don’t have anything in common with me anymore, and are bored by the things i post
feel obligated by whatever personal reason you may have to keep following me, even if literally any of those above things apply
this applies to mutuals as well. your dash should be your happy place, so no hard feelings and i wish you the best in life
I’m adding here that I don’t actually check my followers list ever – I only ever check the number if I’ve had a rash of new follows – so if you’ve got any anxiety about offending me, don’t worry, because I literally won’t see. Your dash is your safe and happy spot, and if my content doesn’t jive with what you want to see…that’s fine with me.
As @shippingisnotactivism put it so succinctly: Often times people aren’t actually interested in a debate, they are interested in making you do intellectual/emotional labour for no reason at all. [X]
I wrote this huge Wall of Text despite the above quote. If you’re a sealion, Anon, you’ve accomplished your mission to some extent, you’ve managed to get me to spend more time and effort on this response than I ever wanted to.
I didn’t write it for you, though. I wrote it for my 15 year old self who was able to read and enjoy all the fictional problematic content I wanted. My 15 year old self loved black comedy, dark humor. I was never criticized for it. I was bullied for other things, like my wonky teeth, my hair style, my (lack of) fashion sense, which, looking at pics of myself, I can see why I was an easy target!
Now, we have bullies who do it in a much more insidious way. They tell you that your interest in problematic content means that you endorse it in real life. I’d rather be bullied for my teeth again.
I actually did spend time crowdsourcing privately to respond to this ask, I got some good answers, but you know what? I don’t need to write a full dissertation on horror/gothic lit and/or Marius/Armand’s relationship and/or Ricean vampire sex/intimacy and/or Anne Rice’s motivations for writing what she writes and/or VC fandom’s reactions to VC ships, etc., for an anonymous person(s) on the internet. You said you’ve seen posts about it already. Being in the middle is an acceptable place to be. I’m not here to force you to one side or the other.
You’re looking for easy answers to complicated questions. It’s not my responsibility to feed you those answers. And I would hope that you would take anyone else’s response to your questions with a grain of salt, and not simply accept opinions as truth because they sound good and righteous.
These are issues with so much nuance, so many facets, and to write Marius/Armand off as simply “abusive” and “pedophilia” is extremely narrow-minded to me. To write off people who attempt to discuss these things in fiction as “abuse-apologists” and “pedophilia-apologists” is a form of bullying. If we cannot discuss problematic things in fiction in a civilized way, it won’t make these things A) disappear from fiction or B) stop happening in real life.
If you’ve been watching/following my blog for even a few weeks, or you check out my archive, you know that I’ve reblogged plenty of Marius/Armand fanart, some of it NSFW. So I think you can do the math on what my stance is on that.
I confess that I was never wildly into that ship, but I have always loved talent and skill in the fanart/fanfic of both of these characters, separately and together, and now my interest in it is A) to have some variety in my blog rather than always reblogging fanworks about L/L (my main ship and, arguably, the VC juggernaut ship), and B) to support anyone who loves those characters separately or ships them together, and let them know that I support them. They can like whatever fictional content they like.
There is no debate when it comes to my own permission to like whatever I like in fiction, and I extend that permission to everyone. It’s fictional. Period.
^Marge Simpson is against pro wrestling here. It was an actual debate, you can google it. I’m not interested in arguing with her. I’m not even interested in calling her “a Killjoy,” even though she’s asked the viewer to do so. Unlike Marge, I’m not interested in forcing anyone to agree with any of my opinions.
More importantly, why is she standing up there next to the TV? She wants to divert attention from it and onto herself. Marge wants the attention.
She is riding on it as a topic, and it’s an easy target, bc it is VIOLENCE. Scripted or not, we all generally agree that violence is bad. So she stands there concerned, but does she really think it’s so awful? I don’t remember the episode well enough to know if she says that pro wrestling is definitively a bad influence on its viewers. Her caption says enough: “BC THIS IS NOT TO MY TASTE, NO ONE ELSE SHOULD BE ABLE TO ENJOY IT.”
Would she take into account that it’s cathartic for fans of pro wrestling to watch the scripted violence played out? Would she care that we love rooting for our faves and we love watching them appear to beat the crap out of the other wrestlers for dominance? Would she care that we can watch it and know the difference between violence in media and in real life? I’m thinking that if she is truly committed to her crusade against violence in pro wrestling, she would be unable to cede an inch of ground, even a molecule of nuance could topple her from her soapbox. Acknowledging that her opinion is opinion and not fact would be acknowledging that she could be wrong, and that’s unacceptable to Marge.
It’s not enough for Marge to respect the old fandom rule of #Don’t Like, Don’t Read. When there is something as juicy as a topic with a buzzword that invokes an immediate reaction to get righteous about, the argument becomes: #I Don’t Like This Thing; No One Should Read/Write This Thing (Unless they Write it the Way I Want it Written).
The points I would make, if I were making points, would be these, listed below. You can do your own further research, bc I’m not being paid for this, and have no obligation to provide sources that will most likely fall on the deaf ears of the “Marges” of fandom who are unable to cede any ground. I am not obligated to respond to arguments against this post.
These points are for the Marius/Armand shippers and Marius fans to show my support for them by sharing some of my own thoughts.
“Vampires operate on a different moral code than human beings.” Anon, you wrote this yourself, and I think it’s a good point. An essay could be written on it.
^Some of the vampires may want to abide by human moral codes, but thosemay be codes from the era they were turned. I wouldn’t even say that moral codes have evolved, I would say that moral codes are on a pendulum swinging from moral to immoral, back and forth.
^Attitudes towards sex/intimacy also change during different eras. This includes the time periods during which the novels were written, what was expected in fiction then, what the cultural landscape was like, etc.
The ship itself occurred during a time period in history when underage/adult relationships mlm were socially acceptable. You can argue that she should not have chosen that time period, but she’s a writer, she can choose whatever time period she wants.
Given the content, I would suggest that these books were written for adults who know the difference between fiction and reality.
These books are fiction, they are not self-help manuals.
^If you use them as a self-help manual and are harmed, it is your misuse of them, not the author’s fault, and not the books’ fault. Like alcoholism. It’s not the alcohol’s fault if you drink it irresponsibly.
Shipping is not just for wish fulfillment/idealization, but it can be. Maybe Marius/Armand is wish fulfillment/idealization for Anne Rice.
^While it is a possibility, I highly doubt she’s intentionally trying to injure any of her readers, especially if she sees
Marius/Armand
and Marius himself as good and desirable.
I absolutely do not condone pedophilia, abuse, or grooming in real life, and in my 20+ years of fandom I have never met a Marius/Armand shipper or Marius fan who condones any of those things in real life, either.
I do not believe that an author is required to condemn problematic elements within the text.
^Which she definitely wouldn’t do anyway, if she sees Marius/Armand and Marius himself as good and desirable.
Anne Rice has similar ships with the underage/adult dynamic that don’t get the hate Marius/Armand does, oddly enough. Furthermore, she didn’t invent it, this is a fantasy that’s been around since before she was even born.
There are a bunch of other kinks mixed into that ship that I don’t need to list out here for you. Anne Rice/the fans/anyone is allowed to have/explore their kinks in fiction or in consensual spaces online/in real life with other adults.
It is my belief that underage people (including Anne Rice) can be curious about sex/intimacy before reaching the Age of Consent.
^Are we only allowed to be curious about it on the stroke of the first minute of our 18th birthday?? I believe Anne writes these ships setting herself as the underage character, spending decades rebelling against what she perceived was an overly repressive religious upbringing in which the adults in her life tried to convince her that her curiosity was EVIL and a disgusting form of Sinning. Making it the “forbidden fruit” just made it that much more desirable for underage!Anne. IMO, her underage/adult ships are a coping mechanism she does for her younger self.
I am not knowledgeable enough about horror/gothic lit to say how Marius/Armand compares to other ships in those stories, but as I understand it, the exploration of monsters of all kinds has been problematic since monster stories were invented.
^Horror/goth lit elevated these stories to a higher intellectual level, so they were criticized on a higher intellectual level than the older monster stories. However, the criticism of exploring these concepts has always been harsher to women writers bc PATRIARCHY and how dare women explore sexual fantasies without permission?!
Shippers of Marius/Armand are easy targets for bullying and harassment as that ship and character tick off plenty of boxes of things we know are wrong in real life.But as I’ve said in the past, creating/consuming problematic things =/= endorsement of them in real life. Thoughtcrimes are not crimes.
It’s easier to attack
Marius/Armand
shippers and Marius fans than attempting to attack Anne Rice. Anne Rice is a published author, insulated from anything she doesn’t want to hear/read. The shippers, like me, are humans behind their screens, and we all just want to get along with each other, so getting accused of endorsing real life problematic things bc of their ship preference is something shippers are very likely to respond to. Shipper attention, while not as juicy as attention from Anne Rice herself, is a reasonable substitute for the “Marges” feed on.
Ultimately I am a #Ship and let ship person and I support the shippers of problematic fictional ships and the fans of problematic fictional characters.
“It doesn’t matter who your problematic favorite character is. Even if they’re literally Satan (looking at you, Supernatural fandom), you don’t deserve to be harassed or bullied simply for liking them. Always remember that you’re just as entitled to your opinion as anyone else.
…There are a lot of don’ts when it comes to problematic characters… Navigating the minefield of fandom is tricky, but having a problematic fave is hardly the end of the world. As long as you’re considerate and respectful towards others, you can’t go wrong. So go on, get out there, and make the most of the experience!”
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.
I just truly believe this to be the universal experience of all Anne Rice fans, and some of us been up and down the lollercoaster a few times so far, and some of us haven’t had to deal with it yet. AND I PROMSE ALL THE LITTLE SUMMER CHILDREN, IT’S COMING.
She’s a divisive and controversial writer for sure, on a lot of layered meta levels that aren’t just like mainstream casual normies thinking the books are scandalous or something. Tumblr is obviously a place where injustices aren’t ignored and it takes about five minutes of browsing to start finding the deeper readings of her work, the bad topics and sketchy opinions, etc etc. It’s so easy to just enjoy her work on the surface and it’s just such a fucking mess when you look closer.
AND I MEAN THAT’S THE THING? I know people get suuuuuuper salty about Anne Rice and it’s always kind of crushing when people learn about the fandom history but like YALL I WAS THERE, I’M OVER IT LOL. I had the salty Anne Rice phase already and it took me like 4 years to bring myself to read Blood Canticle cause I was like So Done With Her Shit at that point.
Are these books good and interesting enough to keep me this occupied on their own? Probably not. But they were really special to me growing up and I found cool fandom people and made genuinely awesome friends here so it’s become a weird hobby to have. I’M STUCK HERE NOW.
I get the AR hate, I really do. I really, really do. I get the whole “omg I waited for the new book and it was about bird aliens” devastation. I REALLY DO. But we all go through this if you stick around for too long. I went through it already, it’s out of my system. I’m done being pissy about it. (tbh I went through this when I read Merrick the first time and I was like wtf I thought this was gonna be an epic crossover with Rowan getting into some shit and instead we’re reading about David fucking some chick in a cave what IS THIS. And that was like 15 years ago LMAO.)
Some people interact with media by criticizing and dissecting and that’s super awesome, other people want to be brainless and just dick around and make memes. I have a stressful life and I deal with heavy shit pretty often so I’m not here to like sling negativity in any form, that’s just not how I like to use my energy and free time. It doesn’t make it less valuable, it’s just not my thing. I put the time in with salty AR years, I’m done, I’m just here to laugh now. AND LAUGH I DO.
AND LIKE IF THERE’S ONE THING I CAN SAY? A PIECE OF ADVICE TO THE NEWBS WHO HAVEN’T GONE THROUGH IT? Stop having expectations. Read enough AR to see that she’s fucking whacky af. Read Taltos. Read the werewolf book. When the new VC comes out, go in expecting that writer. Don’t go in expecting QOTD 2. If shredding books is fun for you, by all means! Knock yourself out! There will be plenty to shred! But if you’re here for fun just go in for fun. It’s lulzy as fuck if you don’t take it too seriously.
did i write this post in my sleep!
#PREACH (Um I think I co-wrote this w/ nightislandofficial and monstersinthecosmos in my sleep, too)
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.
my fave thing is when when women in fandom are like UGH BUT I CANT RELATE TO F/F PAIRINGS BC IM NOT A LESBIAN
funnily enough you’re not a gay man either yet here we are
this tea is fucking SCALDING
actually this tea is cold af because hmmmm I’ll tell you a secret
I’m a cishet woman, therefore I find *men* attractive, same as all cis*het* women
a *gay* man finds *men* attractive
therefore since I’m not a gay man but I like the same things a gay man likes I find it way easier to write fic about a dude who likes a dude because I can imagine *why* he’d be into a dude and with a bit of that thing named *empathy/trying to imagine how it feels to be your character* I can work out the rest and I can relate and also I suppose I’d imagine how things work in the bedroom since both me and my character like having men inside it
meanwhile I absolutely am not romantically or sexually attracted to women and therefore to me it’s a lot harder to write f/f unless it’s a ship I like or it’s canon and I have material to work on because I really *cannot relate* to the concept of finding women attractive *and* since fanfic is for *fun* and I’m not writing a book I am in no way shape or form obligated to write f/f fanfic just because it’s about women and I’m a woman, and I’d find it way harder to imagine why a lesbian would be into another woman physically (because I’m not one) (not because it’s WRONG obviously)
therefore sorry but a heterosexual woman, when *shipping things* or writing *fanfic* in which A is attracted to B will find m/m or f/m *always* more relatable than f/f. a bisexual man would most probably relate to a lesbian on that level more than *I* would, because a bisexual dude would definitely want to fuck women and I wouldn’t and he’d definitely know how to make love to one woman better than I could imagine since I doubt I’ll ever have the chance or the inclination
I mean, it’d be nice if y’all actually thought about fairly obvious things before *always* somehow making fun of *women in fandom* who in 95% of the time happen to be straight because of course it’s the only typology of woman that is *always* good to laugh at (except for bi women in m/f rships who then aren’t bi anymore), but what do I even ask out of this website? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
(ps: not wanting to fuck women doesn’t mean that you will NEVER want to write f/f or I wouldn’t have written the only literal explicit fic on ao3 for a canon ff ship in a show no one on tumblr ever heard of THANKFULLY because y’all would hate it, but putting it like this is really fucking dumb because you’re mixing up same-sex attraction with *the sex you’re actually attracted to* I mean ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )
hey shut up, your hetero opinion actually isn’t relevant here
So what about the opinion of a woman in a relationship with another woman? Relevant enough? Because hey, everything @janiedean said is true. But actually thinking about what she said would require you to examine your own motivations and biases, and that…well. You seem unwilling.
(Screeching about how I’m not queer enough, have internalised homophobia, or some other reason why my opinion is still not relevant in 3, 2, 1…)
a lot of young people say that fanfic made them think abuse was okay, and I think it’s disingenuous to say they’re all lying. but why is this suddenly a problem? this is my theory as to why it’s no longer an understood thing that fandom is about fiction & fantasy.
really good stuff
I’ve said it before– if young people are getting their primary education on consent and sexual relationships from fandom they have already been failed.
And I say this as someone who got my primary education on consent and sexual relationships from fandom, and for whom it worked out pretty well. I mined a ton of good stuff out of fandom and discussions around fandom. But the fact that there was a void of education in my life that I had to fill on my own is not on fandom. That’s on society and rape culture and our puritanical education system.
[First post is screenshots of a twitter thread; here’s the text of it.]
something I think about a lot is how fandom talks to each other.
i suppose that’s obvious, but not just the antagonistic vitriol. the hyper-ramps of joy feedback can produce similarly hyperbolic language.
almost a year ago I got a multi-comment ask from an anti who told me that ‘bad ships’ almost led them into some real life abusive situations in her dating life. I didn’t respond because I wanted to think about it. and while the framework of my feelings was formed 1 month later–
–I’ve been fleshing that out ever since. because she’s not alone in saying this happened – she read smutfic and later felt her impressions were screwed up by them – but why? why is this suddenly a complaint?
and i think it has a lot to do with evolving internet culture interacting poorly with fandom culture and young people looking for easy answers to complicated questions. for instance:
-young women&/or afab people grow up with specific toxic messages targeted at them about sex/purity
a lot of shit mixes together & it’s not weird for afab people to be disgusted by their body &/or come away with dark sex/violence mishmashes brewing in the hindbrain. may or may not be kinks later, but like. USians, think about how sex & violence (towards afab/women) is tied together.
(transphobia adding a WHOLE NEW FUN LEVEL to this, too. trans (&nb) people 10,000% included in this, in case it’s not clear to anyone.) -all the taboo around expressing sexual ideas, esp if you’re not a cis man, makes it hard to express yourself. -then fandom: mostly afab, full of kink
-majority afab and/or women, kink-friendly fandom functions like a release valve for a lot of people. & though it was never explicitly said by anyone I remember, there was always a kind of understanding this was the case: a safe place for women/afab people to be crass and sexual–
–objectifying fictional characters instead of being objectified, exploring sexual fantasies in safe spaces, etc etc. people in fandom would express filthy ideas & wants! it was afab people &/or women being as frank & open about their fantasy lives as cis men could be everywhere else.
but it was also understood that everything in fandom was fictional. like: of course rape is bad, nobody wants rape to happen, but fantasies are fantasies. live it out on a fictional character who can’t be hurt! good way to blow off some steam.
& because this was understood, people talked about kinks – some really taboo, some things that would be very harmful or abusive or illegal irl – without restraint or qualifications. they weren’t needed! fandom was for fiction. say the gross thing, nobody’s judging!
and that was all well and good as long as we were all working off the same context: fandom is for fiction. this is where we put stuff that’s not safe irl. but.
but.
tumblr.
tumblr is a viral sharing platform. every post you make can be boosted independent of its original context. & when you remove all this frank, salacious, unqualified talk about fictional characters from the context of ‘it’s fiction’ and ‘it’s not for rl for good reason’: well.
fandom got visible on tumblr in a new way. tumblr dropped the barriers to entering fandom. and starting in 2012/2013, tumblr entrants had grown up in a world where the internet had been around *their whole lives*. 9/11 happened when they were a /fetus/.
and 2011-2013 fandom tumblr is an unholy, indistinct mix of real life activism, awareness, and …. posts about how sexy Dave Strider is. in exactly the same kinds of tones we used on lj, in fandom-only – fiction-only – spaces.
I can see how baby fans got the wrong idea.
without necessarily knowing it was happening, fandom – in moving to tumblr – went from a delineated safe space for non-cis-male sexual fantasy indulgence to being – for newcomers at least – indistinguishable from the sexual noise they grew up with, except probably more appealing.
losing shared context by being diluted on tumblr means young people could encounter fandom fantasy content independent of the ‘we let it hang out here b/c we’re not allowed to otherwise’ subtext. Mixed well with the much nastier toxic messages of rl & mass media & get a nasty mess.
i don’t want to spoil the punchline, but the reason non-cis-men are more in need of a safe space retreat than cis men is b/c of misogyny. so you’ll never guess what happened when fandom’s version of that space got diluted into pop culture!
(radfems! also misogyny.)
2012/13 tumblr gets a 1-2 punch: structural patriarchy: women who openly like sex are dirty sluts! they raise & teach kids how to be good adults! they’re pure! radfems: women who openly like kinks are feeding into female oppression! women teach women to be good adults! they’re pure!
2012/12 tumblr recognizes the structural punch, kinda, but disguised as Girl Power, they don’t see the second one coming. Bam! fandom – mostly made up of afab people and/or women – is suddenly awful for letting itself be sexually expressive! it abandoned the teaching post!
softened up by structural oppression of non-cis-(straight-white)-male sexuality, young fandom went down like a stone to the idea that women should be teaching other women how to be good women and Good Women Don’t Do Kinks Or Men (add heaping tablespoons of transphobia/racism/etc)
this got out of hand like always, god. but long story short: young fandom didn’t – doesn’t – see how society sets them up for abusive relationships, sexual disasters, and toxic predation. so they look back at fandom – in dialogue with all that grossness – and conclude:
‘the people in fandom failed me.’ – fandom was supposed to teach them how to be safe – society tells them that’s the job of ‘women’. but fandom wasn’t being a mom, and therefore if they weren’t safe it was fandom’s fault.
these people who were abused using fandom as a tool, or feel like they were vulnerable because of fanworks: fanfic didn’t make them that way. it just feels natural to blame it because it’s hard to see the power structure you live in, and it’s hard to admit to being helpless.
the fanworks are easy to point to and blame because they’re fiction. It’s the same reason video games were easy to blame for violence. it feels so clean and straightforward, and it doesn’t require dismantling a whole power system – a whole culture – to get rid of.
but it’s not the fiction.
(here’s the hard part.)
if fandom contributed to the toxic messages about sexuality absorbed by younger members, it’s because of continuing to talk about fictional characters like we were in those old, delineated ‘fantasy only/it’s just fiction’ spaces–
– after the shift to tumblr. and frankly, tumblr is not that kind of delineated space: it’s also an activist space (or was one), and an awareness space.
non-cis-male sexual fantasies about fictional characters & rl social activism/awareness do not mix well, as we’ve seen.
and that contribution was a small, small part, probably: fandom is so queer, so non-cis, so non-straight, so disabled and neurodivergent that our influence on everything but tumblr is really small.
but because we’re not a power structure, we’re easy to point to & tear down.
and we’ve been trained by society to blame our troubles on those we can get at and hurt instead of blaming the very way our cultures are built. hurting other vulnerable people is easy. dismantling the earth under our feet is hard. (why do u think radfems focus on fixing women?)
to wrap up: fandom isn’t perfect by a long shot, and one thing we can do to protect ourselves from harm is assume the best of others and try to put things we see into context.
we can also fuck up white cis male patriarchy instead of each other. (screw the system.) /end
Controversial Opinion™ but: it’s ok to like things that other people don’t like and it’s ok to let other people like things you don’t like.
Controversial Opinion™ but: if you don’t like something in fandom/fiction, the solution is to not pay attention to it and not read it and not look for content of it, and instead just go about your day as per usual.
Controversial Opinion but: this shit shouldn’t even be a controversial opinion….
I-want-my-IWTV 