Tumblr; Doubt, and "Problematic Content"

Trigger warnings: Mentions of paedophilia, noncon, and tumblr drama.

Hello, new guy here. Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, I'm not entirely sure where this should be posted, as it touched on multiple issues and I'm still not entirely clear on the functions of some for the forums, especially the hidden ones(?).

So, Seebs recommended I join here after I sent them a bunch of asks about this, and after a pretty exhausting drama has been unfolding on my own blog for weeks. So here I am. Warning in advance, this is going to be an extremely long post most likely - sorry, I always tend to write in a lengthy manner when I'm trying to get worries off my chest - plus I'm going to be exceptionally frank with you all, so please don't judge me (or at least not too harshly).

So, backstory on me, I guess, and why what may seem a comparatively small deal to a lot of you is giving me so much strife. I'm a 19 year old Brit, and since age 10 I've been dealing with a varying but intense concerns brought on a series of what I guess are best described as obsessive worries. I get fixated on a particular feeling or idea or issue and then it feels like my life is somehow sabotaged or even ruined whilst it remains unresolved - something which rarely ever happens considering that whilst I can still ruminate and find the tiniest amount of doubt it never quite feels resolved. Some of these concerns are worse than others depending on the nature of them, plus they don't occupy my mind entirely or even most of the time, especially when I'm doing other things, and normally they pass after a period of weeks/months when my brain kinda gets tired of them I guess. But in the past nine years or so, I don't think there's ever been a period of more than a few months when I'm not worrying about something. After seeking medical advice about this for the first time recently I was told that I probably have some form of obsessive disorder, although the professional in question was fairly vague and left the specifics of this up in the air, so it might not be accurate at all for all I know. *shrug* I can only inform you based on what I can draw from my experiences which are pretty hard to nail down solidly. I might be overstating things I don't know, but I can tell you that something has been causing me a lot of problems over the years - especially the last couple, where things seem to have escalated somewhat from the fairly mundane concerns I had as a child.

Anyway, fandom has always been one of the most fulfilling things in my life. I didn't get fully involved with any *big* fandoms until I was 15, when I discovered (or, more accurately, rediscovered) Homestuck, and got hooked. Perhaps it is a testament to my obsessive tendencies exactly how much I got into the comic, but I essentially made it the center of my life for... well, essentially into the present day. I've never had any other piece of fiction make such a profound impact on me, but something - or, rather, a lot of things - resonated with me on a very deep level. I signed up to the MSPA Forums, and then Tumblr, simply so I could discuss the comic. I plastered my walls with posters; went to conventions; cosplayed - I've been part of several major fan projects, a number of which I ran myself (the most recent of these, the Beforus album project, is still ongoing). I created my own fan adventure; I developed an increased interest in creative fields, which was directly responsible for my deciding to pursue a career in film. I had my first kiss at a Homestuck meet! Essentially, almost every major event that has happened in my life over the past four years has been connected to Homestuck in some way.

At around the same time as I started reading Homestuck, I was also starting to discover my sexuality. Well, more accurately, I'd already been discovering it for a number of years - to varying levels of satisfaction and, often, concern. I'm bisexual, but wouldn't realize this for several years; in fact, that aspect of my sexuality has never given me too much strife, as by the time I started exploring it I was already used to discussing sexuality in spaces where LGBT was not only accepted, but almost the norm. What preoccupied me during that volatile 12-14 phase was that I was discovering that I had at least one major fetish - I'm not talking your run of the mill, this-is-kind-of-hot-in-fic, kinkshame-that-boy kind of fetish, I'm talking about the kind of thing that'd probably be classified as a proper medical paraphilia (don't worry, it's nothing that's illegal or immoral, just something you'd probably find slightly gross), and that 12 year old me had virtually no context for his sudden fascination for. Given that I was already predisposed to obsessively worry about virtually anything that I perceived as abnormal about myself, I spent pretty much my entire puberty in intense distress about this, believing myself to be somehow sick in the head, or even insane, for this abnormal sexual fascination. After breaking down in front of my parents and confessing my sins on a couple of extremely embarrassing occasions, I eventually had the thought to try a google search on my problem, and discovered that I was indeed Not The Only One (tm). Whilst I've been perfectly at peace with this aspect of my sexuality pretty much ever since, the reason why I discuss this is because it left me with an underlying insecurity when it came to involuntary sexual interest, and a worry that I'd be (once again) attracted to something that would be somehow "wrong", without that revelatory "It's okay!" moment that I had when I was 14 and realized that my interest was harmless.

So by the time I was 15 my sexuality was flourishing, and at the same time I was already getting into Homestuck hard, so I suppose it was inevitable that I'd get into the Homestuck smut scene. Well, not so much get into it myself - I would read fiction and look at art that people had drawn. I experimented with erotic roleplay a couple of times, but quickly stopped as I felt guilty for the fact that I was likely partnering anonymously with adults who would be none-too-pleased to find that they were smutting with a minor! (I really do feel bad about that, as keeping minors out of the NSFW spaces I occupy is something I feel somewhat strongly about today. Still, the fact remained that I was projecting a lot of my sexual fantasies onto Homestuck and it's characters. The art I was looking at, as it rightly should, was of the characters aged up to 18 years or older, although back in 2012/13 I was actually the same age as the Homestuck characters as they were at that point in canon, so looking at them sexually felt natural anyway. As I grew older, I continued to to look at Homestuck smut, sort of automatically - it wasn't the sort of thing I gave a second thought to - aging the versions of them that I was imagining alongside me, so that they were always my peers or older - they were always being portrayed as 18 or older anyway. I kind of formed a deep emotional connection to these characters - mostly just from the comic itself, but the fact that there was a sexual element there in the form of the fan content I was consuming probably aided this somewhat, to be honest. Or maybe that's just me adding more weight to that side of things in retrospect. At the time, I didn't give very much thought to any of this. I just knew that I really loved Homestuck, and also loved the NSFW fanworks that the fandom was producing. Furthermore, both of these interests were a great way of distracting myself when I was worrying about something. It was all sort of an escape for me.

When I turned 18 myself, I dived into the community headfirst. I started chatrooms, made friends of some of my favourite nsfw bloggers, and wrote fiction. I was having a really great time exploring my sexuality within the fandom I loved - and because it was all fiction, I felt especially free to fully explore myself! That essentially continued until this past October.

Now, as I'm sure that all of you will be aware, in September a certain member of the Homestuck music team completed work on his personal project, that I'd been vaguely aware of for some time but had not been paying much attention to; a top down retro RPG entitled Undertale. I was just as surprised when this game, a rather obscure project that I knew of only because of its connection to Homestuck through Toby Fox, suddenly became the biggest game release of the year. And too right! The game is excellent, one of the best I've played in years. However, it so happened that controversy surrounding some emerging nsfw fanart of an aged-up version of the main character (Frisk) snowballed into a huge debate, one that I had somehow previously avoided, but that which was now sprawling across my dashboard, about content that was "problematic" in fandom works, shipping, and nsfw content. Drawing porn of aged-up characters, according to the 2000 note post that found it's way onto my dash, was "simply a way of excusing paedophilia".

It's about this point that my life turned to shit, and you can probably see why;

• I have an issue of obsessing about about things that might be "wrong" with me, especially more recently when it comes to issues of morality.
• I have a particular insecurity when it comes to improper sexual fantasy.
• My main escapes were Homestuck and NSFW Homestuck content, now both of these simply directed my mind back to the issue at hand here.
• Thousands of people were reblogging with and agreeing with a post that essentially (and offhandedly) branded me a paedophile.

I always portrayed the characters I was roleplaying as being my age. I always envisaged these characters as being my age when I saw nsfw art or porn of them. Of course, previously, nothing along those lines had ever crossed my mind! These were fictional adults who I had been involved, along with so many others, so many friends, in creating and consuming adult works for. But I was seeing arguments that I couldn't dismiss out of hand.

lol even writing about this now is making me very very uncomfortable but I will persist

So yeah, I was gripped by my characteristic obsessive fear and doubt. Other people told me that what I had being doing was fine, that I needn't feel bad - our friend Seebs included, when I asked them early on - but there were also a lot of people saying things to the contrary. I could still feel doubt, even when I read arguments against the rhetoric that people were coming up with in opposition to what I'd been doing - what my friends still did - and it's always the doubt that worms its way into my head the most. What if these people that I trusted were in the wrong? What if everybody making Homestuck nsfw art was a bad person - a paedophile even - and I was just as bad as them for going along with it? What's more my doubts started to spread to some of my other sexual interests - I have some interest in some forms of noncon artwork, mostly due to an interest in BDSM, and it was something I'd roleplayed in the past. I shipped certain things that would have likely been perceived as "problematic" due to their canonical portrayal... I was reading arguments that painted me as the scum of the Earth, a potential rapist, an abuser - everything I hated and was terrified of being.

The paedophile thing was something that hit me incredibly hard, because I loathe paedophiles. Well, maybe the better wording is that the concept of them scares me, probably because it's precisely the sort of thing I feared when I had worried about developing sick/wrong sexual attractions. I never had - I have absolutely NEVER felt any attraction towards children - ew! But it is something I had worried about before, even had a couple of lowkey obsessive periods worrying about before - but back then there was nothing to re-enforce that worry like there was this time.

Now, normally, when I'm worried that a particular issue on tumblr might be something I'm wrong about, I protect myself from it but cutting off all ties with [insert trope or element here] and don't think on it anymore. However, if I decided to play it "better safe than sorry" in this instance, what I would have to do would be to unfollow half of my favourite blogs and mutuals, cut myself off from several friends entirely (in case they really were bad people) - these are people I love and are very important to me, lose several vital avenues of sexual expression, and sack half the contributors to my current major fanproject, essentially cancelling it entirely (and this is an 80+ person project that I'd been running for 3/4 of a year). It... simply wasn't and isn't an option for me. My friends especially... I need them. I have to support them. The idea of cutting them off was and is abhorrent and unthinkable, and yet when I was really overthinking things I was starting to get anxious talking to them!

What's more is that this has crippled my ability to enjoy Homestuck... almost entirely. I was so passionate about this comic, and had been for 3.5 years. I'd had negative obsessions that involved it before, but my love for the comic always eventually won out. It was the most important thing in my life and I thought that would be unchangeable... well, ever. Nowadays, whilst that underlying passion is still there, I find it hard to think about certain characters, or even look at certain pieces of Homestuck fanart, which is kind of hard for a dude who has dozens of Homestuck posters plastering his walls. Looking at art of one of the Homestuck kids now sends me into a cascade of neurotic self-checking. "How old is the character in this drawing? Am I attracted to them? Is it bad that I'm attracted to them? Why am I attracted to them if I am? What versions of this character am I attracted to and not attracted to?" At one point, I was obsessively looking up the ages of Homestuck cosplayers whose pictures were on my dash, to see if it was "okay" if I ever felt any attraction to any of them.

I feel like this post is trailing off into nothing much here, but yeah, this is essentially still the situation I'm in. I find myself compulsively reading arguments online to try and ascertain the truth of what to think. I'm not really convinced by the anti side, and Seebs and other people - dozens of people I have talked to - have some really compelling counter-arguments. But there is always the doubt - constant, crippling doubt. These past few months have been marred with all sorts of self-destructive behavior on my part because I'm so stressed and worried about this. It's hurt my relationships with my online friends, it's made having fun online and in fandom really, really difficult. On a couple of occasions I've convinced myself that I am evil, that I am "actually" a paedophile, and that I deserve to die, only to be dissuaded by asks from my followers and some help from my friends. But I still can't fully trust that this is all right! I really don't know what to do or how to make this all better. Part of me doesn't know whether it should be "made better" - what if I really am in the wrong! I don't tend to look at Homestuck NSFW stuff anymore, at least nowhere near as often, but that doesn't help. I know what I did and I know what my friends still do.

This is really hurting me at the moment. I don't know what to think and I'm so confused so often. No sort of relief from this worry seems to last for very long, but hearing from other people does help, so I'm posting here. Please, if you have any sort of advice or opinions that could help me... or even if you just agree that I'm a sicko and want to set me straight (in which case, if that's true, I deserve to be treated badly), then please respond. Honestly, even just being on this forum gives me cause for concern - given where this forum originated then it's likely that you're all, uh, "anti-anti"? And if that's the incorrect position, then that makes any advice I'm likely to hear hear wrong, misleading, and potentially coming from a position of apologism for shitty behavior. Again, I don't, uh, really think that that's likely to be true, but it's a matter of doubt that's making me slightly anxious to be here. I just hope that I'm in the right, and that you'll give good wholesome advice, and that this place will have more of a positive impact on me than any of that anxiety might impact me negatively, if that makes sense.

Thank you for reading, and I apologize for my neurosis.

- BlackholeKG.

 

I don't have any advice as such, unfortunately, but I do have to say it sounds like you have a really bad case of scrupulosity - pathological guilt over religious or moral issues. Note the 'pathological' part of it - this level of guilt and compulsive self-flagellation is a symptom of something gone haywire in your brain, not a sign of you being a bad person.

 

Yep, defs sounds like scrupulosity (which is also a thing I have - I got OCD, and I get similar obsessive thoughts to what you've mentioned).

I don't... really have advice, except perceiving ambiguously aged characters as being your own age is not a bad thing. We are never told how old Frisk is, for example. Like I pretty much projected myself onto them (to the point where I keep calling them her >.>;) and I am a 21-year-old! So like... I fail to see how perceiving a fictional character as being your age and putting a character that is the same age as you into sexual settings is bad.

But uh yes. You are not a bad person! Those of us trapped in Scrupulosity Hell must support each other, so I will tell you how you are not bad as much as you need!

 

i read your original message to @seebs, as well as this thread and while my difficulties are different and probably not as intense, i feel you. i don't know how i could help you with this, but if i knew and i could, i would.

though it might help to know that kintsugi is a genuinely good place, the best place on the internet i've ever been, honestly. it is kind and awesome, and people are generally honest about telling people when they've made mistakes, while also being kind about it, which is something you should be able to see happening if you archive binge a few threads. and yeah, i really hope i wasn't gushing too much about it, 'cause i know that can come off badly. so yeah...

welcome to kintsugi! i really hope it'll make you feel better about this stuff.

 

Hey OP. First of all, holy shit are you me?

Spoiler

Tweak the age, replace Homestuck with my personal fandom obession of choice, and it basically reads word for word like something I'd think or write. I don't have any advice, unfortunately-- I've just been obliquely miserable about it for as long as it's been a big (quote-unquote) thing on tumblr. Note that it's always been a thing; you'd always see those tsk tsk posts in 'bad' pairing tags, but it was easy to just block those couple of people (usually spammers who chose multiple 'bad' pairings for any given fandom). But sometime last year, it became a big thing, pretty much unavoidable no matter which circles you ran in. So big and pervasive, it felt like the tumblr hivemind which may or may not exist had ultimately decided that it (being an 'anti) was the 'correct' position.

I've read all the breakdowns of why the antis are wrong, I've seen all the long and thought-out posts by abuse survivors about why the antis are wrong, I've seen the blogs like youarenotdamaged that assure me that I'm not evil, scum, nor committing heinous acts that are just as horrific and immoral as molesting children, which assures me the antis are wrong. But I'm still completely overwhelmed, terrified, ashamed. Afraid that I really am as awful as they say I am, that it's all just rationalizing and excuses to make myself feel better about being scum, worst yet that I'm a danger, that I'm hurting people. I'm so fucking terrified of that. I have no advice. Nothing I've tried helps. I'm now far too afraid to post any of my fan work on tumblr; in fact, I've muted basically my entire tumblr presence, never go into tags looking for stuff anymore, never make posts, heck I don't even look at my dash. I only check in on a few select blogs now by directly visiting their URLs.

I used to love tumblr. I used to celebrate all the fandom creativity and happily reblog fanart and message and support fanfic writers as much as I could. Now whenever I see something that I like, even if it doesn't pertain to my 'bad' interests, I get seized by terror and immediately start looking for things that could make people want to send the artist or writer death threats, or slander them, try to get them fired, trigger them, etc. I can't even bring myself to work on any fanstuff at all anymore; where would I put it? I'm not the kind of person to just create that kind of stuff just for myself and the personal satisfaction. If I'm contributing to fandom, I want the fandom to see it. Well, not anymore I guess. It's just too dangerous.

This thread is the first time I've heard of "scrupulosity". I've never thought too hard on any possibility of me having OCD; I know I have at least some measure of obsessive disorder, but it's never gotten in the way enough for me to bother figuring out exactly. Honestly, I thought all of this was just a spinoff of my anxiety, which I know I have in spades.

God, I wish I had concrete, useful advice. I wish I knew what would help, or if anything would help. I hope you find something that works; if you do, please share it with me. u_u In the meantime, we can commiserate?

 

Hey! Well, I suppose it's good to know that I'm not the only one out there, even if our pooled knowledge doesn't present any way of uh, well, changing anything about this. I'll definitely let you know if I find anything though (but in the past the only effective remedy I've found for obsession is time, and even that seems to have been less effective of late. Well, that or switching it out for another, equally bad obsession, which doesn't solve the issue so much as transfer the focus of it, and which besides is entirely out of my control anyway, so it seems.

 

Hey so does anyone have any more advice on this? It's not just the smut stuff either it's also things like shipping and just all sorts of things, I still don't know what to do or think

Also it's not just restricted to Homestuck I've started to feel this way about other fandoms and just random nsfw content that my brain seems to mark as questionable. This past day or so it hasn't been so intense exactly but like it's always sorta nagging at me.

 

The thing is I don't know if there is any way of helping out with this sort of thing except a slow process of teaching yourself not to think like that. Because if all the logical arguments don't persuade you because there's still a FEELING, then you're not going to be able to fix it by just finding That One Magical Argument.
If i were you I'd look up resources on countering scrupulosity, because from what little I know it really does sound like that.
If possible perhaps look into OCD meds if there are any.

 

That sounds wise. My initial Google search tells me I'm going to have to wade through a bunch of redundant information about religion but I'll try and find something useful I guess.

 

That'd be because most scrupulosity occurs in religious format, heh, because religion is the BEST at guilting people right after Tumblr. >>
Sadly a lot of it will probably have to be like. Forging On Regardless, which is hard as balls. Retraining brains is really fucking hard.

 

Wow, an alarming number of these websites recommend "contacting a pastor". I'm an agnostic atheist -_-

I'll do a more targeted search later when I'm off my phone.

 

I think the treatment method for this sort of thing tends to be Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Might try googling scrupulosity + CBT to cut down on the religious advice.

 

You're in the UK, right @BlackholeKG? If you end up seeking support from the NHS, then if they offer you therapy it's most likely to be CBT. Which...I have opinions about, but it seems to work for some people. I think it would be worth seeking support on this. It does sound like OCD (at least, how it's been described to me by my couple of friends who have OCD.)

I don't really think I have any useful advice or commentary, except that I don't think you're a bad person and you don't deserve to feel this bad.

 

Thanks.

I have tried seeking help and indeed I am supposed to be getting some sort of talk therapy at some point but when exactly is up in the air. I'm on some variety of waiting list I believe and I'm expecting it to be a few more months minimum.

 

*purses lips*
The fucking NHS. I mean, they try, but...my sister had some major issues* she was supposed to see a professional about. By the time she got to the top of the waiting list she'd mostly dragged herself out of the hole herself. I'm proud of her, but she shouldn't have had to do that.

*would be more specific, but I think this forum isn't so private

 

Yeah I had to go through three assessments, a four-page complaint letter, two basic-level counsellors, two breakdowns at said basic-level counsellors and being mildly libelled to get to the ACTUAL mental health people.
Got lucky once I did though, got a rly good therapist dude and an ASD diagnosis. >> Only twenty sessions allowed though, this week is my last one. Sigh.

 

Unfortunately, treating OCD is really fucking unpleasant, because you basically just have to resist the intrusive thought and/or compulsion until your brain realises that it's not getting the feedback loop of "bad thought, compulsion/thingy that relieves bad thought, bad thought, reliving compulsion, etcetc". Like, responding to the bad thought by doing whatever you do to relieve just reinforces the loop, I guess? So you have to break out of the loop.

As you can imagine, it's a really fucking unpleasant process but the end result is worth it. And it's okay if you can only resist for a little bit of time before you give in and do the compulsion or keep obsessing, it's a process! But you gotta talk to a therapist about this, 'cause it's really not healthy!

Also medication. Medication is magic, and it seriously helps. I'm on an SSRI and with most intrusive thoughts, I can just kinda go, "Nope," and shove it away, instead of obsessing over it.

So!!! Therapist! Meds! Gooooo!

 

I'm not really sure that I even have OCD because I don't really get compulsions? At least, not in the way that I usually hear them described. I do relate to a lot of what OCD folks say about obsessions, though.

The guy who evaluated me said I might be pure O? But he seemed unsure, and unwilling to be nailed down on anything. So it kind of makes me nervous that I might be pursuing something that's like, incorrect or whatever. I don't want to, uh, appropriate other people's experiences if I don't have it as bad. Especially seeing as these things don't occupy me all of the time? Hhh

E: I guess I sometimes do a few things that might be seen as "compulsions" or whathaveyou but not in the debilitating manner that I hear people with severe OCD describe them.

 

Dude. You have a serious enough problem you wrote paragraphs and paragraphs about it and it's pretty clear from just a few posts that the tail-chasing and self-flagellation these thoughts are making you go through are eating your life. No, they aren't eating every single second of it, but that's not required for the problem to be pathological.

I see those buts! Put them away. You have a legit problem - healthy people do not have thoughts that consume them like this, and they sure don't worry about appropriation when they're thinking about seeing a doctor about a problem! - and professional help is the best way to deal with it. I strongly suggest printing out your first post, in fact, and showing it to a professional - your jerkbrain won't have as much of a chance to minimize it, that way.