aiffe:

ahollowyear:

rhodanum:

Perhaps it’s my age speaking, but I’m starting to miss the way fandom used to be fifteen years ago. Mostly since back then the concepts of ‘darkfic’ and ‘don’t like, don’t read’ were properly understood and adhered to (usually). The situation with darkfics was interesting in particular, because the entire premise was that the author could write incredibly fucked-up things, with the understanding on their part that shit was indeed very messed-up and with no pretense to the contrary (what usually gets termed ‘romanticization’ these days).  

Now? You’ve got to run an entire rigmarole of explaining the difference between romanticization and just straight-up exploring a horrible dynamic in writing as, you know, a writer. And even after that, you’ll probably have to deal with the whole invasive ‘explain every trauma you might’ve gone through, so strangers who otherwise don’t care if you exist can decide if they give you Permission to use writing as a coping mechanism’ mess. Fucking hell.

I’ve said it before. Learn to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Learn to tell the difference between what someone explores on the page as a writer and what that same person believes and advocates in their day-to-day life.

Truth.

Hey guys, remember squickfics? I remember squickfics.

all too well

I loved how we tried to outright one-up each other in squicks and badwrong. Well *I* can write something more fucked up than *yours*!

I know there was moralizing in the past too, but the majority opinion after Strikethrough was outrage, when it was about someone getting their blog deleted for Snarry art. While there were a few people who were okay with that even then, they got drowned out by the outrage. I feel like today, fandom would have thrown a party and sent LJ flowers. I see blogs getting deleted for obscenity even on tumblr (mostly guro blogs, though I think they might be getting deleted for shota? Keep in mind this is 100% drawings) and no one even cares. The outrage back then caused mass migrations off LJ, and spawned AO3 and Dreamwidth. Maybe it’s less of a big deal since it’s not a fandom/megafandom thing, but more of a niche fetish, but getting TOSed for porn used to be a huge dealbreaker in fandom settings. This is why all fictional portrayals of anything are allowed on AO3, no matter how offensive.

It’s also a thing where our generation of fandom pretty much gets slaughtered by these new and changed rules if we dare to get popular or famous for anything. Nobody cares about my old socially unacceptable kinkfic, because I’m fucking no one, who’d bother me about it? But if I somehow had a bestseller or something, they’d dig up all the dirt, all the old LJ commentfic where someone said, “I bet you couldn’t make this badwrong thing work” and I said “IS THAT A CHALLENGE?” Look at Rebecca Sugar, stuck with problematic fave status despite all her great work on Adventure Time and Steven Universe, because back in the day she did some porny Ed Edd and Eddy art.

I actually sincerely wonder sometimes, because it feels almost intentional. We had a renaissance of female creativity, and dozens of fandom alumni went on to have successful careers in creative fields. We taught each other, challenged each other, beta’d each other, shared feedback, and made a community where people who otherwise might not have had a voice could create and reach an audience. And now some of the very things that made that culture unique are condemned by the next generation of that same culture–but only for those who dare to become successful, only for those who go mainstream and monetize. You can still write all kinds of filth on AO3, if you have the sense to keep a low profile and never be anyone important, the only time that really changes is if you have the gall to start getting attention and praise, even if it’s for other, vanilla stuff. It’s a way of making sure no one can ever really like you. It correlates much more to popularity than problematicness, for example, I’m approximately 9,000 times more problematic than say zamii070, but she got the bullying because she’s much more popular than I am, and people can’t stand that.

All the “tell me what trauma you’ve experienced” is rarely applied if you’re a nobody. It’s just a particularly nasty way to deal with people who dared to get “too popular” and put them in their place. Either they’ve been through trauma and you rob them of their privacy, make the worst moments of their life fodder for casual analysis, imply they might be lying about it, and hopefully trigger the shit out of them, or they haven’t, and you get to say they’re a shitlord who is so bad they practically caused that trauma to happen to other people. It’s really win/win for the bullies, no matter what the answer is. It’s how we keep ourselves down as a community, by making sure no member of the community is allowed to rise up and “make it.” We’ll teach you how to write, how to draw, how to vid, how to code, but you definitely aren’t allowed to get too big for your britches and start thinking you’re something special. You’re already problematic, and if you aren’t, we can make you problematic.