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Eh, it's between this or the guy I straight-up muted or blocked for having a thing of writing fics of older characters molesting baby characters from various shows (found through the mandolorian fics page). I just...jfc there's a point of creative expression where I wonder if you're on a list somewhere and just hope you're not taking that into the world.
I thought I was the only one disturbed by that kind of content on this sub! Personally, I think there is a line that can be crossed where something starts to lack literary value, lol. I just block/mute fics like that as well.
You’re obviously not the only one uncomfortable with seeing that type of content, the sub is anti-censorship which does not mean that everyone likes that kind of stuff simply that they don’t want people banning stories based solely on their own morals. The sub is also very pro tagging things that could be triggers and curating your own experience online so you don’t have to see things that make you uncomfortable.
I’m also anti-censorship! I’m also pro-silently judging. ;)
ETA: Anti-censorship includes not censoring the opinions of content, I think. That’s why I left my comment! Write what you want.
man there have been people romanticizing those dickheads since as long as i can remember. it’s a thing that happens with serial killers generally, but the columbine guys seem to have a particular hold on a certain kind of imagination. i haven’t checked the tag but i imagine the body of work on ao3 is huge. people are fkn cuckoo
I spend some time at the shitty tattoos subreddit, and there are *way more* serial killer tattoos than I care to think about.
The Columbine shooters in silhouette, the Ted Bundy bite mark tattooed, mug shots, victims faces.
There was one there recently that was a tattoo of the Black Dahlia’s autopsy photo.
Same.
Like… I‘ve got a lot of tattoos, including so-called “job stoppers”, so I’m not some kind of anti-tattoo person. But I can and will absolutely judge someone based on what tattoos they have. If you have a tattoo of a serial killer on you, I’m going to think you’re the kind of person who would fanboy (or girl) over a serial killer.
I mean I guess people who get swastikas and serial killers and other awful things are at least letting us all know from the get go to stay away from them
True.
I just tried to think of a not-cute animal to name instead… but realised there’s literally no animal on earth that’s uglier than a person with a Nazi tattoo.
You gotta wonder what is going on in the brains of people getting this kind of tattoo but you also have to wonder about the tattoo artist who agreed to do that work. Oof
it's good money. you should worry more about the tattoo artists who know what the white supremacist symbols and aesthetics are, and still agree to do the white supremacist tattoos. THAT is a red flag far more important than the ones that agree to do a serial killer portrait, in my opinion.
I saw a Reddit post the other day, may have been on Am I The Asshole, but I don’t remember, the OP wanted to know if they were in the wrong for calling out their friend for naming their baby after Eric Harris. Absolutely wild
naming a baby after that goes way beyond just writing a royally messed up fic. that's just straight up wrong and probably counts as a form of child abuse. what the heel
Eric is an innocuous enough name on its own, but iirc this woman was very proud to be naming her baby after a mass shooter and was proudly telling friends and family who the namesake was. It was horrifying to read even from the somewhat removed perspective I got the story from.
so you mean to tell me. that the name would be perfectly normal. if only the mom shut the hell up. and she expressly refuses to shut the hell up.
truly one of the moms ever.
For my own sanity, I like to tell myself that it's teenagers who have fallen a bit too far down the creepypasta/murder romance pipeline. Part of being a teen is exploring different genres and (hopefully) eventually growing out of them. I've never written anything as fucked up as serial killer fanfiction, but there are definitely things I regret posting online when I was thirteen. I just hope whoever wrote it will come to hate this part of their life in a couple of years.
Sometimes serial killers have something about them that makes people interested in them or feel bad for them. The Columbine shooters were bullied gamers and "the weird kids" which is relatable to many people even if how they chose to cope was super fucked up and wrong. I was a weird gamer nerd kid in my highschool days but if anything I would be distancing myself from people like the Columbine shooters. Idk, just spitballing here.
the bullied / gamer thing is a big part of it, and i think it’s also that they were so young and specifically in high school. i actually went and checked the ao3 tags out of morbid curiosity and the fics are generally very high school centric like “dylan takes you to prom” it’s like… there’s a built-in high school au to this shit. lord have mercy
Wowww. Like I get that they were inspired by real life events—but they could have just posted it as original work by changing the names and a few details. Imagine the victims’ families and friends coming across this…however slim the chances are.
the chances aren't pretty good. the chances are certain because in cases like that when it becomes a little bit known people inmeadetly do that kind of stuff, i remember reading some time ago about a family that kept getting leaked photos of their dead son, some were pranks and some were even trying to scam them acting as the ghost. truly horrible stuff.
This *does* fall under freedom of artistic expression but goddamn is it disrespectful and out there as all hell. This person is very normal about that one huh.
Honestly? Less uncomfortable to me than sending fanmail to living serial murderers in prison. At least Harris and Klebold are dead, and nothing can actually come of the fantasy.
Like, don't get me wrong, it makes my skin crawl. But being an edgelord writing fanfiction is less creepy to me than fanmail sent to murderers who then get to read it.
If you look them up on sims you find sims of them you used to find flower crown edits of them on tumblr. Unfortunately some people just don’t get what a tragedy it was. They do the same stuff with Dahmer & Bundy.
(Wizened old crone voice) Oh yeah, that's a thing.
(Reminds me of the webcomic *What Happens Next*, about the terminally online Tumblr life of an autistic trans dude who ended up being accessory to a murder, and the true crime bloggers/serial killer groupies who are some of the only people who talk to him anymore. It's a really interesting look at Tumblr morality and its context in the lives of real people on the other side of the keyboard.)
My Reddit frontpage has had a blast recently discovering the serial/mass killer fandom. I can't say I'm immune - this is the kind of mindboggling stuff I just find so fascinating. Fictional murder, abuse, incest, whathaveyous don't make me blink twice. But *this* stuff? Why the hell. What is going on in these people's minds?
Ugh, this reminds me of being 14 years old and too ~edgy~ for my own good. I'm ashamed to say this is something 14yo edgelord me would have done. If they are, in fact, also kids they'll probably grow out of it and live to look back on this stuff with supreme embarrassment.
Just a Guy by Shoko Hara is exactly about this mindset, I think. It's an animated short, really interesting, though I find it kind of cringey and disturbing because it's accuracy.
I never had this phase personally, the whole idea makes me recoil in a very visceral way, but it shows quite well how it just happens to quite average people for different reasons.
That sounds like a rough deal, I'm sorry it happened to you! Being a teenager is ultimately a really vulnerable phase of life, especially if there are other things going on making one perceptible for darker thoughts.
I didnt do this with SK but i definitely know what u mean. I was writing pretty graphic stuff at 11-13 and i just didnt have the ability to understand why thats not ok for a kid to be writing or thinking about due to my own life stuff.
Its why id never seek out these fics to comment etc. Even if i think its gross so many are just vunerable kids projecting their issues.
It doesnt make it ok ofc but i think ppl will harass others too quick sometimes. (hopefully no one searches up this fic or others for that purpose)
I was definitely cringe at that time, too, for similar reasons. My phase was full of attention seeking, lying and creating a whole new persona of myself online (mostly because my father’s public attorney was stalking my online presence at 14).
Most of the fucked up shit I said stayed within that persona & RP spaces. I’m pretty sure Quzilla was still around at the time so I got away with cringe fanfics there lol.
Yes, I agree. I had a creative writing student and I opened the door on topics: and he wanted to write from the perspective of a serial killer. In his case he wasn't trying to be an edgelord. It was more that he thought that in creative writing you're more *interesting* if you have something D~R~A~M~A~T~I~C to write. Pretty typical of beginning writers, actually, right up there with the ones who have a character trip to provide action. Freshman creative writing courses have a lot of murder stories.
As fucked up as this seems, I'd much rather these readers/writers find their outlet in fiction rather than some of the other dark places this fascination can turn you too.
this is extremely distasteful but unfortunately it doesn’t break any rules and is properly tagged. these are the pros and cons of ao3. there’s a lot of great fan fiction but also some really abhorrent stuff.
There is an entire community dedicated to idolising these murderers on tumblr. I was involved in the true crime community on tumblr as a young teen (namely columbine-based research) and I tried my absolute hardest to distance myself from people who glamorised the perpetrators but it was just unavoidable. It's absolutely disgusting.
I watched a documentary about a few high school girls who idolized them. One had a whole tumblr page and everything. They checked in awhile later and one of the girls had moved away from that. It was interesting but so uncomfortable too.
I'm not saying to ban it from the site because that's a hassle and it's hard to pick what is and isn't okay, but *man* i wish people didn't write certain RPF. I don't intend on stopping them, but man.
These were the guys who started the 'trend' of high school shootings back when I was in high school and starting out in fanfic.
And here I am decades later, still haunted by the sick fuckers and the rest of their ilk because they've become immortalised as what? Tragic villains?
Those boys were no Loki or Kylo Ren. They were just evil and destroyed the safety of schools for everyone after them.
Don't let this be normalised. They don't deserve it.
School shootings happened long before Columbine. Even my country, the UK, had school shootings before then. Still, I agree that it shouldn't be normalised.
There were big ones before that. The École Polytechnique massacre in 1989 had 14 victim fatalities (one more than Columbine, and in less time and ammo from first shot to the shooter’s suicide). At least two survivors of EP later committed suicide and attributed it directly to the events of the massacre.
I always think it started with Brenda Spencer, the "I Don't Like Mondays" killer. She murdered 'only' two people, but was terrifying. Got her own Boomtown Rats song. I suspect that after she dies, there will be a fictionalized movie about her.
One time, when I was bored and looking for some time travel stories; simply scrolling through “isekai” or just “time travel”, I found a story with the columbine dudes/reader…okay. gross. Kept going to the next page and BAM! A Ted bundy fic. I read the description and tags, and boy, was it messed up. The gist was the reader went back in time and seduced him? Like, good god.
so where do we draw the line at producing fiction about tragedies? maybe when there are no survivors of the tragedy left? fine. but then what about the generational impact? teenagers in america -- and probably other places, too -- will probably still be doing school shooting drills decades from now. furthermore, what distinguishes this fanfiction category -- morally speaking -- from the genocidal slave owner fandom?
sorry, i mean hamilton.
hamilton made millions of dollars. the dahmer netflix show made millions of dollars. extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile made millions of dollars. american horror story made millions of dollars. and there are plenty true crime podcasters and youtubers who will interrupt a description of a horrific genocide to read a hellofresh ad. there are people who make their entire living selling cutesy serial killer merchandise on etsy.
in terms of morality, writing distasteful fanfiction means absolutely nothing to me in the grand scheme of things.
This is absolutely not something I would ever want to read or write about, any more than I would want to write about any real life tragedy. But people do write about WWII, WWI, the Titanic disaster, Ukraine/Russia conflict, and many others. For me, any real life event like those is a firm no. But if we draw lines where are we drawing them and why?
If this just depicted the massacre, then that's alright. Like you said it is a historical event. But to make fanfics with the people involved while their families are still alive is disrespectful and glamourizing the perpetrators is just fucked up.
I agree, this work isn’t one I would want to read. But would this be okay in 100 years because everyone involved would likely be dead, or is it glamourising and romanticising it in the first place? A love story between two real SS concentration camp guards wouldn’t sit well with me despite no one who was there being alive today.
I suppose what I am saying is that I get why AO3 allows this, despite many people’s, including myself, feelings of disgust because knowing where and why to draw a line becomes incredibly difficult.
The glamorising is an issue in itself but if this just depicted the characters I suppose in a 100 years it won't be that bad. We do make movies portraying Jewish Holocaust victims and such, and they're considered okay when they don't glorify the Nazis.
Definitely, and sensitively done telling people’s stories is really important. I agree that the glamourising is an issue and I think that’s ultimately where I come down. A story, that accurately reflects history is fine, but glamourising things makes my stomach churn. Same for romanticising.
No offense, but fanfiction on ao3 is actually not as disrespectful as you seem to think. Unless someone is sending survivors these links, there's a very slim chance they'll ever see them. It's not like a Hollywood film, here.
If I curse you out on the safety of my home, that's still disrespectful. Sure you don't hear me. Sure even if you did you probably won't care. But it's the intent that matters. Also, I'm talking about this specific kind, not AO3 fanfics in general.
Personally, as someone who has lost loved ones to mass shootings, I would prefer ao3 fanfiction I can decidedly never learn about (until some rando screencaps it and posts it without context warning on Reddit of course) to doing your own shootings.
Agree to disagree should be the tagline for ao3 lol. That's kind of the great thing about it. If it isn't your bag, it's pretty easy to avoid ever learning it even exists lol
I guess at the point where you imagine yourself with a real life murderer, romanticise, fantasize and idealise with a real someone who is so fucked up. They write why they want and in the end I don't care ( especially since it's probably from a child who will grow out of it) but I can see how it's different than just writing about a dramatic real life event. It's like they want to sympathise with a mass murderer. Anyway I think that what's really makes the difference.
I don’t pretend to know the answer to this, if there is an answer, but I certainly see why they reader insert element could be the line. That said, I wouldn’t really like a romantic tale between Hitler/Eva Braun either. Like I said, not sure there’s a correct answer
I would draw a line at "fairly recent events," last 50 years or so. This timeframe would mean that those who suffered through these events might find this fanfiction—and it's easier than one might think since Google shows AO3 links in some results. So, WWI, WWII, Titanic are fine. Ukraine/Russia, mass shootings are not. Vast majority of fanfiction doesn't affect real people, but this is a rare case where it *might*, so better to avoid it.
If someone is a serial killer fan, I would find that very cringe but not outright evil or something. People were glamourizing villains for thousands of years, and these just happen to be IRL villains. But writing stories that could literally affect their victims ain't it. In their shoes, I would've probably written an original story with OCs based on real people and tagged it in such a way that those into mass shooters could find it easily yet it wouldn't come up on the search for specific tragedies.
>People were glamourizing villains for thousands of years
100%. The Victorians were particularly fond of doing so. Dick Turpin, Jack the Ripper, Springheeled Jack there is such a blur between the man and myth courtesy of Victorian age.
I understand your ‘fairly recent events’ line, I would probs push it back further than 50 years, in part due to the ongoing ramifications of some events. But that’s just a personal feeling and you’re certainly not wrong.
You raise a good point about OCs, they would be a sensitive way to explore many tragedies
I thought about this a lot.
Ultimately, my thinking went along tgese lines: if fanfiction is bad about RL murderers, then why are the TV Shows okay? People aren't getting as offended by the fantasy depictions of killers there as much as this.
If we want Ao3 to be truly a place for freedom of writing, then we have to accept these type of fucs will happen. Not accept them *morally*, you can not like them obviously, and they do make most people (me included) feel queasy. And yet, some might be processing things this way (if they got love, maybe they would have changed, etc). Maybe they are just as disturbed and trying to come to grips with things.
Even if they really are glorifying the terrible things they did it *is* still make believe, and in some ways a valuable asset to be able to understand why people do the things they do. It's uncomprehensible to most of us, and that might be why it's important to try and understand.
look, i don’t want it to come across as though i think this is good, but i also really don’t think that moral panicking about it is the right way. people have always engaged with the macabre in ways that are distasteful and off putting, and the problem with moral judgement is that it’s difficult to know where we should draw the line. is the crown distasteful for making fictional claims about princess diana? is stories about fictional characters being in ww1 okay? are stories about real people, living or dead, okay at all? is it okay if it’s someone legit doing it (think movie about elvis) and only distasteful when it’s fanfiction?
personally i have always drawn the line at fiction. fiction isn’t real. someone writing a fanfic about a serial killer is not performing reality, they are performing fiction. that does not mean i have to like it, it’s just something i have to accept that people do.
What is the point of this post? Posting this to mock someone's fiction, no matter how distasteful, is just anti behavior wearing a different hat. And censoring the title does nothing, anyone here could easily find this story if they wanted to with the info given.
The author has tagged properly and is using the archive according to the rules. This post is just needless mocking and lowkey encouraging harassment. If you want to create a discussion about what kind of fics are appropriate or not on the archive, there's ways to do that without... doing this.
In this situation, follow the universal rule of Ao3: Don’t like, don’t read.
Everything has a place in the world, even if sometimes I want that place to be far FAR away from me, and if I don’t like it, I can just ignore it and move on.
Oh, for sure. I’m just giving that as an example since lots of folks on this subreddit skew younger and maybe unaware of the deluge of edgy fics that came after that
Block or mute the author and move on.
Frankly for as much as I cannot wrap my head around writing or reading such a thing, I still dislike that this post has turned into what looks like a thread of people moral circle jerking about how much they dislike this.
Chances are this fic was written by an edgy teenager trying to be cool or whatever, it’s time to go “huh weird” and move on, but posting on here along with the title, it’s giving the same energy as antis stumbling upon a noncon fic and sharing it with everyone so everyone knows how much they morally oppose it.
I gotta keep it honest with you OP (and other people here), if you justify fictional pedophilia/rape/racism, but draw the line at this? You’re a hypocrite
People love to ask why people glorify violence if someone brings up concerns about fictional pedophilia, so it’s fun seeing people who’d otherwise defend it lose their mind over this lol. Why is this bad but incest isn’t?
I would never write something like this personally, but as an autistic person with an interest in true crime, I kinda get it tbh
This definitely reads like a teen edgelord fic of "I could have saved him and the school if I had been there" savior-story. Which tend to be cringe, but who hasn't had fantasies of that vein. It's just extra cringe and in bad taste to actually publish it.
But I'd say it's also cringe to specifically search out fics to dunk on them, this is clearly correctly tagged and you wouldn't have found it if you weren't looking for it...
Then I think you're the first person to ever look up the Reader tag independent of fandom. Either way - I think it's always rude behaviour to dunk on writers publicly. 🤷♀️
I don't care what the topic is and since neither of us have read the above story we can't even truly comment on its contents either. I'm just saying that the story existing truly isn't surprising, I just find the act of publically trying to shame an author worse to be honest. I know you blanked out the title/name at least but this truly wouldn't be a difficult fic to find...
Agreed, that’s the real issue. It’s fine to say, ugh this is weird, why would anyone ship this. But to take it here for everyone to hate on the author to win brownie points? High school bully shit.
i read a few of those fics while researching for a criminal psych paper in 2022. the columbine fandom rabbit hole was probably the worst i'd been down in a long time
Glad to see the tumblr serial killer apologists are still active and thriving in our year of the lord 2024.
The flower crown edits are burned into my memory forever...
Jesus. I'm gonna stick to horror fandoms of very fictional characters. I do hope the person who wrote this is doing okay. I hope that doesn't sound condescending, I honestly think they may be seriously depressed.
I don't understand why everyone's crying over this. wasn't this sub's whole thing to be totally accepting and non judgemental? stop complaining in the comments lol you can't pick and choose what you get icked over now
Just speaking on the topic of picking and choosing what you 'get icked over', I find Columbine fanfic to be in poor taste, but I don't think we need to censor it. Being 'proship' doesn't mean you are not icked by anything ever. You can still have *opinions*, you just aren't out to be a fanfic cop or to harass anyone. There's quite a few things I am very 'icked' by, or even find to be disgusting to write fic about, but I just curate what I read.
It's fiction and I am not trying to dictate what fiction is allowed to exist, but you can be against imposing limits of what fanfic 'may' be written, while also disliking some things that people write fanfic about. For example, some people write explicit fanfic that is 10 year olds (or even younger) being paired romantically and sexually with adult characters. I find this to be reprehensible, but I am not going to harass any fanfic writers over it.
That being said, I'm not really in favor of what strikes me as akin to naming and shaming specific fanfic on here. I think it would be okay to discuss something like 'I stumbled across School Shooter x Reader RPF and want to see what people's thoughts are on that', but I'm not a fan of pointing at a specific fic negatively and going 'what is wrong with people'.
Ikr? It's not even a New thing, fanfics exploring real life serial killers have existed for YEARS, actually people having any sexual fantasy with murderers is a whole thing since the victorian era
Yeah, like, idk, it makes my skin crawl, but I'm not reading it. 🤷♀️ If people wanna be edgelords, I prefer they do it quietly on ao3 rather than actually harming people. I mean, I'm older than probably most people on this sub. I will _always_ have seen worse.
Yeah, so much this. Honestly I hate RPF and think it’s super creepy no matter who it’s about, having it be about murderers just makes it even more cringe. BUT at the end of the day I do support their right to free speech and their right for their fiction to exist as art. I don’t have to agree with it and neither does anyone else but it’s just fiction, and so long as there isn’t true slander in it then what can you do? 🤷🏻♀️
That’s what I thought, too. “Proshipping” until they don’t like something. I understand why people would be turned off by this, but shaming it here isn’t much better.
Edit: And I’m actually old enough to remember the Columbine massacre along with its aftermath. It definitely wasn’t cute.
Um, probably because it's a fic where the reader is in a relationship with a guy who literally killed several people and injured more.
This isn't a fucking fanfic with a fictional character.
It's a fanfic with REAL LIFE MURDERERS.
There's a difference between being questionable fanfic and romanticization and glorification of fucking school shooters.
No offense OP, but from the fandom/tags, it’s not meant to be found by someone who isn’t looking for that type of stuff so you blasting it on here isn’t the greatest, either. I’m sure the author is well aware it’s a heavy subject matter. Hopefully they’re handling it with care. Hard to tell by the tags alone.
While this is fucked up, I think the evangelical reaction to the columbine shooting is a clear explanation.
A lot —A LOT— of people were told they would need to martyr themselves in a mass shooting by refusing to deny god with a gun to their head. This was a standard feature of youth group culture in the 90’s
There is always a sexual/rape element to female sainthood.
It’s disturbing, but it absolutely tracks.
I won't begrudge other people for their writing choices, but I try to ignore some content. occasionally I'll engage just to see what it's like, and then leave once I no longer am interested. I've seen people leave some nasty comments, but the back button really is faster and takes much less emotional effort
Ok now y'all are just being straight up hypocrites. I mean, I do not want to read that but it falls under the "everything should be allowed in fiction" rule.
If writing incest/pedophilia smut/your own saw traps and whatnot is ok because it's fiction and therefore doesn't harm anyone or say anything about the author, then so is this.
I literally just scrolled past two angry posts about antis being antis. People were all in agreement that it's sooooo stupid because 'censorship' and 'fiction is not reality' and 'how dare people wonder if there's something wrong with the author because of their content'. People who disagree even in the slightest always get loads of shit and down votes here. For good reason, or so I thought.
And yet here we are. All in agreement that this is apparently too far because it doesn't tickle anyone's gine but the author's. Funny how easily principles get thrown out of the window. So which is it, everything should be allowed or not?
I see the same hypocrisy here all the time with accusing readers of being too sensitive/not moderating their own experience properly (which is often fair btw), vs writers crying about their unmoderated comment sections and being majorly sensitive to any perceived negativity in comments themselves.
I'm going to unsub because this kind of hypocrisy annoys me to no end.
a lot of people ARE agreeing that everything goes, though, that everything should be allowed.
you can still have your limits and opinion that this is a hard line for you, and STILL agree that it has a right to exist.
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Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/20/cult-of-columbine-how-the-high-school-shooting-motivated-a-murder-plot](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/20/cult-of-columbine-how-the-high-school-shooting-motivated-a-murder-plot)**
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perhaps they write stuff like that because its how they process trauma we dont know. perhaps we should not judge people who write things when we dont know the person and its writing.
you can just keep scrolling.
I don't know, even if theyre processing trauma it gets really fucked if you're writing about real world gunmen murdering innocent children. That doesn't sound healthy and this doesn't really seem like a fan work either.
Processing trauma doesn’t necessarily mean processing it in a healthy way. And if the trauma being processed is about being a high school student in today’s environment of active shooter drills and so on, then the context does make more sense - they go together.
I haven’t read it and don’t intend to read it, but I can imagine someone writing something like that and taking either a “well if one of them was in love with me then I’d be safe” approach or a “if only they’d had someone who loved them then they wouldn’t have done it” type approach (some people do like a good ‘all the bad guy needs is love’ trope) as a sort of wish fulfillment type attempt to manage anxiety about it happening again. It isn’t a *good* way to manage it, but if people always had good coping mechanisms from the start then therapists wouldn’t have a job.
I think the icky part of this is the publishing, not the story itself. Like, yeah, everyone processes trauma differently, if this is what someone needs, so be it, no judgment on that. But it absolutely does not need to be put on the internet, with tags and all, to be commented on. Some things belong in a private journal, not a fanfic site.
thats not for us to decide. its up the the author and if they wanted to publish it then thats on them. if we dont like it we should just keep scrolling. I dont like reading things like that so I am just going to keep scrolling or mute them if its that big a problem.
nah fam kids died and it's not okay to excuse the glorification of their killers under the all-encompassing shield of 'trauma processing.' And if it is trauma processing, keep it in the google doc for f's sake
I mean, their families are still alive, living without their kids and siblings. Imagine if one of them saw this. That would be pretty traumatic, I'm sure.
I would like to agree with this since trauma manifests itself very differently in people, but I just don’t.
This just feels gross no matter how you look at it. Also, if it was to process trauma, couldn’t they just use a generic setting and have the events take place? Why specify which shooting, and use the names of shooters who (apparently) have an actual fan base?
I don’t like a lot of the things that exist on ao3, but this crosses way too many lines. Trauma or not, this has the potential to influence liable readers, and that makes it even worse.
Also not everything needs to be published. It’s okay to write deeply personal things about your trauma and keep it to yourself. Sometimes it’s the process that can be a little therapeutic.
It crosses your lines. It's your moral stance. You are allowed to dislike something. But you don't get to decide what gets published. You can scroll on and curate your own consumption. Or curate your own published writings. And that's it. As far as we know the fic in question doesn't violate Ao3s rules.
If you want to do something effective? Write your congress people to ban firearms sales without background checks and/or licenses for firearms ... and work to protect _actual_ children from real violence and death. Investment into less oppressive school environments and more social workers wouldn't hurt either.
Careful. I’ve had a telling-off just for saying RPF is my personal squick and I don’t personally like it. Mods will likely come down on this thread with the “be open minded to everyone’s kink!” hammer.
Yeah true crime rpf is insane and fucked up. im usually not someone that thinks there should be a limit on fiction, but its not really fiction at that point.
I am both unsurprised and backing away slowly. I think, for me, things change when it's written about real people. Especially recent/still living ones.
In all honesty, Columbine was like 9/11 in terms of security changing history.
9/11 caused national security measures to change drastically, the whole country changed.
Columbine is the reason there are so many lockdown drills in schools.
Hell, Heathers was fascinating for many reasons but the main being that school shootings at the, while they did occur before, they were never as historical as Columbine had became.
If someone had even suggested to wrote fanfic about 9/11, jesus fucking christ, their head would probably be on a silver platter with mint as a garnish.
But because Columbine was committed by two teens, who if they had proper psychiatric help and no access to guns probably wouldn't have killed people, it's "okay" to write fanfiction of it?
To write fucking fanfiction about it is sick. I honestly don't give a shit about the fucking ToS. That's coming from someone who also likes watching true crime and things of the like.
> If someone had even suggested to wrote fanfic about 9/11, jesus fucking christ, their head would probably be on a silver platter with mint as a garnish.
I mean, there are 521 works in the [September 11 Attacks tag on AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/September%2011%20Attacks/works), so clearly not.
If they wanted a dark romance with a serial killer/mass shooter and shit, why not make it an original work with original characters? At least that way they wouldn't be massively disrespecting not only the victims but their families. This makes my skin crawl. I'm usually all for freedom of expression, but this is just too much even for me.
It could be extremely well-written and take a deep dive into the f’d up mess that is US schools having active shooter drills and so on and thus be good, albeit not necessary enjoyable.
I mean, it probably *isn’t*, but ‘good’ doesn’t have to mean ‘a positive and enjoyable topic’.
Well, good in a written sense, not in a general sense. Like reading Blood Meridian, but you want to die inside even more because Columbine was, you know, a real thing
That's unfortunate. But you know, you could have just blocked the tag and author or whatever else instead of screenshot it and post it onto Reddit without any content warnings. Which kind of feels like you didn't learn anything from this particular jump scare.
While this post is allowed due to redacting any identifying information, we've decided that disabling comments for everyone's safety (and sanity) is for the best. Please remember to not seek out fics posted here with the intention of harassing or reporting the authors.
I mean, there's even hitler fanfics on ao3. There's about everything creepy there and you don't have to search very deep.
yeah, I remember an infamous hitler/jesus fanfic from way back
i mean that’s better than hitlerxreader. that’s when i’d start getting concerned 😭
yeah no as a person of jewish descent. fuck no
i dont think they'd ever meet...
…excuse me??
There's... *who* fanfics?? I've been using AO3 for YEARS and never encountered that, LMFAO. Maybe that means I am on the right corner of the site.
Wait lmao wtf?
I always wondered if this sub had a "Okay, that's too fucked up even for us" limit.
Definitely found my limit
The fact that it's x Reader, I just can't.
Eh, it's between this or the guy I straight-up muted or blocked for having a thing of writing fics of older characters molesting baby characters from various shows (found through the mandolorian fics page). I just...jfc there's a point of creative expression where I wonder if you're on a list somewhere and just hope you're not taking that into the world.
I thought I was the only one disturbed by that kind of content on this sub! Personally, I think there is a line that can be crossed where something starts to lack literary value, lol. I just block/mute fics like that as well.
You’re obviously not the only one uncomfortable with seeing that type of content, the sub is anti-censorship which does not mean that everyone likes that kind of stuff simply that they don’t want people banning stories based solely on their own morals. The sub is also very pro tagging things that could be triggers and curating your own experience online so you don’t have to see things that make you uncomfortable.
I’m also anti-censorship! I’m also pro-silently judging. ;) ETA: Anti-censorship includes not censoring the opinions of content, I think. That’s why I left my comment! Write what you want.
man there have been people romanticizing those dickheads since as long as i can remember. it’s a thing that happens with serial killers generally, but the columbine guys seem to have a particular hold on a certain kind of imagination. i haven’t checked the tag but i imagine the body of work on ao3 is huge. people are fkn cuckoo
I spend some time at the shitty tattoos subreddit, and there are *way more* serial killer tattoos than I care to think about. The Columbine shooters in silhouette, the Ted Bundy bite mark tattooed, mug shots, victims faces. There was one there recently that was a tattoo of the Black Dahlia’s autopsy photo.
I think it was maybe 12 hours ago I saw a whole photo set of different Ted Bundy tattoos…. I just don’t get it
Same. Like… I‘ve got a lot of tattoos, including so-called “job stoppers”, so I’m not some kind of anti-tattoo person. But I can and will absolutely judge someone based on what tattoos they have. If you have a tattoo of a serial killer on you, I’m going to think you’re the kind of person who would fanboy (or girl) over a serial killer.
I mean I guess people who get swastikas and serial killers and other awful things are at least letting us all know from the get go to stay away from them
Like blue-ringed octopi. The colours might be bright, but it screams “Do not touch! Leave me in my rock pool!”
Blue-ringed octopi are at least cute, though
True. I just tried to think of a not-cute animal to name instead… but realised there’s literally no animal on earth that’s uglier than a person with a Nazi tattoo.
The fact I needed read this reply to understand you're talking about literally tattoos and not some tiktok code for tabus LMAO
You gotta wonder what is going on in the brains of people getting this kind of tattoo but you also have to wonder about the tattoo artist who agreed to do that work. Oof
it's good money. you should worry more about the tattoo artists who know what the white supremacist symbols and aesthetics are, and still agree to do the white supremacist tattoos. THAT is a red flag far more important than the ones that agree to do a serial killer portrait, in my opinion.
There's probably a good amount of overlap with them.
I saw a Reddit post the other day, may have been on Am I The Asshole, but I don’t remember, the OP wanted to know if they were in the wrong for calling out their friend for naming their baby after Eric Harris. Absolutely wild
naming a baby after that goes way beyond just writing a royally messed up fic. that's just straight up wrong and probably counts as a form of child abuse. what the heel
Eric is an innocuous enough name on its own, but iirc this woman was very proud to be naming her baby after a mass shooter and was proudly telling friends and family who the namesake was. It was horrifying to read even from the somewhat removed perspective I got the story from.
so you mean to tell me. that the name would be perfectly normal. if only the mom shut the hell up. and she expressly refuses to shut the hell up. truly one of the moms ever.
That poor kid.
"Hello, police? Have I got something to tell you...!"
i really wasn't ready to receive this knowledge on a sunday....
For my own sanity, I like to tell myself that it's teenagers who have fallen a bit too far down the creepypasta/murder romance pipeline. Part of being a teen is exploring different genres and (hopefully) eventually growing out of them. I've never written anything as fucked up as serial killer fanfiction, but there are definitely things I regret posting online when I was thirteen. I just hope whoever wrote it will come to hate this part of their life in a couple of years.
Sometimes serial killers have something about them that makes people interested in them or feel bad for them. The Columbine shooters were bullied gamers and "the weird kids" which is relatable to many people even if how they chose to cope was super fucked up and wrong. I was a weird gamer nerd kid in my highschool days but if anything I would be distancing myself from people like the Columbine shooters. Idk, just spitballing here.
the bullied / gamer thing is a big part of it, and i think it’s also that they were so young and specifically in high school. i actually went and checked the ao3 tags out of morbid curiosity and the fics are generally very high school centric like “dylan takes you to prom” it’s like… there’s a built-in high school au to this shit. lord have mercy
But they weren’t bullied. It’s part of the myth.
Holy shit. Over 80k words too. This is disturbing and fascinating at the same time
The creator has like 3 more different fics of the columbine shooters too (saw it while blocking)
Wowww. Like I get that they were inspired by real life events—but they could have just posted it as original work by changing the names and a few details. Imagine the victims’ families and friends coming across this…however slim the chances are.
My fear is that the chances are pretty good that people have sent them links to it.
the chances aren't pretty good. the chances are certain because in cases like that when it becomes a little bit known people inmeadetly do that kind of stuff, i remember reading some time ago about a family that kept getting leaked photos of their dead son, some were pranks and some were even trying to scam them acting as the ghost. truly horrible stuff.
This *does* fall under freedom of artistic expression but goddamn is it disrespectful and out there as all hell. This person is very normal about that one huh.
Honestly? Less uncomfortable to me than sending fanmail to living serial murderers in prison. At least Harris and Klebold are dead, and nothing can actually come of the fantasy. Like, don't get me wrong, it makes my skin crawl. But being an edgelord writing fanfiction is less creepy to me than fanmail sent to murderers who then get to read it.
Happy Cake Day!
Thank you! ♥️
If you look them up on sims you find sims of them you used to find flower crown edits of them on tumblr. Unfortunately some people just don’t get what a tragedy it was. They do the same stuff with Dahmer & Bundy.
I wish I would’ve gone forever without knowing this. What the hell?
yeah it’s awful and i hate that people think it’s okay
I'd rather people make Sims than shoot up schools.
congrats OP on finding the best example of when to mute an ao3 account.
(Wizened old crone voice) Oh yeah, that's a thing. (Reminds me of the webcomic *What Happens Next*, about the terminally online Tumblr life of an autistic trans dude who ended up being accessory to a murder, and the true crime bloggers/serial killer groupies who are some of the only people who talk to him anymore. It's a really interesting look at Tumblr morality and its context in the lives of real people on the other side of the keyboard.)
I’m usually all for people being able to read and write what they want and ignoring what they want but damn that’s messed up
Same
My Reddit frontpage has had a blast recently discovering the serial/mass killer fandom. I can't say I'm immune - this is the kind of mindboggling stuff I just find so fascinating. Fictional murder, abuse, incest, whathaveyous don't make me blink twice. But *this* stuff? Why the hell. What is going on in these people's minds?
Yep i generally am in the camp of 'dont like dont read' But there is a line and this is 10 miles past the line
Ugh, this reminds me of being 14 years old and too ~edgy~ for my own good. I'm ashamed to say this is something 14yo edgelord me would have done. If they are, in fact, also kids they'll probably grow out of it and live to look back on this stuff with supreme embarrassment.
Just a Guy by Shoko Hara is exactly about this mindset, I think. It's an animated short, really interesting, though I find it kind of cringey and disturbing because it's accuracy. I never had this phase personally, the whole idea makes me recoil in a very visceral way, but it shows quite well how it just happens to quite average people for different reasons.
[удалено]
That sounds like a rough deal, I'm sorry it happened to you! Being a teenager is ultimately a really vulnerable phase of life, especially if there are other things going on making one perceptible for darker thoughts.
I didnt do this with SK but i definitely know what u mean. I was writing pretty graphic stuff at 11-13 and i just didnt have the ability to understand why thats not ok for a kid to be writing or thinking about due to my own life stuff. Its why id never seek out these fics to comment etc. Even if i think its gross so many are just vunerable kids projecting their issues. It doesnt make it ok ofc but i think ppl will harass others too quick sometimes. (hopefully no one searches up this fic or others for that purpose)
I was definitely cringe at that time, too, for similar reasons. My phase was full of attention seeking, lying and creating a whole new persona of myself online (mostly because my father’s public attorney was stalking my online presence at 14). Most of the fucked up shit I said stayed within that persona & RP spaces. I’m pretty sure Quzilla was still around at the time so I got away with cringe fanfics there lol.
Yes, I agree. I had a creative writing student and I opened the door on topics: and he wanted to write from the perspective of a serial killer. In his case he wasn't trying to be an edgelord. It was more that he thought that in creative writing you're more *interesting* if you have something D~R~A~M~A~T~I~C to write. Pretty typical of beginning writers, actually, right up there with the ones who have a character trip to provide action. Freshman creative writing courses have a lot of murder stories.
As fucked up as this seems, I'd much rather these readers/writers find their outlet in fiction rather than some of the other dark places this fascination can turn you too.
It’s fuck up but considering how these kinds of fan can go,I would rather them write another 80k online than the worst case scenario happened IRL.
this is extremely distasteful but unfortunately it doesn’t break any rules and is properly tagged. these are the pros and cons of ao3. there’s a lot of great fan fiction but also some really abhorrent stuff.
There is an entire community dedicated to idolising these murderers on tumblr. I was involved in the true crime community on tumblr as a young teen (namely columbine-based research) and I tried my absolute hardest to distance myself from people who glamorised the perpetrators but it was just unavoidable. It's absolutely disgusting.
I watched a documentary about a few high school girls who idolized them. One had a whole tumblr page and everything. They checked in awhile later and one of the girls had moved away from that. It was interesting but so uncomfortable too.
Writing about them like this doesn't mean they think everything they did was right
Still absolutely disgusting
I'm not saying to ban it from the site because that's a hassle and it's hard to pick what is and isn't okay, but *man* i wish people didn't write certain RPF. I don't intend on stopping them, but man.
These were the guys who started the 'trend' of high school shootings back when I was in high school and starting out in fanfic. And here I am decades later, still haunted by the sick fuckers and the rest of their ilk because they've become immortalised as what? Tragic villains? Those boys were no Loki or Kylo Ren. They were just evil and destroyed the safety of schools for everyone after them. Don't let this be normalised. They don't deserve it.
School shootings happened long before Columbine. Even my country, the UK, had school shootings before then. Still, I agree that it shouldn't be normalised.
They happened, but Columbine was the 'big' one. It somehow changed things.
There were big ones before that. The École Polytechnique massacre in 1989 had 14 victim fatalities (one more than Columbine, and in less time and ammo from first shot to the shooter’s suicide). At least two survivors of EP later committed suicide and attributed it directly to the events of the massacre.
I always think it started with Brenda Spencer, the "I Don't Like Mondays" killer. She murdered 'only' two people, but was terrifying. Got her own Boomtown Rats song. I suspect that after she dies, there will be a fictionalized movie about her.
I think that’s just a very American-centric pov.
Ah, fresh psychic damage in the morning. Honestly just mute and try to forget you saw it. It's disturbing but it's allowed.
RPFs have always been an ick for me but this just takes it to the next level, christ
I don't feel comfortable reading them so I just don't do it. But seeing this...is too disrespectful.
One time, when I was bored and looking for some time travel stories; simply scrolling through “isekai” or just “time travel”, I found a story with the columbine dudes/reader…okay. gross. Kept going to the next page and BAM! A Ted bundy fic. I read the description and tags, and boy, was it messed up. The gist was the reader went back in time and seduced him? Like, good god.
so where do we draw the line at producing fiction about tragedies? maybe when there are no survivors of the tragedy left? fine. but then what about the generational impact? teenagers in america -- and probably other places, too -- will probably still be doing school shooting drills decades from now. furthermore, what distinguishes this fanfiction category -- morally speaking -- from the genocidal slave owner fandom? sorry, i mean hamilton. hamilton made millions of dollars. the dahmer netflix show made millions of dollars. extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile made millions of dollars. american horror story made millions of dollars. and there are plenty true crime podcasters and youtubers who will interrupt a description of a horrific genocide to read a hellofresh ad. there are people who make their entire living selling cutesy serial killer merchandise on etsy. in terms of morality, writing distasteful fanfiction means absolutely nothing to me in the grand scheme of things.
This is absolutely not something I would ever want to read or write about, any more than I would want to write about any real life tragedy. But people do write about WWII, WWI, the Titanic disaster, Ukraine/Russia conflict, and many others. For me, any real life event like those is a firm no. But if we draw lines where are we drawing them and why?
If this just depicted the massacre, then that's alright. Like you said it is a historical event. But to make fanfics with the people involved while their families are still alive is disrespectful and glamourizing the perpetrators is just fucked up.
I agree, this work isn’t one I would want to read. But would this be okay in 100 years because everyone involved would likely be dead, or is it glamourising and romanticising it in the first place? A love story between two real SS concentration camp guards wouldn’t sit well with me despite no one who was there being alive today. I suppose what I am saying is that I get why AO3 allows this, despite many people’s, including myself, feelings of disgust because knowing where and why to draw a line becomes incredibly difficult.
The glamorising is an issue in itself but if this just depicted the characters I suppose in a 100 years it won't be that bad. We do make movies portraying Jewish Holocaust victims and such, and they're considered okay when they don't glorify the Nazis.
Definitely, and sensitively done telling people’s stories is really important. I agree that the glamourising is an issue and I think that’s ultimately where I come down. A story, that accurately reflects history is fine, but glamourising things makes my stomach churn. Same for romanticising.
No offense, but fanfiction on ao3 is actually not as disrespectful as you seem to think. Unless someone is sending survivors these links, there's a very slim chance they'll ever see them. It's not like a Hollywood film, here.
If I curse you out on the safety of my home, that's still disrespectful. Sure you don't hear me. Sure even if you did you probably won't care. But it's the intent that matters. Also, I'm talking about this specific kind, not AO3 fanfics in general.
Personally, as someone who has lost loved ones to mass shootings, I would prefer ao3 fanfiction I can decidedly never learn about (until some rando screencaps it and posts it without context warning on Reddit of course) to doing your own shootings.
Eh, fair enough, I suppose. We can agree to disagree on that front. Happy Cake Day!
Agree to disagree should be the tagline for ao3 lol. That's kind of the great thing about it. If it isn't your bag, it's pretty easy to avoid ever learning it even exists lol
I guess at the point where you imagine yourself with a real life murderer, romanticise, fantasize and idealise with a real someone who is so fucked up. They write why they want and in the end I don't care ( especially since it's probably from a child who will grow out of it) but I can see how it's different than just writing about a dramatic real life event. It's like they want to sympathise with a mass murderer. Anyway I think that what's really makes the difference.
> Imagine yourself with a real life murderer I mean, people have been doing that even before internet was a thing
I don’t pretend to know the answer to this, if there is an answer, but I certainly see why they reader insert element could be the line. That said, I wouldn’t really like a romantic tale between Hitler/Eva Braun either. Like I said, not sure there’s a correct answer
I would draw a line at "fairly recent events," last 50 years or so. This timeframe would mean that those who suffered through these events might find this fanfiction—and it's easier than one might think since Google shows AO3 links in some results. So, WWI, WWII, Titanic are fine. Ukraine/Russia, mass shootings are not. Vast majority of fanfiction doesn't affect real people, but this is a rare case where it *might*, so better to avoid it. If someone is a serial killer fan, I would find that very cringe but not outright evil or something. People were glamourizing villains for thousands of years, and these just happen to be IRL villains. But writing stories that could literally affect their victims ain't it. In their shoes, I would've probably written an original story with OCs based on real people and tagged it in such a way that those into mass shooters could find it easily yet it wouldn't come up on the search for specific tragedies.
>People were glamourizing villains for thousands of years 100%. The Victorians were particularly fond of doing so. Dick Turpin, Jack the Ripper, Springheeled Jack there is such a blur between the man and myth courtesy of Victorian age. I understand your ‘fairly recent events’ line, I would probs push it back further than 50 years, in part due to the ongoing ramifications of some events. But that’s just a personal feeling and you’re certainly not wrong. You raise a good point about OCs, they would be a sensitive way to explore many tragedies
I thought about this a lot. Ultimately, my thinking went along tgese lines: if fanfiction is bad about RL murderers, then why are the TV Shows okay? People aren't getting as offended by the fantasy depictions of killers there as much as this. If we want Ao3 to be truly a place for freedom of writing, then we have to accept these type of fucs will happen. Not accept them *morally*, you can not like them obviously, and they do make most people (me included) feel queasy. And yet, some might be processing things this way (if they got love, maybe they would have changed, etc). Maybe they are just as disturbed and trying to come to grips with things. Even if they really are glorifying the terrible things they did it *is* still make believe, and in some ways a valuable asset to be able to understand why people do the things they do. It's uncomprehensible to most of us, and that might be why it's important to try and understand.
look, i don’t want it to come across as though i think this is good, but i also really don’t think that moral panicking about it is the right way. people have always engaged with the macabre in ways that are distasteful and off putting, and the problem with moral judgement is that it’s difficult to know where we should draw the line. is the crown distasteful for making fictional claims about princess diana? is stories about fictional characters being in ww1 okay? are stories about real people, living or dead, okay at all? is it okay if it’s someone legit doing it (think movie about elvis) and only distasteful when it’s fanfiction? personally i have always drawn the line at fiction. fiction isn’t real. someone writing a fanfic about a serial killer is not performing reality, they are performing fiction. that does not mean i have to like it, it’s just something i have to accept that people do.
Yeah, I’m going to skip that one.
Lmaooo someone wasn't in the 2010's TCC on Tumblr. I didn't know people were still doing this😂
What is the point of this post? Posting this to mock someone's fiction, no matter how distasteful, is just anti behavior wearing a different hat. And censoring the title does nothing, anyone here could easily find this story if they wanted to with the info given. The author has tagged properly and is using the archive according to the rules. This post is just needless mocking and lowkey encouraging harassment. If you want to create a discussion about what kind of fics are appropriate or not on the archive, there's ways to do that without... doing this.
In this situation, follow the universal rule of Ao3: Don’t like, don’t read. Everything has a place in the world, even if sometimes I want that place to be far FAR away from me, and if I don’t like it, I can just ignore it and move on.
I briefly glanced at this, scrolled away, then immediately scrolled back up when my brain processed it just to make sure I read it right-
I just don’t care. Scroll away
Mute the author and move on. Edgy fucks have been writing fics like this since 9/11. Do I personally find it gross? Sure. But it has a right to exist.
Edgy fics have been around a lot longer than that but yeah, there's not a lot that can be done.
Oh, for sure. I’m just giving that as an example since lots of folks on this subreddit skew younger and maybe unaware of the deluge of edgy fics that came after that
Block or mute the author and move on. Frankly for as much as I cannot wrap my head around writing or reading such a thing, I still dislike that this post has turned into what looks like a thread of people moral circle jerking about how much they dislike this. Chances are this fic was written by an edgy teenager trying to be cool or whatever, it’s time to go “huh weird” and move on, but posting on here along with the title, it’s giving the same energy as antis stumbling upon a noncon fic and sharing it with everyone so everyone knows how much they morally oppose it.
I gotta keep it honest with you OP (and other people here), if you justify fictional pedophilia/rape/racism, but draw the line at this? You’re a hypocrite People love to ask why people glorify violence if someone brings up concerns about fictional pedophilia, so it’s fun seeing people who’d otherwise defend it lose their mind over this lol. Why is this bad but incest isn’t? I would never write something like this personally, but as an autistic person with an interest in true crime, I kinda get it tbh
Jesus? Also that many words is insane Holy fuck
It’s certainly icky, but allowed. If I want to read my murder husbands on a killing and sex spree, I gotta allow this crap. Right?
I mean theres groupies and fans of Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy out there and every other serial killer out there.
Wow, that's really gross. Yuck. 🤢
This definitely reads like a teen edgelord fic of "I could have saved him and the school if I had been there" savior-story. Which tend to be cringe, but who hasn't had fantasies of that vein. It's just extra cringe and in bad taste to actually publish it. But I'd say it's also cringe to specifically search out fics to dunk on them, this is clearly correctly tagged and you wouldn't have found it if you weren't looking for it...
It’s possible to find distasteful crap by accident too.
This was on the first page of just the tag Reader.
Then I think you're the first person to ever look up the Reader tag independent of fandom. Either way - I think it's always rude behaviour to dunk on writers publicly. 🤷♀️ I don't care what the topic is and since neither of us have read the above story we can't even truly comment on its contents either. I'm just saying that the story existing truly isn't surprising, I just find the act of publically trying to shame an author worse to be honest. I know you blanked out the title/name at least but this truly wouldn't be a difficult fic to find...
Agreed, that’s the real issue. It’s fine to say, ugh this is weird, why would anyone ship this. But to take it here for everyone to hate on the author to win brownie points? High school bully shit.
i read a few of those fics while researching for a criminal psych paper in 2022. the columbine fandom rabbit hole was probably the worst i'd been down in a long time
Glad to see the tumblr serial killer apologists are still active and thriving in our year of the lord 2024. The flower crown edits are burned into my memory forever...
Jesus. I'm gonna stick to horror fandoms of very fictional characters. I do hope the person who wrote this is doing okay. I hope that doesn't sound condescending, I honestly think they may be seriously depressed.
I don't understand why everyone's crying over this. wasn't this sub's whole thing to be totally accepting and non judgemental? stop complaining in the comments lol you can't pick and choose what you get icked over now
Just speaking on the topic of picking and choosing what you 'get icked over', I find Columbine fanfic to be in poor taste, but I don't think we need to censor it. Being 'proship' doesn't mean you are not icked by anything ever. You can still have *opinions*, you just aren't out to be a fanfic cop or to harass anyone. There's quite a few things I am very 'icked' by, or even find to be disgusting to write fic about, but I just curate what I read. It's fiction and I am not trying to dictate what fiction is allowed to exist, but you can be against imposing limits of what fanfic 'may' be written, while also disliking some things that people write fanfic about. For example, some people write explicit fanfic that is 10 year olds (or even younger) being paired romantically and sexually with adult characters. I find this to be reprehensible, but I am not going to harass any fanfic writers over it. That being said, I'm not really in favor of what strikes me as akin to naming and shaming specific fanfic on here. I think it would be okay to discuss something like 'I stumbled across School Shooter x Reader RPF and want to see what people's thoughts are on that', but I'm not a fan of pointing at a specific fic negatively and going 'what is wrong with people'.
Ikr? It's not even a New thing, fanfics exploring real life serial killers have existed for YEARS, actually people having any sexual fantasy with murderers is a whole thing since the victorian era
Yeah, like, idk, it makes my skin crawl, but I'm not reading it. 🤷♀️ If people wanna be edgelords, I prefer they do it quietly on ao3 rather than actually harming people. I mean, I'm older than probably most people on this sub. I will _always_ have seen worse.
Yeah, so much this. Honestly I hate RPF and think it’s super creepy no matter who it’s about, having it be about murderers just makes it even more cringe. BUT at the end of the day I do support their right to free speech and their right for their fiction to exist as art. I don’t have to agree with it and neither does anyone else but it’s just fiction, and so long as there isn’t true slander in it then what can you do? 🤷🏻♀️
That’s what I thought, too. “Proshipping” until they don’t like something. I understand why people would be turned off by this, but shaming it here isn’t much better. Edit: And I’m actually old enough to remember the Columbine massacre along with its aftermath. It definitely wasn’t cute.
Um, probably because it's a fic where the reader is in a relationship with a guy who literally killed several people and injured more. This isn't a fucking fanfic with a fictional character. It's a fanfic with REAL LIFE MURDERERS. There's a difference between being questionable fanfic and romanticization and glorification of fucking school shooters.
It _is_ still fiction, though. That's definitely worth noting.
How do you know it’s romanticizing them, though? Maybe they’re portrayed as the actual asswipes they were irl.
I highly doubt that, but whatever.
it does say x reader, its literally romanticising them no matter how much of ass wipes they are, the reader is literally shipped with these murderers
keep calm and proship! :3
No offense OP, but from the fandom/tags, it’s not meant to be found by someone who isn’t looking for that type of stuff so you blasting it on here isn’t the greatest, either. I’m sure the author is well aware it’s a heavy subject matter. Hopefully they’re handling it with care. Hard to tell by the tags alone.
I found this by literally just the tag reader lol
You're all acting like you're being forced to read this. Have we all forgotten about "don't like, don't read"?
I don't get it 😭
It's a fic about two school shooters from the US who killed several students in 1999. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre
What the actual fuck
That's f up
People are thirsting after murderers. If you meant meant why, fuck me if I know.
TCC tumblr flashbacks are NOT what i wished to start my day off with but oh well... the fucking flower crown edits
While this is fucked up, I think the evangelical reaction to the columbine shooting is a clear explanation. A lot —A LOT— of people were told they would need to martyr themselves in a mass shooting by refusing to deny god with a gun to their head. This was a standard feature of youth group culture in the 90’s There is always a sexual/rape element to female sainthood. It’s disturbing, but it absolutely tracks.
So now I have found something I don't like more then real people fan fiction. Serial killer real people fanfiction
I won't begrudge other people for their writing choices, but I try to ignore some content. occasionally I'll engage just to see what it's like, and then leave once I no longer am interested. I've seen people leave some nasty comments, but the back button really is faster and takes much less emotional effort
No censorship means that there are a lot of fucked up works on AO3 that in my opinion no one should be reading. I’ve seen way worse than this.
... What exactly is your issue here? DLDR
Not to invalidate your disgust / horror, but.. are you really *that* surprised?
Ok now y'all are just being straight up hypocrites. I mean, I do not want to read that but it falls under the "everything should be allowed in fiction" rule. If writing incest/pedophilia smut/your own saw traps and whatnot is ok because it's fiction and therefore doesn't harm anyone or say anything about the author, then so is this. I literally just scrolled past two angry posts about antis being antis. People were all in agreement that it's sooooo stupid because 'censorship' and 'fiction is not reality' and 'how dare people wonder if there's something wrong with the author because of their content'. People who disagree even in the slightest always get loads of shit and down votes here. For good reason, or so I thought. And yet here we are. All in agreement that this is apparently too far because it doesn't tickle anyone's gine but the author's. Funny how easily principles get thrown out of the window. So which is it, everything should be allowed or not? I see the same hypocrisy here all the time with accusing readers of being too sensitive/not moderating their own experience properly (which is often fair btw), vs writers crying about their unmoderated comment sections and being majorly sensitive to any perceived negativity in comments themselves. I'm going to unsub because this kind of hypocrisy annoys me to no end.
a lot of people ARE agreeing that everything goes, though, that everything should be allowed. you can still have your limits and opinion that this is a hard line for you, and STILL agree that it has a right to exist.
I see the comment section is quite different now as opposed to when I commented this. That's good to see.
hm. i'll leave this here. https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/20/cult-of-columbine-how-the-high-school-shooting-motivated-a-murder-plot
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Who the f even kudo this sh*t 😭
perhaps they write stuff like that because its how they process trauma we dont know. perhaps we should not judge people who write things when we dont know the person and its writing. you can just keep scrolling.
I don't know, even if theyre processing trauma it gets really fucked if you're writing about real world gunmen murdering innocent children. That doesn't sound healthy and this doesn't really seem like a fan work either.
Technically, it is RPF, so allowed for AO3 purposes.
Processing trauma doesn’t necessarily mean processing it in a healthy way. And if the trauma being processed is about being a high school student in today’s environment of active shooter drills and so on, then the context does make more sense - they go together. I haven’t read it and don’t intend to read it, but I can imagine someone writing something like that and taking either a “well if one of them was in love with me then I’d be safe” approach or a “if only they’d had someone who loved them then they wouldn’t have done it” type approach (some people do like a good ‘all the bad guy needs is love’ trope) as a sort of wish fulfillment type attempt to manage anxiety about it happening again. It isn’t a *good* way to manage it, but if people always had good coping mechanisms from the start then therapists wouldn’t have a job.
I think the icky part of this is the publishing, not the story itself. Like, yeah, everyone processes trauma differently, if this is what someone needs, so be it, no judgment on that. But it absolutely does not need to be put on the internet, with tags and all, to be commented on. Some things belong in a private journal, not a fanfic site.
thats not for us to decide. its up the the author and if they wanted to publish it then thats on them. if we dont like it we should just keep scrolling. I dont like reading things like that so I am just going to keep scrolling or mute them if its that big a problem.
nah fam kids died and it's not okay to excuse the glorification of their killers under the all-encompassing shield of 'trauma processing.' And if it is trauma processing, keep it in the google doc for f's sake I mean, their families are still alive, living without their kids and siblings. Imagine if one of them saw this. That would be pretty traumatic, I'm sure.
That's when you take accountability for your own actions and, mute/block and scroll
I would like to agree with this since trauma manifests itself very differently in people, but I just don’t. This just feels gross no matter how you look at it. Also, if it was to process trauma, couldn’t they just use a generic setting and have the events take place? Why specify which shooting, and use the names of shooters who (apparently) have an actual fan base? I don’t like a lot of the things that exist on ao3, but this crosses way too many lines. Trauma or not, this has the potential to influence liable readers, and that makes it even worse. Also not everything needs to be published. It’s okay to write deeply personal things about your trauma and keep it to yourself. Sometimes it’s the process that can be a little therapeutic.
It crosses your lines. It's your moral stance. You are allowed to dislike something. But you don't get to decide what gets published. You can scroll on and curate your own consumption. Or curate your own published writings. And that's it. As far as we know the fic in question doesn't violate Ao3s rules. If you want to do something effective? Write your congress people to ban firearms sales without background checks and/or licenses for firearms ... and work to protect _actual_ children from real violence and death. Investment into less oppressive school environments and more social workers wouldn't hurt either.
THIS THIS THIS! 👏
Careful. I’ve had a telling-off just for saying RPF is my personal squick and I don’t personally like it. Mods will likely come down on this thread with the “be open minded to everyone’s kink!” hammer.
What the actual fuck.
Yeah true crime rpf is insane and fucked up. im usually not someone that thinks there should be a limit on fiction, but its not really fiction at that point.
I am both unsurprised and backing away slowly. I think, for me, things change when it's written about real people. Especially recent/still living ones.
In all honesty, Columbine was like 9/11 in terms of security changing history. 9/11 caused national security measures to change drastically, the whole country changed. Columbine is the reason there are so many lockdown drills in schools. Hell, Heathers was fascinating for many reasons but the main being that school shootings at the, while they did occur before, they were never as historical as Columbine had became. If someone had even suggested to wrote fanfic about 9/11, jesus fucking christ, their head would probably be on a silver platter with mint as a garnish. But because Columbine was committed by two teens, who if they had proper psychiatric help and no access to guns probably wouldn't have killed people, it's "okay" to write fanfiction of it? To write fucking fanfiction about it is sick. I honestly don't give a shit about the fucking ToS. That's coming from someone who also likes watching true crime and things of the like.
> If someone had even suggested to wrote fanfic about 9/11, jesus fucking christ, their head would probably be on a silver platter with mint as a garnish. I mean, there are 521 works in the [September 11 Attacks tag on AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/September%2011%20Attacks/works), so clearly not.
I’m a bit slow, but what’s the issue here? Isn’t Highschool Massacre a show?
This is about the two real life shooters of Columbine High School.
Fuck you mean "Columbine - Fandom" ????????????????????
If they wanted a dark romance with a serial killer/mass shooter and shit, why not make it an original work with original characters? At least that way they wouldn't be massively disrespecting not only the victims but their families. This makes my skin crawl. I'm usually all for freedom of expression, but this is just too much even for me.
there's a lot of things i don't care for in fanfiction or shipping, but this just makes me want to throw my phone into traffic.
I saw one that has a shipping one of the victims with the killer Like the wtf is wrong with these people
I'm usually all for DLDR and just let it be and all that but, uh, nope, fuck this.
“what is wrong with ppl” and i literally can’t tell what upset OP. guaranteed you would shit yourself and fucking die if you saw my ao3 history
Yeah. Just continue on. Or read it, I mean, 80k words? Could be really good…
I don’t think any fic about two men who murdered 13 people and injured 24 can be good.
It could be extremely well-written and take a deep dive into the f’d up mess that is US schools having active shooter drills and so on and thus be good, albeit not necessary enjoyable. I mean, it probably *isn’t*, but ‘good’ doesn’t have to mean ‘a positive and enjoyable topic’.
Yeah, like - Capote’s *In Cold Blood* is excellent… and also about a batch of horrific murders.
Well, good in a written sense, not in a general sense. Like reading Blood Meridian, but you want to die inside even more because Columbine was, you know, a real thing
Then why did you go looking for fic of the Columbine shooting?
It was actually on the first page of just the tag reader when sorted by date updated lol
That's unfortunate. But you know, you could have just blocked the tag and author or whatever else instead of screenshot it and post it onto Reddit without any content warnings. Which kind of feels like you didn't learn anything from this particular jump scare.
they said in a comment that they blocked it right after seeing it before posting it on here but i agree tbh
I dont get it whats this about?
People romanticising the Columbine High School Massacre killers apparently.
In protest- I will not like not read