thebestpartofwakingup:

Anyways I feel like the ‘entitled’ young fans vs ‘perverted’ older fans conundrum is a lot more complex/nuanced than a lot of tumblr users are really giving it credit

For one, yeah kids are dumb as shit. I’m sorry if you’re younger than 15 you don’t know anything. You’re a certified dumbass. It’s okay, it’s natural it’s part of life and you will grow out of it just like with baby teeth and training wheels, everyone goes through it it’s fine. And with that said yes Tumblr does promote a very aggressive hyper critical culture that is especially dentrimental to those who, for lack of better phrasing, are too ignorant to think for themselves. I once saw a X-cartoon critical blog (I’m not trying to out some random kid) where the point point of contention in literally every post was that because cartoon child characters were involved in the show’s slapstick humor, the show was promoting child abuse.

That is really dumb. Of course if you do have a strong adverse emotional reaction to any depiction of children in peril/danger/pain that’s fine, but of course nobody is making you watch this show and it should be pretty evident by dedication and critical thinking that the majority of children’s show runners are not pro-child abuse.

Now the real problems again to arise when these kids/people begin to harass content producers with ridiculous claims of moral corruption. And the advent of social media has made that, very, very, easy to do. If you have traumatic childhood memories of your mother torturing your cat to death you probably shouldn’t watch Tom and Jerry, but at the same time you should probably be able to acknowledge that Tom and Jerry is not a pro cat abuse cartoon

So when is content encouraging of problematic behaviors? Well, it mostly lies in the framing. To better explain I am going to compare how child abuse is handled in two wildly different adult cartoons

First: Morel Oral

In adult swim’s highly underrated 2006 stop motion cartoon, the titular character Orel, a 12 year old boy living with his parents and younger brother….and girlfriend’s younger brother, is constantly abused throughout the show by various adult characters. Now throughout the cartoon, the show places a heavy emphasis on Orel’s ‘innocence’ how naturally kind and forgiving and pure-hearted he is. With various episodes centered on him trying to help others and scenes of him happily playing with other children. These scenes are very humanizing, they portray Orel as a character the audience should both like and relate to. Nearly everyone has some memory or another playing with friends growing up, or going to class, or trying to ask your crush to the big dance, and I’m sure lots of people raised at least moderately Christian can relate heavily to scenes and episodes focused on Orel’s innocent questions about the nature of god and faith, why do bad things happen if god is good? Why do I need medicine if god is all curing? Is it okay if I love X as much as Jesus? While serving the theme of the show these innocent questions highlight the innocence, relatability, and likability of Orel. When bad things happen to Orel we are expected to feel bad, and it can be presumed the majority of the audience does. When Orel is hurt by other characters, whether it’s playground bullies taking advantage of his kind nature, or his father berating him for being a sissy, or his coach attempting to sacrifice him ritually, we are expected (and presumably) take Orel’s side in these conflicts, the antagonizing party is framed as wrong, less kind and less innocent and less vulnerable, and so less sympathetic

Compare this to how Family Guy portrays child abuse

Meg Griffen, unlike Orel, is a side character while her abusive father takes role as lead of the show. Because of this, Meg inevitably gets less screen time than Peter and as such is less relatable and less human in the eyes of the audience. Now normally, this is how characters should be prioritized in writing, your main character the most relatable and the most empathetic and your side characters less so. This ensures that the audience is not ‘distracted’ from the main meat of the story by other characters and side plots and remains the most emotionally engaged with the main story and characters. However, because of this, and Family Guy’s repeated portrayals of Meg as annoying, a nuisance, and lesser than her other family members, the show inevitably trivializes the types of emotional abuse that have been normalized in the writings status quo. Now, so I expect an avid family guy watcher to pull out a gun and shoot his child like in the above gif? No. But media is one of the prime and easiest ways for human beings to be exposed to emotions and perspectives they may not have otherwise been in their day to day lives. It has been said that non-fiction teaches us about the world, but that fiction teaches us how to see it from different perspectives. This is one of the reasons diversity and representation is so important in mass media, it not only allows minorities to express and see themselves reflected, but allows non-minorities to be exposed to and empathize with the struggles and lives of those they may not have had to otherwise. This is why framing of sensitive issues is so crucial in the content you produce, because it not only expresses how you view such topics but is inevitably consumed by those who may not have been previously exposed, and as such set the foundations for their future expectations.

Now it is time to discuss the other side of the coin, the adult producers in fandom. Well clearly freedom of speech dictates that any and all creative expression is above critique aND ITS JUST FICTIONAL (porn of Steven universe ass raping a dog) GEEZ ITS NOT MY RESPONSABILITY WHAT PEOPLE CONSUME AND TAKE AWAY FROM MY CREATIONS THAT I PRODUCE BECAUSE ITS ART AND I MADE IT FOR ME WHICH IS WHY ITS POSTED PUBLICALLY WHERE LITERALLY ANYONE CAN SEE IT!!!!!

This is without a doubt the most common argument I’ve heard of the part of adult artists who take heed with the criticism they have received. And I am in no way trying to deny that there are far too many who have been stalked/harassed/assualted for trivial nonsense that doesn’t matter by fans who have never made something worth anything in their lives, I think I covered that well enough in the first part of this discussion. BUT, like the alt right to the GOP I have seen FAR too many racists, abuse fetishizers, pedophiles, beastiality fetishists (IM LOOKING AT YOU #NBCHANNIBAL), transmisogonists, etc, etc. eagerly hide behind arguments and the people who make them as fellow ‘victims’ of online harassment who refuse to act like the adults they claim to be and take even the smallest hint of responsibility for the content they produce. And once again I think this attitude can be partially attributed (only partially because at 20, 30, and EVEN FUCKING 40, you should fucking know better, and the rest of us/ya’ll should demand better) to tumblr’s ‘purity’ culture, in which it is preached that anyone and everyone should be defined by their long past actions and are completely incapable of learning or changing as individuals. And even this provides a shitty scapegoat by way of “wELL WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO??? CHANGE MY BEHAVIOR???” like they’ve been asked to turn shit into solid gold.

And you know what? I’ll fucking admit it, I’ve written terrible disgusting fanfiction before, I’ve dealved into topics like rape and abuse uneducated and ignorant, but I’ve learned and changed and moved on and applied those lessons to future works. That doesn’t mean what I did wasn’t shitty, but it means I’m putting forth and effort to NOT DO IT AGAIN. Because I’m a god damn adult and I’m not afraid to take responsbility for my actions.

Furthermore

1. The science absolutely does not support the argument ‘ITS OK IF ITS NOT REAL KIDS’ in fact quite the contrary the science supports that the consumption and creation of child and rape pornography, fictional or otherwise, only normalizes and encourages sexual arrousak in the brain, in the same way regular exposure to stimuli and pain create fears and phobias. If you were attacked by a dog as a child you will associate dogs with pain along with barking and other signs of dogs and may panic when they are presented because your brain pre-emptively makes the connection to pain. And if you regularly get off to depictions of rape/sexual abuse your brain will begin to pre-emptively initiate arousal when you are exposed to signs or properties of such things.

2. Not everyone who has problems with sexual assault, animal rape, abuse portrayal, or bigoted representations in media and fanfiction are children. Surprisingly rape victims and those people with the maturity and empathy for others to react in disgust to its normalization do not implode when they turn 18. Some adults know how to act their age

3. ‘Don’t like don’t read’ doesn’t apply either because of point #1, If you produce abuse porn or gay or racial fetishization than the people who consume it will be those who are already undergoing said neurological connections, and while you are in no way responsible for any future attrocity they may attempt, you certainly aren’t preventing anything either. Again, everything is about framing. That’s what separates porn from drama and tragedy.

4. Yes, everyone needs a break from the stresses of work and school, and are rightly entitled to them. You are NOT under any circumstances entitled to a break from being a HUMAN BEING. Tumblr also has this problem with over glorification of childhood and the imposability is being an adult, which I think in turn has lead to this minor normalization of ‘escaping’ from adulthood. There’s nothing wrong with unwinding with a children’s movie or nostalgic video game, but once you are an adult there’s no turning back—and there’s no shiurking the responsibilities that come with that title either. You own them til death, that’s the deal. It’s one of the reasons they won’t let you into Chuck E Cheese without a kid, because no matter how stressed or unhappy you are you are never above the moral accountatability for your actions.