That Anon Telling You To Go To A Library Made Me Chuckle. My Mom Read "Lolita" At A Public Library When

That anon telling you to go to a library made me chuckle. My mom read "Lolita" at a public library when she was 12. It's why she's a pediatric forensic psychiatrist now. The idea of libraries as having less problematic content than fic is silly. But also, the idea of libraries being easily accessible is wild to me. I live in a rural area and it's a 30 minute drive to my local underfunded, understaffed library, which largely gets books from people donating their used books periodically. Due to poor funding, it's not accessible for nearly as many hours as anyone would like. Fanfic is free and accessible quickly at all hours. "Go to a library!" Where? When? Both of the other towns nearest me have shut down their public libraries. The one I have access to has to keep cutting hours.

If they really valued libraries, anon should go out and try harder to get people to utilize the libraries around them so they survive and continue to get funding. Degrading fanfic doesn't make libraries better off. It just makes people go, "Oh, so libraries are full of assholes like this guy."

And the wildest thing is, due to severe trauma from having one of the most toxic relationships of my life due to fandom, I don't even like fanfic right now. But even my highly-biased, emotionally-clouded ass can clearly see the flaws in this "fic bad, library good" argument. And when someone who's messed up and has and issues with the medium of literature in question still sees it more clearly than you... anon, maybe this is a sign you've got some biases to work through.

The best part, though? I was introduced to fanfic by librarians who liked my fanfics (though I didn't know what they were called) about Monster High characters meeting monsters from other franchises and becoming one big found family. The guardians of "real literature", for whatever absurd definition of that we're using today, have always been in favor of "fake literature", because they know that actually, both are lit.

I have nothing to add to this. 10/10 perfect points.

(Except that just like you, my closest library is almost a full hour away in any direction and the one that used to be five minutes away got closed down to "make room for profit-oriented business" which never happened, and now a perfectly usable space for a library is sitting and rotting.)

Me: hey so actually if real victims of incest, rape, grooming, ect tell you its really dehumanising to be told we're no different to literal 2D characters who do not exist, maybe you should listen

Antis: fucking kill yourself you ugly little pedo defender stop jacking off to little kids and wanting to fuck your dad

By the way if you're creating a space like a private group chat or a Discord server it is absolutely your responsibility to make sure that space is safe.

It is your responsibility to moderate it. To regulate the behavior displayed within it. To take action when people create harm. You cannot just create this space then wash your hands of any responsibility for what happens within it.

I keep seeing so many teens making servers and chats and groups and then whining that they're getting bullied for not doing anything when people use them to cause harm and upset and I cannot stress this enough.

You are responsible for shutting that down. Or for sourcing someone to do it on your behalf. You have control of that space. You are not just an innocent bystander.

"Anything goes here, if you're offended just leave" is absolutely not an excuse for blatantly allowing things like harassment, bullying, racism, homophobia and other targeted hate.

Discord in particular is incredible for available resources for preventing things like this. There are literally hundreds of server bots you can deploy to auto-moderate and manual moderation is as easy as two little clicks.

If you feel you're responsible enough to be in the position of power of creating a space, you are responsible enough to ensure it is not used for harm.

And if you're not?

Well.

"But this piece of fiction romanticizes [insert bad thing here]!"

Okay. And?

If you aren't self-aware and educated enough to know something is bad regardless of how a tv show or movie or song portrays it, that's a you issue. I've never once watched Hannibal and thought that's a reasonable real life relationship. I've never once watched Game of Thrones and thought hey, maybe fucking your sister isn't such a bad thing.

Romanticizing is simply part of the narrative. If you can't separate the portrayal of something in fiction and how it should be approached in real life, you shouldn't be watching it.

"Someone had a good point so I'm gonna make a snarky not-response and ignore it."

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 👍

"READ MY DNI" no. use your block button like an adult. i'm not scrolling through the many-paragraphs-long pinned posts of every blog i reblog something from. if you insist certain types of people aren't welcome in the notes of your posts then it's your responsibility to curate that. or choose a closed social media platform like facebook or instagram. or go and live in a barn away from humanity if you really don't like sharing the world with people who are different from you