#the warrior against purity culture we deserve

[pineyw00dsshesquatch]

Somebody call professor Jeff Meldrum, he's Mormon AF.

"They escaped religious persecution, drove off the Native tribes, and defended their new land from other settlers who were not God's chosen people. Truly THIS place would be their new Promised Land. But there was someone else there, who wasn't about to let them have it, by God...!"

This is my pitch for a movie that is 90 minutes of Sasquatch brutally killing Mormons.

Please give me a million dollars.

We'll call it something generic like "Salt Lake". But print it in a really creepy font.

[stubbornjerk]

Why people keep telling you to block them if you support Pholo (Penumbra Edition)

Or: why jitterbug-juno really deactivated

I love when people categorize this as fandom wank. Really makes you feel like you’re putting the onus on either side of the conversation.

I’m making this post not because I want to stir up spoiled milk, but because I want it out there that this wasn’t a purity culture war.

The TL;DR version of this is that fans of color tried to tell Rab (prev. jitterbug-juno) not to post her Omegaverse (or A/B/O) fic. And instead of taking the L, she posted it on Ao3 and deactivated.

But, if you want context, well, buckle in. CW for mentions of racism and transphobia.

What did jitterbug-juno do?

Before I get into this I do want it out there that I will not be linking Rab’s fic, but I will show you this screenshot of the summary of it.

[ID: It is a screenshot of a fic, “As You Are” by Pholo.

Summary: Peter can hide his scent glands behind cologne; makeup; concealer pads. He can quash his heats with suppressants. He can divert the urge to nest and fawn.

But he can’t feign another gender’s subvocals. He lacks the anatomical capacity. Mag taught him to distract from his silence with fast, flashy words. For longer heists he relies on social convention. Traumatic mutism is uncommon, but remarked upon by enough war vets and soap operas to be widely recognized. Peter’s marks assume he’s been harmed long before they assume he’s a closeted omega. It would take quite the backwater brute to ask why he doesn’t murmur or chuff or growl.

On the 'Blanche there are the usual furtive glances. Juno makes clear to Peter that should he ever want “to talk about what happened,” he’ll be there to listen. The gesture annoys Peter more than comforts him.

‘Nothing happened,’ he wants to scream. ‘There’s nothing to talk about!’

There are 14 comments, 85 kudos, and 11 bookmarks /end]

You decide what you’re doing with that information, but honestly, I’d rather you don’t give it anymore engagement than it deserves.

There was a period earlier this June (yes, even though it’s only the 10th, at time of writing) when Rab was posting snippets of the aforementioned fic on her blog and tagging it appropriately, putting it in the attention of pretty much the entire Penumbra fandom.

What’s Omegaverse or a/b/o and why is everyone so against Rab for it

If you know what Omegaverse is, I don’t have to tell you why it’s controversial. If you don’t know what Omegaverse is, well, Fanlore said it best:

a kink trope wherein some or all people have defined biological roles based on a hierarchical system, with the terms originating from animal behaviour research. There may be werewolf, knotting, or other animalistic elements involved, or the characters may be otherwise purely human.

The term is generally written with slashes (a/b/o). Many fans, particularly ones from Australia and New Zealand, are uncomfortable seeing the term without slashes because it is also an Australian slur for aboriginal people.

I won’t get into the history or the heaps and tons of other discourses (mostly about fictional male pregnancy, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, etc.)  that go on within that. We’re here specifically on Rab v. Penumbra fans of color and we’re staying there.

Anyone who’s been in Penumbra enough to realize that everyone draws the Junoverse characters in a certain way knows that a) Juno is black, b) Nureyev is Asian, and c) as a fan you have to be aware of what you’re subjecting or saying about either of them because of the political repercussions that come with it.

And despite that, Rab proceeded to write Peter Nureyev, a gender nonconforming gay Asian male character that is widely headcanon’d as trans, into a fic using a kink trope that relies heavily on animal behavior.

Unlike most people new to fandom, Rab is aware of what Omegaverse is and is very much white. She is (and if she isn’t, should be) aware of the racist undertones that writing him in would get.

I couldn’t get a screenshot of what snippets Rab was sending out into the ether, seeing as a majority of my friends would rather not have seen any at all (I have all of the usual tags blocked so I wouldn’t have seen it either way), but needless to say, Rab got attention for it. Both positive and negative.

Anne (@hopeless-eccentric) even posted a satirical fic, in the odds that Rab was just writing this thing to be “the first” to write Omegaverse fic in the Penumbra tags.

But, I’m assuming more than one fan of color came into Rab’s inbox and messaged her about it, but someone I know (who would like to remain anonymous) was gracious enough to take a screenshot before he sent his in and let me use it for this post:

[ID: A message to jitterbug-juno about to be sent by a sender whose name is censored with a black bar. His messages says:

“as someone who is a person of color i think the nature of the fic you are writing right now is extremely racist and attributing animal characteristics to lgbt people of color is not at all appropriate, especially when you are someone who is white. i have to ask you to not publish this fic and to reflect as to why you would want to write this in the first place, these tropes are extremely harmful and”

There are 33 characters left to write into the message. /end]

I can’t speak for whoever else sent asks about the fic she was writing. If anyone was actually not-so-gentle with her, well, minorities don’t really owe it to you to be gentle about what they can tell is bigotry-tinged behavior.

But, the message was clear: this is different from your garden variety, lily white straight male character m/m kink fantasy. This is an actual queer Asian character that a lot of queer Asian people feel attached do. Do not post the fic.

What happened next: the beginning of the end

The next morning, I woke up to most of my friends being frustrated by this post on Rab’s account:

[ID: Dated 5 June, a post by jitterbug-juno:

“Gonna leave the fandom for a while. Wishing you all well.”

The tags say the following: not sure if i’ll be back, thank you so much to everybody who’s read my fics, and who’s sent asks or engaged with my art or any of that, you’re amazing and I’m sending love /end]

That... was not what fans of color wanted, but it was definitely an action they took. Some celebrated, as they were very much wary of Rab for having caused much of the same category of drama in fandoms like Voltron: Legendary Defenders and Warrior Cats. This also meant that she was probably not going to post the fic either.

Some, myself included, were relatively pissed, as they’d wanted even just the measly bit of accountability. An apology or an acknowledgement of having been called out in private and that they’ll take time to consider why. But instead we got Rab leaving in the face of fans of color telling her not to post her Omegaverse fic.

Well. The next day...

[ID: Dated 6 June. A post by jitterbug-juno titled, “Well... that was short-lived”

“I gave the situation a lot of thought yesterday. The reaction to my omegaverse previews made me figure I should leave the fandom. It seemed like the safest option.

But you know what?

Hell.

I don’t want to leave. The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space.

Thank you to everyone who sent messages yesterday. I shouldn’t have made that post about leaving. It was really reactionary. I’m okay and I appreciate your support so much.

(bolded on the post) To those who are angry and uncomfortable with me: Please block me. If you’re going to talk about this fic on Tumblr and Twitter– and this may sound odd– PLEASE NAME ME as Jitterbug-juno or Pholo. Don’t vague me. That way people who don’t want to see this discourse can add my name to their block lists.“ /end]

That certainly was short-lived, she wasn’t kidding.

This got a lot of outrage. Again, the fic is up on Ao3 and she has not taken it down. A lot of POC were pissed and I didn’t see a single fan of color actively support what she was doing, at least, not in my friend group. Everyone started making those posts to block them if you liked the fic or Rab’s content in general, in accordance to what Rab wanted.

Perseus (@mraudiodrama) noticed/pointed out that Rab deleted the part where she said she spoke to several POC about releasing her fic, as well as the part where she said she refused to be chased out of the fandom. This was an incredibly pointed detail to edit out, according to some.

[ID: A screenshot of jitterbug-juno's last post taken 11:00PM. Much of it is the same except the following bolded words are removed: "The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space." /end]

That same day, Rab deleted her blog. I actually caught this one on tape, believe it or not.

[ID: A screen recording taken at 12:01 PM of someone scrolling down jitterbug-juno's account. The posts and asks about Omegaverse and her post about leaving and coming back are conspicuously absent. /end]

Initially, I thought she deleted all mentions of it. I wanted to see firsthand if the rumors about her deleting portions of it were true. If she added things where she was saying that she wanted to write it because she was autistic and wanted Nureyev to be autistic too, regardless of the numerous QPOC telling her not to do it.

Instead, it turned out, she deleted her blog.

And now, we're here. The fic is still up. Her blog is down. Rab's public Twitter account @nataclinn is quiet about this. Her @cushfuddled Twitter account is on private after her run-in with the Warrior Cats fandom, according to a friend. And her Tumblr @cushfuddled account has nothing but memes.

Again, I didn't make this post to stir up drama. I wasn't even obsessively making this post as a call-out because she isn't in the fandom anymore. I just want it out there that this isn't a purity culture thing that got out of hand in a fandom as niche as Penumbra. This was a case of someone being called out and failing to acknowledge it before running away. And I want all that out of the way before I say:

If you are on Rab's side of this debacle, I, a queer person of color, want nothing to do with you either.

[rorykillmore]

heres kind of a more in-depth one: where do your characters fall on a morality scale? like from best to worst i guess

hmmmm this is trickybecause i wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a linear thing – like my charactersdraw different lines in the sand for different issues?? for example, some of mycharacters who will straight up KILL aren’t as comfortable being as being asmean or underhanded as some of the ones who don’t’, etc, but i made a sort ofrough order. it’s weird because, especially towards the middle, it’s not necessarily a ranking of who’s the best person, it’s just... complicated, idk

okay we have kara as thesort of, beacon of moral purity of my roster – she has a no-kill rule that’snot… quite as strict as clark’s or barry’s, like she’ll break it if it’s necessary,but given how powerful she is it generally. isn’t, and she’s also usually veryagainst overly brutalizing someone in a fight, or painful emotionalmanipulation, or collateral damage… the list goes on. she doesn’t even like beingmean to people in her day to day life! she will also like, dig her heels in andstand very firm behind her moral values, which almost makes me surprised thatshe and sasuke haven’t had more conflict than they have – but then again ithink sasuke generally tends to back off and let kara and ratchet do theirMoral Thing and it doesn’t come up as much of a problem since the superfriendsare powerful enough to handle most situations without being driven to moral extremes.anyways yeah. kara probably easily takes the moral high ground on the mostissues out of all my characters. she’s a ray of sunshine

okay next… this kindasurprises me but maybe glory?? now granted, this gets a little murky, becauseglory comes from a completely nonhuman society with different moral standardsto begin with and a culture that (for most of the tribes that were involved inthe war, at least) heavily revolves around violence. so yeah, glory will greeta threat with a face full of acidic venom if the stakes are high enough, buuutbeing a queen has generally made her… very honorable and even kind of lawful bydragon standards. she sticks to her word, she’s very fair, she doesn’t fall toextremes without very good reasons, she has a good heart that can generally berelied upon to do the right thing even if she pretends not to care as much asshe does. yeah.

then we have… maybe caitlin,who follows a lot of kara and glory’s standards and is generally a Good Person,but if i rate her a bit “lower” its because she has this like… survivaliststreak? like when she gets really scared she has a hard time letting anyoneelse help her, and instead she’ll close off and try to handle things on her ownand that’s when she sometimes makes more questionable, morally grey decisions. butoverall caitlin really means well and pretty much dedicates her life to helpingother people, so.

okay and then i guessmadeline! the very definition of “chaotic good”. i mean, she’s kind of hard to rank next to like... vigilantes and stuff, because her day to day experiences are like completely different. she’s not a very violent person but then again it’s like, why would she be, she lives a (relatively) normal life. so i guess my justification is just, madeline is very ride or die, but she’s not so much concerned with doing what’s “right” as she is defending the people and causes that are important to her. her heart is almost always in the right place, but she definitely reverts pretty easily to sabotage and underhanded stuff to get what she wants or just to one-up a rival or something. idk madeline fits weirdly on this list but

then maybe trish, who reallywants to do the right thing, really badly. is she willing to take more dubioussteps to get there than the people listened above? prooobably. trish tends toconcern herself with her end goal rather than her actual methods, which can bedangerous. i don’t necessarily want to point to all the stuff she did in season2 as an example, because a lot of that was influenced by her relapse, butstill. sometimes she’s willing to push pretty far if she thinks the end resultshe’s after is important enough. she’s also probably willing to go as far askilling more readily than anyone who’s been listed so far, though notnecessarily without good reason.

anya, i was honestly not sure whether to put before or after sara -- this is a prime example of one of those cases where two characters have such different standards that it’s hard to compare them, but whatever. anya... really does value her dignity and integrity as a person, but she can’t always afford to uphold them. sometimes her life necessitates her to resort to petty criminal shit like pickpocketing, conning, etc. she’s also... very independent, and really doesn’t have any kind of cause driving her or concern for the bigger picture of things, which also makes her hard to rank, but idk. at the end of the day she’s kind-hearted enough and likes to stay away from trouble on a bigger scale, so she can go here i guess.

and then i guess sara, who. idk, is weird to rank in her own way. she’s not always nice, but she’s... very kind, if that makes sense. she cares a lot about people, from this very individualized perspective as opposed to say, rip, who is more focused on the “greater good” or the bigger picture. sara often has way more qualms with sacrificing innocent people, or ESPECIALLY people she cares about, for the sake of any kind of cause. but also... she’s a former assassin, and will still readily kill her enemies without too much debate about it if she sees it as necessary. and that’s not even touching on the chaotic, destructive, lawless kind of stuff she’ll do on a regular basis just for the sake of a mission

i’m laughing at how comparatively low heather is ranking. neutral evil. nah i mean to be fair she just... kind of has the morals of a bratty teenager. so it’s almost unfair to rank her up against people like sara or w/e. she’d never kill anyone or... do anything like that. but she also pretty much lacks sara’s sense of kindness and empathy and compulsion to act on those things; heather really only makes an effort to be kind to... her friends. she still hasn’t reached the point where she sees why she should care about the world on a broader scope, so a lot of situations she’s just apathetic or... she can still even fall into being outright mean.

siobhan is next, because siobhan at this point is driven by loyalty to the people she cares about, and ultimately... deep down, she does actively want to be a better person. she just struggles with believing she’s capable of that. she’s still an asshole in a lot of situations and her bounty hunting is most definitely morally grey, she primarily just cares about making money, but... there is a growing part of her that wants to be more than that. and she’s already come a long way on denny, so she deserves to be ranked above...

killer frost. THIS asshole. although the thing is, in spite of her name, killer frost doesn’t actually kill people. in fact, she’s actively kinda uncomfortable with killing people, along with a lot of the more brutal tactics the bigger villains in her canon were capable of (or... well, the kind she’s seen already at the mld). so because of this, i almost ranked her above siobhan, but then i backtracked because tbh killer frost does not have the integrity siobhan has grown. she’s slippery, she’s known to turn on even the people she cares about if it benefits her enough, and otherwise she just... rarely cares one way or another about causes or morals or w/e. she CAN be swayed by extremely strong bonds, but that mostly entails team flash at this point, and they aren’t here

god okay i’m not sure lucille deserves the last spot on this list anymore, really, i just... didn’t know where else to put her, so she’s more of a footnote. we’ve reached the footnotes section. i don’t think lucille is even certain of what her own morality looks like; she’s done really terrible things for a really long time but she’s... been fighting hard to get away from that and do better. she’s still very, idk insulated, she doesn’t really care too much about the world around her if it doesn’t affect her or the people she cares about, but she tries to stay away from overly immortal situations.

dolores is another one where i just... have no idea where she’d fit on this. she’s killed people without even a FLICKER of remorse, or she’s let a lot of collateral damage happen to benefit her (ie this thing in canon where she let a bunch of confederate hosts get mowed down by human soldiers so she could lure said soldiers into a trap, but hey, they were confederates!). she, particularly when being swayed by her wyatt programming, is very capable of being extremely pragmatic and absolutely ruthless. but. context is everything. in her previous situation, she had virtually no reason to show the park guests any mercy. they were fucking horrible to the hosts, for years and years and years, and she really has no proof that she should be trusting or forgiving of humanity at this point. this is all she knows. on top of that, she’s the leader of a revolution in a situation where her kind are viewed as corporation property, where they literally have no chance at freedom without bloodshed (save for like, a few of them like maeve who are planning to sneak out of the park and blend in with humankind, but obviously it’d be completely infeasible for ALL of the hosts to do that), so she has to be fucking ruthless. so it’s like... idk on denny, i really don’t know where things will fall with all of this. so much is different.

my cats have absolutely no place on this list because warriors society and values are tremendously different and it’d be too much of a headache to try to compare, so

[twilight-blaze]

most of the queer antis I've encountered are also young. they've been lied to and told that they're doing something helpful. they’ve been told they’re stopping actual real-world harm (which they’re not). they've been told that the harassment and doxxing and death threats and suicide baiting is worth it because it's toward people who deserve it (it’s not, because nobody deserves to be harassed). they think that it'll stop once the adult/minor ships, incest ships, non-con fanworks, and explicit underage fics are gone, and they don't know enough fandom history or the history of censorship in general to realize it won't. they don't realize that their current allies will turn on them the second everything they think is problematic is gone, and that their "safe" and "wholesome" and "unproblematic" queer media is the next target. and they don’t realize that if we do get to that point there won't be anyone left to take their side because everyone who would’ve defended their fanworks they’ll have harassed into blocking them or even harassed them out of fandom entirely.

this next part got very long so it's going under a cut, but if any younger antis are (somehow) reading this—especially younger queer antis—and you're wondering why we’re so confident of this? then read on.

so, if you’re looking for proof of what I’m saying here:

read up on Strikethrough and Boldthrough, especially how the purges were so broad in scope that they deleted not only fanworks but survivor blogs talking about their experiences, which happened because the lists of blogs to ban were provided to LJ by a group of fandom purity vigilantes who didn't care if they caught innocent people in the crossfire (and reportedly also targeted the fandom blogs on purpose because those bloggers wrote fic that those fandom purity vigilantes thought was sinful).

read up on the FFN NC-17 purges, where every explicitly sexual fanfic was ultimately removed and the rating was banned completely because some fandom purity vigilantes flooded them with complaints about the ones they didn't like.

read up on conservative christian fandom vigilante groups, such as Warriors for Innocence (the group behind the LJ purges) who claimed to be anti-pedophilia (probably because that tends to garner an immediate outraged reaction that many people won't even bother to double check) but in all honesty were out for any fanworks that didn't meet their "pure christian standards." which included any queer fanwork, if that wasn't clear enough for you already.

and here's the thing: it's people like that who are behind this resurgence in fandom purity culture. it's people like that who you've allied yourselves with. except they've stepped up their recruiting game this time by specifically saying they're only against pedophilia, incest, rape, etc. without mentioning their religious motivations or their ultimate goal of removing everything they find objectionable, your queer fanworks included. they're doing it this way to try to convince people who would otherwise see this bullshit for what it is, and if you’re a younger queer anti, then I’m sorry to tell you this, but you've fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. those people are not on your side; they’re using you to further their own goals. (and it’s working! if someone came into our fandom spaces nowadays talking about how someone’s fanfic was an affront to god and must make them an atheist degenerate, who would take them seriously? I sure wouldn’t, and I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t either. but if instead they just say that fanfic is romanticizing pedophilia to an audience of impressionable young people? suddenly they have an angry mob at their disposal, and an angry mob can do a lot more damage to fandom.)

this is why we say you need to know your fandom history, because when we say removing adult/minor fanworks is a stepping stone to removing queer works in general, it's not fearmongering, it's history. we know it'll happen because it's happened before. it's happened multiple times before. if we're not careful, it'll happen again.

this is why AO3's policies on allowed content and on fanwork removal are what they are, because they’re a direct response to Strikethrough. they’re there to ensure something like that never happens again, and to ensure that your fanworks are safe when people try to pull this shit.

and if you’re harassing people over their fanworks, or you’re trying to tell people what they can and can’t write, or you’re advocating for any of these content restrictions on AO3, you are actively helping to bring about the censorship of all fanworks that don’t fit a conservative christian purity culture view of the world. stop and think about that for a second, and then ask yourself if that’s a road you really want to be going down.

one last thing: while it's not technically fandom related, I'd also recommend giving Neil Gaiman's excellent blog post Why defend freedom of icky speech? a read. it's geared more towards government banning of published media, but the concepts raised are equally applicable to fanworks and fandom spaces. the problems with using the law to enforce the banning of published works at a government level also apply to using policies to enforce the banning of fanworks at an archive level, and the reasons it's necessary to defend works which you personally don't like (and yes, even ones you morally disapprove of!) are equally relevant to fanworks as they are to published ones.

you know what both frustrates the shit out of me and breaks my heart about queer antis and exclusionists? i really don't wish ill on them. i want them to truly understand the harm they're causing and start trying to fix it. i want all of us to make it, goddamn it. but i don't know if some of them would say the same.

--

What I find most upsetting is that they're teaming up with people who want to exclude them. This isn't even one segment of the queer community against another: it's suckers who don't realize their new buddies think "evil cishet fujoshi" includes their own damn selves.