A little girl just fucking died and half you fuckers are still acting like this is some political discourse and going on about hamas fuck you I've actually had enough

You obviously know this is about D*rkling or have you misused tags in other fandoms as well? And I am still better than people condoning child trafficking.

i dont believe in cross-tagging, my friend. unfortunately for you i'm the one that made the darkling slander tag on tumblr. if you want a different experience then can i perhaps recommend tiktok? it's a pretty decent hangout for those with no critical thinking skills and the need to argue with thin air. besides, the tumblr slander tag actually has real slander instead of the shallow and incorrect bs i see antis spew. as if it's my fault i'm better at your jobs than you.

also maybe self-evaluate in regard to the last sentence of your ask. best of luck in therapy!

ive already expressed how bunk the culturally christian discourse is but something else occurred to me and its that the discourse not only alienates exchristians (on purpose) but also alienates poc, largely i think also on purpose. because ive seen so many false equivalence posts insinuating that backlash against culturally christian is the same as resistance to the idea of ‘white privilege’ or that being ‘culturally christian’ is the same as being white in a racist society. and so many people keeping this discourse going are white and trying to call out other white people for having another level of what theyve interpreted as unilateral all encompassing privilege, going back and forth on how privileged the cultural christians (exchristians, people raised atheist, people who have converted to other religions, jewish folks and muslims too now if they breathed the wrong too christian air or lived in the wrong country) are and equating it to being inherently racist. and you can see how this analogy doesn’t work for people of color and literally anyone marginalized in any other way. even if you think ‘culturally christian’ works as a term (it doesn’t but go off, mostly because yall stripped it of anything meaningful from conception) how can you say its equivalent to white privilege even for poc without being racist? for all this “you need to unlearn christian biases!” none of you are unlearning your racist biases.

being ‘culturally christian’ is not a person of color’s version of white privilege you myopic racist fucks. the white ‘culturally christian’ enjoyers are either trying to dodge some sort of guilt or accountability but it shows how they use intersectionality is broken and oversimplified otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. its no surprise a concept made by a black woman (intersectionality) is misused by white folks. and no, i don’t care if youre white and nonchristian saying this, if you can make those kind of claims with no nuance then i get to do the same. a lot of the popular bloggers who say this are white and reblog from people known to harass poc anways...

and now for the personal anecdote as a black person: black churches didn’t get firebombed, be segregated and get defunded so they couldn’t organize against white supremacy for you to say ‘culturally christian’ is the same as being white and racist for everyone. they didn’t edit the bibles they gave enslaved people for no reason, they didn’t burn crosses in people’s yards and march streets with them in white hoods, or claim black people didn’t have souls or that integration was ‘unchristian’ or say that “only jesus could fix racism!” for you to get your white ass on tumblr and say this shit. i hope you feel genuinely uncomfortable and unsettled reading that.

genuinely glad its over though so i can like actually be done. because i would be lying if i said i didnt itch everytime there was a sam ment on stream and iwasnt watching but i cannot live my life like that again

will ALSO say it's fascinating to me how much some people care about what other people have to say about their fav drivers. maybe i'm just too old for in-fandom fighting, but do you realize that you can just? ignore these people? and have fun in your own little bubble?

transphobes call us sensitive but the minute they encounter someone with a different opinion than them their head explodes

it’s not often I get the hellsite side of tumblr but woo buddy am I getting some of it

Okay we're gonna try and settle this

Because I've seen so many people try and speak for the entirety of the ace community in regards to this discourse, I thought why not make a poll just to gauge out the general opinion

Disclaimer: This poll might not turn out entirely accurate given that there's always a possibility some people won't answer truthfully or throw this poll into an echo chamber with people who agree with them.

Disclaimer 2: I'm leaving reblogs open because I want the poll to reach more people but please for the love of god don't start a fight in the notes.

About Option 3: The distinction here is that you're fine with people portraying an asexual / aromantic character as anywhere on the ace / aro spectrum as long as they actually put in the effort to portray a sex-favorable ace or a romance-favorable ace and their experiences as opposed to just making the character allo.

what's been particularly vile to me is this group of white online leftists who insist that anyone who cares about more than this one issue for the election is a bad person, like, as if us black and brown people are making up reasons to be afraid and not.....believing the gop when they say they are coming for us. believing trump who has said previously that he does not bluff, that he will do the things he's said he will do (i hate what social media has gone to the word gaslighting but it feels like gaslighting. we lived through four years of trump. we saw the damage. stop treating us like we're being dramatic). it must be great to not have to worry about that i guess? "life won't change under trump" is such a telling admission because maybe theirs won't but mine will. and so many others' will.

and it is often again these (white) online leftists that love to call anyone who disagrees with them a white liberal (derogatory) because they know it would be racist (bad) to be this shitty and condescending to poc but they don't want to actually listen to anything black and brown voters are saying. it's easier to just call us white liberals and throw our opinions out, to ignore the work of black people for decades to gain the right to vote, to disregard the weight of telling them to not do that. it's genuinely appalling. they care so much about racism until it's time to engage with poc who have different opinions than their online echo chambers, then we're just stupid liberals with terrible opinions like..... wanting to live. not wanting four more years of trump. so sorry for that.

sorry for this vent in your inbox, i'm just so fucking tired of white people trying to rewrite history as if trump wasn't that bad. he was for my family and countless others and i am terrified for what's to come if he wins.

The thing about (the often-white) Online Leftists is that they have become just as much as a radicalized death cult as the diehard Trumpists. If you don't want to die for The Revolution and/or sacrifice your life, friends, family, the rest of the country, etc., then you're Insufficiently Pure and must be Purged. (Which I think is just complete BS, as none of them could actually handle sacrificing anything, but it's increasingly the only kind of performative rhetoric that is acceptable in leftist-identified discourse spaces.) This is functionally identical to "if you aren't willing to lay down your life for our Lord and Savior Donald Trump and the Great White Christian Nationalist Dictatorship, you're a liberal cuck," but with the names and justification changed. It doesn't change the underlying radicalization, nihilism, and insanity of the premise.

Another thing the Trumpists and the Online Leftists have in common is that they are busily rewriting just how bad Trump was in order to serve their Ideology. Ever since January 6, 2021, the Republicans have thrown everything they have at revising and whitewashing any suggestion that it was an "insurrection," and the Online Leftists have done the same, in an attempt to "prove" their insane point that Trump "would be better" than Biden. This is embodied in the recent ultimate-brainworm-nonsense maximalist-online take that "Biden has to lose so the rest of the world will see that the US rejects genocide!!!" That's right, the message that the rest of the world would take from Biden losing to Trump is that the US rejects genocide. Never mind if Trump literally wants to commit all the genocide possible and to install himself as a fascist theocratic dictator. In the deeply twisted minds of the Online Leftists, this is the only possible interpretation of Biden's loss, so they'll push for it as hard as they can! The Trumpists and the Online Leftists, at this point, are working pretty much in concert to damage Biden for similar insane reasons and get Trump elected. Etc etc., one Nazi and ten people at the same table is eleven Nazis.

Like. Sure. Four years ago, when Trump was president and people were dying by the thousands because he didn't want to wear a mask because it smeared his bronzer, just to name literally one of the terrible things he did every single day (and not even mentioning how much worse a second term would be) we were absolutely better off. Super-duper great. (Sarcasm.) Either that or "there is suffering and evil in the world and the only solution is to drastically increase the suffering and evil for everyone and to destroy what progress we have managed to make because It Does Not Fix Everything Now" is an absolute moral imperative, and either way, yeah. I'm calling bullshit.

Once again back on my "Please write whatever the fuck you want especially if it's unhinged" bullshit.

I feel like fandom doesn't talk enough about contrast to understand how important it is and how human nature will always inevitably seek it out to some degree. One of the BEST things about a pairing in fandom is that you get to read fic about them in all different ways. From Canon typical meet cutes and happy ending fix its to serial killers AU and dead doves ahoy. Contrast and multifaceted expression is necessary. It will always exist. It needs to. It should. It MUST.

I say this because the suppression of "contrast" (I.e anything the loudest people in fandom don't vibe with) is especially rampant where the pairing becomes an extension OF the people engaging with it. The inability to separate and share space securely without needing to dominate through bullying and harassment is behind so much of what's wrong in fandoms now.

But see, most people don't understand what fucking contrast IS. They can only imagine someone doing what they are doing: trying to dominate and suppress by asserting superiority, when in fact that's not the case at all.

Contrast is a good thing. A fic that's different and weird and provocative might inspire something new in a reader. Art doesn't only come from happy hyperfixations and an echo chamber of agreement. Salt tastes AMAZING after chocolate. Everyone's tastes can be expressed and contrast is what's responsible for so much of creative expression that we barely realise it. Contrast is Eddie Munson DYING in SE4. Did anyone like it? Fuck no. Did it trigger a mass movement? Hell yes, at least in part. If everything in fandom is "Happy and Safe and Approved By The Self Selected Voices of Fandom TM" then everything will become a replica of everything else. There must always be space for the new, challenging and downright dark explorations because they provide balance, they trigger reactionary imagination, they provide context and critical thought and that's without even touching upon catharsis or human experience in a narrative frame.

Contrast is necessary. Anyone can write ANYTHING. AO3 is an archive, it's for everyone and anyone but not any ONE person to try to control.

No cruelty or discourse will be worth it in 5 years time. Only the art will remain.

💜💜💜

I make a point of not wading into Discourse on this site, because this whole… debacle is something that provides a pretty good example of how there are so, SO many real-world factors at play in how someone goes about their opinions and feelings, and how arguments online are more a collision of those feelings than any sort of... productive statements on the efficacy of the positions being argued from, but... yeah. The echo chamber effect and not having a varied social structure can really screw with your perceptions of the world- I know it did for me when things were bad. "Nobody is there for you" and "You can't trust x people" are definitely the sorts of things I thought then. I'm grateful for the friends I've got who cover a whole swath of life experiences, who I do trust implicitly no matter what despite those differences in our worlds, and it seems like you've got the same- that kind of friendship is one where trust is a given- hell, one might even call it "magical", and everyone deserves friends like that. Sad to see that someone can't believe that we're more alike than we are different as humans. I find we're better off when we come to the world from that point of understanding.

Three of my best friends in the world are a trans man, a genderqueer person, and the most cis man on the planet. Every one of those people have wildly varying experiences compared to me in class, gender, and upbringing, but I would literally trust any of them with my life. No matter the differences in our worlds, the bonds I feel with them transcend those differences and thinking that everyone that's unlike you is out to betray you in some way is far more a product of trauma than it is of every single person on the planet. I hope everyone can come across the camaraderie I feel with my friends, genuinely. If you feel like you'll never get those kinds of people in your life, I can guarantee they're out there and they're waiting to meet you.

It's always telling that the only time when transandro bros even dain to recognize intracommunity transmisogyny, it's only when they're forced to distance themselves from the rampant transmisogynists in their community whose transmisogyny is so cartoonish it becomes undeniable. And it's only to preserve image and position themselves as the non-reactionary alternative.

They did it when one of their own sent out rapey sexual harassment copypasta anons to trans lesbians. They did this when already infamous "transmisogyny group chat"/"The TMRA Radfems warned you about" faggotwithopinions/transmascpeterwenz treated becoming mutuals with the CEO who permabanned a trans woman for no reason and followed her off-site to violate privacy data protections in order to paint her as a sex pest as Huge Get. They did this when TERFs felt comfortable with their communities transmisogyny to openly talk about how they plan to use transandro bros specifically to drive a wedge in the trans community, something trans andro bros accuse transfeminists of all the time.

And when I say it's only in these cases it is ONLY in these wildly cartoonish scenarios. Back when the "transmisogyny group chat" was still fresh news, something that usually happens when a queer transmisogynist shows their full ass happened. A bunch of TERFs who stalk these discourses because they're obsessed with trans women went into his anons to send the most vile hate they could summon while pretending to be trans women so our abusers have something they can point to to play victim. And all the transandro bros took these ANONYMOUS HATE MESSAGES sending gendered slurs/sexual harassment at FACE VALUE when they said they were coming from trans women. It got so bad that prominent transandro bro GenderKoolaid when "dissecting and analyzing" a cropped screenshot of a post by Predstrogen (you know the trans woman who was later outsted by the CEO himself) made some wild speculation about how an offhand comment about "transfems taking the piss" was a direct joke reveling in this harassment.

And there are still plenty of blatant transmisogynists that are propped up as prominent members of the transandro community because they haven't had their own "Me and CarExplosionsHammer Photomatt are besties!" moment. There's the aforementioned GenderKoolaid who routinely engaged with "critiquing" transfeminists posts out of context behind their back and alongside spacelazarwolf has promoted the kiwifarms style blog transandrophobia-archive.

They harbor loads of ex TERFs. ftmtftm who left a 31 paragraph college dissertation with proper citations carefully explaining why I'm either purposely unintellectual or actually stupid and what I was saying was radfeminism aktually when I was looking through his blog before blocking him I saw 1) him lamenting about feeling abandoned by the radfem community he was apparently raised by and 2) him sighing with fucking "transmisoginy group chat" faggotwithopinions of all people about how "these Actual Transmisogynists™ make it so hard for us Actually Nice TMRAs and we need to put an effort to come across as considerate to their experiences with them when we engage with transfems" acting like they they aren't the very problem they are complaining about.

An out Ex-TERF nothorses is responsible for cultivating the current transandro echo chamber tried to use his influence in the community he helped create to try and redefine TERF to try to allow for the label to paradoxically include trans women. After that he wrote an anti-transfeminist manifesto that "defined" Beaddelism and cited open TERF sources. And this manifesto is still constantly linked by transandro bros whenever someone outside the discourse asks what a beaddel is.

The transmisogyny is so bad in their community but simultaneously is explicitly an outlier and not representative of them. Every prominent member is transmisogynists Georg and should not be counted but only when you can prove he is unequivocally, beyond the shadow of a doubt, transmisogynist. Up until then everything he does is fine until it's not.

To transandro bros "transmisogynistic trans men" is this Mystical Other problem that can only be solved with better PR and is completely unaddressable and says nothing about their community at all. Something that they've wholly separated from themselves that's only addressed in the theoretical until they're forced to confront it because they've fostered it so much it's become too big to ignore.

Like if your truly "one of the good ones" whose "only trying to talk about specific issues trans men face" then ask yourself why you've aligned with an ideology founded directly in opposition to transfeminis?. Why do you stand with a community whose mest well regarded members are also some of the most rampant transmisogynists on this site? Why you are constantly having to do PR work to not be instantly regarded as on the transmisogynists that you're community has become known for?Why you refuse to address the transmisogyny problem so much that out and proud TERFs feel comfortable enough to walk right in and start proposing "AMAB supremacy" theory?

Like I've said before. The disgusting actions and behaviors from the community alone are enough to not regard any "theory" they put forth to excuse it.

Imagine being a major publisher in charge of one of the most popular romance/fantasy novels currently on the market.

Now, imagine giving information to Major magazine and entertainment news outlets that contradicts the plot you are setting up in your book.

The casual reader is GOING to question your integrity and question the author and editors of the magazine you are supposed to be working with. (The author will look dumb)

The ACOTAR series are not books that are making profound cultural statements, they are for HAPPY ENTERTAINMENT , and you are supposed to be guaranteeing a happily ever after.

There is no way that Bloomsbury did not approve TIME magazine article, indicating that Azriel and Elain are going to have their book together. They also directly compared it to Nesta and Cassian. ( who are endgame and got their HEA)

This allows the consumer to know what they are buying. They feel safe and confident in spending their money.

Consumer confidence is so important when you have a business that employs a bunch of people, you make sure you secure your income you don’t get other people fired and you keep your job.

The Time magazine article confirmed that Elain and Azriel are endgame in my opinion.

Otherwise that is a huge blunder in the PR department at Bloomsbury.

The best way to deal with the negativity is to mute or block people that are talking about the other ships. I understand it puts you in an echo chamber, but its already over. After that article there is no point in suffering through their lack of evidence theories because it will just upset you and provide no discourse about what the book and plot will look like.

If you’re spoiling for a fight, then go ahead, but it’s just gonna make you upset and drain you.

Be around fountains not drains!

To be clear if it was a smaller magazine, I would understand the misdirection, but the magnitude of the statement in THAT entertainment magazine (TIME) was confirmation for me.the stakes are too high and the magazine would look so stupid if their authors did not know how to read and comprehend “young adult” books.

Absolutely sucks that your blog is ravaged with proshipping apologia. Like yeah enjoying dark subject matter in fiction doesn't mean you condone it IRL (I myself am an avid gore and kink fan and use that to express my feelings in art) but uhhh there's a difference between depicting pedophilia in a story and actively jacking it to child porn which is what most if not all proshippers are trying to justify.

The Venn diagram between proshippers and anime lolicons is a circle. "Ohhh it's not real" yeah sure technically but that's still very much a child being raped on screen you're getting your rocks off to. Being in the second dimension doesn't negate that.

Most proshippers don't actually care about properly depicting complex subject matter in art. They just wanna write their incest rape South Park fics and call anyone who calls them out on it "puritans." (I doubt any of you really understand what that word means. If not liking child porn makes me a puritan then call me the Virgin fucking Mary.) It's all excuses, excuses.

Fiction affects reality more than you think. It's why propaganda is so effective. It's why Jim Crow and minstrelsy was (and still is tbh) so harmful to African Americans. Why do you think POC care about how they're depicted in media so much? It very much influences thinking, how people see the world.

(There is an argument to be made about the rampant racism in fandom, but that's a whole other conversation.)

Don't dismiss this ask. I want you to read it very carefully and get yourself out of the echo chamber you've put yourself in. Consider the points made at the very least. Use the "critical thinking" you claim to love so much.

I have considered the points you made and read them very carefully, and I have found them incorrect, relying on faulty logic, and full of unverified assumptions and false equivalences. I now bring you a full breakdown of exactly why, though I’m putting it under a cut in case anyone wants to avoid the Discourse™ because this breakdown is a long one.

*cracks knuckles* Here we go!

You clearly have a different definition of “proship” than I do. I and those that I have reblogged or liked (as far as I can tell) are “proship” in the sense that we’re arguing for the freedom to read what you want and write what you want because thoughtcrime isn’t real, no one gets hurt inside your head, and the ability to read and write what we wish is vital to a free society. That’s my definition of “proship,” and if you have a different definition and are determined to stick to it, there’s not much I can do about that. I can only tell you what my definition is so that you know what I’m referring to when I talk about it in this post or reblog posts mentioning it.

If you’re referring to what’s on AO3 (which is what I am mainly concerned with, as I don’t talk about other fanfic sites on my blog), that is not child porn. It’s not. The term child porn refers to sexual photos and videos of real children, not text-only stories about fictional ones. AO3 does not allow users to upload videos nor does it allow users to upload photos except for their profile pictures, and it is literally written into their Terms of Service that they do not allow child pornography on their site. You couldn’t put child porn on AO3 if you tried. Text by itself with no photos or videos accompanying it is not child porn, and that’s true no matter how disgusting and immoral you find it. I don’t support or justify child porn because I don’t support or justify real children being hurt, which is what actual child porn involves and requires.

What I do support is the freedom for everyone to read and write what they want, and I am not going to stop supporting that.

How do you know that the people reading or writing a fic are “getting their rocks off to” or “actively jacking it” to what's in it? Did they tell you? Have you developed telepathic powers and read their minds? How do you know that people “don’t actually care about properly depicting complex subject matter in art?” Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them. You don’t know why someone is reading something and you don’t know why someone is writing something. I have no idea whether the person checking Mein Kampf or Birth of a Nation out of a library is a racist who agrees with everything in both works or a scholar doing research for a paper on racism or just an average joe who wants to see what’s in there for themselves and form their own conclusions, which is a perfectly fine and intellectually healthy thing to want. I don’t know which of these is the case and I’m not going to automatically assume the worst-case scenario, nor am I going to demand that the person checking out those works provide me with an explanation because they don’t owe me one. You don’t know why someone is reading or writing a rape or incest story. Maybe they find it sexy or maybe they’re a victim themselves, working through their trauma by expressing it via the written word. You don’t know which one it is, and they don’t owe you an explanation. I’d advise you not to automatically assume the worst-case scenario either.

Because you know what happens when people assume the worst of an author’s intentions and assume they know what a work is doing? You get situations like Isabel Fall’s and Lindsay Ellis’ where people were sure they knew that the former was being transphobic with her short story and that the latter was trivializing rape with her “rape rap.” They were so sure, as sure as you are in your ask, not a doubt in their minds, didn’t think it was possible for there to be any other reason or interpretation, and so they felt totally justified in harassing those women. I’m sure each of them convinced themselves they were doing this because they were an ally who just cared so much and that those authors deserved the hate they were getting because (gasp!) they wrote something bad and if you write something bad, you should expect to be called out. And then they found out—oops! Turns out Isabel Fall was a trans person and not a cis person being transphobic after all, and was actually writing a story about a subject she had plenty of experience with, and—oops! Turns out Lindsay Ellis was an assault victim herself and she was coping with her trauma in the best way she could because making a lighthearted rap about the subject made it more accessible, easier to deal with, and not as scary and she wasn’t making fun of victims after all. Whoops!

How do you know the people writing these fics you find so horrible aren’t doing something similar to Ellis and Fall? How do you know they aren’t victims working through their grief and trauma in a way that helps them? How do you know you’re not misjudging and assuming the worst of them just like Fall’s and Ellis’ haters misjudged and assumed the worst of them? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them. How do you know?

Why do you get to be the authority who decides what “properly depicting complex subject matter in art” even looks like? Maybe someone else read it and decided it was properly depicted; why does your opinion and interpretation matter more than theirs? Why is yours the correct one? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them.

I don’t know what anime lolicon is, so I’m not gonna comment on that, though I will say it disproves your point about the Venn diagram being a circle since I am technically a proshipper and yet I don’t even know what that is. I’m sure if you look hard enough, you can probably find someone using the proship label who has done something bad or supports something bad, but the same can be said about antis. You get assholes in every group. Doesn’t mean everyone in the group is a bad person.

(Also I know this isn’t the most important point here but the fact that you’re more worried about the content of South Park fanfics rather than the South Park show itself says to me that you care more about finding an easy target than about minimizing harm because that show has plenty of racist and anti-Semitic “jokes” in it that are being fed to a much larger audience than any fanfic of it could ever have, yet I don’t see you being worried at all about that. Wonder why.)

(Another less important point but one I’m still going to indulge in: I find your line about “if that makes me a puritan then call me the Virgin Mary” funny in an ironic way because in trying to claim that people don’t know what the word puritan means, you proved that you yourself don’t know what it means by implying that puritan = virgin. Puritan and virgin are not the same thing. Virgin is a state of being that could be voluntary or, if you want sex but can’t find anyone to give it to you, it could be involuntary. One could be a virgin and still be sex-positive just like one could be a religious fundamentalist with ten kids who’s had all the sex required to make those ten kids but still be sex-negative and think that only the straight married baby-making kind is okay and all other kinds are impure and gross. Unlike virginity, puritanism is a mindset, not a state of being, and therefore it is always voluntary. You can be one without being the other. Again, not a super important point, but I thought the irony of that line was funny.)

You do know that Jim Crow was a set of laws and policies set down by the government and enforced by police and courts and not, like…a dirty fanfic or book, right? You do know that? It was and still is a legal framework that’s baked into the justice system and has been the driving force behind everything from mass incarceration to drug policy to redlining and housing to voter disenfranchisement. Bitch, I fucking wish that Jim Crow was nothing more than a bad fanfic or a bad story; that would make it a hell of a lot easier to fight! Acting like any one (fan)fiction writer or any one piece of (fan)fiction has the same amount of power as the fucking US government is some insane false equivalence.

As for the representation argument, you’re misunderstanding what that movement is about and why the founders of it cared about the state of media. We Need Diverse Books and organizations like it did not start their campaigns because they were disgusted by what White writers were doing and wanted to stop them and make sure they could never do it again. They started their campaigns to empower and encourage authors of color. It began when a few Black mothers were looking for books for their kids and realized they couldn’t find any with a Black child on the cover, not because they read something a White person wrote and were so horrified by it that they had to put a stop to it. Being so horrified by something in a story that you have to put a stop to it is what Moms for Liberty does. The goal of the representation matters movement is to diversify the publishing industry since it’s still majority White, to publish more authors of color because most of the authors being published are still White, and to update school curriculums so that students of color can read about and study characters like themselves. All of which are good and reasonable goals. It is not and never was about telling people what they were and were not allowed to write or read, or saying that they’re bad people because of what they write or read.

“Influences thinking” and “affecting reality” are not the same as controlling or determining thinking and reality. If fiction really does affect how people see the real world, then why, in a time when we have more positive books/movies/TV shows/plays of and by POC and positive queer books/movies/TV shows/plays than ever before, are we still dealing with vicious racism and homophobia? If fiction influences thinking and affects reality and how people see the world so much, then why, in a time when we have Drag Queen Story Hour and trans characters are being featured positively in popular TV shows and trans actors are winning awards, are we still dealing with some of the worst transphobia we’ve ever seen? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them.

Fiction doesn’t make things happen. Playing violent video games doesn’t make a person violent. Reading or writing about an immoral act does not mean you agree with, get off to, or are going to do the immoral act. And that’s true regardless of what the immoral act in question is, whether it's gore or kink or rape or incest.

The problem with “you can read/write what you want except for X because X is gross/morally wrong” is that the bigots and mean-spirited folks of the world will find a way to make anything they don’t like into X. That’s the part antis don’t think about. But we’re already seeing it play out in school board meetings.

“We don’t want to ban Maus because it talks about the Holocaust, we want to ban it because uhhh it has pictures of naked prisoners in the camps and therefore it’s pornography.”

“We don’t want to ban Beloved because it talks about slavery, we want to ban it because uhhh it has a slave getting raped in it and therefore it’s pornography and sexually explicit and won’t someone think of the children!”

“We don’t want to ban all of these books because they have Black kids on the covers, we want to ban them because uhhh they’re critical race theory and indoctrination that teaches White kids to hate themselves!”

“We don’t want to keep drag queens out of libraries because we hate them and are transphobic, we want to keep them out of libraries because uhhh they’re sexualizing minors and teaching them to mutilate their genitals!”

Those are real examples. And they will happen to fanfiction too if we’re not careful. Someone doesn’t like Sonadow? Well they’re not against it because they’re homophobic or just don’t like the ship, they’re against it because uhhh it’s pedophilia since Shadow is 50-65 depending on how you count it and Sonic is 15. If it can happen with books, it can happen with fanfiction.

We’ve already seen cases of people running for board positions on AO3 who talked about “cleaning up the site,” and each time it turned out they were homophobic and were very much including queerness in what they considered “dirty.” That’s going to keep happening because antis keep falling for it and getting swept up in a manufactured moral panic without thinking through what the enforcement would be like. The whole reason AO3 has the policies that it does is because these kinds of purges happened regularly on other sites. Every time, people insisted it was “just the bad ones,” “just the immoral ones,” “just the underage ones,” etc. And it never was. And after every purge, there’d be a lot fewer queer love stories in the world.

How are you going to make sure that doesn’t happen again? How will you decide whose definitions of terms like “pedophilia,” “grooming,” “underage,” “sexualizing,” “fetishizing” get used? That’s the part antis never think about, is what enforcement of what they want would actually involve. Some people think “underage” is anyone under 25 or under 20 and some think it’s anyone under 18. Which one is right? Who gets to decide? Which country’s age of consent is the correct one that fanfic writers around the world all have to abide by regardless of where they’re from, and why is that country’s age of consent the correct one? Whose interpretation of a work is the correct one? And whoever ends up making these decisions, how will you stop this decision maker who gets to say what counts as “properly and improperly depicting complex subject matter” and what doesn’t from shifting the goalposts and abusing their power? How will you stop them from applying those negative labels to just any work they don’t like? What checks and balances will be put in place to keep whoever does the fanfiction gatekeeping from abusing that position? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them. I’ve yet to see an anti have an answer to these questions.

I know propaganda is effective because you’ve fallen for it. The idea that peoples’ ability to read and write what they want must be restricted because Think of the Children™ and because “only bad people would ever want to read/write something bad” is the same talking points used by Moms for Liberty, Ron DeSantis, the people protesting Drag Queen Story Hour, and so many others. Every single time an attempt is made to restrict the freedom to read and write, it is always couched in the paternalistic language of protection, safety, just looking out for kids, and the fearmongering language of “that stuff is freaky, dirty, and gross and only a pervert would ever have a problem with it being banned.” Every time, it is discussed with the language of protection and safety, and every time, it is a lie.

I support the right of everyone to read and write what they want because I don’t know their situation, don’t have the right to demand an explanation of their situation or a detailed account of their very private and personal traumas, and have seen what happens when people try to excuse banning and censorship of written text or harassing authors with the excuses of “it’s just the bad ones,” “we’re just protecting kids,” “we just have a few concerns,” “we’re just being good allies,” and “if I wrote something gross I’d expect to get called out!”

So. Now that I have responded to your points, I hope that you will very carefully read and consider my points at the very least and get out of your echo chamber and use some critical thinking too. The fact that you put the phrase critical thinking in quotes like it’s a fake thing that doesn’t exist instead of a real and very important skill reveals a lot more than I think you meant it to, but still I hope you try.

I’ve disabled anonymous asks because I want to see if you’re brave enough to respond without hiding behind anonymity. I’ll be interested to see if you or anyone who agrees with you actually provides thoughtful, well-reasoned, and well-articulated answers to the questions I’ve asked instead of replying with a thought-terminating ad hominem like “That was a lot of words to say that you’re a [insert bad thing here]!” or “Just say you [insert bad thing here] and go!” And if you can actually provide evidence for your claims, if you can provide non-anecdotal, verifiable studies and data that are not from a religious or rightwing think tank that prove your points about proshipping and proshippers, then I’ll really be impressed.

I’m not holding my breath though.

the amount of discourse i see within the white community speaking for poc without actually recognizing our voices or having ever actually talked to a poc…all in the name of looking good and getting brownie points online. do yall even actually care about the struggles of poc? do you care about how we feel? do you actually wanna know what we find racist/upsetting or you wanna make those decisions for us too?

do yall ever get off the internet echo chamber and do anything…anything at all…to help minority’s? . and i mean this goes for all marginalized communities. and i don’t mean your “like or reblog if you stand with” posts i mean actually doing something.

to quote that one song:

“you can join the march, protest, scream and shout. get on Twitter, hashtag, and seem like you're down. but they see through it all, people believe you now? you said publicly, "Rest in peace, Mike Brown". you speak about equality, but do you really mean it? are you marching for freedom, or when it's convenient? want people to like you, want to be accepted. that’s probably why you are out here protesting. don’t think for a second you don't have incentive. is this about you, well, then what's your intention??”

A portion of my thoughts on the tomarry t/b discussion going on since probably forever, as a bottom!tom lover

I want to start this off by saying I am asexual. I’ve certainly become more okay with reading smut over the past year, but because of my asexuality (and my slightly less resolute but still prevalent sex repulsion as well as my incomprehension of people’s shockingly stubborn preferences (that I have no issue with, but for obvious, previously stated reasons, I don’t fully understand)), my experience with seeing and interacting with all sides of the fandom, and my general lack of care for who is topping or who is bottoming in general, I can approach this topic with some semblance of rationality that isn’t affected by, you know, a staunch opinion on something that people are as passionate about as sex. This is an opinion that I haven’t always held, because prior to FULLY joining the tomarrymort fandom (to be more specific: being active on social media and meeting people who prefer either dynamic), I didn’t even have an opinion on it. I didn’t even know t/b discourse EXISTED. This is an opinion I have gained after seeing many many many people from both sides discussing it, so to anyone who disagrees with my opinion miss me with that “oh, well you’re just biased from only interacting with one side of the fandom and having always enjoyed bottom!tom” bullshit, lmfao.

That being said, it is abundantly clear that the issue for some people is more than just “untagged dynamics” as they insist. To this insistence I have two things to say: 1. If you are so bothered by one sex scene in the midst of a 200,000 word, novel length, beautifully written with a beautiful plot MASTERPIECE, perhaps don’t read untagged fics. Simple as that! Authors don’t owe you anything. 2. You know so damn well that your issue isn’t just untagged dynamics (which often only happen when authors are simply UNSURE about what they’re going to write in the future, rather than a desire to make fixed shippers angry and to fish for interactions and are NOT a personal attack or “protest” against tagging, contrary to what many believe).

Are you threatened by twink Tom riddle???? Are you disgusted by the concept of big strong masculine Tom being railed senseless ? Just asking the essential questions.

Furthermore, I see many fandom members persisting in the idea that non-fixed shippers call fixed shippers misogynists and that’s why “we” “start discourse” with fixed shippers (I am using the term “non-fixed shippers” to mean basically anyone who enjoys bottom!tom, because, regardless of whether you’re a fixed!bottom!tom shipper or not, it’s easier to do it this way. apologies for the generalization shdkdhdjdjd). There are many other posts that talk about this topic in much greater detail than I ever could, and I have to admit I’m not educated about the history and nuances of this to talk about it, so I’m just going to say that I genuinely do not give a fuck if you like bottom Harry or bottom Tom. I could not care less. I enjoy both. I’m not here to preach about whether it’s misogyny to prefer one thing another or not, because I simply don’t know. However, what I do know is that this whole thing about “bottom!tom enjoyers calling fixed bottom harries misogynistic” is a classic case of an echo chamber!! Non-fixed-shippers aren’t getting angry and upset at fixed shippers because you guys like bottom harry (which, according to them, is something we call a “misogynistic concept”!! who would have known!! i certainly didn’t know we were doing that!!). I haven’t honestly seen any instances of that. No, people are upset because you make “call-out” posts about authors and fics and blogs to say “oh, this fic/author is Bad Horrible Bad Bad because they didn’t tag t/b”, talk shit about people who mind their own business preferring bottom Tom (which can go both ways, but I see content from every side of the fandom and I have noticed that the non-fixed shippers side only really has an issue when the fixed shippers come in and start being senselessly rude. This irrational anger at those who have different preferences than you does tend to come from one side more than the other), and obtain a victim type mentality when an author of a long-form is either unsure about dynamics or just… doesn’t feel it’s necessary to tag. It’s as if certain people have a distorted view of what everyone is ACTUALLY upset about. No, we don’t care if you like Harry James Potter with a cock up his ass. As a matter of fact, I can say a lot of us do enjoy seeing that too!

I genuinely would like anyone to direct me to an instance of a non-fixed shipper calling out a fixed shipper over something that ISN’T retaliation for something ridiculous or simply mean a fixed shipper said about people just minding their business. Some people walk around here talking shit about anything that even dares to whisper the words “bottom Tom riddle” to their cultish circle of friends, calling them “freaks of nature”, “insane”, “detached from reality”, and “stupid bitches” (to name a few examples I’ve read). It is insanity. Some people just live in permanent delusion and insist that they are the poor victims here and that they can do no wrong and that they’re just “minding their business 🥺” enjoying their bottom!Harry yet FREAK OUT when they come across a bottom!tom fic/artwork/enjoyer who never even INTERACTED with them and act like they committed a grave sin of humanity.

In general, I feel it is just SILLY to get so fed up over seeing bottom Tom. the reaction that some people in this fandom have when they see anything that insinuates bottom Tom would make you think the person who created the art murdered 12 people and buried their bodies In a coal mine. It is ridiculous. Your inability to see past someone’s preferences and automatically labeling someone as “annoying” or “weird” over a fictional dynamic is bewildering.

I would like to say that this is not to resurrect any discourse!!! Nor is it meant with any disrespect to ANYONE in this entire fandom. I am appreictaive of every person here, whether I know you or not, because I love the tomarry fandom and I love how much effort artists and writers and everyone in between puts into keeping the ship alive! This isn’t intended as a target to ANYONE. I’m simply giving my opinion that I’ve held in for a long while now.

To sorta summarize:

Authors don’t owe you a certain dynamic or a certain tag in their own fic that they dedicated time, love, and care into.

Talking shit about people existing and enjoying different things than you is embarrassing behavior and makes you appear 14 years old to observers.

Public call-out posts for specific people doing absolutely nothing to you are weird as hell. Like why is this considered a normal thing to do.

Some people in this fandom have entitlement levels that are OFF THE CHAAARTTSSSS.

Telling people to “go outside and talk to actual gay people” over what is not “just t/b dynamics and/or preferences” but is actually normal, real life people being upset that you dragged their name through the dirt all because they posted once or twice about liking a certain character bottoming reeks of a lack of awareness. The moment a non-fixed shipper calls someone out for sending dozens of people to harass them over having a preference, millions of silly think pieces are created and non-fixed shippers are seen as “whiny”, but it’s somehow okay when the fixed shippers do it over much less?? 😭??? The hypocrisy!

How do I get it through people’s heads that NOBODY! OWES! YOU! ANYTHING!!! Everything that I’ve said has already been said time and time again and yet it still isn’t sinking in for many. You aren’t a god, you aren’t more important than anyone else here, you aren’t entitled to automatic perfect tagging on every fic you read. You don’t have to like it, but it’s the reality. There many tropes that people dislike in fics, but usually what they tend to do when it surprises them in an untagged fic is skip and move on with their lives rather than sending nasty anonymous messages, writing criticizing comments, tweeting about how much you hate this one untagged thing and everyone who enjoys this one untagged thing, etc etc