Here’s the thing.

[dragonlady7]

big bang

via https://ift.tt/38dcQ8h

dsudis https://dsudis.tumblr.com/post/639406247723106304/heres-the-thing:

Not being passive aggressive this time, just… blunt.

I was excited when I first saw that there was going to be an eskelbigbang​! I was writing Eskel fic when there were less than 20 Eskel/Geralt fics on AO3, and it’s been so great to spend the last year watching the growing Witcher fandom latch on to and fall in love with this character–and now a big bang! Sweet! I am feeling a bit better lately, getting some writing mojo back, and it would be fun to have an artist create stuff for a story while I’m writing it–that’s very motivating, having someone else invested in your story like that before it’s even posted! It would be a big help to me and doubtless lots of other authors, to help us write and finish something to be proud of.

So I popped into their Discord, where I noticed that “dead dove topics” were banned even in NSFW channels, and I began to think, uh, maybe this event is Not For Me. Maybe I do not get to join in the fun. I’ve already been kicked out of at least one Discord for wanting to discuss the fic which convinced me to OTP Geralt and Eskel while I was writing it; I don’t want to set myself up for that again, and even if I managed to follow that rule enough not to get kicked out… that’s a pretty unwelcoming vibe, knowing I would always have to be on my Best Behavior.

And then–months after announcing this simply as an Eskel Big Bang, which I took to mean, as it normally does, that any long fic centered on Eskel would be welcome, and artists and fellow authors would simply scroll on by the summaries of fics that didn’t interest them for any reason–the mods announced the content rules for the bang, which forbid, no matter how correctly tagged and warned for: rape/non-con, graphic torture, incest, underage, hard kink and, as of the last ask they answered on this topic, also any variety of dub-con including intoxication before/during sex, and sex with incubi or succubi.

(In case you are wondering: yeah, Eskel IS the witcher who canonically both has used fisstech–in-universe cocaine–and had sex with a succubus. Off the top of my head I can’t remember if he explicitly said that he did both things on the same occasion, but that is the most common fannish interpretation of what he said.)

So now I’m feeling really unwelcome in this bang, since forbidding “hard kink” as far as I’ve seen generally works out to “kinks the mod(s) personally find disgusting or upsetting” and that’s the kind of slippery slope and kinkshaming that I do not feel even a little bit comfortable around, never mind the rest of the restrictions. It’s entirely likely that I would have written a fic that didn’t run afoul of any of those limits–but knowing that I would be subject to the mods’ personal, subjective judgment of what’s too kinky, or too graphic, or not good enough consent, or too much focus on, e.g., teenage Geralt and Eskel’s sexual adventures, would be enough to paralyze me. I just could not sign up for such an event and expect to succeed in writing a story.

Which is why I’m finding it really ironic that the mods, when questioned about these restrictions, are defending them by saying that “we’re trying to be welcoming of as many people as we can, and some people are uncomfortable with those things.” Because by definition, when you start forbidding content and making rules like this, you are making it clear that quite a lot of people are not welcome at all.

Now, of course, the mods are the mods; it’s their event to run as they see fit. But if they intended it to be restrictive in this way–if they intended to be running a Vanilla, No Archive Warnings Apply Only Eskel Big Bang–then I wish they had been up front about that from the start, because damn, you guys. I was really excited.

Everyone’s like “but the restrictions are to make the event more inclusive” and like

if you are excluding the writer who is the whole reason most of us new Netflix-based fans even fucking know who Eskel is

then you did not think this through. (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

[sugarandlime]

This is absolutely mesmerizing. How did the purity police even get into The Witcher fandom??? Let alone decide to mod a big bang??? Is there . . . a single unproblematic thing in the entire canon?? What on earth.

[dragonlady7]

I KNOWWWWW

apparently the mods are young and have come up in Purity Culture fandom and it genuinely never occurred to them that it's fucking ridiculous to self-censor canon-typical material.

of course, their response to this has been to wail about being personally attacked, and fail to actually read any of the actual questions. I should've guessed ,when the very first anon ask that was like "wait we can't write about canon?" was responded to with a snippy "WELL I know this ask wasn't in good faith but I'm going to answer anyway!" kind of response.
HOW TF could that not have been a good-faith ask? That is not trolling! Any attempt to get clarification has been treated as trolling, but those of us who just made our own posts with "well this is how i understand the situation and that's not something I can engage with" are being dismissed as not having gone through the proper channels and "spreading misinformation".

Anyway. It all doesn't matter, because now the antis have their claws in them and All Dissent Is An Attack.

[unicornduke]

oh my god, that's not inclusive, that's exclusive! inclusive would be saying yes you can write those things as long as they are tagged. You could get really wild and have a section just for the fics with content warnings if you were super duper extremely concerned with this! this isn't difficult wow

as someone who doesn't enjoy those types of fics, wow these people are ridiculous. this is why we have content warnings and tags, so I (and anyone who gets uncomfortable) can NOT READ THEM. ffs people, get it together

why are people like this!

[dragonlady7]

That's the worst, most pernicious part of the whole anti thing. Firstly that it gets people to censor themselves before they even have an entire idea, that's bad, yeah, but the worst thing is that it makes people under-tag, or deny that what they've written is potentialy dark. It's rife for abuse with, paradoxically, people romanticizing shit they want to write that's dark so that nobody realizes it's dark.
It's a nightmare for people who are actually sensitive about the content they consume.

I'm so old and tired.

[unicornduke]

The worst fics to click on AO3 are the ones tagged only with relationships and characters and a really vague summary. Those could be anything and more often than not, I skip them because I've been really upset by them before. And I respect the "creator choose not to add warnings" and avoid those too because it could be anything! people who are sensitive to things are fully aware and that info can help.

And the romanticizing ugh, that can be bad for all kinds of reasons. How much abuse has been written as "good", "it's totally fine if the characters are fine with it". And not tagged as such! So it all comes down to some internet stranger's opinions on how someone's story is written and framed and that makes me Concerned.

It's almost as if being upfront with information is better for many reasons!