random-fandom-ramble: beautifulterriblequeen: fangirlofall:one-lonely-whumperfly: rainbowloliofjusti
random-fandom-ramble: beautifulterriblequeen: 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 Purity culture is lazy and entitled and it wants to make everyone else clean up the world before it steps out its door in the morning. Conveniently for the rest of us, purity culture is not the boss of anyone. Purity culture is what makes people criticise characters or narratives that aren’t perfect and pure, as though everything needs to have purity to be good.It’s when people unironically say: “but that’s not a good thing! That’s problematic, wrong, and it’s not a positive narrative!”, without even thinking for a single moment that that might be the fucking point!People who genuinely cannot comprehend that sometimes the thing they are seeing is SUPPOSED to be bad, and problematic, and wrong, and questioned by the audience!God forbid if we see something other than rainbows and sunshine on screen.Heaven forbid if the protagonist does something bad.And all MIGHTY forbid if the world isn’t as black and white as a chessboard, but grey, and red, and colourful and messy; and above all Human -- source link