It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fanfic writer having produced a one-shot is not in want of any “will there be a part two” comments, but will receive them anyway.
Tag: fandom problems
friendly reminder that the ao3 comments section isn’t the place for fandom discourse
friendlier reminder that telling a writer they’re disgusting or you hope they get arrested because of what they’ve written isn’t an appropriate reaction and only makes you look bad
friendliest reminder that the back button exists and you could do everyone a favor and not say anything
Kay but there’s straight up child porn on ao3 so maybe f you can’t handle being called disgusting stop writing and publishing child porn
Like the first post on your blog is an incest ship so mayhaps you deserve all of the hate you get 🤔 just my personal onion tho
So what? It’s fiction. The characters I love literally don’t exist. Meanwhile antis harass REAL people with REAL feelings. It’s weird as hell, and, quite frankly, disturbing.
There are plenty of things that squick me out on ao3. But I behave in a mature manner and, you know, don’t read those topics. I also don’t wish bad on the writers who touch on things I’m not into. I don’t harass them, no matter how squicked or triggered I get. Because it’s the decent thing to do. I am in charge of my own consumption of fanfic. I can’t expect writers to hold my hand and take care of me. It’s up to me to take care of myself. Antis don’t seem to grasp these concepts and that’s unfortunate for them and everyone else.
And wow. You think people deserve harassment over fiction? That’s pretty sad. Seek professional help! 🙂
You’re getting off to incest you don’t have a moral high ground to stand on
Excuse me, but what the fuck? What the fuck is your problem dude? You and I both know there isn’t any child pornography on ao3. There is fiction of *fictional characters* on ao3 and some of them are underage, yes, but no real children are being harmed to create it. None of the stuff on ao3 is real. It’s all fictional. You don’t have to like it but it’s not real. Take solace in that fact. No one real person is suffering so like… maybe get over yourself? Moralizing isn’t gonna help anyone, bucko.
Your own person feelings about a tv show or fictional incest or icky fiction aside, why do you think it’s okay to be mean to real people? Why do you think a person deserves hate because they like fictional things you don’t? Does being a bully on the internet make you feel like you’re accomplishing something? Because the only thing you accomplish is looking like a jackass.
“Maybe you deserve it” what the hell kind of harassment apologism is that? I don’t even have the words to explain to you how wrong and screwed up that is. Good god, it’s so victim blame-y. Your personal opinion is bullshit. No one, and I mean NO ONE deserves harassment. Really, I wish you would think about the implication of what you’re saying and why it’s so messed up. “Someone who hasn’t broken any laws or hurt any real person did something I don’t like so they deserve to be treated like garbage” is what you’re saying. Like… how is that morally superior at all? How is that doing anyone any good? That causes real harm to a real person who you can talk to and interact with. In what universe is it justified to hurt a real person over fictional content? How can that possibly be a good thing?
You and I both know it’s morally wrong to hurt a real person or to excuse the harm that comes to a real person just because you don’t like the kind of fiction they like, so maybe take a good long look at what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and re-evaluate. Don’t be so callous towards other people.
friendly reminder that the ao3 comments section isn’t the place for fandom discourse
friendlier reminder that telling a writer they’re disgusting or you hope they get arrested because of what they’ve written isn’t an appropriate reaction and only makes you look bad
friendliest reminder that the back button exists and you could do everyone a favor and not say anything
‘why don’t antis just make their own archive if they hate AO3 so much?’
because fandom policers won’t feel safe enough if they just establish a safe space they control. they will only feel safe once every space is a ‘safe space’ they control.
(wherein ‘safe space’ is ‘space that follows my social rules/makes me & my own feel safe’, not ‘a place where everyone present feels safe’.)
at heart, I think most fandom policers are afraid: afraid of being ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’.
afraid of exposure to new ideas.
afraid of facing the trauma of past experiences, and afraid of being hurt by new experiences. afraid to tolerate the worldviews of others; afraid to admit that more than one healthy way of reacting to the horrible things in this world exists. and fandom/fanworks are full of these things, because they come from such a diverse group of people.
the existence of anything outside their control means they could, at any moment, encounter something that makes them afraid – and being reminded that they are afraid makes them angry. but anger is a ‘bad’ emotion – unless it’s righteous anger, or justified anger. so: everything that makes them angry is a dangerous influence that must be destroyed. justification established. now it is their duty to make the world a space that’s ‘safe’ for them.
tl;dr policing fandom is an authoritarian social model, and authoritarianism is about assuaging fear by assuming absolute control.
unfortunately for them, it’s an impossible task. (unfortunately for us, it won’t stop them from trying.)
don’t donate to AO3 out of fear of antis; donate to AO3 because it’s proven a trustworthy archive that’s worth keeping running. and hey: did you know the number one way that authoritarians become less authoritarian is by experiencing the things they’re scared of? maybe keeping AO3 up will even help turn some of these folks around.
People keep asking “How can anyone have a problem with AO3 doing fundraising!”
And I’m just like…. Have people not noticed all the virulent anti-AO3 hate on tumblr propagated by the anti shipping community? Antis have a problem with AO3 raising money because they hate the fact that AO3 won’t allow them to censor content they don’t like and doesn’t tolerate bullying. That’s who is putting out these posts like, “how can this nasty site raise so much money?” Read between the lines.
And for all the people who are just like, “If they don’t want AO3 to to raise money why don’t they just not donate?”
Because antis are incapable of saying “this isn’t for me so I won’t support it but I don’t care if other people support it. They have to actively discourage other people from supporting the thing. At the same time, they also won’t stop using AO3 because 1) they’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites who want readership and that’s where the readers are and 2) they’re too lazy to put together their own archive using AO3′s open source code because that would require doing coding and buying servers and doing all the moderating they want, which is hard, and they just want to engage in empty virtue signalling, which is easy
Anyway, my point is, people need to be aware that these people are out there and they hate AO3 and they want it to go away even though they’re actively using the platform. They’ve even said they want AO3 to fail so something “better” (re, something they control) can take its place. Some of them are blatant about it, calling AO3 a cesspit of pedophilia, and some of them are subtle about it, saying more innocuous things like ‘Does AO3 really need 130K a year?” “Shouldn’t you give your money to individual needy people doing gofundmes for stuff that’s more more important?”
But all of these people have the same end goal, which is the destruction of the archive, and the way they’re going about it right now is to try to discourage people from donating.
So instead of asking, “Why do people object to AO3 raising money?” start telling people “Hey there are people out there who hate AO3 and want to destroy it and we have to protect the archive from them.” And donate, if you can, and signal boost, if you can’t.
Defamation, which is making false statements about a person in order to damage their character or reputation, is a thing you can be sued for in the United States.
Just sayin’.
Muddied Waters
How can you tell the difference between a story with deeply troubling opinions, themes, and character actions and a story where the writer is inserting his or her own views, opinions, and preferences?
Warning signs in a story:
- Those with a certain point of view are written as strong, wise, reasonable, sensible, or normal.
- Those with different or opposite views are written as weak, foolish, strange, wishy-washy, aggressive, or dysfunctional.
- Limited ways of thinking. The “right” way and the “wrong” way.
- No moderating voice of reason. Even those who should know better fail to be unbiased.
- Unrealistic characters, character interactions, and authority figures.
- World-building is not only unrealistic but also feeds into the “reasonable” character’s understanding of reality. Reality itself is warped to support a point of view.
NOT warning signs:
- One or more character is dismissive, contemptuous, aggressive, or unhealthy in his/her point of view. (See: unreliable narrator)
- Good characters all think the same way and badguys are clearly evil. (Good guys are good, bad guys are bad is very common and not typically cause for alarm.)
- Characters taking sides. (This is normal human behavior. Even when the sides are unbalanced in someone’s favor, that is realistic. A 50/50 split is too contrived.)
- World-building that creates a problematic world or a world where most people fall into a certain way of thinking. (Dystopian worlds and dysfunctional characters.)
Examples:
Yes, writers can make a point through story. Classic dystopian fiction like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and The Giver all make commentary on human nature and serve as warnings for how far society can fall if we let it. Unreliable narrator stories like The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye have less social commentary and more to do with tragic human nature on a limited and personal scale.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have simple stories of good versus evil where characters aren’t very well fleshed-out. Sometimes the good point of view is obviously the author’s idea of what good means, and the evil is evil for no reason, but that’s just failure to think through character motivations and create nuance.
It’s only when the fabric of reality in a story (the setting, the facts, the characters themselves) warps into something unrecognizable that you can be sure that the story you are reading is biased. This is most obvious in situations like “Pretty in Pink” where a character is a stereotype or farce of a people or culture. I recently read a story (not fanfiction) where modern culture was written as oppressive to straight men in a premise that was meant to be light-hearted but made any sane reader deeply uncomfortable. In that story, the LGBTQ+ community was sexually aggressive, wishy-washy, and foolish, as were any “progressive” thinkers, and the main character and his friends were the only “reasonable” people who saw problematic behavior as problematic. The establishment (such as police) supported the warped version of reality by treating straight men as guilty until proven innocent while they treated everyone else with kid gloves. That was a perfect example of a story which pushed its social views on the reader. (I would give you a link and a detailed analysis, but I have no wish to give that mess any web traffic.)
Conclusion:
Darkness in fiction is normal because darkness in human nature is normal. Racism, sexism, homophobia, violence, these are real things in our world, and so they make it into our fiction on a regular basis. Sometimes a writer condemns them through their story by making them part of the bad guy’s point of view or something for the main character to change in someone else to make that person “good,” but sometimes they are simply there to create setting, world, mood, and characterization. Because they are real things. And in realistic stories, no plucky heroine is going to undo a lifetime of negative social grooming by pointing out that that mindset is bad.
Every writer has different motivations for their writing. To entertain, to reveal, to find catharsis, to condemn, or to simply write. Reasons for writing are as widely varied as writers themselves.
Therefore, if you ever think a writer him- or herself thinks the way a character does, I require more than an accusation to believe it. Give clear and obvious proof through detailed literary analysis, or give the writer’s own unambiguous words, speaking as themselves.
Anything less is pure “fuck off” territory.
Self-insert shippers are valid
There, I said it. I’ve been seeing multiple people invalidate other’s opinions by accusing them of being self-insert shippers as if it were a badge of shame and it’s a frequent subject of mockery even in the reylo fandom. I don’t care if the people being mocked are antis or reylos either. I’ve been through way too much when it comes to bullying to be silent about this.
It’s especially infuriating because that’s such a common accusation for gatekeeping misogynistic fanboys to use. It’s clear to me now though that the reason most people take offense to the self-shipper accusation is not because it’s sexist to assume that “the poor little wimmins can’t help but let her fantasies and desires for a male character cloud her judgment. “ No, they’re upset because they agree with the fanboys about self-shippers deserving mockery and being unable to contribute to meaningful discussion. They shouldn’t be lumped in with those women because, unlike them, they fandom correctly.
I don’t even write fan fiction much less self-ship but y’all are making me want to write Kylo/reader fic purely out of spite because at least I would be doing something constructive with my anger.
Man, whatever happened to fandom being about everyone having fun in their own ways. For some folks that’s speculating about the future films and for others that’s writing fic or making art. I dont get why we have to be so mean to each other over such small things. We’re all a little odd here. It’s 100% fine to write self-inserts or silly AUs or crack fic or whatever. Last I checked, being strange and unapologetic about our fantasies and love of fictional characters wasn’t what was killing fandom, it was what made it great in the first place. What hurts fandom is, as esperanza said, the separation and mockery of “the people who don’t know how to fandom right”. No one here is better than anyone else. We’re all Star Wars nerds. Mocking a certain kind of shipper doesn’t make you smart or cool, it makes you an asshole.
Toxic Fandom: When Criticism and Entitlement Go Too Far – GeekDad
From the text:
Discussions shifted from “I don’t like this” to “no one should like this.” An account from a user on the anonymous fandom meta site fail_fandomanon described the process: “Antis became a social group, a hatedom. And once impressing their fellow clique of antis became more important than being accepted by the fandom at large, it metastasized into harassing shippers to impress their little bully clique. It became about the social aspect of being accepted by the ‘cool kids,’ i.e., the other antis–and like fandom drama groups in the past, often motivated early on by the fear that they might come after you if you weren’t on their side.”
Simply saying “other fans shouldn’t create fan content for the thing I don’t like” isn’t a compelling argument, so antis began adopting the language of the social justice movement that is active on Tumblr. Antis generally argue that the fictional pairing they dislike is morally “problematic,” that it promotes some broadly objectionable thing like pedophilia, abuse, or incest, and that content for that pairing should not be allowed on the internet.
To be clear, critiquing media for its larger social impact is fine and healthy. However, in these cases, antis would disingenuously put forth these claims to provide a basis for their hatred. For example, in the video game Overwatch, antis claim pairing Gabriel Reyes with McCree (known as McReyes) promotes pedophilia. (It doesn’t. McCree, the younger character, is 37.) They also claim pairing Rey and Kylo Ren from Star Wars supports incest, because there’s a chance they could be related (they’re not). Pairing Hank and his android partner Connor together from the video game Detroit: Become Human also supports incest by their logic (Connor is an android assigned to Hank, a human, to be his partner on the police force).
This kind of performative outrage enables anti-shippers to harass others by providing a moral shield for their attacks. Antis justify sending death threats to fellow fans and creators because they claim people who support “bad” ships promote those broadly objectionable things. Therefore, antis claim they are simply trying to protect their community from creating, engaging, and spreading inappropriate content (regardless if the content is actually inappropriate).
Toxic Fandom: When Criticism and Entitlement Go Too Far – GeekDad
I’ll be working on a larger post later but for the time being I really need to get some of my thoughts and feelings out.
Fandom is eating itself. We’re so desperate to try to control each other, either because of things we don’t like or things we’re worried about that we’re attacking our own and making fandom a very scary place. I’ve lived too much of my life on fear of what other people would do or say b/c I had a bad opinion or wanted a “wrong” thing and I’ll be damned if I do it here. It needs to stop.
This is Not a Blog 