26. Been browsing the responses and thinking about this. You do raise an interesting question, but I believe it has already been answered for you by many other people. It seems like a contradiction, but it's not, really, because they are two different things. Still...
I sort of wonder why people who see, say, smoking as a morally dubious activity (perhaps they were raised to see it as such, or their religion forbids smoking, they just think it's unhealthy, or they have a personal aversion to smoke, ect.) who enjoy and fetishize fictional characters who smoke, enjoy reading fics about them, writing about them, roleplaying them... Why don't they get massive amounts of flak for loving on smoking in fiction but not being on board with it in real life?
Okay, so smokers generally have no fear of getting beaten to death for lighting up, smokers are free to marry other smokers, and most people don't get shunned by their families for it... Still, I wonder if it might have been a better comparison?
As for the second one, I think the short answer is "Fandom is obessed with sex" therefore, any threatening of anyone's personal fantasy gets people flak.
26
I sort of wonder why people who see, say, smoking as a morally dubious activity (perhaps they were raised to see it as such, or their religion forbids smoking, they just think it's unhealthy, or they have a personal aversion to smoke, ect.) who enjoy and fetishize fictional characters who smoke, enjoy reading fics about them, writing about them, roleplaying them... Why don't they get massive amounts of flak for loving on smoking in fiction but not being on board with it in real life?
Okay, so smokers generally have no fear of getting beaten to death for lighting up, smokers are free to marry other smokers, and most people don't get shunned by their families for it... Still, I wonder if it might have been a better comparison?
As for the second one, I think the short answer is "Fandom is obessed with sex" therefore, any threatening of anyone's personal fantasy gets people flak.