#it's like. professional marshy. i guess. academic marshy

[marshmellowtea]

hey, sorry, i did read ur bio but im..... unclear what u mean specifically by "anti anti" and "pro ship/pro fiction"? sorry, the terms get thrown around a lot and its made me unclear what ppl mean when they use them since its used in such drastically different contexts. sorry to bother

it's alright, you're not bothering me. i was honestly kind of expecting an ask like this after making that post. i hope, anon, before you respond (if you respond) you hear me out for the whole post.

i'm gonna put this under a cut since i rambled, sorry. warning for some discussion of abuse

first off, i wanna say that while writing this response feels very weird and kind of nerve-wracking, this isn't information i've been trying to hide. i, perhaps foolishly, tend to assume that people who follow me have at least read my bio, even if they choose not to read my about page, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that this is just......not the case? and it's becoming a bit frustrating to inevitably receive backlash from people following me about views i've been open about having from the get-go, hence the vent post. sorry about that, though, there's better ways of handling that frustration, i know.

secondly, i'm pro ship as in......pro ship. all ships, no matter how tasteless, controversial, or disgusting i or anyone else might find them. i'm pro fiction in the same sense, but just in regards to fiction as a whole, both in and out of fandom. while i never fully identified as an anti, i definitely used to have views closer to that mindset, and i can confidently say that they have caused me a lot of harm in the long run. also, while i fully take accountability for the things i've said during those years, i also feel like in some sense i was enabled to be cruel to others while i was a part of that group. never full on hate campaigns, sure, but i've definitely said some nasty stuff to people, and i regret ever doing it, and i especially feel regret for ever feeling justified in doing it. it also bothers me that there were other anti-minded people in my circles who encouraged me, even, and assured me i was doing the right thing when i fucking wasn't.

while i don't think i can explain all of my reasons for my beliefs in this post alone—that would make this thing way longer than it already is—i want to mention that i don't disagree with the notion that fiction can have an affect on our reality, i just think it's more nuanced than a one-to-one correlation of "reading about [thing]=think [thing] is now good", and i also think since fandom is, well, fandom, people tend to overexaggerate its influence on people. if you've ever read a fic or watched a tv show and thought that they handled a certain subject poorly, or recognized that a certain trope they used was bigoted, or anything of that sort, then, well, congrats! you know exactly what i mean. fiction can certainly influence people's views, but i think it's more of a lack of education (sex education, education on the lived experiences of minorities, etc) that's the problem, rather than the fiction on its own.

i also HEAVILY dislike this notion that fiction causes or enables people to abuse—in the case of the former, that's taking responsibility from the abuser because it implies that fiction "made" them do it when it was really their choice to be cruel, and in the case of the latter, i really think it's the aforementioned lack of education and the lack of systems we have in place to support victims/challenge authority that's more of an issue. sure, fiction can absolutely be used to groom people for abuse, but so can candy, or sports, or money, or one on one time, a whole bunch of things are all potential tools and unfortunately, we can't ban everything that could potentially be used to harm someone. and besides, that's overlooking that properly tagged fic (i'm. very pro content warnings in addition to being anti censorship just to be clear) can actually help people realize they're being abused when they see their situations being reflected on the page in front of them that's clearly labeled as abuse.

those aren't my only reasons of course, but this is getting long already, so thank you for sticking with me if you've gotten to the end. if you're uncomfortable with me because of this, i understand, i just ask that you either quietly unfollow or block me, because i'm not afraid to report people for harassment. if you have any good-faith follow up questions, i'm free to answer those as well, i really don't mind.