#if you are homophobic or Bi phobic or transphobic you are never allowed back until you realize being homophobic and transphobic are wrong

[izzyliker]

i think like.... some of this ‘fanfic isnt above criticism’ discourse fundamentally is built on some weird ideas and understandings of criticism, creative freedom, and variance in ppl reading the exact same thing. 

like: just because you dont like a specific thing about someones writing doesnt mean its objectively, concretely wrong, bad, or inappropriate. nobodys going to kill you or jail you or whatever for leaving a mean or unnecessarily blunt comment on someones fic, but it is kind of sad/funny to see people talk shit about writers for ‘not taking criticism’ as if their opinion is objective truth and not just.....their opinion.

like: i have had people tell me my writing is too abstract, or it doesnt make any sense, or that i use too many metaphors or whatever. thats their opinion! i have also had people say that me writing the way i do is dreamy/mesmerizing/whatever nice, sweet things they had to say about it. as a hobbyist writer and someone who ENJOYS writing that way i am not going to change it because someone didnt like it, and people being mad about that is... kind of funny to me? just dont read my fic then! i write six line long sentences and use five em dashes in a single paragraph because i like doing it. if you dont like reading that you dont have to read it!

there’s... of course room for gently calling people out for writing in -phobic and -ist stuff while obviously having no idea that it was -ist or -phobic (eg. having characters misgender a trans character and not warning in the tags, or referring to a trans character as their deadname and using the wrong pronouns until they transition [’x was a girl blah blah she liked blah blah then she suddenly realized shes a boy wow anyway now im getting to the actual story after misgendering my character for no reason. them being trans never comes up again’], or writing deeply bigoted stuff or otherwise inserting unfortunate tropes in writing) and im not going to say that it’s ~bullying~ someone to let someone know that it seems like their writing reflects their own, genuine bigoted beliefs or misconceptions, and a lot of time people will be mortified and thankful to hear that (and when they aren’t theyre usually either openly bigoted, or theyve had other people tell them otherwise and chosen to believe those people instead, which you can feel however you want about).

like: ive left a strongly worded comment on a fic before because it turned out to be completely untagged for the rape depicted in it (as in: no archive warnings apply - not even chose not to warn), and featured a twoc ‘’’’’’having sex with’’’’’’’ a trans guy, where the author was a white cis person who did not see anything wrong with the lack of tagging OR the damaging tropes used with zero self awareness. i dont think you can NEVER say ‘im trans/gay/bi/ace/a person of color/a person of this ethnicity and you don’t seem to be - did anyone beta read this, because you have depicted the character with my marginalized trait in a very stereotypical way, and idk if thats on purpose or not’ or anything similar. sometimes people who are racist or homophobic or biphobic or transphobic also write fic. sometimes a fic makes your spider senses tingle because of the way something bad is depicted in it. 

but like and especially re darkfic - 

when people say ‘you need to take criticism when people say your fic glorifies bad relationships’ i think... what people fail to take into account is that although sometimes people do in fact write narratives where they do not even realize theyre writing a shitty relationship (this is often made obvious by a complete lack of tagging or a flippant attitude about the actions of the characters rather than anything that happens in the work itself) sometimes when you read a fic and think ‘this obviously says that this relationship is good! and that you should read this and think the relationship is good!’ it’s not actually an objective, true criticism that the author needs to... idk...rectify? reflection is always good for yknow becoming a better writer and looking at possible issues re: how you see relationships or certain people or whatever (this isnt just writers or artists btw, this is also you as the reader or the consumer or the person, existing in the world), but sometimes it’s just a fic that either was triggering for you, or that didn’t fill the specific narrative need you had.

again: i have written unhealthy relationships. i like writing codependence, and relationships with bad boundaries, and relationships where people are in denial about how their relationship makes them feel. i have, ON THE SAME FICS, had people say they thought it was validating; or cathartic; or respectful; or realistic and kind and compassionate portrayal of those relationship AND other people say they were uncomfortable; that they thought the narrative not using the word abuse meant it wasnt meant to be abuse (despite the ‘unhealthy relationships’ tag); that they thought it was disrespectful to write two characters they liked in an unhealthy relationship. and theyre all allowed to have those opinions! sometimes someone’s writing just doesn’t spark joy. but just because you didn’t like a fic doesn’t mean the writer has failed. when a fic writer has multiple people say ‘i liked this; this felt real; it felt compassionate and respectful and i will come back and read it again’ and one person say ‘i think this is bad’ i don’t think its... evil of the writer to say ‘yknow, im sorry you didn’t like this fic, you might want to read x fic where the story has a happier ending instead,’ and not change or delete or otherwise do anything to that fic.

i dont know guys like... again, just because you didn't like something doesnt mean theres something intrinsically wrong with it. and a loooooot of posts here conflate ‘this person wrote a fic that uncritically used a bunch of tropes the author did not tag for and thus was not even aware of having used and i have left a comment saying that the implications of that are kinda fucked’ with ‘this person wrote a fic about an abusive relationship/sexual assault/whatever and it wasn’t written the way i want those topics to be written about, and i have left them a comment saying that they need to kill themselves for it.’ 

#man....like......i have seen the fucked up shit on ao3. i truly have witnessed Some Shit. ive opened a fic and immediately backclicked #bc the way it depicted sensitive topics was just very callous and had an air of complete lack of research having gone into it #i have also read fic that i recognized was useful for other people probably but that was intensively triggering to me for no specific reason #sometimes things are handled in ways that arent necessarily...objectively bad. they just dont work for everyone #i rarely want to read any kind of 'this person is in a bad relationship and someone talks them out of it and then theyre happy' kinda stuff #my catharsis comes from the uncertainty of the ending and the emotional parts of the active relationship #theres like.....irl reasons for that. but people also dont need to have any specific tragic backstory to enjoy certain narratives more than #others. idk yall. whatever #long post #disk horse #rape ment

[fortunefavorsthebrave-dude]

rebelbaze replied to your post: rebelbaze replied to your post: ...

As an LGBT ace, I have experienced large amounts of homophobia and transphobia from teh ace community so like… peopel have a reason to be pissed

i get that people can have a reason to be pissed because of experiencing that. i’m also LGBT ace and i’ve definitely been more on the aphobia side than the homo/transphobia side but i’ve seen it for sure even if i haven’t directly experienced it. definitely all identities can be and are phobic towards each other all the time, and i’m not denying some ace people are really bad about that, same as some gay or trans people are towards others.

readmore because this got really long:

the anger mostly comes from like. not trying to defend the specific ace people who are shitty just because they’re ace, but more from seeing the Hot New Meme Of The Week be shitting on all ace people for one person being a dirtbag. like it’s rare that i see a gay person being transphobic treated in the same sort of the-whole-community-is-trash-now way that i see ace or bi or pan people, ya feel? 

i don’t feel like i’m explaining this well but like. if one ace person does one shitty thing then that one person should be vilified, not the whole community. same if one gay person or one trans person does one shitty thing. my initial reaction to that post floating around definitely wasn’t to defend the person who made it, and if that was the only post i’d seen where people took it and ran with it to bash ace people, i wouldn’t have commented on it. the fact is that this is a pattern that i’ve seen so much lately, where an ace person will make a post that’s Less The Great, be it outright awful like the popular one now, or mildly bad like that one that’s like “as an ace person i think about REAL things like SCIENCE” which was honestly pretty funny and kind of harmless to me until people started using it as aphobia fuel.

and like.... a part of that particular person pushing back against certain communities could be due to those communities more vehemently lashing out at them. that DOES NOT EXCUSE IT. please don’t mistake me, that excuses absolutely nothing they said in that post. but if the gay/trans communities are allowed to hate the entire ace community for one person’s transgressions, then that’s probably the same mindset op had, just flipped. it’s harmful and awful, but responding in kind isn’t going to help?

of course i know that people aren’t responsible for responding to hate with peace and love and stuff, that they’re allowed to be angry, but that’s what i meant when i said people won’t think critically before just saying “yeah ace people ARE like that” and reblogging and adding their own hate. and when every single person you follow and every big blog is reblogging it the same way with the same sentiment towards ace people, it’s hard to not feel angry in return.

tl;dr the post that person made was awful. it was homophobic, it was transphobic, and it never should have been made or praised by anyone. that’s undeniable. HOWEVER, those sentiments can definitely be expressed without the entire ace community taking the blame for it. it would have been just as easy to criticize the content of the post and the op without extending it to the entire ace community being inherently problematic.

#rebelbaze #ace discourse #and i didn't mean to be so short before just #i've been deep in the aphobia receiving side of things for a while now #so it's a huge issue for me #and i didn't wanna argue it #but i'll discuss it np #hence this very long reply whoops