on one hand, Ao3 is probably the best place for fanfic writers to, like. write fanfic. for me, it’s what made me want to actually read things, because i have a pisspoor attention span but i still want to read sometimes.
on the other hand… if Ao3 is allowing and supporting pedophilia & incest, then that is a bad thing. we should not be normalizing CP, we should not have fancy tags to mark it. the fact that Ao3 has “Underage” as a warning, not as a strictly banned category, and the fact that i have seen “Father/Son Incest” as just, you know, a regular tag, the kind that would go next to Slowburn or Enemies to Lovers, is so infuriating.
i think the best solution would be either a) building something new with Ao3 in mind, utilizing a version of its tagging system while also having better moderation, or b) Ao3 having better moderation and seeing CP as a fucking problem. what will likely happen is Ao3 will just go down eventually; it’s already dying despite being very popular.
i don’t know. im just very frustrated. i want to continue using this service, but not in the form that it’s currently in, and i think there are probably some people that feel the same way, but i don’t know, because the discourse is so polarized that it’s like, “anyways we should bomb the Ao3 hq” or “pedophilia is ok because it’s not hurting anyone :((”. im just big mad.