LEP 27.2.

[yvannairie]

Once again thinking about how I'm not opposed to ace and aro rep in fandom, but the way people go about it is frustratingly reductive. It's all about forbidding people from doing certain things that people could never see themselves doing and not really saying what they want to see other than... not... those things.

It's the flipside of the vinegar-honey conversation. I'm a lot more permissive of people saying "I want to see more of x, I feel like there's so much y but not x, here's why x should be considered more" even if I don't think there was any reason to bring up y than I am of "I wanna see less of x, people shouldn't be writing x, I don't want to see x". Like, genuinely, what is your alternative? What should all the people who wanna make x do instead? Or could you just, like. Ask people to tag x better so you can block it better?

If your solution to something is "people should just stop x", that's not a solution, that's a preference, and it needs to be handled through methods you have agency over. You have no agency over what I write. You can try to convince me to write something different, sure, but that's a negotiation. There is no negotiation to be had when discussing something I'm doing because I want to that doesn't bother anyone else.

Comments

[cimorene]

Very well observed, and also true of many other things that people feel are under represented.

On the other hand, even though that type of post is annoyingly unproductive and basically amounts to venting, it's easy to see how it happens. Whenever I read a bunch of one fandom I'm practically guaranteed to discover some new feature that seems to be a pattern in fanon that I hate. As a reader, the emotional reaction intensifies the more you read whatever it is. It feels like you've already (personally) decided why it's bad and the repetitions, even though they're by different people, feel more and now ridiculous the more you notice them, until in your mind it's like you're that guy listening to the same song on the jukebox for the twentieth time and it feels like the fandom is putting me and more quarters in, probably just to piss you off. I'm sure everyone is aware intellectually that that isn't true, but they are probably not stopping to think about it before they post. And sometimes they definitely should, since there are a lot of posts out there whose real content is emotional venting, but which are phrased didactically and often even moralistically.

[yvannairie]

Yeah. I think I'm just particularly poor at extending empathy to people who get on their soapboxes about it because I'm literally never doing things for popularity, I'm doing them because I like them. If you can convince that I should make more of something else because it's similarly fun then I am all game for that, but telling me "you shouldn't be making the thing you want" is just gonna result in me doing nothing.

And sometimes comparisons are inevitable. If we're talking about A/B vs B/C then obviously you gotta at least mention C while discussing the merits and demerits of both.

[cimorene]

Yeah, agreed. Also no shade on people who ARE trying to please the crowd if that's what they want to do but I can't help finding the idea that I would be happy to just write whatever because a stranger told me to personally rather insulting, not to say ridiculous. I mean, who are they to tell people what to do?

[palominocorn]

My annoyance with most aro/ace headcanons (as an aroace) is that a lot of them boil down to "I don't like (popular ship) so I'm going to make one of them a-spec so it can't happen". No exploration of the identity, just using aromanticism/asexuality as a shipping torpedo.

The sheer level of "don't write this" followed by attempts to moralize what is clearly a personal preference is deeply frustrating. It's okay to dislike things! To be sick of them, even! You can just. Block it and ask people to tag better! But if you tell me "stop writing this" my response will be to write it MORE.

[yvannairie]

EXACTLY, IT'S SO AGGRAVATING. If I never have to see another aroace Bulkhead headcanon I can die happy, which is an absolute upside-down sentiment for me to be holding about one of my favourite characters in the franchise because it fucking always, invariably boils down to "stop shipping him with [character they have another ship with]"

"Character is ace" being a polite way of saying "character is unfuckable" is so exhausting. It's so rude. It's so cowardly. Sometimes aces are fucking hot and them being disinterested in me and everyone is not a them problem, it's a me problem to manage.

[heliopauseentertainments]

I agree. I don't really have any additional commentary; your sentiment was well-said.

"You have no agency over what I write" is a sentence that a lot of folks should internalize.