[ SECRET POST #6174 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6174 ⌋

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


01.



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02. [SPOILERS for Super Mario RPG remake]




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03. [SPOILERS for One Piece]




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04. [WARNING for discussion of RL politics, genocide]




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05. [WARNING for discussion of pedophilia/incest]




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06. [WARNING for discussion of child abuse]





























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #882.
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

[fscom]

05. [WARNING for discussion of pedophilia/incest]
https://i.imgur.com/KcI57mr.png

[(Anonymous)]

Incest is popular in fic and porn partly because most people would never want to do it in real life. The fascination comes from it being one of those ultimate taboos.

As for pedophilia in fic, it's been said before, but I think a lot of people overlook the fact that people often use it to work through things that happened to them. It's an exorcism, not an endorsement.

[(Anonymous)]

All of this. Catharsis is often a motivator.

[(Anonymous)]

Not for nothing step-family is quite watched and quite popular in porn categories. "we are siblings but without the icky same blood thing, so we can fuck as much as we want".

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt
It's a very cheap way to give the 'forriben' vibe to porn. A very boring footage? Well, just include voicelines about it being insect and voila, it's not vanila anymore.

[(Anonymous)]

It's an exorcism, not an endorsement.

Yup. Perfectly phrased.

But I find it's usually the younger, more sheltered crowd who lose their minds and can't believe someone would write something sooooo disgusting! (Though this does not mean there aren't young folk processing their own trauma via fic.) I just look at them at think, "oh honey, you're not far from having your first ship that somebody else finds morally objectionable. Calm down."

[(Anonymous)]

YES. All of this. This is how I've felt for decades and I've honestly been more and more disappointed with humanity as time goes by and more and more people seem to believe that all fiction will warp all people's concepts of reality forever.

Thank you for putting it into words, OP.

[feotakahari]

You could argue that some fiction normalizes pedophilia to some extent, but not on its own. Rather, the fiction is produced in Internet communities where jokes about “loli rape” are already normalized to the extent that you can talk seriously about which “lolis” you find most attractive. I don’t think AO3 works the same way, since that crowd seems aware that IRL rape is an unpleasant thing. (And besides, even the “loli” lovers seem to treat them as a fictional construct like elves rather than a representation of real children.)

[meadowphoenix]

this is probably because the internet tends to use normalization incorrectly and you've reproduced that here. normalization is not typically a individual level phenomenon, but a social one. for instance, seeing marginalized groups depicted as the dominant group is depicted will normalize people seeing them as human as the dominant group, but this is useful to talk about on a group level not a personal one. the trick is that outside of surveys, evidence of this is usually personal and individual, and examples are usually made out of the personal and individual (for instance when people talk about normalizing misogyny they might mention that many social groups have a person they tolerate in spite of rampant misogyny and sometimes predatory behavior, because that person ramped up their behavior through tests of tolerance, until the inertia of social grouping allowed them to display their true selves. this was a form of normalization).

for the record i agree that fanfic on incest specifically wouldn't have the necessary numbers or social support to have a significant impact even on fandom communities, but i do think it's very silly to think that fiction or even fanfic would be precluded from making significant impact. It'd be nice to have a survey done, but I do think fandom and fanfic did make a generation of people more open to not being homophobic (that said my wording there is very deliberate).

I also think you're really overselling how firm in their convictions the general person is likely to be in the face of social consequences (which is were normalization really gets going) or how much they're going to challenge what they see as the accepted perspective and how much of what is "accepted" can absolutely be molded by fiction but that's a different conversation and irrelevant to incest which is not an accepted perspective and dislike of which has zero social consequences.

eta: pedophilia on the other hand....frankly it's much more accepted than people want to believe. so fanfic and fiction have a much easier time of normalization and can be quite useful for pedophiles to use to groom. that's not necessarily an argument against fanfic existing, but is a request that people make it less accepted outside of the internet and then there's no reason to gasp at the fanfic.

[(Anonymous)]

On the example you mention regarding fanfic not being people homophobic: In my case, when I was a young teen and when I first joined fandom circles, I will be honest, I was homophobic. I'd argue it was due to me living in a conservative country in the 90's, even by the standards of the US. Given I was of a "live and let live" thought, though, I thought same-sex ships were weird, but never voiced it since the people I befriended wrote it and read it. I simply let things be, and just interacted the way I liked, sometimes giving said friends gifts of some kind.

It was through fandom and LGBT+ fic when I ultimately accepted it, finally understood coding in media, realized how many perfectly normal people in my life were somewhere on the spectrum, found some of my own, and slowly lost that bigotry. Though I'd argue it was because I knew the people in those fandoms, because I gained media literacy, and having a mixture of LGBT+ friends & fic allowed me to see things more clearly.

Regarding incest and pedophilia in fic... sometimes, I do wonder about the last paragraph. School uniforms are an incredibly popular trope in porn, as is incest. And yet, I've realized the internet as a whole has become a lot more sanitized and regulated, both by laws and culture. All while I've chatted with child SA survivors that expressed the same: How they needed to write that sort of stuff as a form of 'exorcism'. And when people equate the person that makes that art but would be horrified at the real-life act, with the people directly assaulting and hurting children, all it does is making the latter hide themselves better in the grass.

I grew up in a time where Videogames were accused of causing violence and crime, on a daily basis. Seeing every geriatric, bribed public official rant on and on, and try to ban games, made me incredibly skeptical of "art about bad things causes bad things to happen". Seeing youth culture take that mentality has gotten me worried overall, especially as the internet becomes more and more sanitized. Much of the social progress in LGBT+ stuff was achieved because of a free internet, and people expressing themselves.

When people now want a censored and curtailed internet, on the grounds that incest and pedophilia fic could normalize and cause bad things to happen... I can understand it in some way, since fandom made me an LGBT+ ally in the first place by normalizing it. But using it as a reason to censor stuff, especially as normal people go after random artists and not rich assholes actually touching kids and getting away with it, still doesn't make it feel right.

[meadowphoenix]

Though I'd argue it was because I knew the people in those fandoms, because I gained media literacy, and having a mixture of LGBT+ friends & fic allowed me to see things more clearly.
yeah, this is exactly why using individual experience is a good way of describing the process of normalization, it's not actually what normalization is talking about. you and everyone else who changed your views will have loads of individual reasons and complex circumstances for doing so (or...not doing so). that's not really assessing whether fic contributed to normalization, which it likely did.

as for the rest of your comment, i can't tell if you just agreeing with me, but adding detail about your thoughts or you're disagreeing with me and didn't read the whole of my last paragraph.

specifically though there's a interesting assumption made in the paragraph about survivors. art is inherently social. you can write about whatever you want, but posting it is a social decision you're making, and we can judge the decision and the harm on social terms. art includes responses to that art, whatever they are, and it's not very often that survivors who write exorcising fic feel very exorcised by comments on the art and subject itself that aren't what they want. the assumption here is that the community will respond in a way which validates the decision to post (whatever way that is), and that inherently involves community rules which is not in fact free internet (which is usually an absolutely horrible place lmao). People are already in fact deciding what is or is not appropriate to post, and we should acknowledge that, even if we like the line where it is.

ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

I'm really sorry, I tend to vomit my thoughts into words, and sometimes I counter-point myself as well in order to keep myself balanced. It's overall an agreement with you.

What you said makes sense, I think. Choosing what art you choose to make public, and which art do you keep private. Still, sometimes you want to feel you belong somewhere, and that your experiences were not isolated, which is often what art serves for, as well.

Re: ayrt

[meadowphoenix]

No it's not a problem, I love long thoughts! I just didn't want to assume bad faith if that wasn't what was happening. Yeah, a lot of this subject is about developing community and it's not easy to balance community desires and individual freedom.