Blech, antis
Jul. 1st, 2019 02:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kutsuwamushiSometimes I am just baffled by Tumbr discourse. There are legitimately people arguing that it's pedophilia to write porn about characters that have been aged up:
I honestly believe that most of them are just looking to be angry and righteous about something.
And like, people respond and point out various reasons someone might do this, but I always get stuck on a particular question: Why are they assuming the author wants to fuck the characters anyway? It's such an incredibly simplistic way of seeing things. It really makes me wonder how they relate to media.
Hell, I'll use the series my icon is from as an example. The main characters are in middle school when the series starts. Friendship is a major theme and the characters form deep friendships with each other. Does this mean that Naoko Takeuchi, who was in her twenties, must have had a desire to form deep friendships with middle school girls?
Of course not, because it doesn't work that way. And it doesn't work that way when you add in sex, either.
I mean, yes, sometimes people do write erotica about characters because they think they're hot, but it's still stupid to say that they would be attracted to the character in real life. You can be attracted to the themes a character embodies, their design - all sorts of things. You don't have to be attracted to every single trait they possess.
(And in some cases that would be impossible; age in particular is often contradictory, since characters often have stated ages that don't mesh well with their activities or their looks. So are you attracted to the number or to the adult actor who's playing them?)
It's just fundamentalist thinking, to see things in such a direct, and literal way - and refuse to see them in any other way.
Cept they’re still a child. You’ve just imagined what they’d be like older so it ain’t technically illegal. Let me ask, why age up a child to get off to em if you don’t want to fuck the child? Wouldn’t it make more sense if that wasn’t the case to just do that shit with an adult character? But no, for SOME ODD REASON you take a child and imagine them as older. Really makes me think.But like ... if you are imagining them as older ... that is the opposite pedophilia ... oof ... my head hurts.
I honestly believe that most of them are just looking to be angry and righteous about something.
And like, people respond and point out various reasons someone might do this, but I always get stuck on a particular question: Why are they assuming the author wants to fuck the characters anyway? It's such an incredibly simplistic way of seeing things. It really makes me wonder how they relate to media.
Hell, I'll use the series my icon is from as an example. The main characters are in middle school when the series starts. Friendship is a major theme and the characters form deep friendships with each other. Does this mean that Naoko Takeuchi, who was in her twenties, must have had a desire to form deep friendships with middle school girls?
Of course not, because it doesn't work that way. And it doesn't work that way when you add in sex, either.
I mean, yes, sometimes people do write erotica about characters because they think they're hot, but it's still stupid to say that they would be attracted to the character in real life. You can be attracted to the themes a character embodies, their design - all sorts of things. You don't have to be attracted to every single trait they possess.
(And in some cases that would be impossible; age in particular is often contradictory, since characters often have stated ages that don't mesh well with their activities or their looks. So are you attracted to the number or to the adult actor who's playing them?)
It's just fundamentalist thinking, to see things in such a direct, and literal way - and refuse to see them in any other way.
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Date: 2019-07-01 11:08 am (UTC)Yeah, I agree with that. If the character is being imagined as older... what's the issue? I don't get it.
That being said, I gotta admit I take issue with people writing fics where twelve year olds characters have sex with their parents, and that does happen. I just have no idea why anyone would find that hot. I know, Lolita, but Lolita isn't meant to get you hot on the young character being abused. I'm not saying that's what you're talking about I'm just saying.
And... I think people not used to those kind of fics don't see it any other way because they just can't see past the age. It's not about being fundamentalist, it's just about seeing an author getting hot writing an underage character with an adult.
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Date: 2019-07-01 03:28 pm (UTC)I'm not one of those people who says "don't kinkshame" and leaves it there. I do think that erotic fiction can be problematic. However, I think it's a lot more complicated than thing bad -> story bad.
I viscerally don't like such stories and might dislike the people writing them, depending.
But I think that the primary harms such stories can do is (a) traumatizing people who see them unexpectedly, and (b) normalizing viewpoints that cause harm in the real world.
Fandom is kind of a special case. We generally take care of (a) by specific tagging and labeling - much more extensive than mainstream media, where disturbing content (like rape) is everywhere without any warning other than that there is "sex and violence." It's also a niche audience and with tagging even more so, which means that a fanfic tagged for disturbing content will never have the normalizing power of ... say ... Khal Drogo sexily raping thirteen-year-old Daenerys.
Fandom has also traditionally been a space have been free to express their sexual fantasies. Policing content - even if we only start with content that we, personally, think is really distasteful - changes that. Once you get in the habit it's hard to stop. Today it's twelve-year-olds having sex with their parents; tomorrow it's fifteen-year-olds having sex with other fifteen-year-olds, and the day after tomorrow it's eighteen-year-olds who were fifteen in canon.
I just have no idea why anyone would find that hot.
My experience is that people write it for a variety of reasons.
I once had to deal with a loli author who didn't seem to understand that it would be wrong in the real world. She was all-around a creepy, unpleasant person with no sense of boundaries.
But I've also been in fandom a long time and read what a lot of authors have to say about their work, many of whom claim not to be attracted to children in real life. I believe most of them. One of the major themes is that childhood embodies a lot of things that they want to write about, like innocence and helplessness. It's not a literal desire for a child but a more metaphorical desire. Another theme is that they are not imagining themselves in the role of the abuser, but in the role of the child.
I get the first one intuitively, because it's a similar reason to why I read some of the things I do - things that aren't as extreme, but would still be wrong in the real world and that I have no desire to happen in the real world. But they are a stand-in for something less literal.
The second one I don't really get intuitively because I don't imagine myself in the fiction I read, but I know many others do, and you can certainly tell that one partner is the stand-in and one partner is the fantasy in a lot of erotic fiction.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-01 05:16 pm (UTC)Given that we're already at the point of Aragorn/Boromir being incest because Boromir called Aragorn "my brother" one time, and we've all gotten to see a dozen similar text-book examples of slippery slope (followed by doxxing and harassment!), I'm now fully behind, "No content rules on AO3 past what they already have."
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Date: 2019-07-01 07:03 pm (UTC)Also, what? Really? Hahahahaaaa
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Date: 2019-07-02 01:13 pm (UTC)Well, it very much wasn't what I'm talking about. But I'll engage.
Yeah, I wasn't trying to say it was, I just kinda went into a separate topic. (And I hope that was okay? I sometimes have trouble gauging conversational posts from rants, if that makes sense.)
I once had to deal with a loli author who didn't seem to understand that it would be wrong in the real world. She was all-around a creepy, unpleasant person with no sense of boundaries.
That definitely happens.
But I've also been in fandom a long time and read what a lot of authors have to say about their work, many of whom claim not to be attracted to children in real life. I believe most of them. One of the major themes is that childhood embodies a lot of things that they want to write about, like innocence and helplessness. It's not a literal desire for a child but a more metaphorical desire.
Okay, I can understand that a bit better.
Fandom has also traditionally been a space have been free to express their sexual fantasies.
And see, I think that may be the other issue here. As I was introduced to fandom, it was purely about exploring the universe. So when I found fics that were more about darker fantasies, it was confusing, because in my scope of fandom that was almost like saying "I think this could totally happen in canon, btw." I soon realized that wasn't the case, but truth be told I never really got used to that side of fandom. I tend to still stay in the more discussion-oriented corners, and read fic that focuses less on kinks. That could be the problem some tumblrites have, but I think they take it too many levels too far by really policing things.
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Date: 2019-07-01 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-01 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-02 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-01 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-01 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-01 06:33 pm (UTC)...Because you don't want anyone to fuck the child?
Q.E.D.
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Date: 2019-07-01 09:39 pm (UTC)I've often assumed that the thought process behind aging up characters for shipfic goes like "I like everything about this character EXCEPT for the part where they're a child." Plus it's fun to imagine a how a character might evolve over time or in different circumstances--fandom is famous for its AUs for a reason. Et voila, they're 24 now instead of 11.
If they wanted to write about the character as a child, they...would. I mean. I don't feel like reading or writing about an adult character is gonna scratch that itch if someone has it, you know?
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Date: 2019-07-02 12:21 am (UTC)One of the things I didn't mention is that some of these antis think writing aged-up characters is a way to get around ... something?
They think that people who want to write erotica about underaged characters are being ... stopped? By laws? Or by ... them? Or sometihng? It's kind of conspiratorial, like the people who write aged-up characters are sekrit pedophiles and only the know the truth.
Except ... if you want to write about underaged characters, you can do it, you can be anonymous, you can post it to the biggest fanfiction archive out there...
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Date: 2019-07-02 11:20 pm (UTC)A few kids on Tumblr, maybe, but most folks are gonna either write what they want or not write at all. Who has the time?
Occam's razor, kiddos.
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Date: 2019-07-02 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-02 11:26 pm (UTC)🤷♀️
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Date: 2019-07-01 09:41 pm (UTC)(Here via network, hi! 😊)
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Date: 2019-07-02 02:11 pm (UTC)As an asexual person, 100x this. I'm not open about my personal details in most online spaces, and it bothers me that I sometimes feel pressured (though I don't give in) to submit my sexuality and gender to public scrutiny in order to participate in fandom. The nipples thing may have been the final straw, but I was moving away from tumblr long before that because of this bs.
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Date: 2019-07-02 08:37 pm (UTC)They really are a group of morally righteous dumbasses. I think the "puritanism covered in rainbow spray paint" comment someone else made is really on the noise.
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Date: 2019-07-02 11:33 pm (UTC)But then it gets tangled up in all the self-righteous posturing, and they're jumping at shadows and joining the bully clique.
Some calm, informational, non-pressury sex ed and relationship advice would do a hell of a lot more good than playing fandom telephone about how avoiding X, Y, and Q in fic will keep you safe/moral.
(So of course Tumblr deleted Pervocracy's blog.)
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Date: 2019-07-03 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-03 03:29 pm (UTC)Ha! So true.