You posted an opinion on a social media platform that’s explicitly designed to enable reblogs and commentary from other users, including people who disagree. If you want to write in a broadcast medium where you have total control over replies and their visibility, get a WordPress blog – but even then, the whole point of the internet is that other people get to share their opinions, too.
I appreciate that you think this is a black and white issue, but it isn’t. You, personally, do not get veto power over what the rest of the world imagines when they masturbate or the kind of stories they write for fun, nor do you get to determine where the acceptable overlap between those categories lies, because individual stories impact individual readers differently. No narrative is universally positive or negative, which is why tags exist in fanfiction: to help individuals navigate their needs and preferences safely.
That you, personally, cannot fathom a benign or logical reason why some people enjoy the sorts of fantasies or narratives that you find abhorrent does not mean no such reason exists; nor does it mean that every single person who enjoys those things is as morally pure as the driven snow. What it does mean is that there’s no way to tell at a glance, purely on the basis of the content, which type reader is which, such that you can’t functionally ban the latter kind without also banning the former – and if you’re okay with demonising innocents for the sake of punishing the guilty, then you don’t get to claim moral purity, either.
Which is the crux of the argument, here; the reason why it’s not black and white, even though it looks like it should be. Who decides what fictional content stays or goes, and why? It’s easy to say “no underage, no incest, no paedophilia, no rape,” but if you want to follow through, you have to define those terms in practical, specific ways, and that isn’t easy at all – not for published novels, and not for fanfic. Here’s what I mean:
No underage – okay, so does that mean no romance or sexual content for characters younger than 18, or just younger than 16? Whose definition of ‘underage’ are we using? Are there exceptions for teen characters within three or so years of each other, as there are legally in real life, or not? What are the limits of ‘acceptable’ content for younger characters – can they hug and kiss and talk about sex, so long as they aren’t implied to be having it? What if they are implied to be having it, but there’s a tasteful fade to black? What about stories where a younger character is making realistic bad decisions about sex or is being taken advantage of – can we tell those stories, or are they banned, too? If we do tell them, what are the guidelines for how graphic the content can be?
No incest – okay, does that include characters who weren’t raised together and don’t know they’re siblings? Step-siblings? Half-siblings? Does it include a ban on historical figures who really engaged in incest? What about characters who have an incestuous relationship in the source material – can we write fic about them, provided we take an explicitly anti-incest stance? What degree of separation are we allowing – does it start at first cousins, or do we go beyond that? Are all these things okay so long as it’s explicitly written as abusive and bad in the narrative, or is there leeway? What about people who expressly want to engage in daddy kink, which uses incest-adjacent language without necessarily being incestuous? Is that banned, too? What about fics where the characters aren’t related in the source material, but have been written that way in the story, such that a romantic relationship is turned into a familial one? What about fics where the characters are related in the source material, but aren’t in the fic, such that a familial relationship becomes a romantic one? Is any of this allowed?
No paedophilia – okay, does that include stories about survivors of child abuse? What about stories where the source material includes child abuse; is fic not allowed to mention it? Can you portray it if it’s very clearly a Bad Thing, even though some readers might still get off to it anyway? Can you imply that it happened so long as it isn’t discussed in detail or depicted graphically? What if survivors of child abuse want to write graphically about their experiences as a way to process trauma – is that allowed, or not? If so, how do you go about policing content creators to make sure that writers have suffered the Right Kind Of Abuse to be allowed to write those stories? If not, how do you justify the decision to exclude victims from their own narratives? If some victims find it traumatising to read fics that contain paedophilia, but others find it cathartic and helpful to write them, do you acknowledge that all victims have different experiences and try to create a platform where everyone can navigate those differences safely, or do you think it’s better to just close that door altogether?
No rape – okay, does that mean no stories about rape recovery? Can you show rape provided it isn’t graphic? Can it be mentioned at all, or only in passing? What if two characters consent to enacting a rape fantasy in the text – is that still morally wrong? Can rape occur provided that it’s obviously bad and wrong and clearcut throughout, or is the character being victimised allowed to feel conflicted or confused about their experience? What about instances where consent is potentially dubious, such as sex between characters who are drunk, or where one party is drunker than the other? What if a story’s source material is ambiguous about whether sex between two characters was consensual – is fanfic allowed to explore that?
These are only some of the questions you’d need to answer in order to implement your desired changes on a future, hypothetical website. I say again: it’s easy to sit there and say, “No porn involving these four things,” as though AO3 need only delete every work containing those tags in order to save itself from damnation, but functionally, practically, it doesn’t work like that. The wrong story at the wrong age or time can fuck anyone up, just as the right one at the right age or time can be revolutionary, and those might both be the same story to different people. Explicit stories on AO3 are expressly restricted to those over 18 – if younger people are reading those fics, then that’s a risk they’re taking upon themselves: in which case, it’s their responsibility to use the tags to safely curate their own experience.
I understand the worry that paedophiles will use fanfic to groom their victims, and I don’t deny that this has happened to some people. But at the same time, abusers use a lot of things to groom their victims – historical precedents, flattery, novels, movies, lies – and at the end of the day, the only commonality between those things is the abuser themselves, not the content; so unless you’re arguing that the content creates the abuser, removing the content neither removes the abuser nor curtails the abuse. By the same token, it’s also true that fanfic has helped a great many people to recognise or recover from their own abuse, by showing what it looks like or enabling them to write about their own experiences. I know multiple ficwriters who’ve written their own rapes or sexual assaults into fics, or their own mental health diagnoses, as a way to process those things safely, in a cathartic manner. You really want to take that away from them?
People are complex. Sex is complex. Fantasies are complex. Pretending otherwise is how you end up with books being banned or burned, to say nothing of a host of related social evils.
And if pointing all that out ruined your post, then maybe it needed ruining.
It’s 1952 in Oxford University, and Susan Pevensie is leaving the Lady Margaret Hall library for the last time.
Her classmates will be sorry to see her go – ask any of them “Who’s the young woman with dark hair and a blue coat?” and they’ll say “what, you don’t know Susan Pevensie? You must be new.”
But most of her friends don’t actually know that much about her. They’ll agree that she’s compassionate and charismatic, “and brighter than you’d think she’d have a right to be, with looks like hers – how come she gets beauty and brains?” but nobody knows anything about her childhood. Or her family.
“She’s lost someone,” says a first-year student with a permanent air of exam-induced panic, “she came here on an inheritance from somebody, and I’ll bet anything it’s her parents because she never talks about them, but we’ve all lost someone, you know? From the war or not, it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to make her talk.”
She’s graduating head of her class with a degree in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics; she wants to change the world, but really who expects her to do that? There’s a Queen on the throne and a dozen-odd women in Parliament, and many think that’s enough. She’ll make the perfect wife for some politician or businessman, at least while she’s young and pretty enough to be seen and not heard.
The shadows are chilly and long this time of year, so she almost misses the older woman leaving the Principal’s office, but the other woman steps directly into her path.
“Hello, Miss Pevensie,” she says. “I’m Agent Peggy Carter. How would you feel about a job in America?”
Susan Pevensie, Clint Barton, Kate Bishop. All bore the name Hawkeye.
I wish you’d do some research before just spouting out any old crap. If you took two seconds just to LOOK at the picture, you’d see that it’s not a mother and her newborn. You can tell from the size and position of the rotors that it’s actually a hunting male. Also it’s a commonly known fact that whilst all helicopters are born with red tails, this fades to white in males, by the time they’ve reached adulthood. In females, the red has changed to a deep brown.
So this isn’t a lovely picture of caring parenting – in fact, this young ‘copter’s mother is probably dead, herself. There would be no way she’d leave her baby by itself at such a young age. The poor thing likely died mere moments after this picture was taken.
Have some respect.
You ignorant fool.
The common Red Tailed Boeing you’re basing your analysis on is endemic to Saudi Arabia, which has no climate zones even remotely resembling that in the picture. Helicopters being short range vehicles, there’s no way a Red Tail could be present in the picture above.
What you’re seeing is the red tailed variety of the Arboreal Russian UTair, which you’d know if you so much as looked at the distinctive markings on the parent’s flank.
The photo is a mother tending to her newborn as I stated, and you Sir have defamed the endangered helicopter with your inept observations. People like you who think Helicopters are dangerous hunting animals are why these noble beasts have been scrapped to near extinction. Arguments like yours are used to support the helicopter “blading” industry, in which millions of helicopters every year are deprived of their rotor blades and left to die of oil loss or starvation.
Support your local anti-blading protest group, and don’t listen to people like metalheadadam, if that’s even your real tumblr url.
No,it is you who are the fool here. You say it’s an arboreal helicopter, but no Russian Utair has ever been spotted out in the open in a tarmac environment before, and I think if this was the first photograph showing one, there’d have been some fanfare about it in National Helo-graphic.
I believe that what we can see here is the Lesser-Spotted Longbow, which, as has been very well-documented, has adapted itself superbly to urban life, and has also been known to disguise itself as other types of helicopter, in order to better stalk its prey. If you look at the smugness of the nose, you’ll see I’m right. Yes, the UTair is a peaceful contraption, but the LSL is a rapacious fiend, and should be removed from the world’s airspace completely.
You’re ignoring the clear signs here but the more important issue is your sickening disregard and characterization of the LSL as a “rapacious fiend.”
The LSL is a critical part of the airspace ecosystem. If there were no LSLs, then Piasecki H-21s would quickly grow out of control and soon the air would be downright cluttered with them. Do you want to live in a world where Piasecki noise sounds through the night at deafening levels? Where they land on the streets as you drive and on schoolyards where your children play?
Lesser-Spotted Longbows may seem dangerous but the fact is they kill less than five people a year across the globe. Piaseckis kill 80! And they crap all over the windshields of all those unfortunate enough to drive beneath them. Even still, we should not cull Piaseckis as some suggest, their meat is inferior and no significant research is to be done on their flesh. You’re operating from an old world point of view here, one that says mankind has the right, nay the duty to hunt and tame helicopters.
But the truth is, helicopters are our neighbors on this planet and they have every bit as much a right to it as we do. Support prohibition of industrial helicopter use, police helicopters and circus helicopters. Don’t eat helicopter meat. And donate generously to PETH, People for the Ethical Treatment of Helicopters.
Listen, PETH claim to be in support of helicopter freedom, but if you look at the statistics, you’ll see that is, in fact, a gigantic lie. People brought 652 sick helicopters into PETH’s “Care Hangars” last year, where PETH claim to repair and repaint them, and find them new owners. Of those 652, PETH dismantled and recycled 635 of them within one day, without even trying to find new owners for them.
You say we should support the prohibition of circus and police helicopters, but without the industries that have grown up around the many useful ways helicopters benefit our society, there would be many more wild helicopters, like the Piaseckis, in our skies, or roosting on the roofs of our homes and schools.
But that’s getting off topic. The LSL is still a menace, and although it helps to control the Piasecki population, there are other, more efficient ways to do that, without relying on the crudeness of nature.
Opening up factories to make clothes from helo skins, for example. Faux-helo has been all the rage on the catwalks for the last three years, and the designers have stated that they’d “love to get [their] hands on the real thing”. Paul McTarnabag said that “without the limitations of artificial fibres, [he] could create the most wonderful coats you’d ever see”.
Let’s be honest, here. Yes, it may involve some violent, painful deaths for certain, more… annoying breeds, but helicopters are basically vermin. Let’s make use of them.
“The crudeness of nature”
You lost me there. Nature is a perfect system where helicopters are concerned. It’s only humanity that throws the system out of balance. Before we came along, helicopters existed in equilibrium.
As seen in the opening of Disney’s “The Concorde King,” there’s a circle of life. Concordes and SR-71s prey upon the big 747s and Airbuses. Those in turn eat the Cessnas and puddle-hoppers, which feed on smaller helicopters and gyrocopters. When the Concordes die, they become fossil fuels which become jet fuels and which fuel the gyrocopters.
But when mankind tinkers with the system, it all goes haywire. A few rivet coats and meals of spicy Apache or Black Hawk aren’t worth it. And that’s not to mention the cruelty of foods like Chinook Gras, in which the noble aircraft are force-fueled to the point of illness so their filters can be harvested. Humankind needs to get out of the chopper business for good and focus on renewable sources of 3D printed parts and vegan alternatives, like Balloons, Zeppelins and Blimps. Human stomachs aren’t meant for heavier-than-air travel, as turbulence can convince anyone. Only lighter than air craft are meant for our fragile systems.
This is all a moot point for me as I don’t fly at all. I prefer a more natural means of transport- The whip driven dog-sled.
You reference The Concorde King, but you seem to have forgotten that in that very film, the LSLs sided with the Concorde King’s evil brother, Cracked Aileron, to bring him down and kill his family. Some contraptions just have no natural place in the ‘circle of life’. Besides, you’ve got to take Disney films with a pinch of degreaser (or salt, seeing as you seem to insist on it being “wrong to eat helicopter parts”). Don’t you remember the scandal surrounding their paper plane ‘documentary’? You must know the one, it’s where they set up footage showing thousands of paper planes throwing themselves over cliffs, to go soggy and disintegrate in the water. It was even taught in schools for a long time after it was made, until the truth came out; Disney had faked the whole thing. They got footage of the paper planes gliding gracefully over some small ridges, then cut to a long shot of a cliff – carefully hiding the guy at the top, with a broom, brushing thousands of innocent PPs over the side. So please, don’t trust something just because Disney made a bunch of catchy songs about it. Anyway, The Concorde King is pretty much just Hamlet, but with aircraft.
But all of this is ignoring the real issue here. You’re being very idealistic about humanity’s interaction with helos, whereas you should be realistic. We’ve already messed with the helo ecosystem, and screwed it up beyond repair. It wasn’t so bad at first, when it was just man vs. machine, one hunter armed only with an unguided blunderSAM, but it’s a fact of life that we NEED to keep helos in captivity, as there simply aren’t enough of the rare species left to rebuild their populations in the wild. Besides, they like it in captivity. There’s always someone to play with, and they get taught interesting tricks. Helos are amazing at balancing atop a large ball, something that in the wild, they’d never have the opportunity to do. Breed them, then feed them, to us. At least that way, their populations can regrow.
I too am a pragmatist but I believe the fate of the helicopters must be settled out in the wild. Consider the story of this little Bell 47, as related by chopper spokesman Arnold Schwarzenegger:
Bell 47 was built in 1975 by the US Navy. Bell 47 performed admirably in all its tasks, mostly moving people from ship to ship. Everyone who flew the Bell thought it was a happy craft, it was well fueled, treated with respect and love, and more.
But one day the Bell began to wilt. Its tail drooped, its blades sagged, and it refused to fly. Normally the Navy would scrap the chopper, but those who loved it felt it was better to release it into the wild to give it a few last days of freedom. But Bell didn’t die in a few days. As soon as it was in the wild, the helicopter flourished and recovered.
If you wander the woods around Indianapolis, you might still see Bell 47 fluttering about, and not fluttering alone. Bell encountered a Mosquito XE Ultralight a few years back and the two mated, giving birth to no less than 45 unmanned drones. Those drones formed an ecosystem of their own, feeding on the RC Copters that plague the area. In only one decade, that part of the world changed and changed for the better, all because of one Bell 47.Imagine freedom for all helicopters. It can happen today. If only you would hop on board. Mind the rotor blades when you do, or they’ll chop your head off.
Yes, but that’s just one, isolated incident, a freak occurence. People have tried releasing other helos into the wild since then, but they didn’t fare as well. Most had no idea how to hunt, and ended up causing massive amounts of property damage as they tried to stalk cars and buses. Most also died of malnutrition, having only managed to catch the odd moped here or there. I’m imagining a future where all helos are free, and it’s going to give me nightmares.
That’s just pure virulent vehiclism! It’s clear now that you see helicopters as inferior and incapable of living on their own. Had I known you were a vehiclist I’d never have replied to you to begin with. And you know what? I didn’t say it before because it’s nobody’s business but you know how I know helicopters can make it on their own? Because of my family:
So a few days ago, I made a reference about iharthdarth to a friend of mine who’s a really big Star Wars fan. Much to my consternation, he admitted he’d never heard of it. And when I went to go complain about it to somebody else, they revealed they had never read it either! Thus, heartbroken, I turned to tumblr to rectify the situation. The comics above are just a few of my favorites.
You can read the first one here. Go. Go now. What are you waiting for.
Tumblr Exodus 