What I’m seeing from being very deep into tumblr is that the gaze has become so academic and hypercritical that everyone’s afraid to do anything. The only way to never be “problematic” is effectively to be silent. Added to that, there’s a lot of radical feminism (not “extreme feminism” but a specific ideology separate from mainstream/liberal feminism) which is more Victorian and focuses on blaming women for the patriarchy because they weren’t perfect moral guardians. This means that all fiction is expected to serve an aspirational/inspirational function, rather than other functions stories could have, like excitement, catharsis, exploring darker parts of the psyche, etc. This means that we’re seeing a resurgence of the Utopian genre of fiction which was popular with women writers in the Victorian era, which basically exists to posit an ideal society, and equal parts inspire you to aspire towards it, and shame you for not being that perfect yet. Utopian/aspirational fiction isn’t all bad–that’s what Star Trek was, after all. But as the sole form of acceptable writing, I find that incredibly limiting.
from ‘I think the general mindset and culture of Tumblr is effecting what people choose to write about in fic’ (via fanlore.org)
^ THIS.
(via swiftsnowmane)
I know that even while I ostensibly support the right of everyone to write what the fuck they want (while believing we should all think carefully about whether what we write is compassionate and accurate particularly concerning groups of people different from ourselves) I know I feel a weird guilt about writing characters not behaving properly concerning e.g. consent even though it’s part of their CHARACTER that one of them is reckless and one of them is desperate for approval and a muddying of consent is what would HAPPEN.