Like, if you genuinely believe that certain kinds of fictional relationships are inherently unethical to ships, then…okay. You’re allowed to think that. (Frankly, I have mixed thoughts about certain kinds of fan content too, which I’m still ironing out.)
But.
That doesn’t change the fact that even the gnarliest most fucked up ship in the world is still fictional, and any harm done by people shipping it is completely indirect. Unless someone is actively shoving their weird weecest noncon hentai or whatever into your submission box forcing you to look at it, they as people haven’t actually done anything to directly harm anyone. No action was taken to intentionally hurt any actual living, breathing human beings. Whether the work itself, independent of the artist, is harmful is the question on the table.
And you’re totally allowed to think that it is. And you’re allowed to say “this ship is harmful and here’s why.” And you’re allowed to dislike the people who made the art, to distrust them, to want to avoid them. To block them and everyone they talk to, if you want to.
You’re not entitled to harass them. You’re not entitled to accuse them of committing actual crimes against real people with no evidence. You’re not entitled to lie about them. You’re not entitled to send death threats and rape threats and suicide bait to them.
Once you do that, you’ve already lost the moral high ground, because all of that constitutes direct harm. There’s no question of whether it’s harmful. It’s intended to be. These are actions taken with the intent to hurt a real-life living breathing human being. And that’s not okay.
Art will never be as good at hurting people than people are at hurting each other. Reality will always affect reality a hundred times more powerfully than fiction can. Please bear that in mind.
I almost never reblog my own posts like this unless it’s to respond to someone or add something else, but I’m reblogging this one because…like this really is the bottom line for me. The most problematic piece of art in the world is still not as morally wrong as intentionally and maliciously trying to hurt a real life human being.
And that’s not the climate of criticism we have right now, that principle is not understood or even entertained. And unless and until it is, I refuse to participate in media criticism. This includes fandom criticism, obviously, but probably also includes criticism of canon media. I’m done.
Because right now, it doesn’t matter how long I scream “THIS THING IS NOT INHERENTLY HARMFUL!” As long as we’re in a climate where it’s okay to mistreat people if they create art that IS inherently harmful, we are going to have people exploit that climate and label anything they want as inherently harmful so that they can mistreat people with impunity.
All you’re missing is the fact that any time a female character is announced, the first reaction tends to involve a lot of knee-jerk terror that said female character will suddenly become Dean’s long-term love interest, and then Panic Ensues.
I generally ignore that panic, because there was speculation over the announcement of Charlie joining the cast that of course she was going to be Dean’s long-term love interest, and… >.>
Just go take a look at that post and you’ll get a small peek into why I detest speculation. 😛
And yeah, Dean’s got a lot more worry on his plate right now than establishing long-term romantic connections with veritable strangers… But I think some people simply enjoy getting themselves worked up.
Which is fine, but it’s not gonna happen on my blog. 😛
I don’t want to reblog any of the extant threads about Mark Pellegrino’s dumpster fire antics because I’d prefer not to give him free advertising, but I’ve still spent the better part of a week marveling at how Supernatural’s uncanny casting has given us a Lucifer played by a compassionless, selfish, racist dick who is bros with a guy who stalked and harassed multiple women in our fandom.
reblog if you spend your free time blogging about a television show you’re not a real fan of and fictional characters you disrespect for fun
One thing to write a fanfic, another to deal with deadlines, formats, inputs. Fanfic writers cannot understand.
S.E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders (This tweet of hers has since been deleted otherwise I’d link it.)
My first thought was, clearly this woman has never participated in a big bang before. But it honestly goes so much deeper than that…
You know, I’m always proudest to call myself a fan fic writer when someone, especially someone like S.E., bashes on it. It’s like I’m harboring this little secret about what I actually do when I write fan fiction versus what they’re accusing me of. And while people who put us down about writing fan fic are trying to make us look like idiots, if you ask me, they’re the ones who end up looking stupid. It’s always apparent when someone who gives you crap for writing fan fic has no idea what they’re talking about other than what they’ve heard. They have no idea the amount of passion, dedication, or heart that goes into fan fiction. They have no idea how supportive (for the most part…) the community is. They don’t know the fear of putting oneself “out there” when sharing their work, or what it feels like to have someone admire your work even though you’re not a published author. They might never know what it feels like to have something that brings them so much joy laughed at, or mocked, or disregarded because it’s different. They cannot understand.
Yes, S.E. is a published author, she wrote her first novel as a teenager, and the book is still well known today. She knows about these grueling deadlines, and formats, and inputs she speaks of. But what she seems to be missing about us measly fan fic writers? So. Do. We.
The thing is, countless fan fic writers are writing because it’s an escape, because it’s something we’re passionate about, because it’s a way for our voices to be heard; a lot of us will stop at nothing to be able to write even just a little bit every single day. So many of us are full time students, parents, holding full time jobs, often times doing any combination of the three and so much more. Dead lines? Yeah. I have them. I get to write when the kiddos go down for a nap. Two hours. If I don’t get out what I have to say in those two hours the opportunity is gone unless I want to sacrifice something else (like sleep, for example). Many others are squeezing in words on their lunch breaks or in between classes, staying up late to get something put on a page because they worked all day or haven’t had time otherwise. Sure it’s not a “real” deadline. No publisher or editor is hanging a contract over our heads, threatening our jobs. But you know what comes with that publisher? What comes with that editor and that deadline? A paycheck. Compensation for the time you’ve spent writing. A paycheck just like you’d receive at any other job. So yeah, we may not have “real” deadlines, according to published authors such as the acclaimed S. E. Hinton, but that’s because no one’s forking over cash in exchange for a word count by Monday. We’re writing because we love it. Because we want to share a piece of ourselves whether it comes with money attached or not. We’re writing because we care about something so much, it spills out of our hearts and onto the page in the form of high school AU’s, and slow burns.
We may not understand deadlines according to the “real writing world”, but we sure as hell understand doing what we can when we can because otherwise we won’t get the chance. That does not lessen our skill in any way, shape, or form.
But input, oh. We don’t understand input. …Except for you know what comes along with all that fan fiction we’re not being paid to write? Input. In every single form imaginable. Kudos, and comments, and reblogs, and likes. That is our input. Reviews, recommendations, criticism most of us don’t ask for, thrown at us on our AO3 accounts and our tumblrs, our fanfiction.net accounts, our livejournals, and our wattpads — places most of us go to for solace. Whether we want to see said input or not, it’s there, glaringly apparent. And a lot of times it’s great input! A positive comment on one of my fics can make my day. But sometimes, just like input any published writer may receive, it is not kind. Often times it’s harsh, degrading, discouraging. And we don’t have editors, or assistants, or publishers to keep us going. We don’t have the buffer of “well I’m getting paid to do this so it doesn’t matter whether they like my work or not.” All we have is each other, and our own strength, strength a lot of us have garnered from both tough life experiences and you guessed it, being a lowly, silly fan fic writer.
So you know what? Go ahead. You keep on giving your [shitty, unwelcomed] input on what you think about me writing fan fiction and what I could or could not ever understand because I’m not like you. I’ll be over here doing something I love, something I often times have to fight to be able to do, and I’ll keep doing it because nothing you or anyone else could ever say will make me feel like what I’m doing doesn’t matter. Because it does. And that is something you could never understand.
Anyone who think fic writers don’t know deadlines has never participated in an event and written 10k words in two days fuels by coffee, wine, and good music and no sleep so that they don’t disappoint someone….
Fic writers are real writers mother fucker don’t forget it.
If your fandom hasn’t started falsely accusing everyone of pedophilia yet and clearly misusing the term then you’re a young fandom and honey you’ve got a big storm coming
side-eyeing the people ranting about how they are leaving the show because of bi god and how it’s “so disrespectful” like…. did y’all miss god being called a dick, a crappy deadbeat dad, etc. for the past seven seasons?
you managed to stick around while the show said god was a piece of shit, but now the fact that he’s not straight is “too much”?
1. chuck is a fictional character and an avatar for the creators of the show and he has no more bearing on whatever version of god you believe in than castiel or balthazar or gabriel or whoever have on whatever angels you consider real
2. your thinly veiled queerphobia is showing
feel free to let the door hit you on your way out 🙂
So I had a friend, and she used to have a lot of trouble finding partners. See, she had this habit of jumping ahead in extrapolation. Like, not from A to B, but from A to Zombie Apocalypse.
Let’s say a guy at the library asks her out for coffee. He seems cool, and they…
I’ve been trying to think of a nice way to say this to fandom since the hiatus began, and especially since SDCC started. It got to the point where I almost unfollowed someone because of all the negativity I was seeing.
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