong, or miss the signs.

My parents missed the signs because they assumed a teenager (who was 17-18 when he started abusing 13 year old me) could not be a pedophile. They were happy their daughter “had finally found someone to talk to” because my own peers hated me and bullied me every chance they got at that age. To the point where I was actively suicidal for years.

All of this grooming happened because I dared to interact with the MLP fandom at 13. And trust me that fandom was filled with pedos at the peak of its popularity. Like I said multiple full grown men groomed and RPG’d in a sexual way with me, even after I disclosed my age. Because I dared to like pastel colored pony’s and I wrote some (PG-13) fanfic, and drew some fanart.

And trust me, I saw the romanticization of my own abuse in that fandom, and seeing it being defended still is disconcerting.

Like, an actual survivor saying “hey, please don’t portray the abuse that ruined my fucking life as a good thing please” shouldn’t make y’all so fucking mad. But it does. And it’s fucking weird.

I’m not going to name call or anything, won’t even tell you what you can or can’t post but just know I’m one of those people where if you are posting that crap and I stumble upon it, or are vocally defending your right to romanticize it, that I’m silently judging you.

And I’m just going to block you if you try to defend it on this post.

I’d say that if you want to avoid drama maybe just get a fucking sensitivity reader if your discussing CSA, and aren’t trying to romanticize it. But apparently sensitivity readers are just “enforcing censorship” or whatever so I know I’m just talking to the equivalent of a brick wall.

Before you bring up not reading this stuff- I don’t, I’m just kinda sick of a real problem in fandom being dismissed and victims being blamed for their abuse

Before you bring up Lolita as a “gotcha” defense- I have reading comprehension abilities, evidenced by how I have a minor in creative writing (which btw involves a metric fuck-ton of reading and discerning meaning and intentions of the author from those readings) Lolita was not defending predators, it’s meaning was twisted by people who want to defend grooming and csa, and since I can tell the difference between condemnation and romanticization, I’m sure a lot of people who share my opinions also can as well. Not everyone with “anti” opinions is uneducated like you think they are, some of us are just expressing why we have limits and why we find certain portrayal distasteful. If you think I’m still wrong i reccomend going back and reading the prologue in Lolita that you obviously skipped.

Before you say I’m advocating for censorship- I’m not, I’m just saying you don’t get to shout at abuse victims who were affected through fandom to shut up. Write insensitive portrayals of traumatizing shit, and then get upset when someone tells you your portrayal is making the traumatizing shit look like it’s a-okay. If you post something on this vein be prepared for someone to say that what you wrote is portraying harmful stereotypes (ie that CSA isn’t harmful if an often repeated myth, it’s akin to saying rape victims were “asking for it” because they were drunk).

Also I’ve never harassed anyone about this in my life, in fact the people who defend romanticization of my abuse are usually just blocked on site, because I just don’t want to deal with the shit-stirring that occurs.

And finally for those who think this is me being against harm reduction- I’m not against harm reduction, maybe these thing are harm reduction for awhile, but eventually, just like alcohol or painkillers, these little fanfic stories aren’t going to be enough for would-be predators forever. They will build up a tolerance where imagination and text isn’t enough anymore, and that’s when they start to actually do the real illegal shit.

If you have reading comprehension you’ll realize I’m am not saying fiction=reality, but to spell it out more clearly, the fiction isn’t making them offend, the inability for the fiction to be enough to get them off is what leads them to offend. It’s like someone who can’t get oxy turning to heroin out of desperation.

When the harm reduction doesn’t work anymore, is it really reducing harm, especially when the stuff they now turn to is the illegal stuff they were supposedly trying to “avoid” in the first place.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on this shit, I’m tired of seeing it debated or people with the same trauma being told to shut up because the truth is inconvenient. I needed to just get it out.

Anyone who openly defends this crap in the notes or reblogs will be blocked.

probably low hanging fruit but i associate you with lolita fashion, trans headcanons in general, ravage of course but also glit for some reason (can't remember why?), and of course, thylacines

I also write Glit!

In VOS, the cougaraiders and the condorlights (their birb partners) are experimental models, and they were supposed to have been scrapped because they didn't turn out as desired, but the unscrupulous natal facility sold them all off. Glit, Ravage and Howlback and Nightstalker were paired respectively with Squawktalk, Laserbeak, Garboil and Buzzsaw. One of the reasons that Buzzsaw is super unhinged is that Nightstalker was murdered. (Sundor was originally the partner of Stripes. Stripes actually is an Autobot; Sundor is a Decepticon spy.) At any rate, there are around 10 of these models, starting with Pounce and Wingspan, and they all consider themselves to be siblings. Glit and Ravage have a very conflicted relationship, but they still love one another. Glit can't quite forgive her for sticking with Megatron after what Megatron did to him, even though he consciously understands that they were separated very early in life and Megatron took care of her and Soundwave and her birbs (her own birb and her inherited birb). At the same time, he knows that her intervention with Megatron is probably one of the primary reasons he's still alive, so there's that. Pounce and Wingspan were semi-naturally occurring and had a fully humanoid bot mode. The rest of them don't, but Ravage would rather jump into the sun than take on a fully humanoid bot mode at this point. Like fuck them all, everyone, for deciding she's not a real person or a real girl because she's a cat. She can stand bipedally when she chooses to (and not just for short periods of time, like a thylacine*) but she always has a feline head and face.

(This is also why my antis who are grossed out that she does not have a fully humanoid bot mode amuse me when they're not pissing me off. Like, binch, did you totally miss the point of Ravage's entire IDW 2005 arc?)

Glit also is annoyed with Ravage because until very recently she and Soundwave were not particularly monogamous. In particular he thinks that her affair with Megatron was damaging to Soundwave (it was, but not in the way he thinks--Soundwave doesn't do jealousy, he does 'people I love need to just stop hurting each other') and I really expect him to make angrycatface a lot when Jazz comes onto the Station and he realises it wasn't just "his bitch of a sister" who "cheated". (you really should read this you know :) I think you would like it! it's kind of soft in many places and I don't really do gore, but I have other ways of making it clear what a shitshow the golden age was.) *Ravage's jaw drop in particular, but several other aspects of cougaraider anatomy--they have to be able to stand on their back feet or glit couldn't be a surgeon, they can swivel their forearms, etc are far more like that of a thylacine than either a cat or a dog--in Chinese translations she's called a dog. Also eff you nautica, she does have thumbs, she just has to pop her dewclaws out. She just didn't want to tell you because she had zero desire to play in the explosive quantum foam to protect a planet that might be inhabited. Like, at least find out whether anyone lives there before you ask me to risk my damn life for it.

I’m so tired of seeing anti takes on my dash.

I usually just block or unfollow over it, but writing it out helps to put my thoughts together, so here goes.

The posts I’m seeing are almost always focused on ‘pedophilic ships.’ Which, on one level, fair! Anyone who is writing about an adult and a minor in a way they genuinely think is romantic or sexy is also someone I want nowhere near me!

The internet has no context, so I’ll say it again. That content is awful. If there was a way to ban only the stuff that’s only meant to titillate without any collateral damage, I’d honestly support its removal.

Which should give context to the rest of my argument, because I loathe the assumption that actively liking the worst content you can imagine is the only possible reason to be against censoring it. It speaks to a total lack of understanding of nuance or what censorship looks like in practice.

It’s been said before that being anti-censorship means defending speech you hate, and I’d like to talk a bit about what that means.

First, it is actually a lot harder than people think to censor in a specific and targeted way.

For one thing, how do you define where the line is?

Have you ever tried to write a definition of “only the stuff that glorifies it” that catches all work that glorifies abuse and leaves out something like Lolita that explores that mindset to make a point? What about a survivor writing something really fucked up to process trauma?

Is it okay if you force the survivor to publicly disclose their experiences before they’re allowed to write about it? How much harm are you allowed to do in the course of prevention here?

In short, people write things for all sorts of reasons, and it’s not really reasonable to to assume that inclusion and romanticization are the same.

Definitions of exactly what is and isn’t objectionable, even given a good reason to object, get complex pretty quickly.

Second, censorship, once implemented, never targets only what you want it to. Pretty often it targets queer or other minority work in particular, because there are plenty of people who think that’s objectionable because it exists.

One of the primary reasons AO3 exists is purges on other fansites that deleted innocent fan content, including slash content, under the banner of ‘protecting the children.’ Censorship is a blunt instrument that targets the vulnerable first. Inviting it in is dangerous territory, again, even over genuinely objectionable shit.

(Strikethrough on Livejournal literally deleted a book club that was reading Lolita and left up the account of at least one actual predator. You can’t make this shit up.)

Third, people really need to stop conflating even the most disgusting of fictional content with actual CSEM. Records of real abuse of actual children are on their own level of harm compared to literally any kind of fiction. That shit is illegal for a reason, and it’s not only that it’s disgusting.

Last, I want to talk about implementation. If you don’t want to use AO3 because you disagree with its policies or content, that’s your right. But if you do want it to ban things, how? On the large scale of the internet, that’s actually pretty difficult!

First, the moment you start banning specific topics, even fairly narrowly, both the banned topic and things near it stop getting tagged. People won’t stop writing, or even posting - especially actual malicious actors. They’ll just stop signposting the things that get them banned.

Lots older fans have stories about running into rape or other dark content on other fan sites with no warning. That mostly doesn’t happen on AO3, but the thoroughness of its tagging and the inclusivity of its content policy are related. People feel safe to mark their dark stories because they know doing so won’t get them removed. Tagging them helps people who would be harmed by those stories safely avoid them.

But let’s say that any content with child sexual abuse is banned. It’s no longer tagged, so you’ve probably already triggered some people in this process, but now it can be removed when found.

Finding it after the initial crackdown is going to mean moderators having to actually read it, user reports, or automation.

Automated moderation is how you get stuff like Tumblr’s own absurd sexual content policy.

User reports are incredibly, inherently abusable. If stuff gets removed when enough people report it, the first time someone dislikes a work and has a lot of followers, it’s gone.

AO3 flat out does not have the manpower to have moderators read every single work, and this is unlikely to change - it’s a simple matter of scale.

So the likely avenue is user reports reviewed by moderators. And manpower and biased reporting aside, let’s take an second to honestly consider the trauma of making volunteers read a large amount of content about child sexual abuse to determine what does and doesn’t get kept.

Maybe you manage to grow the volunteer team enough to implement it this way, but frankly, you’re going to end up with a lot of tired, hurt people who lean towards the ban button out of fear of missing something they should have removed. That’s not an environment I’m eager to create, or one I expect to have a great deal of space for a nuanced understanding of why someone might want to go somewhere dark with their fictional content.

(To be clear, my point with this last part is not just ‘it’s hard to do this,’ but a more specific emphasis of the other points about how the difficulties of implementation create other kinds of harm, despite the ostensible goal being harm prevention.)

So all that said, if you got to the end of all this and think I’m disgusting for being a pro-shipper, please tell me how you actually intend to remove only the content you dislike and nothing else without causing significant unintentional harm. A lot of people have failed before you, but I’m still all ears.