tag on post about darkfic: "that being said if you romanticisize it you have treaded into the wrong neighnorhood"[sic]

:x

so, uh, i have a lot of Doubts that we can so easily tell what romanticizes abuse and what doesn't in fanworks & feel that appropriate tags negate most harm

it's a different ball game when you get into works with bigger, more heterogeneous audiences and no agreed-on warning/flagging system (aka anything published or mass media) and god knows there's a fckton of romance novels with abuse/toxic behavior treated as romantic

but even these would be a lot less worrying if we just provided much better education about what abuse looks like IRL??? like legit, a good education will nip 98% of potential issues caused by immoral fiction right in the bud

and some people enjoy fiction that has abuse/toxic behavior being treated as romantic! and as long as they know this is actually an abusive situation irl that's their business. the thing to prevent is RL harm, not immoral fiction, and truth/education is what protects people.

and finally: if someone consumes a story where abuse is treated as romance, and an abuser then uses that model to draw in, trap, and abuse that person: the only person at fault is the abuser. reading 'bad'/immoral content is not signing an invisible agreement to be abused irl.

when we tell people 'reading bad fiction can lead to abusive situations' we tell people 'if you read bad fiction, then your abuse is your fault. you set yourself up to be tricked into thinking abuse was desirable and okay.'

& that is some seriously victim-blamey nonsense right there.

abuse is always the fault of the abuser. nobody else. & frankly, it wouldn't matter what you were reading: abusers can use anything as a tool to get close to you & abuse you. it's what they do.

Not. Your. Fault.