Oh FFS.
I’m probably going to regret this when I’m more awake and haven’t been sitting in the ER for three hours but you caught me in a fighting mood, so. It is what it is.
I’ve been lowkey annoyed at this attitude that seems to be taking over fandom for a while, and this is just the straw that broke it. If you think it’s important to deconstruct the relationship critically and examine why it’s a flawed relationship and/or an abusive dynamic, knock yourself out. That is your perogative as a participant in fandom and I’m sure there are plenty of people that would love to read your meta. But at the point you start coming at other people about how they consume and enjoy media, you’ve crossed the line from litcrit into concern trolling.
It is not my job to protect people from the content of the media or the internet. I am not their mommy. If you consume something that makes you uncomfortable, then sure, talk about what made you uncomfortable. But don’t come in my inbox and tell me I have a responsibility to put up disclaimers beyond tagging my work. As a fandom author, your ONLY responsibility is to make sure the work you’re posting belongs to you and that you tag it accurately so readers know what they’re getting into (CNTW included). If a reader wants to talk to me directly about how something I wrote is not working for them or makes them uncomfortable or triggers them and needs a warning, that’s fine and I welcome it.
But it’s not okay to come up on someone and tell them it’s their responsibility to dissect what they enjoy as escapism. If you want to do that it’s on you. Personally, as someone who enjoys the fascinating and complicated depiction of dysfunctional relationships IN FICTION, I don’t want to take the time to do that. Fandom is the arena I come into to escape having to be on point about real world issues. It’s not the place I want to spend time examining social justice issues, because I do enough of that IRL.
And on an unrelated but equally annoying note, nobody has to disclose their personal trauma or history for fandom to decide they’re “allowed” to write about certain things. It’s super fucking rude to either assume something about a person’s background or, worse, ASK them about it (because wow no, if someone wants to talk to you that’s one thing but asking is fucking invasive and it’s not any of your damn business).
So yeah, talk all you want in your own meta on your own blog about how you dislike XYZ ship for whatever reason, but it’s nobody’s responsibility but yours to police what you consume and make sure it’s “problem free.”
Hell, half the ships I really enjoy, the dysfunction is WHY I enjoy it, because conflict is what creates compelling narratives. I don’t need to be informed about the dysfunction, and I definitely don’t need to slap up giant disclaimers about it. Read tags, avoid things you don’t want to read, and stop lambasting writers or artists who ship things you don’t like. It’s not your damn business.
that anon is right though.
acting like fiction (and your interpretation of that fiction) lives in some bubble or vacuum is irresponsible. it’s not about being “someone’s mommy” or being oppressed by “concern trolls”, it’s about making sure that you aren’t part of the problem and that you’re not perpetuating the normalization of abuse/dysfunction.
sure, go ahead and knowingly enjoy unhealthy relationships privately and on your own because escapism is your number one priority. but you’re not posting and reblogging to a private blog, your content is public where thousands of people can see it.
how many of those people who visit your blog and/or follow you are younger than you, more impressionable, less versed in fandom spaces, less experienced in dissecting relationships? like the anon said, not everyone is an adult who can tell the difference, not everyone has shared the same experiences you have, not everyone has the luxury of thinking abuse is interesting or fascinating. if someone is coming to you and asking you to be mindful of content, maybe you should listen.
you seem to understand responsibility when it comes to your own generated content, but somehow it stops applying to everything else? public spaces and public blogs come with public responsibilities and accountability. what you do affects others.
also, NOBODY IS ASKING YOU TO STOP POSTING, only to be self-aware. if you want a private space to enjoy unhealthy dynamics, go back to LiveJournal where you can lock the content and only pre-approved people can see it. otherwise, stop acting like accountability is oppression.
I find it depressingly ironic that you are earnestly using the “think of the children” argument here, when that’s the exact same argument that was used to police LGBT romance in fandom spaces less than a decade ago. Obviously these two subjects are not the same thing, but I cannot abide any argument which promotes censorship or posits that a content creator is somehow responsible for the reaction their content evokes.
Different people are going to approach and consume media in different ways, and that includes fan-created media in fandom spaces. Some people only want to seek out stories that are lighthearted, happy, and don’t contain psychological conflict that may border on unhealthy or abusive for the characters involved. That’s fine, because that’s the kind of media they want to read/write/see/consume.
But a content creator – even in “public spaces” as you’re specifying – is not responsible at all for making sure the content they put out is palatable to everyone. If you don’t want to see that kind of content, there are blacklisting tools that you can use to hide it from your online experience. If you dislike that kind of content, you are free to say so in your own space, engage critically with the content, discuss why you feel uncomfortable with it or why it isn’t enjoyable to you. You’re even free to comment on the content itself and engage directly with the creator about why you find it objectionable.
The line gets drawn when you claim that the content you disagree with should be hidden away. You say that nobody is asking anyone to stop posting, but you immediately follow that up with “go back to LiveJournal,” so really you are asking people to stop posting because… I’m not sure. You feel that the internet should cater to your tastes? You’re allergic to Tumblr Savior? I think Tumblr needs privacy settings and communities, but “get out of the space that I frequent because I don’t like what you produce” is not engaging critically. It’s the opposite of engaging critically. If that’s how you want to approach the internet, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. People are not going to cater to your tastes.
The internet at large is not safe space, and I don’t think it should be. Before tags, it was possible to run into explicit sexual assault with no warning at all – which was not ideal, and fandom has created its own tools to be able to better warn for that content so people who don’t want to see it have that heads-up and can avoid it if necessary. It is reasonable to suggest that certain things be tagged, and I do tag those things when it’s relevant, but demanding that content you find objectionable be removed from the space you frequent is not reasonable.
And as a final note, if any “impressionable minors” are reading my fic, they should not be because it is adult content and is marked as such. It skeeves me the fuck out to think that minors may read my smut, but it’s behind an 18+ warning gateway and I’ve done my due diligence in tagging the work and marking it Explicit. Anything beyond that point is the reader’s responsibility. Your scroll wheel and your back button function. If you feel like someone is glorifying abusive dynamics with their content, I encourage you to engage directly with that person (politely) and open up a dialog about it, but even in that case I don’t agree that the content should be hidden or inaccessible. Hell, I think that the Twilight novels are one long series of glorifying creepy, stalkery, manipulative, abusive behavior – but I would never in a million years suggest they be removed from shelves or that they shouldn’t be allowed to be read or published.
That post you reblogged is shitty though because it is important to acknowledge if ship dynamics are abusive or unhealthy because not everyone in fandom is an adult who can tell the difference.
Published
Tumblr backup 