Absolutely.
First off, darkfic as an umbrella term encompasses a lot of subjects and ‘dark’ topics, abuse being only one of many. It may be therapeutic for people who’ve endured abuse, but it can also be helpful for people who’ve struggled with other forms of trauma, or with mental illness, or other negative things. Depictions of intense, dark experiences can serve as a catharsis by being a direct analog for one’s own experiences, but they can also function more indirectly as a parallel, or a metaphor. Someone who has not been assaulted, but who has struggled with mental illness, may find a story about an assault victim resonating with them as they can identify with the fear and lack of control. And someone who has never been through a specific traumatic experience, but has a lot of fear of it and cultural anxiety around it, may feel bolstered by stories of characters surviving and recovering from that experience.
So for many people, with many different experiences, there can be a direct, therapeutic/comforting benefit to darkfic.
But darkfic doesn’t need to be therapeutic.
There are, of course, other kinds of benefits. Someone who has never been abused might read a story featuring abuse (and clearly tagged for it) and because of it, identify potential warning signs in a real life relationship down the road and know to get out early before things get worse. Or, they might develop a better understanding of what abuse victims go through and as a result, have more empathy for real-life survivors they encounter.
But it’s also 100% ok to like darkfic purely for entertainment value! It is, after all, fiction.
Dark stories challenge us – and we can really enjoy that challenge. They take us to extremes of emotion and the human experience. They plumb the depths of the human id. Even someone with the most charmed life still lives in a world where bad things happen, and even the sweetest, naive person has the capacity for darkness in them. Darkfic lets all of us explore those in relative safety. It makes us feel, and can thrill and horrify us as much as any thriller or horror movie. It can make us consider our own darkness, and be more aware of it. And it can take us to a place so much worse than our reality, that when we resurface into our mundane lives, there’s a sense of relief; we’ve escaped from our escapism, and our hum-drum lives seem so much better and more manageable by comparison.
Plenty of people create dark content who aren’t abuse survivors. There are books with very dark themes that are written by, edited by, published by, and consumed and made popular by people who have not been abused, but which may prove a lifeline for a survivor – one that might not have existed if the entire genre was limited to only people with lived experience. And by accepting that anyone can produce or consume dark content, we allow survivors the protection of anonymity, by not forcing anyone to disclose and reveal their trauma in order to justify liking a work without being harassed and shamed for it. Creating an exclusive club of heavily-scrutinized creators and readers who have to be ‘this traumatized to ride’ helps no one. Hell, trying to pass moral judgement on anyone by scrutinizing the potential reasons they may have for enjoying certain kinds of fictional reading material, rather than looking at their actions toward real breathing human beings, is utterly inane. Especially when fiction – including, and sometimes especially dark fiction – can be used to expand our horizons beyond our own lived experiences make us more thoughtful, empathetic people on the whole.
Oh thank you! I have so many drafts that start “you don’t need to have been abused to read or write dark fic”.
It always feels like something that should just be understood, but as tumblr shows again and again, this is just not the case.
You don’t need to justify reading or writing dark fic. If you are using it as therapy? That’s fine, and you don’t answer to anyone. If you’ve come by it in a different way? Also fine.
Tag: fandom problems
The idea that fandom arguments at all involve proving each other wrong is bizarre to me.
Somewhere along the line, we forgot that stories are about exploring human nature through our different, subjective perspectives, and not about discovering absolute truth. There are some people whom I am never going to agree with, and some whom my arguments will never be able to convince, and that’s the point.
The point of exploring media is embracing and understanding our own human subjectivity, not trying to create a false objectivity in its stead.
can we please bring back “in poor taste” as a concept
Because at some point it got folded in under “problematic,” and now every damn thing that has Unfortunate Implications or deals with sensitive topics indelicately enough to raise hackles or gores somebody’s sacred cow is treated as a grave injustice or a threat to society. Online activism culture has lost the vocabulary to express “this deals with touchy stuff in a way many people might find inappropriate, and you should probably avoid it if insensitivity on this subject gets you angry/upset, but it’s not promoting hateful ideas or demeaning people or affecting anything but my opinion of the creator’s sense of tact.”
Pedophilia is bad should not be a radical statement.
No really, please reblog this if you can, because this site in general, but fandom spaces especially bad for this, to the point where people are genuinely afraid of harassment they may face for saying ‘Pedophilia is a bad thing and you probably should not encourage it’ or for calling it what it is. Fandom spaces are also especially bad for screaming about how it’s ‘just fiction’ when we know damn well that fiction impacts reality.
Actual, real-life pedophilia is bad. People dealing with their personal pain by writing about it, in a fictional setting where tags and opt-in measures allow others to avoid it, are fine; in fact, a very effective way of working through one’s issues. Oversimplifying the process from ‘pedophilia is bad’ to ‘all people who write fiction about it are bad’ is policing in its worst form.
Actually, trauma survivor here, these people are in fact still furthering the normalization of the trauma they are working through, while also actively hurting other survivors!
If you feel the need to write it to process it, I understand that completely. In fact I’ve DONE that as a part of processing my own trauma in the past! However, you do not get to publish it into public spheres, including online, where all it will do is hurt other people. Likewise, this form of trauma processing is not, in fact, helping you!
These people include other survivors who may have been trying to avoid it and were unable to, people who are being groomed for abuse, people who are already being abused, and do not recognize that abuse for what it is, and the person writing it (assuming they ARE in fact a trauma survivor, because the vast majority of the people shipping siblings, minor/adult relations, and other abuses, are not in fact survivors of this. They just get their jollies off to it!).
Likewise, this is not, in fact, a coping mechanism, and it is not fine. This is retraumatization and self harm in many cases, being written off as ‘coping’. When you publish that, particularly the people who are writing it as ‘romance’, you hurt other survivors. In fact it’s predominantly survivors calling this shit out.
When you have a dozen people telling you ‘if you need to process it through these means, you cannot publish it because this is normalizing it and hurting all of us and people who will be hurt by it’, then you need to recognize that what you are doing is hurting someone and then saying “I’M JUST COPING!!!” which makes you an abusive piece of shit.
Now, consider the fact that you essentially just said “pedophilia is bad BUT FICTION IS OKAY!! FICTIONAL PEDOPHILIA IS ALWAYS FINE AND EFFECTIVE FOR HELPING PEOPLE SO YOU CAN’T CALL ANYONE OUT ON IT EVER!! YOU’RE POLICING COPING!!!”
Like, no. Most of those people writing hebdophilia, abuse, incest, and pedophilia fics on AO3 in some fandoms are NOT coping with a goddamned thing and pretending they are and saying ‘buuuuut fictional pedophilia/hebdophilia/abuse should never be policed!!’ is only going to create MORE victims. (like, I am in one of these fandoms. The people shipping the 25year old with the 14-17 year olds are not ‘coping’, they are fetishizing. Their argument is not ‘It’s my coping mechanism’ it’s ‘but it’s just fiction!!’).
And yes, coping SHOULD be policed. If you are hurting others, normalizing abuse, and retraumatizing/hurting yourself, it’s a bad way to cope, and isn’t coping but self harm, and you need to let it go and find something healthier. You should be helped through this process, definitely, but you should also be working on it, particularly if your ‘coping’ is being read by actual pedophiles, attracting them to your work.
Yes, changing how you cope can be hard, but it is hardly impossible, and acting like people using these things to cope should be allowed to without ever being challenged in that is actively preventing their recovery too. It was when I gave up self harming and found better ways to deal with stress (baking, video games, a long bath, a bad movie, a favourite comedy show) that I began to heal and recover.
I was hardly perfect, it was hard work, but if you actually care about survivors you should consider listening to us when we say that what you’re talking about still hurts us, doesn’t help us work through our trauma, and is not being primarily produced for or by us and therefore continues the normalization of the abuses we faced while failing to display healthy relationships and thus draws in more future victims who do not know the difference between ‘healthy’ and ‘abusive’ due to the excessive normalization both in fanfiction and in published fiction and other media, and society at large encouraging hebdophilia already especially.
Also listen to us when we say we are tired of our abuse being fetishized for the consumption of others, particularly by people who are writing/drawing it and have never been in that situation themselves, and they and their readers ignoring us saying these things. As these people are often also fetishizing mlm and wlw relationships we’re especially tired that they are portraying us as hebdophiles and pedophiles when we’re already accused of this by the outside world too.
@rosemoonweaver what do you think about this?
I’ll tell you what I think.
First, I think that unless you’re a licensed mental health professional you have no business telling anyone how bad their therapist approved coping methods are. I’ll get into why I think that’s so insidious in a little bit.
Second, I think that you can write absolutely anything fictional AND publish it no matter how vile or disturbing the content is.
Third, I think our lemon friend here is slippery and has gone from “this thing we all agree is bad is bad” to “all these things that make me uncomfortable are bad and don’t you dare publish them ever”. And I think that is really harmful.
Alright. Let me break this down a little more and refute some shit.
First of all, the mental health thing. How dare you? How dare you tell people who are survivors just trying to get by that the coping methods they’ve found or have been offered to them by a therapist are bad for them. Do you have any proof that this coping method literally helps no one? I mean actual studies and research, not individual testimony. No? Didn’t think so, because it’s not true. This is argumentum ad populum. If a bunch of people say it, it must be true! No, no it’s not. A bunch of people say that the earth is flat and that’s bullshit, too.
Here’s the thing – writing about trauma is hard. It’s painful. It kinda sucks sometimes. Last year I wrote the aftermath of a car wreck and I had to keep getting up and walking around my kitchen because even though it was very brief and not very detailed, it struck a nerve. It was tough to do, but you know what? I felt better after I did it. I was able to process my own feelings a little better, and in the end, I was proud of myself for doing it. But here’s the thing, you say that we’re not allowed to share that with other people and I have to ask why. When I first talked to my therapist about writing my pain out (she suggested it, by the way) she wanted me to share it when I finished. She wanted me to either share it with her or in a small group or even online because a very important part of the process for me is to be heard. I need people to hear me. I need people to believe me. I need, after years of being gaslighted and hiding away in the corners of my own mind, for people to witness me. And a great way to do that is to share the work I’ve written, in a way that makes me comfortable, in a place where there are safeguards so that others who might not want to see it don’t have to. For me, that means content warnings all over the place and posting under a cut if we’re talking tumblr.
And you know, the idea that work that deals with sensitive topics can only hurt people is false anyway. I’ve been triggered by some fiction. It was properly tagged but I read it anyway, thinking I was in an okay state of mind but I wasn’t and it brought up some icky intrusive memories. And, you know, that sucked. I lost a lot of sleep over that and had myself a panic attack. But you know what? I survived. I had tools at my disposal to calm down, to center myself, and to relax. But I’m not mad at the author for writing that stuff. I’m not mad at them for sharing it, either. I’m mad at the person who did the things that caused me to be traumatized. And, you know, I have hope that they way the particular topic that triggered me was addressed might’ve helped someone. The whole scene that freaked me out was a character realizing they’d been abused and if that helps just one person understand what happened to them wasn’t okay, I’m over the moon happy for it. I’ve had lots of friends (all who write darkfic) tell me that they’ve had comments from people who thank them for allowing them to understand what happened to them and how it wasn’t okay. Hell, I personally have learned what the hell gaslighting looks like because of fanfic and that’s helped me understand how it was done to me!
And I know, the examples I gave were car crash related and not CSA but you know what? The attitude and impression you give off isn’t good for survivors. I don’t have to share anymore than I already have about the shit I’ve been through or the crap other people have done to me, so I won’t. I don’t want to use my abuse as some kind of instant credentials. Darkfic (aka cope shipping) can help a lot of people. It doesn’t help everyone, though, and you know what, that’s okay too! A little too much dark stuff can be bad for people (like me) and it’s about knowing your limits and knowing when to take a step back and when to not engage. But, I’m sorry, I really really hate the idea that cope shipping or writing darkfic or writing The Bad Thing is somehow bad in and of itself. It breeds a deep shame in people, one I’ve had to beat back with a stick so that I’m okay with expressing myself to people who will actually care. I don’t want survivors to feel like writing about their abuse in a fictionalized way is a bad thing. I don’t want survivors to feel guilty about sharing their experiences with others, no matter how they chose to do it. We deal with enough guilt and shame and blame already, we don’t need to put more of it on ourselves.
Second, the fiction thing. I believe that there is nothing you can’t write about. I’m serious, too. I’m so over the moral panic over what people are reading and writing. I love torture porn horror movies. Saw 6 is one of my favorites, and it’s gorey and bloody and completely contradictory to the whole “save yourself by saving others and changing your ways” kinda message the other movies had. But I love it because it’s creative and gory and sometimes I just wanna be a little grossed out. I’ve read so much rape, molestation, genocide, torture, false imprisonment, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, and murder in books. A few years back I read a book called The Ministry of Special Cases which was so disturbing I couldn’t sleep for two nights. And the really disturbing thing was that the book was a fictionalized way of bringing attention to shit that really happened in Argentina. None of the fiction I’ve been exposed to has turned me into a monster. None of the objectively terrible crap I’ve enjoyed in fiction has made me a bad person. That’s because it’s fiction and I knew right from wrong before I started reading the books and watching the movies. I know that murder and torture aren’t okay and if I really saw someone being murdered and/or tortured I would probably cry and throw up, but in fiction it’s fine.
Fiction exists for so many reasons. Sometimes it’s there to titillate, sometimes it’s to gross you out. Sometimes fiction is there to give you a world you might like to escape to and other times it’s to give you a world you’d want to escape from. Fiction is catharsis and hope and despair and repulsion and love and lies and death and rebirth. But, most importantly, it’s not real. Fiction is made up. Nothing is really happening here, other than the reader is sitting and moving their eyes across a page or staring at a screen. Can fiction affect people though? Sure! It absolutely can! But it’s not a case of monkey-see-monkey-do. Humans have critical thinking skills and we don’t just imitate what we see in fiction because we think it’s fun or hot. If you’ve ever seen a work of “romanticized noncon” or “romanticized incest” and you were grossed out or repulsed by it, you’ve proven my point for me. We don’t automatically see a thing that we know is bad and suddenly go “you know, maybe I’ve been wrong” because it hasn’t been painted in a bad light. Children, too, are a lot smarter than people seem to give them credit for. Children know the difference between fantasy and reality. Adults do too, unless they’re having mental issues and then that’s a separate issues I don’t want to get into here.
Now, I know it’s kind of uncomfortable for some people, but the fact of the matter is is that people have some kinks and fantasies that are taboo. Some people have rape fantasies, and you know what? That’s perfectly okay. There’s nothing wrong with having a rape fantasy. It does not make you a rapist or “damaged”. And some people would like to express those fantasies either in a safe and consensual way with a partner or with fiction. That’s 100% okay. The thing is, like I said before, when reading, the only thing that’s really happening is that the reader is moving their eyes across a page. No one is actually being raped. No one is actually a rapist. Can it trigger discomfort in some readers if the rape is romanticized? Yes. Can it trigger bad memories and panic attacks in some readers? Yes. Does that mean that that piece of fiction should not exist? No. It does not. Sorrynotsorry, the fiction can still exist and I think it should. It’s a separate issue, really, but I don’t think anyone should feel shame about having fantasies that are consensual (like consensual non-consent is). I don’t want people feeling damaged or gross. That helps no one.
And before this argument comes up, no pedophilia is not a kink. Pedophilia is a mental issue and if anyone is having thoughts about kids of attraction to kids (real kids) they should seek help. There is help available and it should be addressed. That’s as much as I’m willing to say on the topic, but again, if someone wants to depict that in fiction I support them, too.
Look, I get the disgust over heavy topics that are written as titillation. I really do understand it. But I don’t agree that it’s always retraumatization and self-harm. I don’t agree that it should be policed. I don’t agree that if you’re not writing it “the right way” you’re bad and not really a survivor. Seriously, fuck that. I can’t stand no-true-Scotsman’s and that’s what that is. If you don’t write or ship it the “right way” you’re not a survivor – fuck that. Every person is different. Every shipper is different. We all write things for different reasons and sometimes some ships are better suited to work through issues that might not even really be trauma but is still something that bothers the author. Just because someone isn’t a victim or survivor doesn’t mean they’re barred from writing The Bad Thing. I hate this reductionist way of thinking. It started as “you’re only allowed if you cope ship” then it was “you can only cope ship if you’re specifically affected by the issues you’re writing personally” and now it’s “nope! No cope shipping allowed”. Nope, screw all of that. You’re allowed to write it. You’re allowed to write whatever the fuck you want. Now, this is a separate issue, (again) but I also think we’re allowed to talk about The Bad Things in fic. I think we’re allowed to say “hey, this thing here? That’s rape if it were to happen in real life and rape isn’t okay.” or “this is abuse if it happened IRL” or “this is sexist and here’s why”. BUT I think it can be done without attacking the authors and making them defensive so that they won’t listen. There’s a way to discuss things with people if you think they’re not taking it seriously, but you know what? If their response is “yeah I know, I just don’t care” or “yeah, I know, that’s why I tagged it like I did” then your job is done. It’s over. Move on and do something else. (ALSO, TAGS ON A FIC ARE THERE BECAUSE THE AUTHOR KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE WRITING. IF IT’S LABELED “ABUSE” IT’S BECAUSE THE AUTHOR KNOWS THEY ARE DEPICTING ABUSE NO MATTER HOW IT’S WRITTEN IN THE NARRATIVE.)
Fandom is a really cool space because we can always have discussions about the implications of our works and how we come across with what we’re trying to say. So, you know, we can have actual fruitful discussions about what abuse is and what it looks like while also depicting it and all the complicated things that go along with being a abuse survivor (like still loving your abuser, thinking you deserved it, guilt, shame, reluctance to talk to others, fear ect.). We don’t have to make every work of fiction perfect or wonderful or an outright condemnation of The Bad Thing because sometimes we’re still working on it. Sometimes we just need to say something and throw it out there.
Lastly, the more I think about this, the more insulted I am. OP admitted that writing about their trauma was therapeutic but has now decided it’s wrong for others to do it. Which, you know… that’s just fucking cruel. No, it’s not appropriate to walk out into the middle of the street and scream about your abuse because you’re not really doing it in a way that everyone present has volunteered to be subjected to. That’s not okay. But putting something up on your personal blog on the internet, tagging it properly, or writing it and putting it on Ao3? That’s not the same thing. Tags exist as warnings and filters. Ao3 is a safe space for readers and writers. It allows writers to put their work up, no matter how many Bad Things it has in it, and it has an organized tag system that allows readers to know what they’re getting into. And I think that’s amazing! It’s wonderful to know what kind of themes and topics you’re about to deal with while reading. Ao3 allows people to decide whether or not they’re ready to engage with the topics present and that’s fantastic!
But you know, that can’t happen if we don’t write it. It may surprise some people, but reading something that deals with a person’s trauma can be cathartic. Again, trauma is complicated. Sometimes one of the brain’s defense mechanisms is to fetishize that which hurts us. Sometimes the brain goes “hey, that Bad Thing is scary but let’s make it not scary! Let’s handle it this way instead!” and that’s healthy. It’s a way of processing and recontextualizing so that we can start to work through it. Does everyone do this? No. Do some people? Yes. Is it okay? Yes. There’s nothing wrong with it. But the people who aren’t comfortable with writing their own trauma or haven’t reached that point yet might need fiction to do it with. If we’re not allowed to write it, the people who need to read it can’t do that. So you know, if there is just one trauma survivor reading a fic to cope and process that was written by a non-trauma survivor, I think that fic is more than worth it.
But I said I’d point out why the idea that I can’t share my trauma is so insidious, so I’ll address that now. It’s telling survivors to shut up. If I can’t talk about who hurt me and what happened in a way I’m comfortable, how can I ever really help myself? How can I heal if I’m not allowed to express myself? Yeah, I have a therapist and a support group but that’s not enough. I need to be acknowledged. Survivors need to be seen and by telling them that they’re not allowed to express themselves in a safe place (which is what fiction is) you’re effectively telling them to shut the hell up. The message is effectively, “no one cares what happened to you. You’re gross. Stop talking” and that’s so fucking gross and cruel and wrong. No! We let survivors speak!
I know plenty of people who the softer things don’t actually help. I’m one of them. Taking a bath doesn’t help me process my trauma. Baking doesn’t help. Jogging and mindfulness and drinking smoothies doesn’t help. I need to write about it. I need to express it and physically talking about it, physically saying “this happened to me”, is too difficult for me. I’m getting better, but a lot of that is thanks to writing and the community of darkfic writers who help me process, who listen to me, who are the shining light in the dark for me. I’ve been free of self-harm for a year this past October and you know what? I think a lot of that is because I’ve given myself permission to express my suffering. I no longer have to hurt myself because I can be seen and that’s so fucking liberating.
To the survivors out there who are uncomfortable with darkfic existing, I sympathize. I actually do. There are things in fiction that piss me off and squick me and make me mad. There are things I don’t like seeing. But, it’s not my issue. I can’t tell other people they’re not allowed to write it. I can wonder about their motives, but I can’t say for sure what those motives are b/c I don’t know them. I understand the discomfort. I understand the side-eyeing. I understand being disgusted. But I’m not going to tell them to stop because there’s a chance that writing it the way they’re writing it is saving their life. Bottom line is this: there is no way to know why every person writing what they’re writing is doing it. Are some doing it for titillation? Yes. Are some coping? Yes. Are some harming themselves? Yes. But it’s not up for me to say that everyone participating is doing the same thing and I damn well am not going to condemn a whole group or practice that I know can help just because it makes me feel weird. Have a little compassion and empathy. Try to understand that we’re all at different places in our journey in life, and that some people cope differently and that’s okay.
OP asks that you listen survivors and I have. I’ve got my own thoughts and opinions and so do friends of mine who are survivors. We disagree with the notion that darkfic shouldn’t exist.
There’s a good reason why I support a fan fiction writer’s right to depict abuse in their fics while also criticizing shit like “Twilight” and “50 Shades of Grey.”
The thing is, not only is fan fiction for a much more niche audience, but when fic writers portray abuse in their stories then chances are they’re gonna tag it as “abuse.” A reader will see the tag and know “OK, this isn’t going to be healthy relationship behavior. Gotcha.” But popular mainstream publications like Twilight and 50 Shades have no warnings or disclaimers saying “This is not healthy relationship behavior, it’s abuse.” As a matter of fact, they’re passed off as ideal portrayals of relationships and BDSM to a much wider audience than your average whump fic could ever hope to reach.
So when it comes to fiction, it’s not hypocritical to point out problems in mainstream fare while ignoring some properly-tagged fic on Ao3 that was likely written by someone who was working through some shit with a healthy outlet. Context matters with these things.
Being an active participant in fandom requires a certain level of self-regulating in order to be a healthy activity. It requires the ability to say “Not for me,” or “Not today,” and walk away.
We can have conversations about patterns we see in fanworks. We can discuss how we portray characters and relationships, how to effectively convey what we want to in writing, how to sensitively approach representations of marginalized characters. But having those conversations productively requires that we approach each other in good faith, and it requires the ability to self-regulate–including recognizing that often there is no hard line, no black and white answer, and we won’t always come to the same conclusions.
It requires an understanding up front that eliminating all fanworks we don’t care for is not the end goal of these conversations.
I’ll give a personal example. There is a ship that deeply, viscerally upsets me in like 95% of its iterations. I can explain why I don’t like it if asked. I’ve written about why I don’t think it’s handled well in canon.
And if I wanted to–if I wanted to–I could make a very convincing-sounding argument for why that ship is objectively bad and wrong and no one should ship it. Not because that’s objectively right, mind you, but because I’m good at arguing. I could slap that together in like… ten minutes, probably.
I don’t do that. If I vent about it on my own blog, it’s as infrequently as I can manage, because I do my best to avoid the content that upsets me. I don’t seek it out to get riled up about it. I don’t seek out content that upsets me, read it in its entirety, and then leave angry comments and send my friends to harass the author. I don’t choose a high-profile writer for the content I don’t like and engage in a targeted campaign of harassment against them all while claiming to be addressing a general problem.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself. You are not engaging in healthy behavior or productive coping mechanisms. You are not keeping yourself safe, and you are not helping to make fandom safer for others. You are not engaging in good faith.
If you find that you do this and you can’t seem to stop, you may need to take some kind of further steps up to and including taking a break from fandom. I’m serious. I’ve taken breaks myself for that exact reason. There’s no shame in it.
Please monitor your own ability to self-regulate. Please actively evaluate whether or not you are engaging in healthy and productive behavior, for yourself and for others.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself.
How to defend your ships to others: Don’t. You don’t owe anyone an explanation.
How to call people out on their ships: Don’t. They don’t owe anyone an explanation.
Your tags on that last post are right on point, about the difference in policing fanfic for violence compared to sexual content. It has always been suspicious to me that those who express deep concerns about fanfic seem to zero in on only the sexual aspect.
Thanks! Sorry it took me so long to reply, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. (Apologies in advance because this got ranty)
I really feel like fandom is a double-edged sword at times. It’s pretty good about bringing people together and for shedding light on important things like consent, sexual education and health, gender and sexuality, and all manner of abuse but at the same time there are people who want to shut some of these topics down when they show up in fic. Like, we can talk about what consent means all damn day but it better not show up in fic unless it’s enthusiastic consent. We can talk about the joy of being proud of our sexualities but if a woman writes two dudes doing butt stuff she doesn’t know anything about gay sex and needs to stop. It’s like, on one hand you do get good discussions that can help you understand the world around you, but on the other now you must always apply those standards to everything or you’re terrible and contributing to the problem.
But the only things I ever see about violence in fic is how to write it more realistically – like how bruises form and fade and what kinds of gunshot/knife wounds are fatal and how much blood a person can lose before they pass out.
Now, I’m not saying I want people to start telling people who write violent fic to stop, I think that’s just as stupid as telling people not to write sex and sex related topics, but I do think it’s kind of interesting. Like, we’ve all heard the arguments that children shouldn’t play violent video games because it “makes them violent” but we know that’s a load of crap so we scoff and roll our eyes. We say things like “the parents need to keep an eye on what their kids are playing” and “as an adult, I shouldn’t have my access restricted because kids might also play them. It’s not my responsibility to parent other people’s kids”. And I think that mentality seeps over into fic, too, which I agree with. I don’t want to parent other people’s children so it’s not up to me to worry that my properly tagged and rated fics might fall into the hands of some kid. The same should apply to fics with sexual content no matter how vanilla and romantic or dark and depraved.
A lot of violence on television is glorified, but not all of it is. If an action hero throws a grenade at the bad guys we cheer. If a man slaps a child we want to see him punished. We understand the nuance here. Not all violence is the same. And there is room for violent fantasies in television, movies, and games. I can play games where I can beat people to death with a comically oversized dildo because it’s absurd and weird and fun. But I’m not going to go out and actually try it because I know the difference between real life and fantasy and I enjoy hurting pixel people but can’t stand hurting real people. I think most people get that.
But I think people worry more about sex than they do violence. It doesn’t matter what ship you’re writing or how dark you go, if it’s a violent fic we seem to get that making an argument like “but what if children see it!” will get you laughed at. If you make a fic that ships siblings in a loving way people can make the “but what about the children!” argument you will be taken seriously. Maybe it’s because we still have a lot of shame around sex. Maybe it’s because we’re uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to see nuance. But honestly, violence if fic is pretty common and yet we never seem to see calls for people to never write murder or death or fist fights.
But I will say this: we still need to have conversations about consent and boundaries and abuse and sexuality. We definitely still need those because I think those are great for helping people understand themselves and the world around them. But I think we need to quit trying to apply those to fanfic. I think intent and understanding should be a factor but I don’t think it should be the factor that decides whether or not we should yell at an author (the answer, of course, is never). If someone writes a fic that contains sexual assault/incest/rape/etc and it seems to skirt the line of what we are comfortable with we should think about why. Maybe the characters don’t understand consent the way we do. Maybe the author is trying to capture a specific feeling for the readers to digest. Maybe the author themselves is misinformed. Maybe the author is writing a fantasy. We don’t really have a right to ask the author those questions, but we can ask those questions of ourselves, determine our comfort level with these things, and take action from there. If that means we don’t keep reading, so be it. If it means we try to write it better, that’s okay, too But the attitude that some people seem to have that says “you can’t write this topic ever because you don’t understand it/have no experience with it/are glorifying it/will hurt other people” needs to stop.
If I can write a fic where a person deals with child abuse and domestic abuse and no one says to me “YOu can’t write this!!! what if a survivor finds this???what if a kid sees this??? aren’t you glorifying abuse because the characters still love their abuser???!! ” then the same should apply to fics that deal with taboo sexual topics.
And no, these topics aren’t the same. They’re all pretty complicated and deal with a lot of emotions and reactions. They’re nuanced and some people can do them well and others just can’t. But I don’t think that we shouldn’t write them just because they’re “glorifying” something bad. We understand there is nuance to violence in fiction so why don’t we get that there’s nuance to sexual content as well?
And I’m not here to parent anyone else’s kid. If anyone ever wants to talk to me about real issues they’re facing I’m here, but I’m not going to hold back on my writing just because someone somewhere might be potentially put off by it.
I wish fandom would stop framing issues of content as policing and frame it as a matter of responsibility for content creators
fandom isn’t some space where you can do whatever nor is it a space where you can actively disregard your fellow fans’ well being
if you create content it’s your responsibility to be aware of what messages you’re putting out into the world and yeah you do have to deal with it if it’s damaging content
if you create misogynistic content, it’s not policing when someone says your work is misogynistic
if you create racist content, it’s not policing when someone says your work is racist
and that’s just like super basic I would hope someone has learned to call that shit out shitty messages you can put into your content
there are plenty of areas of grey and mires of shit you can get into but if you’re willing to say what you create for fandom is meaningful you have to take responsibility for whatever shit you create and step in and you need to be critical of what you do and what fandom trends you choose to be apart of
have some respect for your work and fellow fans by not acting like someone just decided to shout at you when you stepped on their toes first
plenty of sad and dark things are dealt with through creative content and maybe all you need to do so you don’t hurt somebody is tag
sometimes you need to realize that promoting or writing something in general is harmful to other fans and you need to not post or share your work publically
the things you create are not just fantasy things you put out on the internet and then have no affect on anyone and float about in a vacuum, they’re not fantasies if you’re sharing them as content, and they can hurt and offend others and you need to be aware of and responsible for the hurt you cause
maybe a good rule of thumb is if you would criticize a published content creator for creating what you’re creating maybe you shouldn’t do it either
Look, I get it. I do. There are things in fandom that I dislike. Things I find intensely disturbing. I get that feeling where you look at something someone’s written and just feel yucky. I do. The thing is: there is no one measure. We all use our own yardsticks for what is damaging and what is good, and yes, even what’s misogynistic or racist because there is no way to distill entire hierarchical, systemic concepts into single, individual actions or products.
Let’s talk about what I call The Frying Pan Paradox. When Tangled first came out, some people found Rapunzel’s use of a frying pan as a weapon to be sexist, reinforcing women’s historical role. Other people found it feminist and empowering, taking an explicitly female tool used in a historically undervalued societal role and showing it to be powerful and useful. Neither of them is wrong or right, because this is not a question with an answer. This is a question with a discussion. There are a great many things that depend entirely on perspective or that read as oppressive or *ism-y more in a larger context than they do individually, and if removed from that larger context, might be unobjectionable or unremarkable. Oppression is a spectrum, with a relatively small area on the “unquestionably bad” end, and a relatively small area on the “unquestionably good” end, and a very wide, layered, complicated expanse between them. This is why we have intersectionality Female characters always being love interests: bad, right? Oh wait, except WOC are frequently relegated to background parts or niche films, so for a WOC character to be framed as worthy of love in a mainstream film is important and valuable, in a way that it isn’t for white female characters. Same with disabled female characters. Sane with fat female characters. Same with LGBT characters. And at a broader level than that, while the tendency for women to be constantly thrust into the love interest role is symptomatic of sexism and patriarchy, the answer is not removing all female love interests, because the point of art is to reflect, explore, and celebrate humanity, and women have relationships and partnerships and experience love. The single piece isn’t the whole puzzle.
So for you to say “it’s not policing when someone says your work is misogynist” or “it’s not policing when someone says your work is racist,” you’re starting from the premise that “misogynist” and “racist” are set, invariable things that no one could dispute or disagree on. You’re starting from a premise that a fanfiction, written by an individual who has been as subject to cultural conditioning as anyone reading their work, is the same thing as media created by professional entities comprised of multiple people over significant periods of time for mass consumption. You’re starting from the premise that the piece is the same as the whole puzzle, and it isn’t. And that’s not even getting in to the fact that a lot of the time, it takes only a tiny bit of scratching to dig through the cries of “Racism! Misogyny! Disgusting perversion!” to see that those objections are the thinnest veneer on good ol’ fashioned stan wank and ship warring (an easy way to tell this: when people get angry and scream about certain things in regards to one character, who just happens to be their favorite and frequently also their lust object, but couldn’t give less of a hang about those things in regards to characters they don’t care about or who aren’t part of their OTP).
Which is not to say there aren’t racist and misogynist things in fandom, because oh boy, there really are. But it’s a lot more complicated than what you’re presenting, and at a certain point we all have to accept that fandom is a microcosm that reflects society, with all the warts society has, and those warts aren’t going to be cured by the time someone updates with chapter 73 of [Halsey lyrics title here]. We are a work in progress. It’s best to get comfortable with that, otherwise we’ll all burn out real fast.
There’s also personal responsibility to speak of, which isn’t just for authors. How can fanfiction “step on someone’s toes,” as you put it, when reading fanfiction is by definition an opt-in experience? Fanfiction is not a fact of life. We inhabit a tiny cove in a great big ocean that most people don’t even know is there, let alone find their way to. If your toes are being stepped on, it’s because you put them under someone else’s foot. You are fully entitled to dislike what someone else likes. You’re entitled to think it’s weird and gross and all kinds of things. That doesn’t make you correct, and it doesn’t make it wrong for them to continue on doing what they want to do. The most anyone can ask is that things are tagged appropriately and that people are receptive to good faith discussion and criticism, particularly when posting things that will obviously have some degree of transgressiveness. And there will always be some people who will not do that, and that’s something everyone needs to find their own way of navigating, because the internet is a wild frontier, and fandom is just one Western town in the middle with a constantly rotating cast of Sheriffs and only our sketchy history of general cooperation to govern us. The only person who can fully, truly protect you is yourself. That this is unfortunate does not make it any less true.
“sometimes you need to realize that promoting or writing something in general is harmful to other fans and you need to not post or share your work publically”
Why? If the work is posted and tagged appropriately, why? Does the presence of harmful things in the world mean those harmful things can no longer be spoken of? Where’s the line between okay-to-post and too-harmful-to-post? Who makes that determination? If there’s someone who would find value and comfort in reading said work, who are you to tell them there’s something wrong with them for that? There is literally no way to codify this that’s better than the system we have now, where people make good faith efforts to tag and warn, and we allow everyone to make their own decisions about what they consume, knowing that there’s going to be a lot of stuff out there that they don’t like and some portion of it that offends them or makes them feel gross. I do not need to be protected from someone else’s idea of “harmful.” Everyone here is old enough to make their own choices.
Another note: stop and think for a moment what kinds of things would make “harmful” content something someone would want to write about or explore. Consider what it is about women’s history of oppression particularly in regards to sexuality that would make the sublimation of active desire into passive participation appealing (hint: it frequently stems from women’s active sexuality being framed as wrong, immoral, deviant, unladylike, slutty, abnormal, and a hundred other nasty adjectives, something that tumblr’s younger members may not remember or have experience with but its older members definitely do). Consider why someone who has been assaulted or raped might have interest in rape-play fics or fuck-or-die or what have you (hint: it may be a way of regaining control of a traumatic experience in which they had none, or a way to harness and control anxiety and fear of possible future assault).
Consider why the intensity of familial relationships could be appealing to someone as a heightened version of the typical shipping urges anyone might have about two characters, and how someone with past familial abuse might find personal value in a similar relationship in which both partners actively consent as they themselves couldn’t do or even felt guilty for doing.
Consider why fantasy allows someone to explore things they would never want to do or experience in real life. Consider how fiction lets us step outside ourselves and be anything we may not be in real life, whether that’s good, bad, brave, shameful, dirty, pure, adventurous, passive, depraved, or anything else. Consider that human beings have, since time immemorial, written both academically and salaciously about rape, incest, violence, trauma, and sexual taboos, and sometimes those works are lauded (Lolita), shamefully enjoyed (anything written by V.C. Andrews) or even worshiped (the Bible), but that there has literally never been a single study showing that potentially harmful fictional content increases that particular harm in reality. Consider that working out any of these issues and more via safe, personal, contained fanfiction is vastly preferable to trying to work them out in unsafe, impersonal, uncontrolled reality. If you want to be concerned about people being harmed, preventing them from exploring unsafe things in a safe space is precisely the wrong way to go about it.
Fanfiction is scratching an itch. It’s purging something dark. It’s embracing something light. It’s reveling in words or feelings, it’s testing boundaries, it’s playing. Fundamentally, at its core, fanfiction is PLAY. It is not society. It is not reality. It does not cause reality or influence reality, no matter how much hand wringing people want to do about it. The ills of society will exist whether someone writes underage Wincest sex pollen fic or not. To put equal responsibility for those ills on the shoulders of a single author writing to scratch their own itch is not just illogical, it’s unfair. After all, if people can be damaged by reading fanfic, the author could have been just as damaged from something or someone else. Suggesting that someone should be both responsible when it comes to others but immune when it comes to themselves is inconsistent and, when it’s applied so constantly and ruthlessly to women expressing and engaging in their own sexuality far more than to anyone else, it’s cruel.
I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand the context of your my/your kink argument, esp. the examples you are using. While I do obviously agree that writing about something is not the same as condoning it, is that where the statement ends? I mean, if someone were to write exclusively about rape/pedophilia/sexual abuse and portray it in a positive light, I wouldn’t merely regard it as a kink (afaik kink implies practice, implies consent) and morally I would condemn it. Could you elaborate?
I have (at least) five answers.
1. The vast majority of the moral meaning lies in both the consumer’s and creator’s contexts. Martha writes a fic in which two sixteen-year-olds explore one another’s bodies. Pedophilia? Which country are you living in? What about the characters? What’s the time period and context? José writes a fic in which one character sexually abuses another but they both come to a better place. Endorsement of abuse? Darkfic? Hurt/comfort? Akane writes a senpai/kohai fic that mirrors material in the original manga. Is writing drawn from a culpable (see point 3) source automatically culpable itself? In specific, there’s an ancient tradition of rape-as-seduction fiction, and an enormous body of documentation showing that it’s a common female fantasy. Rape-as-seduction is rape culture, sure, but we’re embedded in it: see my point in the original post about ids. You cannot responsibly make a moral judgment unless you consider all of these, as well as the context of your own reaction.
2. Consider the creator’s point of view. You don’t know what the creator was thinking, and you don’t have the right to ask. The creator may be working through a painful experience and getting catharsis through fiction. The creator may be trying to convey as subtext that a particular situation is wrong and bad. (With or without success.) The creator may be fantasizing a situation without any intention of putting it into practice – see the very relevant quotations in my post. And, of course, the creator may be deliberately getting off on something that the vast majority of people in the creator’s culture consider morally wrong. (To whom is the creator accountable? Transformative media is created and consumed worldwide now.) You can’t know which of these is going on. Intent is not 100% of an immoral act, but when it comes to writing fiction, it’s a very, very high percentage.
3. Consider the consumer’s point of view. All of the possibilities in 2 apply, plus “I’m reading/viewing this to avoid doing it in real life.”
4. Consider the likely consequences of consuming the transformative work. There is no evidence that a person not already disposed to commit rape/incest/pedophilia/abuse is likely to be moved by fiction to commit those acts. There just isn’t. The evidence that people who are so disposed are more likely to commit those acts after viewing supportive media is, at best, mixed; there’s a lot of “post hoc versus propter hoc” going on there.
5. Finally we come to “What are you going to do with your moral condemnation”? You have carefully considered 1, 2, 3, and 4, and have determined that “applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest.” ( Roth v. United States, and you bet your booty I’m being ironic.) Are you going to draw a conclusion and move on? Are you going to speak privately to your friends about why the fic offended you? Or are you going to drop the wrath of Tumblr on the head of the offending creator?
If your answer is “unleash the hounds of Hell”, I think you’re the one who’s morally wrong. Period. Your moral act also has a context, and part of the context is the expected result. You are not going to change what the writer thinks about morality. You are going to create a mob of haters, most of whom are not going to present a reasoned argument based on evidence, but instead are going to tell the creator, and the world, that the creator is a terrible person. Not that the creator makes terrible works, but that they are a terrible person, and there is an ENORMOUS difference. The experience of the last (at least) fifteen years demonstrates that hate mobs are emotionally satisfying to the haters, are not a force for any moral good, and routinely drive their victims out of fandom and even off the internet.
tl;dr: It all depends. I lived through the fallout of 1970s feminist consciousness-raising groups, and I don’t need to watch the hi-def remake. I am sick beyond words of callout culture.
This is Not a Blog 