your-average-teenage-mess

[your-average-teenage-mess]

Fandom when a character canonically identifies as straight: well, it's not up for the canon to decide! Lots of people think or say they're straight at some point in their life and then decide they aren't, right? We're allowed to project our own experiences onto them!

Fandom when a character who canonically identifies as gay is reimagined as bi by a bi author: no, stop! You're hurting so many gay people by implying that the experiences of people who used to identify as gay And found out they're also attracted to the opposite gender deserve to be aknowlaged!

[your-average-teenage-mess]

You're not immune to being the bully btw. You're not immune to being in the wrong

[your-average-teenage-mess]

something has gone deeply wrong when "focusing pragmatically on issues you can influence and working to make life better for yourself and your community" is considered an unserious distraction while "endlessly exposing yourself to media about distressing situations you can't control" is considered political engagement

[your-average-teenage-mess]

if this post reaches your dashboard, it’s a sign for you to close tumblr and go write that fic in your drafts

[your-average-teenage-mess]

[your-average-teenage-mess]

Also can someone please write a fanfic about this? Pretty please? For me? I'm already working on like 3 different fics, and I have deadlines

no more catboys. catmen . 28 yr old washed up depressed catman downing his 5th whiskey glass and his cat ears twitch depressedly

[your-average-teenage-mess]

Why are these all so GOOD

no more catboys. catmen . 28 yr old washed up depressed catman downing his 5th whiskey glass and his cat ears twitch depressedly

[your-average-teenage-mess]

That's so good. AAAAAAH

no more catboys. catmen . 28 yr old washed up depressed catman downing his 5th whiskey glass and his cat ears twitch depressedly

[your-average-teenage-mess]

no more catboys. catmen . 28 yr old washed up depressed catman downing his 5th whiskey glass and his cat ears twitch depressedly

[your-average-teenage-mess]

Okay, so this DID leave me thinking, how could platforms for troubled adults who want to have fucked up fun keep away children who are trying to be edgy? Is there even a way to do it? Did anyone ever?

And then I realized, oh, this is why myproana changed its name.

Thing is, it was genuinely effective. When I looked for a website like that, I legitimately did scroll past it in shame a bunch of times, literally just thinking it was a serious mental health group that wouldn't take my BS, and I only found out when I saw the entire URL written down somewhere, wondered "oh, is this the real website address? It's still up?" And tried typing it into the search engine. And it took over a year until that happened, which... 14 to 15 isn't a little. Unironically good job.

Okay but like. Acting like children are out of place when they're in fandom spaces engaging with sexual content is just disingenuous at this point. My first real exposure to an online community was Wattpad, when I was nine, and that was when I started reading smut, because that is what all the fandom kids around me were doing. I moved to ao3 when I was, like, eleven. I started WRITING smut there when I was 14. And basically my entire friend group had a similar timeline. We are past having plausible deniability about this. If your fandom has a lot of sexual content in it and you're met with people getting mad at you for presenting in it stuff that aren't appropriate for children, you can argue on whether or not you should get to do that, but you don't get to argue that the children in the fandom shouldn't be reading explicit stuff in the first place, because the fact is, regardless of what you think they should be doing, they are doing that. They're probably tens of percentages of the people consuming and creating this content. You've almost certainly jerked off to something that was written by someone under fifteen at some point. Sorry if this is how you found out.

And I'm not even saying "stop writing fucked up porn if there are minors in the scene", because there's always going to be someone else down the line, and if a child wants to find their dead doves, they will, and they're gonna get their sex ed from pornographic content even if you personally don't want anything to do with it. What I AM asking you is, if you DO write that sort of thing, stop taking for granted that everyone reading your fics have the emotional maturity to comprehend how some of the themes you presented are dangerous or destructive in the real world, and to start fucking clarifying it in the descriptions. Be better than the next person down the line. Yes, even if it makes you feel gross to think about a child reading your noncon/age gap/whatever fic. The rest of the internet will always have fucked up porn to offer, and if you want to be better, you WILL need to actually take steps to mitigate the damage that WILL happen when children WILL read what you write by actually clarifying where it stands next to real-world values, rather than just saying "well they shouldn't be here in the first place". I learned what rape was and why it was bad on Wattpad, in the disclaimer of a wings of fire lemons story, at the age of nine. I don't want to think how my life would have looked like if it wasn't there. This is the reality of fandom right now, you don't get to pretend it doesn't matter. And I'm not gonna try and fight the fact that porn exists and children are reading it, because that's just not gonna be stopped by any of our actions. Even if everyone on ao3 left tomorrow, there would still be Wattpad, and furthermore, there would still be r34, and even furthermore than that, there would still be 4chan. But I DO hope that more of the sexually curious fandom kids will get to at least pass by someone who took into consideration how this will all fuck up their psyche, and took some steps of clarification that might genuinely save them so much pain in the future.

[your-average-teenage-mess]

Okay but like. Acting like children are out of place when they're in fandom spaces engaging with sexual content is just disingenuous at this point. My first real exposure to an online community was Wattpad, when I was nine, and that was when I started reading smut, because that is what all the fandom kids around me were doing. I moved to ao3 when I was, like, eleven. I started WRITING smut there when I was 14. And basically my entire friend group had a similar timeline. We are past having plausible deniability about this. If your fandom has a lot of sexual content in it and you're met with people getting mad at you for presenting in it stuff that aren't appropriate for children, you can argue on whether or not you should get to do that, but you don't get to argue that the children in the fandom shouldn't be reading explicit stuff in the first place, because the fact is, regardless of what you think they should be doing, they are doing that. They're probably tens of percentages of the people consuming and creating this content. You've almost certainly jerked off to something that was written by someone under fifteen at some point. Sorry if this is how you found out.

And I'm not even saying "stop writing fucked up porn if there are minors in the scene", because there's always going to be someone else down the line, and if a child wants to find their dead doves, they will, and they're gonna get their sex ed from pornographic content even if you personally don't want anything to do with it. What I AM asking you is, if you DO write that sort of thing, stop taking for granted that everyone reading your fics have the emotional maturity to comprehend how some of the themes you presented are dangerous or destructive in the real world, and to start fucking clarifying it in the descriptions. Be better than the next person down the line. Yes, even if it makes you feel gross to think about a child reading your noncon/age gap/whatever fic. The rest of the internet will always have fucked up porn to offer, and if you want to be better, you WILL need to actually take steps to mitigate the damage that WILL happen when children WILL read what you write by actually clarifying where it stands next to real-world values, rather than just saying "well they shouldn't be here in the first place". I learned what rape was and why it was bad on Wattpad, in the disclaimer of a wings of fire lemons story, at the age of nine. I don't want to think how my life would have looked like if it wasn't there. This is the reality of fandom right now, you don't get to pretend it doesn't matter. And I'm not gonna try and fight the fact that porn exists and children are reading it, because that's just not gonna be stopped by any of our actions. Even if everyone on ao3 left tomorrow, there would still be Wattpad, and furthermore, there would still be r34, and even furthermore than that, there would still be 4chan. But I DO hope that more of the sexually curious fandom kids will get to at least pass by someone who took into consideration how this will all fuck up their psyche, and took some steps of clarification that might genuinely save them so much pain in the future.

[your-average-teenage-mess]

I love it when a will wood lyric just creates an entirely new emotion who's existence you haven't noticed before and now you feel an urgent need for an entire story with a plot and characters and themes to explore it? Like, the way Beetlejuice was around what it's like when you never want to stop hurting after losing someone you loved, because it feels like the only thing you have left from them? So, like. I need something like that, but like. About "I'm down pounding my head against the kitchen floor, apologizing for my life for ever entering yours, don't say "I'm sorry but this can't go on", I know you got scars of your own, but hide my knives before you go, I'll either live or die alone". Also about "suffering's just another perspective" (in the context of doing something horrible to someone else). Also about "But just like a vampire, I don't exist". Also about "I might be a saint worth steeples, I might be the grain of evil, bad things happen to good people, good things happen to me". Also about "I am quantum physics, my witness brings me to existence" (in the context of gender). Also about "the devil made me do it but I also kinda wanted to". Also about "I'm not a good person, I'm barely a person at all but some day I'll be perfect and I'll make up for it all". Also about "you're trying to replace yourself". Also about (and I did actually know this one before, but still) "this is not enough, this is not enough to prove it yet, no I need to hit the bottom". Also about-

[your-average-teenage-mess]

Okay but if your post has "how can you not reblog this, this could save a life!" And I cannot take this part out in the process of reblogging, I'm not gonna fucking reblog it. No matter how useful the information is. I am not taking on the commitment of being a good person again, it fucking sucked (and also my conscience will be clean in a few years when I'm dead anyways).

[your-average-teenage-mess]

[your-average-teenage-mess]

The whole "genius is a myth used to glorify cishet white men and absolve them of responsibility" narrative pisses me off so much. Like, what kind of person do you have to be to think that instead of recognizing all the marginalized people throughout history that created genuinely magnificent things, we should just pretend nobody was amazing ever at anything? Like, yes, Van Gogh DOES deserve to be aknowlaged as a fucking amazing artist who created fucking amazing things out of a fucking amazing mind. So does Frida Kahlo. I'd ask what kind of person you'd have to be to think that social justice should be about tearing his memory down rather than uplifting hers, except I KNOW what kind of person that is- the kind that cannot imagine a narrative that doesn't revolve around the people you were taught to see as important, but wants to be progressive about that.

[your-average-teenage-mess]

Okay, so... The "she's sexualizing herself on purpose, that's a very deep part of her characterization" line of argument made sense with, like, Faith Lehane. And then maybe like five other characters at most. In the history of cinema.

[your-average-teenage-mess]