A little personal story for yall:Being in anti spaces was honestly the worst time in my life for my mental wellbeing. I was 15/16 at the time (so about 7 years ago?) And I felt so depressed and unsafe the entire time.At 16 I was afraid to ship characters my own age because I knew my friends would tell me I was gross for it. I isolated myself because I didn’t know how to extricate myself from it. I left fandom entirely because I felt like I could never escape “bad” fiction and didn’t want to get harassed for it. Note: this was before suicide baiting was openly praised by antis and it still fucked me up for years. Every action I took was a performance in acceptability.Even now as a 23 year old I’m just now FINALLY feeling safe enough to ship perfectly “normal” stuff in public. Although luckily I’m in a mental and social place where I can also safely explore whatever fiction I want without harassment or suicide baiting. Basically I’m saying as someone who has been on both sides – so to speak – I am 100% certain the most unhealthy way to engage with fiction is to police others’ consumption of it. You will never get rid of all the shit you don’t like. You will never be safe from being turned on next. You have to accept that no matter how distasteful you find something it is fictional and there are more important issues that can actually be solved. (Also that a culture where suicide baiting is normalized will never be safe, lol)Anyways thank you guys for this blog. You help me a lot feel less alone in my struggles with this shit. I hope the harassment dies down for you.
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