Like idk I just find it ironic and disappointing how easily the anti-fiction purity culture crowd in the stranger things fandom will go from understanding that queerness and strangeness is worthy of being given space in the world, only for them to turn around and crucify anyone who makes something they deem “perverse” or “immoral” at the drop of a hat based on assumptions and estimates about how they perceive their limited and narrow view of that creator’s mind.
Y’all literally treat pro-fiction ppl exactly how the town of Hawkins treats people like Eddie Munson. Y’all treat dark fic and other things that personally make you uncomfortable the same way satanic panic treated D&D. “But people can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality and they’ll act this out in the real world”.
The absolutely delicious irony of that.
To quote Mike Wheeler: that’s just bullshit media propaganda.
It’s the same old rainbow washed nonsense.
They want GAYness but not QUEERness. They want gay cutesy hand holding and wholesomeness but if you so much as IMPLY a queer teenager has homoerotic sexual feelings and desires then suddenly you’re a “freak”…
A FREAK. From the STRANGER THINGS fandom. Let that sink in.
If you’re like me, you can write relatively tame and completely consensual NSFW between adult characters but if those characters aren’t adults yet in the source material? You can get called a pedophile. For…*squints* writing a loving, intimate, consensual relationship between aged up adult characters.
If you write Dead Dove? Oh good luck buddy, suddenly the fans of this horror series become so cognitively dissonant that they forget that the entire horror genre is based on violence and uncomfortable topics, and next thing you know they’re accusing you of shit for writing dark fiction.
Somehow this fandom recognizes that enjoying watching gore, violence, murder, etc. isn’t a mark of evil- but then when it comes to fanworks that have any sort of unconventional and explicit sexuality they’ll attack and harass people for writing anything they deem “too dark” or “immoral” even if it’s not dark (such as aged up smut with enthusiastic consent).
This leaves all the power of creating fiction in the hands of corporations and companies, but if the common people partake in making such things? “There must be something wrong with them, they must be hiding something”.
In short, Anti-ship culture draws undue associations between pedophilia and adult queer sexuality and kink. Just like TERFs, Nazis, and general homophobes.
Which btw, as a CSA survivor– let’s stop fucking reducing the gravity of that word by throwing it at anything that makes you vaguely uncomfortable. Stop throwing this word around AT CSA survivors like myself because all you’re doing is being presumptuous and deeply sanist to thousands of people with OCD, PTSD, and other mental illnesses.
There are many things I don’t write or read (incest, underage/adult, explicit non con) but I also recognize that I can’t assume shit about why someone would write these things. I just DON’T PARTAKE IN THE CONTENT. I block the creator if I’m triggered or squicked out, then I move on w my life.
It’s unhealthy to form obsessive moral patterns like this. If you feel a deeply unavoidable sense of guilt or shame for even THINKING about such things? Babe you might have moral OCD and should consider distancing from fandom puritans.
Just fucking block ppl and stop slinging around words that actually mean things in utterly nonsensical ways. If someone calls me a pedophile for aging up teen characters to write queer sexuality and intimacy between adults, I will simply laugh at you. Been there done that, babe. I used to BE an anti. I was you. I’m over it. You’re cuddling up with Nazi rhetoric, and I hope you actually listen if you’re an anti reading this post.
Antis are a political cult. Full stop.