I Think We Need To Remind Ourselves Again That Viewer Interpretation And Headcanons Are Not Always Actual

I think we need to remind ourselves again that viewer interpretation and headcanons are not always actual fact and that's okay. That's part of fandom and part of adopting canon as a source.

Likewise, nobody is "wrong" for their personal headcanons, because they're not fact. They're not supposed to be direct reflections of or representative of canon as it exists then. That is, in fact, the fun of it. Altering canon to embrace your own creativity and ideas. Having your own perspective on canon based on your own values, experiences, thoughts and assessments.

It is not an invitation to begin a dictatorship about how people can interpret or headcanon aspects of canon.

Disliking characters who aren't straight, white, cis men isn't inherently/always racism, internal prejudice, misogyny, homophobia, ect and every time I see valid criticism of a character being met with a siren wail of "bigotry!!" I want to physically transform myself into that Benfleck smoking meme.

Because there's a difference between civil discussion on the factual nature of something and telling someone when their views are blatantly bigoted (i.e; "all gay people should die") vs telling someone to kill themselves because they wrote Stefan x Damon Salvatore fanfiction.

Harassment =/= any and every negative response or neutral correction to something.

I'll admit, perhaps "call out" was aggressive phrasing. How about we try; "point out." "Educate." "Initiate civil corrections and/or discussions." "Respectfully challenge a bigoted or incorrect statement with intent to correct it or explain why it is bigoted/incorrect."

If I say to someone;

"Hey, just so you know, this information in your post in incorrect." "Actually what you're saying is harmful transphobic rhetoric so unless its your intention to be transphobic, you should consider finding alternate statements or take time to recess and evaluate your opinion." "It might be better if you allow people with more knowledge on this subject to speak rather than speaking from a place of limited understanding."

That is not harassment. And that is the intention of my statement. I hope you understand now. My apologies if my phrasing in one paragraph prompted you to misinterpret the entirety of my post.

Anti-censorship simply means the inherent freedom of something to exist. It does not mean that it has the inherent freedom to exist without response.

I also genuinely can't get over you saying misinformation should remain uncorrected as long as the original poster is happy. Like. What a way to ruin any outstanding point you might've had otherwise.

(Also, likewise, I was not solely referring to fanfiction in the matter you seemed to imply. I am referring to all content as a whole, because harassment is not and has never been limited to just fanfiction, although its a frequent victim.)

It might help you, perhaps, to re-evaluate your understanding of harassment and what it entails. Harassment is a specific type of behavior with a specific type of intention, not just literally saying anything that isn't positive.

Actually there's nothing wrong with blocking or reporting people, deleting comments and refusing to respond/engage with hate and baiting on any level whatsoever. They are not owed your time or explanations. They are not owed your energy. You are not immature or incapable for choosing to refuse to engage instead of choosing to argue and expend energy.

Obviously if you're making uneducated, incorrect or bigoted content then yeah, be prepared for people to call you out and challenge your statements and views, but I'm talking in general.

Hate comment on your fic? That's cool, baby. Just delete it.

Someone's trying to bait you into arguing about your stance on something? Whatever. Its all groovy. Block 'em.

You got a clear visual that someone's just gonna keep coming back at you? Have a report button. Its free. I'll give you as many as you need.

You don't need to facilitate that. You don't need to see it. You don't need to spend your time trying to challenge someone who's obviously either in a bad mentality or is just a shitty person as a whole. You simply Do Not. You don't need to allow that person to have a space and a voice within yours. You don't need to allow them to be able to spew their bullshit for you and everyone else to see outside of their own little bubble.

Next time you get a hate comment on AO3? Wham, bam, its gone, ma'am. No thank you. Anon hate mail? Not in this household.

You have no obligation to facilitate any of it, and anyone who tries to force you into thinking otherwise is simply incorrect. Their action does not inherently demand your reaction. Plus, its objectively more hilarious to know that the sole outcome of their spitefulness and negativity is them getting even angrier because you're refusing to engage and refusing to feed their need for a response.

Fandom analysis and "activism" are healthy and indeed important to a point, and will almost always relate to you or your beliefs on a personal level, but if you're at the point where you can no longer objectively approach a discussion or fandom as a whole, or you're at the point where you cannot separate fandom and your real life, you need to take a step back.

If you're at the point where you're spending the majority of your time relating to fandom doing nothing but complaining and getting in arguments and treating fandom spaces like warzones and protests, you need to take a step back.

If you're blatantly making up things that are non-existent in canon just to be angry about it, you need to take a step back.

And just to clarify; taking a step back in okay. Its not a bad thing, and its absolutely not meant to be an insult. Sometimes we just get to caught up in something we need breathing room to be able to readjust ourselves and realign ourselves, and that's a perfectly valid, normal, human thing. We often use fandom spaces as outlets, but if its reached the point where you have an unhealthy obsession with negativity in those spaces, its no longer good for you. Its no longer just an outlet, its a feeding loop of toxicity.

The onus of responsibility is on you, the reader, to ensure you're prepared to encounter - or avoid - content in whatever capacity. And here's a fun little fact for you:

You can filter by kudos and other criteria in order to find works that likely fit your "quality demands."

You can look at rec lists. Collections. Bookmarks. You can ask for recommendations from other users who share similar standards and interests to yours. And, yes. That means every. Single. Time. Because again; if you have specifics you want, its not up to the author to jump through hoops to bestow their works at your heels like a peasant to a 14th century King. Its up to you to go looking for it.

If you're so bothered by other writers and their "mediocre" content, here's a suggestion.

Write it yourself and stop complaining.

"Then just…. don't skim the unfiltered character tag? Filtering out a NOTP, a rating, and a few major squick tags takes literal seconds and is how the site is meant to be used."

Do you fucking hear yourself? Do you have any idea how many ships there are, especially in a big fandom? Am I supposed to astral-project to imagine every single combination of characters I'd find disturbing to read about? Every possible setting? And if I miss something, it's on me? Are you for real?

And hell, that's not even a solution. It's not that I would never read an incest fic, I would. It's not that I would never read that particular incest ship or that particular rating, I would. So why the hell would I filter for it? But shit like that is something you need to ease into, and that means not dumping it in the summary or tags that you read specifically to decide if the actual fic is worth it.

What's squicky can be so heavily context and situation-dependent that it is ridiculous to the max to act like authors are free to be as gauche as they like in tags and summaries, and it's readers' fault if they get majorly squicked by something they wasn't quick enough to "argh my eyes my eyes stop reading" on.

Let me say this even more bluntly:

I love reading rapefic, it's a major kink for me. When it's written well, and in a specific way. Ergo, I'd still absolutely hate it if it were commonplace for people with rapefics to make the summaries and tags explicitly vivid. Please, in all your apparently infinite wisdom, go ahead and tell me which combination of filters I should use to not get upset by shitty summaries while skimming fic summaries for something I'd actually like!

Poor or gauche writing in and of itself can make something squicky or potentially upsetting.

So screw everyone who replied to this post with some variation of "Just get better at Not Reading Things while reading". You can't always predict what you'll find squicky and you can't filter for "this thing I only find squicky when it's not done in a way I subjectively find tasteful". Maybe don't be so intent on making the archive miserable to use, mkay?

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When I say I hate the 911 fandom, things like this are what I mean. These came onto my dash within 3 posts of each other and were the first 911 posts I saw when I logged on.