Remember to leave out milk and cookies for Captain America tonight when he comes to leave presents under your flag.
Im so glad I did this!!!! captain america came last night!!!! he’s real and he left presents!!!!! how can i tell, you ask???? well when i woke up this morning there were pro-vaccination pamphlets and a donation form for the ACLU sitting under my flag, which had been turned upside-down
NC-17 – Castiel/Dean Winchester – Alternate Universe: Modern Setting, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Trope-Typical Dubious Consent, Alpha Dean, Omega Castiel, Howdy Neighbor, Naked Cuddling, Fluff and Smut, Fluff and Humor
“Hello,” the man in 606B says. Instead of a boxy suit, he’s in low-slung sweatpants and nothing else, sweat darkening the hair at his temples and gleaming on his chest. He’s staring at Dean like he might try to eat him whole.
“Hi?” Dean says, and then the heat-scent hits him.
nothing says happy fourth like 5k of fluffy a/b/o porn, right???
like, i’m not saying that adults don’t have a place in fandom. they can and they do, and many are perfectly great people.
but if you’re an adult, say, in your mid to late 20s or older, especially if you’re in a fandom that’s filled mostly with teenagers, you do need to be careful about how you interact with young people in fandom.
you need to be careful about the content you produce or share, and if you do something that people take issue with, you need to be prepared to address that in an honest and meaningful way, instead of blocking the young people who are telling you you’ve done something wrong and going on a rant about how “it’s just fiction” and “ship and let ship” and “do whatever you want” and “i’m too old for this.”
if you’re an adult in fandom, you need to be able to recognize how the content you produce might affect young people, and honestly, you should be able to show maturity when dealing with it, because you are still an adult talking to many people who are literal children.
many of those young people will, by default, view you as a sort of authority figure based on your age alone, as that’s what they’re used to. be careful of the lessons you teach them.
Hm. Okay. Here’s the thing.
We all know who you’re talking about and which situations you’re talking about. What you really have an issue with isn’t anything to do with anyone’s age, it’s about people producing things that other people find hurtful, then not responding the way the hurt people would like them to when called out on it. That can and does happen anywhere, regardless of the ages of the people involved. It’s a separate issue that should be discussed and dealt with.
And yes, in some of those recent situations, the ages of the offenders or the offended were brought into the discussion, by both sides at different times. The age difference does complicate things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the main issue.
You may be thinking “why do you care if I focus on age, it was a salient part of the argument for me, you’re trying to defend adults who don’t care how their words hurt children!” But here’s the thing.
You may not realize this, but in other fandoms adults have been doxxed, have been threatened, have been outed because they were creating things that someone, somewhere deemed “dangerous for minors.”
Adults who were creating things that were not meant for minors, that were openly and blatantly tagged as being NSFW, explicit, as containing triggering material. I’ve even seen people who weren’t even creating the offending material being harassed, bullied, and threatened, for daring to stand up for the people who were. Not even just online, but in person. I’ve been a victim of it myself, though not to the extent that I’ve seen many others go through.
All because a segment of the fandom decided that because certain content could be dangerous for minors, it should never, ever be posted anywhere a minor might possibly read it. Adults who do post it are responsible for every bad effect it could possibly have on anyone who reads it and are horrible people for not willingly taking on that responsibility.
I know the situations you’re talking about are different. In many of those situations, adults chose to interact with the minors who were complaining about them, and yeah, when you’re choosing to directly interact with a minor you need to tread carefully.
But once you go down the “adults in fandom are responsible for the minors in fandom” road, if lots of people start clinging to that mindset, that is where it can lead. And that is an extremely serious issue. It can literally destroy careers and ruin lives.
I am not in this or any other fandom to produce content for minors. I have asked many times for minors not to follow me; I don’t block them, but I know quite a few people who block any minor who follows them. I produce enough SFW content that I don’t mind minors being able to, say, reblog it from others on their dash, but I do not want them following me and getting explicit content directly from me, full stop. If it becomes an issue, I will start blocking people.
If you’re a minor, I’m old enough to be your mother. But I’ve got my own kid, and I’m not in fandom to babysit anyone else. When I create or reblog content, I do not and will not take the presence of minors into account when doing so. Because that is not my job.
Now, right now I’m choosing to get involved in this discussion, which will involve people much younger than me, including minors. So yeah, I’m being careful about what I say and how I say it. And I agree that any adult who willingly engages in conversation with minors needs to do the same.
But I simply can’t agree with your last two paragraphs. Those “literal children” already have parents. If their own parents aren’t monitoring what media they consume, aren’t having conversations with them about problematic messages in media, it certainly isn’t my job to do so. Period.
This is an excellent time for teens in fandom (and in general) to stop seeing every adult they come in contact with as an “authority figure” and start viewing us as human beings who are living our own lives with our own motivations, problems, desires, and inclinations that have nothing to do with them. That’s something that will serve them well in life.
How people interact with oppressed groups they aren’t a part of who complain about their representation of those oppressed groups is an entirely separate issue that is not about the age of the people on either side. Age can complicate it, especially in that it can be difficult to communicate across a generation gap when people on either side have such enormously different experiences. I think that that has caused some problems.
But any adult who is not willingly choosing to interact with a minor is not responsible for minors who consume their content, and conflating the two issues is downright dangerous.
I know we’ve seen this discussion pop up more than once (like the author of this piece points out, it usually cycles through every few months) but this is probably one of my favorite set-downs of the Non-HEA crowd yet.
It’s well phrased, fairly comprehensive, and just slightly scathing.
It’s the utter bane of my existence when people send me their manuscripts to edit, and I get a cover email that read along the lines of “I’m not a fan of romance novels so I added my own twist” and my soul curdles because first of all a) if you don’t like romance but you’re writing it because you’ve realized it’s lucrative and you think Anyone can do it because it’s “easy”: get the Hell out of my genre and b) suffering and misery instead of a happily ever after (or happy for now) are not twists.
It’s not edgy, it’s not clever, in fact what it shows me is that you do not understand the genre on a fundamental level and shouldn’t be writing for it.
Romance is a fantasy genre, people don’t read fantasy for endless suffering (thank you GRRMartin et al for making every edgelord in the world think nitty gritty detail = pain and suffering without relief and flooding the genre with their shitty reimaginings of the characters from Lord of the Rings but set to the plot of SAW) they read fantasy to know that the suffering will end. That evil will eventually be defeated, that good things can and will still happen and that the sun will shine again.
Romance is no different from that, except it is a genre primarily considered to be feminine and therefore subject to ridicule and the belief that somehow if a woman can do it, it must be easy
“But Joy,” I hear some of you say, “Romance doesn’t have that reputation because of sexism, it’s because of how many bad writers get published in it and make it look bad.” *angry buzzer sound* oh I’m sorry that was incorrect, you see every genre has an abundance of shitty books that make it to print, whether it’s goofball sci-fi or Lord of the “all my characters are white because of historical accuracy” Rings 94949392.0 (or if you really want to start a fight, every mediocre white man considered a classic by the literary genre and lauded by academia for writing about wanting to have an affair with one of his students/the inevitability of death) and while they are subject to criticism, there’s still not quite the same vitriol that Romance gets for wanting, what is essentially, a happy life.
There is nothing wrong with feel good media, there is nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy something a little bit silly and unapologetically happy. The popularity of coffee shop Aus in fandom is both unsurprising and nothing new. It’s quite literally common romance tropes that have been around forever but with the diversity of fandom (*eyes ao3 tag* kind of) and I will die on this hill defending the validity of Happily Ever Afters and Happily For Now before I let anyone try to take it from my icy cold grip.
And if I get one more romance manuscript with a cover letter that says they’ve added a twist, then god dam y’all someone had better have twisted their ankle and been carried bridal style to their bed because I’m so over people hating on the simple want for happiness.
other acceptable twists: polyamory
And polyamory. Things I am now looking for in my romance twists, twisted ankles, polyamory and people doing Chubby Cheker’s The Twist at weddings. That is the acceptable list of twists.
Chocolate twists?
Okay, yes good. Unless your characters have celiac in which case no, I will not allow that kind of suffering.
This is why I really think authors should warn, spoilers be damned, if a fic that claims to be centered around a romantic pairing doesn’t have a happy ending (defined as the pairing being romantically involved) or at least a hopeful ending where it’s strongly implied that they will get to that point. Shippy fic, while it can be sci fi or thriller or any number of other genres, is also its own genre that is very much derived from romance. Readers expect the happy ending, and in fact many are banking on it and do not want to read fics without it. Pulling the rug out from under your readers isn’t any more okay than not warning for other potentially upsetting content.
Saying it’s “more realistic” or that “not everyone wants to read happy fluffy stories all the time” is just a bullshit excuse for the fact that you’re implicitly promising your readers certain things by writing in a certain genre and then not following through on those promises. And you’re doing it because you’d rather trick people into reading something they don’t want to read than lose hits (and for a WIP, kudos) from the people who don’t actually want to read your story if you’re honest about it.
This is why tagging in fic matters.
And like, if you tag for ONE romantic pairing, but spend half the fic with part of that pairing in a different relationship? Guess what, you don’t get to whine about people being upset, and no they aren’t mad cause they hate the other character you had one of the leads involved with.
They’re mad because you were dishonest about what you were promising. Don’t blame readers for not liking the story being about xy when the sole tagged relationship was yz.
When magic starts to return to the modern world, barely anyone notices. It doesn’t look anything like what we imagine. People don’t suddenly start developing magic powers, casting spells, or turning into elves and dwarves. In fact, people don’t really change at all, not at first. It turns out that the magic isn’t even here for us. It’s here for what we’ve built.
The change is slow, and subtle, and strange, as the magic works its way into our institutions. You mail letters to dead relatives, and the post office starts delivering their replies. Late-night bus routes stop at places never seen on any atlas. Libraries suddenly include subterranean archives where you can look anything you’ve ever forgotten, from the names of your favorite childhood books to the precise flavor of your first-ever chocolate chip cookie.
The people working at these places take the changes in stride. The letters from the dead just show up every morning, sorted and stamped and ready for delivery, so why not carry them? Bus drivers follow the maps they’re given without trouble, and learn to accept even small gold coins as more than adequate fare. Electricians get used to seeing warding symbols in circuit diagrams, while clerks at the DMV find a stack of forms for registering ghostly steeds as personal vehicles, and sigh in relief at finally having that particular bureaucratic headache solved. The firefighters are shocked the first time they see a giant of living water burst out from a hydrant, but after it rescues several of them from a burning building, they decide not to ask questions. They tell their stories to others, though, and soon word of the changes is spreading.
There’s no single moment of realization where everyone discovers that magic is real; the knowledge just creeps into day to day life a bit at a time, and society adapts. Cyber-safety programs teach people to never accept a file from the electric fairies without sharing one in return, and to never accept their Terms and Conditions without searching for the subsection on Souls, Forfeiture Thereof. Students leave offerings of coffee and boxed wine to petition the School Spirit for lower tuition or exam deferrals. Nurses learn the hours when Death stalks the hospital hallways, and keep bedside vigils in the children’s ward. They bring board games and cards for when the reaper is feeling playful, and well-worn baseball bats for when he isn’t.
There are problems, of course, like the vicious monsters of blood and fire spawned from age-old hate groups, or infestations of the writing many-mouthed worms that literally feed on governmental corruption, but really, they were already there before the change. Magic only elaborates on what we’ve made, good or ill, manifesting the latent modern mythology underpinning our society. It doesn’t offer solutions to all of life’s problem, but for a few hurting people, guarded by the concrete arms of a neighborhood come to life to protect its community, or flying away on wings of copper wire and fiber-optic cable, it’s exactly the change they needed.
So let’s talk about the libraries and librarians, because I see they got missed up there. The librarians realized that something was going on immediately because they got it from both sides.
First, of course, there’s the vast subterranean archives themselves, which suddenly appear–complete with a door. And thank goodness these things are cataloged already because there’s ways to catalog or accession a chocolate bar or a pair of shoes or a box of crackers or a video or a photograph, but the smell of someone’s preschool is another thing entirely (not that the AACR wouldn’t figure a way to do it, but this saves some time).
The thing is that these subterranean archives have really good climate control and plenty of space. So many libraries just kind of annex the space for their rarest and most fragile materials, which frees up space for more and other things. It’s a win-win. And as it turns out, thanks to national and then international cross-checking, they’re also all connected. So, yes, you can go to your hometown in Ohio to look up exactly what every street looked like in 1978 but you can also look that same information up in the New York Public Library. No need for off-site repositories or backups here. Win-win-win.
Second, of course, are the people who start coming into the libraries asking for things like a picture of an ancestor’s grave from 1620. No, not a current picture, a picture from 1620. Or for the records for the taste of Ecto-Cooler from 1989. Or the complete memories of their grandparents’ wedding–both perspectives, please. Or for that preschool smell, sure. And when you start getting questions like this, you realize you’ve got to start providing answers.
The cataloging system is idiosyncratic. To say the least. But it works. And no one can really figure out how to change it, even if they could. Like, this thing is more complex than GPO cataloging and, infuriating to the more formal among the members of ALA and other library organizations, it works best when you go at it intuitively. So you need this picture of a grave from 1620–you can go at it from pictures, graves, or your own family. The librarian knows it’s there, but it’s going to take some looking through the stacks to put your hands on it. And you will find it. It’s just not as efficient as looking up an exact call number. It’s less structured and more intuitive. It also requires logging into a separate OPAC to look things up. It’s just a whole other system and–hang on, does anyone here know how to read Sumerian? Because that’s what this record is written in and we really need it. It requires developing new skills, which is always a good thing. Collaboration with local experts becomes absolutely necessary and completely delightful.
And sometimes, late in the evening, just before the library closes, the whole building gets cold and the lights flicker and the librarians give each other a knowing look because that always means that someone got into a particular part of the closed stacks down there. But some of them roll their eyes because the same thing would happen at other libraries for the same reasons–and that was back before the new archives opened. Either way, it’s going to be a Whole Thing pretty soon.
Unfortunately, all the materials are reference materials; they don’t circulate and can’t be checked out. But your library card will grant you access to the new archives. And the librarians would like to digitize what they can of these new collections…
…but that’s a tall order. Maybe in the next fiscal year.
kototyph 