OK Fandom apparently we need to have another little chat

[puppetmaker]

And this is not about the hate tweets that caused a couple of actors to decide to leave twitter because they decided that enough was enough and they don’t have to deal with this. Good on them because what they did for their health ties into what I want to say.

I am putting it behind a cut for those who do not wish to read it. I will warn for talk about triggers, mental health, personal choice, strong language, and the off button.



I ran across an essay on Tumblr entitled Fandom is not your safe space which seems to come out of the great Sherlock debate that started at a convention and then spread to the Internet like a plague. It is a little harsh but it speaks about topics that need to be talked about in a rational way not in a Burn Everything way.

But it is already being talked about in a Burn Everything way, which is muddying up the message that is in the last paragraph.

Fandom is not your safe space. Tumblr is not your safe space. AO3 sure as fuck isn’t your safe space. People will post things you don’t like in all three spaces, which they have every right to do. Get over it, grow the fuck up, take responsibility for your own mental health, and stop confusing your oversized sense of entitlement with “social justice.”

Peter has been saying this for years not in such harsh language. He and I are both firm believers in personal responsibility probably more than our belief in the first amendment.

Neil Gaiman caught a lot of flack for his short story collection entitled Trigger Warning. How dare he make light of such a thing! Came the cry. He is trying to mansplain things. He is taking our words away from us!

Personally I thought it was clever way to cover his bases and cause a little controversy.

I know what I like to read might not be what you like to read. What I like to write might not be what you like to read. And all that is fine. We are not the same people.

However when someone tells me that I cannot read or write things that I like to, we have a problem.

The only person, beside myself, that I have any censorship capabilities at all is my daughter because she is my minor child and I am responsible for her wellbeing. I don’t need outside forces telling me what I can and cannot show my daughter. I know her. I know her likes and dislikes. I know what scares her. I know her level of understanding on many subjects. I am the one that gets to have the sex talk with her and help her understand what is going on with her body at this point. I am the one that gets to say nope can’t see that it is too violent for you or I know this will give you nightmares.

But once she is 18 then she gets to make those decisions and if I raised her right, they will be good ones.

And this sense of fan entitlement has gotten to the point of absurd. They are tweeting and yelling at the creators of a show that they are doing it wrong. That they are not addressing X issue (which is not part of the show at all and never has been). They don’t have enough Y to keep the fans happy. They don’t know what they are doing and they are destroying the thing that the fans love.

Nope. They are not. It is their sandbox and their toys that someone pays them money to play with in public.

I think the best version of this was the creator who said, “We write the show FOR you not WITH you.” Which of course set off a lot of social media hate wrapped in the guise of social justice towards the creator.

Peter has said in public that if he gave the fans what they say they wanted, they will then say that’s not what we meant what we really wanted.

For the record, Peter did this once and gave the fans exactly what they had been shouting about and they informed him that they didn’t like it at all. Since then his attitude is that he is here to entertain his audience not fulfill their every whim.

You know what I do when I run across something that isn’t my cup of tea? The off button or the back button or I just close the book or stop reading the article. I don’t keep going when it is going places that aren’t comfortable to me. But that is my choice and I should have that choice.

There are times that I just step away from the Internet because I know I am going to say something that is going to be misconstrued or misquoted and I decide I don’t need the agita. I avoid places that I know are just going to cause my stomach to go into knots because, honestly, I have better things to do.

I am grateful for people who do take personal responsibility for their Internet wanderings.

Comments

[kazeno-taka.livejournal.com]

Thank you. When the social justice movement first emerged on the internet, I mostly was in support, because it began as a voice saying things like, "hey, naked models covered in warpaint and wearing war bonnets is kind of insensitive and irreverent to native culture and beliefs". But gradually it ballooned into complete intolerance towards gender, race, and sexual identity under the guise of 'social justice'.

I had a friend who was basically bullied off Tumblr because of a mask she made, which featured a coyote, and feather and turquoise imagery. All three of these symbolize something personal to her, but someone on Tumblr saw it, immediately assumed it was cultural appropriation, and a whole group of her friends attacked my friend until she closed her Tumblr account. How is that helping anyone? How does bullying helping stop oppression?

I am sick to death of people saying that Show A or Book B or Game C is 'bad' because it doesn't feature a female lead, or because there's a rape scene, or because it offended some group of people. FICTION EXISTS TO INDULGE IN FANTASY. If you don't like a certain subject, then you're free to read/watch/play something else. Don't try to censor to push fictional content in your favor.

I saw this comic once saying how 'justice' was taking things away from men to give to women, to equal things out. I completely disagree - fiction is NOT a limited resource. You don't have to 'take away' a movie that features a male lead to make a movie that features a female lead. Make more movies with women! You don't have to take away the male-lead shoot-em-up movies and games where he has a sexy girlfriend. Get in there and make your own movies and games with strong female characters! But don't condemn media that features 'privileged' groups, or contains subject matter you dislike or are triggered by. There is so much out there and so many possibilities that to try to limit what is being produced is completely juvenile.

You're basically saying "I don't like the color of your ball so I'll pop it" instead of "I don't like the color of your ball, so I'll go find a ball that I like."

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I love the ball metaphor. That works for so many things.

Yep, as someone else said "Don't like it? Write your own."