Writing fiction *is* a good place to work through traumatic events. But it’s gotta be at our own pace. It’s good it’s your brain suggesting it though
For sure. Fiction is a great place to work through trauma. This particular instance is about teacher’s abusing their students (physically and mentally), which is something I’ve been wanting to do something about for a while but this is actually a great place to do it. So I’m really glad my brain suggested it.
… phew. this ask almost passes as a legit question, but the ‘xoxo’ at the end is a little much. still, what a great opportunity to talk about this ongoing problem of people ignoring warnings that a work contains content that upsets them, then complaining that they were upset when they viewed it.
(first, a side note: don’t censor the word ‘pedophilia’. It’s not a slur – it’s a content warning. If you censor it, the blacklists of people who don’t want to see posts that mention pedophilia won’t catch it and they could be harmed. Just use the word.)
anti-shippers who look at a fic or fanwork’s tags and say ‘this has problematic content! I better go tell the author how problematic their content is!’, I have news for you:
warnings on fanworks indicate that the person creating the work knows the content is ‘problematic’, not for all audiences, and may hurt people if they view it unsuspectingly.
stop taking fanwork warnings and tags in bad faith and using them as an excuse to harass and harm creators.
warnings aren’t ‘disclaimers’ (and aren’t used as such). they’re the CONTAINS NAPROXIN. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN sticker on painkillers. The content is good, even helpful, for some people, but for others who don’t need it or are too young to understand what they’re consuming could be harmed. take the warnings seriously and if you don’t like what they say the fic contains, you really are better off not reading/viewing it!
‘they’re not warnings, they’re advertisements!’ they can function as both! people who want to read that content can find it and people who don’t want to read that content can avoid it. everyone is happier, except anti-shippers who are mad that people are enjoying content they don’t personally approve of.
‘If the creator knows their content is problematic, then they shouldn’t have created it in the first place! Or if they did, they shouldn’t have put it on the internet for people to see!’ well that’s a very different conversation. What you’re saying is that you advocate for censorship, and in that case ‘don’t like don’t read’ would be worthless: only things you like would be allowed to exist in the first place.
But let’s talk about how ‘they shouldn’t have put it on the internet for people to see.’ the basis for this is, I know, that it could corrupt the unsuspecting youth who read the bad content. But isn’t this a bit contradictory? if a fanwork is tagged with a warning that it contains abuse, everyone who looks at the fanwork is going to know that 1) the author believes that abuse is bad and needs to be warned for, and 2) the work contains abuse. Taking these points together, no matter how positively the abuse is depicted, a viewer has foreknowledge that it’s abusive and the creator thinks abuse is bad. It’s simply insulting to imply that viewers will look at the abuse in the fanwork so uncritically as to not think it’s horrible after receiving such a warning.
In fact, I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that people who have been raped or abused (or still being abused) or undergone other harm have read fics with these warnings and because of the warnings, realized what had happened to themselves was not okay. If anti-shippers had their way, those fics wouldn’t even exist, much less be warned for.
I’m about to say something radical, so brace yourself:
because tagging warnings is the accepted way to warn people about dangerous content in fandom, the things more likely to cause confusion and harm in fanworks are the things that aren’t warned for.
Even the most positive depiction of abuse would be spoiled by a warning. Can you imagine if the beginning of every copy of Nabokov’s Lolita started with ‘Warning: this work contains depictions of csa, abuse, and child grooming.’ It would force readers who are blind to the hints that the narrator is unreliable to read the work with a very different eye, and I doubt most people would read it and conclude it’s a love story the way many people do today.
Now Lolita was intended to be a kind of monster story from the point of view of the monster – it was never meant to be a positive depiction at all. Nabokov’s work was too subtle for most people, but he was a master storyteller. I think if he could, he’d go back and add a warning so people would stop getting the wrong idea.
In fandom, where we have a widely-accepted tagging system, potentially harmful content that the creator adds deliberately will be warned for. But the potentially harmful content that the creator doesn’t know about won’t be – and that’s the stuff that tends to be a lot more sneaky and insidious.
Let’s take your example:
“i can be as racist as i want and you have to deal with it because i used a disclaimer".
Racism does crop up a lot in fanworks, but not in the way this implies. There’s a huge difference between a creator recognizing racism exists and utilizing it as an aspect of a setting or acknowledging it in a respectful, truthful way and a creator who does not recognize their own racist blind spots and therefore ends up perpetuating harmful stereotypes or providing racist narration without realizing it.
The former tends to be warned for; the latter never is because the creator doesn’t even know they’re being racist. The former may be painful, because racism is shitty and harmful and real, but a person can steer clear if they want to avoid it and the warning shows the content is known to be bad. The latter is more painful because it’s not just depicting racism: it is in fact perpetuating racism.
So which is actually worse: the fic that has a warning for racism or the fic that doesn’t?
And this can be applied to anything. A fic that depicts a character being abused but doesn’t warn for abuse tells me that the author doesn’t know the work contains abuse (which is worrying for the safety of the author). A fic that contains dubious consent but the author doesn’t warn for noncon/dubcon/rape tells me that the author has a poor understanding of consent. These are the fics that are more likely to be dangerous. Fics without content warnings are also the ones most likely to unironically and uncritically depict the bad behavior in a positive light – because the authors have been taught by the rest of society outside fandom that what they’ve depicted is normal/not harmful. They are victims, and they need help, not people yelling at them about how problematic they are.
Two last notes, which I’ll try to keep short:
- If a fanwork depicts a relationship that’s canonically unhealthy in a world where it’s fluffy and healthy, they are not responsible for putting warnings on their fic that pertain to the canon version of the ship. For instance: Kylo and Rey are enemies in current Star Wars continuity and Kylo tried to torture Rey for information. But if a fic is set in a future where Kylo is well-adjusted and happy and dating Rey in a non-abusive relationship, the fic does not need to warn for ‘abuse’. the fic doesn’t contain abuse. Let it go.
- No creator is beholden to using anti definitions of words like ‘pedophilia’, ‘abuse’, and ‘incest’ for their warnings. The definition of what antis call ‘pedophilia’, ‘incest’, and ‘abuse’ varies from fandom to fandom – sometimes from pairing to pairing. While tags will always be somewhat subjective, the wide variety of definitions these words have in anti-shipper parlance makes them all but meaningless, so use them when you see fit, not when antis demand it. If antis have a problem with it, they’ll just have to start treating ship tags as warnings* and avoid all depictions of ships they don’t like. (which is what we all wish they’d do anyway.)
And now for the final irony: every time anti-shippers use warnings as a reason to go yell at people about how their fanworks are bad, antis give creators less incentive to tag warnings. People might start to hope that if they just don’t warn up front for the potentially dangerous content people will stop yelling at them without even looking at the work itself. Or if the work is borderline (’maybe this is abusive but maybe it’s not’), they may opt to go without the warnings so they can avoid the extra trouble. this is already happening with dubious consent depictions. If a noncon warning gets you yelled at, then fics where the consent isn’t completely denied will just not get warned for at all, and that’s fucked up. And when the warnings aren’t there, people are way more likely to stumble on something of a nature that upsets them!
So as usual, in their crusade to eradicate all content that isn’t unquestionably wholesome and pure antis make everything a little less safe for everyone. Thanks, guys. (please stop.)
and creators: please, depict terrible things in your fanworks in whatever light you choose – and warn for them. you might accidentally help save someone from a real situation that’s terrible.
*ship tags also work as both warnings and advertisements, as it happens. Funny, isn’t it?
@trisscar368
Imo, Bad Boys could be debatable but given that 1) we know Dean lies and 2) the whole episode is about how shitty John was and how happier Dean is without him, I don’t think we’re supposed to believe a werewolf did it.
Dark Side of the Moon, though, yeah. I’m of the opinion that whatever happened was deeply traumatizing but I don’t think it has to be physical. Mental abuse can do the same thing. But I don’t discount it. Maybe it was both. But yeah. That look. *shudders* A+ acting though.
@unforth-ninawaters replied to your post
For drug use I think it depends what we’re defining as drugs. I tend not to think of pot as a drug, at least not in the dangerous way. It’s basically canon that Dean at least has smoked weed. Emotional abuse and manipulation for both Dean and Sam is also canon. For harder drugs, I’m not so sure (cocaine, heroine, etc) but I lean toward no – maybe psychotropics, that seems a little more in character – and I’m on the fence about physical abuse.
(pre-series mental illness is imo as much as a given as during-season mental illness)
The thing for physical abuse is…my inclination is that John didn’t hit them, didn’t beat them in the traditional sense. But I do think his neglect shaded into what would probably legally constitute physical abuse – both in terms of food deprivation, etc., but also in the “it’s just a little scratch quit being such a baby, be a man” kind of way – leaving them to suffer through injuries that COULD have been succored if John wasn’t so fixated on “toughening them up.”
And yeah, I agree that’s both Dean and Sam. I do NOT think in canon that John did any form of sexual abuse against the boys, nor do I think it very likely that Sam had to turn to prostitution – Dean would never have let that happen.
I can see psychotropics. I wouldn’t put it past Dean to at least try things here and there but I’m not sure if it would pass experimentation.
It’s funny to me because I posted a thing about Dean having anxiety a while back and the response was basically “yeah, totally”. I thought I was going to have to explain that one, but it seems like everyone I talk to is just like “yup, mental illness is a given”. Which is fine.
I can definitely see John letting them suffer through injuries he doesn’t deem “serious” enough. I don’t think they were ever hit or sexually abused, but I do think they could have been grabbed or smacked or shoved in ways that might’ve left bruises, even if they were unintentional. I seem to be the outlier in that respect, but I feel like it could have happened a few times. I don’t think John would have intentionally hit his kids, but I think he might have been rough with them.
And yeah, there is no way Sam would have had to turn to prostitution. Unless he was alone at the time, Dean wouldn’t allow it.
@unforth-ninawaters replied to your post
I even kinda hate it – I hate that John W being a douche bag put Dean in the position of being young and desperately needing money. He had to be an adult so early. Even if he didn’t have to turn to prostitution we know he turned to theft and other crime. He had so few choices and was so determined to support Sam as John was unwilling to do. Poor Dean.
Like I don’t find in sexy (no offense to those who do) I find it fucking tragic.
Incoming John Winchester rant.
I hate him. Like, I don’t like to use that word a lot and especially not for fictional characters, but I really do hate him. I hate that he put a child in the situations that required that child to be the full-time caregiver of another child. I hate that he put Dean in the position to learn to fight and kill and understand that there were things out in the dark that wanted to kill him at a young age. I hate that Dean was desperate enough he stole to feed Sam. I hate that he was neglectful. I hate that he was emotionally abusive. I hate that the last thing he said to Dean was “Sorry for sucking. BTW you mihgt have to kill Sam. Okay, bye!” I hate John Winchester. And I hate that sometimes his actions are supposed to be “justified”. Like, maybe it’s me as a child of an abusive alcoholic but I hate that he gets defended. I don’t believe he was doing his best. He may have loved his kids, but he wasn’t doing what was right by them. And I hate the justification is usually “but the apocalypse!”. Fuck the apocalypse, he could have done better! He didn’t have to be neglectful and abusive in order to keep his kids safe. He didn’t have to put Dean in a position where he was that desperate to steal, let alone whatever else he might have done.
Okay, end rant.
But yeah. I agree that it’s a tragedy. A Pretty Woman type AU is a lot difffernt from canon verse, imo, so I am a bit torn on reading about it. I don’t find it all that appealing in canon verse, but to each their own.
I wouldn’t say I like it but when I specifically consider canon I think it’s pretty damn likely.
Oh, definitely. It’s one of those things that will probably never be clear cut undeniable fact but that’s one of a few things I would say are more likely than not. That and drug use, emotional abuse (possible physical abuse as well) and pre-series mental illness, I think it’s there just not talked about. (Those last three are for both Dean and Sam.)
I’m not having a good mental health day and my dad decides to be the alpha asshole today. Awesome. Fucking awesome.
It’s great that mom has friends but I wish she was here so I didn’t have to deal with him alone.
@intotheruins
Might be a bit extreme but I’d be lying if I never considered it a possibility. I mean, I could go on about the shit he’s put me through, but I don’t think anyone wants to hear that. I won’t sugar coat it though, he’s abusive, and everyday he’s home I wish my mom had just divorced him. He just pulls of that “I’ll change! Look how good I was at listening that one time” rountine though. He’s such an asshat. *hugs*
@trisscar368
lol. I like dogs. 🙂 Swaps and chainsaws probably won’t be needed though.
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