Taste Is Not A Moral Test, And Most "Representation" Sucks Ass, Actually
There’s something that’s been building online over the past several years, and I need to talk about it. It’s this culture where your taste in media—what shows you like, what music you listen to, what movies you critique—is treated as a moral litmus test. And if you fail it, you’re cast out as a Bad Person.
I’m so fucking tired of being told that my taste is a political statement. I’m tired of feeling like I have to justify why a certain show didn’t resonate with me or why I find a piece of music overhyped. Taylor Swift is the perfect example—her music is mid. I like a couple of her songs. But the hype around her is so intense and sanctified that it makes me want to avoid her completely. And no, it’s not because I hate women. Back in the '90s—before most of today’s Swifties were even born—I was listening to PJ Harvey, Siouxsie Sioux, and Shirley Manson. Don’t come at me with “you just don’t like female artists.” I grew up worshipping female artists. I just don’t like this one.
The 2016 Ghostbusters remake? It sucked. It had a female cast, yes—and that’s not the problem. The problem was the script was garbage, the pacing was off, and the jokes fell flat. But if you dared to say that, the internet labeled you a woman-hating neckbeard. Like there was no room for legitimate criticism if the movie ticked the “diversity” checkbox.
Heartstopper was the same for me. People kept recommending it because “oooh gays,” and when I said I hated it they were like "you must hate queer joy," but I found it bland and squeaky-clean and emotionally flat. It felt like queer media made for straight people to feel good about themselves.
Meanwhile, something like Black Panther? That was epic. Beautifully crafted, emotionally layered, culturally specific, and it didn’t feel like it was apologizing for being bold. It didn’t feel like it was made in a lab to please Reddit.
I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, which had some of the most diverse casts on TV and they wrote real stories—morally complicated, character-driven, brilliant. Voyager? It tried. But you could feel the executive fingerprints all over it. They added Seven of Nine halfway through the run, not because the story demanded it, but to throw eye candy at guys who whined that the show was “too feminist.” That’s not progress. That’s pandering.
Representation doesn’t mean anything if it’s hollow and corporate. Real diversity means real characters. Real stories.
But maybe the thing that wears me down most is how we talk about problematic creators. I’m a trans man. Of course I take issue with J.K. Rowling. I’ve read what she’s said. I’ve seen how she’s weaponized her platform to spread anti-trans rhetoric. It’s fucking disgusting. And I fully understand why some people can’t engage with Harry Potter anymore. That’s valid. That pain is real.
But I also understand people who do still engage with it—through fanfiction, fanart, cosplay, transformative works that don’t give Rowling a dime. And those people shouldn’t be vilified either. For some of us, Harry Potter was a lifeline. Whether we grew up with it or found it as adults, it was a story about misfits, found family, fighting fascism. It gave us comfort before we knew who the author really was. Telling people they’re bad for not immediately setting fire to something that shaped their childhood or gave their inner child comfort as adults isn’t justice—it’s cruelty.
It’s grief. It’s complex. And it’s okay to grieve complicated things.
I’ve been through this with other creators too. Marilyn Manson was a huge influence on me when I was a fundamentalist Christian teen, questioning everything I’d been indoctrinated to believe. I literally told my mom I was going to Bible study and snuck out to a Manson concert in 1996. That was a moment of liberation for me. And finding out decades later that Manson is a predator? It wrecked me.
Neil Gaiman was another hero of mine—until 2025, when it came out he was a predator too. Where do you put that kind of betrayal? What do you do with the stories that once made you feel seen, but now feel tainted?
If we demand that everyone give up every piece of media created by a problematic person, we end up with a very short list of “acceptable” media. That’s not liberation. That’s just another kind of purity culture. A checklist of who’s allowed to still love what. There’s no room for grief. No room for contradiction. No room for being human.
And speaking of purity culture—can we talk about the abysmal representation of trans men in fanfiction? Because most of the fic that includes trans guys isn’t written by trans men. It’s written by non-men—women and non-binary people—who, in many cases, don’t understand the trans male experience and frankly don’t seem interested in learning. What they are interested in is writing something that will earn them social justice clout points on Tumblr or AO3. The result? We get hollow, shallow, and fetishistic portrayals dressed up as representation.
I started out writing cis gay slash. But by 2022, I was so sick of the way transmasc characters were portrayed that I said, fuck it, and started writing trans-centered fic myself. I began writing transmasc Maglor, and my OCs Sören and Anthony as trans men. Not tragic girls trying to be boys. Not “soft bois” with delicate frames. Men. Full stop. Complex, flawed, sexy, brilliant men.
Because the way transmasc people are written in fanfic? It’s a nightmare. We’re constantly feminized. Infantilized. Clocked instantly. Our bodies are seen as exotic curiosities, not as real human forms. And when we do show up, it’s often just to be victimized or comforted, always aching to be protected by a taller, stronger cis man. There’s an obsessive fixation on our ability to get pregnant, like our entire identity revolves around being an “uwu soft boi” with a womb. It’s dehumanizing, it’s lazy, and it’s not representation—it’s projection. It’s writing about us without any respect for us.
It’s not about building stories where trans men are full people. It’s about using transness as a trendy character trait, a performance of inclusivity. These writers don’t actually give a shit about how it feels to move through the world in a trans male body, about the fear, the fury, the joy, the hunger, the contradictions. They’re not interested in writing us with power, with agency, with sex appeal or moral complexity. We’re just props in their self-congratulatory politics.
And can we also talk--really talk—about how autistic characters are portrayed in most fanfiction and media? Because it’s just as insulting, and just as hollow.
Most autistic “representation” I’ve seen feels like someone Googled “symptoms of autism” and then copy-pasted the DSM into a character sheet. No depth, no context, no humanity—just a checklist of stereotypes. They're doing "quirky" lack of eye contact, speaking in a monotone, they info-dump awkwardly about some hyperfixation (usually trains or math, or trains AND math, because of course), and are emotionally stunted to the point of being either comic relief or a burden. That’s not a person. That’s a flattened caricature wrapped in buzzwords.
Worse, I’ve seen autistic-coded characters in anachronistic settings describing themselves as autistic using modern terminology that makes absolutely no sense in context. Characters in fantasy or historical fiction going, “I’m autistic, that’s why I use a weighted blanket.” As if the concept of “autism” as a self-identity existed in a medieval village or in Beleriand or on an alien warship. As if diagnosis, language, and accommodations aren’t culturally and historically situated. It's lazy writing. It's not character work—it's virtue signaling. It's a shallow attempt to earn inclusivity points by using the word “autism” like a tag, instead of actually portraying an autistic experience.
An autistic friend once told me, “Well, at least they’re writing about us.” But that’s not enough. Crumbs are not a meal. Stereotypes are not stories. Writing a marginalized character badly isn’t representation—it’s erasure in disguise. That’s exploitation. If you’re writing autistic characters just to win pats on the back and not because you care about how we see the world, how we process emotion, how we love, how we rage, how we mask, how we live—then you’re not doing us a favor. You’re using us.
I’m autistic. I’m tired of being reduced to a pile of traits. I want autistic characters who stim and melt down and hyperfixate and mask and feel too much, not just “the awkward one.” I want autistic joy and autistic rage. I want characters who struggle and grow and exist fully, not ones who exist to be pitied or chuckled at or labeled “representation” like that’s a personality.
We deserve better. We deserve depth. Not just cardboard cutouts designed to win internet points for “representation.”
And above all—we deserve the freedom to say, “This didn’t work for me,” without being branded as bigots or bad allies. We are allowed to have taste. We are allowed to dislike things. We are allowed to grieve what was lost. We are allowed to reclaim what was taken. We are allowed to feel complicated things about art.
Because at the end of the day? You are not your taste in media. You’re not a better or worse person because you liked or didn’t like something.
You are a person. And that should be enough.
I’ve spent my whole life being told that the things I loved were wrong, weird, embarrassing. I was mocked for liking “baby stuff,” shamed for making soft art, ridiculed for feeling too much. I was bullied for being autistic, for being queer, for being trans, for being me. And now, even in so-called progressive spaces, I’m still expected to walk a tightrope—liking the “right” things, saying the “right” things, never stepping out of line or admitting when something hurts or falls flat.
But I’m not here to perform correctness. I’m here to survive. I’m here to create. I’m here to feel. And if that means holding onto something messy because it once gave me comfort, I’ll do it. If it means rejecting something shiny and “inclusive” because it rings hollow, I’ll do that too.
I write what I need to see in the world. Trans men with fire in their veins. Autistic characters who aren’t reduced to punchlines or pity. Stories that breathe. That bleed. That tell the truth, even when it’s complicated.
If you’re reading this and you’ve ever felt like your taste made you a bad person, I want you to know: it doesn’t. You’re allowed to like what you like. You’re allowed to walk away. You’re allowed to reclaim. You’re allowed to be complicated. You don’t owe anyone an apology for being real.
And if the world won’t give you the stories you need—write them yourself.
I’m so fucking tired of being told that my taste is a political statement. I’m tired of feeling like I have to justify why a certain show didn’t resonate with me or why I find a piece of music overhyped. Taylor Swift is the perfect example—her music is mid. I like a couple of her songs. But the hype around her is so intense and sanctified that it makes me want to avoid her completely. And no, it’s not because I hate women. Back in the '90s—before most of today’s Swifties were even born—I was listening to PJ Harvey, Siouxsie Sioux, and Shirley Manson. Don’t come at me with “you just don’t like female artists.” I grew up worshipping female artists. I just don’t like this one.
The 2016 Ghostbusters remake? It sucked. It had a female cast, yes—and that’s not the problem. The problem was the script was garbage, the pacing was off, and the jokes fell flat. But if you dared to say that, the internet labeled you a woman-hating neckbeard. Like there was no room for legitimate criticism if the movie ticked the “diversity” checkbox.
Heartstopper was the same for me. People kept recommending it because “oooh gays,” and when I said I hated it they were like "you must hate queer joy," but I found it bland and squeaky-clean and emotionally flat. It felt like queer media made for straight people to feel good about themselves.
Meanwhile, something like Black Panther? That was epic. Beautifully crafted, emotionally layered, culturally specific, and it didn’t feel like it was apologizing for being bold. It didn’t feel like it was made in a lab to please Reddit.
I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, which had some of the most diverse casts on TV and they wrote real stories—morally complicated, character-driven, brilliant. Voyager? It tried. But you could feel the executive fingerprints all over it. They added Seven of Nine halfway through the run, not because the story demanded it, but to throw eye candy at guys who whined that the show was “too feminist.” That’s not progress. That’s pandering.
Representation doesn’t mean anything if it’s hollow and corporate. Real diversity means real characters. Real stories.
But maybe the thing that wears me down most is how we talk about problematic creators. I’m a trans man. Of course I take issue with J.K. Rowling. I’ve read what she’s said. I’ve seen how she’s weaponized her platform to spread anti-trans rhetoric. It’s fucking disgusting. And I fully understand why some people can’t engage with Harry Potter anymore. That’s valid. That pain is real.
But I also understand people who do still engage with it—through fanfiction, fanart, cosplay, transformative works that don’t give Rowling a dime. And those people shouldn’t be vilified either. For some of us, Harry Potter was a lifeline. Whether we grew up with it or found it as adults, it was a story about misfits, found family, fighting fascism. It gave us comfort before we knew who the author really was. Telling people they’re bad for not immediately setting fire to something that shaped their childhood or gave their inner child comfort as adults isn’t justice—it’s cruelty.
It’s grief. It’s complex. And it’s okay to grieve complicated things.
I’ve been through this with other creators too. Marilyn Manson was a huge influence on me when I was a fundamentalist Christian teen, questioning everything I’d been indoctrinated to believe. I literally told my mom I was going to Bible study and snuck out to a Manson concert in 1996. That was a moment of liberation for me. And finding out decades later that Manson is a predator? It wrecked me.
Neil Gaiman was another hero of mine—until 2025, when it came out he was a predator too. Where do you put that kind of betrayal? What do you do with the stories that once made you feel seen, but now feel tainted?
If we demand that everyone give up every piece of media created by a problematic person, we end up with a very short list of “acceptable” media. That’s not liberation. That’s just another kind of purity culture. A checklist of who’s allowed to still love what. There’s no room for grief. No room for contradiction. No room for being human.
And speaking of purity culture—can we talk about the abysmal representation of trans men in fanfiction? Because most of the fic that includes trans guys isn’t written by trans men. It’s written by non-men—women and non-binary people—who, in many cases, don’t understand the trans male experience and frankly don’t seem interested in learning. What they are interested in is writing something that will earn them social justice clout points on Tumblr or AO3. The result? We get hollow, shallow, and fetishistic portrayals dressed up as representation.
I started out writing cis gay slash. But by 2022, I was so sick of the way transmasc characters were portrayed that I said, fuck it, and started writing trans-centered fic myself. I began writing transmasc Maglor, and my OCs Sören and Anthony as trans men. Not tragic girls trying to be boys. Not “soft bois” with delicate frames. Men. Full stop. Complex, flawed, sexy, brilliant men.
Because the way transmasc people are written in fanfic? It’s a nightmare. We’re constantly feminized. Infantilized. Clocked instantly. Our bodies are seen as exotic curiosities, not as real human forms. And when we do show up, it’s often just to be victimized or comforted, always aching to be protected by a taller, stronger cis man. There’s an obsessive fixation on our ability to get pregnant, like our entire identity revolves around being an “uwu soft boi” with a womb. It’s dehumanizing, it’s lazy, and it’s not representation—it’s projection. It’s writing about us without any respect for us.
It’s not about building stories where trans men are full people. It’s about using transness as a trendy character trait, a performance of inclusivity. These writers don’t actually give a shit about how it feels to move through the world in a trans male body, about the fear, the fury, the joy, the hunger, the contradictions. They’re not interested in writing us with power, with agency, with sex appeal or moral complexity. We’re just props in their self-congratulatory politics.
And can we also talk--really talk—about how autistic characters are portrayed in most fanfiction and media? Because it’s just as insulting, and just as hollow.
Most autistic “representation” I’ve seen feels like someone Googled “symptoms of autism” and then copy-pasted the DSM into a character sheet. No depth, no context, no humanity—just a checklist of stereotypes. They're doing "quirky" lack of eye contact, speaking in a monotone, they info-dump awkwardly about some hyperfixation (usually trains or math, or trains AND math, because of course), and are emotionally stunted to the point of being either comic relief or a burden. That’s not a person. That’s a flattened caricature wrapped in buzzwords.
Worse, I’ve seen autistic-coded characters in anachronistic settings describing themselves as autistic using modern terminology that makes absolutely no sense in context. Characters in fantasy or historical fiction going, “I’m autistic, that’s why I use a weighted blanket.” As if the concept of “autism” as a self-identity existed in a medieval village or in Beleriand or on an alien warship. As if diagnosis, language, and accommodations aren’t culturally and historically situated. It's lazy writing. It's not character work—it's virtue signaling. It's a shallow attempt to earn inclusivity points by using the word “autism” like a tag, instead of actually portraying an autistic experience.
An autistic friend once told me, “Well, at least they’re writing about us.” But that’s not enough. Crumbs are not a meal. Stereotypes are not stories. Writing a marginalized character badly isn’t representation—it’s erasure in disguise. That’s exploitation. If you’re writing autistic characters just to win pats on the back and not because you care about how we see the world, how we process emotion, how we love, how we rage, how we mask, how we live—then you’re not doing us a favor. You’re using us.
I’m autistic. I’m tired of being reduced to a pile of traits. I want autistic characters who stim and melt down and hyperfixate and mask and feel too much, not just “the awkward one.” I want autistic joy and autistic rage. I want characters who struggle and grow and exist fully, not ones who exist to be pitied or chuckled at or labeled “representation” like that’s a personality.
We deserve better. We deserve depth. Not just cardboard cutouts designed to win internet points for “representation.”
And above all—we deserve the freedom to say, “This didn’t work for me,” without being branded as bigots or bad allies. We are allowed to have taste. We are allowed to dislike things. We are allowed to grieve what was lost. We are allowed to reclaim what was taken. We are allowed to feel complicated things about art.
Because at the end of the day? You are not your taste in media. You’re not a better or worse person because you liked or didn’t like something.
You are a person. And that should be enough.
I’ve spent my whole life being told that the things I loved were wrong, weird, embarrassing. I was mocked for liking “baby stuff,” shamed for making soft art, ridiculed for feeling too much. I was bullied for being autistic, for being queer, for being trans, for being me. And now, even in so-called progressive spaces, I’m still expected to walk a tightrope—liking the “right” things, saying the “right” things, never stepping out of line or admitting when something hurts or falls flat.
But I’m not here to perform correctness. I’m here to survive. I’m here to create. I’m here to feel. And if that means holding onto something messy because it once gave me comfort, I’ll do it. If it means rejecting something shiny and “inclusive” because it rings hollow, I’ll do that too.
I write what I need to see in the world. Trans men with fire in their veins. Autistic characters who aren’t reduced to punchlines or pity. Stories that breathe. That bleed. That tell the truth, even when it’s complicated.
If you’re reading this and you’ve ever felt like your taste made you a bad person, I want you to know: it doesn’t. You’re allowed to like what you like. You’re allowed to walk away. You’re allowed to reclaim. You’re allowed to be complicated. You don’t owe anyone an apology for being real.
And if the world won’t give you the stories you need—write them yourself.
