Genuinely so obsessed with how the ST fandom is a perfect microcosm of black and white thinking and an obsession with being Good and Moral and even Pure in your media consumption. If you like a character who does bad things, you are judged within an inch of your metaphorical life. There is nothing you can say that will change the minds of the haters. And if you tell them you think they're being cranks, they just double down. Like my guy I like him because the actor is hot and, as someone who went my entire childhood emotionally and verbally abused and reacted to that trauma with hostility, I relate to him. (Also you're constantly bringing up a point that is unfounded in the prevalence of his character as a gotcha.) I also happen to really like a character who's done nothing wrong, ever, not just cause he's a kid but because he's a sweetheart! These are not mutually exclusive. I am not a bad person for liking the former, nor good for liking the latter. I am just a guy watching a show and reacting to characters in ways that are informed by my life experiences. Get bent.

Nuance is something that can be soooo hard for online spaces to hold onto. Hell, offline spaces too, for that matter. Today I'm thinking about kink and the concept of kinkshaming, when I think about nuance: that people should be allowed to enjoy and engage with kink, especially in fictional and fandom spaces where even bad kink etiquette can't actually harm anyone should be a given. Personally, as long as someone is tagging correctly and creating with self awareness, anything goes in a fictional space, you do you, your content deserves to exist online. I have personally created a variety of kinky works, both publicly available and not, and would really not have a leg to stand on trying to declare otherwise. In a time where people are cracking down heavily on kink and trying to decry it as deviance that shouldn't exist, being kink positive can be a very important, good thing.

At the same time though, the people have squicks, and when it comes to kink and a good culture towards sex in general, people have to be allowed to have squicks. If anyone's hearing the term for the first time, a squick is essentially a concept that just grosses you right out, you do not want to see it, you do not want to learn more, maybe it even distresses you to see it, but not to the extent that you would consider ot triggering content. A couple of common tend to bodily excrement: piss and shit, alongside guro (extensive bodily mutilation combined with sexual imagery). A squick doesn't have to be extreme, it doesn't have to be unusual, it's just something that grosses an individual out, and they don't want to see it. (And because this is tumblr and it must be said: no, racism is not a squick.)

Sometimes, we lean so heavily into the negative that we refuse to allow positivity. Sometimes, we get so into positivity, that we refuse to acknowledge negatives. People are allowed to talk about their squicks. If people see something that grosses them out, they don't have to shut up about it just because it's someone else's kink. Kinkshaming, the idea that someone would go up to someone else and tell them they're gross for their kink, is something people shouldn't do in general. But expressing disgust and distaste for a kink in general isn't kinkshaming - that's just talking about your squick.

Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That's Okay is about not hating on other people or demanding their works not exist because you hate the kink, not pretending that you find every kink, fetish, or sexual concept totally wonderful and would never react with disgust towards one. This idea in fandom that if you don't like something you should never say anything publicly because what if someone does like that thing, and is upset that you publicly don't like that thing, is ridiculous, and it has been for a while. Negative emotions have a place in fandom, especially in regard to sexual content. You shouldn't harass people who share a kink (especially when their content is tagged this is why everyone should read the tags) - but you also shouldn't go around saying people aren't allowed to use their own online space to process their disgust.

I've been seeing a lot of people lately saying anyone discussing how much they dislike a kink concept is just a kinkshamer, an anti, the purity police, and it's getting beyond ridiculous. We have the right to engage in kink, to write about kink, to make kinky art, create audio for it, and to in general delight in all kinds of kinky works. We also have the responsibility to make sure we're tagging correctly. Others have the right to dislike kink, including our own kinks, and to talk about how much they dislike those kinks. They have the responsibility to make sure they're curating correctly, that they're reading the tags and warnings on a work, and that they work out their negative responses in their own space.

Multiple things can be true: kink is a great way to explore sexuality and desire and a wide range of topics. people deserve to share their interest in kink without harassment or being belittled. one person's joy can be another person's squick. people deserve to share their squick without harassment or being belittled.

idk about you but I love getting my opinions on one of the titans of English literature from a barely post-pubescent 20-something child on tumblr, a website famous for having users with great reading comprehension, critical thinking and no impulse whatsoever to fall into purity culture nonsense at the drop of a hat. I also love the English courts of law, and anti-sodomy laws, and I immediately and uncritically trust them when they accuse a gay man of being a pedophile. There is nothing wrong, childish or immature about this and I don't need to grow up

PURITY CULTURE??? PURITY CULTURE?????? Oh my bad folks I didn’t realise grooming 16 year old boys as a 30-something year old man was just rebelling against purity culture. And for your information, I’ve done plenty of research into anti-sodomy laws at the time of Wilde’s trials, and I’ve also read multiple sources of shorthand translations of the proceedings of the trials themselves, and anyone with two brain cells could tell that the way Wilde spoke wasn’t the way an innocent man would speak, and the evidence compiled against him was overwhelming, regardless of any bias the court may have had. True, the bias in question is fair to bring up and discuss, but it doesn’t negate his extremely likely guilt. It’s extremely unlikely that the man was innocent, from the evidence itself to Wilde’s tone during his “defence”.

Some sources:

The Trial of Oscar Wilde: From the Shorthand Reports (1906)

“In 1895, the playwright and wit Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was prosecuted for 'acts of gross indecency' with other men. Parts of his trial were covered in newspapers of the day, but because of British censorship laws, this fuller account was not published in English until 1906.”

–The British Library official website (bl.uk)

famous-trials.com, compiled by Professor Douglas O’Linder from UMKC School of Law, mostly aligning with the shorthand translations of the testimonies from the prior source referenced yet with a few details not included in the 1906 publication to my knowledge.

https://www.famous-trials.com/wilde/327-home

Of course, everything has drawbacks, everything has a grain of salt, not everything is fullproof, there’s room for argument everywhere and of course the two sources I linked there aren’t fully enough for a big picture, and context of the time, surrounding impact, further accounts etc should all be looked into — however, in weighing up the evidence and legitimacy of sources and conflating information on all sides, personally I’m ridiculously extremely confident that Wilde was guilty, and I think the fact that this isn’t really widespread historical information is ridiculous.

You’re right, you shouldn’t take things you see on Tumblr as full proof undisputed fact. You’re right, Tumblr is a hellhole a lot of the time for misinformation and bad literary comprehension and analysis. But that doesn’t mean anything you see anywhere is objectively wrong, and you should do a small molecule of proper research and critical thinking from seeing those posts before spouting bullshit.

And for your information, I’m both queer and Irish myself and shockingly the fact that one of the major idealised queer figures for my country is a rich 19th-century-Narcissus pedophile creep, and nobody says jack shit about it, makes me pretty fucking pissed! Surprisingly!

“Purity culture” catch yourself on lad what in the fresh fuck are you on about. I’m in the age range for the wee boys Wilde fucked, surprisingly if I heard one of my friends was meeting with and having sex with some rich fuck old enough to be their da I’d be pretty fucking concerned I’d be calling cps bro 💀🙏

24 and 25?

heehee thank you for the ask!

choose violence ask game here!

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

EASILY the snape vs. marauders discourse lmfaoooo it always devolves into the most inane shit and it’s NEVER ENDING!!!!! i am of course hopelessly fascinated by it even though it’s terrible and exhausting, i just think it’s so interesting what parts of the characters different people focus on. like, we all are kind of projecting onto the characters and seeing different things in them because of our own life experiences, no? and it’s SUPER interesting to me to see which actions people can justify and which ones they can’t (and their reasoning for each... which is often inconsistent...!). i feel like people who argue that snape is a terrible horrible irredeemable person for the actions he took in his youth are sometimes extremely thrown off by the fact that he's also obviously much less privileged than the marauders, and that the marauders pick on him for no other reason than that they can. i've seen people bend over backwards to try to make it sound justified, that uh nooo child snape was a bad person who just so happened to be poorer and less connected than the marauders, and see he said a slur which is Bad sooo actually the marauders were doing the morally correct thing by bullying him before that happened, and i find this whole thing very funny. i love endless arguments about ethics this is just who i am

THOUGH I SHOULD ALSO SAY. there are ways in which this discourse is also a putrid festering pile of shit that makes me want to crawl into a cave and live there forever. imo the absolute worst of it is when people start debating whether or not james levitating and exposing snape’s underwear “counts” as sexual assault (i’ve seen this debate happen multiple times and have made several posts about it) which is just. i’m not rehashing it now but. deep sigh

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

i’m actually quite unsure… this fandom is so big and sprawling and i’m in such a small part of it that idk what a “common” complaint would even be. maybe just the what i already said lol – the classic, "snape is a creep and a fascist and is therefore irredeemable even though the narrative pretty clearly redeems him," if only because it’s such a boring take. oh this person is "bad" let's put them in a box in the corner labeled "bad" and never speak of them again unless it is to make them unequivocally evil and ooc lest we cross the line of rigid moral purity into the slightest bit of ambiguity. booooring. like literally i get it if someone doesn't like snape (you don't have to like every or even any character! aka read my pinned post), but when someone dislikes him for the flimsy reason of "he's bad" i do indeed get pissed off. if an anti-hero has no defenders then i am dead

it's crazy the level of discourse there is about antis/pros and how teenagers just devolve into purity culture so quick. I'm sure I used to be like that, but somewhere between dating gang members and reading copious amounts of philosophy the world became a lot more gray to me when I entered my twenties and I've realised three things that I think are important for teenagers to know:

To quote my favourite childhood book series: "People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict." Sure, going to car meets, selling drugs, drunk driving, stealing cars, playing chicken with cops are all examples of bad things that you shouldn't do but am I going to sit in my lovers bed and tell him that this life he was born into that saw all his friends die in drive bys and that saw his own dad pull a gun on him when he was a kid makes him a shitty person? Even though I can see all of the good in him, and can tell he doesn't want to do this, I should ignore it and focus on the negatitives? We have all done bad things, we all do bad things, and we all will do bad things. It doesn't make you a bad person.

Purity culture hurts everyone. There's a great book about this called the History of Sexuality that delves into how purity culture and the censorship of sex is at its essence the capitalist authority controlling the means of reproduction. At large scale 'pray the gay away' and 'contraception is a sin' make it so that men and women couple up more (instead of same sex coupling) and have unprotected sex. On a smaller scale 'AO3 is evil because it has pedos' and 'watersports is the grossest thing ever' do the job of the capitalist authority on a more digestible level. Us vs Them no longer is 'alt right vs communism' they use your words to make it 'pure good hobest people vs pedos who like piss play.' you are making bullets for your enemy and handing them your own damn gun. I promised I wouldn't make this whole post this one point tee hee sorry if you want me to elaborate just ask lol

Fetish ≠ real world experience. I'll build my own pyre as an example: I love me some good CNC (consensual non-consent) in my fanfics but in real life sex I have a praise kink so bad I have cried during sex multiple times. I am into tooth rotting sweet stuff and the kindest people in the world in real life. The media you consume 1000% has an effect on you, I'm not arguing that. I am however arguing that if you have media literacy and know what media is and is not harmful to you, it shouldn't effect your real life drastically unless you have other shit going on. I know this is rich coming from the "I have dated people in gangs" guy because that may show what kinda guy I'm into but prommy that's not a sexual attraction thing, it's 100% a lifestyle thing that again I will elaborate on if you want. Point being, porn ≠ reality and what gets that blood flowing isn't necessarily a reflection of how good or bad you are (ofc there are kinds of porn that are bad but that's beside the point and a very complicated thing for me to type while I'm this sleepy)

thank you for coming to my ted talk. pls I am begging on my knees for people to stop having black and white world views but i also know that's just a product of being a teen so if you are a teen pls! go out there and! consume media from different cultures and people with different lives to you! the world is at its best when it is wide!!! and full of love <3

just anti things: refusing to grasp that purity culture was sexist and racist BECAUSE of the anti sex rules. the anti sex rules were used to control women as well as poc. by making them terrified of anything other than super vanilla sex purely for making babies. this is also how church culture created homophobic. all these people need to relearn the history of how the church aided in creating homophobia, sexism and racism via anti non married sex fearmongering. and if anti rhetoric led them down this piss poor understanding of how purity culture works then that doubly proves anti rhetoric is ahistorical.

.

Many people fast-forward passed examining the infant-brain-in-grown woman’s body premise of Poor Things and it’s a disservice to the film.

Yeah, it lets the film ask questions about men fantasizing the nymphomaniac ingenue and hypocritical cultural conceptions of virginity, naïveté, and purity. The 1st act of Bella coming in to her bodily autonomy is her becoming aware of her bodily functions.

And I think I’m only noticing it because I’m autistic. Bella is “a beautiful retard” we’re shown pissing herself, delighting in brutalizing a corpse, yanking a flaccid moribund penis, and masturbating with a vegetable. She is very frank about discussions of sex. Many autistic women know this leads to men thinking you’re interested in sex, while conversely men engage in locker room repartee out in the open as the norm. The film isn’t just about what women can do with their bodies but what women can say about their bodies. Gendered divisions most obvious to those who repeatedly need to have societal mores explained to them.

The online public reaction to the film is self-demonstrating of how an anti-sex bias from feminist viewers, no matter the intentions, poison the well against frank discussion of consent and bodily autonomy. I’ve seen people throw around pedophilic or masturbatory, far more interested in rehashing old discussions of the male gaze, than in engaging with the film. The audience is uneasy with the subject matter because it has been socialized to be disgusted by their bodily functions. Bella has not.

Bella’s personal umwelt of her body and mental development defies the medically normative model, phenomenologically, experientially, ontologically. Emma Stone having her tits out or not wearing underwear hits differently if you’re a demographic that has to get told not to masturbate in public.

work: they left me with an incredible workload, because people took vacations off together, even the bosses. YAY, fuck that. also, they made such an awkward situation that a superior is pissed off at me when honestly, it's your organizational skills that made this situation possible at all. thanks. also, I'm underpaid and overworked, but there is no escape.

health: either a brain tumor or a spine something. might need spine surgery, but the next appointment is scheduled FOR NEXT SUMMER. until then I should just be sick.

relationships: I mentioned spine surgery to a friend, and she ghosted me lol. what a lovely friend. see: I'm a burden to everyone.

fandom: antis are harassing me, big bloggers vague post about me (suck a fucking dick) just because of fucking purity culture. and above mentioned friend is also in fandom. so it's fucking poisoned now.

family: my only family member left is dying of cancer

fuck me, I deserve a fucking break. just a small one pls.

You know that post complaining about how sequels feel the need to turn the protagonists of the previous story into shitty parents for some forced drama and parental angst? That’s how Nocturne’s writing feels like. The original series ends on a very hopeful note that actually felt tonally like the games, with the Belmont clan rebuilding…

Only for Nocturne to pull the “Last of the Belmonts” bullshit again with Richter, and give him yet another dead mom backstory. Because if people complained about the games having too many blonde love interests who get kidnapped by evil and resist corruption via purity of heart, then Netflixvania relies way too much on dead moms.

And with Juste especially, his story really was about the power of friendship, even in comparison to other Castlevanias, and they sequel trilogy’d him. Netflix Juste is Jake Skywalker. It’s like the writers can’t imagine writing a character who has decent parents and doesn’t start off as miserable and jaded and cynical, and it comes across as less creative despite justifications of differing from the source material for the alleged sake of creativity.

"people complained about the games having too many blonde love interests who get kidnapped by evil and resist corruption via purity of heart" I wish 😂 you're only describing Annette (who had purple hair in RoB). Love interests tend to be fridged in the games :^)

And you would think that big, wonderfully written, modern, super duper feminist NFCV would fix it, right? Nope, Nocturne swoops in and assigns dead moms, sisters and friends to everyone! (plus a bf for Olrox lol)

Lydie is particularly egregious. She survived in the best ending of HoD! And yet they killed her off uncerimoniously along with Maxim in Nocturne! All to turn Juste into yet another cynical Belmont! Bruh!

(like. this really pisses me off. i do love the games, but no one would say their writing is perfect. by all means, there are things or characters to fix. and nfcv would be the best candidate to do so. but no! they only made things worse!)

Anyway, good point about the sequels, and overall Juste felt wasted. He's just a jaded mentor that can be chewed out by the idealistic hero... and he doesn't even do what you think he'd do, help Richter train with his magic. It just feels like the writers want to strip the Belmonts of their straightforward heroism because the Western brand of anti-hero would be more appealing and appear "deeper". But at least Trevor was afforded the courtesy of a character arc... we'll see with Juste in S2.

What the hell did people want Steven to do? Kill the diamonds? Yeah sure bro that's a great idea hey um what happens after he kills the pseudo religious being of godlike power? The issues on home world are systemic and run deep killing the diamonds would be horrible idea- yes they are dictators but you can't fix the issues fascism causes by just killing the leader and in some cases you make everything worse, i might not buy whites redemption (she went from genuinely terrifying matriarch and cruel to a blushy 'i must atone mess?) but steven was not a selfish idiot who forgives other people's abusers on their behalf, if another war started earth would be screwed, the solution to the problem wasn't as simple as kill the bad guy- to everyone who complains that diamonds will just start killing again- steven is taking active effort to make sure that never happens! I get why people are angry the diamonds get away with abusing pink, being dictators and still have power in home world- it feels like a major injustice but the bigger picture flat out shows that steven isn't being selfish for maintaining his moral purity (and even if he was I would defend him, the same way i do with aang and batman). While I have my complaints about the ending (mainly how white diamond was written) and hate how pink went from morally grey/questionable to evil hate sink, the fact that the secondary crystal gems, and lars and the off colors were basically irrelevant in the finale, but I will fight anyone who says the only way to solve complicated issues in the world is to 'kill the bad guys!' and that when fighting against racism or abusers or fascists etc the only correct way to deal with the problem is kill the people who are racist or abusive or fascist- some of you people are so focused on 'justice' or 'fairness' that you neglect everything's else like if I applied your logic to the real world we could just forget things like protecting basic rights or fixing systemic elements of social injustice etc, I genuinely hate the diamonds (especially white) and the og shows finale as a whole but steven is not an abuse apologist- he's a diplomat who uses violence as a last resort, there is a ton of other issues with su but God can we look at the ending with nuance? It sucked ass with the pacing and the fusion designs were pretty bad but it wasn't endorsing abuse apologism- Steven was focused on the bigger picture while I have my issues with him as a character sometimes I can say he was being noble here and was not a whiny piss baby, pussyfooting around something he 'needed' to do. The show was never about good killing evil and our 'moral duty' to do so, it was a show with anti war messages with a few botched aesops and wonky art, there's actual shit to complain about with steven universe but Everytime I hear all the comments about how toh made up for steven universe's sins or about how batman and aang are selfish etc it drives me insane,like I could point out so many unfortunate implications in su that are actually bad but y'all focus on the least problematic shit in the show and accuse of Rebecca Sugar a bisexual jew married to a black man of being a nazi apologist! You claim toh made up for the sins of Steven universe and laugh at the 'jab' the show made at Steven universe but there's a few things that don't hold up Dana is friends with Sugar (it is definitely not a jab) and the shows while they have similarities should not be compared, they are fundamentally different shows, like the stuff they do have in common (developing several characters that end up having no real effect on the finale or plot, badly written main antagonists etc) still don't justify the comparison yes they are filled to the brim with lgbt characters and are fantasy shows but one is magical girl/boy space opera about self love the other is a dark fantasy comedy that is about inclusion and coping with disabilities/trauma and while they have overlap they are not the same.

I keep encountering antis in the wild so far my favorite one has been the one who was frothing over Jaytim shippers. "Just because they're not technically brothers"!

Friend they're not technically nor non-technically brothers. They weren't raised together. They don't have a brother dynamic.

"It's different from DickBabs and TimSteph!" Not really! You're just cherrypicking!

90% of antis use anti rhetoric to justify why their ship is better/more valid than another, not because they really care about things they deem immoral or whatever, and I think a lot of Fandom Discourse tends to miss that by a long shot.

Like more often than not it's just bitches digging for reasons why their OTP is the only ship that can be shipped, therefore if you ship something else You're Wrong and the ship you ship shouldn't even exist. They use arguments on morality and such because they're hard to argue with - lots of folks don't know what to say when they're faced with "don't ship X and Y cause it's harmful and abusive!", "you're hurting victims of SA and grooming by shipping X and Y!" - and what happens is that they get scared out of the ships/topics they like and stop engaging actively with fanworks. Sometimes they rationally or subconsciously realize that it works, so they end up even adopting the same rhetoric as it's really fucking convenient: being on the moral high horse is delicious because people feel like it automatically puts them in the category of the good guys, therefore everyone else is a bad guy and they can harass them and send them death threats, even if it's just about shipping fictional characters.

I've seen this happen in basically every single fandom I've been in since I was 12 (and I am Not Young™), and I've seen the most unexpected people use anti rhetoric while not being antis themselves, or even labeling themselves as proshippers, but they would still use anti arguments to "legitimize" their ship and claim how and why it was better than others in the same fandom. Instead of just... saying that one ship in particular is not for them. Tbh lately I'm only trusting multi-shippers not to pull anti bullshit out of their ass, and this niche of the DC fandom is really a safe haven. But I digress.

One of the things that really pisses me off the most is the rampant homophobia. Going by generic anti logic Jaydick is incest, but Dickbabs isn't. Jaytim is incest, Timsteph isn't. Brudick, Brujay, Brutim are all incestuous ships - except Bruce and Barbara isn't. The het ship is fine would you look at that. Childhood friends to lovers is alright with pop culture as long as it's a man and a woman, because if it's two men they'll immediately scream incest and abuse (lumping them together too, while they're also not the same thing ffs). Because hiding behind anti mentality and purity culture there's the big bad monster of queerphobia, which shows its ugly face the moment you take a peek below the surface.

And since I feel like this isn't being said enough. Dick and Jason ARE NOT BROTHERS. Neither are Dick and Tim, or Dick and Damian, Jason and Damian, Jason and Tim, I could go on. These people are not related, not by blood or legally, not in any way that matters and would make it incest. They're a legacy of characters who wear the same cowl for narrative reasons, and THAT'S IT.

Calling Jaydick "incest" irks me to no freaking end because I LOVE incest ships, I am DOWN BAD for them, and this one ain't it chief. They're not related. They didn't grow up together. They don't share any brotherly bond except a vague "brothers in arms" kinda thing. People decided this at some point in order to have an argument why their plastic prepackaged het ships were better than the Bad Abusive (gay) ones, because they're fucking homophobes, and that is about it.

And that's what I really want to say to all the young, queer antis that parrot the terfs and homophobes that pushed them in that direction. They are taking away a space that is YOURS TOO. They fucking HATE YOU. They hate you because you're queer, gay, bi, pan, ace, trans, nonbinary, a woman, even just a teen. Purity culture and anti mentality is how they keep you under control, tied to their morality leash and making life miserable to every other queer person that refuses to conform and refuses to shut up and to stop enjoying fiction for the harmless, but also valuable thing that it is.

Hey, I know you didn't mean it like that, but you probably shouldn't say that an aro or ace spec person is basically straight as that was a major talking point at the height of the "anti-ace discourse" (a term that really fails to capture how bad that shit actually got), and it just isn't true, in the same way it isn't true for assimilationists who engage in respectability politics and anti-sex gay people. There definitely is a massive issue of asexuals hiding behind their sexuality to get away with homophobia and anti-sex shit, though, which seriously pisses me off. Plenty of asexuals have and like sex, plenty of asexuals are sex workers, plenty of asexuals are into kink. Sexuality isn't an excuse to not unpack the purity culture you internalised - stand with your community, losers.

Yeah I didn’t word that the best and it doesn’t reflect what I meant so I deleted those tags off the post, I was trying to find wording to describe the type of conservative talking points people use and then as you said hide behind their sexuality and refuse to unpack their biases against others in the community. I’m on the ace spectrum myself so the comment they made really hurt me because it felt like such a homophobic thing to say, especially if you are part of the community

This got long but I'm fucking pissed. Content warnings for abuse mentions, trafficking mentions, discourse about discourse to prevent future discourse, "proshipper" nonsense, grooming, etc.

This is gonna be the one time I open my mouth about this because haha, hey, years of internalized fear and shame. I'm trying to lay down a boundary and that comes with so much anticipated backlash.

I do, for the record, have a background in Yelling about the crossroads of media/culture/literature/academia/games studies/trauma/capitalism. Which is a wide range and we can thank my comp exams in the PhD for that.

Since this is tumblr I also gotta just do the fuckin' disclaimer before anyone else feels like doing the "if you don't publicly condemn xyz then I'm gonna make your day worse" thing:

I don't participate in fandom and I don't ship things. I'm not about to defend specific instances or pairings because everything exists in subjective contexts, and texts especially so. But also, I have graduate degrees in English and text analysis and lived experience with CSA and trafficking that went on for a long fucking time. And I am very, very tired of being called the worst things you can call a trauma survivor because I don't care about shipping.

I'm not anti-ship, or whatever. I am not down for imposing my own trauma, feelings about it, and opinions on others in order to censor their art. Call me a proshipper if you want -- ignoring the part where I don't write fanfic or participate in fandom -- because I agree with them. I condemn CSA/CSEM, abusers, predators, the entire evil side of humanity but people who write fic aren't that. Neither are people who read it, even the most problematic of the problematic.

People can write, as fiction, as fantasy, whatever they want. There are no real people being harmed. I can distinguish between those things and, again, am a survivor of some very intense abuse. You're welcome to disagree. I'm fine with that if you're fine with me. I don't believe in absolutes when it comes to topics this complicated (and it is). I spent years on the opposite side, actually, because just the MENTION of things like incest or age gaps triggered me. And then I would do the same and get mad at the people writing it.

This is not healthy and it is not healing on either side of the argument.

But also in treating everything like such a monolithic moral purity test, where you're either good or deserve to suffer -- a test that I fail, because there is no room for things like Complexity -- you just spent a lot of time telling me I'm as bad as the people who trafficked me. Because of fiction. Because of fake things happening to fake people, based on an idea in someone else's head, people's real harm and real trauma means we're as bad as their abusers. That is so heavily the implication in so much of this talk. If I don't disregard my degrees, my training, my own experiences, my own principles and take a stand against people shipping things on the internet, I must basically be a predator!

That is violent and fucked up.

I don't want you around here, so block me and get it over with.

I (like a lot of people with trauma histories) use fiction and writing to process and heal. I don't even post them. A lot of that writing, and being able to seek it out, was helpful. It was a connection to someone else out in the world who maybe understood a little bit of the pain and fear and confusion.

There's a difference between fiction and real abuse. And the "but predators use it to groom vulnerable children" angle barely holds water -- predators use anything. Mainstream TV shows. Vending machine snacks. Gumballs. Access to a remote control to change a channel. A lot of things are more accessible and friendly to kids than making them read. Advocating for censorship, especially in today's political hellhouse, is not actually helpful. It just feels really righteous.

Which doesn't mean there aren't those trying to leverage fic to "normalize" abuse and grooming, I absolutely believe they have and do, but that does not justify externalizing your pain and trauma onto others, or policing them, or trying to take control back by claiming an imaginary moral high ground and pinning other people to it. It also doesn't mean that censoring the internet of all things icky to you saves the world, the kids, anything. It just means they'll find easier avenues, of which there are already so many. It also means you're all just attacking people from a place of presumed hurt rather than compassion, curiosity, anything like that.

So.

Anyone whose stance on this entire thing boils down to "you agree with me or you're a secret pedo enabler," you need to leave.

I'm happy to talk about it if you want! I don't think people trying to draw those lines are right but I think they're well-intentioned, until they start calling me shit that triggers entire mental collapses. You know. In the name of saving the children. Which hasn't been a red flag for conservatism and oppression for hundreds of years or anything, either. How many kids do you think are protected by shutting down places they can actually go and talk about the darkest shit in their heads? How many of us just suffer unbearable pain and isolation because the culture around us is shame-based and if you think about things like that, you're Just Like Them?

This ain't about protecting kids, basically. This discourse never has been. It's about being righteous and never examining why that is. It's about lashing out and displacement. I think the concern for victims is real, like I said, but that concern can translate to actual, real help elsewhere. People are DOING the work to make the internet safer. This? Is not that work.

You are responsible for how you manage your trauma and pain, and that has to include not taking it out on others. Full stop. Even when you disagree. Even when everything in your brain is going DANGER ALARMS DANGER ALARMS DANGER ALARMS WE MUST STOP THIS because someone ships something you think is wrong or uncomfortable. It sucks, and it sucks we have to do that, and it sucks we have to learn how. None of us asked to. None of us wanted to end up here. It's not victim blaming to say you're accountable for your own recovery.

But while you are here, maybe consider that the name/shame/blame model hasn't been working either. For hundreds of fucking years. We know shame doesn't motivate people to care, or learn.

But especially when you're weaponizing shame against trauma survivors for recognizing their own experiences in literature, art, stories. We all struggle with toxic shame. Using it against people until they agree with you?

Holy shit just look in the mirror one day, I guess. But block me first.

Pinned Post (revised 6 May 2024)!

If you’re trying to decide whether or not you want to follow me, hi!

I’m old (60 in 3 weeks, retiring in July), and I have chronic pain, post viral syndrome (like long COVID, but a different virus) and a mood disorder. I am autistic and ADHD. Sometimes I’m cranky about things people say because I took them literally; if I am doing that, explain and I’ll shut up and say sorry.

I spend most of my time on this site talking about Transformers, Gravity Falls, my other fandoms, and Lolita fashion, which I absolutely do still wear. I also talk about thylacines a lot. I’m a progressive.

If you’re here for frilly dresses and giant robots, or weird little northwestern towns like Twin Peaks, Gravity Falls and Night Vale, come on in and pull up a chair!

I have been active in fandom since 1978 and I have shipped many pairings and polycules, and you probably think at least one of them is gross, but that’s just life in fandom. I write loads of Transformers fic and my OTP is Ravage/Soundwave. 

If that bothers you, leave now because I talk about it a lot--unless you can accept that our headcanons likely differ and I’m probably not writing the relationship you think they have, only with added smut, which probably would be weird (but I’d still have the right to do it).

I do not have a DNI because I just block people if they piss me off. If you are an evangelical Christian, an animal rights activist, a messianic “Jew”, an anti-Semite, a TERF, a racist, anti-choice, anti-queer or an anti-shipper, you are likely to piss me off and get blocked. 

Rude anons will be deleted or roasted depending upon my mood. I grade anon hate on a very stiff curve.

I reblog things I like. I do not have time to check everyone’s DNIs first. Block me if you don’t want dirty shippers reblogging your content--it’s not our job to defend the purity of your platonic pairings, it’s our job to reblog things we like so that other people can see them. Otherwise, this site does not work.

I do not take down reblogs unless it’s getting 2500 notes and everyone’s notifications are making them want to die a little. I will also not reblog things on demand, especially if everyone else I know is doing it and we’ve all seen it 6 times already today.

Mate, what are you on about?

Whenever I look in the obey me tag, it's filled with an overwhelming amount of dominant and/or sadistic takes on the characters x painful to read submissive reader, not to mention painfully cishet and completely lacking in inclusivity.

The kinks you mention are few and far between, even when you're directly looking for them if the searches I just did is anything to go by. You have to actively be looking for that type of content to find it, and there are much worse things that the obey me fandom has produced, such as categorizing Asmodeus as predatory and a r-pist. Submissive characters or headcanons about piss kinks or lactation kinks are the LEAST of the issues here.

Secondly, dom/sub and giving/receiving are not linked at all, which is something ALL fic writers and consumers should understand. That kind of mindset is rooted in purity culture, misinformation, as well as anti-queerness.

You are correct. There's is a massive issue with people watering down or changing characters to suit their taste. There's also nothing wrong with being vanilla, but there is also nothing wrong with having kinks either. You made a massive post that can be summed up as "don't yuck someone's yum" and then proceeded to do that exact thing because you personally do not like reading it. Block the tags for that content or whoever is writing it and go on about your day.

No one is forcing you to read it.

Mate, what the fuck are you on about?

I didn’t mean what I said to be exclusively about tumblr and perhaps I should have clarified in the original post. I’m also referring to twitter, instagram, etc.

I used the examples I did as EXAMPLES. I never said those were always the case. I don’t know if you felt personally attacked by what I said or what, but you completely misconstrued what I said. The issue is NOT people having those kinks or being into those things, the issue is people being asses to others that AREN’T into them.

Regardless you clearly need to go back and reread what I said because at no point did I “yuck anybody else’s yum.” I made it a point to say that it’s okay to like what you like, just don’t tell somebody else that their headcanon is wrong if they don’t agree with you.

And, yeah, people categorizing Asmo as predatory and so on is an issue, I agree with you there, and that’s much worse than what I complained about, but that is not the point of my post.

Nobody is forcing me to read any of it, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I see people being asses about it often enough that’s it’s an issue. Again, it’s people being asses about it that’s the issue, NOT THE KINKS THEMSELVES.

Nobody forced you to feed me a bite of this lukewarm nothing burger of a response you wasted your time on writing out when clearly you had no intention of understanding what I had said to begin with.

Can we talk about this obsession that people have now about people only being able to reblog or post certain things because of the people that follow them?

Like the amount of times I’ve seen on Twitter of people yelling at someone for swearing or posting anime boobs because “you’ve got teenagers following you!” And it’s like? Yeah so fucking what they can unfollow, im not gonna in prison myself into only posting certain things because some people who I didn’t ask to follow me or that I care are there just so happen to be there

It’s MY blog and I’ll post what I want on MY blog, who do you think you are?!

It’s like some people walking into my apartment and trying to force me to put power rangers on tv all the time and then getting pissed I put on a horror movie??

It’s reminds me so much of Antis purity bullshit and “protect the minors” why should I have to change everything to suit them?! Like fuck my happiness all for some strangers, hell no!

So yeah basically unless you expressly advertise yourself as kid friendly you can post what you want and no one should act all shocked when it’s not what they expected, it’s their fault for making assumptions

yeah that’s so ridiculous and entitled