d1cks1e-st1x:

hmm thinking shipcourse thoughts again 🙂

we’ve all seen the antiship take ‘i guess its ok to create darkfic as a coping mechanism but it’s bad to make it for sexual reasons’

and most of us brain having people have replied with ‘it’s actually fucked up to think people have to disclose their trauma to see if they’re “allowed” to write darkfic’

which i obviously agree with. but additionally, you can’t always tell what someone’s intentions are from their work alone, and you can’t control what the people who consume your content think abt it

great example from my real life in fact:

i have two friends who both have oc stories with a main character who was sexually abused by a parent.

friend ones story heavily features the effects of a fictional trauma disorder, so her ocs abuse is narratively important. she does not gain any sexual gratification from this aspect of the story, it’s just important to the plot.

friend twos oc story is about the effects of trauma on a group of siblings. one of her characters was sexually abused by his mother. she is interested in psychology and likes to delve into how trauma manifests, but she also has a boatload of kinks. it isn’t overt in the story itself, but friend two thinks that what happened to that oc is hot as hell (in fiction only ofc). despite this, if someone who didn’t know that read the ocs story, they wouldn’t necessarily read that the scenes were meant to be titillating.

friend two also thinks that friend ones ocs backstory is hot, despite there being no intention for his story to be arousing. even if friend one doesn’t have any kinks surrounding her ocs abuse, friend two does.

all this to say, no matter what your intentions are when writing darkfic (and fiction in general), you can’t control how others feel about it! if you think finding sexual enjoyment in darkfic is morally wrong, then you can’t really support darkfic in any context, because people can and people will get freaky about it.

i don’t know how to conclude this post uhhhh remember that despite everything we remain silly :3