#clutch ur cross dudes and scream think of the children

[candymayvary]

You said you're not going to 'vet' blogs who follow your other account. Aren't you worried about who might read what you write, or be able to interact with your stuff? Especially minors? It seems a bit reckless, and pushing the decision onto others to know what might happen isn't good.

This is definitely an ask that should have been directed towards my main, and not here. I’ll answer it anyway, and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. My opinion. Under the cut. Sorry if you’re on mobile.

Quite frankly, I don’t give two shits about who reads what. That’s kind of the be all and end all of my opinion on the sudden frantic purity fascination we have developed on tumblr, especially in (at least) the last five years. 

Fanwork, but writing especially, because that’s my area of expertise, is there to create universes with existing characters. Expand stories. Fill in gaps. Put well loved characters in a whole new life. Use the universe to create a story with your own OCs. It’s a really under appreciated form of work (but that’s a debate for another day), but it’s really fucking powerful in what it does. No matter what the rating could be. Something fluffy and sweet and all goodness is just as powerful at sending a message as something nitty, gritty, R18. I firmly believe that - it’s all about execution. 

Now, not to sound crotchety by going ‘the good old days’, but we’ve got such a knee-jerk reaction to ‘what if minors see?!’ that it’s literally that 50s housewife with perfectly kept blonde hair in her Sunday best crying in church ‘think of the children!’. I will obviously agree there’s quite a bit of stuff to keep away from those a good 10yrs younger than me, but like. You can see it on the news. In papers. Private sessions on a web browser to find free porn lmfao. Video games have just very simple warnings, and it’s not until one fan on the internet is like ‘hey guys, watch out for this!’. Like, when Mad Max: Fury Road came out, I saw a post two months later actually detailing that a pregnant woman gets crushed under a car. I hadn’t seen it then, but it took over a month for someone to finally stick their hand up and be like: great movie, but watch out for this sort of stuff. 

I think it kind of diminishes the critical thinking that those under the age of 18 are capable of too, and to only police fan works as opposed to everything else is kind of fucking stupid. Fan works have become so important to the development and continuing growth of industries, because they won’t have an audience otherwise. Creating discourse and discontent in the fandom breaks that cycle of fanwork, meaning people won’t get interested because their favourite artist or writer stopped drawing/writing, so less fans for a company. Especially indie companies - they rely on fan positivity (not purity). 

My personal experience is that I came into fandom at the end of strikethrough, and stumbled wildly through ff.net at the age of 12 (or 11, around then). I didn’t know any better at that time, because my friend who was a year older, and my other friend who was a year younger, we were all into Harry Potter and Naruto. I’m not saying it was a good experience, and I’m not saying it was a bad one either. Honestly it was quite eye opening lmao shit be wild but I guess it’s also made me... more nonchalant? Apathetic? To tumblr purists screaming and ranting. I’ve been posting online too, since then. I’ve scrubbed my old accounts clean the older I’ve gotten, but I still have all my original writing (on paper, in coloured pens, with really bad ‘manga style’ drawings lol).

Also I have had my own fics torn down because someone out there didn’t agree with the ship, and they claimed it contained like sexual abuse and stuff... 2013-2016 was not a good period of my fandom experience, as I lost a lot of friends to both sides of the purity debate, gained plenty more, but fanwork from everyone I knew came to a halt because everyone was so afraid of questions like this. One wrong answer and poof! There goes any credibility. Especially with how easily people fling around legal terms and the like, a lot of creativity has already been killed off from the aggressiveness and awfulness that some people are capable of. They don’t care, obviously, but they’ve hurt so many people so far... 

TLDR; Basically, make up your own minds. There are things I’m going to write, there are things I’m not going to write. There’s going to be descriptions, if you’re worried send an ask about something in particular. Make your web experience the experience you want and need, not what people tell you it should be. And if that includes some NSFW, because quite frankly teen years are terrible and confusing and incredibly hormonal, live your best life my dudes. If a NSFW fic at 3 in the morning makes you happy, because school sucks and you don’t know why you’re up then anyway, go for it. I’m not stopping you.

#*replies #ok thats the last time i'm talking about this here lmfao #if you wanna debate this further #you can on my MAIN account #not here #anymore questions like this get automatically deleted #basically: make your experience your own #and dont diminish the critical thinking skills of those under the age of 18 #and dont come at me with purity politics lmfao lawd #clutch ur cross dudes and scream think of the children #Anonymous