#fiction meta
“All fictional content is just fine and totally harmless to everyone” is not my actual position; I believe in nuance and social responsibility and that a lot of things are up for debate.
But as long as there are people out there who think it’s OK to harrass and threaten kids for exploring their sexuality in fiction, and as long as the community that just wants to criticize is not actively taking stepsto oust these predatory individuals, they are pushing people who are horrified by the stalking and harrassment to adopt that as a fall-back position.
Or, in other words, matter how not-OK any particular piece of fiction or art might be, it is always more OK than targeted harm to actual human beings, especially vulnerable children. And that’s a hard line.
And as long as that’s happening on as large of a scale as it is right now, anyone who cares about the safety of minors online should be concentrating on cleaning that up, and people who focus on the contents of purely fictional works instead, or put far greater emphasis on these, are at best misguided and at worst trying to take the attention off their own predatory behavior. This focus is a red flag.
I’ll be happy to discuss the potential indirect harms of more and less permissive stances on media content with a community that demonstrates a commitment to fixing their missing stairs, not ignoring that they exist.
Hint: The missing stairs are the ones engaging in harrassment and abuse, not the ones who reblogged a “bad” fanart once.
I agree with the majority of this, however I don’t 100% agree that fiction should be policed at all. But as a librarian I know that my viewpoint is radical and probably problematic for the majority of Tumblr as it is now.
the bottomline:
Stop attacking people for fiction.
Start attacking people who ACTUALLY HARM CHILDRENJFC it’s not that hard.
To clarify: I don’t believe in policing fiction because I don’t believe in policing.
Ido believe in presenting it with framing information that helps the reader contextualize it: for example, the foreword to Naked Lunch that addresses the matter of its obscenity trial, both the question of why the book was tried and some of the framing arguments that won the case.
I also don’t believe every platform has to be a place for every kind of fiction (and I think that we should all collectively move away from our near-total reliance on massively centralized, commercialized, public platforms like Twitter and Facebook and probably Tumblr, because not everything that should be allowed to exist should be getting flung at your head at 80 mph, jfc.)
I believe that it’s possible to hold the opinion “it’s bad to post untagged, un-warned-for rapefic” while also holding the opinion “abuse and harassment are always wrong, even if the subject has also done something wrong.”
See also my post on Mein Kampf, media responsibility, mitzvahs, and libraries.
lol trying to write a cute soft fic cuz that’s what I’ve been wanting to read but then my mind is like MAKE HIM SUFFER. and I’m like jfc calm down… and then it’s like OH ALSO MAKE HER TEASE HIM.. like girl no. i can write at least one fic that is cute. I MUST. sadistic sneezefucker brain please chill.
Me: *writing fic*
Brain: “MAKE HIM SUFFER.”
Warbler: “Ohhh then I am going to be the ALLURING PRINCE OF TRAGEDY!”
Me: “Im taking a break from writing.”
To be honest, every time I think on the fact that I only write my favourite OCs being sick every damn time, it gives me a strange little guilty thrill. It’s like… Sorry love but that’s what you’re here for. It must suck for you to have a cold all the time, I’m sure you’d love to breathe through your nose, but I don’t make the… ahhhh sorry my mistake, I actually domake the rules. I just make them kinda awful for you. Now let’s see how badly I can fuck up your sinuses this time.
I have a third and last part of the latest gross nasty Warbler thing in works (it’s edging the whump territory as I need to push him some for plot reasons) BUT I’m actually obsessively writing a follow-up to that where contagion has happened, tables have turned, and he is the caretaker now and oh isn’t he enjoying himself. Tehana is not sure if she likes the attention, it’s sweet but very embarrassing, because, yeah, he’s embarrassing.
I’ve never written this sort of dynamic from this angle (embarrassing fusser of a caretaker being the focus) and ummmm fuck I love it
