thedogsled:

frozen-delight:

shinelikethunder‌:

itsbuckybitch‌:

I’ve had a bee in my bonnet since this incident the other day, and I figure it’s probably time to get it out of my system.

Darkfic is not a new phenomenon. It’s as old as the hills. For as long as there have been fic writers, there have been fic writers using the medium to explore themes that are taboo in mainstream fiction. Torture and gore, death and destruction, rape and sexual abuse. Every author has their own motives and inspirations for the content they produce, and there’s no ‘average’ darkfic writer. But what I can tell you – anecdotally, from a full decade’s worth of experience drifting in and out of various darkfic communities – is that when you involve yourself with these authors, you start meeting survivors. Lots of survivors. In what I think it’s fair to call a statistically significant concentration. 

For some, their survivor status is incidental to their controversial interests; for others of us, past trauma and mental illness are intrinsically tied to what we read and write. Darkfic can be a lifeline, a validation, a liberation, a profound and unbeatably intense catharsis for the shit we’ve got stored in our heads. Darkfic enclaves within fandom are places where we can air our darkest and most desperate fears and fantasies in a safe, supportive environment, in the company of others who remind us that we are not broken or defective just for wanting the things we want.

And here’s the thing: literally no one in these communities wants to force outsiders to join us. We recognise that our content is stuff that the majority of people don’t want to see, and we do our best to protect the rest of fandom from involuntary exposure by using appropriate trigger warnings. We don’t want to hurt anyone, we don’t want to ruin anyone’s innocence – we just want to be left alone to do our thing. But tumblr callout culture has taught people that “speaking out” against things they don’t like is cool and brave and socially progressive. It has created an environment where virtually the automatic response to distress, discomfort or personal offense is to look for a perpetrator, a culpable oppressive villain to whom the offended party can deliver a vicious “smackdown” while their friends look on and cheer.

I’m not going to argue just now about whether that’s ever an acceptable way to treat people. Regardless of anyone’s personal feelings on callout culture as a whole, there’s an intersection between darkfic and trauma survivors that you guys all need to understand before you go targeting darkfic authors as convenient representatives of everything you think is wrong with the world. So let me lay this out as simply and clearly as I can:

• When you oppose darkfic because it “harms survivors”, you are talking directly over large crowds of survivors who will tell you they find darkfic to be a validating, healing experience.
• When you claim that darkfic is self-destructive and unhealthy, you are privileging your personal beliefs over the lived experience of other people.
• When you accuse darkfic authors of glorifying and supporting real-life abuse, you accuse survivors of glorifying and supporting their own abusers.
• When you blame darkfic for supporting rape culture, you are making victims responsible for the actions of their oppressors.
• When you set conditions around the creation and enjoyment of darkfic – aka “it’s only okay if you’re a survivor” – you create a culture of coercive disclosure, where survivors are expected to trade their right to privacy for the right to live free of harassment.
• When you criticise darkfic authors for using survivor status as an “excuse”, you are locking us out of our own communities and denying our past traumas for the sake of a political argument.

If you are anti-darkfic, you are anti-survivor. I’m sick and tired of watching vulnerable members of my community get harassed and bullied by people who claim to be acting in the interests of survivors. I’m sick of being told that survivors like me aren’t survivors at all, that our very existence is toxic and harmful, that we have no right to speak and be heard on an issue that affects us so intimately. 

Anti-darkfic fans, you need to pull back. You need to realise that your comfort and safety, while important, are not more important than the comfort and safety of other people. You need to understand that it is your responsibility to learn how to peacefully coexist alongside people who experience the world differently from you, even if their experiences make you unhappy or uncomfortable. You have no right to ask us to stop existing so that you can feel at ease. You have no right to demand that we prioritise the needs of some survivors over others. You don’t own fandom, and you have no right to dictate who does or doesn’t get to participate.

You are not brave heroes speaking out against the spread of moral degeneracy in fandom. You are bullies, deliberately and systematically targeting trauma survivors with your abusive tactics. It really is that simple. And it needs to stop.

WELL FUCKING PUT.

Addendum: coercive disclosure is not the only reason it’s a terrible idea to draw a line in the sand between survivors and non-survivors liking darkfic. Fiction is a way to explore various aspects of a theme or situation in a controlled, safe environment–including aspects that could never be explored in real life without harming real people. It’s a way to explore, dissect, understand, and rehearse traumas that could befall anyone. For those who’ve actually experienced something similar, it can help them process it, or be an outstretched hand and a voice saying “you aren’t alone; either I know that feel, or I can imagine having that feel if I put myself in your shoes.” For those who haven’t, it’s an outlet for anxiety, a mental preparation, a “what if?” and a “how might someone react to–?” And even the most twisted, fucked-up darkfic is usually an exercise in empathy: empathy for characters we already care about thrown into terrible situations, and also a space outside of actual RL horrors where we can take a deep breath and attempt the kind of radical empathy that lets us understand what drives people to do abhorrent things. As far as the first one goes, I certainly don’t think anyone should be compelled to partake if it distresses them, but I do think that actively discouraging and shaming people for trying to empathize with another’s suffering–even if they go about it badly or the execution is shoddy and distasteful–is utterly toxic behavior. As for the second, the kind that consists of trying to imagine your way into a perpetrator’s shoes: it may make you wildly uncomfortable, but understanding the reasons for a thing is among the best tools for recognizing and preventing real-world evil. Beyond that, dehumanization–even of villains, bullies, and abusers–is a dangerous impulse. No one’s required to empathize with the people who’ve hurt them, but making a fucking policy out of attacking everyone who tries only plants the seeds of further evil and abuse.

And we need these stories. Desperately. One of the reasons noncon/dubcon fic in particular has such a staggering variety of weird, fucked-up, iddy tropes and clumsy/insensitive/offensive executions is that we’re fucking marinating in rape culture and have very few scripts or outlets to talk about it. All of it. Even the ugly, unsavory parts, the impulses we know are wrong, the desires we hate or feel guilty about and can’t discuss without being accused of straight-up validating whatever heinous cultural messages planted them in our subconscious. Even the dumb, unrealistic power fantasies of fighting off rapists, taming rapists and making them love and respect you, walking away unaffected and being able to laugh it off as a wacky misadventure, being comforted by someone whose love (and/or healing cock) will magically fix everything. One person’s insensitive is another person’s escapism; one person’s offensive is another person’s “thank god, I’m not the only one broken enough to have that awful thought.” Fiction–particularly the communities that have formed around fanfiction–is one of the very few no-holds-barred places where we can Fucking Talk About It, without the pressure to speak only in hushed tones and behind closed doors where decent people won’t be exposed to it, or to uphold the image of a perfect model victim who never has ugly, unacceptable thoughts about the ugly mess left behind by an unspeakably ugly act. When you shame and police darkfic in fandom, you are taking that space away from the people who need it the most. You are telling them to their faces that they’re filthy, abnormal, tainted and contagious, and that they need to either shut the fuck up or keep it in the shame closet where it belongs instead of sharing it in public with other people who might understand. You are, in other words, doing the exact thing that’s tied with “I don’t believe you” for first place on the list of What Not To Say To A Survivor Opening Up About Their Abuse. Survivors aren’t the only ones with a tangle of conflicted thoughts, feelings, and neuroses about sexual violence and rape culture who benefit from exploring it in fiction, but you can be damn sure they’re a major constituency. The absolute last thing they need is some white-knight ‘anti’ bullying them into silence with concern-trolling about whether their “coping mechanisms” are “healthy” or whether they’re setting a sufficiently good and wholesome example for teh childrens.

The “only if you’re a survivor using it to cope!” bullshit is also noxious because fiction lets us handle difficult issues through several layers of distance and displacement, isolate particular aspects, transpose them into different but related situations, etc. Just because someone’s not a survivor of the exact thing they’re reading or writing about doesn’t mean they don’t have very real pain they’re trying to process. And again, empathy. I don’t give a shit what your sexual-assault history is; if you read my fucked-up Hydra Trash Party porn about Steve Rogers getting gang-raped by Crossbones & co and staggering away still shouting “FITE ME U PATHETIC ASSHOLES” even though he wants to die inside, and it hits you where you live, I’m fucking glad you found it. If I read your fucked-up Hydra Trash Party porn and hit a line that makes me feel like you’ve plucked something ugly and painful and private directly from my brain, frankly I’ll be even more impressed if it turns out you were extrapolating rather than writing from personal experience. And if your badwrong noncon porn is directly at odds with everything I’ve experienced re: rape and its aftermath? I don’t live inside your head, dude. I don’t know what you’re drawing on or what demons you’re exorcizing. I don’t even know whether you’re writing from firsthand experience that’s dramatically different from mine. All I know is that whoever your target audience is, it ain’t me.

One final note on noncon fic specifically: it works on the exact same principle as consensual nonconsent play IRL. No, the character(s) didn’t consent; neither did the persona being acted out by someone playing the victim in a con-noncon scene. The consent that distinguishes it from real-world violation isn’t between the characters in the fantasy; it’s between author and reader. The back button is the safeword. And in contrast to one of the dangers of IRL con-noncon play, it’s a safeword the author has zero power to override or ignore.

(b = mine)

Good post.

So I think it’s fair to say I have a dog in this race. I used to write darkfic for the Harry Potter fandom, and in fact one of the early bangs I was in was the HP darkfic big bang. Feels like it was a million years ago. The thing is, this debate was raging even then. Even back then, people were there to tell you what you can and can’t write, who should be able to write what, how far was too far. It drove me away from it to a certain extent, despite having made good friends. I had other reasons for leaving fandom, but the toxic environment around darkfic was a part of it.

I’ve inched back into writing darkfic for SPN. I’ve got a couple of really dark pieces up at the moment, for which the warnings are many. And here’s the thing: I’m not a survivor. If I have issues I’m working out, I’m not aware of them. But I do use fic to convey narrative as well as explore the emotions of the characters experiencing those things. I used my Handmaid’s Tale AU to tear up the A/B/O true mates trope. I used my demon Dean fic to explore how a character might be manipulated and groomed into doing something against his nature because of a love for someone that no longer exists. Hell, it’s not a darkfic, but I wrote A World As Yet Unseen because I wanted to really interrogate why disabilities in fic are so often magically cured at the end of a story, especially blindness. 

This is what we do. We explore characters. Yes, some people are exploring because they have some personal trauma, or even for some people a dark side they’re well aware of, but that’s not true of everyone, nor should it be. We write what we write because we can’t not write it, because these things, however they’re born inside you, insist on being given form and set free. And we slap on a billion warnings because it isn’t intended to hurt or wound or mislead people. It’s called what it is, labeled unashamedly, not so that haters can find it, but so that those who need it or want it can find it, and so that those who don’t want it can steer clear. When you make people ashamed of tagging things appropriately, you will stumble into those things inappropriately.

I am immensely proud that there are people who read my fic who need it. To insist I can’t write these stories because I’m not traumatized myself would deprive them of those stories. Most readers don’t leave comments for me because their reasons for reading are private. Some people I’m sure click back having realized it’s not for them. Finally, some people are creeping back in just to say ‘This was really hot, and I feel guilty for loving it so much’. I get less signed in kudos and comments for darkfic, because fandom has made people ashamed of it; a dirty little habit. But for the people who come to me and say ‘This story spoke to me’ or ‘this story was just what I needed today’–why is that of less value than if I’d written a fluffy romance and scratched someone’s perfectly morally unambiguous itch?

The most genuine and emotional comments I’ve ever received have been on darkfics. They strike an emotional chord with readers reliably because of the intensity of emotions portrayed. I had a commenter about this time last year who told me that the way I described Castiel’s relationship with emotions, his inability to label the complexity of these things he barely understood, made them feel like I was speaking just to them, that they could identify themselves within those descriptions. I don’t have difficulty with labeling my emotions, but I described it, and it touched another person. It meant so much to them that they left me comments saying so. 

Fiction – not just fanfiction – has supreme power like that. And really at the end of the day (as some additions to this post have added) you do not need to have experienced a thing to empathize with it. You can teach yourself about it, and approach the topic respectfully. Just like Jeff Lindsay didn’t have to kill people to write the Dexter series, and Anthony Horowitz isn’t actually a spy.

And some people are going to do a crappy job, but where do you get off judging them for that? People have to learn. God knows my Harry Potter darkfic is unbearable to my mature eyes, but it meant enough to enough readers at the time and in the years since that it as much as belongs to them as it does to me, and judging myself for it – removing it – would be judging them. You do not get to judge people on quality, because if so we wouldn’t have fanfic at all, because mainstream culture would have just waved fanfiction off as teenagers drivel years ago. Fanfiction is done. It’s problematic. Delete it all. After all, it’s not REAL writing amirite?

So look. I could get flak for my honesty here. Since I’m not untangling some dark place inside myself, people can obviously say whatever they like to me without feeling any guilt that they’re attacking someone vulnerable. Go for it, I’m handy with the block function. But I will stand by my belief that darkfic is a service to its community. You don’t need to have any part of it, you can pretend it doesn’t exist, but when you bully darkfic creators you destroy people, both writers and readers. In essence, you rob them of connection with fandom when you drive darkfic underground, because the people who need it (or hell, just want it) can’t find it, or worse, they don’t feel SAFE in fandom, don’t feel as though they have a place to exist. I find it ironic that the people who claim to want fandom to be a safe space in the purist moral sense are the same ones who want to make other people feel shitty and unwanted.

If you earn the trust of a darkfic reader, they will tell you what the genre means to them. They will tell you what specific fics mean to them, or a sentence, or they’ll tell you all about a single author who really gets them. Those moments of trust from my readers always let me know that I’m doing it right, so thank you to all those people, I am always grateful for your input and feedback.