okay, with all the anti discourse i’ve been seeing out there recently, i just want to say two things:
1) this is a ship and let ship blog.
proshipper, anti anti, whatever you like to call it. if you do not like a ship, simply skip over the content! block the tag! it is simple: you do not have to interact with content you do not like! no one is harming you by posting or interacting with content you find “Problematic™️” or dislike! no one on the internet owes you anything. it is up to you to curate your dash.
2) the “you must be x to write x” trend is harmful.
it asks people to reveal details about themselves that may be dangerous, painful to go through, or simply uncomfortable. once again, no one on the internet owes you anything. how much, if any, personal information someone puts on the internet is up to them, and it is not up to you to decide whether they have “permission” to write something, whether it be “Problematic™️” or not. up until less than two years ago, i did not think i was part of the queer community, but i was writing queer fanfiction. does this make me “Problematic™️”?
you don’t always know if the person writing x really is x—surprise, people can lie or not share that information—and in any case, it isn’t your business. bad portrayals exist—from within and without the community. we can simply not read them. sending hate mail to or doxxing anyone who doesn’t fit your blueprint of “who’s allowed to write xyz” is dangerous and downright awful. let me also remind you once more that i, and all other fanfic authors out there, owe you nothing. you do not have a right to my personal life.
at the heart of all this is the fact that fiction does not equal reality. sometimes people write unhealthy relationships to process trauma. you have no right to demand that knowledge. sometimes they write them because those dynamics are interesting to explore in a work of fiction that, again, does not equal reality. and again, you have no right to know why they write something. it is not up to the writer to impress morality upon the public. further, whether or not a work is moral has no bearing on its value as art. contrary to what purity culture would have you think, morality is entirely subjective and full of grey zones. you are not the sole arbiter of morality. if you disagree with an author’s work, simply do not interact with it.
“there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. books are well written, or badly written. that is all.”
—oscar wilde, the picture of dorian grey
