I was an extremely precocious young reader who regularly checked out books for people aged anywhere from 16 and upward. My parents encouraged this, and while they occasionally were curious as to what I read, they generally trusted me to choose appropriate books for myself. Spoiler alert: I didn’t. I read a whole lot that was way out of my league.
Around eleven or twelve, I checked out my first smutty book from the library. I had no idea it was smutty, and very little on the cover or inner fly indicated this. It was called The Book of Shadows by James Reese. I read it during my lunch breaks at school. Inside was the following (that I can remember):
A woman bleeding to death from her vagina
Underage lesbian sex between an intersex girl and a cis girl
Bondage rape of the underage intersex girl by an incubus
A threesome between a cis man, the underage intersex girl, and a succubus
Sex in a church between a priest and a woman, who later were turned into the incubus and succubus
Graphic descriptions of torture and death
Around thirteen, my grandfather gave me a book. He had no idea what was inside. He just knew it was a scary book, and that his little granddaughter loved scary books. It was called The Laughing Corpse by Laurel K. Hamilton. Inside was the following (that I can remember):
Graphic depictions of gruesome whole-family murders
Discussions of children being taken along to their father’s visits to the red light district
Discussions of handicap fetishes
Discussions of extreme BDSM practices such as extreme knifeplay
Human sacrifices
Around fourteen, I found a book at a bookstore while on a very boring vacation. I convinced my mother to buy it for me, and she did so without looking very closely at the cover. It was called Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. Inside was the following (that I can remember):
A boy my age deepthroating a grown man, complete with descriptions of what his semen tasted like
A dog giving oral pleasure to a young boy
Massive, and I mean massive, amounts of emotional abuse
A teenage boy seeing his mother getting oral sex from another woman
The same teenage boy seeing his mother and another woman having sex in a bathtub full of glass
Multiple attempted rapes
I read all these and more. Much more. This was before even fanfiction.net existed. They were easily accessible at bookstores, libraries, anywhere you might find books. Literature has always been full of this kind of material – and it needs to be. It is a place for humans to purge themselves, to safely explore that which cannot be explored elsewhere, to deal with the strange animalistic impulses that make us so deeply human. That last book? It was a memoir. Those things actually happened to Augusten, and literature was the place he went to safely purge the horrors that he experienced and witnessed as a boy.
Fanfic is no different. Fanfic, in fact, is even safer than regular fiction, because it has a much smaller and more niche readership. Much of the bad stuff in fic you can’t find unless you specifically look for it. Not so with regular fiction. I had no idea what I’d picked up when I checked out The Book of Shadows. The sex scenes and violence blindsided me. There were no tags, no warnings, nothing. I had been a kid in search of spooky stories, and I got rape and death.
But here’s the kicker: I have no hard feelings against the writers of those books, or against the books themselves. They did nothing to me. My parents probably should’ve looked a bit closer at what I was reading, but they didn’t, and I have no hard feelings against them either. I was the one who, when at 11-14 I came across material I knew was too much for me, kept reading. I knew I should’ve closed those books and stopped reading. I didn’t. That was my choice, and mine alone.
That aside, back to my original point: all this happened well before even FFN existed, let alone AO3. And it’s always existed. It always will exist. It needs to exist. Those Purge movies have one thing right: humans need outlets, places to explore the animal darkness that still lingers inside us. Literature is one of the few places where that can be done safely.
In essence, fanfiction is no different from literature outside of the ways I’ve mentioned above. If you support purging sites like AO3, you need to ask yourself why you don’t support purging libraries. And then you need to ask yourself how you’re any different from the book-burners of the past, who started their pyres with pornographic “filth,” but in their desire for purity, expanded them to include even literary treasures like the Decameron.
Here’s the thing champ… Maybe you should have hard feelings toward a site that hosts child porn and incest.
You sure took a long time to defend this nonsense
Here’s the thing champ…AO3 literally doesn’t do that. It hosts stories about those things, but not those things themselves. Maybe learn the difference?
There literally is not one but yeah it does, in fact, host that stuff
I suppose you’re okay with burning the books OP described in their post, then?
Hey guys, in case you were wondering where all the CSA victims have been in the #metoo movement, it turns out Miss #metoo herself was busy paying one to keep quiet
There’s much hypocrisy in the #metoo movement but this case is a
shakedown. He was 17 (over consent age where they were) and had sex with her willingly. He said
nothing about it for years until she went public about Weinstein and
then he tried to extort her for millions to keep it quiet,
finally settling for a few hundred thousand dollars.
17 is still a child, age of consent laws are gross and meaningless. Being legal doesn’t make it right.
She met him as a SMALL child, and GROOMED him for abuse, until he was “of age” legally. “Willingly” means nothing when you’re groomed to act/think that way. That is literally why predators coerce their victims.
And, only legally, not mature, not mentally ready, not grown. Just. Legally.
A predator who waits for you to not get them arrested is still a predator.
@joanoftart is wrong anyway, the age of consent is 18 where they were.
Chick groomed that boy for years, and it’s disgusting.
If the genders were reversed they’ve have the guy strung up and publicly gutted.
I hear the best information as takedowns for assholes like JoanofArt above.
Also it’s amusing how proponents of the #MeToo movement are now trying to say “Don’t believe it just because he said it.” The irony and lack of self-awareness on their part is palpable.
Hey guys, in case you were wondering where all the CSA victims have been in the #metoo movement, it turns out Miss #metoo herself was busy paying one to keep quiet
writing conclusions in papers is like the stupidest thing ever though like what’s the point of dedicating an entire paragraph to “so yeah i know you just read my paper but this is a summarization of what you read in case you need to be reminded about what you just read” like why can’t the paper just end
I keep seeing this post and similar ones, and if y’all’s teachers and professors have left you with the idea that a conclusion is a summary, they have failed you in a big way.
Your conclusion is your “so what’s the fucking point” section. You’ve given you’re reader a lot of info and now they need to know why they care. Depending on the type of paper you should be giving a plan of action, explaining how this knowledge changes our understanding of the topic, link your paper to other disciplines, suggest further areas of study, etc.
One of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever received is that if you can’t envision yourself dropping the mic and strutting off stage at the end of your conclusion then it’s probably not strong enough.
“So whats the fucking point” is more helpful than all 6 years I’ve probably been writing papers
Moonlit Spires 