Why My 18+ Filter Will Be Turned Off Forever · 5:49am Jun 11th, 2013
Rape fics.
Plain and simple as that.
Rape is a disgusting, disgusting thing. There is, in my mind, few things more evil than rape; than the utter humiliation of a person just because someone couldn't keep his dick in check. I have a girlfriend whom I love so, so dearly, and the mere thought of rape anywhere near her fills me with seething, worry, hatred - despair. Much less my sister, or mother, or cousins. Rape is an absolute perversion of good; unlike other perversions, it is blatant and does not even attempt to masquerade as other things. Whether or not this is more favourable is irrelevant; evil is still evil, whether or not it takes on the guise of class or chivalry.
Rape is easily the most vile act a person and indulge in, so why the bloody !@#$%^&* hell would anyone write stories with the purpose of glorifying and indulging in rape? Why would anyone upvote something like it? Why would anyone go as far as to say "Yes thank you, there is such a lack of Sombra rape fics?" Why the hell would something like it be featured?
People have the right to enjoy whatever they want. Sure, whatever - doesn't stop it from being utterly disgusting, doesn't stop it from being bloody ignorant , insensitive, naive about the hurt, the damage that it causes. Doesn't stop it from, be it an undercurrent or more, impeding the removal of one of the greatest social ills of time.
Rape as a plot device is useable. It is a heavy plot device that cannot be handled with anything less than extreme skill, and almost some form of retribution. But to make rape the focus in a positive light is something that I simply cannot tolerate.
Sometimes, love cannot tolerate. Sometimes, either you love a person enough to become unable to tolerate, or you do not love a person enough to be able to tolerate.
Cold in Gardez has released a new story for those of you tung by the same poison as I. It is, above all, quality, and quality makes me happy.
My apologies if you came in here looking for updates on Pipsqueak. I cannot promise anything aside from the note that it's going to be part of my writing schedule once I finish finals and a favour for a good friend. It also looks to be a full-fledged adventure on its own, so... there's that!
Very much my take on foalcon as well. I'm getting the vibe that you've gotten burnt by this recently and, well, I've been there. *hug*
I have no idea what drives people to celebrate these things in a general sense. But to deliberately combine it with something that's supposed to be so innocent... it's salt on an open wound.
True statements, in my opinion, but I don't think a time a bunch of people find a story conducive to masturbation is one of those times. I'm sure that, though they are guilty of the terrible sin of not getting bonerkills at the mention of rape in a work of smut, a number of those people very much hate to hear of occcurences of rape in real life and would, out of self-righteousness, spite and harass and defame and possibly even do such things as physical harm to a rapist if they met one; they must simply be people who think much less of a work of smut's effect on the real world than do you. Ah, you can take that as my answer to all your "Why?"s; I think it works okay.
Oh, hey, about ptvaj!—would you like a list of its typos?
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I don't think I'd be motivated enough to give it a clean sweep, as is the case with all of my fanfics... thank you kindly for the offer though! =s
That is a fair point. I'm not very good with reeling in my emotions, on account of suffering from hubris that the few emotional responses I do feel are validated (and I am champion at convincing myself that too often!) - but yes, that is indeed a fair point.
I agree with your frustration of reality versus the ideal, or, "In my ideal fandom, there wouldn't be any rapefics." However, there's not a vast difference from a good chunk of this fandom and from the rest of the Internet. That's something that seems to be forgotten just often enough to warrant a wake-up call from reality. The more that this fandom claims to be an ivory tower and "better than the basal Internet dwellers," the more deluded it is.
Still, this is the day and age we live in, rape is a genre of porn (usually confined to writing). People coming to Fimfic to indulge their lower brain are going to like what they're going to like, and that's how stuff like that gets upvoted to the front page. And that, is where I disagree slightly with you—or at least, I'm conflicted.
See, I remember my ideal fandom. I remember being an idealist. I remember hating and being disgusted with the very idea of "clopping," as an act. Over the course of a few years, several key incidents changed my mind—the main one being a video I watched about why it's stupid for atheists to continue living by religious ideals towards sex and sexuality.
Which... that is a huge can of worms that I don't wish to open in your comments section; that was just how I realized it was dumb for me to keep living by harmful ideals that I no longer believe in. And by "harmful," I mean there are mental aspects such as sexual repression, body shaming, and taboo-ifying something that is, as you call it, "good."
Then, there's physical aspects, too, such as abstinence-only sex education in school, which is truly horrifying to me—can you imagine an abstinence-only driver's education class, where they teach kids that the only safe way to drive a car is to never get behind the wheel, yet kids are at that age where they're going to experiment with car-driving regardless of anything that the school system teaches them?
That's not just dangerous, that's blindly irresponsible of the school system, and that brings me back to my inner conflict between reality and the ideal. Meaning, I agree with you that I dislike rape, rapefics, and the general idea that people write rapefics about My Little Pony. At the same time, I disagree with the concept of sexual righteousness—which, since you're condemning rapefics and rapefics alone, I'm not sure if you're guilty of that. I'm certainly not accusing you of being anything but a kindred disliker of rapefics.
The main question that I find myself with after reading this is, "What is the harm of rapefics?" That's not a rhetorical question, either. That's something I'm trying to weigh on a societal standpoint. That means I ask a few questions:
I don't have much more than a gut answer for most of these, but "intuition" is a terrible basis for forming logical conclusions. And as much as I dislike rape, I'm not a fan of censorship without due cause—especially when the censorship is sexual in nature.
All in all, I found this to be an interesting, thought-provoking blog post. I hope I haven't overstayed my welcome as a commenter, and I have one final question, for you:
Did Cold in Gardez piss you off or something? Why did you shunt his recommendation to the bottom of the rape-protest post?
Well said. This is one of the main reasons I filter out 18+ as well.
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That's actually a good counterpoint. With something of effect as ill-defined as this, the fairer way, perhaps, would be to not draw any lines - as of compared to drawing the lines too tightly, which is what I would, being unabashedly idealistic, do. =x
As for the sexual righteousness part... I am a Christian, and my beliefs do shape my ideals. Funnily enough, they weren't the source of my emotional response - my disgust as a result of fear for my girlfriend was. So while you may be right about me on that account in general, it isn't part of the matter here? But yeah, religion - I'm happy to keep off the topic if you are. =x
I snorted at that.
Unfortunately people are just weird in general. I really have no problem with this stuff being here - it's unavoidable and simply not worth rooting out every terrible thing. That's not to say I don't have a problem with the content itself, which I do. A lot. Though I will admit that I've enjoyed a few of the stories here with erotic content precisely because they took so much care to write it well and give the reader a positive reaction. That's, however, a gigantic exception to the rule that a lot of the clop here involves "let's have underage Scootaloo have sex with a cactus because reasons."
But you are absolutely right. I almost vomited when I saw comments about "there isn't enough Sombra rape fic here."
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I think an issue that is more easily dealt with is not the sheer existence of these fics as the prevalence and celebration of it. Love it or hate it, foalcon and rape are always going to be wrong... hopefully. People always want to push buttons, envelopes, what have you, and that's part of the reason these fics exist at all: some guy said "I'm gonna write something shocking and fappy because I can." What worries me is the fact that it's all over the flipping place. Remember when one person made a foalcon fic about Rumble and Cloudchaser? Then it became kind of a fad? And it was all over the featured bar or stories were popping up about it like every other week?
Yeah, that's where it just becomes unbearable, because it comes to define us. It comes to shape others' perceptions of us. And it's not "these guys like a kid's show" it's "these guys like to masturbate to horrifying things." People keep going on about censorship, but when you're dealing with a veritable flood of this stuff, what else are you going to do? Admit to the world that we not only write about rape and incest, but love it and get off on it? And have every brony's character smeared by that? Thank goodness EQD with its content filter is the face of the fandom and not this site.
Of course, this is a fandom, so the character smearing is already done for a lot of people. But I will never stop shaking my head at the way people deliberately turn to the most disturbing things, even here. I still remember Mother's Day, where a perfectly adequate story between Twilight's parents who loved each other competed with Shining Armor committing incest due to an abusive relationship for top spot.
Seriously? Seriously?
People sometimes have a rape fetish. But, more then half the time, its about them selves then someone else. While rape in general is morally wrong, some people think of it as being dominated by the opposite sex; or same sex.
Don't judge.
I guess what I am saying is that people are people. Trying to understand why people have rape fetish is like trying to small the color nine.