I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:
Fictional characters are objects.
They are not people. You cannot “objectify” them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot “disrespect” them, because they are not real.
I know this has good intentions, so I will just add the “how you treat them, even as objects of fiction, can speak about your own character, be careful out there”
Your addition is actually completely antithetical to my message. It is literally the opposite of what I am conveying.
Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.
How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be “careful”.
It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a “slippery slope” to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming “dark” fanfic.
I can write tentacle noncon of my favorite character all day long and be a fierce anti-sexual assault advocate in real life because what I do in my head is not the same thing as what I do in real life.
These tags were too perfect to not include
I get the points being made but y’all are also sounding dangerously close to the “shipping children with adults is okay because they’re fictional and it doesn’t affect reality!” crowd which is… Not it.
Does fiction affect reality? Yeah. But “fiction affects reality” does not directly translate to “shipping these two characters means the author wants to rape children”, nor does it mean “authors of these kinds of stories are only publishing them with the intention of grooming children”.
I was groomed as a 15 year old by a 20 year old man without the involvement of underage fic. I didn’t even know what fanfic was. He and I met in an anime-themed chatroom and roleplayed as characters from Gundam Wing. Should we ban anime themed chat rooms? Obviously not. What happened to me was entirely on that man’s disgusting shoulders.
Oh yeah and by the way: none of the characters are hurt when you ship a fictional child with a fictional adult. Because they are not real people.
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