hey, anon. I’m sorry to hear about this – it’s an unpleasant experience to see a bunch of people who you thought agreed with you irt fictional content behaving this way. the option to specifically report harm to fictional minors might just be a way to separate real cp reports from reports of objectionable fictional content, but its existence certainly does seem to embolden harassers who feel this is tumblr’s way of condoning their behavior & worldview.
I don’t know if this is going to help, but it is something that I think is important to remember: a lot of people are a little bit ‘anti’. that is: most people don’t hold to the extreme ends of anti-censorship, of ‘ship and let ship’ and ‘it’s okay to portray really upsetting, illegal things in fiction’. most people put limits on what they consider acceptable.
this is what militant fandom antis have long banked on. knowing that many people are not going to be okay with fiction portrayals* of csa, or power imbalances, or incest, or domestic abuse, or kinky sex, they portray everything they don’t like as falling into these categories, whether it is or not. outsiders/semi-outsiders tend to fall for it, and fandom policers are strengthened by it.
all this is to say: i have my doubts that so many people are militant, ready-to-call-everything-pedophilia fandom anti-shippers as it might appear right now, and I hope that gives you a little bit of hope.
(*specifically, a lot of people would object to ‘positive’ portrayals of these kinds of things, or minors accessing kinky adult content. but almost anything can be interpreted as a ‘positive’ portrayal of something unpalatable if you try hard and believe in yourself, and it’s nigh-impossible to force minors to not click on or view 18+ material if they choose to, no matter how much you label & and warn for it.)
below is some stuff I wrote about this previously, which I wanted to give its own post (more or less):
as fandom has (1) gone increasingly mainstream/diluted into mainstream spaces and (2) increasingly conflated shipping & activism*, the old ruling principle of ‘live and let live’ that transformative fandom once operated under has fallen increasingly to the wayside.
(*conflating shipping & activism is a subtype of conflating fiction and reality/’fiction affects reality’.)
‘ship and let ship’ (SALS) and ‘your kink is not my kink (and that’s okay)’ (YKINMKATO, ‘kinktomato’) are not ‘I endorse everything under the sun both irl and in fiction’: they are guidelines to respecting other fansthat have different values, coping mechanisms, feelings, worldviews, traumas, life experiences, identities, orientations, fantasies, etc, and acknowledging that this makes it impossible to judge their life choices.
this widespread cohesive attitude is what really made transformative fandom a radically unusual space in the 2000′s:not the existence of kinky shit by and for non-straightcismale audiences, but the lack of judgement of things that we knew we could not judge. and this had its own problems and blind spots (racism being (a hUGE) one of them) – it was far from perfect – but it was comparatively friendly when we consider current fandom environs.
these respect guidelines are not widely known/followed anymore due to a variety of circumstances. one of them is that it’s very common for the average, uncritical stance towards ‘weird’ things to be ‘that’s gross and I wish it didn’t exist’/’I don’t think it should exist’.
for example, that (in)famous gifset of Josh Keaton saying ‘first of all, learn the definition of pedophilia’? what was not giffed was what he followed it up with [paraphrased]: ‘there’s people who ship shiro and keith as student/teacher and stuff and that’s not okay. that’s gross.’(this is why I don’t find his apology when he bowed out of public shipping wank to be a change in his position on shipping.) even while JKeat did not approve the ‘anti’ definition of pedophilia, he also did not approve of kinky shipping from the start.
I believe this to be the average non-fandom-member’s feelings on all fictional content (though in the main, only authoritarian groups try to police the existence of fictional content they find objectionable).
dilution of fandom into mainstream spaces & increased ease of access to transformative fandom means that many people have joined fandom without becoming acquainted with SALS or YKINMKATO as rules for respectful interaction. Instead they carry this casual ‘ship/create whatever you want – except the gross shit’ attitude with them into fandom. and if they don’t quickly figure out how to curate their fandom experience, viral sharing social media will bring the casual newcomer a host of ‘gross shit’ they don’t want to see.
If such a person is inclined to be an authoritarian – that is, to demand that everyone live by their definition of what’s gross and what isn’t – they will probably become an enthusiastic militant anti-shipper, policing ‘bad ships’ with vigor. If not, their fandom etiquette ‘alignment’ is much more uncertain.
between this average ‘all kinks but my kinks are weird’ feeling & the successful pushback against SALS/YKINMKATO by militant fandom antis: people who believe that fictional ships/fanworks should be morally pure/good/healthy and insult, denigrate, or discourage ships/fans of ships they see as ‘bad’ don’t always identify themselves as ‘antis’, ‘anti-[ship]’, or ‘anti-pedophilia/incest/abuse’.
in fact, it’s become increasingly common for people who believe this to NOT identify as ‘antis’ because the ‘anti’ label is associated with harassment and abuse**.
here’s my point:
at this strange, sort of postmodern transformative fandom juncture (Oct 2018), the labels people use to identify their opinion on fandom etiquette mean less and less. We’re all so polarized that if a person wishes to throw their weight around with a small army of followers, harassing and dogpiling on people they disagree with, they could do it in the name of nearly anything and find some success.
the ‘anti-pedophilia/incest/abuse’ community remains the most popular place from which cyberbullies take positions of power and direct intrafandom attacks … but it is not the only place that harbors cyberbullies, and it never was the only place harboring cyberbullies.
abusers are abusers are abusers, and again: they will use anything – shipping, anti-shipping, or anything else – to abuse people.
and: the more polarized fandom is, the easier it is for serial abusers and predators to find a place where if they say the right things, they can do whatever they want and get away with it.
(**even the most virulent fandom policers often do not perceive their own intimidation tactics as abusive. they may see their actions as justified because they’ve deemed their target(s) as acceptable targets/subhuman, or they may justify them as a necessary evil for the good of all. alternatively, they may simply be so un-self-aware that they literally don’t know they’re harassing people.)
I highly recommend, if you are on the fence about the Cassandra Clare case. You read this court document.
The fact that you can put each character and plot point next to each other and they are the exact same. Says something. I didn’t think they were going to have much of a case. But when it’s this similar. Down to a rebellious sister whose cooking is mocked. I have no sympathy for CC and I will no longer be supporting her books/shows/endeavors.
There’s literally 15 pages that list every single similarity! It’s insane! I’m surprised Clare didn’t get sued earlier. Can someone who’s read both series confirm that these comparisons are accurate though??
Cause I saw someone asking in the reblogs and someone else claiming that the Dark-Hunter series was published after The Mortal Instruments….
Also, there’s this from the initial report of the lawsuit:
On Friday, Kenyon sued Cassandra Clare aka Judith Rumelt aka Judith Lewis, claiming her “Shadowhunter” series initially used Kenyon’s trademark “darkhunter.” After Kenyon demanded that Clare remove the word “darkhunter” from her work, Clare used the term “shadowhunter” for her protagonists instead, according to the lawsuit. The word “hunter” was also removed from the book title. Clare’s book, “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,” was published in 2007. Since then, Clare has expanded her use of the term “shadowhunter” despite assurances that she would not, according to Kenyon.
You can find the initial report of the lawsuit here.
I’ve read the first three books (but they’ve been on my reread list for a while) in the series and I can confirm from my recollections that having read through that list? The similarities are pretty fucking damning.
Also, for those who want further reading on the subject of this lawsuit, you can read more here. That contains these two points:
12. In 2006, PLAINTIFF was alerted by some of her distressed fans of the potential
publication by CLARE of a work that incorporated PLAINTIFF’s Dark-Hunter Marks. PLAINTIFF demanded that the term “darkhunter” and the Dark-Hunter Marks be removed from
CLARE’s work. CLARE removed the term “darkhunter” and the Dark-Hunter Marks from her
work, substituting instead the term “shadowhunters” for her protagonist, but removing any
reference to “hunter” (whether “shadow” or “dark”) from the title; the book was published in 2007
as “The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones.” Despite PLAINTIFF’s continuing protests and continuous assurances from CLARE and CLARE’s publisher that she/they would not expand the
use of the “shadowhunters” term or adopt it as a trademark, CLARE has persisted over time in
expanding her use of the term “shadowhunters” from a mere description of her protagonists, first
to a tag line on the cover of her works and eventually to a complete rebranding of her works so as
to be confusingly similar to the Dark Hunter Series. CLARE’s works are now listed on CLARE’s
website, “shadowhunters.com” under the category of “Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunters” and
include the series of “Mortal Instruments” novels along with “The Infernal Devices,” “The Dark
Artifices,” “Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy,” “The Bane Chronicles,” “The Last Hours,”
and “The Shadowhunter’s Codex”, each a “Shadowhunter Book” (and collectively, the
“Shadowhunter Series”).
13. The Dark-Hunter Series and the Shadowhunter Series are so similar that CLARE’S
own publisher mistakenly printed 100,000 copies of a Shadowhunter Book referencing the DarkHunter
Mark on the cover. Upon written demand by PLAINTIFF, CLARE’s publisher destroyed
tens of thousands of the Shadowhunter Book that contained PLAINTIFF’s Dark-Hunter Mark on
its cover. Despite the destruction of tens of thousands of copies of this Shadowhunter Book, thousands of Shadowhunter Books including the Dark Hunter Marks on the cover have now been
sold and substantial commercial confusion has resulted.
^^This should clarify things if people are wondering what the fuss is about. It’s more than a couple of similarities (which books based on the same sort of thing are going to have)
Oh look, someone who started plagiarizing when she was writing fanfic (conveniently left off her wiki page) has been caught plagiarizing yet again.
I bet all those suckers who paid for her to get a new laptop a long time ago in another magical fandom are pleased to hear this.
I remember watching the Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle unspool in real time from the minimum safe distance of not writing for HP’s huge, wanky fandom. Color me unsurprised.
Every time I think I’ve heard the last of her, Cassandra Claire emerges from the depths of her own infamy like the plague. In bouts and fatalistic spates. I still remember when all her shit was going down on livejournal, so seeing this makes me feel ancient. I was there Gandalf…three thousand years ago…
It’s surreal to watch this unfold now. Like ah yes, the plagiarist who was a known plagiarist is being taken to court for plagiarism. Shocker.
For the original ask, requesting the definition of squick, please see this post.
Squick is a fun term that was often used as both a noun and a verb. Either X was one of your squicks, or X squicked you, or squicked you out, or squicked you hard.
It was often used in fic exchanges. They would ask for a list of your squicks so that the gifting author would know not to include any hint of them. It was also used in casual conversation with fandom friends, authors, artists, etc. It could be left in comments, or as a reason you just didn’t read your best fandom friend’s latest fic. “Sorry, bff, you know I love your writing, but you have X tagged at the top, and that just squicks me out.” “Hey, no worries, best reader friend! I totally get it. Give this one a pass, but I’ll send you a note when I post my next one! I promise it will be totally X-free!”
Here’s the thing though. In your example, you explain why X is your squick with Y. But the beauty of squick was that (at least in my experience) no explanation was necessary. Not only was it not necessary, it was rarely asked for. A squick is a squick, and there doesn’t have to be any rhyme or reason. In fact, why would you have a rational, bullet-pointed, well-thought-out argument as to why something squicked you out? Very often it’s a visceral reaction, and if you don’t like the thing, you’re likely not going to sit and do deep meditation on why not.
Squicks were respected by fandom. You don’t like the thing, okay, we will tag the thing appropriately, you do not have to read the thing, no judgments on either side. There was no fandom policing, only respect.
And this, I think, is super important, because fandom policing is a problem, especially when it comes to triggers. “Trigger” has become so overused, so all-encompassing, that people feel they have to defend their legitimate triggers. If X triggers you, it triggers you, and you DO NOT need to provide an explanation. But because “trigger” is so often used in place of “squick,” some people feel they have the right to “call out” those who use the word. They want explanations, they want you to tell them what that triggering concept does to you, so they can call bullshit and feel superior. You don’t have to explain either your squicks or your triggers, but using the correct word stops the fandom police from feeling as though they have the right to ask.
Bring “squick” back, people. Don’t devalue triggers, which are horrible, nasty, dangerous things.
the culture of justifying dislike on an ideological/moral basis in part one: chapter one of my novel, Let Me Show You My Issues With Tumblr Fandom. the requirement for ideological purity has become so impossibly strict, and is valued so highly, that tearing the thing you dislike from an ideological standpoint is the quickest way to shut it down. it’s a cheap, disingenuous shortcut that exploits social justice language for personal leverage. it’s not like we were free of wankery and ship wars back in ye olde lj days, god, far from it, but at least the insults we flung at each other were subjective: A is so bad for B and if you can’t see that you’re an idiot!!! B/C OTP!!! (i should also disclaim that we did have moral policing as well, it was just FAR less extensive.) leveraging social justice concepts is an attempt to gain a kind of objective superiority. “they’re a dark ship and i don’t like that” holds little power; “they’re abusive and you support abuse by shipping this” is a trump card to shut down the content you don’t like and the people who fan it. that kind of rhetoric is all over the damn place and it continues to be propagated because it works and it has created a culture from which a variety of problems like the trigger issue explained above consistently arise.
…i would go into further chapters on my novel but i am tired now
every time I see more of the ‘ao3 is evil’ crap circulating I think, ‘well, tumblr is evil too and I don’t see you stop using it’
You know, the more I think about this, the more I think the real complaint isn’t that AO3 hosts “evil” content, it’s that it doesn’t allow harassment/dogpiling of “evil” creators as easily as Tumblr. Abuse won’t remove or even re-tag a work except in a handful of very specific cases, but they will suspend or ban users for harassment, including filing repeated unfounded Abuse reports. Authors also have at least some ability to screen/block comments on works, and there’s no direct messaging system outside of commenting on works through which to pursue harassment. You can follow a creator but you can’t block them (much less encourage others to do the same).
Tumblr, by contrast, generally ignores any abuse report that doesn’t involve the DMCA, and aggressive anons can and have driven bloggers off the site entirely. The fact that the same tactics are used by social justice bloggers and neo-Nazis (for instance) doesn’t matter – they’re the affordances of the site, by accident or design, and an entire fannish generation have gotten very used to performing their fannish (and moral) identity in this fashion.
(I thinks it’s relevant that AO3 was designed by fandom’s LJ generation and in some respect mirrors the affordances of LJ circa 2010. Tumblr is a very different site and that, moreso than age differences, seems to be at the root of this – though of course age intersect with site experience in a non-trivial way.)
ding ding ding ding.
Ao3 requires you to police your own consumption of content. Ao3 won’t let you destroy someone’s online presence simply because you don’t like it. Ao3 won’t let you impose your own morality on other without cause.
If you have issues with this, and the fact that Ao3 requires you to have responsibility and agency, then you seriously need to sit down and have a damned good long hard look at yourself.
The question I usually fail to see being answered when people bitch about the content on AO3 is – so who gets to decide?
You? Me? A committee of my friends? Of yours? Of those who have the most kudos? Of those who have no interest in fandom, but want to protect other people from dangerous content, whatever it may be? Who gets that power, and how long will they have it?
Who are you comfortable with giving the power of regulating all the content? What happens in grey areas? What happens when something you like isn’t liked by the Decider? Is there an appeal? Who gets to make the arguments for and against something?
The world is complex and there are no easy answers.
The impossibility of creating a censorship board that curates based on content is a great reason why those things don’t exist, and shouldn’t.
Certain people are screaming that AO3 is bad because it’s not a “safe space.” The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space – for writers. And it does a pretty good job of that. It was designed to be a place where writers are safe from arbitrary content rule changes, random and unwarned deletions, and abuse-report abuse (which is common on ff.net). The Four Big Warnings + CNTW system is beautiful in its fairness and simplicity.
Antis can’t take control of it. And because control-freakdom is at the heart of their “movement,” this drives them into frenzies. Good. It motivated me to dig a little deeper into my pocket to donate on the last drive. For all the pleasure AO3 has given me over the years, that’s money well spent.
The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space – for writers.
Preach it loud and hard!
I’m a member of the LJ generation, and when I first came to Tumblr (grudgingly and out of desperation, I might add, since it tragically seems to be the only place to really connect with other fandom peeps) I was horrified at how people here had established this sort of fucked up bully culture, where nobody is responsible for monitoring their own consumption, and rather they expect everyone else to custom tailor content to the whims and desires of the Shrieking Banshee Masses. And woe be to the person who doesn’t bend and break! “I’m going to bully you while accusing you and your Big Mean Poopie Content of being the actual bully, so I can hopefully distract you and others from realizing I’m being a royal intrusive asshat who failed Astronomy 101 b/c I clearly believe the world revolves around me.”
The irony here is that this in itself is an abuse tactic – victim blaming with a side of gaslighting. Pot, meet kettle.
And it’s the exact same mentality that drives right-wing lunatics to kick up a fuss about the existence of icky cootie gay people in media because we need to “protect family values”, or who take to screeching at Starbucks because their particular religious symbolism isn’t portrayed on the winter holiday cups and OMG WAR ON CHRISTMAS, STARBUCKS STOP OPPRESSING ME BY NOT CATERING TO MY PERSONAL TASTE.
The mentality is one and the same – “Cater to ME ME ME or FACE MY DIVINE WRATH even if it means taking away other people’s freedom!” while hiding behind a flimsy-ass shield of faux righteous anger.
And when these bozos find an environment or situation where they’re unable or not allowed to bully people into silence and submission, they stomp their feet and pitch a tantrum and claim that they’re the ones being oppressed. Identical shit, different pile, and it’s the exact same infantile, schoolyard rubbish no matter which side it’s coming from.
This was a really interesting read. The last poster in particular but all of it.
I had the lightning rod realization why The Discourse about fiction feels so alien to me
It’s because 99% of the arguments boil down to denying an individual’s agency
Fiction is one of the safest ways to exercise your right to choose – especially fanfic, which comes with an entire culture of tagging and content warning etiquette
If you go seeking fanfic on AO3, you can try new things with a fairly good understanding of what you’re getting yourself into
And if you get in over your head – you can close the window and walk away with no regrets
No real people were hurt in the production of words on a page – you aren’t sitting there thinking “gosh, I hope those people in this YouTube video survived that fall”
Fiction gives you the right to try on all kinds of ideas
Which is why I get so indignant when I see stuff like “XYZ content could be bad for some people, therefore it shouldn’t exist”
Or “what if minors clicked on porn for ABC fandom uwu”
The truth is, you have agency
My god, but you have agency
If you are old enough to be poking around these sites without parental supervision, you are old enough to start reading the warning labels on what you consume
And if that isn’t true for you? Then ask someone in your real life for help
(I have some pals who do ask me to screen fics for things that might trigger them)
But seriously, with fiction, you can choose what to access, and learn (in private) what you can handle
Don’t let anyone take your power
antis straight up don’t believe that people have agency. or at least, not agency enough to cancel out the other things that they believe have power over us.
they’re rooted in the same politics that gave us terfs/swerfs, aka radical feminism, which believes among other things that women can’t make free choices under patriarchy – like the choice to do sex work or engage in kink or any number of other things. the reasons women give for doing these things aren’t real reasons, the only reason they do them is because patriarchy has manipulated and brainwashed them into thinking these are acceptable things to do. it’s a “feminism” founded on the idea that most women (except the radfems themselves, of course) are not real agents.
hence the transphobia – because being a woman isn’t about how you feel, only about whether you were assigned in childhood to a particular sex-based second class
hence the biphobia – because bi is a “lesser” kind of gay, because it taints the true equality of gay relationships with imbalanced man/woman ones, which are always inherently coercive towards the woman because the man has all the power
hence the hate of kink, of stories with cruel or abusive themes, because if you like that sort of thing you can’t be trusted to know your own mind. at best you’re participating in your own oppression, mindlessly acting out the desires of a bunch of old white men circlejerking it to your humiliation. at worst, you’re a traitor who’s enabling and encouraging our pedophilic anti-woman overlords, the creators of all cruelty, without which we’d live in a lesbian separatist paradise with no war or suffering.
it can never be just because you find something valuable in reading about weird shit – the only people who could do that without gagging are oppresor menz or brainwashed women. (nb people don’t really fit in here, so they’re ignored.) try on ideas? but some of those ideas are Dangerous, Corrupting, Objectively Sick, and it’s our job to keep you away from them. there are some thoughts that are too awful to ever be admitted into your head, even for a moment, because they’ll change you.
i mean, this sounds like a stretch, but the more i read the more i see it all fit together. it might not be what people consciously believe, but it’s what created this radical exclusionary politics.
This is also why despite generally no longer caring about Fandom Discourse, there are times when I’m going to speak up
And I am deeply creeped out by this current thread in fandom that says “readers have no agency” for exactly the above reason
I’m not saying we can never be critical about unconscious bias, or issues within fandom like racist themes, sexist themes, etc
I’m saying that it’s deeply creepy to say “we must protect people from their own choices because they’re all equally impressionable babs uwu”, especially when it comes to niche fiction written by marginalized people
missionlameturtle 