Inoktober:

T H E

S P 0 0 K S

(volume warning) *rises from the dead only to post this and leave*

Omg...

Can these evil gentlemans grab those little ladies even softer then they already do? XD

They're like: 'be careful with the ladies'

This is so cute :3

Wow... I was dead for a while, wasn't I? Anyways, have a Fran - art!

People seem to have forgotten that "proship" was the Fandom norm for the longest time.

Only, it wasn't called proship. It was called ship and let ship. Or minding your own buisness.

If someone had a ship you didn't like or thought was gross, you would avoid them. If they drew art or wrote stories you didn't agree with or like, you would ignore them.

There were tags like smut, whump, and angst to tell people about things they might not want to read. And then dead dove: do not eat for taboo subjects and especially gritty fic.

Then people started to ignore that. Younger fans started to bully people because they disagreed with shipping certain characters. Whether it be because it "wasn't canon", they thought it was gross, or they just didn't like it.

These people began calling themselves "anti-ship"

Pro-ship became a label to show that someone was against anti-ship.

Eventually, the anti-ship movement began to die down. So do you know what they did? They started accusing people. Of being pedophiles, groomers, rape supporters, and more. All because they wrote or drew things that these people didn't like.

They began claiming that THEY were the Fandom norm, and that these "proshippers" were the bad people. They started claiming that proship stood for "problematic shipping"

Due to this, the term "pro-ship" is often misconstrued as to what it means. Many people don't even KNOW what it means.

It means "anti-censorship".

It means that we support someone's right to produce art, no matter how gross, no matter how taboo, no matter how "problematic"

Because it's not hurting anyone.

If it's something you don't want to see? Block the person. Block the tag. Say in your bio that you don't like it. That's what they're FOR!

This was discussed in earlier days of fandom.

"I wonder why people would read a story in a genre they don't care for, then take the time to let the writer know that sure enough, they didn't care for it. That would be like me going to a restaurant, ordering a slice of cherry pie, then asking that the chef be brought out so I can say "I don't like cherry pie, and I didn't like yours either." To continue this analogy into its usual fannish outcome, the chef would say "Well gee, lady, why did you order it?" And I'd say, "Are you questioning my right to order cherry pie?"

-Unknown 2002

Except now, it would be like the person who didn't like the cherry pie and ordered it anyways then demanded that no restaurant serve cherry pie because it was poison. Not only is it a ridiculous request, it's blatantly untrue.

(via)

I decided this needed its own post, so--

Here's some context for ""The content of a piece of fiction does not reflect on the morality of its author."

and

"Your personal interpretation of the content of a piece of fiction does not reflect on the morality of it's author." 

You can't say, "Well it's okay to judge the morality of an author based on their fiction if you're correctly interpreting that fiction."

Because, my friend, every person who interprets a piece of fiction believes that their interpretation is the correct one.

The tumblr user who recently posted believing that Hayao Miyazaki had nationalist beliefs and made movies that supported fascism believed that their interpretation was correct, and judged Miyazaki's morals based on that assumption.

The people who think Nabokov wrote Lolita as an endorsement of child abuse rather than a work of fiction against child abuse believe that their interpretation is correct, and judge the author based on that assumption.

The moment you allow yourself to judge an author's morals based on your assessment and interpretation of their fiction–

➡️ you are opening yourself up to falsely judging victims who were writing about the abuse and injustice they suffered or witnessed, because you falsely believed you were supposed to root for the abuser.

➡️ you are opening yourself up to falsely judging people who were writing about the horribleness of crime and abuse, and injustice who fumbled the message or didn't portray it in a way that is clear enough for you.

Unless and until an author comes out and tells you why they wrote a certain thing a certain way, you cannot know for certain why they wrote it. You cannot judge their moral intent.

If someone writes a horrible dystopia and then in an author's note says "I wrote this because I think this is the world we should live in and aspire to you" please, please judge them.

If someone writes a book about child abuse and gives an interview where they say "I believe that this is the way we should treat children, this is good and just" please, please judge them.

But you can't know. You can't believe that you know.

You have to judge people on their actions in the real world and their words that they say they believe, not the fiction that they create.

All I’m saying is, if y’all spent less time finding new Harmless Weirdos to hate on and spent more time learning to love yourself and embrace your truths unabashedly, you’d probably see where all us Harmless Weirdos are coming from

"What have I done?"

Inoktober

Guilt and Fear

💖 It's totally okay to avoid fiction with subject matter that makes you uncomfortable, disgusted, or upset.

💖 It's never okay to try to force other people to avoid fiction with subject matter that makes you uncomfortable, disgusted, or upset.