dragonlady7

eskel big bang, there did not have to be wank about this but here we are

via https://ift.tt/3nhI2YC

I didn’t even intend this to be a crusade or boycott or anything, I was just truly horrified and dismayed by the fact that there seems to be this new idea in fandom that heavy, subjective censorship is the default way to be inclusive.

Like, that’s the worst part– the EBB people seem to genuinely think I and those who agree with me are on this weird crusade to force them to look at our trash. I’ve honestly had overwhelmingly positive responses but the occasional outliers are just frothing about the– here’s the thing, I chose to summarize my fic to make it clear what kind of content I wanted to create, which I was fairly certain was what that exchange was actually looking for (I am not a darkfic or trashfic writer! No shade, that’s just not what I do), and the responses are like “ew her gross scat rape fic” and that is so clearly something they’re bringing with them to this, and I don’t know where they got it.

(Genuinely, I know some trashfic writers– I’d fallen out of touch! 2020′s been dark! I don’t even read that stuff lately! but in these dark times we need to rekindle connections sometimes– and I can’t think of a single one who’s into writing scat. It’s a weird, weird fixation, which does not originate within the trashfic community, I promise you.)

There is this wide, deep movement within our culture in general and fannish culture specifially that is wildly pro-censorship. It’s a kind of Purity Culture creep that’s startling, to those of us who’ve been here a while, and is just the latest wave of the Strikethrough bullshit. What’s stunning is how deeply mired within fannish spaces it has become; all kinds of people I’d blithely assumed were generally common-sensical are up in arms over this and are clearly not reacting to what’s actually been said, but what it’s said has been said, which–

I don’t even know who the mods of the EBB are? I don’t hang out on Discord servers generally and that seems to be where the younger set does its wheeling and dealing, though I’m not sure even of that. I only know what’s been publicly posted on Tumblr and even that, only what’s been reblogged into my sphere, so I have no idea who’s actually said what, but as far as I can tell, the drama is entirely that they feel attacked by this.

I’m not attacking anyone. I wrote that entire post inwardly-directed; I feel excluded, I am sad to be excluded, I am upset at this bizarre trend. I didn’t want to attack anyone, and I’m not even interested in drama.

But I definitely felt that if we can’t put our feet down against pointless self-censorship (don’t like don’t read is a phrase as old as fandom and if we lose that we lose ourselves) in an extremely adult-oriented fandom, then we’ve lost the beachhead entirely.

Censorship is NOT normal. It is NOT normal and no, not everyone’s going to just “know what you mean” when you say “no dead dove”. (IIRC Dead Dove actually really just means “tagged thoroughly and accurately”, though my source on that is, you know, watching the meme develop, so maybe The Kids use it differently now, but I do feel like the original meaning’s kind of important.) No, appealing directly to the mods to review every story concept is not sustainable or fair or NORMAL it is NOT NORMAL. That is not how ANYTHING works. That is a new change.

It’s a slippery slope, and I genuinely don’t want to hurt people’s feelings about it but oh my GOD no. This is an 18+ canon, and you cannot POSSIBLY run a general-interest event that you censor MORE STRICTLY THAN CANON and then have the absolute blind nerve to say this is “for inclusivity”. (Your picture was not posted)