#ask to tag i might be missing a few

I think one of the things that always gets me in particular is how often “dark” writers say they’re just trying to “explore the topic / themes” whenever theyre criticized for writing absolutely vile things.

And I always want to know what the hell that’s supposed to mean in the context of these fics.

I DO think some dark topics can be explored in a reasonable manor, I obviously know someone who writes a murder mystery novel is not condoning murder. But the way you engage with a topic matters. Yes you can write a murder mystery, but if you exclusively write only graphic, detailed murder scenes and literally nothing else BUT the murder scenes themselves, I’m absolutely going to assume something is just deeply fucking wrong with you.

And I feel like that’s exactly how some of y'all approach this shit.

(tw for the rest of this post for discussing themes of sexual assault, racism, fetishization, abuse)

If you claim to be exploring sexual assault as a dark topic, to understand the themes of it and explore an understanding of it and the mental impact of it – but then exclusively only write violent, graphic sexual assault scenes and literally nothing else, I’m going to assume something is just deeply wrong with you.

You are not “exploring” a topic by writing a graphically disturbing oneshot. You just have a kink for writing noncon and abuse that you’re trying to pass off any responsibility for, and excusing it in the most pretentious way imagineable.

Ihave seen fics address the mental toll of sexual assault, and seen them do it respectfully, without showing graphic detail. Again I’m not against the exploration of these things. But when you’re writing 60k words of intense brutalization and that’s just… it. That’s the entire story. And then you write it again. And again. And again–

What exploration are you doing? What themes are you analyzing? What message are you attempting to send? If this truly is an exploration, you have an end goal to it, yes? What would be the point to it all if there wasn’t?

So besides you just… having a completely obvious kink for Din mentally, physically, and sexually abusing the shit out of Luke for no discernable reason other than you think its hot, go ahead and tell me what the purpose of your literary exploration was.

Go ahead and tell me what, in your analysis of the available canon media, led you to these character decisions. Go ahead and explain to me why you would assume these characters would perform these acts and why. Give me your whole reasoning. Give me examples. Cite your sources.

Oh it’s an AU? It doesn’t follow canon? So as someone with even more control over this universe now, explain to me what led you to these decisions as an author. Why you picked these specific characters for these specific scenarios. Do you even have a solid reason? If this truly is just a harmless fictional exploration of a fictional universe, why do you always seem to draw on and enforce such real-world prejudices?

(This is all rhetorical I don’t want to hear your shitty fucking explanations, but I’m encouraging you guys to ask this shit of yourselves. Be cognizant of your decisions and their implications.)

If the grand majority of your writing is based around Latino and Māori men brutalizing, assaulting, torturing, and abusing other characters, you are not fucking “exploring dark themes” in any way. You’re just fucking racist, and completely unaware of the way in which you fetishize characters. Stop making excuses for yourself.

Stop hiding under the guise of being some dark visionary for the Star Wars writing scene. You’re not ‘pushing boundaries.’ You’re just reinforcing harmful stereotypes for the sake of an irresponsibly handled kink.

I do not fucking trust people that grab at dark topics with both hands and claim it’s fine because they’re not condoning it, or they’re just exploring it. I don’t care what you think you’re doing. If your first thought upon consuming new media is about how much you’d like to write the characters grahically sexually assaulting each other and post it on the internet to share, you need to fucking seek help, not praise.

Anyways I’m so incredibly tired of my trauma being used as a casual kink for shitty racist people. 'Dark’ fic writers go choke challenge✌️