#Even those screaming for censorship of other things in fiction

[scentedluminarysoul]

On the topic of censorship and this post:

I don't remember exact details, but something like 20 years ago, a German yaoi fanfiction site got sued. I think a parent saw their teen reading smut or something, and it got blown up to a pedophilia issue.

The site, which had very explicit warnings and a pretty good tagging system and etiquette, very dedicated mods, was forced to only show fics rated adult (yk, 'lemon' fics as it were) from 10pm to 6am, to prevent minors from accessing

Obviously a huge blow to the traffic. Idk if the mods did it or not, but explicit fics just started disappearing, getting deleted, and the site went completely bust shortly after

A huge site for mlm fics, gone. Because of censorship "to protect the children' because 'pedo icky'

If you're in favor of censorship of 'pedophilia', people will always use that to hurt queer communities

Baby queers, I BEG of you. We've been around this specific block so many times

If you don't like something THAT'S FINE AND VALID

But what it isn't is a moral issue just because you find it ick

I personally find A/B/O to be really gross and problematic. What do I do about it? Simple: I don't engage in it. The end. I avoid reading about it and trust people to tag it properly. Yes, sometimes it won't be ragged and it'll spring up and surprise me. Has happened in the past. But so what.

Sometimes you are confronted with things you find uncomfortable. It's unavoidable, actually. You need to learn how deal with it.

I closed the fic and that was that. I didn't start a petition to ban it forever yes I whined about improperly tagged fics on this here webbed site. But I what I didn't do was harass the author. A fellow human who made a mistake. They're completely entitled to write whatever the fuck they want to write

Anyway, rant over

Censorship bad

To repeat the point from the other post:

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

Edit: pertaining specifically to "pedophilia bad", how would even start defining it? What age of consent would you go by? For the whole internet? 16? 17? 18? 19? 20? 21? 2-fucking5???

Because ho BOY have you SEEN this here webbed site?

People will say it's "pedophilia" if people are different heights. If one partner is petite. If the age difference is more than 5 years even if both are adults. If they engage in consensual kinks. Size kinks. Role play. People believe in the 25 immature brain bullshit for real and see everyone below it as children unable to consent. I've talked to people who think asexuals, adhd-ers and autists can't consent. It's a fucking mess.

And that's not even getting into fiction, where adults with adult minds can look like children. And if you say surely that's pedophilia because they have small bodies, possibly underdeveloped, then I want to ask you: what's your opinion on little people? Disabled folks of sound mind with less developed bodies? Flatchested women? Men with small dicks?

Like, have you EVER even properly thought about consent at all? Like really? Who can give it and what it means? Because I have. Thanks to fiction, where I can do so safely.

Everyone has different icks they'll pretend are universal moral issues and definitely pedophilia. This is why you don't start with censorship in the first place.

If you think something should be banned because you, personally, feel disgusted by it:

Congrats. That's how every bigot operates. That's how TERFs work. You really wanna be that?

[caparrucia]

i don't think people truly care about morality in fiction. people use "morality" as an start drama and discourse and harassment campaigns because they're so bored with their lives they have nothing to do. by using the morality excuse, they shift all blame to the people they're trying to other and not them. because these same people who scream about morality in fiction are also the people who also drawn-up long-ass excuses about why they support a something (totally not financially of course!) made by actual known bigots who spew hateful shit about real groups of people and actively try to harm real life society. they'll whine about how a piece of media is toxic and disgusting, but when presented with a piece of media that isn't so, they find reasons to make it problematic (even something as stupid as an author liking a tweet made by some guy who got cancelled 7 years ago for making shitty mario porn) so that way they feel good about hating it.

nobody cares about having a discussion about morality in fiction and how it reflects or affects or real world. people just want an excuse to be horrible people for the sake of it.

So, I don't think you're wrong, necessarily, in so far as yeah, none of these conversations about morality in media are being had in good faith, because a lot of people don't even know what a good faith conversation about morality in media even looks like.

Spoilers: it's not about "this thing shouldn't exist and we should make it so people do not create things like this, by force if necessary." It's more along the lines of "what kind of commentary and reception will encourage better ethics in media production" and "is there anything worthwhile to discuss about any given work, is the transgresiveness of the morality within meant to say something, or is it really just not that deep, bro."

Notice the distinct lack of "THIS SHOULDN'T EXIST" and "YOUR MEDIA CREATION/CONSUMPTION DEFINES YOUR MORAL CHARACTER" and trying to litigate the concept of "GOOD PERSON." Because all of those are dog whistles for anti-intellectualism and pro-censorship tendencies that are prime to be radicalized into something... well. Radical.

My thing is, genuinely, dipping into the ad hominem is cathartic but not particularly useful. And yeah, accusing them of doing what they're doing out of boredom is, in fact, ad hominem. Because that automatically changes the discussion back to the whole "NO, I AM NOT A BAD PERSON, I AM IN FACT A GOOD PERSON, THEREFORE EVERYTHING I DO IS GOOD BY DEFAULT" track of circular argument that ultimately devolves into thought crime.

It doesn't matter why they're doing it. What they're doing is wrong and harmful, and the way to put a hard stop on it, is to not engage with it. Because engaging on their level, engaging on theorizing about "why" is inadvertently affirming the validity of their viewpoint. It's tacitly acknowledging that if there's a good reason for it, the tactics themselves can be used. I think that's incorrect. The tactics are deplorable, regardless of what objective one argues they're working towards.

I've had conversations about this with a friend, where they educated me on a lot of the nuance about depictions of torture in fiction. And how the concept of "torture bad" is inherently diminished when your fiction also portrays "torture works" unironically right next to it, because it legitimizes torture as a thing that gets results, even though it is scientifically proven that it doesn't. But in the attempt to characterize the bad guys as bad and immoral, many writers use torture as synecdoche, where torture ends up being bad because it's used by the bad guys, not because torture itself is pointless cruelty weaponized stupidly.

And I feel the same way about the playbook of derailment and plain old bad faith engagement with media and morality. It doesn't matter why people are engaging in it, I don't think. Maybe individual cases, when you know someone who's falling into the funnel and you're trying to reach out and try to get them away from that edge. But in general? It doesn't matter. You're causing harm, and from a harm reduction perspective, what matters is figuring out an effective way to stop them.

This is also how I engage with other radicalized, discourse poisoned bigotry champions, like T*RFs. There's nothing inherently valuable in their ideology or their methodology, so the best thing you can do is de-platform it, as aggressively as possible. Because even just spreading it in order to dunk on it is just causing splash damage on people around you. And it might sound dramatic, but given how much of the rhetoric on faux media criticism revolves around horrific abuse being commodified for internet discourse points, and given the fact abuse is generally under reported and abuse victims are often around us, keeping their status to themselves for their own safety... yeah, it is harmful to spread even for the fun snarking.

I'm big on harm reduction. I look at problems and conflicts and I try to go for whichever option, at the time, I believe is going to cause the least harm possible. I also really don't believe in giving power to structures that are known to abuse it, because I belong to quite a few groups that have been historically the first ones to get shat on as soon as those shiny new powers are abused. And they will always be abused. I understand that is a frustrating POV for a lot of people, because I'm always of the naysayers that keeps trying to figure out how rules made in good faith will be abused in bad faith, but I've been on the internet for 25 years and I've done moderation work often enough, both IRL and online, that I consider that to be just basic politics.

Don't give the dude who wants to shiv you a knife, no matter how much he promises he's not going to use it on you.

[access--granted]

Apologies for keeping this nonsense going, you must be exhausted, so I'm clarifying before I speak - delete this ask if you don't want to address this topic anymore.

Anyway, to offer a different perspective, I have personal substance issues. Life's been lifeing and I eventually turned to not-so-healthy coping mechanisms over the last few months. Fan fiction about this is my safe way of exploring my feelings about it. This widespread assumption that I need a handheld, sugar coated portrayal to cope is offensive. Shying away from difficult topics is censorship. Period. And it is a big issue because it carries a massive real-world impact on those who use fiction to escape. The same cowards criticising you will bang on and on about "representation in media", but won't note their hypocrisy.

I'm not a baby, I don't need the teletubbies to show up and remind everyone that Leon is flawless and a hug willl fix him. The fact that there's a new age approach that hails this crap as gospel, is more dangerous and harmful than one might think. I know it's stupid, but I am utterly fuming on your behalf.

That fic was the first gently thought out, yet brutally realistic piece I've found in AGES (this isn't pressure to repost!!). The fact you were bullied into believing you did something immoral just... it fucking irritates me to no end. I am so tired of this huge scream for censorship, I'm tired. Just don't engage if it triggers you, it's that easy. The rest of us adults have every right to explore darker aspects through fiction because it is SAFE. It's safe and it helps people. Talented writing is a life skill. It truly is. (Also on an amusing note: if they think me exploring his drinking habits is sinful, I would he sent straight to prison for the smut I read, lmfao!)

I'll end it by saying THANK YOU for the effort that you made. If it's better for your mental health not to post about that specific thing anymore, then please don't, but damn I'm not leaving without saying thank you for that honest portrayal of how addiction and alcohol dependency harms people and how it feels for everyone involved. You've got a talent and your empathy is very noticeable. Fuck these puriteens, lmao.

You have nothing to apologise for, anon. I'm certainly not going to shy away from talking about specific topics on my blog just because other people don't know how to ignore content they dislike. I already made the mistake of letting a bully get to me during a low point, resulting in the deletion of a piece I was both proud of and that had all-around mostly positive feedback anyway. I still appreciate your concern, though.

I completely understand that life has been lifeing, as it has been for me, too. I wrote that piece because I want my fics to be inclusive to a more widespread audience so that more people can relate. There's a lot of happily ever after fic out there, even some that completely ignore the struggles that happen in real life, too. So, I thought I'd write something different. I'm all for fluff, smut, romance, etc. But there is so much content for that already. I wanted to, and will continue to, add mature content to my writing, but not in the sense that it's always about getting Leon naked and doing the devil's tango with him.

I'd like to say also that it's not at all stupid for you to be fuming about this; I certainly am, and even more so for letting asshats get to me.

I'm happy that my representation of the issue was well thought out and realistic in your eyes. The thing I was most nervous about, to begin with, was getting things right. While I've never dealt with it personally, I had a very close friend who went through this, and many people left them behind. I will be reposting the fic at some point. I was proud of that work, and nobody will spoil it for me or anyone else who finds some kind of solace in reading it. (Also, same - like, why is exploring real-life struggles so outrageous, yet reading a crap ton of smut isn't? None of it should be a problem for people to explore.)

This topic is in no way detrimental to my mental health. I was just down in the dumps for personal reasons at the time anyway, lmao. Thank you so much for your kind words. I'm touched you think I have talent as a writer, and as a colossal empath, I'm glad it's clear to see.

[greighish]

Shen Wei... Shen Wei... ... Kill me! Kill me!

10,000 years could pass and I will still have not recovered from this scene. I mean, he's saying I don't want to live in a world where he isn't... I want to go wherever he's gone to, so kill me.

This only works in fiction, for me, but, damn if it doesn't work.

Forty episodes of Guardian complete. It continued to be engaging until the very end, which is not an easy feat. That said, I am not sure I understand the ending. I get it, but I think they left some important things on the cutting room floor.

I never did get around to liking Guo Changcheng. But can I say that the scene with him having tea with the women doesn't make sense and it feels like the adaptation team felt the need to include a specific scene from the novel but they needed to pass censorship and that's what they came up with. I could be very wrong as I haven't read the novel, but Chu Shuzhi waiting impatiently to drag his friend/teammate away from a matchmaking scene doesn't make nearly as much sense as him waiting to drag his boyfriend away from the scene. And even before that, why was he there in the first place? No matter their relationship, why is he just (not) chillin' in the background?

Zhu Hong annoyed me for a bit wondering why Zhao Yunlan didn't return her feelings. And this is possibly a cultural divide, but as far as I could see, she never explicitly made her feelings known--until the dream. And even knowing how perceptive her chief was, I think it's unfair to leave it to the other person to interpret your actions to your liking. If you want someone to pick up what you're putting down, you're better off just handing it to them. That aside, I liked her. Other than what I see as a lack of communication, I never questioned her actions; everything she did as a character made sense for her, even when she when she was lamenting about Zhao Yunlan, though not quite fair, it made sense from her perspective. Moreover, her future path is the only one I understand.

I don't have a precise understanding of what anyone else on the team is doing with their life post-split. And if it was trying to be one of those "leave it to the audience to decide" endings, it failed spectacularly by being simultaneously too vague and too specific.

Shen Wei and Ye Zun... I have complicated feelings about what I don't know. Family bonds are weird, so I can't say that their fate doesn't make sense, but I also don't think whatever it is is gonna be healthy.

Lin Jing and Da Qing in Zhao Yunlan's apartment?

Guo Changcheng being the only remaining team member walking through HQ and that mini-me Chu Shuzhi?

But the one I'm most confused about is... the real Chief Zhao?

I feel like I might rupture my cerebral cortex if I don't stop there. I want to scream, but I'm also pretty certain that if I just wait for the novel, my questions will be answered. But is it fair to ask a viewer to fill in the blanks from the original work? Be it a loose or faithful adaptation, it should be able to stand on it's own. And for the most part it did; however, it failed to at the most crucial moments.

That said, on the whole I enjoyed the story and while I won't watch it again, I am looking forward to reading the novel(s). I could take or leave most of the performances, but Zhu Yilong, Bai Yu, and Jiang Mingyang really did it for me.

Finally, I have to say something that is really unbelievable coming from me because I usually do not comprehend people's faces as being attractive or otherwise, and the times when I do acknowledge it, it's usually fleeting; however Zhu Yilong is unbelievably beautiful. I cannot stop thinking about his face and his subtle and brief expressions. I just don't understand what's happening with the symmetry and general arrangement of his features, but I am honestly and utterly captivated. This might be a problem.

[seeyouspacecoyote]

Anti-shipping at its core is one of the most deranged online movements because it winds up in little ass kids who are still barely in middle school or whatever the fuck stalking, harassing, and threatening to kill other human beings online over writing and drawing stuff about fictional characters. Online harassment is a dick move regardless, especially when you go to the level of doxxing or threatening people with physical harm or sexual assault or start suicide baiting people but harassing people online over fictional and a bunch of lines on paper or pictures on a screen is next level insane, nobody with a healthy brain thinks it's normal or acceptable to spend large chunks of your free time to yell and scream at people for enjoying fiction that doesn't personally appeal to you.

If you see fiction you don't like online, someone's fanfic gives you the ick, you don't like how someone drew character A's boobs or character B's ass, etc, then just press the back button and move on with your life, it's really that simple. There are all kinds of people in the world, and yes, some of them are jackasses and sick motherfuckers but newsflash, there were sick ass motherfuckers out there way before Archive Of Our Own or Deviantart existed and they'll still be out there even if the entire internet gets destroyed beyond repair because that's just human nature and no amount of censorship or whining and bitching and moaning about fiction you don't like will ever change that.

If you want to protect kids or abuse survivors, then invest your energy into doing things that have a positive real world impact on others like being a good friend and neighbor, looking out for friends or loved ones who are in abusive relationships, and contributing time or money into advocating for issues that actually affect people in the real world (and there are plenty of those to go around, especially in these times,) instead of threatening to stab someone online because they drew your favorite character kissing your least favorite character.

[c-is-for-circinate]

Wait, isn't "anti" stuff more like "anti-pedophilia" and stuff? Like, you have a point about anti-porn attitudes, but from what I've heard just "anti" on its own means against stuff like kid porn and incest porn and legitimately f*cked up sh*t like that.

Okay!  So this, I think, is actually a great example of what I was talking about, and a really useful thing to understand.  (CW rape, child abuse, etc)

Smarter people than me have written much better essays about why policing thoughtcrimes is a bad road to go down, and I will probably reblog some of them next time they cross my dash for more context.  What I want to talk about is the trigger mechanism, the ‘oh, this looks like danger!!!’ immune response in how we look at different kinds of porn, and how that applies to anti culture.

Here’s the thing: I am anti-pedophilia.  I think that, for most people, that’s a stance that largely goes without saying!  Adults who prey on children are bad.  I’m also against incest; relatives who prey on their family members are bad.  Above all I oppose rape.  Sexual predation of any kind is bad.  In fact, I’d say that’s the most important item on the list.  There is plenty of room to argue about where the lines are between ‘adult’ and ‘child’ and how teenagers fit in the middle, and there’s plenty of room to get historical about the lines between ethically terrible incest, distasteful-but-bearable “aristocratic inbreeding” between distant cousins, and the kind of consanguinity that tends to develop in a small town where everyone’s vaguely related to everyone else by now anyway.  The core of the issue is consent, and it has always been consent.  Pedophilia and incest are horrific because they are rape scenarios where the abuser has far more power and their victim far fewer resources to cope, both practically and emotionally; because harm to children is, to us as a culture, worse than harm to adults, for a lot of very valid reasons; and because they constitute betrayal of trust the victim should have been able to put in their abuser as well as rape--but they are all rape scenarios, and that’s why they’re awful. 

These things are bad.  It is good for us to have a social immune response system that recognizes these things when they’re happening and insists we step in.  That is a good thing to develop!  It helps us, as a society.  It can help the people being victimized.  It’s the same reason educators and childcare workers in the US are all mandated reporters, why we do background checks on people working near kids.  These things happen, and they’re terrible, and it’s good that we try to be aware and prepared for them.  (Though obviously studies show we’re a lot less good at protecting the vulnerable than we’d like to pretend we are.)

The question is: why does that same social immune response trigger, and trigger so angrily, in response to fiction?

Anti culture is fundamentally an expression of that social immune response.  Specifically, it’s that social immune response when it is set off by a situation that, while it has some similarities to the very bad real-life crime of sexual predation including pedophilia and incest, is in and of itself harmless.

If you’re instinct is to flare up in anger or dismissiveness because I’m calling these things harmless, I want to ask you to just take a deep breath and bear with me for a bit longer.  What you’re feeling right now is an allergic reaction.

Humans tell and read and listen to stories about “legitimately fucked up shit” all the time.  It’s part of the human condition.  It’s part of how we process those things happening, not just to use, but to other people in the world around us.  It’s part of how we process completely unrelated fucked-up shit, playing with fears and furies and insecurities that we all have, through so may layers of fiction that we don’t even recognize them any more, playing with power dynamics in metaphor and making characters suffer for fun.  Aside from the fact that literally all stories do this to some extent or another; aside from the fact that drawing lines between ‘ok that’s good storytelling’ and ‘that’s too fucked-up to write about’ is arbitrary, subjective, and dangerous in its own right; aside from all of that, these stories are stories.  All of them. 

Even the ones about rape, about incest, about pedophilia.  They’re words on a page.  No real children were harmed, touched, or even glanced at in the making of this work of fiction.  This story, pornographic though it may be, is part of a conversation between consenting adults.  (And if a teenager lies about their age to consent, that is a different problem altogether.)

Stories in and of themselves, no matter what they’re about, are no more dangerous than a crate full of oranges.  Which is to say: utterly harmless, unless all you have to eat is oranges, all day every day, and you find yourself dying slowly of nutrient deficiency--which is why representation matters.  Or unless someone wields one deliberately, violently, as a tool to cause harm, and someone gets acid in their eye--which is the fault of the person holding the orange. And unless you happen to be allergic to citrus.

The key here is this twofold understanding:  First, the thing that hurts you can also have value to others.  Real, legitimate value.  Whether you’ve undergone trauma and certain story elements are straight-up PTSD triggers or you just don’t like orange juice, that story, those tropes, that crate of oranges may be somewhere between icky and fundamentally abhorrent--but we understand that that is still your reaction.  Even if you don’t understand how anybody could ever enjoy it; even if every single person you surround yourself with is as sensitive and disgusted and itchy about this thing that makes your eyes hurt and your throat stop working as you; that doesn’t make it true for everyone.  That doesn’t make oranges poisonous.  No real children were involved in the writing of this story.  It is words on a page.

But, secondly: the thing that has value to others can also hurt you.  Just because a story isn’t inherently poison doesn’t mean it can’t cause you, personally, pain.  That’s what a PTSD trigger is: an allergic reaction, psychological anaphylaxis, a brain that’s trying so hard to protect its own from a threat that isn’t actually present (but was once, and the brain is trained to respond) that it causes far more harm and misery than the trigger itself possibly could.  And no, it’s not just people with PTSD who sometimes get hurt by stories.  There are many, many ways a story can poke the part of your brain that says, this is Bad, I don’t like this, I don’t want to be here.  The story is still, always, every time, pixels on a screen and ink on paper.  The story causes no physical harm.  But it can poke your brain into misery, it can stir up your emotions, it can make you want to cringe and run away.  It can make you want to scream and fight and go after the author who brought this thing into existence.  It can make you hurt.

This is an allergic reaction.  This is your brain and body, your reflexes and instincts, trying to protect you from something that isn’t really happening.  And just like a literal allergic reaction, it can do actual harm to you if it gets set off.  This is real.  The fact that stories can upset you to the point of pain and mental/emotional injury is real, even though it’s coming from your own brain and not the story itself.  There are stories you shouldn’t read.  There are stories I shouldn’t read, regret reading, will never read, because they hurt me.  That doesn’t mean they’re the same stories that would hurt you.  That doesn’t mean they don’t have value.

And, finally:

If getting upset about stories is fundamentally an individual person’s allergic reaction, their brain freaking out and firing off painful survival instincts in the face of a thing that isn’t, in and of itself, a threat?  Then the anti movement is a cultural allergic reaction.

Fandom as a whole has a pretty active immune system, which doesn’t mean we have a good immune system.  We try very hard to be aware of all the viruses and -isms and abuse and manipulation and cruelty, both systematic and individual, that exists around and within our community.  We’re primed and ready to shout about things at all times.  The anti movement is that system, that culture, screaming and shouting and fighting at a harmless thing on a grand scale.  It wants to stop that thing, that scary awful thing that trips all of its well-primed danger sensors, at all costs.  It’ll swell up and block off our airways (our archives) if it has to.  It’ll turn on the body it came from.  It’s scared and protective and trying to fight, and it’s ready to fight and destroy itself.

Luckily, fans and fanfic and fandom and fan culture are a lot bigger and older than they often get credit for, and it’s not like these cultural allergies are anything new.  We could talk about shippers and slashers in the X-Files fandom in the 90s.  We could talk about the birth of fandom in the days of Star Trek.  We could talk about censorship and book burning going back centuries.  We survived that and we’ll survive this, too.

But god, does the anti movement my throat and eyes itch.  Man is it irritating, and sometimes a little suffocating, to realize how many stories just aren’t getting told out of fear of what the antis will say.  And that’s the real danger, I think.  What are we losing that would have so much value to someone?  What are we missing out?

[butterflyinthewell]

I’m saying all of this as a proshipper who both dislikes most of same ships fantis flip out over and who blocks but won’t harass MAPs / zoophiles…

Fandom antis claim proshippers are mad at them for saying “you can’t ship adults/minors and incest.”

That is a lie fantis spread to fool people into believing their “cause”.

Cuz like I said, I’m a proshipper who isn’t into those kinds of ships. There’s always a few exceptions that are dependent on how the subject matter is handled, so there’s a lot I will not touch when it comes to what I consume.

And I’m here to say fantis lie constantly about their cause and their stance.

They wish for real people (usually proshippers) to suffer the things they say they’re disgusted by and totally against being portrayed in fiction.

They tell proship CSA survivors that they deserved it and probably liked it.

They tell proship rape survivors that they deserved it and probably liked it.

They tell proship abuse survivors that they deserved it and probably liked it.

They perpetuate misinformation about how fiction affects peoples’ minds.

They perpetuate misinformation about how predators select and groom targets.

They call proshippers pedophiles over pixels and ink and muddy up the meaning of the accusation so much that people are suffering from alarm fatigue.

Or they outright lie to the point that people who don’t examine the accusation closer think a real crime has been committed, and fantis bank on that to ruin lives.

They accuse people of heinous crimes over pixels and ink.

They tell people to get hurt, get abused, get raped, get killed.

They have harassed people to suicide and laughed about it.

They do the things they accuse proshippers of doing.

They never speak a word about other kinds of violence against children in fiction, like child soldiers, or children being maimed or killed. They only focus on sex, and it’s because they know they perpetuate abusive violence and would be even bigger hypocrites if they yelled about violence with the same fervor they yell about sex. And they know it, too.

Fandom antis do extreme mental gymnastics to justify their vile behavior.

Do you remember how fantis called a proship artist’s work “pedo shit” because they drew their Minotaur character as a child innocently doodling with a piece of chalk? I do!

Fantis are huge fucking bullies.

It’s NOT about being told “don’t ship this gross shit” at all, and fantis keep telling that lie to continue to slander proshippers as monsters.

Proshippers want to be left alone. We want people to read the warnings on our content and move on instead of clicking anyway and blaming us when it triggers or disgusts you. Warnings exist for a reason.

But it’s never about warnings, it’s about forcing censorship and control because you fantis can’t fucking control yourselves like decent people.

Your group will read a fic by a proshipper that has nothing problematic in it, see an older character put their hand on the younger character’s shoulder in a most non-sexual platonic way, and you’ll cry that it’s pedophilia.

You’ll look at fanart of brothers choking each other during what is clearly a violent fight and scream that it’s incest.

You’ll cry those things because maybe the fanfic author or fan artist made problematic shippy content in the past, so you wrongly assume all their content is purely shipping material.

Guess what?

You are not protecting a child from molestation by yelling at someone for drawing shippy fanart or writing shippy fanfics of pairings you find morally corrupt.

I get that you want to do good in the world, and maybe you think you’re helping, but you’re causing harm.

Maybe you actually like the creation and have to perform disgust to keep your friends.

Heck, maybe it excites you and you’re frightened into thinking it’s like liking the real thing and IT IS NOT. Liking problematic fiction doesn’t mean condoning the same things in real life.

If you’re in a group of friends that will cast you out the second you ship something they don’t like, they’re sucky friends.

Maybe you’re acting out of fear, and that sucks.

But if you really don’t care at all that you’re hurting people and think pixels and ink are more important than real lives, do us all a favor and throw your whole self in the trash because you suck as a person.

Some people read fiction to see a magical idealized world where everything is pretty and perfect.

And some people read fiction to see how horribly a situation can go without anyone coming to harm in the real world.

It’s okay to be uncomfortable with problematic content, but it’s not okay to call for censorship or harassment.

Heck, sometimes a piece of disgusting work can allow for discussion of things like bigotry and how not to write about a group of people or how not to handle a relationship.

But we can’t have those discussions if people are constantly having to fend off slander and false accusations.

Sometimes I swear fantis don’t want there to be any discussion, they only want unquestioning, unwavering compliance.

Being proship means a person who encounters content they find upsetting or gross says something like this to themselves, “I think that pairing is the most disgusting immoral thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Everybody is OOC, there’s no chemistry that I can see, this couple feels forced, this is gross, I hate this story so much I want to puke, but I’m not going to say that to the creator of it. I’m going to move on and maybe block that person to avoid seeing it again. I’m not going to harass them, call them names or spread their content around out of context where kids might see it. I’m not going to send my friends after it by performing disgust in public so everyone sees me as a martyr for it. If this content is harming real people or breaking the website’s TOS, I’ll report it. If it’s missing a needed tag, I’ll ask them to tag. But I will not harass them. If I need to rant, I’ll rant in private to my friends or rant with censored names so it doesn’t show up in searches.”

THAT’S IT.

That’s what fandom was like before all this puritanical crap started.

There was a time when the really egregious stuff was kept away in its own areas, but because Web 2.0 happened to smash it all together, and because some of you out there can’t read a damn fucking warning, it’s come to this.

I have no patience for fantis.

It’s not “I’m mad because I was told not to ship that” at all.

It’s about bullying. It’s about gaslighting that the bullying isn’t bullying. That’s all fantis do, bully and gaslight, and it’s not okay.

It’s not okay when anyone does that.

[elumish]

I am all for Don’t Like, Don’t Read, but you all have got to stop using it as a blugeon against people doing antiracist work or otherwise calling you or fandom out for being harmful.

Don’t Like, Don’t Read started as a disclaimer warning on slash fics, back when slash fics were way less accepted than they are now and some people would freak out upon reading them. The idea was simple: if you don’t like the ship I’m writing about, don’t read my story and then get mad at me for it.

Obviously it’s expanded since then, but it’s also become an easy blugeon against people talking about racism or other such issues in fic/fandom, because it’s a treasured remnant of Old Fandom, even if most people don’t remember its origins.

I am a huge fan of the general concept of Don’t Like, Don’t Read. Readers are under no obligation to finish a story. I have opened many a story and either closed it immediately because it had some writing or formatting issue or gotten halfway through and gone, eh, not my thing, and stopped. There are ships I don’t want to read about, so I don’t.

More broadly, it encompasses a really important point in fandom: authors produce all of their work for free, and so they are under no obligation to cater to the desires of their readers by using a certain style, writing a certain ship, or changing their plot. I have talked about that ridiculous comment I got recently, and to them I would say: Don’t Like? Don’t Read. But leave me out of it.

None of this makes writers immune to criticism. Don’t Like, Don’t Read isn’t a magic barrier you get to put around yourself or a cross you can use to ward off unwanted spirits. If you are racist or sexist or homophobic or otherwise bigoted (even if it’s not intentional), people absolutely have a right to call you out on it, the same way they do if you had published an essay or a book or a post on Tumblr. If you are putting something out into the world that hurts people, people should and will call you on it.

Fandom isn’t some magical utopia where everyone is progressive and perfect and nobody can ever be harmed by what someone writes. It’s not some ideal set of queer women unproblematically writing subversive fiction, untouched by all of the biases of the world. It’s a bunch of random people making things, and it can be just as good and just as bad as things being made outside of the magical etherial bubble of FandomTM.

You’re not cool and progressive and stopping censorship by wielding Don’t Like, Don’t Read like a weapon. You’re just being every one of those conservatives who screams that the First Amendment means they can say whatever they want without consequences, but with a neat little Progressive FandomTM hat stuck on top.

[potteresque-ire]

Gg,

I’ll say this using the simplest way too. I’ll also say this, knowing it doesn’t solve anything ~

You didn’t start the culture of comment control (控評) and the fan circles that execute them, which stifled any rational discussions about entertainers. You didn’t start the culture of treating constructive criticisms—even opinions that fall short of being praises—the same as malicious slandering, something to be buried under a pile of positive comments, of rainbow farts. You didn’t start the longstanding frustrations among netizens, who felt they couldn’t even gossip freely when entertainment is all about the gossip. You didn’t ignite the antagonistic views of non-fans against fans that would one day turn into support for that movement against you.

You didn’t criticise fan circle culture on one hand, and encourage the practice of comment control on another. You didn’t tie the act of comment control to patriotism, didn’t mobilise fan circles to perform comment control on message boards in support of the Hong Kong police in 2019, taking advantage of the fan circle’s high level of organisation, their experience in performing such task, and their intense need to be seen as patriotic such that their idol will be viewed favourably by the government. You didn’t praise these fans who were there for their idol 阿中哥哥 (Chinese GeGe) — a virtual idol who personified the Chinese government—and called them patriotic. 

You didn’t make performative patriotism a pre-requisite for entertainers to survive in c-ent. You didn’t require performative patriotism to be placed above logic, above personal preferences in expression. You didn’t portray performative patriotism as a goal sufficient to justify any means. You didn’t teach impressionable young fans that as long as the cause was deemed by the powers-that-be as patriotic and honourable, one can ignore the laws, scale the Great Firewall and go to otherwise banned websites; one can cause havoc on and trample on their perceived enemy’s communities. 

You didn’t equate silencing one’s opponent with patriotism.

You didn’t market reporting culture as an honourable, noble deed. You didn’t resurrect reporting culture from its Cultural Revolution’s grave, with the knowledge that it had always been a weapon against people expressing different opinions. You didn’t ask your media arm to pen articles about the rewards to be made by reporting. You didn’t list the people who had reported on your official website like they had made honour roll. You didn’t make reporting so open, so righteous-sounding that many didn’t think twice to join the effort, even if it was only about a piece of fiction they didn’t like.

You didn’t make reporting of certain content on a website sufficient grounds for censoring an entire website. You didn’t make censoring a thing. You didn’t censor one of the few remaining websites left with relatively free expressions, while the rest of your team was already performing heavy-handed censorship on a certain pandemic—a certain pandemic that had killed, that had brought much anger, sadness and frustration. You didn’t put a chokehold on people who had already felt they had no room left to talk, when they were bound to their homes and could do little but talk. But vent.

You didn’t create a system where venting against the powerful could get one into trouble. You didn’t marry the politically powerful with the commercially powerful. You didn’t build the society where the few people left with perceived higher social status and who could still be attacked with little consequences were entertainers—especially young, recently break-through stars with little backing from the media companies, and the commercially and politically powerful people behind these companies.

You didn’t start 227.

The moment the axe fell on AO3, Gg, there was very little you could do, very little you could say. 227 was indeed an explosion, from too high a pressure from freedoms of speech that have been too strangled. They said you were mute? So were the theys who called you that, who didn’t have the guts to take their complaint to those who deserve it. You became the eye of a storm you didn’t brew, the eye that could’ve been anyone else—anyone else who wouldn’t have known better what to do. 

Offer guidance? Exactly what kind of guidance? Tell your fans that AO3, which does host material offensive to the Chinese government, has the right to remain inside the Firewall? Tell your fans that reporting is wrong? 

Is your guidance asking the solo and cp fans to keep their peace? Fans fight. Solos and cpfs fight. These fights happen on a daily basis, and there would’ve been no 227 if they were the cause of 227—because everyday would’ve been a 227. 227 became 227 because one of these fights, which happened to be between your fans, also happened to have knocked upon one of the most important pillars that prop up an authoritarian dictatorship: suppression of the freedom of speech; it stumbled upon what had already been a field of landmines, the buried anger of the people who have been silenced, censored over the years.

COVID put in a full, fresh layer of landmines, still buried shallow and waiting for inexperienced youngsters—who could be fans or non-fans, fans of any idol—to trip over their sharp corners.  

These days, people call the youngsters who tripped over them the shrimps.  One explosion triggered another and in the din, you were accused of not warning the youngsters, and thrown into the exploding field for punishment. To set off all the other landmines in danger of exploding. No one asked why the landmines were there. 

Appropriately, perhaps, or ironically ... have you thought about this, Gg? That your silence might have played a role to your survival in the industry, the support you’ve got lately from the state media? Because you took one for them, for those who created the storm and buried the landmines, who did all the things you didn’t do. Because you became a convenient punching bag for a country of 1.4 billion who needed something to punch. Because you took the blows gracefully and without complaint, didn’t utter a word that would’ve made obvious the instigator of the damage you’re now apologising for. You eased the guilt in the people doing the punching by having so many gifts they didn’t have; it must have given some people cold joy to land their fist on your gorgeous face. You’ve gritted your teeth and stayed silent even after the water armies, the yxh’s entered the scene, eager to feed on your corpse. The rot they smelled was the commercial value on you.

Have you thought about this, Gg, that you might’ve already performed the social responsibility implicitly demanded of you and in flying colours, by being the punching bag, the landmine sweeper? That when you promise to take more social responsibility in the future, that you may be asked to do something similar?

No one asked why the landmines were there. They’ll pile up again.

Yes, I’m frustrated. I read your letter and wanted to scream. I understand why you said everything you did, understand the realistic need to issue an apology and I respect and adore you, as always, for your maturity, your emotional intelligence. This letter is therefore neither a complaint nor a criticism against you; this is me, venting my frustration, from that half of me that knows painfully well that your letter is necessary and the right thing to do.  

Still, the other half of me wants to say your letter is utter nonsense.

Because your only mistake, Gg, is that you’re too likeable, and too likeable, perhaps, at the wrong time. You have too many fans who made all these issues you didn’t create so much more visible. You had too many fans at a time when COVID took too many victims, when the whole sociopolitical climate demands one voice and when every fan of yours is an individual with their own voice, their own likes and dislikes. You have too many fans who dearly love you but also require you to become a “public figure”—I’m putting this term in quotes as you did—a “public figure” who can help them decipher the conflicting messages the society is sending them re: the meaning, the responsibility of a fan, a “public figure” who, as you admit yourself, requires construction from Gg the Idol and Gg the regular person from Chongqing.

Gg the Idol and Gg the regular person from Chongqing who, you also said, require mutual acceptance. Gg the Idol and Gg the regular person from Chongqing who, therefore, must have significant conflicts—mutual acceptance isn’t necessary otherwise.

Who’s this “Gg the public figure” that will emerge? Or, what? How human will he/it be? How much will he/it still be you? Where are you going to be in this “public figure”?

And that’s the most difficult thought to endure this morning. To become a better self—you keep emphasising, as if you weren’t good enough, kind enough, courteous and respectful and professional enough to begin with.

A better self, may I ask, to who?

[knicks-knacks]

Fucking yes, I will defend any and all fictional works actually. NO ONE should be entitled enough to say what belongs where, how fucking dare they. Why are THEY the be all and end all of what someone can write and what can be posted. "you want a little horror and smut, sure!" THANK YOU FOR YOUR PERMISSION YOUR GRACE. Fortunately they're not actually in charge of anything.

Nah, I agree with you fully. Be as heated as you want to be.

And thank you! It really is entitled, narcissistic, and very short-sighted. That post had a whole bunch of red flags tbh and it was effortless to pull apart at the seams. Like, lemme break it down piece by piece (because I'm high and bored and eating pudding!)

Tries to shock the reader by mentioning something that is clearly gruesome, taboo, or alarming. (I.e. anti-choice people calling abortions "baby murder".) and then accuse the other person of committing those acts or endorsing them.

It's basically a tactic people use to try and get people to automatically agree with them. Very old propaganda trick in a way. I mean, I hate murder! You hate murder! We all know murder is wrong! So let me go ahead and show you a crime scene and claim the person/thing I hate is murder, or endorses it! If you are on their side or support them, you are also a murderer! And you don't want to be a murderer, do you? It's really cheap and honestly dumb.

Like you said, tries to make exceptions to try and seem reasonable or less like a narcissistic dumbass who's pro censorship.

I always find it so funny and hypocritical when people try and pull this shit. It falls apart so easily too. Like... okay, necrophilia is bad, so it's banned, but murder and gore are fine? Why is the line drawn there, and only there, specifically? Who made you the baseline for what was and wasn't okay? Who are the people who get to decide for everyone and set the rules? Because I hate to say it but censorship of fiction for the sake of moral outrage is a slippery slope. And an endless one. Like sure, you're fine with murder, but what about the people that aren't? Are you going to cry and defend fiction when slasher film fanfics disappear? Or, if it's on the basis of who is offended or grossed out by it, what about all the people with less severe squicks or things of that nature? What about the people who are uncomfortable with MPreg, or oviposition, or something or other? Do those fics then get banned also?

It just raises so many questions that the argument fails before you even finish reading it. Why do only the things YOU find okay get a pass, and what do you do if someone disagrees? Then do you suddenly start screaming "But it's just fiction!!!"? It's never gonna make sense.

It's just all-around immature and self-centered. I'm sick of it.

But anyways. I really do have a lot of thoughts about AO3, antis, and censorship. It started as a joke but it kinda became a hyperfixation so I tend to keep up with what nonsense people like them are saying on the regular. (You'd be surprised how stupid they can be.)

If this at all reads weird, my bad - right now I feel like my field of vision is on the highest setting.

[rametarin]

We deal with this, “fiction is reality” shit EVERY. GENERATION.

And I mean it comes back among authoritarians playing to sheep EVERY fucking generation on different pretenses.

It always boils down to a bunch of people that are insecure about the effects of culture and media on other people, and as a flimsy pretense/pretext to restrict access to things to other people “in society” for their own safety and sense of security.

And when it comes to, “obscene literature” or illustrations, the source is always jealousy, insecurity and an attempt to reduce other people down to a demographic statistic. Whether it’s reducing black people to a caricature and acting like hip-hop just turns the kids into violent, drug abusing, psychotic felons, or imagining pornography is what turns people into horny fucking do-nothings, it’s always about control.

And we’ve put it off for so long. We’ve put off the conversation about just what demographic these people play to in order to get traction and followers and staying power and warm bodies for their movements. They’re the demographic that makes antis- work, the demographic that screams for censorship because illustrations “hurt them personally,” or “cause men to hurt them.”

I’m talking about women. Particularly, cis women, as trans women are not in numbers enough to affect anything, and it is EXPLICITLY IMPORTANT that the source of the offense and complaint come from the population that are the gateway through which the next generation is born and brought up.

Individual men may be so clueless as to assume the way degeneration works is a person is left improperly or negligently nurtured, and so just make bad decisions because, “they were never taught better.” They embrace the idea that people only do bad shit because, “the society,” isn’t paying attention, or that individual people are just blank slates beholden to the righteousness and morality of the cultural hivemind of said society. That Society is an objective effect, and if bad people exist, it’s proof to them that there’s something wrong with said society.

But individual men know that the bad actions of other men are not caused solely by “male culture,” or the absence of it, or shitty “role models.” They see the shitty natural inborn attitudes of other men, and despite being raised in shitty conditions, naturally develop a good head on their shoulders, and despise actions like that. As men you can’t HELP but grow up watching boys around you make shitty decisions based on shitty impulse control and, no matter how often they’re punished, how much they’re loved, how much they’re compassionately talked to, STILL act the fool and wind up as terrible, stealing, violent adults. As men you can’t do anything BUT reconcile that some people are just fucking shitheads, and the idea as a man YOU should be punished or treated like the “association” of men itself is at fault, smacks of sexism. The same sort of sexism women’s lib supposedly is against- at least, when it happens to women.

Women, however, are not men, are not privy to the thoughts and feelings of men. Men are abstracts to these women, many of whom are so solipsistic or gynocentrist that they just see men as a class of monsters in a videogame. Just a pattern of individuals that surely must all get their code and culture from “society.” Clearly, when there’s bad men about, it’s proof this “society” isn’t doing everything it can to mollify and gentrify those horrible beastly men to make them safe and not dangerous and productive.

These women that see men like living aggregates for society, imagine that in order to “keep men working properly,” they need to not have “bad moral influences,” treating pornography and access to drugs and literature like a cleaning lady treats dirt on linen. They imagine that the only reason rape or murder or theft by men occurs is because “there’s a problem with men, thinking that is okay.” Like the only reason your average man isn’t running around violently raping people or killing them is because they sang enough hymns at church- by force. Or because they were prevented from, “getting deranged by wrongthink.”

So with this in mind, how do they imagine porn affects men, male minds, and this big abstract-turned-monolithic-concept called, “society?”

Well, they imagine fiction is reality. That if “people of lesser intellect” read a thing, then they’ll inherently believe it, because, “it presents itself as factual and reality.” When.. no. That’s not how it works. They believe, absolutely, that without some mechanism there to go, “BUT WE’RE JUST PRETENDING THO, IT’S NOT REAL!” that will inherently make people, whom all have tenuous and toddler-like grasps of reality and object permanence, think a thing in fiction is real and applies to reality.

And naturally, they see men as people of lesser intellect. So they reason, those dangerous statistical anomalies are just men that haven’t been browbeaten, and whom are subject to any given negative influence or writing or opinion or culture that preaches values and ideas incongruent with their preferences, as women. Therefore, they conclude, fiction that does not preach their “good values” is in fact advocating bad ones, bad habits, bad moral character, bad mental health- call it whatever you want based on your generation. It’s ALL THE SAME SHIT. All the same knee-jerk moralism based on justifying societal and institutional use of force to restrict and arbitrate and judiciously enforce and justify dictating censorship and good-think. It’s just a question of where that basis comes from.

And theres’ ultimately no reasoning with that culture of women when they grasp hold of a thing that appeals to them, flatters and justifies their prejudices and biases. You can sit there colorfully or dryly explaining the ways in which this shitty point of view is wrong, much as you can try to walk back a persons beliefs in their homophobia that they base on religious purism or use the purism to validate their homophobia, but you cannot just get them individually to give up those nice, comfortable beliefs.

And when grouped together for mutual support and validation, it becomes this negative-thought, field of fucking SHEEP braying “Nuuuh-uuuh!” and arguing for restriction of content and sanitation and disbarrment from certain subject matter to be in consumable porn or literature or even just art. The only thing keeping them in check being the consequences for vandalism, and the ability for a community or institution to police out the bias usurpers that would seek to enter their foundations and run them on behalf of the values of these easily upset, insecure sheep.

every FUCKING generation, it manifests in some manner. Be they from church ladies, to radical feminists, to intersectional feminists. If you capture the imaginations, insecurities, jealousies, foster and sanction them, interpret them, get young women believing them, participating in the romance that tells them the way to change the bad things or take the edge off the bad men is to foster and enable authoritarianism (be it regional social, regional institutional, or federal institutional) then you have this neverending avalanche of unending support for it. Be it from dictators, or just from pure ideology from a doctrine. They’ll do it. And stubbornly and obstinately believe in whatever compliments their biases, to the contradiction of everything.

And while you can remove a man and his influences on the next gen from the home, from the social radius of the next generation to be a significant source of culture and how they relate to young people, removing women from the equation, from whom the next generation comes from, is virtually impossible. So a male zealot, already susceptible to scrutiny and punishment for being so wild and zealous with their beliefs, can be retaliated against, muted, beaten and removed from relevance until they censor themselves or change their tune.

But you cannot do that to a female human, or women/mothers as a sex, without both women AND men taking it as an attack on humanity at their most prime and kernel. It has to be done with disproportionate authoritarian state power that does not fear mass dissent and violent retaliation, or it isn’t done at all.

So these zealous Karens that embrace wholly these ideas enabling authoritarianism under a banner they approve of, are allowed to propagate unchallenged, and even if challenged, cannot be subdued or subverted. Their own little cliques and echo chambers and lack of desire to even consider their positions are wrong. Any attempt to point the fingers at this very real, disproportionate and characteristic, objective power female humans have just on the basis of their sex and how that relates among them socially, can and will be trash binned arbitrarily as, “sexism.” Despite the fact, it’s absolutely true.

So long as women that believe “society” is an objective, monolithic thing from which, “that other sex” and other women get their marching orders on how to BE what they are, and don’t see them as billions of individuals with their own ambitions, instincts, inborn personality and character flaws, independent of “society’s failures,” believing those people can be saved or corrected IF ONLY WE CENSOR EVERYTHING or make all media “good thing,” we’re just going to have people with illiberal beliefs asserting their dominance and insisting it’s for the soul of the species, society and the planet.

I mean yeah there are male antis and shit, but honestly. Tell me honestly. How many fucking deranged fandom people that are doing shit like mailing cookies with sewing needles backed into them are male gendered or male sexed, either? As uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge or consider this might have a sexual grounding, I’m sorry. Not acknowledging it is simply rejecting reality.

[eluvion]

An Analytical Response to @emounmasked

This is less a response denying their claims (as many have already done one) and more of an analysis of something I noticed in a lot of their accusations. They, in most of their posts, have cited swearing and violence within and out of the bands’ songs. They cite that as “proof” that the bands are toxic, as they are exposing minors to things of that nature. They also claim a lot of sexism (which can and has been disproven) and racism. On the subject of racism, I would just say that many of those things happened a long time ago, when the rules for what you could and couldn’t do were a lot looser and the punishments less severe. It is unintentional racism at worst, and, in my opinion, what makes someone problematic for race concerns is more of if they struggle to learn from their mistakes. Yes, many musicians have said the n word or something of that nature, but if they’ve learned and decidedly not done it again, then that is fine in my books. They also comment on the skill of their favorite artists as compared to other artists, but that is very much subjective and has no presence in arguments of being “problematic”.

What I really want to talk about is their complaints of swearing, of violence and sex, because that feeds into discussion on censorship, of what is “safe” and what is not. 

Now, because I struggle with words, I will quote @neil-gaiman on an excerpt of his short story collection, Trigger Warning. While what he talks about is with the focus on story, I’ve found that it applies to music as well.

“We build the stories in our heads. We take words, and we give them power, and we look out through other eyes, and we see, and experience, what others see. I wonder, Are fictions safe places? And then I ask myself, Should they be safe places? There are stories that, as a child I wished, once I read them, that I had never encountered, because I was not ready for them and they upset me: stories which contained helplessness, in which people were embarrassed, or mutilated, in which adults were made vulnerable and parents could be of no assistance. They troubled me and haunted my nightmares and my daydreams, worried and upset me on profound levels, but they also taught me that, if I was going to read fiction, sometimes I would only know what my comfort zone was by leaving it; and now, as an adult, I would not erase the experience of having read them if I could.”

I find that the same ideas apply to music. Music is an expression of emotion in a way nothing else is and emotion, oftentimes, is not “safe”. We curse and scream and yell a thousand dirty words at the sky, at God, at humanity, because we need to. Music is a lifeline, and I feel that maybe a less than savory epithet is the price of a song. 

This discussion, however, leads to the question I would ask @emounmasked. What is “safe” and why is it “safe”? What ideas constitute as for any audience? It is interesting what many people’s responses would be to that question. I find that music is a reflection of truth, especially in the rock, punk, and emo subgenres. They are often songs of how the world, how humanity, is flawed, but they have a sense of understanding to them. They feel raw, and so much different than the lighter, happier pop songs that @emounmasked enjoys.

All My Chemical Romance albums have an explicit content warning label. All rock concerts, when buying tickets, have an implied explicit warning on them. As Neil Gaiman again states, “We are mature. We decide what we read or do not read.” We, as fans, are wise enough to read a label and understand its meaning. We chose to go concerts. We know exactly what we are walking into. Even the minors in the crowd. 

@emounmasked speaks of swearing in front of crowds as an offence. And my response to that is many-sided. Yes, you do not want your children to hear these words, but many of us already do. It is hard to censor things now, as most explicit content is a few clicks away. So I ask: do we shut ourselves off, only give and take entertainment labeled as “safe” or can we choose for ourselves what we do and do not consume? Who do we trust with telling us what is “safe”? We can avoid, as much as we can, our triggers, but things will always sneak up on us. 

We have, so far, managed to strike a balance between complete censorship and leaving everything out in the open. We have trigger warnings, and content warnings, and we tell whoever comes across our art what is in it. But @emounmasked seems to want to push this line we have drawn. 

Music opens your eyes, shows you the world in a way nothing else does. 

But is it safe? Should it be safe? I don’t know if I can answer those questions. Art is such a human thing, and as a human thing, it will be flawed and complicated, with a hundred different strings attached. Maybe someday, someday, we may just find ourselves untangling those strings and reweaving them in a perfectly shaped pattern. But we are far from a world where censorship exists in a perfect, uncomplicated manner.

So what, you may be asking, is my conclusion? 

Here’s what I would say:  

Give a warning. Tell people what is to come, what explicit or terrifying things are coming. Let them know what is behind the curtain, and leave it to them whether or not they take that step. Keep swearing, keep saying what you wish, keep singing what you want to. Do what you wish with music (barring, of course, racism and words that aren’t yours to say). But give a warning. 

Art is such a strange concept, and censorship of art is such a large rabbit hole. But, @emounmasked,if you see this, I would honestly love to hear your answers. 

Is art safe? 

Should it be safe?

[tlbodine]

Why Isn’t “Mass Shooter” a Modern Horror Monster?

Horror reflects the anxieties of the culture that produces it. In the 1950s, we got monster movies about radiation-mutated creatures and invaders from beyond the stars, mirroring our Cold War Science fears. 

In the 1970s, as “Women’s Liberation” and birth control went mainstream, we see an influx of horrors settled on childbirth and children and family dysfunction. 

And as the 70s bled into the 80s, while real-world serial killers were leaving behind trails of victims, the masked psycho was dominating the field with countless slashers. 

But now -- throughout the 2010s -- mass shootings loom large our our collective American consciousness. Hardly a week goes by without hearing of one somewhere, and they inspire fear and terror. Yet we haven’t seen them show up to dominate horror media in the way serial killers do -- what’s up with that? 

Horror-media discussion about gun violence under the cut! 

Before we get started, a caveat: There is media about school shootings. It’s just not usually horror. Most, as you can see from IMDB, is family drama: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls070532039/

And none of them are really particularly mainstream, not in the way we associate with slasher films. 

So what’s the difference? Why is a killer with an axe more compelling as a film monster than a killer with a gun? 

Some hypotheses: 

Primacy: Because mass shootings are frequently in the news/public discussion, it’s always “too soon” - the real-life horror is too horrifying for entertainment. Sounds good on paper, but why isn’t that true for slashers? Those movies were popular when serial killers were at their most active. 

Politics: Perhaps political motives are influencing the market. Since gun control is a contentious topic, maybe some powers are motivated toward censorship. But wouldn’t that also censor the family drama type movies? Why would it focus on horror especially? 

Logistics: It’s just really hard to make a good horror movie about a mass shooting. Guns kill people pretty quickly and indiscriminately, so you lose the mounting suspense and intimacy of a killer with a knife and other similar horror/slasher conventions. 

This last point, I think, bears some further consideration. The more I think on it, the more it seems that the things that make gun violence especially horrifying in real life are also things that make it very hard to put in a horror story: 

Mass shootings happen, obviously, in mass. Most horror formulas require characters to be isolated and picked off one by one. 

Guns kill people in ways that are impersonal and swift. If you’re killing a stadium of people with an automatic weapon, it’ll take just a few minutes. You can’t stretch that out into a long, lingering torture sequence or whatever. 

Gun violence is indiscriminate. Wherever a crowd gathers, a shooter can start killing people. There’s no space for, say, the “horror rules” re: jock, slut, virgin, etc. because morality doesn’t play into it. 

A killer methodically making his way through a sorority house, killing its members one by one lends itself more naturally to suspenseful storytelling than a gunman opening fire on a crowd. A killer leaving clues and taunting detectives lends its own narrative structure. 

In that regard, it’s pretty obvious: We cannot make a slasher-style film or a torture-porn film about a gunman. It just won’t work. 

But perhaps we’re looking at it all wrong. What if we viewed the mass shooter not as a serial killer, but as a force of nature? The disaster movie genre has ample cross-over with horror, and the general formula would work well for a mass shooter: 

Introduction to a wide cast of characters as they maneuver into a vulnerable position

The disaster hits, and we move between individuals affected by the calamity, watching their initial reactions 

In the ensuing chaos, characters attempt to escape further danger

The danger passed (for now?) some characters manage to survive, now irrevocably changed

Whether the disaster in question is an earthquake, a sharknado, or a school shooting, that formula should work. The key to success lies in the pacing and the large cast, allowing you to stretch out a relatively brief event into a detailed and tense narrative. 

So why haven’t we seen that? Outside of, like, one made-for-TV movie I recall watching in the 90s, this presumably straightforward premise hasn’t gained much traction. 

The Making of Monsters: Signs and Signifiers 

Perhaps the real reason we haven’t seen a lot of horror stories about mass shootings is because there is already so much mythology and symbolism tied to these sorts of narratives, and that symbolism is at odds with the creation of movie monsters. 

Guns carry a tremendous amount of cultural significance and baggage, at least in the United States. It’s why they’re so politically contentious. And when something is already heavily laden with symbolic meaning, it’s hard to turn that symbolism into something else in a way that will stick. 

Point #1: Guns are a great equalizer. Unlike a knife or sword, skill doesn’t matter all that much when it comes to killing somebody with a gun. You don’t have to be strong or fast or have a ton of training. You just have to point it and pull the trigger -- if you do that enough times, and at a big enough target, you’ll probably hit something. This means that anyone can kill someone with a gun: a skinny nerd, a young child, a petite woman. Guns are the thing that give you, the underdog, a way to compete against them, the big strong enemy. 

This leads to Point #2: Good Guys With Guns(tm). As absolutely anyone who has been on the internet for five minutes after Any Sort Of Bad Event will tell you, Bad Things can be stopped by Good Guys With Guns(tm). And while you can debate the merits of armed civilians protecting a group from harm against an active shooter, it’s impossible to deny that, historically, good guys have been armed. Police, military, armed militias, frontiersmen, etc. carry weapons. Which means that “guy with a gun” does not immediately translate, visually or thematically, as “threat” in the same way as wielding a butcher knife in a non-culinary context. A guy with a gun could, at a glance, be a good guy. A guy with a big knife is obviously a villain. Similarly, the Good Guys With Guns(tm) bleeds over into the horror genre. What would the zombie apocalypse be without headshots? How many horror franchises could have been cut short if someone had just shot the killer? 

Finally, Point #3: Guns in media have special powers. Gun mythology in film and television is well-developed, with its own set of tropes and expectations. In movies, pointing a gun at someone will automatically make that person comply with whatever you ask them to do -- we even have vernacular about this, “nobody put a gun to your head” -- as if the gun were somehow more powerful than a simple threat and could in fact control behavior. Often, people who are shot in television politely fall over and die quietly; it’s a civilized end, without all of the screaming and thrashing (never mind where they’re shot or what that would would do in real life). And there are so many types of gun. We have a whole video game genre dedicated to it -- collecting guns, learning their various abilities, applying them situationally to achieve various goals. With so many established tropes, writing anything with new tropes and rules runs the risk of generating confusion, disbelief and even hostility in an audience. 

So, with all of that in mind, it starts to become clear: 

Writing a horror story about gun violence is difficult because guns carry so much mythic significance, and it’s impossible to write about them metaphorically while keeping it clear what that metaphor is. 

If I write a story about an atomic-powered lizard who destroys a Japanese town with radiation, it’s easy enough to see that it’s a metaphor for nuclear warfare. But there is no similarly straightforward metaphor for gun violence readily apparent. 

But it’s tougher even than that -- because guns themselves aren’t the only thing to have been mythologized. 

The Myth of the Lone Gunman 

Remember: Guns are the great equalizer. 

This knowledge sits in the foundation of storytelling, not just in the fiction we make up but in the way we build narratives around mass shootings in the real world. There are certain tacit assumptions we make about gunmen that may or may not be accurate.

We have a certain narrative framework in place to explain school shootings, for example: The awkward, isolated young man who is bullied until he finally snaps and goes on a killing rampage. 

Never mind that this narrative is not wholly supported by facts. It may be true in some cases, but certainly not all. And yet, go back up to that list of mass shooter movies on IMDB and look again at what the majority of them have in common. 

This is problematic because, from a mythic perspective, people who are bullied and then stand up to their oppressors are heroes. 

In Carrie, when Carrie White destroys the school after being humiliated on prom night, we’re on her side. It feels good to watch her kill all those people who were awful to her. It feels just and righteous and imminently satisfying. 

When Spartacus leads a slave revolt, we cheer. When Daenerys Targaryen kills all the masters and uses their heads as mile-markers, we feel triumphant. When Arthur Fleck shoots the smug talk-show host on live television, we think, Well, he had it coming. 

Oh, sure. We pay lip service to being horrified. And these dark heroes might die at the end, receiving some karmic retribution for the price of their revenge. But can you say, truthfully, that you have ever once watched a story about an underdog killing his bullies and felt sorriest for the bullies? 

So: This is the problem with our cultural narrative about the school shooter. Purposely or not, it puts the shooter in the role of hero. 

And not only is that irresponsible, it’s just downright inaccurate. 

When Stephen Paddock opened fire on a concert and killed 58 people, he was not firing back at his oppressors. 

When Omar Mateen shot up a night club in Florida, he wasn’t getting revenge against his bullies. 

When Adam Lanza slaughtered 26 people at an elementary school -- 20 of them young children -- he obviously was not giving his victims what they deserved. 

In the real world, mass shooters might be motivated by political ideology and a desire to promote fear -- ie, terrorism. They might be unhappy with some aspect of their lives and decide to “punch down” at a vulnerable group in the worst possible way. They might be looking to become the heroes of certain media narratives, to secure some kind of fame or notoriety. They might want to kill themselves in a way that hurts a lot of other people at the same time. There are lots of reasons why people might commit mass murder. 

But the important thing is that the victims are, overwhelmingly, not bullies and oppressors. They are people. Just innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because mass shootings aren’t really about personal vendettas; they’re about mowing down a bunch of strangers in a few minutes at an impersonal long range. 

So here’s my final thought on the topic: We SHOULD tell horror stories about mass shootings. 

It’s a topic that’s timely, and it’s a scenario that’s frightening. There’s no reason not to tell these stories. But to make it work -- on a logistic and socially responsible basis -- we need to change our treatment. 

Going back to the “disaster movie” idea: It’s time to treat mass shooters in fiction as forces of nature, as oblivious and blindly destructive as a hurricane. It’s time to center the focus on the victims. Never mind the killer and what led him to this moment. Let’s take a minute to think about the people caught in that situation -- the people who fear for their lives, who try to help one another, who fight or flee or hide once the first shot is fired. Let’s write about the moments of humanity shared by two strangers crouched behind something while shots fire all around them. Let’s write about the horror of having your perfectly normal, mundane day suddenly and irrevocably shattered by a stranger with a gun. 

There is horror there, real horror, that can be mined and cultivated and turned to art. And it seems to me that embracing that, and shifting the cultural narrative away from valorizing the lone gunman, would be good for art and society. 

Are you ready to tell that story? 

I am. 

[dollydeez]

Fanfic is Canon, and Here’s Why

I was thinking today about the distinction between canon and fanon, sort of in the same vein as Death of The Author. Ok, that might not immediately make sense but hear me out:

I am of a fairly strict belief that the core reading of a text should be centered around what is actually in the damn thing. Authorial intent, in my mind, should be thrown out the door as it doesn’t matter what is meant but what is said. Examples of this would include Ray Bradbury screaming at college kids that Fahrenheit 451 isn’t about censorship or she who must not be named throwing in bullshit elements of her books on Twitter. This is highly influenced by the way I perceive the creation of art: the artist sends a work out into the world and it is completed, for lack of a better term, in the audience by their interpretation. This isn’t to say unpublished work isn’t art, as the artist is always the first audience member to impress upon said work their own interpretation. You could split hairs dissecting that assertion with different situations or whatever else, but I’m not here to define what is or is not art; I’m not giving the unpublished work implication more than passing attention because it really isn’t relevant to what I want to discuss. What I’m really driving at is the conception of works, specifically written works as far as we are concerned, being separate from the author once they have been completed and submitted to audiences. Granted, with the introduction of sites such as Wattpad, the relationship between the author, the audience, and the work has changed greatly; however I would argue these don’t quite factor in to our discussion as, for our purposes, they are practically a different medium.

So how does this tie in to fanfic? I’d argue that, if the work is being considered under this framework, the authority of the author’s interpretation of the piece isn’t just called into question, but their authority on the world they have created. This is complicated by the capitalistic system under which we live, so for simplicity’s sake let’s put aside the compounding factors of copyright, market share, etc., however I would like to point out that there is precedent for, if not fanfic then fandom at large having an effect on the original work. But, more to the point, let us consider the relationship between the author and the work post-publication, more specifically the authority retained by the author over the world they have created, as this is conceptually based in the idea that their own interpretation is no more valid than any other reader. The main factors I see in this consideration is, in most cases, whether there is a textual contradiction, and in the case of AUs how perspective may shift if it was written by the original author. In the former case, the amount of leeway given should be equal to that which would be given to the original author by suspension of disbelief. The misalignment of certain details is usually tolerated within a series as long as they aren’t too glaring or have too much impact on the plot, and this courtesy should be extended to fan fiction. For the latter case, the re-imagining of stories has been an accepted practice for centuries; it is only in recent times that, because of copyright, only those done by the original author (or many decades after their death) are considered at a similar standard as the original. So how does this play out when someone continues a story through fan fiction and is contradicted through a sequel by the original author? On one hand, I would say this is up to individual interpretation, as if an audience member prefers one to the other that is their prerogative, however future fan fictions will be based on the plot progression delivered by the original author. For practical purposes, what the author says happens next in a story is what canonically happens next.

The distinction between what constitutes canon and what does not is much too strict. The author has control over what is true within their story, but has no authority over what is untrue. This latter distinction is solely up to textual evidence. With exemption to fictions taking place in alternate universes, the only real distinction between an author’s work and a fan’s fiction is the stories taking place and whether or not they contradict each other; in other words, if the fanfic is not contradicting the story being told by the author, it has as much claim to being canon as the original work itself. For this concept I would like to put forward the idea of the communal imagination: although one person may create the piece establishing the world in which the others take place, they have as little control over the valid interpretation and creative use of that world as they have regarding the canonical plot line.This world created in the imagination, and then disseminated into the the imaginations of others, will most likely have some sort of guiding principles around it, therefore even the sequel by the original author could be considered to be a sort of fan fiction. While it could be argued that fan fiction is in a different category, due to its inherently derivative nature, it could just as equally be posited that all stories are derivative and that it is simply matter of scale; in my opinion basing artistic merit on where a work falls on this scale is counter-intuitive to the creative landscape. Art is art, stories are stories, and your fan fiction has just as much claim to being canon as the work produced by the original author. Theoretically, at least, given capitalism and all.

[marked-by-fire]

Here’s my research paper. Took me 3 days to type up.

In most recent years, video games have become incredibly popular with a wide variety of titles and different systems to play on. People have been able to start whole careers based on competitive gaming and amass a fortune. If only playing for fun, the internet allows for anyone to play with different people across the world that they never would’ve met otherwise. All in all, the advancement and availability of video games has definitely changed the world and brought a lot of people together. Even though gaming has improved by leaps and bounds, there’s a lot of negatives that’s come with its popularity. The more prominent issues are greed and control, but that’s only scratching the service. Right now, long time gamers are getting fed up with gaming companies and their practices, and said companies are losing millions, sometimes billions, of dollars. In this essay, we’re going to explore what some of those actions and practices are and why it seems like gaming is heading towards a whimpering, drawn-out end.

First, one of the biggest issues that recent games are facing is that more than a fair share of them are being released unfinished. By “unfinished”, that means that textures aren’t loading properly, enemy and ally AI don’t behave how they’re supposed to, or there are glitches that prevent story progression. There are even games that some people call unplayable because the game itself doesn’t even work. This happens because many of the higher-ups from well-known studios will rush a game through development in order to release it by a certain date or major holiday. One such instance was during the release of Fallout 1776, that was due to be released on Thanksgiving 2018. The game performed so badly that Bethesda was sued due to the game being borderline unplayable. The most common issue for the game was that it would crash constantly. If it didn’t crash, the world was mostly empty with weak enemies, an inconsistent loot system, and, the most egregious offense, the exact same enemy that was just taken down would respawn right in front of a player if they stood still for too long in any given area. Some of these issues have been fixed with patches, but a game shouldn’t need a patch within the first week in order to work properly after being installed. To sum up this section, gaming companies are starting to release half-baked games for a quick buck, at the cost of angering fans, to only fix the mess they made later if it starts costing them actual money.

While everything stated above is a driving factor of why gaming may take a nosedive in the future, the state of games upon release only covers one side of the production coin. The other side has to do with advertisement and add-ons. One of the prominent ways advertising games has changed is the inclusion of pre-ordering. Pre-ordering games has become incredibly common to where most games can be bought and held on to a year or more before they’re released. The problem with that is a person could’ve very well bought a game that’s such a mess it fries their system during start-up and leaves the customer with an unusable block. If a game is released unfinished, or “broken”, consumers usually can’t get a refund if the game was pre-ordered because the window for a full refund has long past expired. Along with pre-ordering, there’s also DLC (downloadable content). DLC is supposed to be additions to an already finished game in the form of new areas to explore, side stories, or new/exciting items not necessary to the main game. Some companies have done the unthinkable and will cut out core parts of a game and package them up as DLC to sell back to customers. A shining example of this was with the game Asura’s Wrath. If a person manages to reach a high enough rank at different parts of the story, you’re treated to an alternate ending where you meet the true antagonist of the series. To actually face him, get the true ending, and finish the game though, you had to pay roughly an extra $10 for the DLC. Many fans were understandably angry and refused to buy the DLC and were either content with first ending or found free, illegal downloads of the DLC.  That was a lot of information to take in, but everything that was just mentioned only covers just a game having all its necessary pieces. What’s made its way into games when it works is another beast entirely

When it comes to the way content has been affected, two words come to mind: Gentrification and Politicization. Gentrification is going to be covered first seeing as that’s going to be a little less volatile to talk about. What’s meant by gentrification is now that gaming has become more popular, people that were never fans of the hobby in the first place feel as though they have a right to change games to fit their sensibilities, despite how others may feel about it, and game companies are suffering for it. The reoccurring cycle is that an “outrage mob” campaigns to change features or aspects of new games they find offensive or not inclusive enough, companies cave to the demands because they think they found a new target audience, established fans end up hating the final product when it’s released because they feel alienated and infantilized, the “outrage mob” that wanted the changes in the first place don’t even buy what they campaigned for, and then the company loses out on profits. This either ends with a series or new entry being cancelled because it didn’t sell well enough or a studio going bankrupt because that game was their last hope of making a profit. This cycle has been seen so often that it coined the phrase “get woke, go broke,” meaning that companies almost always fail after listening to these people. This phrase also plays into the politicization aspect of current games

What’s meant by politicization is that more games in recent years seem to think that some political statement has to be made in order to sell and do well. It’s not uncommon for entertainment to have some sort of political statement during controversial periods of time, but that’s not the issue here. The issue is that many of the political components end up feeling forced, make no sense in where they come up, or carry little nuance. It’s one thing to have an antagonist that holds a belief or goal that’s objectively wrong, like genocide or dividing people by class, but it’s another thing entirely to awkwardly shoehorn in current, reasonable politics or people, push one or both side’s views to their extremes, and then paint one side as wholly good and the other irredeemably evil. There’s no nuance of either side making good and bad points. In the end, no matter which side the game paints as the “good side,” the other half of the fan base is still going to be angry because they’re also being called evil by affiliation by having vaguely similar views. Another issue is that people just don’t want current politics in their games. Due to social media, school, friends, the news, or any other source of information, the last thing people want is more of the current world’s problems in their escapism. People are tired of having to constantly be bombarded with issues about racism, sexism, the economy, the environment, etc. People don’t want to have to deal with that all day just to come home and have their form of entertainment shove even more of it down their throat.

There’s so much more to cover on this topic because this essay has only covered the tip of the iceberg of the issues plaguing current day gaming. There’s a lot that wasn’t covered that deserves to be but is a bit of a touchy subject that ties in with gentrification and content, and one of those subjects is censorship. A lot of games that catch the attention of the aforementioned outrage mobs are games that tend to have some degree of sexual or violent content in them, at varying degrees, that the target audience is willing to pay for. The outrage mob basically functions as new age puritans who seem to think no one should ever consume any kind of sexual or unnecessarily violent content of any kind in games because it’s “degrading to women” or “it inspires violence in the real world”.  Never mind the fact that there’s never been a link between real world violence and violence in games, many of the women featured in games are designed by women, and that many of the men featured in games can be as equally sexualized, but in a different way. There seems to be this disconnect between what’s fiction and what’s reality for them and they believe everyone else suffers from this condition too, especially for people who play video games. So now there’s this rabid need to censor everything for everyone because a select few people can’t handle a woman dressed a little sexily. People don’t like having third party views pushed into their entertainment, but it’s happening anyway, and gaming companies seem to be ignoring this issue that’s rotting them from the inside out.

In the end, if this kind of trend continues, gaming is going to die out in the near future. There’s already been a number of game studios closing because they listened to people screaming on Twitter and Facebook over loyal, paying fans. Too many of these gaming companies try go for the social justice, good boy points to only have the bar moved farther away to unattainable levels. This is on top of pushing out games that don’t work or just look and handle horrendously because they were more focused on politics or making as much money as possible with the least amount of work. There are a few major studios left that stick by their fans and core principles, and there are hundreds of smaller studios that fully embrace making a good game over making money or sending a message. Though, with the way things are going, it’s only a matter of time before someone else takes over that prioritizes their online image over appeasing the people who got them where they are now. If and when that day comes, it’ll be the end. The gaming industry as a whole will die a slow, painful death.

[thesporkidentity]

The a-yuan broke my heart, I was crying like the final flashback battle all over again but they were happy tears, ya know? THE LEG HUG!!! Also is it just my dumb self or was his costume slightly different between the walking and then the final playing in those final 30 seconds? Not lying it's perfect either way but oh if it's like a little while later I can't with my child. Also oh my goodness can that boy smile like a sunbeam, my heart has been restored from the PAIN, SO MUCH PAIN.

Also with bby!Nie I literally called it, I knew something was up I was screaming and hollering. Don’t get me wrong there’s enough in the flashback that yeah they’re all dumb together but there’s enough hints there, just enough. It was very well done that section. I’m being extremely vague in case the other anon’s still around. I literally love everyone on the show even though in some cases I really shouldn’t because… jsdjcsd they belong in the garbage can.             

Don’t get me wrong I sympathize with them very deeply in some cases but in other cases like dude I wanna slam dunk them in the garbage where they belong for very good reasons. They seem to have added a lot more gray into the live drama from what I hear, which makes it a bit easier in every case but the consent issues (oh god the consent issues, that’s not going to be fun). I’m glad I might still get to try the AD! Apparently it’s the same voice actors so it’s like a rewatch but more canon ;)            

THE. LEG. HUG. he’s just such a precious baby duckling! and he’s ALIVE! and my god lan zhan fucking RAISED HIS CHILD FOR HIM like that is devotion right there and he did such a good job he turned out so well like even before knowing WHO he was he was ALREADY everyone’s favorite of the juniors.

if you’re talking about between lwj and wwx walking away and then the final thirty seconds with the silence and then the music then yeah it was a different costume. so even after lwj and wwx split to fulfill their own separate duties in the end they still come back together like, lwj tracks him down and finds him again (presumably when his duties are finished and the cultivation world has recovered from that chaos) because they’re fucking cultivation partners and after they do what their honor and goodness demands they finally get their happy ending of just wandering around and doing good together and it makes my heart so full.

nei huisang!!! my little dark horse! yeah i don’t want to spoil it but hot damn.

and yeah i’m not gonna judge you for loving the garbage people like, book jin guangyao is actually one of my favorite characters. (i just find him so fascinating because so much of him is so understandably human that, a few of his crimes aside, i can actually totally understand him. so you end up asking like, what was the tipping point? what number of his mistakes or which of his crimes took him from redeemable to unforgiveable? in a universe a little bit to the left could he have been a force for good or do you side with nie mingjue’s opinion that after his first crime that he could never be anything else?) i like that in most cases the villains in this story are so very human rather than a caricature, like aside from wen ruohan and wen chao they actually have reasons behind the bad things they do besides just ‘oh well they’re an evil character.’

as for the grey morality, the live-action actually took away a lot of that in my opinion (likely due to censorship reasons, so i wouldn’t blame the production for that they very obviously tried as hard as they could to be as faithful as they could) at least as far as the leads go. it’s like they polarized it so like wwx was better and jgy was worse, but at the same time those changes made some of the minor characters a little more gray though i guess because they were minor it was okay? skip these parts if you’re wary of spoilers.

**the villains are more evil, the heroes are more pure. like the show glosses over it but in the book one of jin guangyao’s biggest contributions to the cultivation world is a watchtower project where small groups of cultivators rotate through garrisons spaced out along the countryside in order to make it easier for the people under their protection to get help and to reduce reaction times when they detect surges of resentful energy. like, he fought a lot of the sect leaders on this since setting up garrisons could (and likely was) a first step towards consolidation of power, but at the same time it did protect the commoners and rural areas that a lot of the others deemed unimportant enough to really care about. but because that distracts from his misdeeds the show left it out to make him more explicitly evil. (also the whole NOT MENTIONING THAT HIS SON WAS CONCEIVED BEFORE HE KNEW SHE WAS HIS SISTER AND THEN HE NEVER TOUCHED HER AGAIN, WHY DID THEY HAVE TO TAKE THAT OUT AND MAKE HIM COMMIT INTENTIONAL INCEST??? anyway i’m fine it’s cool whatever) but for the most part everything he does isn’t about power just for power’s sake the way it seemed to be for wen ruohan or jin guangshan, it’s the impulse of someone who was abused and powerless amassing power because maybe if he gets enough he can finally keep himself safe (and the tragic thing is that it will never be enough because he cares so much about what everyone thinks about him that he could never achieve what he would view as “safe”)

and the live-action absolves wei wuxian of…basically all his crimes except maybe having a bit of a temper and a sharp tongue. the whole ancient ancestor of a destroyed clan creating yin metal? the wens already practicing demonic cultivation with xue yang? none of that was in the book. wei wuxian wasn’t just a demonic cultivator, he was the genius who invented it. xue yang didn’t even come in until much later as an imitator. it’s like the difference between someone who uses a gun versus someone who invented the gun and introduced that kind of harm into the world. and no one interfered with his usage of the tiger seal at the pass with jin zixuan or at nightless city. wei wuxian really was just emotionally compromised and he lost control and yeah it wasn’t intentional but it did kill people and it was very much on him.**

so like, there’s a lot more grey in the novel and who you decide to hate and who you decide to forgive is very much of the “when is a monster not a monster? oh, when you love it” variety. so if that’s your bag you might really enjoy that novel.

yeah the consent issues… the consent issues feel in my opinion  like…unnegotiated kink? at least that’s kinda how i interpreted it to get through the sex scenes (and also i’ve read in this series of posts that some of those consent issues are exacerbated by the translation and were not necessarily in the original text). like from POV you can tell that what he says and what he wants are two different things and he definitely wants, but it is not something that would be okay to do in your real life as opposed to in fiction without a pre-scene negotiation and a safe word so the lack of that might be a trouble spot for some people. and if you’re sensitive to that then definitely skip the incense burner extras. if it’s something you’re worried about then i’d say read that series of posts to make an informed decision.

and the voice actor for the AD is the same for wei ying, but different for lan wangji. but the same for some other actors. the live-action took a smattering of different people from the AD and the donghua. but it’s really good and it follows the book canon super closely and the scenes they add are really good.

okay i’ve blabbed on enough at this point i apparently like hearing myself…type? that expression works less well in this context. but yeah, done now lol