Don't laugh at this because "Oh those silly monster f*ckers." This is a giant freaking RED FLAG just like with Only Fans.

the sheer amount of control ad agencies and payment providers hold over culture is actually horrifying. if a site gets blacklisted by both, it's just fucking gone unless it's willing to take the risk of using crypto for payments (actually one of the only practical uses for crypto)

if someone so much as sends you a note in something like cashapp or paypal with something remotely sexual in it, you can get your account frozen with the money still inside. it doesn't matter if it was perfectly legal and above-board stuff like hentai or erotica, because the corporations don't like those and that's all that matters

similarly this is why sites are extremely touchy about wording and tags when it comes to anything remotely adjacent to sex. if you use the wrong word and don't change it, years of work or even your entire livelihood can effectively be deleted in seconds

nobody ever talks about this because it's career poison to do it, but porn is basically already "illegal" in the vast majority of cases because if your money touches it, you're operating outside of terms of service and risking some corporate asshole deciding your smut is wretched enough to necessitate the destruction of your finances, and by proxy, your life

also there's no one stopping you from loving a badly written woman. in fact sometimes a badly written woman will crawl inside your brain and live there forever.

Some anecdotes and comments about Tumblr favourite author, Neil Gaiman, no matter what.

Probably someone has already shown some of them, but since you like to ignore it...

The importance of the allegations against Neil Gaiman being public

Claire on the podcast: Am I Broken?: Survivor Stories

S4 Ep2 - Claire "I Ignored It and I Believed Him Because He's the Storyteller [Neil Gaiman]"

"There are a few reasons why I'm coming forward now.  And honestly, most of them have to do with how things went that first time that I tried.  Um, that was back in 2019 that I first tried to share my story, and I reached out to a handful of journalists and I had several conversations off the record, but... Yeah, that message I got, across the board, was pretty much that what happened to me wasn't enough to establish a pattern of behavior.  Because I was just one person, and back then everyone was looking for a serial rapist, right, like not one-off creeps"

"It turns out – I wasn't the only one. Uh, three weeks ago from the date of this recording, uh, two other women came forward with allegations against him of rape and sexual assault. And one is – was in 2002, and the second in 2022. So my experience falls right in the middle of that, in 2012, and – that's a pattern! So, I decided to come forward, and ... knowing what I know now, I – I wish I'd come forward sooner, like I – no – (sigh) it just – it broke my heart hearing how one of the victims, Scarlett, had been googling "neil gaiman sexual assault" when she was trying to piece together what had happened to her, because I did the same thing! For years!"

"I was – I felt so alone, back then, and I don't want any of his victims to feel that way ever again. So, I'm sharing my experience, in solidarity, to support those women who've come forward and the people who will, and the people who can't. And... I'm also doing this for myself, as a... continuation of my healing. And I've never told my story so completely before. And... I'm choosing to do that through this podcast, because in this space, unlike in most spaces, it's not about him. It's about me, and my story."

y'all are always complaining about how gay rep has to be perfect and unproblematic like speak for yourself i personally love it when they try to murder each other

no youre going to come over here and apologize to that female character from 2000s-2010s film television. speak up she cant hear you.

some of you really aren’t gonna like this, but a creator’s wishes should never dictate what fan content is produced for a piece of media.

in the past, authors like anne rice have tried to limit the production of fanfiction. but at least rice was honest - she thought this infringed on her copywrite. back in the day, this was considered a valid argument to not create any fanfiction at all for her works.

do you understand what i’m saying? while you may sound valiant for placing a creator’s “discomfort” above the fan’s natural proclivities in fandom, really you’re just continuing to advocate for censorship in fan spaces.

and for anyone who is a creator, or who wants to become one - get comfortable with the rules of the internet. there will be erotic content made of your characters, there will be weird AUs made with your characters. there will be strange pairings and headcanons, no matter if you interact religiously with the fans or not. you cannot stop people from connecting with and wanting to be creative with your characters.

A fandom mindset that really needs to come back: Don't Break the Fourth Wall

Make whatever you want, but don't show it to the original creator. Writers legally cannot read fic of their work. It is a perfectly reasonable boundary for actors not to want erotic art of their characters thrust upon them. Don't link copyright holders to fan merch of their IP. And for the love of fuck, stop @ tagging the people who make the thing you're a fan of to validate your headcanons or rebuke someone else's.

And creators? That goes both ways. Block, mute, ignore, set and enforce whatever boundaries on what you don't want to see, but don't for a minute think you can stop a fandom from being a fandom.

addendum: if you know a pro writer's ao3 name, NO YOU DON'T

i hope i am not only a mutual to you but also someone you can point at a fictional character and go "oh shit that guy on tumblr is super fucking mentally unwell about that one" about

@writingkitten

*white knuckling the bathroom sink* do NOT infodump ppl about the fact that the first spn fic was a wincest one and that it was posted mere hours after the pilot and that the founder of ao3 was a wincestie and that the first fic on ao3 was wincest too and that the omegaverse as we know it was created by wincest shippers for jared/jensen fics *pointing at myself in the mirror with a shaky hand* ppl will think you're weird and off-putting you need to control yourself–

it's fundamental fandom history 😤 and honestly the amount of people who think wincest is an aberration in spn fandom and those that think ao3 shouldn't allow "problematic" content and be fully censored should know these things so they can be aware of where these cultural juggernauts started.

not them asking naomi novik AKA ASTOLAT if she was okay with incest fics of her characters when she was the one in the trenches writing wincest fics and founding ao3 so people could have a place to post their works without censorship. that's absolutely hilarious I have to find that post

YES my brother in christ she WROTE THE PROPOSAL !

May. 17th, 2007

An Archive of One's Own

AO3 was created out of collective effort, and she was the one who started it all. It's incredible to see how many of her ideas in this proposal ended up actually happening. So many things we now take for granted were crazy dreams at first

The deep history and why I shake my head at people who were toddlers when ao3 was conceived think that they'll get anywhere with arguments about fandom purity.

Like, there's a ton of shit on ao3 that I don't bother with because it is very much not my thing but I am deeply grateful that ao3 exists as it does because the things I do like, even the super fluffy g rated fics, would be considered just as "bad" by various religions and governments. And if I want to be able to read sweet gay coffeeshop found family or wish fulfillment time travel fixit featuring complex qpp and gay ships, the best guarantee of being able to do so is a place where everything goes. Because my "non-problematic" innocent fluff is absolute perversion according to some people. I know because they yelled at me before I turned off anon comments. And even the country I live in used to require unhappy endings for queer characters if it allowed them at all in many forms of media.

I absolutely avoid the kind of fic that ao3 was founded on and I am still deeply grateful that it exists.

to pretend that horrible people cannot make good art is another way to conflate beauty and talent with integrity and morality. the works of monsters are best examined with knowledge of the author in mind but art is not inherently reflective. human beings are creative, and habitual liars- it'd be stupid to pretend art must always be a portrait of its creator

it's also a convenient oversimplification of humans to believe that a person who is horrible in one way will be horrible in every way. people can hold terrible views in one area and have something thoughtful to say in another. people can do terrible things to one person and tremendous acts of kindness and empathy to another.

humans are fucking complicated

i just kind of hate how every time someone is writing a female character, there is far more scrutiny on whether she is “good” representation. like no one ever writes a male character and is like “hmm… is this good representation for men?” because they’re ALLOWED to be written as smart or stupid, or serious or funny, or sensitive or mean, or loud or quiet, or competent or irrational, or jovial or angry, or wise or inexperienced, or pathetic or badass, or good or evil, or complex or one-dimensional. and they will ALWAYS be loved in some shape or form.

but the MOMENT a woman is any one of those things (even tho women irl can ALL have these traits), there are video essays and entire blogs and articles dedicated to Why That’s Not A Good Woman. and like YES, good female representation is important. i acknowledge and agree with that to hell and back. but god damn let these writers breathe. no one is ever going to want to write women again if we shove these impossible standards down their throats.

YEA.

It makes me happy when they listen

YES. YES YES YES THANK YOU

I think it’s really important to talk about how different people have different power fantasies.

For example:

I would argue a lot of fandom conflicts re: villains come from people being unable to see that their fantasies, which put them in control of a narrative (and all three of these are designed to give the author or reader control of the narrative in different ways) are someone else’s horror stories.

….this explains SO MUCH.

This breakdown works equally well for the Problematic Love Interest.

Name ten female characters you like, you get zapped if it's jsut a male character you call a babygirl or other feminine nicknames because I can't see people calling Lestat coquette again

As a victim of sexual assault, I just want to say that you fuckers should have dropped him when the "funded defense of child porn" shit came out, when the "his wife liberally says the n word" came out, when the ZIONIST shit came out. I don't want to see any more of this motherfucker on my dash now that we have proof he's a rapist. If you interact with or reblog Neil Gaimans shit going forward, you are explicitly saying you do not care about CSA survivors, you do not care about people of color, you do not care about genocide, and you DO NOT CARE ABOUT SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVORS.

Drop him. Forget his name. Trash his books. Stop watching his stupid show. There is nothing there worth saving.

free my girl she did all that shit but the fandom is mischaracterizing her for it

free my girl she has the same character traits as a male character but is getting deemed a bitch for them

free my girl she acted irrationally in a situation where it was impossible to act rationally and is now being hated for it

nothing more embarassing than when you develop personal beef with a piece of media thats entirely petty. like sorry no i cant talk about that show it. bit me.

this is by far the most fun Ive ever had reading tags on a post that blew up