we'll eat you up, we love you so

tbh i think that my least favorite thing about this episode and this whole mess is that like, this is material that i and many others are very sensitive to, and they are invoking all these very weighty and important ideas and dialogues and images and like, i embarrassingly cried at this episode, and it wasn’t good this-work-of-fiction-spoke-to-me-crying, it was bad frustrated vulnerable this-work-of-fiction-is-fucking-with-me crying—I mean i cried not because they were dealing or discussing these things that mattered to me, but because they were abusing them, because they were dealing with and discussing them badly, and it was disingenuous and manipulative, and it wasn’t right

and i am telling you this because it is i think it’s a really important criticism—that they are being irresponsible storytellers. you can’t, as an author, actually swan around and neglect and hurt and manipulate your characters and your viewers without paying attention to criticism or reactions. you can’t just pretend like you’re just doing innovative and remarkably honest storytelling when these are real palpable emotions and relationships and events that you’re talking about and dragging through the dirt

when you’re going to talk about certain potentially triggering or sensitive material—when you’re going to talk about anything at all tbh—you have to do so conscious of the fact that these things are real and that they exist within a certain loaded cultural context, and that your specific words and images do not only mean what you intended, but also what everyone else before you has said with them, like you do not tell stories in a void, and you do not tell stories to a blank audience

and this shit matters

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the lizzie bennet diaries. abuse cw. fandom drama.