fozmeadows:

saintalia:

saintalia:

oh no, i don’t condone abusive relationships! i just write, reblog, and create art, fanfic, meta, gifsets, and other content that portrays an abusive relationship as sexy, attractive, ideal, and the only true choice for each character. most of the time i put them in happy aus or situations despite claiming that i only ship them because of the angst! that’s not condoning abuse, you silly antis!

this is giving me angry abuse apologist anons in my inbox please keep reblogging this i live on their tears

I am honestly fascinated to know what OP thinks of Brian Fuller’s Hannibal, both as a series and as a source of fanworks, given that its status as an adaptation arguably makes it a species of fanfic in its own right, too. Or Game of Thrones, for that matter. 

I’m just… really, really flummoxed by the idea that creating something which features abusive/badwrong relationships is generally understood to be Drama provided it’s in some sense original, but if the same thing happens in fandom, then we somehow lose all ability to distinguish between depiction and endorsement. 

This is just me spitballing, but I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that it’s frowned on in fandom – and with reason! – to offer criticism or critical analysis of individual fanworks, especially fics, so that a certain percentage of those thwarted critical impulses get redirected into generalised and vehement moral condemnation of specific ships and tropes. 

Like: when it comes to books, comics, TV shows, games and films, the established culture of critical reception means that we’re usually able to criticise a specific narrative without being told that the very act of doing so is Mean And Unacceptable – and again, I completely get why fanfic has the conventions it does around unsolicited crit or analysis. But when it comes to analysing a given original work, regardless of the invariable disagreements about taste and whathaveyou, there’s a general critical ability to distinguish between such options as:

• the author is deliberately and skilfully exploring darker themes in a way which I, personally, find fascinating
• the author is deliberately and skilfully exploring darker themes which I personally, cannot enjoy
• the author has attempted to explore darker themes but has, in my opinion, failed in a way that undermines their intentions
• the author has, in my opinion, used darker themes without considering their implications within the wider narrative
• the author has, in my opinion, used darker themes without considering their implications to particular readers
• my knowledge of the author leads me, personally, to suspect that their uncritical use of darker themes is the result of, and therefore a testament to, their actual worldview
• the author has stated clearly that their worldview informs the treatment of darker themes in their work, such that their depiction is, by their own admission, an endorsement of particular themes, though not necessarily specific acts contained in the work

All of which are really crucial distinctions to make, and just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to analysing a work which might delight and infuriate by turns. Which isn’t to say that there’s ever a fannish failure to apply these distinctions to original works, too: manifestly, once a particular work is branded Bad, then anyone who dares create fanworks of it is tarred with the same Bad brush. But when they are applied, which is most of the time, these are all distinctions predicated on the ability to distinguish and discuss an individual work in a critical or negative fashion – and in fandom, where works are produced predominantly for free, often by new or developing writers, often as a catharsis for personal trauma, often for an incredibly niche audience, and, crucially, very often in contexts where sexual fantasies, dark or otherwise, form the basis of what are otherwise in-depth narratives, this sort of specific criticism is not only difficult to make, but subculturally taboo.   

So instead, people get worked up in general about individual ships or squicks or tropes that they dislike, especially when they appear in confluence – and again, I understand why! Because a fanwork, unlike an original story, is based on an existing narrative, which makes the creative distortion visible to readers. If someone takes what is canonically a happy, PG narrative and writes a dark, sadistic fic about the characters, it’s easy to feel that something innocent is being defiled; while on the other hand, if someone takes what is canonically a warped, abusive dynamic and reworks it as something light and fluffy, it’s similarly easy to feel as though they’re trying to exonerate or elide the original darkness, because why else would they bother? 

In both cases, that angry, reactive feeling is easily intensified in a context where, once particular ships or fannish character interpretations become dominant in the minds of multiple fans, such that the thing being exalted is fundamentally separate to the source material – or, as just as often happens, is fundamentally separate to the preferred interpretation of the reactive person – then it’s easy to look at any and every reference to it, however brief, as lots of people saying, in shorthand, “I love and approve this awful, abusive concept because I think abuse is okay.” 

But here’s the thing: people come to fanfic for all sorts of reasons, and they don’t owe you, personally, an explanation for their choices – because unlike, say, Guillermo del Toro, they are not public figures with a certain inherent degree of responsibility or accessibility to their readership. Among my friends who write fanfic, I know people who’ve written their own sexual assaults or rapes into fics as a way to help them process those experiences, or who write darkfic as a safe outlet for sexual fantasies they’d never want to actually try in real life (or who did try them, and had them go wrong, or who want to create a reality where all the bad things they’ve experienced are, in this fictional medium, wholly under their control, and not the control of the person/s who hurt them.) There are people who face their fears by putting them in fanfic. And on, and on, and on.

Are there also genuinely abusive people whose work reflects what they believe is okay IRL? Yes, there are; but that’s also true of people who create original works, not just fanfics (see: Woody Allen), and while we absolutely condemn those individuals when the truth comes out, we don’t respond by issuing a moratorium on any future stories containing elements favoured by the abuser, because regardless of the purity of your intentions, it’s pretty much impossible to say Thou Shalt Not Create This Particular Thing without simultaneously banning a lot of stuff that, actually, it would’ve been good to keep, because stories – and people, and stories about people – are just that complex. 

Anyway. This kind of got away from me a bit, and like I said, this is just me theorising, but the more I think about it, the more I feel as if there really is a correlative relationship between fandom’s regular forays into total moral puritanism and its inability to offer criticism except at a general level.

the-quiet-priestess:

blackheartseverywhere:

badsciencejokes:

…I almost killed myself

I put on my sunglasses, to hide my swollen eyes, over my tears. I cried all my makeup off. Went inside to have a milkshake. I don’t know why. I wanted something to drink as I figured out what I would do. I got a soda and a milkshake. Medium. The cashier looked at me and with a line around the corner of the counter he rushed away from the counter “Hold on “ he yelled to a coworker.

I filled my soda and went back and saw him looking all over. I go up and he gets close and says “I made it a large”.

That was seriously enough for me not to do it. His kindness. Someone went out of their way and as I went back in my car to cry I realized I could muster through a few other days. A few more weeks. Then I came down from that panicky high of anxiety, depression, and pain. I finished my shake. And it was enough time to let me feel better. I… I’m alive. I’ll make it through.

Try and be nice today. Tomorrow. Something as much as a smile. It helped so much.

Thank you man at McDonalds.

The milkshake saved my life

I hope you all can read this and remember to be kind

The smallest of gestures can save a life. My Mum answered her phone when I called and I am alive today because of that.