#a lot of purity culture in fandom spaces is based on this idea of like. if i don't like this thing it's Morally Wrong for these reasons

[astronomodome]

[sweetfirebird]

I am not involved in the drama in any way, and Threads/Twitter/Tiktok always seem to have some bookworld incidents happening and figuring out all the details is too much work most of the time. But I did see part of the current situation that I believe began on Twitter, in which a person allegedly ragged on a book for having smut in it, and also allegedly mocked people for reading and liking smut. The tweet got like several million views apparently, at which point the author of the smut saw the tweet and commented about it *on her own social media. Her comments were apparently a defense of smut and smut readers. She did not link directly to the tweet but she didn't blur out the username either because the tweet already had several million views.

Allegedly.

Anyway. Then the original tweeter...? Do we say tweeter? Whatever. Started getting some feedback they did not like, and a whole thing happened where original tweeter then accused the author of harassment, and then of pedophilia, and then of going after a queer person on the internet, and there were also some charges of "an author invading reader spaces." Allegedly.

And with the author receiving angry DMs from strangers, and the original tweeter presumably also getting them and perhaps getting ratioed as well though I have no idea, I think it might have sunk in to the original tweeter that purity culture pedo accusations, in the real world, when written down and posted publicly, are potentially libelous and defamatory because those tweets got deleted. And now it's just sort of tense and a bunch of feathers are ruffled and both tweeter and author are dealing with a lot of attention, most of it negative.

Anyway, I am only commenting on it because it was interesting to see a)purity culture policing perceived degeneracy and b) the very common purity culture wild overreach to accuse someone of pedophilia because something isn't going their way both happen, then get shut down in real time by an adult who is not from fandom and probably has a lawyer.

It was also interesting to once again watch someone act like a dickbag (as people outside and inside of fandom are wont to do) and when called out on it, fall back into the "but you can't criticize me, I'm queer!" position, and when that didn't work, attempt, "but you can't criticize me, I'm mentally ill!" position as well.

I've seen authors, youtubers, and tumblrites all try to hide behind those excuses and it makes me furious every time. I turn into the lady who wrote the book Chicago is based on who is angry that all those women used femininity to get away with murder. Anyway. (She hated those murdering bitches though)

Also, for the record, reviews in public are fine. Yes even negative ones. Reader and review spaces do exist. However, Twitter is a public space. Public. It's not reader and reviewer exclusive, so yes, authors will be there too. And if something goes viral, they don't even need to be on Twitter to see it. It will find its way to them.

Trashing something you (allegedly) have not read in public is also allowed, for the record. But like with all grown up type things, speaking or doing things in public means other people will see and hear you. Perhaps even the person whose work you are trashing and sometimes, they are not going to react nicely to that, and that's something you need to accept when you do shit in public. Which most of us do, btw. Not to be all 'we live in a society' but....

To sum up, the purity culture bit was fascinating to me. It was textbook. Adults reading a novel with erotic content are bad and anyone who says differently must be a degenerate pervert and if you can't find evidence that they are, then stretch to find some. Attack anonymously and accuse anyone who speaks in support of them as supporting pedophilia, and then, when the accused argues in their own defense, make sure to add that they are also attacking you, a person of marginalized status who did nothing wrong.

Only unlike on Tumblr, there were consequences. (Whispers of a C&D on the wind)

There was also an interesting bit of discussion on something that has been bugging me for a while too. The advice used to be, authors do not respond ever to anything, comments, reviews, tweets, etc because authors were the ones with the power compared to individual reviewers. And that made sense. But in a modern social media landscape where the reviewer (or in this case, more of a shit talker) could have thousands or even millions of followers, *is* the author the one with more power? Especially in the world of indie self-publishing or even trad-pubbed authors being failed by their publishers?

That's a whole other interesting discussion that needs to be had.

But I am going to go back to pretending to write now.

Just remember, kids: public means p u b l i c

And yay! smut!

[fandom-hoarder]

Considering OP is yelling at ppl to leave them alone when questioned on specifics because a post that says “the grooming in spn fandom is insane” (specifically Wincest) was “not a callout” and only “a legitimate safety concern” about “a space is known for well you know”, they are not worth the time. They also reacted very rudely to an anon who only wanted to apologize for following them (thinking that OP was anti Wincest and trying to respect OP’s boundaries). Just not worth it.

[I held onto this in my drafts for a day, but I think I'm just gonna publish it after all. Even though v did a much better job of addressing the op directly, imo, I'm not interacting with the op. I'm also going to gather screenshots in a posterity post, but it will likely be unrebloggable.]

Hmm, I debated publishing this ask, because I'm really just. So tired. And annoyed. And it's not a great combination for tact. Nevertheless...

I haven't seen the yelling myself, just avoidance and redirection. Flippancy. But maybe it's happening in a space I can't see, or between people I've blocked, idk. If so, it sounds a lot like it IS January 2023 redux 🙃🙃🙃 -- I HAVE seen it now, and my suspicion still stands, though still not 100%.

People need to stop making such serious accusations when they refuse to back it up. Words fucking mean things. Saying a certain sector of the fandom--that ostensibly you're also a part of?--has a problem with grooming and is stupid...that was NOT worded in a way to help people stay safe. It was worded like a vague callout post to scare people. We've seen those before. 🙄

A post that was actually concerned about grooming in online spaces *in general* would list some things to be aware of, things to recognize, tips for getting out of a situation. But no, it's this vaguepost without anything specific, with the one question in the notes asking for an explanation or if it's sarcasm-- unanswered [eta: well maybe they responded and I can't see it, since I realized I had op blocked]-- and one reblog from a person who claims it wasn't about wincesties specifically, when it demonstrably WAS??

So who is doing it, and where/how? I don't necessarily think it's a good idea to make public posts with names that devolve into personal beef and worse, but if someone is making the accusation that there's a grooming problem in the fandom they need to come with receipts or at the very least descriptions of the situation??

This isn't cutesy. You know exactly what anon is talking about, as shown later. Reblogging the post unaltered gives at least the appearance of agreeing with it as written.

This isn't to make light of! You reblogged it.

This isn't helpful.

If there was no one specific, why reblog a post specifically about the wincest fandom having insaneeee grooming? It wasn't "just in general." It's not a joke, yet this reply looks entirely unserious.

I am too old to keep seeing this type of shit go through the fandom at regular intervals, especially when it's so often a false accusation based on interpersonal drama. The only purpose this serves is riling up the dash. It's exhausting, and waters down the gravity of the accusation by making it a phrase that cries wolf.

I'm not even saying outright that the post is a LIE; just that it has seriously similar markers of past drama that was approximately 90% unaddressed purity culture biases about fiction, 9% interpersonal beef, and 1% actual concern for a human being who was an adult, but young. And it led to the utter gutting of fandom, loss of acquaintances, deletion of a glut of fic-- all due to smearing the reputation of a writer by using horrible UNTRUE AND INCENDIARY ACCUSATIONS.

So I'm sure many of you already understand why I take umbrage with these types of posts! Who knows if it's about fiction or something real? ��‍♀️

And since there's no further context to be found, the way it LOOKS on the dash is that someone is taking creeper!Dean too seriously. It could be about something else, but who knows.

[lipglossanon]

you totally don’t have to respond to this i know you don’t like posting about fandom discourse but i have a rant- a lot of “vanilla” or palatably kinky readers (kinks that don’t outwardly make someone who isn’t hardcore kinky uncomfortable) have the mindset of “i have an understanding of this character and want content that fits this idea of the character i have in my head and i can’t comprehend why people would characterize a fictional character in such a taboo/dark way or a way that’s outside of my realm of acceptable” so they complain in this echo chamber of people who validate what they’re feeling about not wanting dark content and everyone is entitled to an opinion but all it takes is one interaction to start a witch hunt for a specific creator and [un]intentionally create a ton of hate towards accounts and people who are just doing their thing in their corner of the internet and the “vanilla” or palatably kinky readers who choose to attack those creators of darker stuff get so up their own asses about these works getting traction and pushed when they’re the reason for all the engagement because algorithms do not differentiate positive or negative engagement that’s why blocking tags and blocking accounts and not engaging is recommended instead of hate anons and comments and mass reporting, not just that but the inconsideration of the people who don’t consume dark content who vent about it being out there and not putting warnings for the content they’re talking about or even posting screenshots with no warning is so disgusting, i’ve never read a darker work of anything and not been met with tags or warnings. for people to say this content is ooc, i can accept and have agreed with some posts about a characters backstory being ignored or changed to support dark content but it gets bad when people demonize others for taking a darker route with how they view a character because it’s usually this character who has a history of experiencing some type of abuse or some large trauma that took place at a point in their life which is why they chose to do what they do or it’s why they are the way they are but it’s rarely delved into how they coped or how they handled the situation leaving it up to consumers interpretation so it’s immersive for everyone and that’s where these issues arise in the blending of people in a fandom space when “vanilla” or palatably kinky people look at a character with a trauma and see people say they want that character to do something darker to them and it makes them uncomfortable because they can’t comprehend someone having that response to any trauma because they assume everyone responds the same way they do so they seek out emotional validation to feel seen for being made uncomfortable by something they interacted with instead of seeking to make themselves comfortable by blocking and ignoring these works, they seek out this validation even demonization of things outside of their realm of perception based off what they’ve experienced to make themselves feel like they’re right instead of aiming to make themselves comfortable and lastly, people saying dark content should move to ao3 solely is blatantly ignoring tumblr pre the adult content ban because most fic writers started on tumblr and got their following on tumblr and it’s the app/site that’s changed for the worse to appease this ultra purity culture sect of their site to get more ad revenue and its fucked the larger community of people who’ve been here since before the ban because we don’t really have the access to grow our platform or share our work anywhere else and still have the amount of community engagement we can get on tumblr which is why most authors share fics- to engage and be a part of a fandom for a thing they enjoy and in my opinion ao3 is very impersonal in the interactions you can have with people and i think that’s why some people want dark content creators in fandom spaces over there because they can feel distant from a creator on ao3 in a way they can’t on tumblr if that makes sense

- 💀

(i got got by the text allotment it was like 1k words lmao sorry for any typos <3)

💀 anon 😮 i am shook you got by the text allotment 🤭

But exactly; I was around tumblr pre purity clean out 🙄 but I left until 2013 and then left again til 2022. It’s a different world now. Same thing happened with livejournal back in the day too; which they never recovered and eventually fell to the wayside.

It’s really dumbfounding to me; I just don’t know why polite fandom culture has took a nosedive. If you don’t like, don’t interact.

It’s like they’re never interacted with a irl human being or been presented with working with a coworker who you might dislike every single thing about them but you can’t let that affect your job.

Idk at this point people are more online than ever before it’ll probably get worse before it gets better to the detriment of those with cognitive thinking skills.

[serpentmythos]

I think the best thing for folks going forward is to just... Accept it.

I know, a lot easier said than done, but this is how I think of it...

You didn't know any better at that point in time. Nobody did! So you can't sit around wondering if all that time you spent immersed in the Harry Potter culture/fandom space was a waste, or if being so involved and enjoying it at that time makes you a Bad Person(TM) and/or Bad Ally(TM) in the present. People who subscribe to Black+White Morality are cruel. Purity Culture is bullshit.

It's like scientific research and studies: With new information comes new ideas and new conclusions. Nobody knew JKR was THIS big of a raging tool when Harry Potter was at its peak. And now that new information has come to light, people can recognize things for what they are. But that doesn't also mean that folks who previously enjoyed/created Harry Potter content or participated in the culture have to now somehow "atone" for doing so. Trans folks who previously enjoyed Harry Potter don't have to, nor should they be made to, feel guilty for their past, or feel like they betrayed their community for doing so.

We're human. Most of us (usually) learn from our mistakes (especially those made out of a place of ignorance), and grow from it as people, which is what a lot of Black+White Morality/Purity Culture attempts to deny and shame folks for.

If you liked Harry Potter back then, you're not a bad person now. You're human. What will be scrutinized is how you interact with the series currently. So if you chose to drop it, then cool. You learned new information about JKR, made an assessment based off this new information, decided you would feel to uncomfortable to keep participating in the culture, and you're moving on. It's unfair to both your past and current person to beat yourself up over it.

It may not be a part of your life now. But it was in the past.

And that's okay.

Past ignorance does not define Present Morality.

What makes JKR's shitshow even harder to process is that she didn't just ruin a book series. Harry Potter was an entire subculture. Like Star Wars and Star Trek fans, Harry Potter fans dedicated their lives and careers to the series. I don't know if I'd call it "underground," but liking Harry Potter got you beaten up when I was in school, so it was more of a dedicated indie culture than a mass-appeal fanbase.

Harry Potter was so huge that fan works developed their own followings. Potter Puppet Pals racked up hundreds of thousands of followers and was nearly as relevant as the series itself. For fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality got so big that it has a Wikipedia page. The band Harry and the Potters spawned the wizard rock music genre. A Very Potter Musical developed a fanbase and launched Darren Criss's career.

Harry Potter also has extensive ties to fandom history. Everyone in my generation (millennials) remembers coming home from school to read Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Today, most people just post their stories on Wattpad or Archive of Our Own. But at the time, the fanbase was splintered between fanfiction.net and dozens of individual websites and forums, some made for specific ships. Since they all had individual hosts, a lot of those sites have been lost to time.

And there's the infamous My Immortal fanfiction, which is an Internet legend with people still searching for the author. Everybody read that one (and laughed at it) in middle school.

Pre-social media, fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet had massive followings because they were one of few sources for news, theories, essays and fan content. Some of these sites still exist after being around for over a decade and building their own legacy.

Before Deathly Hallows came out, fans were so desperate to know what happened that Mugglenet published a book called What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End? Yep...Harry Potter was so big that people wrote separate books about what would happen in an upcoming book.

And that's not mentioning all the book release parties, Harry Potter-themed events, monuments, fan films, restaurants and even a theme park. A lot of fandoms have those, but Harry Potter infiltrated every aspect of popular culture.

Today, there's a thriving culture of "Harry Potter adults" with themed weddings, baby showers and Etsy stores. Putting your Hogwarts house in your Instagram bio is pretty much a prerequisite for joining the "bookish" community. Warner still produces new content, like the Fantastic Beasts series, although we've all seen what a disaster that's been.

Everyone has at least a few memories associated with Harry Potter even if it's just watching the movies. I had great memories associated with Harry Potter. But looking back at the subculture, history and thousands of fan works, it doesn't seem fun anymore. Studying the fandom or being part of it comes with an awkward tension because you don't want to seem like you're condoning JKR's bigotry but can't divorce her from the series. This subculture was spawned by a woman who turned her legacy of magic and wonder into one of abuse and hatred.

I don't expect people to write paragraphs about how much they hate JKR every time they post about Harry Potter, but it's still uncomfortable to see people make new content or wear their Harry Potter Etsy tote bags like nothing happened. Even if they clarify that they don't support her, it's just a weird, tense situation for everybody.

People dedicated years of their lives to running Harry Potter fan sites, writing fanfiction, cosplaying characters and making fan movies. If I were in that situation, I'd have a mild identity crisis. I'd ask myself "Did I waste all those years? Should I delete my content? Where do I go from here?"

So ultimately, JKR didn't ruin "just" a book series or even "just" a fandom. She tanked an entire culture, which inspired people to look at Harry Potter more critically. The issues that people brought to the light tainted the series's legacy even without JKR's personal issues.

Once, Harry Potter was a series for generations. Now, former fans hope that the series fades into irrelevancy. Unfortunately, JKR didn't just tarnish her legacy--she took decades of history, millions of fans and a worldwide subculture along with her.

[emeraldspiral]

Voltron was the thing that really popularized the motal purity culture we see nowadays in fandom spaces but for some reason it reared its ugly head BEFORE Voltron.

all I know is that I was in a fandom for a good long while, and by 2016 it was GONE.

around 2014 people went insane with nonsensical fictional moral panic and started harassing all the big name ship artists and around 2015 most of them left the fandom behind because they couldn't deal with the constant harassment and sui baiting. by 2016 there were basically none left.

I'm talking 30+ artist, wonderful art, blogs, aus, headcanons, theories all GONE their blogs deleted and wiped

this behavior in 2012 was completely unheard of and by 2016 it destroyed my fandom. nowadays I'm lucky if the ship gets a piece of art every few months and the brave artists who do post about it still get harassed. it used to be one of the most common ships pre purity culture!! it was a booming community!!

I genuinely have no idea why and how this all started, as Voltron only came out in 2016!!!

anyway sorry for the rant the topic just made me sad and I wanted to share :(

love your blog btw!! your iz headcanons are awesome :3

I feel like early tumblr was mostly populated by teens and college students who were just recently introduced to queer feminist intersectional social justice concepts after a lifetime of sheltering in the public education system where a lot of that stuff is watered down if it's talked about at all. So you had a lot of overeager young people having their minds opened up for the first time, and then they start parroting feminist theory they heard from one person and only half-understood to other young people, and it keeps losing its nuances and having its points missed or twisted to fit into someone else's ideology and it becomes like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox the more it gets passed along.

And sometimes you'd also have people just making stuff up. Like, they have an idea or a theory, and they think they've hit upon some brilliant epiphany. And because they say it confidently and with a catchy slogan and it kinda makes sense if you don't think about it too hard, people buy it. But it's not supported by any research and if you pull at any of the threads of their logic whatever "truth" they think they divined completely unravels.

Some of those people are probably well meaning and just trying to emulate popular people that they admire who talk about SJ issues. But there's a lot of people who do it just so they can get popular and pretend to be superior to others. A lot of people intentionally set out to become social justice influencers in order to gain people's trust so they can sick them on people they don't like or target people for grooming and abuse and gaslight them into thinking what's happening to them isn't happening and if they speak out their followers will shield them and harass their victims off the internet.

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that people tend to only examine their beliefs on a surface level, so they think that just because they believe in gay rights and abortion they're woke. But the reality is, Christianity permeates so much of western civilization that whether you've ever practiced it or not you are absolutely influenced by it and a lot of distinctly Christian ideas are at the foundation of your whole way of thinking. A lot of people base their ideas of good and evil and right on wrong on their gut reactions rather than evidence of actual harm because Christianity promotes the idea that you're supposed to just know these things intuitively. A lot of people buy into the idea that exposure to "immoral" content taints and corrupts them. If you really want to look at the "immoral" stuff you can convince yourself that it's okay for you because your superior moral fortitude and enlightenment makes you immune to corruption. But you can't trust the common plebs because they're too weak-minded and impure to inoculate themselves against sinful influences, which makes it your duty to campaign to have those influences removed for their own good. A lot of people think being okay with gay sex and sex outside of marriage makes them sex-positive but they still talk about all sex and sexual expression as if it's inherently dirty and sinful and degrading and vulgar outside of a select few circumstances in which it's somehow divorced from lust to make it a pure expression of Divine Love.

And that's how you end up with the extremely toxic culture of 2010s tumblr, before the NSFW purge led to most of the people who were like this fleeing to twitter.

So yes, prior to V0ltron people were using garbage social justice arguments to attack ships for being "problematic". But also, people were using those arguments to attack anything and everyone they didn't like to make it a moral issue so their petty dislike could feel more like an objectively moral stance.

There was an entire blog dedicated to listing all the reasons why you shouldn't like this actor/writer/director/whoever, sometimes for legitimately scummy things they did, which people who stanned them might not have known about. But most of the time for really petty reasons, or stuff that was made up or interpreted disingenuously. I think the creator of that blog even admitted that she lied to herself that it was about spreading awareness and discouraging celebrity worship and parasocial relationships. It just felt good and made her feel better about herself to pick apart and find fault in other people and things that people liked and act like she was morally superior for not liking them. Or at the very least she admitted that despite her intentions that ended up being the primary purpose it was used for by the people who contributed to it and she regretted fostering that culture and getting sucked into it herself.

I think what made V0ltron different was the fact that it was so deliberate and coordinated. Like, there was an actual group of masterminds who weren't just having emotions and then using moral reasoning to justify their emotions and the inappropriate ways they were acting out over them. They were fully aware that they were co-opting SJ rhetoric and combining it with puritan rhetoric in order to demonize a totally vanilla ship in service of the righteous crusade of canonizing their own ship. And they convinced a lot of useful idiots to adopt the beliefs they were faking sincerely. And now those people are passing those beliefs along and normalizing them for the next generation and telling them not to listen to us Millennials who already went through this with the Satanic Panic/Don't Ask Don't Tell/Abstinence Only Education era.

[sword-and-stars]

Feel free to ignore me if you would rather not think about it or don't want any on your blog, but what even *is* "nonsense anti rhetoric"? Because my first thought is that it means irrationally being against rhetoric itself, which, while definitely ridiculous enough to count as nonsense, probably isn't what you had in mind.

Essentially, for me, it’s a sense of entitlement and pro-censorship. In my particular case, I get a lot of flack from antis because I write adult content for a series that Is For Children that is enjoyed By Children, because antis cannot fathom the idea that a character can grow up and experience adult relationships. To them, any adult content—and that includes content for characters that are even adults at the time, like Kya and Lin from LOK—is as good as child porn. Which, you know, to anyone with a functioning brain and a single wrinkle, is absurd. Antis believe that anyone who could engage with adult content in any series that could have a fan base of minors is basically a pedophile. Which, again, is absurd.

And all of this, of course, comes with a heaping helping of “protect the children!!1!1!”. As if policing fandom and just generally being a dickhead is doing anything for actual children.

Anti-rhetoric is the idea that because they don’t like a certain type of content—adult content, dead dove, what have you, that it shouldn’t exist on AO3 and in fandom spaces because “it’s gross” and harmful to children. Because never mind that n/sfw art isn’t allowed on tumblr in the first place (and a character in their underwear doesn’t count) but for the most part, most fic—especially fic containing explicit content—is very well tagged.

I’m against purity culture in every form. Even in the case that fics are not for me—for whatever reason—I still support the presence of any content on AO3. Sometimes you’re working through shit. Sometimes fucked up shit makes your id go brrrrr. It doesn’t matter. I choose what I read, because I’m responsible enough to be on the internet by myself without parental supervision and can vet my own content. No one should be made to participate in the trauma Olympics to justify what they want to read or write. I’m simply not going to read it and, in fact, probably won’t even know that it’s there because I mind my tags and have bigger things to worry about than what people are doing on the internet.

The most vocal of these people are also the ones who like to slide into my ask box every so often and tell me to kill myself, so I’m sure that they’re also just delightful people to know in general.

[phynali]

Canonization and Fandom Purity Culture

I wrote a 1k-word twitter thread (as proof that I am Not made for Twitter and it’s goddamn 240-character limit) and am pasting it here with edits and updates (it’s now 2k words). 

I have thoughts to share (which I know have been stated more eloquently before by others) about this trend of demanding/obsessing that certain ships become "canon" and how it overlaps with the rise of fandom purity culture.

Under the cut.

Here in 2021 there is a seemingly large and certainly loud and active contingent of online fandoms who desire (or even demand) "canon validation" for a given interpretation of a source material. This is more true with shipping than anywhere else.

First, it is important to note that the trend is not limited to queer ships or to any single fandom. In the past few years I've seen it for Riverdale, Voltron, Supernatural (perhaps most extreme?), The 100, etc., and less recent with the MCU, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, Hawaii 5-0, etc. It is a broad trend across ships, fandoms, and mediums.

So if it is more common for queer ships, it is hardly unique to them. Similarly, pretending that it is about queer representation is a clever misdirect to disguise the fact that it is most often about ships and shipping wars. If you ever need proof of that, consider that a character can be queer without being in a given relationship or reciprocating another character's affections. Thus a call for more/better queer rep itself is very different than a call for specific ships to be made canon.

Also note that when audiences frame it as wanting to recognize a specific *character* as queer, it is almost always in the context of a ship. Litmus test: would making that character queer but having them *explicitly reject* the other half of the ship be seen as a betrayal?

(Note: none or this is to say we shouldn't push for more queer rep and more *quality and well-written* queer rep! Just that that isn't what I'm talking about here, and not what seeking canon validation for a specific interpretation or a specific ship is almost ever about.)

Why does this matter?

the language of representation and social justice should not be co-opted to prop up ship wars

it is reciprocal with a trend toward increasing toxicity in transformative fandom spaces

Number 1 here is self-explanatory (I hope). Let's chat about 2.

Demands for canon validation correlate with a rise in fanpol / fandom purity culture. What is fandom purity culture (and fandom policing)? This toxic mentality is about justifying one's shipping preferences and aiming to be pure (non-problematic) in your fictional appetites regarding romance and sex.

Note that this purity culture is so named as it arises linearly from American Protestantism, conservative puritanical anxiety around thought crimes, and overlaps in many ways with terf ideologies and regressively anti-kink paradigms.

It goes like this: problematic content is "gross" and therefore morally reprehensible. Much like how queer sex/relationships get labelled as "gross" (Other) and thus morally sinful, or how kink gets labelled as "harmful" and thus morally wrong. The Problematic label is applied by fanpol to ships with offset age or power dynamics, complicated histories, and anything they choose to label as "harmful". As such, they would decry my comparison here to queerphobia itself as also being harmful, because their (completely fictional) targets are ~actually~ evil.

(The irony of this is completely lost on them).

This mode of interacting with creative works leaves no room to explore dark or erotic themes or dynamics which may exist in fiction but not healthily in reality. Gothic romance is verboten. Even breathe the word incest and you will be labelled a monster (nevermind Greek tragedy or GoT).

As with most puritanical bullshit, fanpol ideology only applies these beliefs to sex and never to violence/murder/etc, proving what lies at its core. It also demands its American-based values be applied to all fictional periods and places as the One True Moral Standard. It evangelizes – look no further than how these people try to recruit others to their cause, aim to elevate themselves as righteous, and try to persuade (‘save’) others from their degenerate ways of thinking. 

“See the light” they promise “here are our callouts and blog posts to convince you. Decry your past sins of problematic shipping, be baptized by our in-group adulation and welcome, and then go forth and send hate to others until they too see the light.” In many ways “get therapy” by the antis is akin to “I’ll pray for you” by the Christian-right (and ultimately ironic).

(Although it has been pointed out to me that these fans are likely not themselves specifically ex-evangelicals, but rather those who have brushed up with evangelical norms and modes of thinking without specifically being victims of it. In many ways they are more simply conservative Christian in temperament and attitude without necessarily being raised into religion by belief).

What this has to do with canon validation is that these fans look to canon for approval, for Truth. On the one hand, if it is in the canon then it must be good / pure or at least acceptable. The authority (canon) has deemed it thus. It is safe and acceptable to discuss and to enjoy watching or consuming. In this way, validation from canon means a measure of safety from being Bad and Problematic. 

For example, where a GoT fan could discuss Cersei/Jaime's (toxic, interesting) dynamic in depth as it related to the canon, fans who shipped Jon/Sansa (healthy, interesting) were Gross and Bad. The canon as Truth provided a safety net, a launch point. "It's GRRM, not me, who is problematic." It wasn’t okay to ship the problematic bad gross incest ship, but it being in the canon material meant it was open for discussion, for nuance, for “this adds an interesting layer to the story” which is denied to all non-canon ships labelled as problematic.

(Note: there are of course people who have zero interest in watching GoT for a whole slew of very valid reasons, including but not limited to the incest. That’s a different to this trend. A less charged example might be The Umbrella Academy, where a brother canonically is in love with his sister and antis still praise the show, but if you dare to ship any of the potential incest ships then you are the one who is disgusting).

On the other hand, a very interesting alternate (or additional) explanation for this phenomenon was raised to me on twitter. (These ideas aren’t mine originally, but I wholly endorse them as a big part of what is likely going on): Namely, as with authoritarian individuals in general, they see themselves as right and correct, but the canon (which has not yet validated their ship) is not correct, and is in fact problematic, and so they can save the canon from itself.

As mentioned, these fanpol types see their interpretation as Good and Pure. So if they can push (demand, bully) the canon into conforming to their worldview and validating their interpretation, then they have shown the (sinful) creators the light and led them to the righteous path. This only works if the canon allows itself to saved though, otherwise the creators remain Evil for spurning them.

How is this different from fans simply hoping for their ship to be canon?

For a second here, let’s rewind to the 90s (since Whedon has been in the news recently). This “I want it to be canon” thing isn’t 100% new, of course. We saw this trend then for the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it was different then. At the time, fans who hoped for a ship to be canon might have been cheering for a problematic one to begin with (Buffy/Spike). So shipping was still present, minus vocal fanpol.

(And Buffy fans learned that canon validation...can leave a lot to be desired. A heavy lesson was learned about the ways that fan desires can play out horrifically in canon, and how some things are best left out of the hands of canon-writers).

These days, this is still largely true. Many fans hope for their ships to go canon, as they always have. There are tropes like “will they/won’t they” that TV shows may even be designed around, which a certain narrative anticipation and a very deliberate build up to that.

But while shipping *hopes* occur for many fans, almost all ships fans that *demand* to go canon and obsess over are now the ones deemed as Unproblematic, or as Less Problematic. I’m talking here about the ships that aren’t necessarily an explicit will/won’t they dynamic but do have some canon dynamic that leads them to being shipped, but which the creators aren’t necessarily deliberately teasing and building up a romantic end-game for.

These ships often have fans who are happy to stick to fandom, but there has also been a huge uptick in the portion of fans who are approaching shipping with an explicit lens of “will they go canon?” and “don’t you want them to be canon?” and now even “they have to go canon” and “the canon is wrong if they don’t make this ship canon”, to a final end-point of “if the ship doesn’t go canon, the source material is Wrong and Bad.”

These latter opinions are the one we see more by extreme fans (‘stans’), hardcore shippers, but especially by fanpol-types, the ones who embrace fandom purity culture at least to some extent.

Why them?

In pushing for canon validation, fanpol types seek to elevate their (pure) interpretation of canon. As mentioned above, it’s validation of their authority, a safety-net, and a way to save the canon from itself if only they can bully the canon into validating their right and good interpretation. 

There’s also another reason, which is that canon validation is a tool to bludgeon those seen as problematic. They can use it to denounce other (problematic) ships as Not Being Canon and therefore highlight their own as Right and Good, because it is represented in the True Meaning of the Work.

Canon validation then is a cudgel sought by virtuous crusaders to wield against their unclean enemies. It is an ideological pursuit. It is organised around identity and in groups sometimes as insular as cults.

How does this happen?

Fanpol tend to be younger or more vulnerable fans, susceptible to authoritarian manipulators. As many have highlighted before, authoritarian groups and exclusionary ideologies like terfs are very good at using websites like tumblr to mobilize others around their organizing beliefs. Fanpol tend to feel legitimate discomfort, but instead of taking responsibility for their media engagement, ringleaders stoke and help them direct their discomfort as anger onto others; “I feel ashamed and uncomfortable, and therefore you should be held accountable for my emotions.” Authoritarian communities endorse social dominance orientations, deference to ringleaders, and obedient faith to the principles those ringleaders endorse.

As these fans attach more and more of their identity to a given media (or ship), and derive more and more validation and more of their belongingness needs from this fanpol community, they also become more and more anxious about being excluding from this group. This is because such communities have rigid rules and very conditional bases for social acceptance. Question or "betray" the organizing ideology and be punished or excommunicated. If that is all you have, you are left with nothing. Being labelled problematic then is a social death.

What this means is that these fans cannot accept all interpretations of a media as equally valid: to do so Betrays the ideology. It promises exclusion. And, in line with a perspective around ‘saving’ canon and leading others into the light – forcing and bending the canon to their will is what will make it Good (and therefore acceptable to enjoy, and therefore proof of them as righteous by having saved others). As was also pointed out to me on twitter, endorsement from canon or its creators also satiates that deep need they have for authority figures to approve of them.

Due to all of this, these fans come to obsess over canon validation of their own interpretation. In a way, they have no other option but to do so. They need this validation -- as their weapon, as their authority, as their safety net, as their approval, as their evangelical mission of saviorship.

Canon validation is proof: I am Good. I am Right(eous). I am Safe.

(In many ways, I do ache for some of these people, so wrapped up in toxic communities and mindsets and so afraid to step out of line for fear of swift retribution, policing their own thoughts and art against the encroaching possibility that anything be less than pure. It’s not healthy, it’s never going to be healthy.)

In the end, people are going to write their own stories. You are well within your rights to critique those stories, to hate them, to interpret them how you will, but you can never control their story (it's theirs).

Some final notes:

This trend may be partially to do with queer ships now being *able* to go canon where before so no such expectation would exist. Similarly, social media has made this easier to vocalize. Still, who makes these demands and the underlying reasons are telling. There are also many legitimate critiques of censorship, queerbaiting (nebulous discussions to be had here), and homophobia in media to be had, and which may front specific ships in their critique. But critique is distinct from asking that canon validate one's own interpretation.

[adorpheus]

on fujoshi and fetishization

Lately, more and more, both here on tumblr and on other sites, I keep seeing people spew unfiltered hatred at fujoshi - that is, women who like mlm content such as gay fanfic and fanart featuring men with other men. And I don’t mean like a specific type of fujoshi, like the ones who are genuinely being weird about it, but just like a general hatred for girls (but especially straight identifying girls) who express love for gay romance.

I hate to break this to you all, but women (including straight women!) actually are allowed to like mlm fanfiction and fanart, even enthusiastically so. A woman simply expressing her love of gay fanfic, even if it is in kind of a cringey way or a way that you personally don’t like, is NOT automatically fetishization.

I’ve been on the receiving end of fetishization for my entire life, from a very young age, as many black and brown folx have, so I consider myself pretty well acquainted with how it works. Fetishization isn’t just like, being really into drawings of boys kissing, or whatever the fuck y’all are trying to imply on this god forsaken site. 

Fetishization is complicated imo, and can encompass a lot of things, such as (but not limited to):

1 - dehumanization, e.g. viewing a group of people as sexual objects who exist purely for entertainment purposes, rather than acknowledging them as actual people who deserve respect and rights

and

2 - projecting certain assumptions onto said people based on their race/sexuality/whatever is being fetishized. These assumptions are often, but not always, sexual in nature (like the idea that black people in general are more sexual than other races, etc etc etc).

I’m going to use myself as an example to illustrate my point. Please note this isn’t the best or most nuanced example, but it is the most simplistic. A white person finding me attractive and respectfully appreciating my black features as part of what makes me beautiful is not, on its own, fetishization. A white person finding me attractive solely or mostly because I’m a PoC is now in fetishization territory. Similarly, assuming I’m dominant because of my blackness (like saying “step on me mommy” and shit like that) is hella fetishistic. 

That being said, theres definitely a difference between how fetishization works in real life with real people, and how it shows up in fandom. 

Fetishization manifests in many different ways in fandom, but most commonly on the mlm side of things, I personally see it appear as conservative (or centrist) women who love the idea of two men together, but don’t actually like gay people, and don’t necessarily think LGBT+ people deserve rights (or “special treatment” as its sometimes dog whistled). These women view queer men as sexual objects for entertainment rather than an actual group of people who deserve to be protected from systemic oppression. I’ve noticed that they often don’t even think of the men they “ship” together as actually being gay, and may even express disgust at the idea of a character in an mlm ship being headcanon’d gay. In case its not obvious, this is pretty much exactly the same way a lot of cishet men fetishize lesbians (they see “lesbian” as a porn category, rather than like, what actual LGBT people think of when we read the word lesbian). There’s a pretty popular viral tweet thread going around where someone explains seeing this trend of conservative women who like mlm stuff, and I have also personally witnessed this phenomenon myself in more than one fandom. 

The funny thing is, maybe its just me buuuut.... The place I see this particular kind of fetishization happen most is not in the anime/BL fandom, from which the term fujoshi originates - I actually see these type of women way way more in western fandom spaces like Supernatural, Harry Potter, and Hannibal. I can’t stress this enough, there’s a shocking amount of people who are like, straight up trump supporters in these fandoms. If you want to experience it, try joining a Hannigram or Destiel group on facebook and you will probably encounter one eventually especially if you happen to be living through a major historical event. Like these women probably wouldn’t even be considered “fujoshi”, because that term doesn’t really apply to them given they aren’t in the BL/anime fandom, yet they’re the ones I personally see actually doing the most harm.

Of course this isn’t the ONLY kind of fetishizing woman in the mlm/BL world, there are other ways fetishization shows up, but this is the most toxic kind that I see.

A girl just being really into BL or whatever may be “cringe” to you, or she may be expressing her love for BL in a “cringey” way, but a straight woman really enjoying BL is not, on its own, somehow inherently fetishization. Yes, sometimes teenage girls act kind of cringe about how much they like BL and that might be annoying to you, but its not necessarily ~problematic~. 

That being said, IT NEEDS BE REMARKED that a lot of the “fujoshi” that you all hate so deeply, are actually closeted trans men or nonbinary people who haven’t yet come to terms with their gender identity, or are otherwise just NOT cishet. I know because I was one of these closeted people for years, and I honestly think tumblr and the cultural obsession around purity is one of the many reasons I was closeted so deeply for so long. STORYTIME LOL!!! In my early adolescence, I was a sort of proto “fujoshi”. I identified as a bi girl who was mostly attracted to men, or as most (biphobic) people called it, “practically straight”. I wrote and read “slash” fanfic and looked at as well as drew my own fanart. We didn’t use the term fujoshi back then, but that’s definitely how I could have been described. I was obsessed with yaoi, BL, whatever you want to call it, to a cringe-inducing degree. I really struggled to relate to most het romances, so when I first discovered yaoi fanfics (as we called them at the time), I fell in love and felt like I finally found the type of romance content that was made for me. I didn’t know exactly why, I just knew it hit different. LGBT+ fanart and fanfiction brought me an immense amount of joy, and I didn’t really think too hard about why.

At some point, in my early 20s, after reading lots of discourse™ here on tumblr and other places like twitter, I started to get the sinking feeling that my passion for gay fanfiction was ~problematic~. I had always felt a sense of guilt for being into mlm content, because literally anyone who found out I liked BL (especially the men I dated) shamed me for liking it all the fucking time (which btw is literally just homophobic, like can we talk about that?). In addition to THAT bullshit, now I’m seeing posts telling me that girls who like BL are cringey gross fetishists who inspire rage and should go die? 

Let me tell you, I internalized the fuck out of messages like this. I desperately wanted to avoid being ~problematic~. At the time, I thought being problematic was like the worst thing you could be. I was terrified of being “cancelled”, before canceling was even really a thing. I thought to myself, “oh my god, I’m gross for liking this stuff? I should stop.” I beat myself up over this. I wanted so badly to be accepted, and to be deemed a Good Person by the internet and society at large.

I tried to shape up and become a good ally (lmfao). I stopped writing fanfic and deleted all the ones I was working on at the time. I made a concerted effort to assimilate into cishet culture, including trying to indulge myself more deeply in the few fandoms I could find that had het content I did enjoy (Buffy, True Blood, Pretty Little Liars, etc). I would occasionally look at BL/fanfic/etc in private, but then I would repress my interest in it and not look for a while. Instead I would look at women in straight relationships, and create extremely heterosexual Couple Goals pinterest boards, and try to figure out how I could become more like these women, so I, too, could be loved someday. 

This cycle of repression lasted like eight years. Throughout it all, I was performing womanhood to the best of my ability and trying to become a woman that was worthy of being in a relationship. I went in and out of several “straight” relationships, wondering why they didn’t make me feel the way reading fanfic did. Most of all, I couldn’t figure out why straight intimacy didn’t work for me. I just didn’t enjoy it. I always preferred looking at or making gay fanfiction/fanart over actual intimacy with men in real life. 

Eventually, I stumbled upon a trans coming out video that someone I was following posted online, my egg started to crack, and to make an extremely long story short, after like 3 years of introspection and many gender panic attacks that I still experience to this day, I realized that I’m uh... MAYBE... NOT CIS..!? :|

I truly believe if I had just been ALLOWED TO LIKE GAY STUFF WITHOUT BEING SHAMED FOR IT, I probably would have realized I was trans way way sooner. Because for me, indulging in my love of gay romance and writing gay fanfic wasn’t me being a weirdo fetishist, it was actually me exploring my own gender identity. It is what helped me come to terms with being a nonbinary trans boy.

Not everyone realizes they are trans at age 2 or whatever the fuck. Sometimes you have to go through a cringey fujoshi phase and multiple existential crises to realize how fucking gay you are AND THATS FINE.

And one more thing - can we just be real here? 

A lot of anti-fujoshi sentiment is literally just misogyny. omg please realize this. Its “women aren’t allowed to enjoy things” but, like... with gay fanfics. Some of the anti-fujoshi posts I see come across my dash are clearly ppl projecting a caricature they invented in their head of a demonic fujoshi fetishist onto any woman who expresses what they consider to be a little too much enthusiasm for gay content and then using their perception of that individual as an excuse to justify their disdain for any women, especially straight women, ‘invading’ their ~oh so exclusive~ queer fandom spaces.

 god get over yrselfs this is gatekeeping by another name

idk why i spent so long writing this no one is even going to read it, does anyone even still use this site

*EDIT: HOLY SHIT WHEN DOING RESEARCH FOR THIS POST I FOUND OUT THAT Y-GALLERY IS BACK OMG!!! 

[bettsfic]

do you know anything about like, the development of the purity rhetoric that now seems to be ubiquitous in fandom and how it got there? i used to be on tumblr in like, 2014 and only recently came back to fandom and i remember everyone being generally kind of cool with things like incest ships and morally grey characters (speaking specifically re the frozen fandom and elsa/anna here lmao) whereas now it seems like the conversation about those things has drastically shifted and i am..puzzled by it

this is what i imagine that experience was like for you:

according to fanlore, purity culture started in the homestuck fandom which. based on what i know of homestuck, that tracks. however i’ve never been in homestuck so i’m not sure what that transformation was like. all i know is my personal experience with the disk horse. afaik there’s no cohesive timeline of events across fandom, and i lack the time and resources to be able to make one myself. if anyone knows of one, or wants to make one, please let me know.

i do know that purity culture is a movement started by very young teenagers, who were maybe 13-15 in 2014 and are now 18-20. they were 8-10 when ao3 was founded, and therefore seem to have a limited knowledge of fan history, censorship, and critical thinking. i’m hoping that since they’re now entering college, they’ll get some insight and broader social awareness, and this movement will finally die out in the next few years. 

on any other platform, at any other time, their toxic rhetoric would not have gained traction. but here and now, on tunglr dot com where anyone can gain a platform, where mob mentality thrives and inciting an anonymous dogpile is as easy as hitting Post, where the brokenness of this place makes it difficult to control the content you’re exposed to -- it’s the perfect storm. we live in an age of hopelessness. young people grow up with social media as an extension of their identities, tethered to devices that hold all the information in the world. i think it’s fair for them to be afraid of their futures, and i can understand the desire to control the online spaces where they have the most agency, where their voices are the loudest. 

that may explain why, but not how. as in, where did they pick up this mentality at all? @freedom-of-fanfic (whose work is a necessity in understanding the disk horse) connected anti-shipping to TERF rhetoric. i’ve linked the fanlore page because it has all of the links and some of the responses. i honestly do believe that the language surrounding purity culture has its ugly roots in TERFdom. at its core, purity culture -- the policing of female and queer sexuality -- is misogyny. 

when i started writing destiel circa 2014, fandom was as you described. wincest was a juggernaut on par with destiel. teen wolf was full of underage and noncon. a/b/o was on the rise. it seemed like fandom was a genre without restraint -- anything you wrote, if it found the right audience, would be celebrated unabashedly. people who have been following me for a long time know that i was addicted to adderall at the time and pounding out all sorts of manic nonsense. i remember living on the validation of comments (and at the time, there were lots of comments. not so much anymore, but that’s another story). i got critical comments only rarely, and they were the type that i admired -- readers without judgment thinking through the story, reacting to it earnestly. i made some of my best friends because they left long, critical comments on my work. sometimes they didn’t like it, sometimes they did, but ultimately, they were engaged, and that’s what counted.

i remember my first policing-type comment, i think at the start of all the purity nonsense. it was a destiel fic, and someone very angrily told me i should tag my bottom!cas because it was triggering. i’ve thought about that comment a lot over the years. top/bottom discourse is nothing new, but to say that bottom castiel is triggering? that was ridiculous. but then i realized -- there was a writer in fandom at the time i won’t name, who was known for being extremely sensitive (for bottom!cas especially, which they found triggering), and their very dedicated following offered fic that was safe for their fave to read. i have nothing against this person at all. they were not part of the purity discourse, they were up front about their sensitive nature, and as far as i knew (i believe i met them at a con once?) they were very kind. 

but that commenter had been clearly influenced by this person and believed that a specific fictional character receiving anal sex from another specific fictional character was actual, real triggering content, and it was my obligation as a writer to tag for it. which i did, because i felt bad, and i was baffled by that request. at the time, i wanted more than anything to be liked, and conformed wherever i could. if i got such a request now, i would ignore it because it was rudely written and honestly kind of bonkers. i’d happily add a tag for something i may have missed, or even something i’d never considered before, but there’s no reason a person can’t make that request politely. 

this situation isn’t about purity discourse proper (the commenter didn’t tell me not to write the fic, and it had nothing to do with morality), but it’s the earliest example i can think of where the process of policing had occurred: a person of influence on tumblr affected their follower’s thinking, and that follower felt entitled to command another writer to conform to that ideology.

i could be completely wrong about making these connections. maybe that commenter truly believed bottom!cas was a legitimate widespread trauma. they did not say the fic was triggering to them, but that it might be to some other people, in the same way purity police say “think of the CHILDREN” when in fact they don’t give a fuck about children at all. 

after destiel i moved to stucky, which was, at the time, a juggernaut ship where anyone could write anything. this was also the time when the term “cinnamon roll” became incredibly popular, circa 2015. it was a fun and seemingly innocuous meme, but it positioned the ideas of “purity” and “wholesomeness” in sharp relief, and cemented these ideas by beginning to give it a distinct vocabulary. “trash” was pitched as its opposite. stucky is where i first came into contact with “antis.” in destiel, there had been ship wars, sure, but it was of a different flavor than antis. destiel vs wincest wasn’t about morality in 2014. it was about everything but.

in stucky in 2015, however, the disk horse was running rampant. the MCU had a sub-section of fandom called HTP (hydra trash party) in which steve and/or bucky have dubious or nonconsensual relations with various or many members of hydra. this is the first time i remember being aware of morality becoming a cornerstone of shipping. HTP was loathed by purity police. by the time i wrote a stucky bdsm au, i’d accumulated multiple nasty anons, rude comments from entitled readers, and other nonsense that all said the same thing: your filth is not welcome here in our space of purity. go away.

but the release of the force awakens is what really turned the tide. TFA offered three major ships: stormpilot (as it was called at the time, now finnpoe), reylo, and kylux. the fandom that developed around the sequels was firmly divided. franzeska wrote an amazing meta about this phenomenon which gives some insight into the seeds of purity policing. in short, stormpilot should have been the primary pairing of the sequels, but instead many of the badwrong writers from other fandoms (and HTP specifically, which was how i entered the fandom) flocked to the blank slate of kylux. 

it took a long time for the ship to gain traction. a friend told me that kylux had started with angry star wars racists who hated that there was diversity in the sequel trilogy. and i told them no, i was there, there were twelve of us and a cornchip, and all we cared about was the dirty/darkly comedic potential of these two ridiculous villain characters in one of the biggest franchises of all time. it wasn’t that complicated. i don’t mean to dismiss the discussion of race in fandom; i think it’s important to acknowledge that racism, as franzeska describes far better than i can, plays a huge part in fandom, particularly in star wars, and it’s an important and ongoing discussion to be having, especially given what kelly marie tran has gone through, and how it affected (presumably) rose tico’s extremely limited presence in TROS.

the early fics of kylux weren’t particularly taboo. they were post-TFA hurt/comfort mostly, then slowly the bdsm and power dynamics crept in. those of us who wanted to get away from purity discourse had finally found a new home. for a while. 2016 was the golden era of kylux. we were all very happy.

i remember talking to a friend about how there were certain things i couldn’t write in certain ships. being from ye olden days of fandom, she was appalled by this idea, and told me i could write anything for any ship i wanted, wasn’t that was the whole point of transformative works? and i agreed! but i tried to explain, if you post badwrong for a fandom of purity police, you’re going to, at best, get dogpiled in your comments/inbox. at worse they will find you, call your employer, and try to ruin your life. people will tell you to kill yourself. they’ll report your tumblr and try to get your blog shut down. there are real-life, harrowing consequences to writing taboo fic, and many who write fic as a hobby don’t have the emotional energy to field these risks.

around this time, discord became popular, which offered a private space for badwrong writers to congregate. i had started grad school and didn’t have much time to write fic. metoo was happening. tromp got elected. kylux was slowly turning mainstream so a lot of us turned our attention to gradence in fantastic beasts. some went on to hannibal and other fandoms that hadn’t yet caught the attention of purity police (but it was, as it is now, just a matter of time). kylux, i feel, was specifically decimated by a single fan creator, who was like a police chief. they would get wind of someone writing underage or noncon and write a call-out post about them, and that writer/artist would get pitchforked. a few times, my comments or posts got screencapped, and posts were written urging people to stop reading my works because of how heinously immoral i was. this happened to several of my friends too. 

the great tumblr tittyban of 2017 happened, which only added fuel to the fire and further legitimized the purity movement. i shifted hesitantly to the 100 fandom, which seemed small in comparison to supernatural, marvel, and star wars. i thought it was a chill place. i was wrong; it was just as toxic as other fandoms. but i also didn’t care anymore, and i appreciated that i was mostly left alone. more importantly, i found a lot of support from other people who were as tired of the purity as i was, and @the100kinkmeme was reborn. 

the state of things is pretty abysmal. there are some really amazing writers out there writing under multiple sock accounts, keeping their fandom identities shattered so as not to call attention to themselves. as much as i understand why writers do that, and i respect that decision, i also think it’s sad. it deprives readers the chance to read that author’s other works. it limits the sense of community and our ability to make friends. it fractures the future of the genre.

what’s most important to acknowledge is that none of this is happening solely in fandom. i went to a writers’ conference where 2 of 3 panels were about the history of moral policing and censorship in art. it is worth noting that of the 40-ish visiting writers on faculty, only one (1) was a woman of color (jaimaica kincaid). naturally, older rich white people who have spent their life in the arts are all about death of the author, separation of art and artist. they’re on the total opposite side of purity police, and they won’t acknowledge at all that racism and sexism are a problem in the creative world. they don’t have any nuance on the discussion, or modern perspectives in light of metoo or popular culture. 

this went on longer than i anticipated. i neglected to mention YFIP (your fave is problematic) an old blog that started the idea of call-out culture by pulling receipts on celebrities, and how call-out culture led to cancel culture, which also aided in the purity disk horse. i think a lot can be said about how some of this stuff is genuinely good (metoo and holding men accountable for their bullshit) while also being profoundly toxic (punishing criminals via mob mentality, ruining their careers and livelihoods through social media, rather than giving them their due process in court. i understand it -- the judicial system is built by the hands of the very predators we seek to condemn, but still. the jury of the internet is never a fair trial). 

if you want to read more, my tag is tsatp (the sacred and the profane). i’m sure i’ve left out a lot, but i can only speak to my experience. i think it would be good if people would share their experience dealing with purity policing, too, so we might get a cohesive timeline in place. feel free to reblog and add your story.

[kuriquinn]

Dear Mr. Kuri, thank you so much for your recent post concerning the young artist who was effectively censored from sharing his/her/their art on a particular subject (just... so sad). I was hoping to get your thoughts on how adults might navigate interactions with minors in this space. Specifically, extending our support for their work w/out necessarily... engaging with them. I know this sounds crazy stupid but before tumblr I wasn't really active on any social media and I had no idea (cont'd)

there were so many users under the age of 16 on this site. I've even come to learn that some identified users I had interacted with early on were as young as 13, and as someone in my 30's - tbh that scared the shit out of me. I totally agree that someone that young and impressionable would be crushed by the kind of criticism that poor artist faced, and would likely never create or share again... to their detriment. The thing is though, I feel really hesitant following any creator (cont'd)

that isn't 18 or older... What are your thoughts on following/reblogging/interacting with minors in fandom? I fully agree that they need support, especially from older users who don't care what some stranger on the internet has to say... but I just feel... like I don't know how to go about that the right way. I really REALLY don't want minors on my blog at all... sorry to bother you with this, just wondering how you'd suggest handling this. I didn't comment on the post bc I didn't (cont'd)

want to risk that young artist reading my inquiry and feeling even more alienated. As always, thank you for your time and insight. - Birk

I may go a bit off-topic here, but let me give this a try:

I think in, In the end, it all comes down to communication and mutual respect.

Adults have this pervading mentality that until a child hits 18, they need to be infantilized and sheltered, but once they pass that magical number, then it’s a free for all. So, for eighteen years, it’s all about sticking a Potemkin village in front of any idea, person or situation that a child might find uncomfortable (read: they don’t like the feelings it gives them; very different from actual harmful ideas/persons/situations). Then, these sheltered almost-adults enter public spaces and expect society to keep doing that…when it turns out that’s not how it works, they become toxic.

This is how poisonous movements like purity-culture develop online, or new fans who demonize older fans and adults as being perverts for enjoying the very same pastimes they have.

For those of us interacting with these people, the automatic reaction is to “cancel” that person, thereby alienating and isolating them even more in their bad behavior. Instead of taking the time to talk with and try to show them through actions that the world isn’t limited to what they know.

As adults in fandom, we know that a large majority of the fandom is younger, because we were them once. We were that 12-year-old discovering fanfiction existed or sharing drawings we made of our original Harry Potter characters or quoting our favorite movies and televisions ad infinite. We got shit for it in real life, so we had to create spaces of our own online.

We, in effect, built fandom so that it would be more welcoming for the generations that came after us. And while a lot of us stick to that unwritten knowledge, as the years pass, a lot more become gatekeepers. They set a standard of what a fan must know or do to be considered a “real” fan, and they’re mean about how they do that.

Is it any wonder that new fans coming in experience this behavior and then jump on the “adults in fandom is creepy” bandwagon?

These new fans coming in, especially tweens and teens, they still live in this false reality where they only get to enjoy themselves and be kids for a limited amount of time, and once they Become Adult they have to give it all up—and can’t figure out why all those old creeps online are still a part of such “childish” things.

That fault lies squarely on our society, which pushes kids from a young age to be thinking of what they want to do when they grow up so they can get out there and start producing, producing, producing for the state and becoming a “useful” member of society.

We as fandom veterans, need to do our best to teach them differently, and that comes right back to my point: communication and mutual respect.

Older fans need to respect newcomers, as much as the new baby fans need to learn to respect their fandom elders. There is no maximum age for fandom; there’s no minimum age, either, although the younger the fan, the more their parents should be keeping an eye out for the truly damaging stuff and teaching their kids how to avoid that stuff on their own.

Now, obviously, people don’t always announce online how old they are (though it does happen more frequently now than when I started writing), but regardless, there should be a certain etiquette to it.

When you interact with someone online, you don’t know if they are 15 or 50. And the way you interact with them shouldn’t change based on knowing their age. We should maintain the same level of respect for the new fans as the older fans.

So, as to how adults might navigate interactions with minors (especially when you know they’re minors)?

Treat them as any other intelligent human being: with respect.

Because how else are they going to learn?

My mom always used to say to us, “I’m not raising children, I’m raising adults,” which basically meant she was teaching us how to be adults. Kids don’t pop out of the womb magically knowing how to interact with the world, they take their cues from the adults that are already there.

Fandom babies learn how to be active participants in fandom from the people who are already there. And they’re more likely to listen to and look up to someone that treats them as a mature and capable being, than someone who dismisses them as too young or too green, or dismisses their knowledge and experience because they haven’t earned their metaphorical stripes.

Remember, a lot of these kids are coming to fandom because they need an outlet. In this age of helicopter parents, this is the only place where they get to be treated as an individual adult-in-the-making instead of the overly protected child or student that must be shielded from the world. A lot of them are trying to figure out how to deal with the horrors that happen to them or around them every day. That 16-year-old girl writing a rape/non-con fic under a pseudonym? She could be exorcising her own demons through the only way she has because no one in her life is listening to her. That 14-year-old writing about homelessness might know more about it than someone twice his age.

Expertise and experience knows no age, and as adults, we need to not fall into the trap of thinking it does. There are some kids out there that have seen and endured more than I can even imagine.

In recent years, there’s been this trend of treating kids like sexless beings until we, the adults, deem them capable of having a sense of sexuality. When the reality is, once kids start puberty, they’re developing that sexuality, and are trying to figure out what it means to them and how to navigate it, and the world. It doesn’t matter if adults are uncomfortable with it, this is what our human biology has decided for us.

And chances are, as much as adults try to curate the world and keep kids from seeing the darker, less safe stuff? They’re already doing it. I saw this when I was teaching, the kids are already accessing and interacting with stuff like sex, drugs, relationships… Whenever a faceless censor tries to block that sort of thing, they find a way around it. Humans are funny like that—we want the things that are kept away from us, whether harmful or not.

It’s our responsibility to help them think critically about what they’re seeing, and teach them to express themselves about it in a respectful manner.

So by all means: follow that amazing artist even if they are only 15. Their age doesn’t negate the fact that they have talent that needs to be nurtured and encouraged. Reblog the images and the fics that strike you, even if you find out the person writing it isn’t 18 yet. Send a shoutout via DM or review or comment to someone that you admire whether you know they’re age or not.

Unless you’re being actively creepy and offensive (and seriously, don’t do that, it’s gross whether the recipient is a minor or not), chances are these creators are desperate for some assurance that the medium they choose to express themselves in is having an effect on people—and that they have the power to make even adults sit up and listen.

So…TL;DR:

When interacting with younger fans, do so with respect. And if they say something problematic, don’t automatically cancel them and write them off as “obviously too young and immature to understand”. They understand more than you think and will seek out their interests whether adults think it’s appropriate or not. That’s how freedom works. But if we’re going to nip bad behavior like purity culture and agism in the bud, we need to start by treating minors in fandom as adults developing their worldview, not as infants to be sheltered.  

[chamerionwrites]

@tobermoriansass asked: 🔥🔥 free space + star wars!

Second half of my response to this unpopular opinion meme (for SW opinions, see here), because sometimes I’m a wordy bitch:

I’ve grown to really dislike “conservative protestantism in a gay hat” as a description for fandom purity wank. 

I have nothing against the phrase itself; it’s immediately evocative and in many ways accurate. My issue is that in many (maybe even most) cases, people have taken it to heart not merely as description, but as diagnosis. I have repeatedly seen it suggested that the root of the problem is people who were raised in conservative religious environments, and left/superficially changed political labels without ever examining or confronting the underlying authoritarianism of the worldview. Which seems like a reasonable hypothesis on the surface! Except that in my personal experience - and anecdotes are not data, but they can be suggestive - it’s precisely those people who have the most vehement kneejerk NOOOOPE reaction to the purity police, sometimes so powerfully that it resembles (or just straight-up is) a trauma trigger.

I’m not denying that one factor here is a certain sort of cultural puritanism, or saying that someone like me (because lbr, I am exactly the kind of person being described here) might not have some unexamined ideas they need to work on. Most human beings do, because y’know. We live in a society. Like I said, I don’t even have a problem with the phrase itself. And I generally keep this discomfort to myself, because I think I may not be the ideal person to make this point - it’s pretty easy for anyone who’s not inclined to agree with me to dismiss my opinions as defensiveness. So people will just have to take my word when I say that I’m mostly motivated here by an earnest belief that if you’re going to confront a problem it’s important to understand it.

Because I WAS raised in that environment, and I have an extremely good (some people might say “oversensitive”) radar for that particular brand of bullshit, and I’m telling you that when the rhetoric of ideological contamination is precisely the thing you’re trying to fight it’s counterproductive to fall straight into the rut of the same exact thinking yourselves. Yeah, maybe it’s a milder form. But it’s still the same basic logic chain of Bad Thing In Our Community [hysteria about dark or transgressive fiction] Imported By Undesirable Others [conservative fundamentalist Christians, or ex-Christians still unconsciously adhering to much of the worldview] With Incompatible Values [disgust-based morality and the belief that mere exposure to less-than-perfectly-wholesome subjects is inherently dangerous and/or corrupting]...with zero consideration of the possibility that the call might be coming from inside the house, so to speak. 

Imo you should always, always be wary of the idea that problems within a community are imported by a particular undesirable group, as opposed to arising organically from the structure of the community itself. The resemblance to fundamentalist Christianity is real (that’s why a lot of people find it triggering!) but a lot of what people are identifying specifically as “conservative protestantism”...isn’t. It’s dogma, and authoritarianism, and those are neither uniquely religious nor uniquely right-wing phenomena - they crop up anytime a large group of people derive such a sense of power or self or safety from a given way of thinking or doing things that the slightest bit of criticism or questioning or exploration of complexity is perceived as an existential threat. (In this case I think a lot of the issue is tied up with people seeking a sense of safety, and thus pretty sympathetic to a degree - but it’s still reactionary and harmful, and I don’t think you can address that if you get stuck on the idea that it’s an outside issue imported from religion.)

Basically I have no issue with the phrase itself, but I think the way a lot of people use it actively interferes with a fuller understanding of the problem.

(I also think this particular interpretation demonstrates a distinct lack of imagination about other people’s experiences - most people don’t just...abandon ideologies, especially ones that have been deeply instilled in them as the ultimate standard of truth and morality which they could be literally damned for challenging, without a lot of wrestling and soul-searching and leaning into questions and doubts; I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to do so without confronting the underlying structure of the worldview, but I would venture to guess that it’s relatively rare - as well as the broad difficulty a lot of folks seem to have conceptualizing why an oppressive environment might be harmful in and of itself, as opposed to just for the way it interacts with some facet of one’s identity like gender, race, queerness, etc. But those are larger discussions for another day, and also ones that I find much more personal and difficult and vulnerable to articulate.)

[stigmatvm]

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

- i think people are way too quick to overestimate the malice of other people on this website. dont get me wrong ive been guilty of it but as a professional opinion haver i dont post VAGUES about people. sometimes what other people do REMIND me of the topic at hand but the majority of it is me going thing -> memory of thing from past -> entire argument extrapolated in my brain based on that thing -> opinion. i dont even remember who posted the original half the time. also like having a difference of opinion wont kill us i genuinely dont consider disagreeing to be like, a friendship breaker. i just think shit and say it.

and in personal experience im also way too quick to jump the gun to someone hating me or talking shit abt me but like...we all have real lives to worry about we all go to the grocery store. i dont think ppl have the time or energy to bother thinking abt me.

i think more of us should live by the idea of occam's razor: the simplest solution is usually the correct one. and the simplest solution is rarely a seething and plotted hatred for another person

- that being said i do think some ppl get ridiculously mad at the idea that just bc u werent outright bigoted that ppl dont have the right to be annoyed or mad at u in return. like re: the ableism in rp spaces thing i know at least 6 other disabled people who had to quit rping on tumblr bc aesthetics made things so inaccessible and at this point i think we have every right to be upset when ppl disregard our opinions or complain about how accessible text "looks bad". its demeaning

- ummmm idk whats unpopular these days.....if ur still a harry potter fan in 2022.....read something else how much bigotry does this woman have to platform before you grow up. like idc how much nostalgia you have im not attaching nostalgia to a property that now has "main character has stuffed antisemitic caricature heads in their room in this open world video game" .

-i think critical thinking in fandom spaces is ass. like just in general browsing the tags is a shitshow and more importantly i think people get the idea in their head that if fandom is supposed to be "escapist" then their actions cant harm people. assflash newshole: they do. and when you refuse to think critically about yourself and the people around you you just turn a blind eye to harmful behavior. this goes for whichever spectrum of fandom ur own btw been there done that. insular internet communities are next level crazy

-i dont think u can be "centrist or neutral" on the whole "proshipper/antishipper" thing. i dont. idc anyone who is "neutral" on the idea of published cp or incest or what have u is a fucking weirdo in my book. ive got a lot of thoughts on the topic and also a lot of sources but this post is already long as hell but idc idc 0 tolerance for sexual content that can harm children and/or that exploits rape. idc.

- if you say purity culture and u arent using it in the context of religious abuse im killing you with my mind beams. btw

[freedom-of-fanfic]

a comprehensive guide to mlm shipping habits in transformative fandom

anonymous said:

Ok, this is going to be a controversial one, but her me out: do you think it's a bit weird that so many women in the fandom (most of them straight or bi) only show interest in mlm ships? I know on a personal level everybody has their reasons and I don't think there's anything wrong with liking mlm in any sense, but for so many women to only relate to relationships where they aren't represented is a bit... weird. Not to mention knee-jerk reactions to any mlf pairing 🤔

This is far from a controversial question. People have been mystified that transformative fandom - primarily made up of women* - is ‘only’ interested in mlm for as long as transformative fandom has been a recognized phenomenon.

A caveat for the terminology in this post: as society at large tends to forget/ignore/reject the gender spectrum and transgender people, ‘male/men’ = characters referred to with male pronouns in canon and ‘female/women’ = characters referred to with female pronouns. (NB/agender/genderqueer people don’t come up, unfortunately.)

So first let me point out that transformative fandom is not only on AO3/tumblr. AO3 stats in particular give a very skewed idea of what fandom focuses on. Both ff.net and wattpad - fanfic archives which dwarf AO3 - have far higher ratios of m/f (to m/m) fic than mlm-focused AO3: ff.net is about 50/50 and has more genfic (no pairings) while wattpad features lots of m/f fic, often in the form of (male)character/(female)reader stories.

In other words, Fanworks are NOT mostly mlm; it’s just likely that we tend to notice m/m more than m/f because m/f is the ‘default’ - unmarked, and thus overlooked.

secondly, while you’ve lumped straight and bisexual women together in your ask, if you separate straight and bisexual fandom participants you get an interesting picture in regards to the typical ‘straight women are the biggest m/m fans’ common wisdom:

In a 2013 survey of AO3 users*, heterosexual female respondents were slightly less likely to be both readers and creators of M/M works - 87% were readers, compared to 90% overall, and 32-33% were creators, compared to 40% overall.

according to a variety of smaller, previous polls on various sites, the majority of m/m (and f/f) fans identify as queer (and based on a thorough dissertation pending, the stats are about 50/50 ‘mostly straight’/’mostly non-straight’).

Now with those caveats out of the way ... why is mlm popular in a space that is primarily dominated by women**? I honestly don’t think this can be truly quantified. the reasons vary from person to person too greatly. But there’s a lot of theories and a lot of anecdotal evidence for those theories. Here’s some of them, in no particular order:

it’s male privilege (sexism/misogyny). 

Male privilege: Male societal privilege and and bias feeds into media bias. media is heavily male-dominated (more male characters, usually played by cis men where actors are called for, with more central/leading roles and more screentime). Even conversations between female characters tend to focus on the male characters. The media bias then itself contributes back to societal bias - and fandom bias - towards seeing men/male characters as more interesting, more dynamic, and more varied than women/female characters.

Flip side: societal bias towards men leads directly to a relative lack of interest in women/female characters. they have less screentime, less interaction with one another, and are less centralized by the plot. Their stories are more likely to revolve around a male character in the cast. And when they do get the same treatment as male characters, audiences are very hard on them.

it’s simply a function of statistics. the overrepresentation of male characters compared to female characters has a natural consequence. If you do the math, that exponentially increases the odds of a mlm ship being fanned over compared to an m/f or wlw ship.

it’s also an observable phenomenon across multiple character demographics.

in addition to having more roles, relationships between masc characters are often where the emotional heart of a story lies. people tend to ping on that in and create fan content for it.

it’s because fanworks are a function of wish fulfillment, taking various forms:

straight women, being sexually attracted to men, consume mlm (nsfw) fanworks for the same reason straight men might consume wlw porn: double the eye candy. (the fact that straight women are actually less likely to consume or create mlm fanfic than non-straight women suggests this may not be as prevalent as often assumed.)

non-straight characters are still incredibly uncommon in mass media; transformative fandom, which is mostly non-straight, creates their own representation (perhaps with bias towards the characters with more emotional connection in canon.)

non-straight relationships are even less common than non-straight characters, and are unlikely to get much canon focus if they do exist. fandom fills this gap. (conversely, m/f pairings are far more likely to receive canon fulfillment and canon focus, so there’s less need to create fan content for it.)

(white cis) male bodies are both more common in (western) mass media and ‘unmarked’. like m/f pairings, white cis males are perceived as ‘default’ due to white/cis/male privilege. If racism, transphobia, and sexism weren’t enough on their own to increase content about pairings between characters of that description, that privilege also means that fictional characters of this description are the least likely to be seen as needing protection by policing elements in fandom, increasing the free rein on content creation. thus: fandom produces more mlm fanworks despite being fannish over m/f and f/f ships as well, which increases content obscurity, which increases free rein, which increases content creation, etc.

relatedly: women’s stories/sexuality is too fraught. male privilege/internalized misogyny leads directly to women’s stories and afab bodies being politicized.   some afab people have hangups about fictional representations of themselves in nsfw content, being uncomfortable with portrayals of people like themselves in fiction, and even sickened by depictions of pleasure experienced by bodies with vaginas (particularly in f/f works). mlm stories create enough distance for women to enjoy it without distraction by concerns of misogyny or fear of something hitting too close to home in the experience (and cis mlm nsfw content in particular provides a safe space for afab people who are bothered by depictions of afab pleasure for whatever reason). 

it’s an outlet for afab people discovering they are not straight or not cis. they may still identify as a ‘cishet woman’, but they are consuming mlm works because it resonates with a part of them that they haven’t consciously recognized.

In conclusion: at first glance it might seem weird that fandom seems to spend a lot of time on mlm, but this is both not entirely true and (where it is true) there are many, many reasons for it.

I’ve spent 8 hours compiling links and piecing together this post now so that you can have a comprehensive guide to the reasons that parts of fandom seem to be dominated by mlm stories, so I’m going to wrap up now. For more fanwork statistics, try these links:

AO3 Ship Stats Masterpost by @centrumlumina​

ToastyStats tag on @destinationtoast​

For more analysis on why mlm is popular (and wlw not so much), try these links:

Why is there so much slash on AO3?

Why mlm? (and some of the responses)

Femslash and Fandom

Femslash Can Save the World if We Let it

and this essay briefly sums up the migration of online transformative fandom over the last 15 years or so, giving context to AO3 fic stats.

One final note: the comparative prevalence of mlm to wlw would suggest that male privilege and bias is primary motivation for its popularity, but wlw was not always so scarce as it seems to be now. Just as you might expect, shows with a mostly-female cast had massive amounts of wlw content: sailor moon, utena, etc. But there’s reason to believe that purity culture has stifled wlw popularity, and that’s a damn shame.

*The largest fandom demographic survey from a reputable source (that I am aware of) was based on AO3 users, advertised primarily via Tumblr, and analyzed by @centrumlumina​ in 2013. I’m pulling my stats from this survey, but be aware it has significant limitations.

**in my personal experience, many of those in fandom who identify as women are cis women, but also many of those in fandom who do not identify as women are afab/were socialized as a woman before identifying differently. However, I don’t currently have survey data to back this up.

[rpbetter]

Hi Vespertine. Can you offer some advice on how to RP a character that a lot of people think I shouldn't be RPing? I've wanted to RP Hans Landa for years, I like how cunning he is and how he could react to other ideals, how he could grow, especially in modern settings where he would stick out a lot. But I'm afraid because of how people react to muses like him. How do I build up confidence? How do I keep RPing if people bother or threaten to report me? Would people even RP with me? Thank you.

Alright, first thing, I've apologized on the blog already, apologized to people before you, but like I keep saying: it's really important to specifically apologize to individuals when we do something lame like I have. I did not intend to leave the blog unattended for months, but I did. This is an important question, it's right up the alley of why I created this blog, and I left you hanging. I'm deeply sorry, and I hope that my serious delay did not cause you any further worries or to give up on your character/RP!

Okay, we can proceed now!

I'll confess, I seriously spaced on who Hans Landa was for a moment there, but quickly remembered upon Googling! He was an interesting character, and I love that movie! However, I definitely see why you're worried, Anon.

Up until the last decade, taking up a character who was villainous, yes, even a Nazi, was a mark of creative gumption. Almost everyone had a verse for their muse that today would get them anon hate, callouts, reported, and so on. You know what? We had far less drama then. So, I'm not at all in the camp of demonizing your choices, or anyone else's. I saw what worked for a more peaceful RPC for decades and I've seen what is a total nightmare on tumblr.

Unfortunately, it is a total nightmare. So, let's see what you might be looking at, what your options are.

Firstly, you have the right idea; this is a character that appeals to you creatively, and that's really all that should matter. You've got ideas, you want to see your muse grow and change through interactions, and that's very much what the whole RPC needs to be a little more interested in.

I think, based on that alone, you would find people who wanted to write with you. There are quite a few muns out there dying for more interesting interactions with muses who have been taken up because the other mun really wants to write and develop them. Especially in the multi-para and novella communities. It's a bit of bane over there, the way the majority of muses are picked purely to satisfy a fleeting interest in a fandom. They don't come across as the characters they are in canon, are never given the opportunity to develop uniquely, they just exist to fulfill the mun's intense interest that will be gone soon. That works wonderfully and happily for some, but there really are a lot of muns out there who are interested in different approaches.

I will also say that most longer multi-para and novella RPers are less supportive of callout culture and content policing. When the very way that you enjoy RP is easily considered problematic on the grounds that you take it too seriously because you're invested in it, you tend to be against labeling others and giving them a hard time. That portion of the RPC, additionally, tends to be made up of older adults. The RPC kind of despises anyone over 25 who is still RPing, and I think a decent part of that is...this. We don't usually go in on equating fiction to reality, thinking that muse=mun, or that "problematic" material needs to be driven into the darkest void for communal safety. A great deal of that is because we lived through multiple fandom experiences being obliterated by these sorts of ideas, we know this is all detrimental to the community, and are more interested in a live and let live mentality even if we are disturbed by someone's muse or writing topics.

You may wish to specifically seek out RPers who are serious veterans (around for 10+ years), multi-para to novella writers, and/or have things in their rules that imply toleration and support for dark topics, villain muses, etc. (I know I have it in my rules that minors shouldn't interact with this blog due both its content and my age, but I can't exactly verify that with an anonymous message! So, Anon, please be aware I am giving this advice as though you are legally an adult.) Seek out muns who have muses that could also be considered "problematic" or who interact with muses who could be.

Remain away from anyone participating in or supportive of callout culture and purity policing. I know that can be difficult and limiting, and it is also not a 100% safe bet that you will be avoiding problems, but at least you'll know right off that these are not your people. That includes the ever-present callouts that claim the poster "never does this," that the mun being called out is just that much of a danger, and/or those dealing in the major callout-laden muns in your corner of the community. You might agree that one or two of those muns is a legitimate problem, but it's too likely that these people are going to feel like you are too.

Know that you will, inevitably, be called worse than just a "villain apologist." I write a muse that I wanted to write for years as well, and refrained from writing for so long because of the fandom's ideas about them. However, I have never been so happy with any muse choice, it's worth it to me to have some random hatefulness sometimes. I know I'm not a horrible person, the people who matter to me on and offline know that I am not, it doesn't actually matter what someone on tumblr thinks. It doesn't matter what they think about you either, they don't know you and won't give you the opportunity to be known, so pfft to them!

It can still be a little disheartening to hear some of the especially hateful things. While my muse isn't like Hans, the comparison to that is often made. There are a lot of assumptions about my personal character, race, gender, political affiliation, and so on. I'm just going to say it: if you don't think you can handle someone randomly attacking you and labeling you as "actually a Nazi," a genocide supporter, school shooter, "white cishet republican," and so on, do not subject yourself to this. Just write with friends you know are on your side or write some fic where there is some distance and control.

I do not believe, after reviewing them again, that you would be violating tumblr's TOS by writing this muse. You would not be promoting racism, harm to others, or misleading information. Nor would you be harassing anyone. Does that mean no one will try to report you? No, unfortunately. I've gotten reported for politely disagreeing on a post and asking a question! The important thing is that nothing will happen.

I would still make it very clear that this character might be offensive to some. Seriously, I would say, "In the interest of sensitivity, please note that this muse might be offensive to some - do not interact if imagery or topics associated with historical Nazis will be triggering for you. Hans Landa is from the film 2009 Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds." Pop that into the top of a pinned post, your rules, and your blog's header statement.

Because even if tumblr wasn't a mess, it's still the most responsible thing to do to treat this sensitively. It is a sensitive matter! People should have every opportunity to be aware and make the best choice for them to interact or not.

People almost certainly will threaten to report and block. Particularly when you are still looking for writing partners and having to expose yourself to more of the community in order to do so. It'll get so much better when you start finding them, though, I promise! Once you find a good mun or two, you've kind of unlocked a pocket of potential. Those people who are more accepting, reasonable, and interested in writing and characters are naturally going to be interacting with other like-minded muns.

Finding a good base of partners might take you some time, but the good news is, the whole process will help you build up the confidence to keep writing. It helps you get in touch with both writing and the muse, what is really important to you as an RPer, and is what isn't. It feels shitty at the time, but in the end, it builds a lot of confidence in yourself, and when you pull confidence from within you, you're never totally without it again!

When you're looking for those people (I'd additionally suggest historical RPers, if there is any existent community for the movie still, and branching out to fandoms that have "problematic" characters in them that you could do crossovers with in modern settings etc.), you can still be writing and developing your muse. Write up headcanons, fleshout the character's backstory, make multiple verses so that you have many options ready to go, do some one-shots.

A great way to do that is to find memes or traditional writing questions specifically for character development, but don't wait for someone to ask you! Go down the meme/list, pick some questions that spark your interest, and base your HC posts on them. Answer questions you immediately have answers to, answer the really hard ones you have no clue about. You don't know until you develop it, after all!

It helps with confidence so much to feel confident about your writing and comfortable with the character. It'll also help non-judgemental RPers who come across your blog or want to follow you back to see your writing and interest in the muse. I know that there are muses I was not interested in from their canon, but seeing the mun's love for them and how they had uniquely developed them, I had to interact!

When you do receive the almost inevitable anon hate, I'm going to suggest something a bit radical here; the idea of not feeding the trolls doesn't always work. That's predicated upon people not already receiving a reward for sending that hate to you. You can't starve what has already eaten lunch! I've found that demonstrating that they're not getting to you is more effective, in all, incredibly controversial honesty.

Put in your rules that anon hate will be addressed only with something like...a gif of a rabbit, a random fact, or a link to a song you recommend. Then, you do exactly that. You get a message calling you derogatory things, but instead of deleting it or going off about it in a way they can just use, you respond with a picture of a bunny cleaning its ears. Block the anon after.

This, again, in all honesty, is a confidence booster. Sometimes, building confidence is about projecting it first. You are projecting an aura of non-hostile confidence that you're not any of those negative things in reality, nor is your life ruined by people who haven't anything better to do with their own lives than bother you as performative "activism" online. It's alright if it really does bother you at first! Eventually, it won't. Eventually, you'll be left in peace with the reasonable muns you've found.

You will find them! There are still muns out there who feel like the most important factors in RP are engaging muses and writing, and how the mun is truly conducting themselves. If that mun is a genuinely decent person who isn't starting problems, harassing people, forcing anything on anyone, that's what matters! Just put your muse out there in a thoughtful way around people who are interested in writing. Be respectful of the sensitive nature of the subject, tag liberally and correctly.

No matter what tumblr's RPC says, you do have the right to write any muse or topic you so desire. People also have the right to not interact, of course, but since you're concerned about it (and truly, the person who is most likely to be made uncomfortable on here), I highly doubt you'll be trying to force interactions or anything.

Unfortunately, when you write any, even vaguely, problematic muse here, you are held to higher standards. You are obliged to be ten times nicer in the face of hatefulness, to be more aware of tagging and other warnings, and so on. It's kind of a practice in acceptance, and it can be frustrating. Again, if the muse is worth it to you, it'll be fine. Just know that you'll need to not be reactive to nastiness, very responsible in how you present yourself in all ways, and that it still won't be enough for some people. And know that's alright as well! They're making a choice to be hostile without knowing you or employing the adult maturity to just not interact with you, not you.

I know it's very easy to say "don't let people get to you." Perhaps especially from someone who will openly say in the tumblr RPC in 2021 that it's 100% fine to write a Nazi muse lol but please know that my confidence was not naturally occurring. It was developed across years of nonsense, and much of it offline, in person. So, I'm not flippantly advising you to have a level of fortitude out of nowhere! I'm honestly telling you that it is a process, but I think that if you want something bad enough to stick to it through the hardest part of it, you kind of expedite that process. It makes it a bit easier if you're still enjoying yourself!

So, on that note, my additional advice is to have another muse or other hobby you can enjoy during the difficult patches, or even slow times before you establish a good group of writing partners. Do things that will keep you feeling positive and motivated to write. That looks different for everyone, but I'm certain you have something. If that does happen to be another muse, or muses, I would strongly suggest you keep it to yourself that you are the mun of this one until you get rolling. While you have exactly nothing to be ashamed of, don't tempt ruining your fun on the other blog(s) until you are established on the new one and confident about it.

If you ever need to vent or further advice, I'm not going to vanish or anything again! Drop by any time you need to, Anon. Sometimes it goes a long way knowing that even a single person out there supports you!

I hope this helped a little, and I do support you! I think you've got this!

[transbcyfriend]

For the homestuck asky, EVERY question 🔫

CARL I OWE U MY MCFUCKIN LIFE

1. Do you have a chum handle? What does it mean?

i don’t! i mean i used to have pesterchum installed on my computer when i was like, 13, but i don’t remember SHIT of what it was. probably something embarrassing.

2. Is your username homestuck related/have you had one hs related?

my current one isn’t, but i used to have one w/ dirk in the title

3. Do you call your s/o a matesprit?

i … i haven’t heard of anyone doing this since middle school. nah

4. Do you call your best friend your moirail?

see answer to 3

5. Are you “kin” with any characters or commonly called a character?

answered!

6. God Tier?

knight of heart!

7. Do you make HS fanart?

i haven’t in a rlly long time, but i rlly want to! i’m thinking i’ll end up doing some soon for a late 4/13 pic

8. Do you make hs fanfiction?

don’t remind me i was just a kid

9. Do you roleplay homestuck? where and how often?

i used to! i rlly wanna do it again, but everyone i know who wants to rp hs just wanna do it for the smut :/

if i could get an rp partner who just wanted to for fun tho, i’d b down to try my hand at it again!

10. Do you cosplay homestuck characters? Who and where?

GOD DON’T REMIND ME

when i was but a wee lad i cosplayed as dave bc he was my fav, but that was it

i’d lov to cosplay the signless at some point tho, i like his design

11. Are you apart of ask blogs?

nope! i debated it, but i was never confident enough in my skills as rping a certain character outside of private rp

12. Are you in any homestuck groups?

nope!

13. Favorite character?

tbh i’d probably say dave, since he’s … the most relatable to me personally? that and i love his rambles when he just spouts some random shit and goes off on a billion tangents at once. i also rlly like karkat, roxy, kanaya, and mituna!

14. Least favorite character?

caliborn.

i can appreciate him as a character, but he’s…yeah. y’already know.

15. OTP?

i lov rosemary a hella lot, but i also like davekat!

16. NOTP?

…y’know that’s a good question. i don’t rlly think abt ships a lot, just homestuck as a story itself, so. never rlly thought abt it. i’m gonna have to mull that over.

17. BROTP?

nepeta/equius, hands down.

18. Do you want homestuck to just die already?

nah – it’s a rlly good story, tbh. sure it’s confusing if you don’t keep tabs on things and engross yourself in it, but it’s really well done.

19. Are you following up with hiveswap? Do you play? Watch YT videos?

i am! i mean i haven’t seen anything going on except for the troll reveals, but ye – i need to catch up on the playthrough i’m watching (jack’s). i’d play it myself, but i’m staying on a budget.

20. Tell us how homestuck has effected you in real life?

it’s made me really rewire how i go about telling my own stories, tbh – that and it made me rethink comics and how interesting they could be without being just “sunday funnies.” i grew up with shit like archie comics, nothing that really strung together (not to mention something as long as homestuck is), but it made me change my view on how good and serious one could be.

21. Have you met anyone through homestuck?

i have! i don’t know ‘em anymore, but they were a chill group.

22. Have you left the fandom before?

nah – i’m just kinda off to the side of the fandom in my own little bubble, i don’t really get too involved in discourse or w/e to rlly feel the need to leave

that and it’s had my interest for too long for me to leave

23. How many times have you read through it?

5! 3 times on my own, and 2 times reading it to other people.

24. Did you ever skip intermissions/dialog/animations?

god fuck no that’s extra content i could scarf down r u kidding

25. Opinions on the fandom?

i haven’t really mingled much with the fandom to really have an opinion on it – i remember when i was a kid it was really wild and people feared having the homestucks show up, but the people in the fandom seem to have calmed down, and i can fuck with that, so i tease the idea of mingling in. i probably won’t tho, i’ll prolly just stay on the fringes of it hangin in my own space.

26. Opinions on the comic?

get ready

the comic … is honestly, i mean considering it literature, the best piece i’ve ever read? the characters are all really diverse in their views and thoughts, every one of them have different aspects to them that make them unique (john being very aloof when he wants to be, dave’s rambles, rose’s entire personality aside from her interest in psychology, etc.), and they’re memorable in whatever they do. they have their own quirks, their interests, their morals and – i really like how the characters are into genuinely bad things. it’s not like “oh yeah this character likes x and x,” and the things they’re into are neutral or good in nature, it’ll be like, “oh yeah this character actually loves horrendously terrible movies,” and i can appreciate that.

that, and i like how they’re unaffected by “purity culture” – in a lot of media i see today, all of the characters are usually mad acceptable, but homestuck doesn’t really do that. like fuck, take caliborn and doc scratch, they’re hella problematic but i like that – having characters that aren’t acceptable, whose actions are…disgusting, really, but still portray them without having to spoonfeed the reader that they’re not okay. i think a lotta shit i see nowadays misses out by not having characters that have gross views and actions like those two.

i also really like how complex it is. like you get media that shows video games like sao (which don’t even get me started), and they’re…lacking, they’re not like how a real life game would be with all the little events within its code and all the sidequests and yada yada yada. they feel bland. but with homestuck, it’s rich, it’s interesting, there’s always something going on (and it’s limited in time). that and it’s concepts – the way it does its own version of rpg classes, its perma-death aspect, how the players can vastly change things with small actions in a butterfly effect, things like that.

i could go on, but i just really like the worldbuilding, characters, and story, it’s rlly good

27. Do you favor the trolls, humans, or carapaces?

i think i like the trolls the most, but the humans are a close second!

28. Favorite moment of all of homestuck?

either the penis ouija scene, [s] collide, or [s] game over

29. Least favorite moment of all of homestuck?

whenever there was a hiatus

but beside that, tbh there’s rlly no moment in the comic that i disliked!

30. Tell us a homestuck based story.

one time, i tried doing a fanventure.

i’m gonna stop that story there because it was embarrassing and i was an overexcited 15 year old.

31. How homestuck related is your blog?

not really? i reblog quite a bit of hs related content, but otherwise it’s just kinda here and there y’know