“why do we even need ao3/ why won’t they censor content i don’t like/ what’s that money going towards”
it’s going towards not arbitrarily deleting all your fucking blogs overnight because yahoo had a shareholders meeting, that’s what the fuck it’s going towards. if you don’t own it, they can yank the cord whenever they feel like it, for whatever reason, using whatever wobbly catch-all algorithm they want, and that is exactly what the fuck we’ve been telling you. “wellll i’m not a porn blog, it’s not going to affect me,” oh worm?? you sure?? this website is suddenly gonna be capable of censoring posted content with surgical precision? give ao3 ten bucks immediately and get real
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.)
Look, here’s the deal with tumblr: it moves fast. A lot of people follow enough blogs that scrolling through one’s entire dash is impossible. I remember the days when I could wake up in the morning and scroll back to the last post I saw before bed. Sweet, summer child.
Here’s the other deal with tumblr: I see so much anxiety about reblogging one’s own stuff, be it art; analysis; fanfiction; hell, personal posts and replies. I have (and continue to feel deeply) that anxiety. Every time, my inner critic and I go through the same song and dance.
Critic: You look like you’re begging for notes/replies/reblogs. People will think you’re needy/full of yourself/have to be the center of attention. You already have a few notes, why do you need more? Other people have it worst than you. Ugh, you’re just clogging the dashes of your followers. If they wanted to read it, they’d have read it already.
Me: *ball of anxiety* You’re right. Wait, no you’re not. Wait, maybe you are. Wait, no—
I’d say it’s 50/50, even now, that I’ll reblog myself.
And you know what? Fuck that.
Not everyone can get through their dash in a sitting.
Timezones are a thing.
Work hours are a thing, also affected by timezones.
Life away from tumblr is a thing (what??? I know).
There are so many reasons a person might not see your fic/art/stuff the first time. Reblog it the next day. Reblog it a week from now. Hell, set up a schedule or a queue and have it reblog itself three months from now. Go back through old fics and reblog the ones you really liked; I guarantee you have followers who are new enough to have never seen it or who would like to reread it.
Be proud of the work you do.
Oh yeah, I felt that resistance from here.
Say it again. Out loud. Write it on a post-it note and stick it where you’ll see it.
Be proud of the work you do.
You wrote/made it for a reason. And yeah, part of that reason was probably to share it with other fans. Otherwise, why post at all? I know. Man, I get it. I’m cringing even writing that. The fucked-up “don’t show off” mentality runs deep, right?
Fuck that, too.
If you have followers who unfollow you because you’re reposting your stuff (and this is hard to prove, remember; maybe they quit tumblr, maybe their interests diverged from yours, whatever), who cares? Let them go. For everyone who leaves you, many will stay. And many will be happy to see that thing they missed because of work, life, sleeping. Especially if you follow a few points of tumblr/dash etiquette:
Use cuts/read mores for anything longer than a few hundred words (I tend to cut at about 400-500 words, though if something’s under about 700 I might leave it).
Reblog at reasonable intervals (day/evening, next day reblog, etc. Hourly might be a bit much ;D).
The thing in question was tagged appropiately, and posted in an adult space. To find it, a minor had to agree on that website that they were over 18 and agreed to view adult content.
Seriously.
howdy. i am a person who likes boundaries. if there was a clear cut way to avoid most of the kids in this fandom, trust me, i’d be there. but you hide your ages, when you aren’t outright lying about them, and even those of you upfront about the fact that you are Literally Children go on tirades where you point-blank admit to being on crusades against content you weren’t supposed to be viewing in the first place.
what’s up with that? do you guys realize that’s like me coming into your space and being pissed off that the content is largely PG? we are so used to ~raging against the machine~ on this site that we have apparently forgotten that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. erotica is an entire genre, and in this year of our lord 2017 with extensive tagging and clear rating systems, it’s pretty difficult to stumble into. when i first started reading it at 16, it was not an accident.
where exactly are these “minor spaces” you are referring to? is it the rvb minors chat? because we don’t go in there. there are no designated safe spaces here–you have to make them. there is no designated SFW space on tumblr or ao3. what we have instead are ratings and tags that serve as signage to tell people where to, or where not to go.
you’re framing this like we’re in your territory, but really, you’re in ours. if you want safe, you can go to ff.net. they don’t accept explicit works. that would be why the adult writers are over here, and not there. i guess you could call that area minor-friendly.
but you’re coming out of your safe little corner because you want to see more of the world. i get it. when you’re limited to sticking to content created by teenagers or SFW content from adults, you see less. you’re also in the middle of being mobbed by hormones. been there. mysteriously made it out without pissing a slew of adults off though, but hey, i waited until i was 18 to join tumblr. which is, by the way, ten years old now–five years younger than rvb, a show that was probably taking off when you were diapers. i have no idea how people have gotten it into their heads that we’re watching anything other than an adult show, but i would really appreciate if that stopped, like, yesterday.
i think you guys are forgetting you’re reading content that on every other major site where it’s been hosted, you weren’t supposed to be reading it. ao3 has a rating system that marks explicit works as for adults only. livejournal asks if you’re 18. dreamwidth lets authors demand the same check. tumblr is the only fucking godforsaken place where you don’t have to opt into anything if the blog isn’t marked nsfw, so what do we do? WE MARK OUR SHIT UP. we put it under cuts, we tag it nsfw, we LABEL OUR BLOGS AS NOT FOR MINORS.
and you still show up.
you open the content anyway, and i get it. curiosity, cat. you want to have the power to turn ‘no’ into a ‘yes’.
but here’s the thing. you can’t insist we treat you with respect and then expect us to act like you’re stupid. we know what you’re doing, and we know that you know you’re doing it. (still following?) we know you’re reading these entries fully aware that you shouldn’t be. and there are thousands of kids like you, who, unlike you, are managing to fly under the radar. we know because we’ve done it ourselves.
you can’t come into adult spaces and insist that the content be censored for you. I CAN’T EVEN DO THAT IN MY OWN HOUSE. i am a 24 year old woman living under my father’s roof, and i cannot control a) the topics he chooses to discuss b) the volume he chooses to discuss them at. all i can do is retreat to my room, my designated safe space, which doesn’t even do much on account of our loft style floor plan, yet i cope somehow.
let me make this absolutely clear: no one is in your goddamn house. no one’s forcing you to be exposed to what we make. you are on a website where adults are actively trying to protect you and themselves, and you are not meeting us halfway. and what’s being done here on a wider scale? it’s bullying. you have kids online bullying adults, and it’s only because the adults are decent enough to NOT chew any of you out and be responsible for sending kids into fucking depression spirals that no one’s tried to put a stop to it.
not that it would work. if nothing else, you’ve proved you’re stubborn.
we aren’t stupid, and we know you aren’t, either. we understand you want us to just stop making the things you don’t like. that this “invading minor spaces” rhetoric is really a thinly veiled cry for us to stop making adult content altogether. but adults built the communities you take solace in. do you think a bunch of high schoolers just trying to survive their teenage years are modding your favorite community events, chatrooms, making the gifsets, writing the 300k fic, making art in styles that have taken a decade or more to hone?
so now i have a question: what do you think will happen when you grow up in a space filled with adults you spent a considerable length of time harassing? what happens when you’re finally of age to consume the content, but no one wants to take you off their blacklist? i’ve been in communities where people try to hide their identities. eventually it gets out. you can make all the new blogs you want; your reputation will precede you, and people will block you all over again. good luck having any meta conversations with a crowd of people you alienated with your venom as a child.
if you’re 16, you will be a kid two more years.
but you will be an adult every year afterward.
please police yourself accordingly. i know it’s annoying as hell waiting to grow up. i know there are days you don’t think you will.
you’ll get there.
please let us be happy for you when you do.
I mean I just would have said “do your goddamn homework” but this works too.
Kids. Teenagers. As someone staring 40 in the face lemme tell you a thing.
You are going to be horrified and embarrassed at some point by the shit you are doing now.
And you are going to wish with all your might you’d done more of it.
You’re gonna wish you had more selfies, more photos, more videos being dumb with your friends. You’re going to wish you’d had your hair even higher or your shoes even sparklier.
Go. Document the shit out of your ridiculous life. Fuck trends but if you wanna be trendy, go all in. Fuck in-groups and subcultures but if one sings to you, do it all. Be exactly as cool or punk rock or goth or fandom or country or hardcore or hip hop or whatever, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Just don’t hurt people. That’s the only thing you’ll ever genuinely live to regret.
I think I have talked about this before, but because life doesn’t end at twenty or thirty or forty or fifty and thinking that folks are going to fall out of social media or that there won’t always be someone your age and my age and twice both of our ages interested in [insert anything, ever] is a very limiting worldview.
Somewhere there is a sixty-five year old who unironically loves Taylor Swift’s music and a fifty-two year old writing Superwholock fanfic and a ninty year old who absolutely lives for the next episode of Archer and a seventy-one year old that can kick anyone’s ass in k-pop trivia. There will always be these folks, and all the Internet has done is give fans of all ages a chance to interact in a way that they never had before.
Before BBSes and the Internet and Usenet and the World Wide Web and fanrings and forums and social media, those people would just love it in their own way, in the privacy of their own homes. But now anyone can make an Ao3 account or a basic fansite or tumbl about whatever they want, and sometimes you’re gonna learn those people are old but they still get it, and sometimes you’re going to find out those folks are still kids, twelve or fourteen at the oldest, and marvel at their maturity and skill and attention to detail.
And that is rad as hell, that is fucking incredible, that is… whatever the kids are saying these days, hah.
As a sidenote, once, about a decade ago, I decided to email one of my favourite authors before she bit it … she was pushing 90 at the time. ( … she’s still alive now).
Anyways, we got to having a long discussion, because I shared my deadname with her late husband, and I actually had quite a long conversation with her.
The part of the conversation I’d like to share with you about this now pushing 100-tear-old author isn’t that she developed a liking for her breakfast eggs from her honeymoon in Vienna, or that her Husband would sometimes steal her drafts to read them as soon as he could, or that she superglued a potted plant to her bookshelf to watch her orange cat try to knock it over and fail.
Nono, I mention this to bring up what she would do as a writing exercise whenever she didn’t feel like writing her serious work.
In short, erotic darkwing duck slashfic. You can find it online.
This is the greatest addition this post has gotten so far.
I LOVE THIS FUCKING POST.
I love all the posts written by older fans, with their insight, and their generous attitude towards young fans, and young fanfic writers, and young fanartists.
Older fans who patiently explain to whomever questioned the validity of older fans participation…
that it’s older fans running the AO3 servers and the entire OTW organization;
Older fans most often writing the actually well written fanfic;
Older fans planning, organizing and executing massive cons;
Older fans who write out fandom history dating back to pre-internet so that history can be known and preserved and enjoyed;
Older fan lawyers enforcing Fair Use lawspro bono to keep fans from being sued for creating fic or art or any other media;
Older fans behaving well with life-lived-and-learned healthy boundaries;
or conversely dealing out smack-downs to those not behaving well be they older trolls or naively inexperienced younguns;
Older fans letting fans of all ages remember that zany enthusiasm is not the province only of the young – it is the province of humanity.
And we’re right there loving being human with you.
like, i’m not saying that adults don’t have a place in fandom. they can and they do, and many are perfectly great people.
but if you’re an adult, say, in your mid to late 20s or older, especially if you’re in a fandom that’s filled mostly with teenagers, you do need to be careful about how you interact with young people in fandom.
you need to be careful about the content you produce or share, and if you do something that people take issue with, you need to be prepared to address that in an honest and meaningful way, instead of blocking the young people who are telling you you’ve done something wrong and going on a rant about how “it’s just fiction” and “ship and let ship” and “do whatever you want” and “i’m too old for this.”
if you’re an adult in fandom, you need to be able to recognize how the content you produce might affect young people, and honestly, you should be able to show maturity when dealing with it, because you are still an adult talking to many people who are literal children.
many of those young people will, by default, view you as a sort of authority figure based on your age alone, as that’s what they’re used to. be careful of the lessons you teach them.
Hm. Okay. Here’s the thing.
We all know who you’re talking about and which situations you’re talking about. What you really have an issue with isn’t anything to do with anyone’s age, it’s about people producing things that other people find hurtful, then not responding the way the hurt people would like them to when called out on it. That can and does happen anywhere, regardless of the ages of the people involved. It’s a separate issue that should be discussed and dealt with.
And yes, in some of those recent situations, the ages of the offenders or the offended were brought into the discussion, by both sides at different times. The age difference does complicate things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the main issue.
You may be thinking “why do you care if I focus on age, it was a salient part of the argument for me, you’re trying to defend adults who don’t care how their words hurt children!” But here’s the thing.
You may not realize this, but in other fandoms adults have been doxxed, have been threatened, have been outed because they were creating things that someone, somewhere deemed “dangerous for minors.”
Adults who were creating things that were not meant for minors, that were openly and blatantly tagged as being NSFW, explicit, as containing triggering material. I’ve even seen people who weren’t even creating the offending material being harassed, bullied, and threatened, for daring to stand up for the people who were. Not even just online, but in person. I’ve been a victim of it myself, though not to the extent that I’ve seen many others go through.
All because a segment of the fandom decided that because certain content could be dangerous for minors, it should never, ever be posted anywhere a minor might possibly read it. Adults who do post it are responsible for every bad effect it could possibly have on anyone who reads it and are horrible people for not willingly taking on that responsibility.
I know the situations you’re talking about are different. In many of those situations, adults chose to interact with the minors who were complaining about them, and yeah, when you’re choosing to directly interact with a minor you need to tread carefully.
But once you go down the “adults in fandom are responsible for the minors in fandom” road, if lots of people start clinging to that mindset, that is where it can lead. And that is an extremely serious issue. It can literally destroy careers and ruin lives.
I am not in this or any other fandom to produce content for minors. I have asked many times for minors not to follow me; I don’t block them, but I know quite a few people who block any minor who follows them. I produce enough SFW content that I don’t mind minors being able to, say, reblog it from others on their dash, but I do not want them following me and getting explicit content directly from me, full stop. If it becomes an issue, I will start blocking people.
If you’re a minor, I’m old enough to be your mother. But I’ve got my own kid, and I’m not in fandom to babysit anyone else. When I create or reblog content, I do not and will not take the presence of minors into account when doing so. Because that is not my job.
Now, right now I’m choosing to get involved in this discussion, which will involve people much younger than me, including minors. So yeah, I’m being careful about what I say and how I say it. And I agree that any adult who willingly engages in conversation with minors needs to do the same.
But I simply can’t agree with your last two paragraphs. Those “literal children” already have parents. If their own parents aren’t monitoring what media they consume, aren’t having conversations with them about problematic messages in media, it certainly isn’t my job to do so. Period.
This is an excellent time for teens in fandom (and in general) to stop seeing every adult they come in contact with as an “authority figure” and start viewing us as human beings who are living our own lives with our own motivations, problems, desires, and inclinations that have nothing to do with them. That’s something that will serve them well in life.
How people interact with oppressed groups they aren’t a part of who complain about their representation of those oppressed groups is an entirely separate issue that is not about the age of the people on either side. Age can complicate it, especially in that it can be difficult to communicate across a generation gap when people on either side have such enormously different experiences. I think that that has caused some problems.
But any adult who is not willingly choosing to interact with a minor is not responsible for minors who consume their content, and conflating the two issues is downright dangerous.
@porcupine-girl nailed it 100% but this especially bears repeating:
This is an excellent time for teens in fandom (and in general) to stopseeing every adult they come in contact with as an “authority figure” and start viewing us as human beings who are living our own lives with our own motivations, problems, desires, and inclinations that have nothing to do with them. That’s something that will serve them well in life.
Fandom is a good way for teenagers to learn how to interact with people in different age groups as peers. Because that’s what we are, we are fandom peers posting on the same web sites and obsessing over the same shows and no one in fandom has any authority over anyone else (no matter how much some people might try to claim it). I am not your teacher, your parent, your babysitter, or anyone in any position of authority over you or anyone with a responsibility for taking care of you. Nor am I willing to take on that role. The vast majority of the billions of adults in the world fit that description. Only a very few, ones you know in real life, are responsible for you personally – and soon that number will be none as you become an adult yourself.
I block anyone with an age under 18 listed in their profile if they try to follow me – not with any animosity, I’m just not interested in interacting with kids on a fandom level. This is a completely valid option and I think it’s a wise one.
Plus the original post here is predicated on the assumption that fandom belongs to people in their early 20s and younger and the rest of us are just hangers on. Sorry baby, look at the demographics; you’re the minority. We’re not in your house. I, for one, am happy to interact with anyone I have interests in common with and bond over those interests; I think people of all ages have exciting perspectives and interesting minds. But I don’t want to be treated like a second class citizen by anyone, and as said above, I am interested in interacting AS PEERS ONLY. I ain’t your mommy and I have enough people IRL trying to leech emotional labor off me, I got none for strangers on the internet.
I have watched my friends raise their kids in fandom. Literally. Raise. Their. Kids. I’ve watched young things I met carried in arms toddle, walk, run, be 8, 18, 28, marry, come to a convention carrying young things in their arms.
It was assumed that everyone who knew the parent would keep a vague eye on the child because friends don’t let friends’ little ones run into traffic. But at NO POINT was it ever assumed or expressed that the adult fans had to stop being adult fans talking about adult things. If a minor walked into the “How to write explicit bondage” panel, then someone gently suggested that this was not the place for the kid to be. If the kid found the dick pics in the art show, they were told “go ask Mommy what ‘slash’ means.”
I get that the OP wants to protect children, but while it’s my job to make sure someone too little to take care of themselves doesn’t get hurt, it has NEVER, through three generations of fandom, been my job to be anyone’s actual parent or to stop adulting around adults.
Oh, and the line “I’m not saying adults don’t have a place in fandom; they can and they do” – that line? Child, ADULTS BUILT FANDOM. We created the cons and the fanzines and the webrings and the clubs and the fan sites and the VCR tape swaps and the letter writing campaigns and the podcasts. We maintain the fan sites and the fic repositories and the conventions and the rest. Did you think those things just spontaneously evolved? Fuckin’ A we have a place in the culture that we built!
If you’re old enough to be online unsupervised you’re also old enough to police your own fandom experience. Head the tags and warnings, that’s what they are there for.
Also, to be blunt, I am not responsible for anyone’s children. Full stop.
I am pretty sure I have commented on this before, but I will again.
The idea that I am anyone’s mother is ridiculous. If you are old enough to be on the internet unsupervised, you are old enough to make decisions for yourself. If you click on clearly labeled NSFW content, that is on you. That isn’t my fault.
The OP also seems to believe that anyone who writes /any/ type of romantic content with minor characters is a pedophile. This is ridiculous on so many levels, because it would be that any writer who ever wrote a YA romance should be locked in prison.
JK Rowling. John Green. Lauren Kate. Veronica Roth.
These are fantastic writers that many people enjoy, that many teenagers enjoy. The OP seems to think all of them should never write another book.
Nothing but My Aching Soul 