Actually, You're Right!

Actually, you're right!

Although I disagree with 'extremely public' (because literally any online website is inherently 'extremely public') I firmly believe in the curation of content via tags and filters.

Personally, I would love it if tags, filters and content markers were obligatory. They are mutually beneficial in that they can show and hide content depending on the preference of the individual using those tags, filters and markers.

Hoping you make someone feel guilty is a strange one, though. Especially since without all the vitriol and pearl clutching, you actually have a pretty good point, and one that is actually aligned with a value a lot of proshippers themselves have.

I am fully aware that something such as incest is not what everyone enjoys. I am fully aware that there are a lot of people who would prefer not to be exposed to content regarding incest.

As such, I heavily advocate for the common-spread use of, and personally use, tags, filters and content markers.

Making sure you can't see something that is unpleasant, upsetting or triggering is as important to me as being able to find content I enjoy and help others who enjoy it find it too.

However, what I do find interesting, and perhaps something for everyone to think about, is that you are clearly placing blame and accountability solely on individuals and small creators, and I bet mainstream media wasn't even in your consideration when you made this post.

For example; Game of Thrones.

No warnings. No filters. No content markers. Incest, rape, pedophilia and murder on a free-for-all for anyone to access.

How many streaming platforms offer you the opportunity to filter out any content involving such topics? Without switching to the 'children's' platform?

How many TV shows and movies give you a little pre-episode warning screen telling you that X topic will be depicted in the episode?

How many official platforms offer the chance to filter or avoid certain themes and topics?

How many websites offer the chance to filter content explicitly by topic and not just an en-masse 'mature content' flag?

Certainly, far less than websites geared toward fan and individual based content. Tumblr offers me more filters than Twitter. AO3 offers more filters than Wattpad.

Individuals and small creators take more consideration in regards to tagging and filtering than the mainstream media industry ever has. While its fairly important to remind individuals and small creators of the importance of tags and filters, surely, its a more pressing issue to remind the mainstream media industry?

If you have the time to sit around making guilt-trip posts on Tumblr, you have the time to send an email to a major movie studio or create a petition or email Netflix.

I feel like people forget incest victims exist in real life and you may not want to make your incest fan content extremely public with zero filter. A lot of people treat incest as a joke but it's actually so fucked up because family is who you're told to trust so the level of betrayal and disgust is unimaginable. I hope I made someone feel guilty with this post 👍

By the way, no.

Fictional smut, be it literature or art, involving fictional characters who are children, is not child pornography because they are not actual children.

Hope this helps.

Stop watering down child pornography and its genuine horrors by trying to tell victims that made up little beings have the same rights as they do.

When people tell you its dangerous and dehumanizing to equate fictional people to real ones, listen to them.

In case it wasn't clear:

Yes. Even as a proshipper, I firmly believe every single person creating content that has the potential to be unpleasant, triggering or upsetting should be responsible for making sure it can't be seen as much as they have the right to spaces where it can be seen.

It is your personal choice not to bother with things like tags or applying content markers.

But then you lose the right to be angry or upset when people complain about being exposed to your content with limited or no ways to avoid it.

Again. The Salmon Analogy.

You don't have to eat the salmon.

But its in both our best interests for me to be blatant about which dishes contain salmon specifically so you don't eat the salmon.

(And its in everyone's best interests to start bullying websites and services into giving us better tools to make sure this symbiotic relationship works.)

I was just thinking about how important it is to have authors (both fan and professional) with whom I feel... safely unsafe, if that makes sense.

Like, this is going to hurt, there are going to be things that happen to these characters that I absolutely Do Not Want to happen, but I trust you and I trust this ride.

The problem with trying to irrevocably tie what we create to who we are is that it then completely voids the freedom of being able to create things.

Fiction is not meant to be our reality. Its meant for all the things we can't do. For the things we shouldn't. For the things we want to do but will never get the chance to. Fiction is for being more than our reality.

What is the point in fiction if you want it to be intrinsically bound to who we are? To what we believe in? To what we dictate we must obey?

How much of our own history would we lose if your demand that we must only create what is sound and 'right' comes to fruit? What lessons will we fail to learn in the future because the fiction that taught them to us in the past no longer exists?

Those who huddle in a barren shelter will starve but those who venture forth might find a bounty.

This anti, who routinely reblogs and shows support for sending people death threats, rape threats, infertility threats and other much arguably more harmful content than fanfiction will ever be, broke their own DNI to reblog one of my posts, and when called out on their hypocrisy, blocked me and made this post.

Ordinarily, I'd let it go, but I'd like to use this instance to be blatant about why self-proclaimed proshippers tend to see antis as unreasonable hypocrites who cannot be seen as honest examples of the beliefs they uphold.

Because they don't. Uphold them.

(And, ironically, they use one of the core beliefs of proshipping in their own post attempting to avoid accountability for their own actions. If you don't like something, ignore it.)

@liashxlie, if you're ever open to having an actual discussion about this, feel free to unblock me. You have so much to say when nobody talks back. I'd love to see what you have to say when you're not just spouting violence and running away.