#bc they explore such traumas and dark content in a fictional setting

[rush-the-stars]

a lot of dark content anti discourse online is just thinly veiled misogyny

[leonsdolly]

reblogging bc liz articulates it so well 🔊

it's also worth noting that you don't necessarily need to have trauma to enjoy or feel interested in these topics. there's a lot of shaming/guilt tripping going around which is so weird bc these kinks have BEEN a thing in all nsfw communities since the beginning of time! these topics are considered taboo which is what intrigues people and that's ok - humans have always been drawn to the forbidden! it's perfectly okay to explore these kinks in a fictional setting. no one is saying they want to do these things irl! stepcest/incest are popular in many nsfw communities and porn (lol) but that doesn't mean anyone wants to actually fuck their siblings!!! and for example, cnc/rape play is a very popular kink - it doesn't necessarily mean the person wants to actually be assaulted. there are a number of things that may fascinate them about it - the thrill, relinquishing control, etc. rather, they will usually have a healthy discussion with their partner about how to incorporate it in a way that's safe and enjoyable for both parties. this is how kinks are usually implemented irl!

it also feels like the majority of people i have seen complaining about ddne are underage? (i'm assuming so as a lot of times their ages aren't even visible on their blogs which is like the NUMBER ONE thing you should be doing if you are going to be engaging in mature content). this is exactly why minors shouldn't be interacting with, let alone commenting on the ways of nsfw content, whether here or anywhere else. these are extremely mature topics in an already established adult community. and for those who are adults crowing about the same things, everyone is responsible for curating their internet experience. just bc you don't like something doesn't mean you can police someone else from liking it in a space that THEY created for themselves. there are certain topics that i don't really like to read about, so i just continue scrolling. i don't need to pat myself on the back and have my mutuals congratulate me for calling those fics disgusting and denouncing anyone who even enjoys them a little bit as a dangerous freak. so many times i've seen people complain that they just read a fic with incest or something in it... why did you read it when you clearly saw the content bolded and highlighted at the beginning of the post with all the warnings in the world plastered for all to see? that is 100% on you for proceeding when you knew you weren't the target audience! that's not the writer's fault!

i also agree with liz that i see far more people complaining about ddne content than the ddne content in question itself! i'm always seeing discourse pop up in the tags and my fyp. i don't like seeing this as it's contributing to the mistreatment/harassment of writers. i don't think the anti ddne crowd quite understands the impact this discourse has on writers in general. it's revealed a lot about the RE community in particular - they have made it apparent that writers are to be taken for granted, dismissal of writing/fanfics in general (stating that anyone can do it and that someone's writing isn't worth anything), should only write what they deem to be appealing according to their standards, and that it's ok to harass/dehumanize them if they don't. i've seen the anon hate that my mutuals have received, and i've seen the multiple comments on posts like the one op posted. it's just disappointing and disheartening and discouraging. it's a shame that so many talented writers have to go through this when this is supposed to be their safe space. i've said it once, and i'll say it again - it takes an extremely thorough and capable understanding of a character to be able to successfully write dark content for them 🗣️

tw: inc*st

yall I'm so sorry but as a leon kennedy stan, the amount of incest fics on here is actually so fucking gross like WHAT. how are you writing about that. it's genuinely insane. like really?? 😭😭

not just ab him, but any character. he's just who I've seen it for. like that is so fucking crazy & gross. and so insensitive to anyone who's been through that??? like what.

[seita]

I have a question bc I’m trying to understand and deal with my abuse myself (if you don’t mind) if I get turned on by your incest works doesn’t that mean I’m romanticizing what’s happening to me? My therapist told me consuming content that resembles my trauma is a slippery slope but like my mind is so confused. I feel I’m too grown to be this lost but I just am and I don’t wanna subconsciously justify my wounds with horniness, any help you can share??

hmm. to me i just say it's fetishizing my own trauma tbh.

to me, the most important thing to remember while consuming the content is that fiction and reality is different. you have to be able to differentiate things in fantasy and fiction do not translate over into real life.

like i look at anime characters and think "ah yes. a niichan to lewd" but if i look at like a real life celebrity, i never think "what about a big brother!au". because they're real people, in real life.

lewding and fuckin with a fictional character like an anime character, who is literally just pen and paper and animation...is a completely separate thing in my head.

i don't even consume incest themed porn. because the blocks are two completely separate entities in my mind, do you know what im saying?

so i think it's okay to consume the content as long as you're able to continuously think of them as different things.

a lot of people enjoy this content because they can take their trauma and the things that ones scared them and hurt them, and make it into something enjoyable. you can have control over the topic of your trauma when you do it in a fictional setting.

naturally, i do have my own limits. for example i don't do bio father x daughter lewds. i do primarily brother x sister or stepdad x stepdaughter. so even tho my abuse was by my dad, i can't mentally lewd that troupe myself.

so instead i morph it into something in a similiar vein that i can find enjoyable. it's never too late to evaluate your own feelings and explore different coping mechanisms. if you find that exploring these dark topics helps and you don't feel like you're going down the "slippery slope" then it should be okay.

as victims of abuse, we get told constantly that victims perpetuate the cycle of abuse. so there's a lot of fear that goes into it that if you dabble in fetishizing these topics, things that you went through, you're in danger of repeating the cycle. but that's not the case. as long as you feel you are safe and sane enough to do it, then it doesn't hurt anyone.

[full-course-identity]

Give me your thoughts on uuuh Jake

wew boy

okay. gonna word dump this, and probably other interpretation asks, so I can get the words out there.

from my POV, there’s 3 types of canon Jake + 1 fanon vers + my personal interpretation. lemme explain what they are;

Book Jake, who I don’t have enough experience with bc I STILL haven’t finished the book… >_>;

2River Jake, who is kinda oblivious and very in-the-moment impulsive (not so bad he’s jumping place to place ADHD like Rich, but like, not considering that maybe dropping everything to seduce Madeline or Christine is a bad idea when he clearly really likes Chloe). these are debatably survival mechanisms bc of his family (and wealth, if you want to go into the “being rich actually traumatizes you and locks you into dissociation” theory–but to be fair, this is partially reliant on thinking Jake is Genuinely Rich. … well, not Rich as in… yeah); ignoring any pain he feels in favor of getting dicked down and forgetting about everything for a while. very “I’m not sad, I’m busy!!!!!” 

Bway (possibly the new canon general for all Jakes since it sounds like London’s is modeled after him but just… toned down), who is still oblivious, but towards other people’s emotions instead of himself; he’s manipulative, a little impulsive but a lot more malicious about it, and he knows exactly how hurt he is about his parents. this jake’s awareness of himself makes him act worse because he knows this is the only thing that seems to help and it’s basically the only thing he actually has control of. his wealthiness is undeniably present and Bad here because the reason taking what he wants and not caring that it hurts people is his main coping skill is pretty much only because he’s been allowed that privilege all his life. i tend to think this version of him should be done by a white cishet dude (despite jake’s actor on bway being genuinely FANTASTIC) bc being marginalized in a high school should’ve curved a lot of the “endless power and privilege” he gets for being rich (Not That One). 

[i… think this jake has ‘better’/more nuanced writing in BWay… but i don’t think it fits the musical nor is it the overall direction i think it should’ve gone. BMC feels best to me when there’s a heavier element of Dark Humor that briefly nods to a Larger and more Fucked Up world behind the bit we see in the musical. making it largely a twisted comedy, maybe even ramping that up further with more whiplash lines like jake’s “which means the house is empty, so that’s fun”]

Fanon Jake is… like most of the fanon characters in BMC, a bit… “bipolar” (like, radically shifting depending on the situation). the BMC fandom has been born with heavy engagement from minors in the current fascist climate of fandom as a whole. as a result, you have three general uses of jake that as “approved of” by somehow the exact same people despite being conflicting in a lot of ways. THIS IS NOT ME SHITTING ON FANON, i actually think most of this fandom is just a casual romp for most people and that shouldn’t be snatched away from them nor mocked nor treated like you HAVE to be logically consistent when this is just a fun hobby for most… but there are still trends i notice:

1: Jake the sweet bi disaster who loves their significant other and is just a little bit hopeless in their silliness and Down For Whatever-esque personality. this is often used for shippy pictures and memes and cute little oneshots, plus, of course, fluff.

2: Jake the tragic abuse victim who is extremely sad and has to learn to love again and has always been selfless, plus or minus a permanent disability post-fire. this is of course used for hurt/comfort, plus in combination kinda with michael in the bathroom-esque posts and tragic art, often also used as an example of the squip being the worst for jeremy or rich guilt trauma. also: aesthetic and moodboard posts.

3: the one I have the least good will towards: Jake the “why does everybody woobify mlm? You can’t portray him without flaws! queer boys aren’t your fetish!!!” with an attached, clunkily written reasons why he was an asshole that is also simultaneously watered down so you don’t think he’s a Monster bc then you’d be vilifying queer men (well, more like they’d feel bad about their cutesy-er ‘emotional support’ art and writing which is Totally Different from all the other cutesy emotional support art and writing). 

basically, Meta Trying To Make Jake Reasonably Flawed But Not Evil in this fandom is RARELY genuine–it’s more often than not moralistic hand-wringing made so that they can wash themselves of the guilt for actually enjoying something with a character they portray as mlm, or otherwise the guilt of enjoying anything romantic or sexual involving men or queer people period when we’re apparently not supposed to do that anymore, as decreed by the radfems infesting our spaces. 

and, well, or you’re an mlm writing this post, you’re probably young and still feeling extremely sensitive and scared about your identity. i once saw a very wise post by a trans person who had been trans for a long time, who said that when you first come out as trans (or queer in general, but especially trans people who are beginning social or physical transition and coming to terms with themselves) you are obvs on High Fucking Alert and so you’re insecure and scared of anything, ranging from “obvious transphobia” to “just trans people enjoying themselves and exploring transphobia in fiction or else their own sexuality”. again, this can relate to a lot of identities tbh, and as such young mlm either cis or trans can get very Itchy about people enjoying mlm content.

anyway.

wrapping it back around to me: i edit jake on a case by case basis (sometimes i even make him eviler or meaner based on what’s set up during Bway, he’s just not my usual go-to villain), but i tend to think of him as a tragic Mr. Peanutbutter-y sweetheart who kinda knows he feels like shit yet also knows that if he stops to assess it, it would make his life a lot harder in a time where he can’t afford that. his relationship with chloe is extremely toxic (chloe abuses him horribly, specifically), and so he tries to claw his way out of it only to be continually back in by chloe and her bullshit. 

this is why he doesn’t really get... well. he genuinely thought the thing with christine was going to be permanent; he wasn’t jerking her around, he thought he was over chloe and wanted a girl as cool and fun and genuinely nice as her. afterward he Gets It, and so feels Really Bad--at a time where he doesn’t have his house, his legs are broken (i don’t tend to put him in a perma-wheelchair), his parents have abandoned him, and he best friend is in the hospital. guilt crashes in on him from all sides, and he just has to... pretend it isn’t, even as he can no longer stop himself from thinking about it.

if i was to do a jake focused story, it’d probably be a dating sim where you play as him and watch his life change in conjunction with his attempts to find happiness again; you can either choose decisions that help him greatly or ruin his life so ver much... hmm. lets file that under hashtag “story ideas i’ll never use even though they could be great”

to wrap this up: i like jake. i don’t... really enjoy most of the written content (fanfic, meta, sometimes even the storylines on ask blogs) in this fandom about him or... really, most of the characters, which i feel bad about--i’d enjoy it more if it was every in conjunction with my usual Wants in a fic, which is, like. extreme angst.

BUT

i do still like jake, and i can super enjoy his portrayal in memes and visual art

he’s just not my total fave, but like, the reason he tends not to come up a lot in my content is more what i’m focusing on and why. i’d be happy to use him in stories if his presence fit.

as a bonus

here’s the ships i’m happy to use him for, generally: deere, michael/jake, brooke/jake, toxic chloe/jake, and of course, different ocs/jake

his identities/labels: cis, bisexual/romantic... tho sometimes i actually go for bisexual and aromantic! outside bway and eviler jakes, i’m good with him being any race, and even then it’s just a matter of suspending disbelief re: privilege theory. also, PTSD probably, and maybe generalized anxiety as a result. maaaaaybe autistic too? adhd would be a hard sell for me since he seems super put together in a way that’d be extremely difficult for every form of adhd, but i can see him being neurodivergent on the spectrum + like dyslexia maybe. oh, and i sorta-kinda think he may be color blind? but really i’d drop that at a moment’s notice if it’d be easier to write him without it lol.

his interests: one is more or less sports in general, tho i think that, unless he went straight for track or swimming or something Olympics (which he probably can’t do now...), that’s a high school or some college only focus for him. so, besides sports, i think he’d kinda like the satisfaction and steady growth of Collecting Rare Things That You Have To Look For, like cool rocks, bugs, etc. 

as for careers... some form of doctor something, maybe a businessman of some sort but he’d likely try to curve his power in that field as much as possible; he inherits his parents' assets and company or whatever, but he probably takes a backseat to that and only really has it out of a sense of ‘it’s my job as my parent’s kid to keep the company going--without engaging in the same awful legal issues they did--for as long as i can’. one of my fave jake-is-there stories, vanceypant’s spicy bis-focused fic 1999, has him owning a restaurant, and that was cool as hell.

also jake loves dogs. especially golden retrievers. yes.

[i-want-my-iwtv]

Thank you for your Anne Rice/Fandom relation post and then the BOLDING of writing of dark content does not equate a desire for it to be replicated in the physical world. I'm a 100% behind that sentiment.

Thank you for appreciating that [post is here]! It always feels like I’m going out in front of a firing squad when I say that “creating/consuming dark fiction is not endorsement of it in real life” because people who do conflate those will insist that I’m an x,y,z-apologist. No. That’s incorrect. 

ANOTHER WALL OF TEXT™ what is happening to me? I just miss you guys a lot, that’s what ;)

“Why did this person say/do this thing?”

I support the creation and consumption of dark content in media, in fic/art/music/etc. as a means of exploring it, as a means of unpacking it, as a means of trying to figure out where it comes from and how to recognize it. Sometimes it’s not so easy to pick out the “bad guy.” Sometimes the “abuser” seems to be a “good” person. Sometimes the “abuser” is reenacting their own trauma. Finding reasons for a behavior are not excuses for that behavior, but it can help provide answers for those of us who want them.

~Story time~

My grandmother was a tough old lady, what we call a “battle-axe.” She was blunt and tactless, and downright MEAN most of the time. She raised her children through terror and bullying, held grudges for decades, was short-tempered with her in-laws and grandchildren.

She was also very smart in her role as a professor in a college, and had a sweetness to her that very few people in my family experienced bc they were so deterred by her tough exterior. I was one of the few who got close to her, and I wanted to know why she behaved the way she did to others. 

Seeing movies like Mommie Dearest, in which Joan Crawford was portrayed as somewhat of battle-axe to everyone in her life, too, I could see similarities between her and my grandmother. 

Could my grandmother have had the kind of pressure in her life that Joan did, competing with the misogyny in her career? I thought so. 

Both of these women set incredibly high expectations for themselves and others, and then reacted badly if reality didn’t meet their expectations. They were not good at handling disappointment and would take it out on others.

In other media, I would see “only” children worshiped by their parents and then these women were dissatisfied, bitter adults, who would never get that kind of attention again. (Not sure about Joan Crawford, but that was my grandmother’s childhood.) 

^What I’m saying is that media (fic/movies/books/music/etc.) gave me insights as to why my grandmother behaved the way she did. It provided reasons for the behavior. I didn’t take these as excuses, but it increased my empathy for her and others I met who were like her. Rather than do as the rest of my family did, by writing her off as “a mean old lady,” I could understand her and navigate my way into a better relationship with her. They missed out on her good parts because of her bruises.

^The first time I saw this graphic, I felt that expression in my soul. These are fictional characters. They are not real. Writers write them. What is “writing” anyway, but speculative reality? We used to call fanfiction “specs,” short for “speculative fiction.” It’s thoughts. Not all writing is for idealized versions of life and/or wish-fulfillment.

I’ve heard from VC fans who are survivors of child abuse, sexual abuse, etc. who said that VC helped them in some way,

whether it was recognizing that the abuse they suffered really was abuse (and not normal!), 

or whether they have since made fanworks with VC characters that helped them explore their own past and examine it from a place of safety,

or in consuming other fanworks, they got some closure on their own experiences in some way and were able to heal or begin to do so, 

or just in making friends here that have helped them through difficult times,

I could go on and on… there is enormous value in creating/consuming dark fiction. 

Whatever Anne Rice’s agenda is/was in writing the Vampire Chronicles, it doesn’t matter to me, because of how much good I have witnessed that has come from it. If some of her inspiration for certain aspects seems relevant to me, I consider it, but it doesn’t really matter as far as I’m concerned. 

It all really boils down to the old adage “Live and Let Live.”