‼️ The only person who should have the power to decide if a piece of fiction is harming you emotionally or psychologically is you.
‼️ Any fiction you feel like you are being harmed by you can stop reading/watching/creating it at any time.
‼️ You are always in control when you are consuming or creating fiction.
‼️ Do not surrender the power to decide what fictional ideas might cause you emotional or psychological harm to other people.
‼️ No one will ever know better than you what ideas are harmful to you personally.
‼️ You cannot decide what is psychologically or emotionally harmful to another person.
‼️ Attempting to restrict the kind of fiction that people create or consume because you think it might cause them emotional or psychological harm is authoritarian.
‼️ It is safe to explore any ideas and themes in fiction. Fiction does not and cannot cause physical harm to any person. You are always in control of the fiction you are creating or consuming.
Yeah it is purity culture.
When I say “this isn’t entirely true” I’m only genuinely talking about like… Shit that IS harmful actually
Like racist and pedophilic art normalizes that shit there isn’t much around it
Sure you can still do whatever you want
But you’ll be fucking around and finding out I hope
‼️ You cannot decide what is psychologically or emotionally harmful to another person.
fictional characters aren’t real
your fellow fans are.
for the love of god tag your shit accurately and don’t post depictions of racism or rape where people can run into them unwarned
“choose not to warn” is always accurate btw
when writing about rl marginalization pls do research if it’s not something you experience
fans of color talking about unaware racist tropes are destroying their fandom experience are not the same as “dead dove turns people into rapists!”
give people the information they need to decide if your fic will harm them
tag. your. shit.
racism in fandom (and transphobia, homophobia, ableism, etc) is a problem to be addressed, however the difference between that and purity culture is whether or not you want censorship or a conversation. if someone writes a really offensive story, and people are like “hey that was really hurtful and here’s why,” then we have a conversation. we can listen to others and try to broaden our own understanding and compassion.
if instead people are like “you should legally not be allowed to write/consume this, because it is offensive” then we have censorship. and it’s a problem because in all but the most egregious cases, individual people disagree a lot on what is or isn’t offensive. like, is an asexual autistic character inherently offensive? i would vehemently say no, but a lot of people have argued yes. we need the conversation because the censorship will ALWAYS err on the side of “just stop writing about meaningful topics.”
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