objective quality of a media (show/game/anime/etc) has almost zero meaning compared to: what you go in expecting, what you need emotionally in that period of your life, and how you see it through the lens of resonant thematic elements specific to you as an individual.
tbh don’t ever bother asking me whether i ship this pairing or that pairing, just assume the answer is either yes, i could be persuaded, or i don’t know who those people are and block or follow my ass based on however that assumption makes you feel.
because i’m a multishipper and i don’t have notps. i play this game with myself whenever i don’t like a ship or i don’t get it or it even straight up physically repulses me where i go to ao3, sort by bookmarks, and read fic until i can figure out what the attraction is. and 99% of the time?? i can absolutely be persuaded by somebody’s good writing that the pairing has appeal in some way or some universe. some of my favorite ships now are ones that i absolutely hated before i conned myself into liking them.
so if there’s something i might ship that’s a dealbreaker for any of y’all just go ahead and assume i ship it and hit that block button because even if i don’t, i’m probably a few fics away from shipping it at any given moment anyway.
🤷
and actually just to delve deeper into this, my thing is really simple:
i love to read
it is my favorite hobby
and when i choose what fiction i want to read, i am not doing that by pretending that my reading choices are some form of political activism or like they’re an extension of my morals or ethics – i am very simply looking for stories that are interesting to me on some level, that will capture my attention and elicit some kind of feeling from me because reading for me is a form of entertainment.
the only caveat i have for the stories i read when i go looking for new content is that they not bore me.
my real world politics are not a factor in what fiction i read
my real world morals are not a factor in what fiction i read
my real world ethics are not a factor in what fiction i read
the only thing that factors into what fiction i read is whether or not the story is one that is interesting to me
so when you ask me “do you ship this, that, or the other?” it is utterly pointless because what i’m hearing is “is there ever any situation where a story about this relationship would interest you?” and the answer to that is a categorical yes because reading is my favorite thing to do and fandom is full of talented writers who spend their time wrtiing stories about characters in every conceivable combination, universe, and situation that they can think of – so of course the likelihood is extremely high that at some point someone is going to write a story about [insert problematique ship here] that is going to interest me and in the event that that happens i am absolutely going to read it and hope that i enjoy it
i do not read as an exercise in being Woke
i do not read only in accordance to what my real world morals and ethics say is right/wrong behavior in outside of books
i do not read as a way of proving to either myself or anyone else what my politics are
i read to be entertained because that is what reading fiction is to me: entertainment, a form of escapism, a way to intimately explore certain topics and ideas in a safe environment that i would not want to or cannot explore in the real world, something that says nothing about me or my worth or values as a person because the entire point of fiction is that it is not a 1:1 copy of reality and the entire point of reading it is to get away from our reality, whether for better or worse
and that approach to reading fiction? it’s completely fucking normal and has been for years to the majority of the people in the world who read it. it’s the ideas that your fictional tastes must correspond exactly to your real world morals or that you are tainted if you read ‘immoral’ fiction that are in the minority and have always been held by only the most regressive sort of people, the kind who would happily ban books and burn down libraries because the purpose of fiction and its separation from reality escape them.
I sometimes wonder if some people here in their late teens/early 20s just rarely or never interact with unrelated adults older than them so they tend to base their understanding of what *adults* are like and how they should act on their relationships with their parents and teachers, and other authority figures. So many seem to believe that other adults, particularly those older than them, have a responsibility to protect them as if they’re still vulnerable children. They don’t seem to realize that they are in young adulthood themselves, and that other adults are not required to act as their mentors or stand-in parents.
And like, I really don’t think they realize that most people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond aren’t *that* different from them. Most are still dealing with some of the same shit that they were dealing with at age 20. If you don’t accept that humans are complicated and weird, no matter how old they are, you’re gonna have a hard time navigating your own adulthood. If you’re expecting every older person to be more mature and wiser than you, you’re gonna be very disappointed. People are hot messes at all ages.
my dad is infuriating to talk to bc he will pounce on any weakness or chance to humiliate, he will make some up if need be. he acts like it’s a joke and other ppl will laugh at it if it’s not them he’s after. it’s really difficult even now for me to talk to ppl without doing the same, down to the urge to jump on typos in chat.
I used to do it a lot tho, and it was kind of a rush to finally be the one making jokes out of other ppl. I was bullied incessantly and violently as a kid but as I got older I got quicker with wit and it was such a fucking relief. bc when you’re the attacker, you’re safe. it’s not enough to be ‘neutral’ neither being hurt or hurting, bc u have learnt that ppl will come along and pounce on you. attacking gives you the power, and then the fear of being vulnerable again makes you keep going, bc u can’t let up or you’ll be right back there in the danger zone where any innocuous comment or action will lead to a stream of abuse.
so if ur a person who has been or is being mistreated and ur wondering why verbally devastating strangers on the internet makes u feel good, and why u can’t stop until everyone can see you Won, but then u gotta move right on to the next one and the next no matter how many times you’ve supposedly publicly proved your point, idk I sympathise I guess but it’s gonna make u feel like a real piece of shit human one day, and that feeling is gonna last way longer than the rush of finally being the one doing the hurting.
you ever see someones posts and can tell they send anon hate
that, and
tracked down that post because i had to know what would so clearly give off that specific vibe and and the referent comment is… exactly what you’d write given the above comment as a Jeopardy question
Do NOT harm yourself. That doesn’t help, and asking you to do so doesn’t help.
Instead? Tell your parents. Tell your family, tell your friends, your teachers, your employers, EVERYONE you know and interact with, that you support and even romanticize abusive content. Tell them that you think it’s harmless.
Well?
We’re waiting.
I do tell a lot of people. My mom, for example. She’s a writer too and she knows that I enjoy writing dark stories. I said people were mad at me on the internet over a ship and she immediately guessed which (very problematic) ship it was and was shocked that people had told me to die over something so ridiculous. I recently told my therapist that I write and enjoy darkfic sometimes, specifically mentioning the sort of sexual content they involve. His first impulse was to worry that I might feel guilty about my harmless interest. I told my previous therapist that I get off to violent fictional media and she said it was fine because she knew I’d never hurt a fly in real life. I’ve told my coworkers about the sort of movies I like (horror) and they didn’t care at all. Turns out people who work at libraries know how fiction works. My childhood best friend has known I’m a sadist for as long as I can remember and it never seemed to bother her. I still have a reputation as a very polite and helpful person, and my friends feel comfortable telling me secrets and asking for advice.
You know what always shocks people? When I tell them about the hate I’ve recieved online for my ships. My mom regularly says she’s proud of me for standing up for myself and others online, and my therapist considers it a very positive act. I don’t tell EVERYONE I interact with about my problematic ships (hi I’d like a number 1 combo with cheese also I think Thor and Loki should kiss), but I don’t hide it at all. The worst I’ve ever gotten is people being mildly surprised that someone as silly and positive as me loves horror.
Tell your family, tell your friends, your teachers, your employers, EVERYONE you know and interact with
“and that’s all 300 pairs of fictional characters I want to kiss each other. any questions?”
“ma’am this is a wal-mart”
Told my mom I wanted to rip open kylo rens abdominal cavity and she just shrugged so op idk what you’re expecting to happen here
“Hey young people, i want you to initiate sexually explicit conversations with lots of grown ups you barely know”
NICE TRY JARED FROM SUBWAY
This is honestly the funniest post I’ve read on this hellsite.
Especially knowing that OP’s definition of “incest” = people who were close friends before falling in love and “paedophilia” = adults who are not exactly the same age.
Listen, kiddo, if you can’t even type out the words without performative purity slashes, you’re not old enough to ride the disc horse. Don’t tell anyone you know and interact with you wrote this post, it’s just too embarrassing.
I told my therapist about the trashtastic fan fic I write and she called the purity police and I’m writing this from the Internet Jail and Reeducation Camp for People Who Fan Fic Wrong
I just want everyone to know
not to throw pearls before swine, but op (inadvertently) presents an interesting false dichotomy of morality here. “only Bad People will be punished by society for Bad Behaviour” is an implication so historically inaccurate as to be hilarious, and lbr op is not actually trying to be taken seriously with this bizarre gotcha attempt, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that they are. it’s noteworthy that a lot of people mix up morality and ethics on the reg and i think that’s the root cause of a lot of this type of confusion and hysterics.
morality is specifically culturally mandated. it’s the sum of what your family, culture, religion, economy, ecological niche, etc etc, have organically ratified as the code of conduct (theoretically anyway, and only at the time of its invention) best suited to keeping everyone alive. a lot of the time it sucks and falls short of reality, bc things like the heliocentric model of the solar system and germ theory haven’t always been around to inform our traditions. ethics otoh is basically the calculation of potential suffering. how does xyz action actually impact an individual/group, regardless (but acknowledging the subjective role) of cultural morality? masturbation, for instance: historically immoral; actually perfectly ethical. human sacrifice (culture-dependent): morally necessary; almost certainly heinously unethical.
regardless of the extensive, fruitless lengths it would take to draw some strict line between what an “abusive” fictional scenario is or isn’t (and then subsequently go out and burn the resultant millions and millions of works of Bad Art to keep ourselves morally pure), and regardless of the years that could be spent debating how and when and why fiction affects reality and whether thought crime should be a thing (??!!), there’s something grimly amusing about the conceit that culturally immoral (even if it is ethically sound) behaviour must always result in a personal sense of shame, and that the only reason people keep private information private is a guilty conscience. as though there have never been people who hid, eg, being queer, or a jew, or a female author, or a single mother, or a believer in heliocentrism, not out of personal shame but because a) their business is their own, and b) their peers’ unethical moral beliefs would have caused them harm or even death.
now obvs i’m not comparing being jewish or queer to enjoying subgenre fiction, that would be reductive and absurd (sort of like op’s post), but what i am saying is that this “hurr durr fire bad science scary nikola tesla thomas edison was a witch” style of moral reasoning is pervasive, obnoxious, historically fatal, and doesn’t ever need to be taken seriously. and imo it’s extremely debatable whether Bad Fiction is even culturally immoral in the first place. i’d wager not, at this point in 21st century western society, and that anyone you tearfully confessed an interest in, say, silence of the lambs to would back away from you slowly, but not for the reasons op thinks. in essence, op would have been right there alongside savonarola gleefully shovelling books into the bonfire of the vanities and i think most of us can agree ain’t nobody got time for that
it is responsible, and the mark of a good audience, to critique problematic elements in the media we consume. For example, I love gothic lit – but a lot of it is incredibly sexist and racist. I can acknowledge that these elements are a problem and objectionable while still enjoying the piece for a multitude of other reasons. I can also say to myself “if I ever want to write my own gothic lit, here are some elements I should avoid.” Or, if I do want to tackle the issues of racism and sexism in my future gothic lit, then I can say “I will avoid writing in a way which implicitly or explicitly condones racism or sexism, while still emulating the praiseworthy elements of gothic lit.”
In essence, the fundamentals of intersectional media critique is this: “these elements of [x media] are problematic and we should rethink them in future media, both as audiences and as creators.” By rethinking these elements, I don’t mean utterly doing away with them, but rethinking how we approach them and how we read them.
We enter purity culture when our statement moves from “these elements of [x media] are problematic and we should rethink them in future media, both as audiences and as creators,” and becomes “these elements of [x media] are problematic and therefore anyone who consumes or creates [x media] is condoning everything about [x media].” The implication here is that, if one wants to be a good person, one should avoid [x media], because to do otherwise is to either implicitly or explicitly condone everything in [x media]. This type of attitude towards media is very common in conservative religious circles.
It moves fully into censorship when the statement moves from “these elements of [x media] are problematic and therefore anyone who consumes or creates [x media] is condoning everything about [x media]” and becomes “these elements of [x media] are problematic and therefore nobody can consume or create [x media] for any reason.” Those who break this rule are seen as evil and shunned. This type of attitude toward media is very common in fundamentalist circles.
A culture of censorship is the natural outcome of purity culture, because purity culture by its very nature seeks purity until even the whisper of objectionable content, in any context, is suppressed.
I would wager a guess that many people who are against anti culture are familiar with either these toxic conservative or fundamentalist attitudes towards media, and we are alarmed by their striking similarity with antis’ attitudes towards media. It is most certainly why I am against anti culture.
What I definitely don’t mean when I say I like a villain:
“They’re just misunderstood”
I’m defending every single one of their actions and I think they’re 100% innocent
I’m a dumbass who doesn’t know that they’re a villain
also
I am able to sympathize with tragic villains without saying that they are misunderstood, innocent, or don’t realize that they are a villain. I have no idea why tumblr has such a hard time grasping the concept of “seeing people suffer makes me feel bad for them even if they did terrible things” and quite frankly the idea that “only pure and innocent people deserve love and empathy” thing that tumblr has going on scares me.
all of the above and
tbh sometimes the villain is just hot and/or very funny
and my appreciation of hot villains and fictional hijinks does not impair my moral reasoning in a real world context
stop demanding serious and complicated explanations for why i like this goofy fictional character who is obviously ridiculous and exaggerated
i'll apple your turnover 