Whole dang thread but especially this given the current Discourse https://twitter.com/naamenism/status/1200788573978578944

This is another thing I’ve seen antis and people with sympathies inclined that way struggle with, and it’s weird. There is in fact a difference between saying “I think X is playing on some harmful/toxic stuff and we need to talk about that” and “BURN THE WITCH”

Fanfic is absolutely subject to criticism. All of fandom is, works and otherwise. I have never seen anyone in the anti-anti crowd claim anything contrary to this.

But here are things criticism is not:

- conflating fiction and reality
- harassment
- death threats
- you are not allowed to write/draw this, like just flat out not allowed
- Your Thoughts Are Bad So You Are A Bad

Criticism is ideally opening up a conversation, and pretty much everything antis do is designed to shut all useful conversation down. What antis do is like the *opposite* of criticism.

And I think there’s also this odd inability to determine when something should be especially subject to it, because I think there’s a diference there as well.

Blithely carrying on your bullshit like there’s no problem vs “I know this is rough so I am HELLA tagging”

When an author has tagged their problematic thing to hell and back, and you stroll up all like “did you know your content is Problematic”, the creator is going to give you a funny look and gesture at the tags and say “uh, yeah?”

They know. They’re on the same page. Which means that for the most part, the “criticism” that can take place at that point is going to be along the lines of “you shouldn’t have made this at all or if you MUST make it you should secret it away”

While in the rest of fandom there is a ton of harmful shit going on right out in the open and untagged where the people doing it either don’t realize they’re hurting someone or don’t care.

Like thinking it’s cool to send people death threats.

Racism in fandom is not the same thing as writing something terrible and being like “I have written something terrible, I must make sure that the only people who ever see it are the people who want to read a terrible thing”.

And again, it’s weird to me how difficult to grasp this appears to be

YEP https://twitter.com/kimboo_york/status/1200809799283286016?s=21 https://twitter.com/kimboo_york/status/1200809799283286016

Like I said, complete opposite of criticism. And another reason why I think we need to be pretty clear about what an anti *is* https://twitter.com/jakkugerblin/status/1200814855390937090?s=21 https://twitter.com/jakkugerblin/status/1200814855390937090