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#fiction discourse
tzarina-alexandra · 4 months
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Some stories you can tell that the author sees the characters as props for a Larger Theme or Message but some other stories you can totally tell the author thinks of the characters as their blorbos
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Guys, it's so easy to use the block button. Instead of telling people to hurt themselves over fictional content, please learn to use it.
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i think the internet, especially teens, have gotten a little too comfortable with suibaiting and telling others to kys in fandom spaces when they don't agree with something they do or like, and i think that should really get pulled back... like... a lot.
it doesn't matter if someone ships something you hate. block them, filter their username, filter the tags for the ship you hate. it doesn't matter if they like a character you hate. do the same thing. block, filter, filter.
i can understand some people might want to debate stuff but that's an entirely different cup of tea than suibaiting bc ur angry or disgusted or triggered by something. i understand being triggered is extremely hard to deal with. flashbacks are awful things i deal with all the time. however you also need to know how to take responsibility for yourself and find coping mechanisms or someone to help you when you're having them instead of lashing out at the people around you or online.
i will tell you this: no fictional character or ship is worth more than someone's life. ever.
when you go to send "kys" to someone, you need to consider the even SLIGHT chance they might actually do that. you need to consider the weight of having someone's life end because one more "kys" message drove them to the edge. you don't know what their life is like irl. you don't know what they're going through. what they do online with fandom is none of your business.
this isn't directed toward anyone or any group in particular, just anyone who does this sort of thing. if you're sitting there thinking something like "it's okay if they actually do it" then you need to seek help and talk to a professional about how to cope with things that make you feel this way.
this post is not about irl stuff, just fandom, because those kinds of things need to be handled in a completely different way from what i said above.
i think it's also important to remember that a lot of people in your life are the types that would upset you if they were more open about what they like. next time you consider going to send hate to someone that they should hurt themselves over something fandom-related imagine that person being your best friend or a family member that you love and then think about how horrible it would be to lose them. these people have family and friends who would miss them, too.
a life is not something you can replace. you can easily block and avoid people online but when they're gone irl that's it.
just think everyone needs to be more kind and learn to help themselves when they find something they don't like. you can take care of yourself without hurting those around you.
it's okay to not like things. it's okay to hate things or have squicks or triggers. it's NOT okay to suibait someone just because you don't agree with what they like, however.
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To pro-shippers, pro-fiction people, anyone who minds their own business about shipping, whatever you call yourself: thank you.
You make fandom a safer place. By refusing to engage with harassment campaigns and by engaging positively instead with content that you enjoy, by practicing self-care and using the content filtration systems available to you, you create safe spaces for your fellow fans, especially abuse survivors.
I hope you find a fic or piece of art today that’s everything you’re looking for.
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peacefiction · 1 year
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If someone says that they are neutral on ship discourse, this does not mean that they secretly agree with the side you oppose.
If someone says they don't feel like they have enough information to have a solid opinion on ship discourse, this does not mean that they secretly agree with the side you oppose.
If someone says they are uncomfortable with ship discourse, this does not mean that they secretly agree with the side you oppose.
Discourse is draining. It can be stressful or downright triggering to engage with. Someone choosing not to engage with discourse is not a moral failing, and it does not mean that they don’t care.
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aronarchy · 6 months
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You and alot of the youth libration posters on here: "adults need to listen children and teens and take them seriously"
Me who is trying to understand better: "I agree with that"
The overmajority of the children and teens I take to on platforms other then here: "We don't like media and stories that sexualize us in anyway"
You and alot of the youth libration posters on here for some reason: "That's bad and here's why you should ignore them"
I'm legit confused bruv
(I’ll assume you’re talking about fiction not depicting specific real-life minors here, because that is usually the topic of discussion.)
Your experiences have been very, very different from mine, then.
I’ve had a few IRL friends whom I had discussed or mentioned the topic to or vice versa when I was a child/young teenager; they were generally supportive and didn’t take issue. I met far fewer children and teens IRL who were opposed to it. (I actually can’t remember any specific incident of someone being opposed to it around me. Although that’s probably because it wasn’t really a topic of discussion much. But yeah.)
I am a minor, and I have met many, many minors online who are proship. It’s actively difficult to be a proship minor, even more difficult it is to be a proship or antiship adult, or an antiship minor, because of how we’re commonly erased, how both antis and adult(ist) proshippers like to assume we just don’t (and can’t) exist, and we are rarely listened to.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of fantis I’ve met have been adults. It’s also adults who have driven public discourse for moralizing dark fiction, and adults who lobby for and pass laws censoring art.
I knew a (fanti-adjacent) adult who sexually harassed and abused multiple minors, building his brand on being a “predator-hunter,” protecting minors. He severely stalked and harassed many people, adults and minors, perceived as sexually deviant or problematic, for long periods of time. When my friend, a minor, went public about their abuse from him, they were branded a liar by his friends and supporters, all or almost all of whom are fantis. Many were minors themselves. There were more minors supporting him than supporting my friend, because he had more supporters in general. Should I have agreed with them, because they were minors? Erased the victims?
My friend has experienced sexual harassment from a minor for being interested in “problematic” art depicting fictional CSA. That same person also harassed me, including with bigotry and suicide-baiting, for my related stances and my sexuality, and sexually objectified me (in a mostly unrelated context). Would you support him because “we need to listen to and agree with minors more”?
There have been innumerable cases of adult fantis online being caught grooming, sexually harassing, or abusing minors, including minor fantis, and running exploitative, cult-like communities. Even one (at least one, whom I remember) who raped someone IRL. It’s become almost an expected occurrence that adult fantis go around sharing the “problematic” art they call “CSEM” and make others, including survivors with PTSD who are distressed by it, and even minors, to look at porn they otherwise would not have seen. And trivializing CSEM, calling depictions of fictional characters “CSEM,” and, like what I once saw done to a friend who is a rape and CSEM survivor, being dismissive of them when they are, naturally, offended and triggered by claims that fictional material could be possibly equivalent to actual recordings of rape or abuse.
(Yes, many proshippers are CSA survivors; you can read some testimonials from them here.)
Many, maybe even most minors support the “stranger danger” myth and other adultist, authoritarian beliefs to some degree. Believing that sexual “deviants” or “degenerates” are the cause of CSA and that purging them in a fascist manner is the solution. They would likely invalidate my claims of having been abused, because most people are conditioned to downplay child abuse, even as children themselves. This dynamic is replicated with any other marginalized group. Fully liberationist beliefs are rare in general. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong, or not what we all need, ultimately. (That does not also mean it would automatically be paternalistic to disagree with someone else on what would constitute liberation or whether liberation is good.)
Many minors, like people living under a CSA culture in general, believe in victim-blaming myths like “children and teenagers wearing ‘over-sexualized’ clothing ‘tempts’ adults into sexually assaulting them; we need to promote [modesty standards for clothing] to prevent CSA.” Many people, even survivors, claim that abusers abuse because “they can’t help it,” because they lack emotional self-regulation, because they are mentally ill… or because they looked at some fiction or art depicting abuse in a not-entirely-condemnatory light, and suddenly pro-abuse beliefs magically entered their head entirely against their will, or they got “hooked” on it and developed a “porn addiction” or uncontrollable sex drive until they couldn’t help but “escalate” by attacking real-life minors, as if abusers only abused because of fiction and not from any volition of their own. As if that excuses it, or can adequately explain it away. As if that’s not an excuse SA’ers have been using for a long, long time.
Many of those minor fantis would likely defend my CSA to me, or at least try to paternalistically overwrite my own perceptions, memories, interpretations, and understandings of my experiences, because they don’t fit their preconceived narrative.
These are deeply destructive myths, harmful to minors and survivors, but they are still extremely prevalent.
Does that make them okay?
The vast supermajority of minor fantis I have encountered or observed (and a far greater proportion than among proshippers) are adultist, often violently so, and defend the nuclear family and mock me for advocating abolition, and connect their fanti stance with their adultist stances in logic and framework. They would dismiss me on the basis of my age. They think purging fiction is a sufficient solution to abuse and take issue with my efforts at more concrete activism against abuse culture within communities and political causes of abuse. They think adults should use parental controls and censor minors’ media and coerce us to not view content perceived as problematic or corrupting even if the minor does not agree to that. They either pretend minors with kinks or other “deviant” sexual interests don’t exist, or demonize us and sneer at minors’ experiences of distress and trauma from societal kinkmisia. They would help adult fantis harass proship minors and minors who view dark fiction/create “problematic” art. They play into culturally adultist notions of “childhood innocence,” adult control over youth sexuality, denial of agency, and paternalistic condescension, but also turn to aggression and overt hostility when a minor doesn’t buy into it. See, for example:
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I grew up in a conservative, abusive, sexually repressive, censoring environment. Then when I first went online I encountered a ton of the same negativity. I felt a lot of shame and internalized stigma and constant self-doubt because I was worried I was somehow being immoral for enjoying dark fiction and accidentally harming myself in the long run or indirectly wronging people I care about. That was deeply detrimental to my mental health for a long time. I felt a lot of clarity and felt much safer, more validated, more comfortable existing as myself, and less self-hating when I encountered other people who did have similar views which were supportive and who were interested in pursuing the real causes of child abuse (which I didn’t really know a lot about until I started unraveling all the propaganda I had absorbed which scapegoated unrelated things, and has been immensely helpful to my understanding of my conditions and beginning my ability to advocate for myself and others), and things finally made a lot more sense (fanti views were contradictory, confusing, and I knew even when I had a lot of internalized problems that they were very wrong on some level). I also unlearned a lot of adultism in the meantime. I’m not sure where this recent trend of “antishipping is youthlib” is coming from. I’ve always only ever seen fantis promoting adultism along with their ideology, and that it’s been implicitly understood everywhere that if you support antishipping you support adultism too because they’re part and parcel.
I do believe in a standpoint epistemology, where one predicts that a marginalized group is on average much more likely to have correct opinions about issues pertaining to their oppression and blind spots generated among oppressor classes through that oppression, because of the disproportionate pressures and incentives they experience to understand more, or else they suffer more. However, this does not make me a relativist; it does not mean that I repeat “listen to and uncritically agree with whatever marginalized group X says about Y, because reality is subjective and if someone believes it they automatically can be right.” I still believe that there is objective truth, and while I try to find wherever possible where they may be blind spots in my perspective, my goal, ultimately, is still to rely on methods of evidence and logical inference. I don’t go about this in a way anywhere near how the average normie does, and they wouldn’t like my methods either. But still—I recognize, yes, that marginalized people are not monoliths, and we are not going to all agree on everything; at some point, even the privileged will have to look on and deliberate and choose what they think is true. And, sometimes, there’s a reason why one perspective is more rare on the surface (suppressed? claimed to be impossible? threatened?) than another.
Fanti communities are abusive. Fantis are abusive. I still have a lot of trauma from how individuals and groups have treated me, especially online. It was cruel. It was fucking unfair. I don’t think ritual harassment, bigotry, trying to cut someone off from resources, abuse apologia, and enforcement of authoritarian norms are somehow youth liberationist. I don’t think silencing minors or making them afraid to exist in spaces because of harmless beliefs or fictional interests is youth liberation.
This is also how many conservatives have treated fictional depictions of violence. (I can attest to that from personal experience too; that was also incredibly traumatic.) Do we have to censor GTA before we advocate against murder and torture and assault?
It feels very distressing being told that I can’t possibly support views that are important to me and my freedom of expression and in helping resolve the trauma and violence many people I care about experienced without somehow secretly or inadvertently undermining myself and other causes I care about. This paradigm keeps people trapped in toxic communities, feeling like they are being forced to choose either one or the other, which makes it easy for abusers on both sides to exploit us and then moralize against us. It’s suffocating and cruel.
I don’t just disagree with minor fantis when I encounter them. I feel triggered, afraid, threatened/in danger. I remember a whole slew of awful past incidents, and a long time feeling a lot of confusion, feeling gaslit, feeling like my whole self and existence are wrong. I anticipate hostility and possible violence toward me and people I care about. I feel angry, because I remember what people like them did to people I care about (and to me), and tried to do. I feel even more angry that people will run apologia for them and try to gaslight the rest of us into thinking there’s no problem, everything’s fine, shut up and get in line or else you’re next.
Recently, fantis effectively killed a proship CSA survivor for drawing cope art on a private account after a years-long harassment campaign. Do you think your friends would defend this? Do you think they would agree, that this is protecting children?
But this is only my perspective. I know that fantis will always have the moral and discursive advantage over me and that it would be much easier for someone to accuse me of being adultist/corrupting through this, or tokenizing myself/having internalized adultism/being predatory/a dozen other things I’ve been accused of other the years to discredit and invalidate my words which I do, in fact, sometimes worry over, as I argue with myself in my head, as I internalize gaslighting and doubt myself and wonder if I really am wrong and should just abandon trying to carve out a space for myself, to exist as myself and with dignity. It would be easier to be mad at me and think I have insidious or misguided motives or am trying to guilt-trip.
I wouldn’t even really blame you. It’s always been easier for me to blame myself.
(Except then I look around and see all the people, minors, CSA survivors, extremely traumatized and fucked-up people who’ve been badly hurt who feel doubt too who really need this activism and it doesn’t seem so hard then, does it? Cruelty is cruelty. Abuse is abuse. Trauma is trauma. Bigots can fuck right off.)
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aquarian-airhead · 16 days
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umm your ship is problematic because quantum theory says every parallel timeline is real because of potential electron positioning instance therefore the universes where they're full siblings are also real which makes it quantumcest and that means you want to show ankle to a minor on discord you should basically kys yourself
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red-devil330 · 6 months
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Is there any truth to those people who say that indulging in p*rn or "taboo" art can make someone mentally unstable? they always bring up that a criminal indulged in that stuff if they did.
None at all. A friend of mine asked me the same thing recently, so I'll direct you to my response here.
In summary, according to psychologists and decades of research, fiction & pornography can influence one's morality, but only if they've had immoral thoughts/urges in the first place, beforehand. It cannot change someone's morality on its own, nor can it make someone mentally unstable on its own. Reality/real life experiences and influences have to have played a part first and foremost.
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It's important to acknowledge the difference between propaganda and fun fiction.
Some stories have a message of "this thing that would be bad in real life is actually good in real life" - that's harmful. Some stories have a message of "this thing that would be bad in real life is hot or interesting to explore in fiction" - that's fine.
It's also very important to learn to recognize the difference between those two things. No, that piece of dead dove fanfiction is not arguing that the actions taken in the piece would be good in real life. If it were arguing that, it would be tagged something like "healthy relationships that should be emulated", not "abuse".
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wildfeather5002 · 3 months
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When it comes to fiction affecting reality, I think the author's intention and the type of story they're writing matter the most. For example, a story that is intended to be educational about certain topics or a fictional character that is inspired by some indigenous culture could have an impact in people's worldviews and behaviors in real life. The reason why I decided to educate myself about CSA and grooming is because of a comic with a main character who goes through these things.
And I'm not saying fiction alone should be blamed for people's ignorance regarding things such as toxic relationships, abuse or racism. Education should always be the primary source of reliable information, but fiction can be an effective eye-opener when it comes to making people actually think about real life issues.
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tzarina-alexandra · 5 months
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Characters who are so rigid, perfectionistic and fanatic, Characters driven by single-minded obsession, Characters who have never gotten over anything ever and cannot adapt to changes around them, child characters who are "wise beyond their years" but actually old souls, child characters who are uncannily unchildlike, child characters who are idiosyncratic, arbitrary and weird, characters who have trouble getting out of a black vs white mindset, and who, despite finally being shown love, still live in a dog eat dog world in their own minds
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012mashi · 1 year
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If you unironically think that a moral core is brittle enough to be swayed by an evil personTM being morally grey or a problematic ship, I believe by that point it's fully on you, don't lump us together lol
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leseigneurdufeu · 5 months
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feeling like there's a chart to be had for real people in works of literature
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with every extreme being like
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I may be a pro-shipper, but I’m not a pro-shitter. I think intestines should be illegal, actually. Who else with a GI disorder is with me??
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the-save-star-anomaly · 10 months
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not sure exactly what to think of pro-fic, but as a fiction-heavy system, fiction *do* heavily affect our reality and it sometimes cause harm. so. idk. i try to stay away from these.
i don't want to cause harm to anyone, i just dislike these things for these reasons pwp
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aronarchy · 10 months
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(completely incorrect assessment of causality, how laws are passed, etc + probably incorrectly interpreted/debunked/nonexistent studies aside): can we kill this myth already? (yes there are more than two such choices, “lolicon works as an ‘outlet’ for potential sexual abusiveness” is definitely wrong, but “it makes it worse” is also very wrong.) fantis rely on these bland input-x-output-y functions w/no nuance, no curiosity, no further social analysis (same as the general psych/criminological mindset) bc easy way to avoid actual intellectual rigor & looking at the world around you with more honest eyes.
“porn escalation” is a myth pushed by the evangelical lobby, following older puritanical ideas of sexual assault & abuse being a product of irresistible biological urges / sexual deviancy / overly high sex drive / unmediated fantasy & not their own fault, a product of their own values & will to power but some external influence (e.g. “satan”). patriarchs & abusers & others invested in upholding this social order have fucking incredible propaganda systems and part of that is how such bias has infiltrated academia and research and perceptions thereof. c.f. “Rational Science(tm)” from the Right, w/“you’re just Denying The Facts” if you argue they’re wrong or are motivated by bias or are fueling biases.
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