no but how much audacity and sheer entitlement do you have to have to tell people they need to stop posting their darkfic and porn fic and any other fic you don’t like to ao3 so you can have a safe space when ao3 was literally created as a safe space for writers to post their content without fear of it being randomly wiped out by pro-censorship assholes with an agenda like what has happened to plenty of other fic archives before?
“but a lot of us see ao3 as a safe space to get away from that kind of nasty content” – lol you can see the middle of a busy interstate as a safe space all you want too but that doesn’t mean that you get to walk into the road and scream at all the cars going by that they’re the ones infringing on your safe space either
ao3 is not, has never been, and will never be a site meant for nothing but children’s stories. you can “see it” like that as much as you want but there’s a difference between fiction and reality and that view of what ao3 is like is as fictional as the stories posted on it.
AO3 is a space for all kinds of content–that’s why there’s a rating system. That’s why there are tags. Use the tools you’re given, rather than whining that it doesn’t serve up the content you want tout suite.
People that try so hard to police other people’s work aren’t poor delicate flowers that just want a safe space, they are control freaks testing how many power do they have among others’ lives. So it’s useless to try and explain how AO3 tag system works, they don’t want to learn, they don’t have a real issue, because if they did they would actually LOOK at the tags. They just want to feel important and impose themselves on others.
What she really means: I don’t mind people disliking a ship for their own reason but the anti-shipping movement is driven by hate and bandwagon bullying to police what people are “allowed” to enjoy. They use fundamentally abusive and manipulative tactics on real people in the name of protecting survivors from speculative things in fiction. Antis want to act morally superior over ship wars and claim that to ship something problematic you must be a survivor. By doing this antis force survivors who may be uncomfortable with coming out with their status to out themselves and then hold them to impossible standards. Except when it does come to survivors who ship anti-deemed problematic things we are attacked, harassed, and then pushed under the bus anyway. Antis trivialize terms such as abuse, rape, and pedophilia by using them so often and out of place against a group made up of many survivors and minors– the people they claim to be protecting. They have bullied and suicide baited artists and other content creators they dislike in the name of “policing the bad ships uwu.” All antis are at fault for this, even if an anti claims not to send hate themselves they are still influencing this bad behavior because they are part of this hate group. The entire anti-shipper movement is a toxic cesspool that makes me feel sick.
Honestly, when it comes to my own personal views? I believe that no one is beyond redemption (though whether or not the people said individual wronged are willing to forgive is wholly up to the people in question). For me, the belief that anyone can claw their way out of iniquity is not only a central tenet of my faith but also the knowledge that keeps me emotionally balanced and stops me from wallowing in bleak cynicism. I have to believe that redemption is possible for all, even if some choose not to take that road.
It always grinds my gears when people talk about redemption as if it’s something to be ‘deserved’, rather than an active choice, a verb, something a person does, with more or less variable degree of success. To redeem oneself is to take the necessary steps toward uplifting one’s soul from moral degradation. In essence, they keep equating redemption with something like forgiveness, when the two are entirely different matters and don’t have a 1:1 correlation at all. Some of my favourite redemption narratives (Anakin Skywalker lives AUs, for example) don’t really contain all that much in the way of forgiveness, because some acts simply can’t be forgiven by their victims. For me, the enjoyment of such stories comes from seeing the central character’s physical and emotional struggles with everything redemption entails, until they can achieve a weary, wizened peace with the world and with themselves. There’s an almost poetic beauty, I’ve always thought, to the words of a person who has walked in both the brightest light and the darkest shadow and it’s a real pleasure to put those sorts of words down on paper.
And yes, as I said before, I suspect that at least some of this nonsense comes from people having a visceral reaction to their own flaws being reflected back at them. For others, it’s your run-of-the-mill purity culture wankery.
I really like this for making a distinction between redemption and forgiveness. I am well on record as hating most forgiveness arcs. A lot of time, it feels like the character hasn’t earned it, but the narrative requires that their victims forgive, and I vomit inside my mouth a little. A redemption arc is just the opposite. By god, the character puts in the work. And at the end of the day, they may not be forgiven, but they do what they have to do, because they have to do it, because it’s the right thing to do. And that? That matters.
Anti: I only go after smaller artists because they’re the only ones that will listen!!
Anti: what do you mean smaller artists are upset when I harass them? they’re adults they should learn not to care
translation: I’m a bully, but like any low-level pathetic bully, I only go after the easiest targets! 🙂
it’s like they’ve never actually learned anything about bullying or how it works or what it looks like because they occasionally describe a near dictionary definition of it but call it “activism” and it blows my fucking mind
We recently received reports about one or more Tumblr accounts posing as “AO3 consultants” and contacting other users about their works on the Archive. In those messages, users are asked to take down their works “due to reports of abuse” or else have their works deleted by AO3 admins.
These messages are in no way sanctioned by the AO3 Policy & Abuse committee, who will never contact users via social media. All messages you receive from our Support and Abuse teams will be signed by the volunteer contacting you, and will reference specific abuse reports, requests for technical support, or other matters pertaining to your account.
So if I may hazard an educated guess: some antis are impersonating Ao3 staff to intimidate authors into deleting content the antis dislike. Stay classy.
oh god I’m done I’m fucking. I’m done I’m sick and I’m exhausted and I’m done
Nobody here supports real life pedophilia and abuse.
Antis support bullying creators for depicting it in fiction in ways they don’t approve of. They harbor bullies because they would have no power otherwise.
What are you – I assume an anti – missing in your life that you need so badly to feel righteous about the fiction you consume? Why do you need to feel you have power over people? Antis openly admit that they go after smaller creators because they know that smaller creators will “listen” to them – except that what they’re doing is intimidation and bullying, so what they really mean is that smaller creators are afraid of them.
And you know what? It worked. It fucking worked. Small creators are terrified. Multiple artists have been driven into depression and suicide attempts by harassment that came from antis. Creators who never hurt anyone had their careers ruined over false accusations of pedophilia over a cartoon drawing. Someone got fed needles. Three artists that I know of at conventions have had their merch and displays damaged by people calling them pedophiles or abuse apologists or whatthefuckever because of the completely safe for work art they were displaying.
You’re bullies. You’re fucking bullies and you need to feel powerful so you gang up on fandom creators, who are almost all already marginalized young people, so that you can feel like you’re doing something. But you’re not. You’re fucking not. You can tear down all the queer artists you want, it won’t make a single goddamn bit of difference. YOU ARE NOT HELPING ANYONE.
You’re not. Helping. Anyone.
But you did it, I guess. Artists are scared. People are scared. Small, queer creators are more scared to release content now than they were 5 years ago, because their own community will almost certainly tear them apart like wild dogs.
This is extremely true. Everyone that goes through abuse is different and has their mental health impacted differently, and your feelings on x are not necessarily correct for everyone despite being valid.
Different people can handle different things, and if you can’t handle/enjoy something, that does not mean that those who can and do have to cater to you beyond tagging things properly. This is especially important now that Tumblr has finally added the blacklisting feature. It is imperative that YOU take the initiative to make yourself feel comfortable and safe, because this is a SHARED SPACE.
I-want-my-IWTV 