As a research scientist who studies making very precise modifications/damage to glass with lasers, I cannot describe the level of sheer fucking skill and practice which must go into this.
Sometimes you see a post of someone saying dark fiction should be banned and then another person will respond to that saying “No, there’s nothing wrong with dark fiction, as long as the bad things are portrayed as bad”, and the thing is… I also don’t agree with that.
I think what people don’t realize when they say stuff like that is that those are literal Hay’s Code guidelines. “Yes you can portray the bad thing, as long as it’s explicitly said to be bad, and done by bad people, and all the bad people are punished for it”.
Saying “dark themes can be portrayed, but only if they’re portrayed as bad” is not advocating in favor of art, it’s more advocating in favor of propaganda. The main purpose of art is not to be didactic, or to teach good morals or a guideline to tell people how to live their lives.
So yeah, characters can have shitty harmful opinions and never learn or be corrected in the narrative, villains might never be punished for their actions, the evil toxic romance might be portrayed as sexy, and no one will turn to the camera to tell you how the bad thing is bad and you shouldn’t do it in real life.
Because just as we say that porn is fiction and not sex-ed, fiction in general shouldn’t be taken as educational material and it should not need to be that, it’s not its job. We are not gullible little kids, and I don’t want to be treated like one. I’m old enough to know not to replicate something just because I saw it in a cartoon, let’s tone down with the infantilization and paternalism please.
saying ao3 needs to censor certain content is like saying a museum can’t have still life art that includes strawberries because you don’t like them.
these are not real strawberries. you do not have to, and in fact cannot, eat them. no one with a strawberry allergy will be harmed by looking at them. no migrant workers were exploited in the picking of these strawberries. there were no questionable farming practices or negative environmental impacts from growing or transporting them.
because - and i cannot stress this enough - they are not real strawberries.
if you don’t like strawberries, you don’t have to look at the paintings. in fact, you can get a map of the museum that lists what works are in what rooms and just. not go in there. if you see one by mistake, you can look away. just keep walking. there’s plenty of other stuff to see.
yes, real strawberries can cause real quantifiable harm to real people.
but again. these are not real strawberries.
you may have whatever feelings you like about strawberries, and so can i. you can draw and write about whatever fruit floats your boat, and so can i, even if that happens to be strawberries. and we can hang our art side by side in the same gallery, provided you understand that my strawberries are not about you (and your kumquats are, shocker, not about me) and that - and this is true - neither are real.
and when the fascists break down the doors and grab all the strawberry paintings and heap them in the street and set them on fire, please know that they are coming for your kumquats next.
so if you want a place where you can show off your beautiful kumquat art safely, you’re gonna have to tolerate having some strawberries in the next room.
and that’s okay. because the strawberries aren’t real.
ALT
