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People already condemn relationships between 20 year olds and 25 year olds. People already condemn teenagers safely exploring sex and sexuality through literature. People already condemn 18 year olds having sex.

We are living in an era that is striving to simultaneously shove sex down our throats and make it borderline illegal to even think about sex. Drink adverts will show half-naked girls fawning over bottles and cans but women in the streets are being beaten and raped for wearing skirts or showing their hair or simply having the misfortune of being born with an extra hole.

The word 'pedophilia' has been watered down so badly that men in their forties are being accused of it for dating women in their late twenties. There's a post that's been circulating Facebook for as long as I can remember loudly declaring that 20 and 25 is still pedophilia. 16 and 18 is still pedophilia. 60 and 30 is still pedophilia.

Men dating short women is pedophilia. Men dating skinny women is pedophilia. Men dating women with small breasts or youthful faces or girls with higher voices is pedophilia.

Women dressing in cute outfits is pedobaiting. Women striving to look cute instead of hot is pedobaiting. Women who enjoy older men are pedobaiting.

I cannot stress this enough. One, none of that is correct. Two, literature does not equate to real actions.

If pedophiles genuinely are writing out their desires on AO3 instead of touching real children, guess what?

That's a good thing.

If victims of pedophilia are using AO3 to write about their trauma and process it and outlet it?

That's a good thing.

If reading a piece of fiction where your favorite character is groomed actually helps you realize the signs and methods of grooming?

That's a good thing.

If people are using literature to explore harmless desires and ideas?

That is literally what literature is for.

Re; censorship, if you still think discussing how one seemingly harmless act of censorship can actually trigger a landslide of creative suffocation is just dramatics, understand that Conservatives hopped straight from 'we need to stop pedophiles having such easy access to children' to 'saying the word gay or teaching children about their own biology is tantamount to grooming.'

Censorship is biased, prejudiced, and dangerous. It has its place within very careful structures but it is not something to wield like a hammer and it is certainly not something to advocate for in artistic and creative spaces.

You want an AO3 without all of that stuff? Guess what? They tried to make one. It never got further than a domain and an idea because nobody involved or supporting it could actually agree on their own rules and ideas about what should be censored and why.

Nobody is forcing you to look at that literature. AO3 explicitly gives you multiple tools to help you stay away from it. AO3, across literally any literature collection online, gives you the most tools to avoid it.

"Why can't the freaks on AO3 just go and make a site for all the gross stuff and leave AO3 alone."

Because AO3 is that site. Because AO3 was that site long before you decided AO3 was better than the sites you bullied us off of before, and I can promise you if someone somehow comes up with a fanfic site you like better specifically for the 'gross stuff' you'll try to bully us off that too so you can benefit from it.

AO3's specific core purpose is to preserve fanfiction, yes, but it was also instigated as a host site for the fanfiction that kept getting yeeted off other platforms like Wattpad. Its designed to preserve all fanfiction, not just the fanfiction you, personally, think is 'allowed' to be written.

AO3 is the site for all the gross stuff the freaks make. We've been there just as long as you. We've been funding it just as long as you have. AO3 has specifically said you have a place here. The timeline was literally:

Wattpad/FF.net/LiveJournal purge fanfics > AO3 is born > The people who's fics got purged moved over to AO3 > AO3 gains popularity as the best functioning site > The people who pushed for the fics to be purged off Wattpad move to AO3 > The same people try to push for AO3 to purge fics.

AO3's source coding is open-access. You go make a polished, strict, rigid site where nothing 'icky' is allowed. You go make a site where you can control what is hosted. We already have our space.

By the way, you're certainly not obligated to do things for people or return effort, but if you frequently refuse to do so you cannot blame other people for your social relationships crumbling away or for the opinion they form about you.

I see so many posts about how; "you're not owed my time!! If I want to ignore you for weeks I can!! You just have to accept it and be ready to accept me whenever I give enough fucks to speak to you again!!"

And while its absolutely true that, yeah, technically, not even your friends are owed your time. And plenty of people need respite from social engagement, if you're someone who frequently ignores your friends, cancels on them, blows them off or just generally doesn't reciprocate the effort they're putting in....

Sooner or later they're not going stop that effort. They're going to think of you as a selfish or ignorant person who isn't suitable for friendship.

My friends are understanding of the fact that sometimes I'll go a few days or a week without replying. Everyone has a life, everyone gets busy, everyone gets overwhelmed. But I always make a point of reaching back out to them the moment I have the time or energy to.

I thank them for being patient. I ask how they are. If I've really got enough time and energy I make plans to meet up or call them. I put effort into actually maintaining the friendship, valuing them as my friend, and making sure the relationship is even.

The amount of vitriol I see aimed at friends or family who have genuinely and in good faith expressed that people aren't putting in effort or maintaining an equal relationship is fucking astounding.

"I don't have many friends. Everyone is so fucking selfish these days, always expecting people to be available at the drop of a hat or answer every single text."

Are they though, Karen? Or are you just acting like a child with its toys, expecting people's lives to be put on pause until you're ready for them?

One time I was in an anti space because I was indoctrinated and also kind of... forgot... that I'd written incest in the past, I'd accidentally made friends with someone who was also friends with people I suspected hated me and what I SHOULD have done is blocked that bitch, but I was younger and stupid and thought maybe it was possible to work it out.

Anyway you may have already guessed that someone dug up my years old incest works that I'd completely forgotten existed, showed my friend, and I ended up completely blindsided and no one believed me about me not remembering them at all. Just assumed I was lying the whole time.

People as a whole have started this new habit of digging up things that happened years ago as proof that someone in a bad person in the present, or as justification for crucifying them in the present, and frankly its got to stop.

I've done some real shit things in my past. I did, I'll fully admit it. When I was in my worst headspace amidst an abusive relationship I became a person I honestly hope to god I never even come close to being again, but I've grown from that. I'm no longer that person and I no longer do those things.

They do not define who I am today. And the same thing goes for other people. I hate seeing ridiculous Daily Mail articles where they're proclaiming that celebrities are racist because they took a mud bath nine years ago on a vacation or something.

"X Celebrity is a horrible bully?!"

And then its literally just because they called someone annoying as a child. Its ridiculous. I've met people in real life and had other people warn me about them because of things they did literal decades ago.

People are always screaming about working on yourself, improving, being a better person, ect, but people can't actually achieve that when you're anchoring them to the things they've done in the past. People can't grow if you're weighing them down.

https://www.tumblr.com/myfandomrealitea/753096686405124096/ao3-was-our-site-the-site-of-scamming-people-out

Damn Anon, before speaking you must learn to read a website's TOS. AO3 does not host this kind of content. It's literally written:

The Archive of Our Own is a place for fanworks. Content may not be uploaded to OTW's servers if it contains or links to child pornography (images of real children); warez, cracks, hacks or other executable files and their associated utilities; trade secrets, restricted technologies, or classified information; or if it consists entirely of actual instruction manuals, technical data, recipes, or other non-fanwork content, including non-fanwork creative work

Unless, of course, they're talking about fanfictions with fictional characters who experience fictional events…

You and I both know very well they were talking about fictional characters who experience fictional events within fictional literature. We also both know very well they cannot read.

Anyway. Death to Wattpad and long live AO3.

An anti screenshot your post about fandom spaces not needed to be riddled with politics and real world events and saying how proshippers are the worst. Just letting you know in case you get an influx of hate from antis or others.

Thank you for the warning. Ultimately though, it would be wasted effort on their behalf. I wield the block button like a war hammer.