I'd honestly argue season 6 is one of the better seasons if it wasn't for that.

Yeah, yeah, sorry for being slow on the uptake on the specific crux of the matter here, you're completely 100% that the lack of ability to opt-out basically results in it everyone being fed to the machine no matter what. It's maddening as shit.

that does not involve t/b naming stuff but is an example of how highly filtered tagging systems can result in more pitfalls and more folks deciding Hostility is the answer, especially if they are already in that brain zone where any mistagging is considered evilmalicious

As an example, if you have x/y ship and also x/b unrequited or as a punchline, so you tag both x/y and x/b, you might also get harassment for this from people who feel it doesn't belong in the x/b tag, or people mad that you tagged something as x/y when it's clearly x/y/b or whatever.

Yeahh. In my experience t/b discourse still exists in fandoms w/o the naming conventions, it just doesn't ping the same "red alert! you broke a rule!" alarm as a result. This is partially mundane (miscategorizing on ao3 being more easily accidentally done than ffn for example) but partially... not

Oh and also people love seeing themselves as valiant defenders of their great and honorable fandom and beloved blorbos.

--shrugs-- my main theory is you only need 1-3 assholes who cause a problem and then everyone else merely has to be complicit about it. No social consequences for harassment, so they can continue to be shitty and then rile up folks around them to further isolate anyone they dislike.

Fandom's lack of willingness to good-faith confront or correct exacerbates this shit so much. It's hell! I really cannot emphasize enough how sorry I am you were put through this.

Yeah it's deeply fucked up. I'm so sorry this happened to you. It's shitty and is a great example of how fandom has a nasty habit of treating deviation as malicious intent.

Yep! And people don't self police either. Yes it's a preference, yes I get it you don't want to see the opposite. Your friends are currently engaging in a harassment campaign about it. Are you gonna --do-- anything or just shrug and go "well they're just frustrated due to seeing something they hate"

Come at with it is not okay.

Some fandom norms are weird and imperfect, but persist because they fill a use and folks adapt to that use. I could cite at least a few fandom niches that use t/b to extrapolate. I know it's frustrating when people just ignore those norms entirely and whatnot. But Jesus Christ. The intensity people

This is really what gets me. Obviously blocking someone who makes stuff you don't like can be a mundane thing but fandom is sooo punitive about this shit. I will find folks vaguing about "holy shit this asshole mistagged and bypassed my blocklist" and without fail I'll see no one told the op

Oh my god this isn't shipping? Ohhhh. Ohh noooo

--together. We've got lots of awesome projects for you -- dragons, fairies, romance, horror -- and my project in all of this is GULA, an epic poem about the undercity of the forgotten.

www.backerkit.com/c/projects/e...