Maybe you’re in a handsome drawing room library, sitting next to one another in high backed chairs near a cozy fireplace.
Maybe you’re in a cute living room, the lights low, snuggled half on top of one another on the comfortable couch.
Maybe you’re outdoors on a warm day, sitting shoulder to shoulder on a blanket under the branches of a large tree, the remains of a picnic lunch around you.
Maybe you’re in your bedroom, snuggled deep under your covers, with your pillows just so, and they’re sitting next to you on the edge of the bed.
Maybe they read you poetry, or read you a novel, or read you your favorite book from when you were younger.
You can scream at the top of your lungs that purity culture doesn’t impact fandom and that all the hate we get is just righteous Non Weird™ people bullying the Freaks™ who deserve it or whatever.
But like, the silencing of queer artists and writers, the stigmatization of problematic fiction and hatred of people who consume queer fiction not tailored to their specific gender, which for some, has moved on to things like attempting to rid things like A03 of ANY NSFW content or saying that it’s gross and weird that people write fan fiction at all, is all exactly like puritanicals?
Like, exiling and ostrasizing people not deemed “pure enough” for the group is not what Christians do? Silencing people (because threatening someone until they leave the platform, mass reporting and false striking, and repeatedly getting their followers to comment things like “kys” on all their blog posts is bullying and silencing, sorry to break that to you) is bad. And bullying tactics are common in closed off christian fundamentalist places too.
And it follows the same pattern as all other rightwing censorship. First it’s “pedophiles are everywhere” then it’s “sexual deviants (so kinky people, usually, or those with paraphilias and other "abnormal sexual interests”, whether those interests are benign or severe is of little importance) are pedophiles", then it’s “queer people are dangerous and need to be silenced”, and slowly but surely anyone even remotely different from you is a pedo (like radfems that think people who like twinks are pedophiles) and again, if you are a minority at all YOU WILL BECOME A FUCKING TARGET.
Y’all say fandom and small creators don’t matter. You degrade our art and our writing. You call us freaks and other cruel names. And when people try to actively silence us, you say “good, they’re freaks”. But one day, the thing you like will be toxic. And you’ll be the freak, deserving of bullying, social ostrasization, and harassment.
Stop the bus. Don’t just throw more people under it.
