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abschaumno1 · 8 months

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How Not To Distance Yourself From Fandom Drama As A Youtuber

Hi,

this is addressing what Scott Smajor said on stream regarding recent twitter harrassment of Ecto. I will preempt this by saying that I have known Ecto for a few years now and I support them. I think I have made my stance on "problematic content" and antis clear in the past, but to summarise: I am against censorship and harrassment. People can and should create whatever they want. If someone has an issue with what they make they should block and move on.

With that out of the way, what did Smajor actually say?

If you don't want to go to TikTok to hear it here's a transcript:

“If you don’t know what this is about, that is fine, you can stay not knowing. But if you do, this is me mentioning it, okay? I’m gonna do it. So. I’m going to try keep this short and simple, as I just want to clear some stuff up, I do not support proshipping. And until yesterday, I had no idea what proshipping was. Um, after last MCC, I removed, uh, Twitter from my phone, and I would only use it if I was on my laptop while I was travelling to VidCon and visiting [?]. So, on Saturday I was packing up my stuff and I checked Twitter before I shut off my laptop and noticed that an artist I followed, um, was receiving death threats and hate. And, me, not knowing fully what was going on, I shot them a DM along the lines of ‘sorry you’re getting hate’. Um, and then I logged out and flew home [?]. That was my mistake, as I should not have said anything without fully reading what was going on. Um, I’d just seen someone upset and wanted to help. After I got home and found out what was happening, I realised that people were saying that my DM meant I supported it, again, I do not. Um, I immediately unfollowed the artist, and have since told them that I do not- I did not realise the full degree of what had happened. Um, since this, I have made the decision to step away from Twitter, really. Um, I’m gonna do my best not to log in to look at it, um, or if you, or someone you know, is affected by this stuff, please do find the help you need, and take steps, uh, to protect your own mental well-being, like I am. Um, I would also like to say that my boundaries, um, with fanart and such has changed, and I am no longer okay with NSFW art of me or my characters. Um, and, that is the last I am going to talk on this subject. — As I said, chat, if you don’t know what it is, or what’s going on, enjoy the ignorance, enjoy the bliss. Just, you don’t need to know anything, nothing else is happening here, we’re not talking about it, we’re not going to be answering questions in chat, that’s it. Done."

(See also this twitter thread)

I'm not gonna inspect every word in that tbh and I've talked extensively about what I think of creator boundaries in fandom before so I'll spare you guys that. But there are a few points I want to address.

"And until yesterday, I had no idea what proshipping was."

I will say that I have no idea how the term was explained to him or where he got his definition from. I do know there are various definitions floating around the internet, often biased in their approach. It might be that he got one of the definitions that was heavily biased towards the anti side. I won't judge him for that. The internet, and this discourse in particular is hard enough to navigate for someone who knows their way around it.

I will also acknopwledge that it might be hard for an outsider to understand any of it in the first place.

Which is why I think the statement "I do not support proshipping" is not the statement to make in this situation. This is not a discussion he has any experience with. And I am perfectly aware of how loud antis can get, particularly on twitter. This should not be a statement. Not just because I disagree with it. He is entitled to his opinion, as am I to my own. But because as a youtuber or any other celebrity or creative, you have to realise where your space ends and fandom begins and you have to realise that fandom will have its own rules and discussions and terms.

Honestly, it's like walking into a foreign country, reading one newspaper and starting to make statements about their politics. It can and will go wrong.

Here's the thing. If you truly think you have to make a statement addressing this particular issue, while completely ignoring any other criticims thrown at you by a lot of the same people who are saying a lot of things about this, try and make an informed statement. And maybe think about the message your sending to your viewers.

Ecto received harrassment, suicide bait, death threads, and got doxxed on top of it all. I would think someone who's been on the receiving end of harrassment the way Scott has been would at the very basic least be able to address that.

Instead, what he actually said amounts to "I don't support them. I wash my hands of all of it. I don't care what you guys do with them."

At best the harrassers will feel vindicated and quiet down. At worst he just enabled them to find their next targets.

I don't think it matters what he (or anyone else really) thinks about the content that Ecto was harrassed over. No one has to like it. But that does not mean there should be any doubt about the fact that harrassment and doxxing are wrong and that there should be no space for that. Not suppporting someone is one thing. Being someone with a platform who makes a statement like this, effectively giving in to people who have harrassed someone with a vastly smaller platform, without even mentioning that the harrassment is not okay, is a very different thing.

I understand that Scott might also be trying to protect his own mental health. I understand his history with twitter. But I will say that telling affected people to "take steps to protect your own mental well-being" is not the statement I personally think he should be making. I guess we'll just leave everything to the loudest, worst people then instead of even pretending what they're doing is not okay.

Hands down, the statement he made feels very much like he's saying "but surely the leopards won't eat my face". It's only been a day and MCC teams were released. The leopards on twitter are eating his face once again. And I wager I am not the only one out there who now knows that a youtuber we enjoyed watching would rather side with people who send death threats and doxx others than their victims.

#smajor1995 #discourse #scummy post #mcyt

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catboymoments · 10 months

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these ppl r being so shitty wtf ☠️wtf is going on i’m so sorry

I made a mistake and posted something I shouldn’t have that was a breach of privacy on my behalf (and was in the wrong to do so) without knowing the history behind a particular infamous/“proship” artist. The tweet in question was a photo of their booth at the convention I went to this weekend with the caption “my jaw fucking dropped.” It was meant for my active followers, but it should’ve stayed confined to dms with people who I knew wouldn’t instigate anything else. I only vaguely knew about lunasol through the grapevine (mostly just that they had a reputation and one of their tweets that reads like a villain monologue that I found funny) and I had no idea that they had been ran off of Twitter and attempted suicide due to constant harassment and threats of doxxing. I honest to god had no clue.

However, despite me apologizing, acknowledging that I was wrong, deleting my posts and owning up to my mistake, this artist’s group of supporters keep finding new ways to put words in my mouth and turn what I say against me. And like. I don’t even know what to do at this point? Because no matter what I say or what I do, in their eyes I’m always gonna be “the bad one” and they’re gonna continue to send me death threats until I deactivate or kill myself. If I say nothing, I’m not owning up to it. If I say something, I’m fishing for attention. If I say “hey please stop sending me threats on all my socials,” I’m playing the victim. If I tell these people “hey what you’re saying isn’t true” or defend myself at all against false claims when defense is due, I’m not “genuine enough.” It’s a lose lose situation.

I’ve directly apologized to the artist in question and I’m not gonna post all of the intricate details about it, but pretty much they don’t want to hear it. I can understand not having the mental energy to reason with someone you’d put your defenses up for, but when I reach out in an attempt to reconcile with the hurt party and stop something that’s gone too far and they essentially tell me to go fuck myself, there’s not much I can do at that point either. Some people will never like me, and not everyone will accept an apology. That’s okay.

Basically. I was very stupid and I’m paying the price now

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ghost-of-a-slave · 4 months

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How the antiship community held me back from healing

I don't like necessarily labeling myself in this discourse now but I suppose I would technically be considered an ex-antishipper.

In the past I was antiship because proshippers abused me, or well I thought they did. Because obviously my abusers and predators when I was a kid would be proshippers right? Because they must have liked the content about the stuff that they did to me. Even the ones who never talked about the content. Because they were never proshippers they were just cartel members, organized crime, customers of such, or child predators. Being in antiship spaces lead to people trying to convince me of that. I don't think I ever fully lied... I am both histrionic and a sociopath and when I was pre-therapy (for trauma- I had therapy as a kid for suicidality and self harm but not the other issues until adulthood), I was incredibly delusional and easily influenced. I was being pushed to believe these things by others so hard that I didn't understand where my "filler" memories for my amnesiac periods of time and terror of the unknown started or ended. My perception of reality was easy to mold and change. And with that warped perception of "these were my abusers" and "these people are the same as my abusers" my own delusion was able to be weaponized against others.

Part of why it took so long to accept this as what happened is because I wanted to believe I had gotten better. Being raised in a cult originally also tends to mean reactionary and unreasonable beliefs stick and stay deep inside of you. But I was so certain I was different. We moved away when I was 9 and when I got internet access starting at 11 I slowly got into leftism. I couldn't possibly still be affected, I was better now, safer. I had to be or that meant I deserved to die obviously. (Something antishippers also sadly seem to be the types to push as well- reform only for those who do minors ills.) Those thought patterns and delusional fears of being a monster were just the continuation of ideas from the cult. Those problems with my thought patterns and ideas never got resolved merely the targets changed and people around me convinced me I was acting justly.

I hadn't healed as much as I thought I had and everyone around me was enabling my delusions. People were actively making it harder to heal and the fact I didn't have a proper therapist yet for what had actually happened and the actual extent of my disorders certainly didn't help. Cult brainwashing doesn't go away because you educate yourself on topics, it needs deep intensive help to fully remove. My current therapist cannot even fully help me in that regard. I need a deprogrammer. But antishippers often told me otherwise, and the community in general lead me and I know so many others to holding conflicting beliefs and allowing reactionary ideology to go unchallenged.

I want to be clear here that antishipping itself is not a cult nor cultlike and as a survivor of a cult I find it repulsive to compare the two. Antishippers do not have a child trafficking operation with connections to the cartel set up in their temple's basement. They don't have preschools that work as a front for further trafficking, and they don't murder their detractors and bribe the police to cover it up or ignore the mass graves. But what many antishippers do is take advantage of people who have experienced those things and similar.

I started having my doubts as I healed more and more and I became incredibly more and more jaded against antishippers in general as time went on and I heard more horror stories and saw more antiship people going after people who held the positions I did as not being "antiship enough" or "secretly being proship". See, the idea I had in my mind of a proshipper was someone who would send gore, death threats, threaten to assault you, purposefully trigger you, bait you into self harm, and throw a tantrum over media ever being analyzed by anyone ever. Because those were the kinds of people who would go out of their way to dig through my various tiny social media accounts to harass me for the one time every 7 months I would ever talk about shipping discourse.

Normal people (meaning most proshippers) would not take time responding to a child having a mental breakdown and thinking that all proshippers are literally the people who abused them (and yes I say literally because I did believe at one point in my life that every proshipper I had interacted with had been one of my past abusers on an alt account because again I was severely mentally ill and not properly treated and my OCD has psychotic elements) but the neo-nazis and the genuine child predators would.

I think that's part of what keeps people like me in the antiship sphere for so long. I was bound to be pushed out eventually given my love for media such as Berserk, Fear and Hunger, and games by Nitro+CHiRAL. I've always loved dark media, I've loved blood and gore and death, and even before I accepted I was a necrophiliac I found corpses incredibly intriguing in a way that was obviously not normal. I had opinions in line with what I've seen people say proship is- no harassment to others, like what you like, don't want the government to get involved with things. But because the only proshippers who would interact with actively unhinged and deranged posts and meltdowns I had were bound to be bad people and/or ill equipped to handle a child in active crisis- who mind you was getting trafficked the entire duration of the time and was having constant blackout episodes- I was lead to believe that the proship community and those within it were all a genuine danger to my safety. And I never once had the courage to question if the antiship community was harming me as well. Not until I started getting into recovery at least.

Because part of recovery was having repressed memories come up, part of recovery was having those memories be a constant thing I had to sit with. Part of recovery was me desperately wanting to write about what happened to me in fiction but being terrified if I did I would be ostracized for being a proshipper even when I was planning to handle the topic "correctly" in my writing. Part of recovery was being told that the reason I found certain things so attractive was because I may have died if my brain didn't change the horrors I experienced and the sense of helplessness into a new form of control through lust and desire. Part of recovery was realizing I had been lied to by everything and everyone since the day I was born and having to question everything I knew about myself and my ideas.

And those questions lead to answers.

The main core the main thing that people had gotten to me on in order to fully convince me of the antiship position above all else- was so insignificant and stupid.

I used to be into guro and very much liked it when I was 12/13 or so and part of that was as a way of coping with what I had repressed. Part of my issues and dissociation had been not noticing the scars that litter my own body. Scars I've had since I was under the age of 10. Scars that are inseparable from the real issue that caused me to act the way I did that got blamed on my consumption of darkfics and guro. I was violent and aggressive to others in middle school and early highschool and at some point antishippers convinced me it was because the media I read had normalized it and pushed me to act in these ways. But then I broke through more of my amnesia and realized I was getting trafficked weekly multiple times a week when I had these outbursts. It was never my fault and I never was tainted by the media I read. I was scared and I was having flashbacks and hurting people on accident and nobody understood what was happening.

I feel so fucking stupid for having hated myself for so long for having been able to be convinced that reading stuff caused that when maybe just maybe I could have realized things sooner maybe someone would have saved me. But of course that's also wishful thinking.

Media was my escape and it was torn from me and deemed the source of the symptoms of my abuse that I was trying to escape from.

I may not consider myself a proshipper. But I most certainly am not an anti. Not after realizing everything. Now I'm actually allowing myself to indulge in things I've been missing and to accept my paraphilia that my trauma left me with. Because one final part of this and that coming to accept that it's okay to be a necrophile is accepting I can write and make art about it and have a character centered around it who I very much do plan to post about. I can also stop feeling guilty for my kinks and fetishes and playing games that may sexualize bad situations and actions. Because fuck it I do find slavery hot and I'm allowed to as a survivor of it and I find weird tentacle rape hentai as hot as well. I may be grossed out or scared of other media as well but that doesn't mean it's actually dangerous to me. And people cannot convince me I'm in danger and scare me as easily as they could before.

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I am anti-contact for paraphilias that would break consent or cause egregious harm to a person even with consent. Disclaimer is here because I mention my paraphilia in this post and want to be clear I have no wishes to act on it IRL. I also know not everyone who like fictophilic para content is actually attracted to the real versions- I don't get that given my attractions to fiction are identical in reality but I'm also really autistic and weird so ya do what you will. Feel free to add anything if you wish!

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#ex anti #ex antishipper #pro para #para safe #paraphile safe #paraphiles please interact #sa tw #csa tw #trafficking tw #pro paraphile #shipcourse #shipping discourse #proship friendly #proship #profic #<- more for reach since I'm technically not one due to not identifying with the label but I think some people have experienced similar

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unironichellokittygirl · 2 days

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⋆˚࿔ 𝓡𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓫𝓮𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓮 𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝜗𝜚˚⋆

Hiii! This is my intro, FAQ, and DNI. Please respect that when viewing my blog! ᯓᡣ𐭩

Name: Kitty!

Age: Adult, but not comfy giving personal info. Sorry. ﾐ・◦・ﾐ ྀི

Pronouns: Any are okay!

⋆˚࿔ 𝓕𝓐𝓠 𝜗𝜚˚⋆

Are you a paraphile?: No. I’m not diagnosed with any paraphilias or paraphilic disorders, nor do I identify as one. I am a kinkster but not a paraphile. I just find the attitude society has towards them to be very unempathetic and want a space to show that even non-paraphiles can have compassion for those who are different.

Are you proship?: If I had to be labeled as one or the other I’d be considered a proshipper. However, I don’t personally identify myself under that label. I do believe that art is a place that’s meant to explore complicated feelings and the human condition. That includes dark things and aspects of life that make us uncomfortable. Unless there are tangible victims (such as published sexual art depicting real life identifiable children, art that is purposefully meant to be a threat to someone else ((even implicitly)), drawing that reference things like CSEM, etc.) then it’s morally fine. No one, and I mean no one, should ever be harassed, doxed, or otherwise harmed because they made art that is simply offensive to someone. This applies to things I’m even offended about, like certain political artists or particular fetish art.

What is your contact stance?: Certain paraphilias and/or paraphilic disorders can’t be explored to its most literal extent without a victim being involved. For example, pedophiles can’t have sexual relations with children without creating a victim. Obviously I am against that. However, they can explore this part of themselves via ethically-made art, an adult partner in consensual sexual roleplay, etc.

Honestly, I would much rather people have an outlet for their desires rather than let them build and build and build until it becomes an issues to not just themselves but others. I mean, how many times are we going to see anti-gay politicians for example turn out to be LGBT? (1, 2, 3) And no, I don’t think that paraphiles or people with paraphilic disorders are inherently LGBT, nor do I think there should be an added “P” on the LGBT acronym. I am simply saying that repressing one’s sexuality is unhealthy in my opinion.

Said opinion is based off of data. For example, there have been multiple studies showing that countries with easy access to pornography of any kind have significantly less sex crimes committed than countries who don’t. (1, 2)

Are you pro-recovery? I find this to be a difficult to answer because there are certain implications with the question I don’t agree with. This would be like asking “Are you pro-recovery?” in reference to someone with an anxiety, depressive, or schizospec disorder. I want people to have easy access to resources if they’re struggling, and let’s be honest, almost all paraphiles are struggling in one way or another. At least from what I’ve seen. But what I hear when seeing “pro-recovery” is “Do you think paraphiles should be ‘cured’?” You can’t “cure” paraphilias in the same way you can’t “cure” the disorders I listed above. You cant “recover” from them because they aren’t going anywhere. People recover from events that happen to them, people recover from trauma, people don’t recover from things hardwired into their brain. (1)

⋆˚࿔𝓓𝓝𝓘𝜗𝜚˚⋆

Do not interact if you are a minor. At all. I discuss and reblog adult topics and don’t want minors exposed to it. Please respect this.

Do not interact if your intention is to bully or harass. I am totally up for disagreements and discussion! That’s how the marketplace of ideas works! I just don’t want to waste time with unproductive conversations. Thank you.

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insomniaink95 · 6 months

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Uuuugggghhhhh… okay. Proship/Antiship discourse. Inky's got opinions on this...

Okayso, I have never known what the terms proship and antiship ACTUALLY mean. I know about the issues SURROUNDING what the terms mean but not what they actually 100% really mean at all. I did not grow up on tumblr. I had an account for, I think, three months once before deleting it, and didn't come back until I made this account a couple months ago. I also have only ever read fanfiction written by close friends and a single Final Fantasy VII fic from the ancient internet days of 1999(I barely know how to navigate Ao3 to read friends fanfics even). I have never had any real interest in any kind of shipping with the only caveat being a VERY mild fascination involving GriffGuts… So basically no real exposure to any community that was dealing with this.

So about a decade ago(give or take) when I first heard the terms proship and antiship, my understanding of it without looking anything up was that there were people who were against shipping in general and people who generally enjoyed it. I had no outside input and no impetus to go find out because I had heard the terms in a complete vacuum without their actual meanings. It just sounded like another random internet argument that I had no interest in whatsoever.

Several years later I FINALLY started hearing a few people's negative opinions on proshippers as well as other people's negative opinions on antishippers and realized my understanding of this was completely lacking and that it wasn't just some dumb argument and it was based on very important societal impacts. …so I went looking for what the two terms actually meant.

And the reason I have never known what the two terms actually mean is because depending on who's words you're reading the two terms can mean any number of different things with wildly different negative connotations for one group or the other. And it can be any DEGREE of negative connotations depending on who's explaining it as well!

On the most negative edges of the definitions I have heard proshippers described as those who enjoy fictional CP/incest/abuse who don't care that the propagation of that material in a positive light can have a real negative impact upon society and what other's perceive as acceptable irl.

And I have heard antishiipers described as censorious puritans who are against sex-positivity and are often also anti-LGBTQ+ and have even been compared specifically to the "burned furs" movement.

And of course from that level of negative connotation on either side all the way down to some folks thinking it's just a mild difference of opinion and no big deal…

I've got a good idea of what the terms SHOULD mean these days. but I just did another quick web search to see what any young people would run into if they were curious about the term's meanings after just hearing them for the first time. Y'know, what're the KIDS gonna learn these two terms mean today if they go to look it up like I did several years ago.

It's the same jumble of definitions that I ran into several years ago. Both from random people who gained their opinions on what the terms meant from the SAME jumble of definitions to news articles in which the writers did a cursory glance at what the meanings were(basically looked at whatever the first google search result on the subject said) and wrote authoritative articles on the subject.

pulling my hair out!!!

The ISSUE is deadly serious. But these terms have no useful application in society. I don't know the history enough to say if they ever DID, but they don't anymore at least. There's been so much muddying of things by those who don't want their interest in hardcore muppet babies porn to result in reasonable people giving them the side eye and hitting the block button AS WELL AS online "news" content mills doing their best to make a quick buck by churning out articles on the subject that are authoritative and "well researched" when the authors don't know jack and had no interest in ever knowing jack in the first place!

asdlkfja;dfja;kfja;ldfja;sdlfkj

Also, does anti proship mean the same thing as antiship or is that a new term with a completely new meaning??? I am an old man who doesn't even have a smart phone, someone take me back to my room, my grand-kids are supposed to visit soon!

#can we have a new term???#or terms?#something that has an inherent meaning that's interpretation can't be easily altered? One that doesn't require research?#please?

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brightblueinky · 4 years

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Long winded ramblings about a Bronycon video

So I’ve seen some hubbub about a YouTube essay going over the history of the Brony fandom up until the last Bronycon. (You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVOF2PiHnc ) I just got around to watching it today and I was...somewhat confused by some of the stronger negative takes I was seeing floating around Twitter, and I’ve been in a “fandom discourse” mood lately so, hey, I thought...why not talk about it. The first part of this was originally going to be a Twitter thread until I realized Twitter wasn’t going to let me keep going on the thread so I gave up and decided to put it here instead (lol) so it’s probably going to be a bit choppy since I was trying to keep it readable for that format.

So first of all, my background, so I can be completely honest about where I'm coming from and try not to portray what I'm saying as like...an end-all-be-all take here, because I don't wanna do that. I was never really an MLP fan. I watched the first season of FiM and really enjoyed it, but I didn't really engage with the fandom because by that point I'd gotten to where I didn't spend much time in huge fandoms. So I can't come at this from the perspective of an MLP fan. When I’m addressing the fandom here, I’m coming at it as an outsider in the sense that I am not a MLP fan/brony. What I AM going to do is come at this from the perspective of something of a "native" to fandom. I've always been a geek. I've engaged in online fandom in some form or another since I was about 8, which was in the mid 90s. I've been around the fandom block. Actually, I can even say that I used to lurk on 4chan a lot and I saw a lot of the early Brony discussions there. I also watch @JennyENicholson's videos, and yeah, there's been times where I've been bugged because we had a disagreement of opinions and felt like it was a little harsh. She's got a dry sense of humor and sometimes it's hard to read when she's joking and when she's being genuine. So like, I wasn't surprised when I saw some hubbub from some people online about her doing the video about Bronies. Not at all. But I gotta say...I am really surprised by some of the more INTENSE takes on the video after watching it?? The LARGE majority of the video is @JennyENicholson covering this fandom from an INSIDER'S perspective. She was an MLP fan before FiM, she was active enough in the fandom to be a BNF. A huge, huge amount of the video is positive and nostalgic. In fact I now wish I HAD been in the fandom! It seems like it was a lot of fun! The only thing I felt was maybe harsh in the video is I think she gave the impression that being "furry" is exclusively a sex thing, but by the end she talks about furries being a community that's a very inclusive, kind community with a lot of queer people, so even then I think if you're really paying attention to the whole video you're not going to come away with the idea that the furry community is bad. Just maybe could've had more nuance earlier in the video? So from glancing through mentions of her in a Twitter search (which is definitely not going to be a perfect sample) from what I can tell there's like two things that people seem to be upset about with the video: 1, the idea that the fandom is "dead" and 2...just...Body Pillows. So let's talk about the dead fandom thing first. As I mention, I have been in fandom a long, long time. Although I (usually) shy away from big active fandoms now, I started off in bigger ones--Sonic, Pokemon, Digimon, LOTR, etc. The two fandoms I currently care about the most, though, are definitely fandoms that tend to be called "dead" and were never HUGE to begin with (Princess Tutu and Chrono Crusade). I think I can count on my hands the number of ppl who actively discuss or create fanwork for CC. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, I've been on both sides of the coin here. And let me reassure Bronies: "Dead", while maybe too strong of a label for what it actually means, does not have to be a negative thing and you don't need to defend your fandom from it, IMO. I think the "dead" label simply means that interest in the fandom has cooled, the number of active participants is significantly down from the heydays of the fandom, etc. And I don't think that's an unfair label for brony fandom from what I know. If there was a large scale replacement for Bronycon then maybe it'd be unfair, but...yeah, if you're losing your large hubs for the fandom community, if the flow of fanwork and discussion has slowed, I think "dead", as it's used, isn't an unfair label. But again, I don't think this is a bad thing! I'd imagine that even the current state of the brony fandom is larger and more active than the Princess Tutu fandom at its greatest heights. It's a pretty relative term. It doesn't mean nobody cares, or that you can't still enjoy it! All the "dead" label really means is acknowledging the change in a fandom. It's not a bad thing. I might be 1 of ~30 writers for Chrono Crusade on AO3 but I still have fun writing fic and I still get hits and occasional positive comments. It's not bad. Just different. Okay so now let's talk about the body pillow thing and oh man, is this going to be a minefield, lol. Let's first talk about my personal lens I'm going to come at here... I've created NSFW fanwork. Some of it taboo. I'm also (somewhat) a part of the "proship" discourse on Twitter which is basically a community of people that push back against another community of "anti"-shippers who feel that some ships are problematic (because of character age, power dynamics, etc) and shouldn't be shipped. (I think that simplifies a lot of the discussion on both sides but it’ll do for the purpose of what I’m getting at here, I think.) At its worse this debate has lead death threats and suicide attempts. I have seen people get treated abusively for fanwork (sometimes NSFW but not always). (And I also want to add that while I think the major component of the pro-ship discussions on Twitter are anti-harassment, there’s been some ‘edgy’ types who think that it’s fun to harass antis with NSFW fanwork and the like and I want to make it clear that is ALSO ABUSIVE AND NOT OKAY.) Basically, I want to say I'm sympathetic to a knee jerk defensive reaction over NSFW fanart. Okay? I can get why people might want to push against criticism of stuff they enjoy/create, and that there’s an element of possibly being harassed for fanwork you create. But the thing is, I don't think this is really the attitude Jenny is taking in the video. She lightly mocks NSFW stuff and body pillows, but often describes it as "harmless" and "fine". The only time she's critical of it is when she notes that sometimes body pillows with suggestive poses could be on display at conventions where young kids were present--at a con celebrating a show MEANT for young kids--and that probably shouldn't have been allowed. She's not saying you can't buy a body pillow, or create one. She didn't even say that while discussing body pillows of characters who were 10! She expressed personal discomfort, but the only restriction she really suggested was "keep this out of the sight of minors." And I don't know why that would be a controversial take. I read lemons when I was younger so I'm not going to sit here and act like it's going to completely ruin kids lives or anything. But I ALSO think it's appropriate to have boundaries for sexual materials for kids (or anyone who doesn't want to engage for whatever reason). I want my stuff to be clearly labeled as NSFW, with tags being clear about the content, so people know what they're getting into. I’ve grown to care about this even more as I’ve gotten older. I don’t really want to know about minors reading my nsfw fanfic or anything. I’m not going to, like, parent them and shame them if they do, but I don’t want to engage with it, I want my stuff to be labeled, and I am DEFINITELY not going to put it on public display at a place where I know kids are allowed, ESPECIALLY not when it’s work based on stuff MEANT for children! I mean, I grew up in a fundamentalist Evangelical household and I will rant at you for hours about how damaging I feel that environment was, and that I don’t think kids and teens should be completely shielded from sex, etc. But that doesn’t mean that having boundaries in place is a bad idea, especially when minors are involved. I also think that boundaries are good just for the sake of consent, too? I’m not saying that someone accidentally seeing suggestive art is the same as them being raped, please don’t conflate it like that, but if people don’t want to see it for whatever reason they should be given the opportunity to make that choice as much as possible. The stuff that Jenny mentioned brony conventions would do (requiring stuff to be sold under the table, or having late night hours for the dealer’s room where 18+ merch could be displayed and sold) seem like really good policies and pretty similar to what I’ve seen at anime conventions I’ve attended (although occasionally some stuff that was maybe a biiit more suggestive than I’d be comfortable displaying in public...but hey, my local con allows kids but also makes it clear in their rules that it’s mostly geared for 13+ attendees and that it’s up to parents to decide what’s appropriate for their kids, and I think that’s fair). And yeah, I know, nothing that Jenny showed in the video being displayed at Bronycon was 100% explicit, just suggestive. She notes this in the video herself, saying that yeah, it doesn’t show genitalia, etc...and as I’m writing this I think I’ve maybe rambled too much about NSFW fanart when most of the stuff we’re talking about here is more “suggestive” than straight-up porn, since that’s probably muddying the waters a bit. But I gotta, gotta, GOTTA address the sentiment I saw multiple times on Twitter in response to her video: “Dakimakura/body pillows aren’t sexual and to say that is orientalist.” I...what? What the fuck? Okay, again, I’m going to make it perfectly clear what my background is here so that I’m not claiming to have some expertise that I don’t have: I am white. I am VERY white. My parents did the DNA test thing and the most “exotic” thing that came up is that my dad is 3% Spanish. Not latin american, I mean from Spain spanish. I am sooooo fucking white. I’ve studied a LITTLE of Japanese culture in college classes but that wasn’t even my field of study (Communication major on a Broadcasing track, minor in Theatre) so I’m not going to tell you I’m an expert on Japanese culture. I’m just a weeby geek that grew up in anime fandoms and never really stopped consuming Japanese pop culture. I have a very limited experience with Japanese culture. I am NOT an expert on what is and isn’t orientalist. I know I’m really hammering in this point here but I think it’s really, really important that I make it clear that I shouldn’t be used as an expert on this subject. But what I DO have a background in is someone who has engaged in Western fandom of stuff from Japan from a young age, I did spend a lot of time on 4chan, this is NOT the first time that I’ve seen some form of an “this isn’t sexual at all and you’re just a PERVERT” discussion about fanservice and...okay first of all, I highly doubt anyone saying this is any more qualified to define what is and isn’t orientalist than I am. I think this is bullshit and it feels like an attempt to make your opinions more legitimate by implying people that disagree with you are some form of bigot. (And look, I was a sheltered, insecure, stuck-up teenager in fandom, part of the reason I feel like I can recognize this is I totally pulled the same shit. I am not going to act like I have never tried to pull this and that I’m a pure innocent woke intellectual who’s never said something foolish, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let it slide, either.)

While writing this I googled ‘dakimakura’ to make sure I was spelling it right and noticed that Wikipedia does note that the origins of this style of pillow are sometimes used by Japanese kids as something like a security blanket, which I’m guessing is where the justification for the argument is coming from, but let’s be intellectually honest here--body pillow covers being sold at a convention aren’t primarily meant to be a security blanket for kids. And, okay, maybe you have a body pillow cover with a character on it that isn’t exactly in a sexual pose, just laying fully clothed on what looks like a bedsheet background. But I don’t think it’s an unfair argument to say that even THEN it implies a sort of intimacy, right, possibly a desire for a romantic attachment? Like, sharing a bed with someone doesn’t have to be sexual or romantic, I used to share a bed with my brother in hotel rooms when we were kids, but I’m also not going to share a bed with my brother and then hug him closely to my body no matter how he’s posed or what he’s wearing??? And look, maybe a body pillow isn’t ALWAYS sexual but to say it’s NOT sexual, which kinda implies NEVER, is so disingenuous. The top result I got when I searched for “anime body pillow” is a shop that includes categories like “18+ body pillow” and “sexy body pillow” and also SELLS FAKE BREAST INSERTS FOR SOME OF THE PILLOWS SO YOU CAN SQUEEZE THEIR BOOBS (obviously, NSFW link: https://www.dakimakura.us/ ) Like, COME ON, I don’t think it’s orientalist to say that something is sexual when Japanese people are actually selling body pillows they label as 18+. The second result even has a second for pillows you can insert sex toys into. And yeah I saw the guy saying “masturbation isn’t sex!” and sir at BEST you have a very narrow and incorrect definition of sex as simply being intercourse and, again, at worst you’re just being straight up dishonest. In fact, I’ll straight up call myself out for this. There’s a fanart body pillow of a fictional character I’ve considered buying several times! (Not porn but still probably NSFW link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/701912275/dakimakura-hypnosismic-doppo?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=hypnosis+mic&ref=sr_gallery-1-4&organic_search_click=1 ) Is this porn? No. You can’t see much. But on one side of the pillow he’s got his shirt untucked, you can see a bit of his stomach, and his fly is undone and you can see the band of his underwear peeking out. This is sexual. I’m not wanting it to like, get off on it, exactly...honestly it’s maybe a bit ironic, and a lot of wanting a body pillow in general is I like sleeping hugging onto something but I have a different sleep schedule from my husband I find him too big to hold all night and too warm in the summer anyway. But I’m not going to tell you that me wanting this PARTICULAR pillow case isn’t at all sexual, I know what I’m doing, I like the character and think the drawing is hot. I’m not saying don’t buy body pillows, okay? I’m not saying don’t sell them. I don’t think Jenny is either (she literally OWNS ONE that she shows in the video!!!). But don’t act like there isn’t ever anything sexual about it existing to try to defend their existence, okay? You don’t need to be a fucking coward about it, and you especially don’t need to say it’s racist if people call out something as being suggestive when, well, it fucking is. And I think it’s totally 100% reasonable for someone to say “hey I don’t think it’s a good idea to display suggestive art around kids, especially if it’s depicting young characters.” TL;DR -- Chill, guys. CHILL. Your fandom is getting smaller and the term people use for this is “dead” but that’s not a bad thing, you’ve still got the fandom, you can still enjoy it, there’s definitely no need to take personal offense over it. And enjoy your body pillows, but don’t be disingenuous about the fact that they can be suggestive and try to act like anyone that calls it such is racist, that is such bullshit. Like what you like, other people’s opinions of it is not automatically a personal attack on you, there’s no need to jump to being defensive every time someone says something vaguely negative about it. Chill, fandom friends. Fandom ain’t bad but it also doesn’t need to be the center of your identity and you don’t need to lash out against people for daring to have opinions about a thing you like. You especially don’t need to act like other people are perverts for noting something being suggestive. Chiiiiiiiiiill.

#long post #fandom #bronies #my little pony #youtube #ramble #fandom discourse

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