LEP 27.2.

Tuesday, 27 February 2024 10:49
yvannairie: :3 (Default)
[personal profile] 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.

Date: 27/2/24 11:29 (UTC)
cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.

Date: 28/2/24 13:35 (UTC)
cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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?

Date: 27/2/24 13:47 (UTC)
palominocorn: A rearing palomino unicorn with a rainbow mane and tail, standing in front of a genderqueer symbol. (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.

Date: 27/2/24 14:57 (UTC)
heliopauseentertainments: a stock photo of a bull shark, a stocky variety of large shark, in shallow greenish water (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.

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