Hello, survivor here who grew up with illness and disability and who loves to explore life through fictional characters because it’s a good way to think outside of your own experiences and learn and grow and also to have fun.
Can we stop pretending that unsavory fan content made by survivors is more powerful than big bucks goreporn movies coming out every year? There’s so much discourse about how someone’s geeky indulgent fanfic can cause a whole generation of sickos to feel validated by it and go commit horrible crimes but if an obscure fic is that powerful and influential because to you fiction = reality, why isn’t a musical where we root for the characters making people pies treated the same?
If fans shouldn’t be allowed to write weird or dark or gross things for coping, speculation, learning, healing, empathy, creative exercise, or just for fun just because there might be people who cannot separate fiction from reality, then why isn’t media seen by literal millions your target as well? Because individuals are easy targets and this is all performative and you don’t actually care about us, you hurt us because that’s how weak and powerless you are, you have to harass some 20 year old survivor just trying to explore things safely in the realm of fiction and act like their weird crackship fic with 800 hits is responsible for every new trauma victim created that month.
I’ve got a secret for you: telling survivors they should be ashamed of what they create and they should kill themselves because you personally are grossed out or uncomfortable with their OTP doesn’t protect them or anyone else from harm. The one doing harm is you. Stop harming real people in the name of hypotheticals. I have seen this go on for far too long. You hurt people who are already hurting. Who does that save?
Fellow survivors and even people who just like writing dark things and know that what they write isn’t reality: asking “what if?” and exploring that creatively is not a sin.
People will gleefully attack creators of fanworks all day long, and then not even blink when they walk into a movie theater whose walls are adorned with posters graphically advertising violence and gore because it’s not about ~protecting~ anyone, it’s simply because they’re bullies, full stop. Some random author on the Internet is a much easier target than a rich theater owner whose business features posters of bloodied chainsaws, saw blades, and a man carrying a decapitated woman’s head.
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