[ SECRET POST #5019 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5019 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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04. [SPOILERS for Mulan (2020)]



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05. [WARNING for discussion of transphobia]



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06. [WARNING for discussion of transphobia]



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07. [WARNING for discussion of child abuse]














Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #718.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Um, no.

If you pair a parent with a child, or two characters coded parent/child, I will find it problematic whether or not I like both characters or have a favorite ship involving one or both characters.

I will respectfully leave shippers alone as long as they aren't deliberately shoving that shit in my face or are screaming from the high heavens that their problematic pairing is the one true canon pairing, to the point where I can't shut out the noise.

If you ship problematic shit, it's a little silly to judge others' moral stances or their reasons for objecting to it.

And if you're not the one shipping it but are just watching everything with your bucket of popcorn, well, I guess it's your right. But it's not really a good look either.

[(Anonymous)]

The ship isn't "problematic". It's a ship that you, personally, find revolting. This secret is also, clearly, about antis, who are wankers that spend a lot of time accusing people who like ""bad"" ships of being genuinely terrible people and contributing to the abuse of IRL people.

[(Anonymous)]

This secret is also, clearly, about antis, who are wankers that spend a lot of time accusing people who like ""bad"" ships of being genuinely terrible people and contributing to the abuse of IRL people.

Where are you getting this from? The secret says "there is no good faith approach to criticizing a problematic ship in fandom. Behind the moral outrage, there is always something else", some ulterior motive. It doesn't say anything about antis or people who say that liking bad ships make you a genuinely terrible person. It says that anyone who criticizes a problematic ship or expresses moral outrage has an ulterior motive.

If OP had meant to say that specifically *people who say that liking bad ships make you a genuinely terrible person* always have ulterior motives, then why didn't they say that? Are we just supposed to intuitively know that when OP says that ANYONE who criticizes a ship ALWAYS has an ulterior motive, they only mean antis? Because it really, really, really isn't what they said.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like this is handwaving away the following:

1. It's perfectly reasonable to find problematic ships that the text positions as problematic. Like Harley/Joker, Lechter/Starling, or if we're going to go back to the roots of fanfic, Hamlet/Ophelia. (Yes, most of Shakespeare's plays were derivative of works that were popular at the time.)

2. And sometimes the text itself has problematic issues WRT consent, abuse, or how relationship dynamics are presented. To avoid all the recent punching bags, it's quite reasonable to be weirded out by mating-flight sex in Dragonriders of Pern.

[(Anonymous)]

You're equating things that are problematic when people do them in real life and things that people write about. Nobody has any difficulty understanding the distinction when it's something like murder. Murder is bad when it happens in real life, but writing a story about a murder is just writing a story where something bad happens and doesn't mean the writer has done anything bad themselves. Take that concept and apply it to everything, and you will finally understand how fiction fundamentally works.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

Let's not go too far here.

Fiction is fiction, but fiction also applies to real life, and there is some fiction that really does promote, or at least intend to promote, bad real life views or even morally bad actions, and we should be able to have a serious discussion about it without just falling back on fiction is fiction.

[(Anonymous)]

To be clear, I'm not referring to original fiction where the author clearly has a vision and place and reason and a meaning for everything. I'm talking about fanfic writers who just slap a pairing together just because, and not because they care about previously established canon, or the many ways the pairing doesn't work, especially when they're trying to base the relationship on previously established canon. Just because I personally object to parent/child pairings doesn't make them not problematic. And I'm well aware there are exceptions.

Your final line comes off as really rude, and I don't appreciate being made out to be a person who doesn't know the difference between reality and fiction.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not AYRT, but I find your reasoning odd. Why would you make an exception for original fiction? How do you know when the author "clearly has a vision and place and reason and a meaning for everything" and isn't just writing something because they're into it? Maybe fic authors who write problematic stuff also have non-kink reasons that aren't apparent -- if they included a manifesto with their ship fics would it make the stories acceptable?

[(Anonymous)]

But people do find certain murders in fiction to be problematic and a reflection of the author's attitude. Tropes such as "Black Guy Dies First" and "Women in Refrigerators" come to mind.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

To expand on this further. Very few people argue that people who write fictional murder are murders in real life. What we do say is that when you do studies of works across entire genres, there are certain forms of bias that stick out. For "Women in Refrigerators," the problems were that 1. women in DC and Marvel already were given much less editorial love in terms of titles, frames, and lines of dialogue, 2. women in DC and Marvel were routinely murdered or tortured as a cheap plot point for male characters to have angst, and 3. the perspectives of the women in that narrative were rarely developed.

The same is true with "bury your gays" and "queer-coded villain." Or how crime dramas often normalize violations of suspect rights for the greater good. It's really rare that the writer is out there killing off gay people or interrogating people without probable cause. But the writer is reflecting and supporting cultural biases that LGBTQ lives are tragic and racial minorities more likely to break the law so aggressive police tactics are sometimes justified.

[(Anonymous)]

Murder is bad when it happens in real life, but writing a story about a murder is just writing a story where something bad happens and doesn't mean the writer has done anything bad themselves. Take that concept and apply it to everything, and you will finally understand how fiction fundamentally works.

Look, antis suck and I don't agree with them, but this argument is incredibly obtuse, and always has been. Ask just about any anti if they object to erotic depictions of murder and they will say an emphatic yes. Ask just about any anti if they object to romantic depictions of uxoricide (wife murder) and they will say an emphatic yes.

Most antis do not object to the subject matter that is being portrayed, they object to how that subject matter is being portrayed. This whole "if you're an anti you'd better not watch horror movies" argument is apples to oranges. They're horror movies; the way the content is being depicted is in the name: HORROR. They're not called sexy-swoon-time-hands-in-your-pants movies.

Antis think the way bad things are depicted in fiction should at least roughly align with the real-world nature of those things. I will say it again: antis suck and I don't agree with them. But their stance isn't that hard to understand if you're not being willfully obtuse.