fangirlofall:one-lonely-whumperfly: rainbowloliofjustice:athenagray:decepticonsensual:cleo4u2:
fangirlofall:one-lonely-whumperfly: rainbowloliofjustice: athenagray: decepticonsensual: cleo4u2: THIS. I saw a post the other day that literally said if you do it to a fictional character, you’ll do it in real life. No. Just NO. I’m so glad someone put it into words. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a legend, and he’s absolutely right. And I really feel like there are parts of fandom that don’t get or don’t believe this, and I think that’s troubling. I’ve seen arguments that people shouldn’t have dark fantasies, or that bad impulses in themselves make a bad person. I’ve seen so much shaming over thoughts. And if you get to a point where it’s bad to have dark thoughts and it’s bad to wonder what something would be like and it’s bad to put yourself in the shoes of anyone who isn’t “pure”, if fiction is no longer a realm where you can confront and explore, but an ongoing test of moral purity… well, maybe not everyone’s brain works like mine, but I feel like that takes away something incredibly important to being human. Purity culture is gonna kill art if y’all let it. Fiction is a safe place to explore whatever fucked up or dark desire that you have. You can write the most vile and fucked up shit in fiction and it be absolutely nothing you desire in real life. You can write about a serial killer who gets away with it. You can write about someone who goes on moral crusades to purge the world of all evils and still be the protagonist. You can write anything in fiction because that’s what it is meant for. It isn’t meant to be a social commentary unless you create it to be. It isn’t meant to be educational unless you create it to be. Sometimes a story can be just that, a story. Entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less. Not everything has to be deep, or have meaning, etc. unless the creator wants it to be and a lot of the purity types end up forcing something to have deep meaning or social commentary where it isn’t meant to. Is this inherently bad? No, but these people don’t just say “But this is my interpretation of it.” they go as far as trying to force that interpretation onto everyone else, including the creator, as a means of saying “See? It means that they promote/condone xyz so they’re bad and shitty people who should spend the rest of their life in jail with/are the same as people who’ve actually committed acts of violence against other people.” THANK. YOU. @ all the people in the notes saying “yes except u can’t write about (list of immoral things they don’t want to see in fiction)” congrats on missing the point so spectacularly I’m not sure I could create better performance art if I tried folksfolksI wrote my dissertation on how fanfiction isn’t shitty writingPeople want to say that fanfiction is shitty writingbecause it teaches women to see themselves as a powerful protagonistand they think that’s BAD.(It’s basically the anti-Mary-Sue argument)And part of this (incredibly stupid and misogynist) argument is based on the centuries-old beliefthat women and young people (and poor people who couldn’t pay for an education)cannot tell the difference between fiction and realityand that they’ll do the equivalent of a kid putting on a superman cape and jumping off the roof thinking they can fly.And by acting like you can’t fucking tell the difference between fiction and realityYOU ARE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THEIR FUCKING HANDSJESUS CHRIST I DIDN’T DO ALL THE WORK TO GET A FUCKING PHD IN LITERATURE AND WRITE A GODDAMNED BOOK TRYING TO TELL FELLOW ACADEMICS THAT FANFICTION IS A VALID ART FORM JUST TO HAVE A BUNCH OF IDIOTS PROVE ALL THEIR MISOGYNIST AND CLASSIST ARGUMENTS BY PRETENDING YOU CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FICTION AND REALITY.knock it the fuck off. academics OUT. *drops mic* -- source link
#fiction#reality