hey now...

Couldn't have nailed me any harder to the floor if you had a fucking hammer.

I have been perceived.

𝐠𝐨𝐭'𝐜𝐡𝐚: 𝐚 𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞'𝐬 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐥𝐞.

✧.*ೃ⁀➷ pete's place | the intro | opening night | the playlist ༊*·˚

*this is an 18+ space. minors are not welcome here.

*this is a dark au. there are no happy endings here.

Lloyd’s laughter mocked you as you bound barefoot down the never ending hallway. As you stumbled with a heaving chest, manically trying every door as Lloyd’s heavy footsteps inched closer and closer.

𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐝𝐞: 𝐚 𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞'𝐬 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐥𝐞. ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-

✧.*ೃ⁀➷ pete's place | the intro | opening night | the playlist ༊*·˚

*this is an 18+ space. minors are not welcome here. *this is a dark au. there are no happy endings here.

a writer who writes the most fucked up “dead dove: do not eat” problematic pairing and fully tags and warns for the content they create will always be worthy of more respect in my eyes than people who call others weirdos because of who they ship. This is because a writer who writes disturbing things but gives me plenty of warning about them has demonstrated, regardless of what happens in the fic, that they value the consent of real people, and that they value my consent to see such content and will always offer me the option to avoid or withdraw. On the other hand, a purity cultist who demands I explain my trauma and exactly why I might be drawn to dark content, regardless of whether they’re the purest fluff writer to ever write, has demonstrated a lack of respect for my boundaries and the attitude that they are entitled to whatever they want to take from me. 

There are a lot of things that bother me about purity culture, but I think the most disturbing is that it clouds the very definition of consent, and then teaches this confusing version (you must consent to deep dives into your trauma and how it affects you for the benefit of strangers who have already decided you’re a bad person, and not consenting to that automatically makes you an abuser, also no one can consent to reading or thinking about disturbing content ever because thinking about it means you want it irl) to young, vulnerable, and often traumatized individuals, thus making it harder to understand their trauma and easier for them to ignore the real warning signs of abuse (like demanding that you agree with the abuser otherwise you’re literally the worst and most harmful person ever) because it teaches that abusers only come in one type, and that all abusers are “nasty shippers”.

This is especially dangerous because real life abusers teach their victims that the abuse is happening because the victim is a bad, evil person. One of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD is literally “Places undue blame on themself or others for what happened”. Teaching traumatized people that consent is a luxury only “good” people are allowed to have is incompatible with support for abuse survivors. tl;dr a writer who tags “dead dove: do not eat” has demonstrated respect for the necessity of consent. A purity cultist who sends anon hate has demonstrated a lack of respect for consent. 

Yes, this absolutely does include people who write, read, or ship abusive pairings, explore abuse in their work, include rape or incest in their work, with or without “calling out” that content. This also includes writers who include that type of content in erotic work. Content like that that is tagged properly indicates that, regardless of what happens in the fic, the person writing it understands that their work could impact real people and that those real people deserve the chance to choose wether or not they’d like to see the fic. An author who tags their fic has demonstrated that they understand consent and the fact that everyone gets to consent or not consent to the content they’d like to consume, unlike a purity cultist who sends harassing and threatening messages with the intent to cause emotional or physical harm to the person they’ve decided is “bad”.  Furthermore, ANY ideology that allows its followers to harass and attack members of the “out-group” for the crime of “not following the rules”, where the rules are about how you speak or act rather than how you actually do or do not harm others, is dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.

This is such a spectacularly-phrased example. Kudos!