I Still Can’t Get Over The Fact That You Don’t Need Parental Permission To Be In The Triwizard Tournament,

I try to stay away from a lot of fandom discourse, but since I’ve been seeing this on my dash again and in tags, I feel the need to make a statement on this, particularly for any young fans who follow me that might get drawn into this mindset.

Stay away from purity culture. Warn your friends away from it too, if you see them starting to fall for it. It’s very easy to get drawn into it

Almost always, it starts with one of three roots, pedophilia, incest and/or abuse. Usually it’s pedophilia. Funnily enough, that’s also what congress usually uses to try to justify passing bills that undermine online privacy & security. Because it’s an easy, extreme target, and when people attempt to argue against it, it’s nice and easy to say “Oh so you like pedophilia” rather then actually engaging with their argument.

The logic goes like this, although there’s many forms of it.

“Pedophilia is bad.” -> Obviously, you agree with this. You’re a reasonable person, and the idea that anyone would do something like that to a child is horrible. This is a normal human reaction.

“Because pedophilia is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.” -> Here you might hesitate, but it adds up, doesn’t it? The thought of pedophilia in any context probably gives you a bad feeling, that makes you inclined to go along with this logic. 

“Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia is also bad.” -> Maybe you pause here, or maybe you don’t. But still, it adds up, it’s a very easy flow. After all, we’ve decided that that is Bad, so why would anyone Good want to create something like that?

“Since people who create content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia are just as bad as people who engage in pedophilia in real life, it’s okay to harm them.” -> Here’s where you might pause again. The argument might not win you over entirely, you might not be willing to do harm yourself, but you may be a lot more willing to turn a blind eye to harm being done to someone. Or to consider it ‘justified’.

The pattern now repeats for anything else that’s considered “morally impure”, and “pedophilia” is expanded and expanded, often to ridiculous points, such as merely shipping two underage characters. “Abuse” becomes any ship that the person pushing doesn’t like, for any reason. And so on and so forth.

This is the foundation of “anti” culture, and it’s important to be aware of it so you can catch this false equivocation. Fictional explorations of something, are not the same as the thing itself. Fictional explorations are fiction. The characters are not real people. There is no actual harm being done. Equating fake harm and real harm is a dangerous, slippery slope, which leads us to fundamentally flawed ideas of moral purity. It’s a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions. 

A very handy trick for when you encounter this sort of argument, is to replace whatever the selected purity term is with murder. After all, we can all agree that murder is bad, but at the same time, we understand that a murder in a book =/= a murder in real life.

Let’s see that argument again, shall we?

“Murder is bad”

“Because murder is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.”

“Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of murder is also bad.”

“Since people who create fictional explorations of murder are just as bad as the people who commit murder in real life, it’s okay to harm them.”

Hopefully, it’s now easy to see why the above argument is fundamentally flawed.

Keep your eye out for purity culture in your fandom spaces, and when you see it, refuse to engage with it. Warn your friends if you see them falling into the same traps, although try to be kind about it; this is a very easy thought pattern to fall into. I don’t recommend trying to argue/debate anti’s. The attention only feeds them. Block them instead. Don’t let people control or shame you for what you create or consume, and don’t control or shame others for what they create or consume.

Also, as a note, let me be clear about something. If you are uncomfortable with any of the above discussed things, or anything in general in fiction (ie, underage ships, murder, incest, abuse, penguins, needles, etc), that’s perfectly fine (it’s also called a squick, for those that haven’t heard that term before). Absolutely control your fandom experience by blocking people, filtering tags, unfollowing, etc. However, just because you are uncomfortable with something, does not give you the right to control other people. Other people have no right to control what content you create or consume, and you have no right to do that to them either. 

Okay?

Reblog and put in the tags what your anti love language is. What’s the one love language you suck at or don’t get

The air is thick with the prelude to a summer storm when Draco finds Harry lazily draped over the back porch swing. A piece of dandelion fluff clings to his mane of sweat-soaked curls as Harry rocks the swing with his bare foot on the paint-stripped deck. Draco picks the fluff from Harry’s hair before climbing over Harry and melting over his chest.

“Hey,” Draco sighs. He feels an uncontrollable grin emerge as Harry pops a blackberry into his mouth.

“Hey, yourself,” Harry smiles back and offers a berry to Draco’s lips. The taste of midsummer sweetness stains Draco’s tongue. “Missed you today.”

“What ever did you do to survive without me for eight hours?”

“Honey, you’re looking at it.” He traces a berry-stained fingertip behind Draco’s ear. “Wish you could’ve joined me.”

“Tomorrow?” Draco shivers as a gust of wind teases the sweat on his neck. 

“Sounds perfect.”

For @drarrymicrofic‘s prompt, Waste it on me. 

embarrassing taste in men

another life

I have a date with the Chesapeake Ripper.

are you living or are you just jumping from one obsession to the other to run away from yourself

Remembering the War: It doesn't get easier as the years go by. But at least they have each other.

Created for the Drarry Discord Server's Drawble Challenge, March 2020. Thanks go to this month's hosts, @potter-art and @ana-iliad.

Prompt: 'Remember when...'.

Art restriction: Earth tones/browns.

Liking only good characters and 100% completely unproblematic things (which don’t exist) is not a replacement for actually being a good person