#and whether they should be allowed to not want people to critique their fics | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ballsballsbowls · 2 months

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Saw a post the other day talking about a fic author who is very upset to know that people are talking about their fic in Private Exclusive Discord Servers and they feel "excluded" and it makes them want to write less. I obviously do not want literally ANYONE who'd participate in that discussion on tumblr to see what I have to say, which is going to lump fic and published books together, because I am one on those mean meanies who HAS a private discord book club of sorts and we do both published books AND fic.

Besides not being sure there's any relation between "talking about stuff you're reading on discord" and not openly leaving comments or reviews or anything on the works themselves, which feels a little "every pirated copy of my song is someone who would have purchased it and I have actively lost the cost of the album for every single download." (And it's deeply, unquestionably fucked to say outright that people should blame themselves if you quit writing because they didn't comment enough.) Part of the reason I went from talking about books I read on tumblr in extremely coded language to not discussing them at all is because when there's no private internet places anymore, the only people who truly lose are the people who want to complain about things, even a little tiny bit.

To be clear, all references to "criticism" from here on in will NOT mean, "The author should be sent to break rocks on a penal colony on the moon so they never have a chance to write dogshit like this again," we're talking "This was good but they need better editing." Or a "This was fun but it was 10k too long" sort of criticism that balances "I read this to completion and it was a net good and I enjoyed it" vs a mild but understandable critique.

You are Not Allowed to have even tepid criticism of a work on AO3 (or in reviews on indie books) because The Author Might See It, and you don't know whether they will vague about you or blame you for them not writing x thing. There's always another Indie Author harassing people who leave reviews that are even marginally negative.

You are Not Allowed to collect fics to recommend to other people using AO3's bookmark feature if you leave mediocre notes because The Author Can See It.

You are Not Allowed to have a middling review on social media because The Author Will See It. If you set it to private, someone will screencap it and email it to the author.

If you compile book or fic recs where people can see it, some stranger (rarely the authors) will take umbrage with your choices. Then you either get hate mail or someone will email them to your boss.

I don't want people hounding me and I don't want people mad at me, so I moved everything to a more private venue. I comment and review when the spirit moves me, but I think long and hard about whether the review could be construed as negative and keep it to myself if it does. I can control who is seeing what I have to say, and these are people I trust implicitly to have my best interests at heart and know that an opinion like, "I don't know why they bothered with sex scenes at all" will be taken at face value.

Besides there's only so many times I can discuss a book on tumblr and pretend it is a book titled "Half Vampire Half Angel All Stupid" and lampshade the plot points so it's not recognizable because god forbid the author has a tumblr and sees me saying that their book's incredibly bad and that I read the entire thing.

If knowing people are discussing your work in a discord that you're not allowed in turns you into a shivering critter in a Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercial, I'm not sure what to tell you, other than, whether you are writing for fun or for money: I genuinely think that people who liked your stuff should comment/review more

and I also think our lives were both made worse when every place I could go on the internet to say "I spite-finished their new work but I didn't care for it. I'm going to read the next one once it's out and see if I hate it less" disappeared so that I am forced to have this convo right within earshot of you. I think that hurts us both.

#I am not bullying you! I am doing the opposite of bullying you and making sure you cannot see me talking about things I did not like!#It's healthier for both of us if you cannot see every single thing I think about!#I have retreated to the one place on the internet where you cannot find out if I like you better or worse than your two best friends!#stop b think of the children

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aimmyarrowshigh · 2 years

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Hey so this is really random, but I've seen you talk about bookmarks in fan fiction, and what to not put on them. I was just wondering if there are any other etiquette rules when public bookmarking? Eg if someone is tagging an NSFW ask with thirst/appreciation, if there's any sort of personal tag that can be annoying for an author to read, if there are other things authors would prefer not to know.

Disclaimer: I can only speak for myself, this is only my personal opinion, other people have different preferences and boundaries, etc.

I think the most basic rule of responding to fanfiction and fanart across the board -- whether it's comments, bookmarks, Tumblr posts, or Tweets -- is that you should never respond in a way that you wouldn't want someone to respond to you, you should always err on the side of being TOO earnest and kind, and you need to remember that you and the writer do not know each other (unless it's someone you do know).

The problem with commenting or bookmarking or tweeting about how [X] fic is a 7/10 is, A, that metric means nothing -- there is no rubric for what it takes to be a good fic, and even if there were, your taste (editorial you) is not subjective -- and B, it's fucking rude. People are sharing their fic, or their fanart, with you because they love a thing you also love and they are communicating with you about that love. Grading them on their love is cruel.

Grading fics, whether on the A/B/C/D/F scale or the 1-10 scale or whatever, is never, ever actually providing feedback. It's just being mean for the sake of being mean. It also suggests that you view fandom and fanfiction as a hierarchy or a competition and not as a community, which is against the whole spirit of the thing.

And even if you (editorial you, not you you-you) are one of the people who looks at my first "guideline" and says, "But I would want people to be honest about my fic's Quality, and it's weak sauce not to be able to take criticism," then here's the thing: "7/10" is not criticism. It tells the author absolutely nothing about your actual response to their work, it just says "this was mediocre, bye." Like... okay? What about it? And why do I care what you think? What are your qualifications to grade my writing?? And do you understand that fanfiction is written, 99.9% of the time, without significant editing or drafting and is pretty much never totally polished?? Because it seems like you don't know that and therefore, again, why should I care what you think??? Rude!

I have genuinely never seen anyone respond to a fic with so-called constructive criticism and actually be saying anything worthwhile about writing craft. Editing is actually incredibly difficult and that's why it is a full-time, highly skilled career that takes a lot of dedication and education to do in a meaningful way. It's also something that happens BEFORE a work is finalized.

For fanfiction, if it's posted, it's finalized. Going in with suggestions, unless they are VERY SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR IN AN AUTHOR'S NOTE, is both pointless -- the story/chapter is done -- and most of the time, frankly just... not helpful, because most people don't know how to respond critically to a work without confusing "literary criticism" with "being critical" and "editorial comments" with either "personal preferences" or, way worse, "prescriptivist grammar policing."

(And that's FINE! Most people don't NEED that skill! I'm not saying that it's a bad thing or that anyone shouldn't be allowed to have preferences or suggestions or whatever for the fic that they read, and I'm not bashing people who don't have that skill. It's a niche skill. I can't do long division. That's not even niche.)

IF you ABSOLUTELY MUST give unasked-for critique, then the ONLY thing that you should be concerned with doing is providing actionable feedback that is concerned with the text as it actually exists, not with what you wish it had done or think it should have done or are pretending that it did. But you know what's way better than leaving unasked-for critique that is 100% guaranteed just to bum someone out and ruin their day, and possibly their whole experience in your fandom?

Just find another fic to read and let whatever you didn't like in the first fic roll off your back like water off a duck.

And if you TRULY CANNOT DO THAT, YOU MUST let the writer know that you don't think their pacing was good, or whatever --

You wouldn't walk up to a stranger on the street and say that you didn't like their shirt. You COULD tell your best friend that. If you really want to have an impact on someone's writing and you ABSOLUTELY MUST tell them how to change it to better suit your personal taste, then put on your big-person pants and message them privately about how you love their shoelaces and make a friend. And then, eventually, they will probably ASK for your thoughts on their writing. Because that's what writers do to their friends. But no one ever wants to make friends with, or consider the opinion of, a stranger who just ran up and was rude out of nowhere.

And if you read a fic and you REALLY HATE IT and you CANNOT CONTAIN YOUR HATRED and you HAVE TO LET SOMEONE KNOW HOW MUCH YOU HATED IT -- my pal, my buddy, that is what private conversations are for. That is not the author's business. That is not Twitter's business. That is not Tumblr's business. That is your Salt Friend Susan's business, and you can shit-talk that fic in private to Salty Susan as much as you want. I'm not saying you cannot have fun being salty about fics you hate. I'm saying you absolutely should never do that in any place that the author could conceivably see it.

Like, I have dunked on "reylo fics" as a thing on my blog, but even at my MOST unhinged anti-reylo, I have never publicly shit-talked any specific fic, author, or fan. Because that's just fucking cruel and there is NO purpose to it besides making someone feel bad. And if you are SO INCENSED that you MUST MAKE THE AUTHOR FEEL BAD then not to be glib but you need to close AO3 for an hour and slowly drink a glass of cold water, because no, you do not need to make an author feel bad. There is never a reason to do that.*

*I'm not talking about troll fics that are intentionally tagged incorrectly or that are intentionally racist/transphobic/antisemitic/anti-Black/etc. The only rule for responding to THOSE fics is "block and report, do not personally engage the troll, protect your own self."

And then the flip side: when you're responding kindly and excitedly and squeeing and AFLSLGSKGLSGLSGDSGL; about a fic, the main thing to remember is that you and the author do not know each other (unless you do) and that they can't read your tone over the internet. If you're not sure how your message comes across, make it nicer and kinder, and then send it. Err on the side of being TOO earnest and kind. That's always better than thinking you're sending a squee comment and accidentally ruining someone's day anyway.

Example: a few months ago someone commented on one of my fics, "This is the stupidest thing I've ever read!" And I was like... okay? Did you have to tell me that? I don't need to know that you're saving it to laugh at or something? Fucking rude??? And I think I wrote back, "Fucking rude???" and they wrote back and were like "OMG no I meant that I loved it and laughed so hard!!!" and it was like... just... say that then? I don't know you, I don't know your language patterns, and there's no way to infer tone from a written comment. "This is the stupidest thing I've ever read" does NOT read like "I loved this." Just say "I loved this."

And in terms of responding specifically to smut and thirst asks... idk. *MY* opinion is that I never want anything more detailed than like, "that was Not Gross and I enjoyed it," but I'm also a giant prude and almost never write smut anymore, so my opinion is very different than someone who runs a thirst-ficlet blog, probably. But I feel like the general stance of, "if you wouldn't say it to a stranger on the street, don't say it to a stranger on the internet" is a fair rule of thumb.

I don't want to know that some random person in the movie theater has a boner any more than I want to know that someone wanked to a smut scene. That's not my business.

But again, my opinion is likely to be very different from someone who runs a thirst blog and is intentionally TRYING to elicit physical reactions. But still. One of the worst comments I've ever gotten was like ten years ago someone said that they thought of a scene I'd written while they fucked their husband and I'm like, scarred. I don't know them. I don't know their husband. I didn't write it "for" that. I... ablsa;hdb;lsn;l;

So all in all, tl;dr, remember that writers are people, they're strangers, and they're doing fandom to participate in a community about a thing that they love, not necessarily to get better at writing and DEFINITELY not to get told by random strangers that they didn't love something correctly.

#fandom #fanfiction #**fan

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icemankazansky · 1 year

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💝💋💘

(I decided you may not appreciate me just pasting all the emoji's in an ask but always a pleasure to hear your thoughts whether it be on writing, Top Gun, or anything)

💝what is a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

Um, I've written a couple stories (and I don't want to name them specifically because I don't want them scrutinized or the people who left comments scrutinized), that I meant in a very specific way, and people ... did not read it the way that I saw it, in ways that were ... actually pretty upsetting to me. Like, they thought I was advocating for something I meant to critique? and that was pretty disheartening.

💋when you leave comments on a fic, do you want to hear back from the writer?

I love hearing back from the writer! I've made so many wonderful friends that way, and I always like to talk more about the fic and the fandom, etc, with someone whose POV I enjoy. I don't expect to hear back; as an author, I always try to respond to comments in a timely manner, but sometimes that straight up doesn't happen for a variety of reasons. But I love when it does happen.

💘Is there any posted fic you want to rework/re-edit/re-write?

Um ... well, a couple times, I have actually done this. The most obvious example is Brick, in which I rewrote a small little 800 word story that honestly was just kind of a quick, light thing into 3800 words of substance and character growth and dealing with hard shit. I think that one really needed to be done, and I'm so much happier with Brick than its predecessor. But for the most part: No. I have older stories that I have thought about re-editing, revamping; I know some of my older stories have mistakes that I've since learned about, and inconsistencies, and language that could be tighened up ... and, let's be honest, I'm a better writer now than I was 10+ years ago. But I've given it a lot of thought, and I have decided just to leave those stories as they are. They are finished; they are complete; they are from a specific moment in time, and some things should just be allowed to stay that way. We don't constantly need updated versions of stories (and I am now kind of side-eyeing the film industry, but the same thing holds true for this.) And some of these stories are really beloved stories that mean a lot to people, and I don't want to change them. Like, I'm not going to release a Storm remake or reissue. It isn't perfect, but nothing is, and I think it means a lot more as it is. It has more value the way that it is and always has been.

#asks answered #fic memes #my writing

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caparrucia · 2 years

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💥

💥 How do you feel about criticism?

I mean...

Okay but jokes aside, I do have thoughts about criticism and fanfic!

Personally, I love criticism. Criticism is not the only way to learn, but it's definitely one of the best and fastest ways to get better. Feedback is awesome and should be encouraged!

But there's the caveat that we're talking about fanfic, and fanfic is primarily a labor of love. People do this shit for fun, and sometimes people forget that.

There's also a difference between criticism and critique, and I feel tumblr is super bad at nuance and understanding the difference. Criticism is aimed at the author, it's made with the expectation the author will see it. You're engaging the author in a conversation because you have opinions about their work and you want them to know it. Whether the opinions are positive or negative doesn't really change the fact you're actively trying to get a reaction from the writer. Critique is aimed at the work. Critique is not necessarily aimed at the writer, nor should it expect a direct response from the writer. Critique is an exercise on the reader's part to contextualize and analyze the work and it's component parts and what its effects are.

The way I look at it is like this:

"The way this fic handles death makes me sad" is criticism, "the way this fic portrays romance is a good example of the recent trend of coffeeshop AUs" is critique.

I think the difference is valid because sometimes you want to say something about a fic in its context, but it's not a comment on the work itself or for the writer to interact with, and yet people insist on throwing it at the writer anyway.

There's a very contested point of view that insists because a work is put out in the open it's free game for criticism and critique, and I don't entirely disagree. If you put your work out there, it's out of your hands and people will interpret and find meaning in it in ways you can't control. If you can't make peace with that, the only option you have is to not publish at all.

But the people who tend to go hard on that stance tend to be the people who like to abuse the concept of criticism to be abusive towards writers under the guise of criticism. So I'm also perpetually resisting the urge to remind people they're hissing and frothing over fanfic, and in the large scale of things, fanfic doesn't matter.

On the other other end of the spectrum, you have critiques about the way fanfic in specific, and on a broader sense, fan culture as a whole, reproduces systemic oppressive structures that other and ostracize fans that aren't white or cis or straight. And those critiques are super valid and important should not be just ignored or demonized as people trying to "censor" fandom. Because it's not about censoring bigotry, and that's what tends to make people frothy. It's not that you're not allowed to write bigotry in your stories. It's that writing bigotry in your stories should ideally be a choice, not an unexplored, unquestioned reflection of your biases.

Fans of color have been particularly loud in explaining how aggressively racist fandom can be, when it comes to pointing out "hey, all those slave AUs you keep churning out are super racist" and people immediately going "this is right wing propaganda trying to silence us all!" Like, critique is a great tool to start conversations about the kind of art we're making, because if fanfic wants to be considered art and people want to keep insisting they're "Hugo winners" because they post in AO3, you kinda have to be open to the idea that critique is part of that legitimized existence. You can't have it both ways: you can't claim fanfic is a niche hobby people do for fun, and also insist that it's a bastion of representation to make up for media censorship.

Mostly I just wish people could take these discussions in good faith.

Me, personally? I try to approach criticism and critique in good faith. But I'm not here to be anyone's punching bag and when people are clearly just in it to be abusive or insist on making me responsible for their choices? (Ie, I clicked on the link and it said there was porn and there was porn in your fic and now I'm traumatized, HOW DARE!) Yeah, no. Fuck that. That's what the block button is for.

#rie answers #Anonymous

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bangtan-oasis · 2 years

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Critique Project

Thank you for your interest in the Bangtan Oasis Critique Project.

Please read below to understand this important project and its rules & procedures.

🌴 What is the goal here?

To provide in-depth feedback — or critique — to authors that are looking to improve their writing and to help encourage others to also leave feedback and thoughtful comments on fics. This will also help people learn how to read works objectively in a comfortable environment, which can improve how authors approach writing and editing their own works.

🌴 What is critique?

'Critique' can often be a scary, intimidating thing, especially if you don't have any previous formal education or experience with a creative process. A critique is not an opportunity to tear something apart, but rather an opportunity to look closely at something and carefully express your thoughts on a work.

With this process, you can start to break down something into its base components, like looking at individual ingredients of a meal, and appreciating those parts for their unique attributes and how they can come together to create something new and special.

Submitting yourself to critique is something that takes quite a bit of courage, so the staff of Bangtan Oasis would like to commend and appreciate you for becoming part of this project.

🌴 What works can be submitted?

At the moment, we only accept completed SFW written fanfictions for full critique. If you are seeking feedback on part of a fic, a Social Media/Mixed Media fic, or have a yet unpublished piece of writing, please visit our Beta Reader section of our Discord community.

🌴 Where are the critiques shared?

Part of the goal of this is to start getting more feedback out on Tumblr. Feedback should be posted as a reblog of the work.

🌴 What if I want anonymous feedback?

There will be a section in the submission form that will ask whether you want anonymous or public feedback. Oasis Staff has created a form in which readers can submit feedback, and we will then share the critique as a reblog on the network's Tumblr.

🌴 How is this different from beta reading?

Beta reading is for fics that have yet to be published and is a different process than providing critique on a completed work that is unique to each beta reader.

🌴 What if I don't agree with some of the feedback and suggestions I'm getting?

So this is also a part of critique! Sometimes you will get feedback that you don't think is really applicable, or suggestions to fix or adjust something that you don’t think needs it. As the author, you are allowed to just ignore it, but keep in mind that those reviewing your work are taking the time to put their thoughts down and share their feedback with you. Please take the time to consider their thoughts before deciding to accept or dismiss them.

Sometimes, the feedback might hurt you as the writer as it touches on something that is meaningful to you. This is absolutely natural and okay, and we encourage you to take a break and step away for a moment before you continue reading your critiques. This is also a skill that takes time to learn, as it is often hard to be able to separate yourself from your work to see it objectively. We hope that you can learn to find the places that you could use improvement, and what your strengths as a writer are and what you want to develop.

🌴 • PROCEDURE • 🌴

• Authors will submit a completed fic for review and feedback via the Google Form found here.

• The Oasis staff will put up two fics a month for review using the information given on the form.

• Reviewers will then read the fic, focusing on the problem areas that the author stated as well as what they are most proud of.

• Provide your thoughts on how effective the author was in achieving their goals for the fic, what and how the fic can be improved, and what was successful about it.

NOTE: Authors, please be sure that you include that you are inviting feedback/critique either in a reblog of the fic or in your Author's Notes.

🌴 • RULES & GUIDELINES • 🌴

• We will only accept SFW fics.

• If it is a chaptered fic (or part of a series) that is overall NSFW, then we will not critique it.

• All works submitted for critique MUST include a list of warnings if dealing with heavy topics.

• The goal of improvement should always be kept in mind. We are not here to tear down a writer.

• Tone over text is often hard to determine. Please aim to keep your feedback neutral in tone.

• When something needs improvement, provide ideas on how it might be improved.

• Include positives in your feedback of works. It is helpful to understand what parts of your work are landing as intended, and what your strengths are as a writer.

• Do not offer unsolicited critique here.

• If you are ever in any way confused about part of your feedback, ask questions! Critique can often become a back and forth and a sharing of ideas, and it’s okay to ask for clarification if it's needed.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this project, you can direct them to our #critique-project channel in our Discord server or contact us via ask or DM!

#oasis critique project

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fozmeadows · 3 years

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race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.

#race #racism #c-drama #fandom #fan wank #fandom wank #microaggresions #culture #the untamed #bronies #whiteness #ficwriting #fanwriting #cultural bias #discourse

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head-empty-just-shikamaru · 2 years

Text

Walls of Steel (part 1)

shikamaru x gn!reader

Warnings: discussions about chronic depression, medication, hopelessness, anxiety, (BRIEF) mentions of suicidal thoughts, just a whole lot of self-indulgent angst (and comfort). This might be triggering for some of you, so proceed with caution, please.

Premise: You tell Shikamaru nothing feels like it's getting better- that you feel like you're drowning in your misery. Turns out that Shikamaru has a lot more emotional intelligence than you give him credit for.

A/N: Highkey going through what feels like hell right now, wrote this to comfort myself with delusions. I see so many "x reader" fics centered around the idea of a depressed reader. But I have yet to read one that TRULY captures the intensity of depression and its effects on people. It always feels so watered down. I also really wanted to highlight the ugly, not romanticized aspects of depression no one really talks about. If you have any critique to offer then I urge you to give me feedback. It's my first time writing a piece of fiction and I'm still an amateur. I would like to get better at writing.

(HOLY SHIT I WAS NOT EXPECTING MY FIRST FIC TO BE SO LONG)

You faintly hear the whirring of the fan in your dimly lit room, although it's not doing much to cool you down when you're wrapped up in such thick blankets. Your body is damp with sweat and your eyes bleary from drowsiness- but frustratingly enough you're not tired enough to actually fall asleep, and yet your body can't muster up the energy to do anything but lie in bed.

Ugh. How incredibly annoying.

Your mind may be drowsy, but it still echoes with self-deprecating thoughts. Thoughts of hopelessness, self-hatred, anger, confusion..... it suffocates you and holds down your whole body like a mysterious, invisible pressure that no one else seems to feel but you. A pressure that was so powerful it left you frozen and helpless on the bed. Your thoughts are slowly taking a darker turn as you start contemplating for the millionth time in your life whether you should take one too many of your pills and just end it all. You're quickly running out of reasons to restrain yourself from doing so and that realization only sends you further down your depressive spiral. Your chest is tight and it's hard to breathe. Or maybe that's just the blankets suffocating you? Who knows.

Actually, how long have I been here anyway?

It must've been hours because the room had been gradually getting dimmer and dimmer as the day went on. You'd been in the same spot since afternoon, and now it was dark out. You squint your eyes in the darkness to check the clock and your eyes widen.

No way. It's 7:00 PM. How?

You flop back on the bed in disbelief and curl in on yourself underneath the thick blankets once again.

I've wasted yet another day doing nothing productive. How pathetic.

And suddenly, you hear your front door click and unlock. A voice calls out your name and your stomach drops.

Shit. It's Shikamaru.

Why did you think it was a good idea to give him the keys to your place anyway? You really should have thought this through a little more. Shika might be your boyfriend, but the idea that he can now come and go as he pleases is not ideal in the slightest. Not when it's the one place you allow yourself to let your guard down, where you release all the horrible feelings you suppress in public just to get through the day and function like a normal human being.

You hear his footsteps get closer to the room and shut your eyes quickly. Maybe if you pretend to be asleep, he'll leave you alone.

Please, please, please, just fall for it and leave already.

Your bedroom door clicks open and you hear him flip a switch. The room is flooded with light and your already shut eyes squeeze tighter under the covers from the sudden brightness in the room. You feel the mattress shift as you realize that Shikamaru is now sitting next to your laying form. A sudden silence fills the air until Shikamaru finally breaks it.

"I know you're awake- there's no way you're not uncomfortable with how hot it is under those blankets. You can stop acting like you're actually taking a nap, babe."

You recognize the slight humor laced in his tone and it only worsens your already bitter mood. Actually, "bitter" was quite an understatement.

Depression had made you so miserable that not only did you envy others in their ability to function better and feel happy, but now it made you hate them too. It made you feel like shit to see others live a life that made it impossible for them to comprehend how all-consuming this illness was. How could they understand that it made you paranoid of every slight shift in tone in any conversation, made you paranoid of people secretly hating you? That it made you question your own character, your own worthiness? That it made you lose sight of the consequences of your reckless actions on your own mental and physical health? That it made you dysfunctional?

Obviously, this means that Shikamaru was now one of the many victims of your silent wrath and jealousy. You had secretly grown to resent his attitude towards life. His carefree nature towards it all, the way he complained about the things you wish you had. You wish you had his "nagging" parents, you wish you had his amazing support system provided by his friends. You couldn't imagine why he would ever complain about the very people who supported him and contributed to his stable, happy life.

You, on the other hand, felt as if you had nobody to rely on. For most of your life that was your reality. Even your family wasn't supportive, and they hurt you so much. You had to deal with your illness and trauma on your own. However, recently you had managed to make friends who seemed genuine in their efforts to be there for you- Shikamaru was one of them, although he was more than just a friend.

And that's just it isn't it? You're dating him because you love him far more than you hate him. Despite your secret resentment against him, you love him so, so dearly. You would climb mountains for him. You loved so much about him. The was he was so uncharacteristically patient with you. The was he affectionately called you "troublesome" and ruffled your hair, with the softest smile on his pretty face. How incredibly gorgeous he was (truly, he was out of your league). The way he loved your body even if you hated it. The fact that he smelled like musky pinewood. The way you felt so safe and wanted in his arms. The fact that he gave such warm firm hugs every time he saw you (if no one else was around of course- he was quite shy with affection in public. And you loved that too. You found it adorable, really). And even though you envied how effortlessly good he was at everything despite his laziness due to his genius (because your efforts always seemed to fall flat no matter what you tried and no matter how hard you tried to excel at it), you truly admired him for it. His intelligence made him an excellent person to have long conversations with no matter the topic. And you were so proud of him for becoming the Hokage's right-hand man. You have no doubt he has wonderful things ahead for him, things he deserves.

And that's why you hate yourself more than you could ever hate him or anybody else. Because he was a good man who deserved better than you. And even though he was patient with you, you were always aware that he dreamed of a simple life with a simple, happy family. You were far from simple. Or happy.

"I really was trying to fall asleep, you know. I'm just tired and I really don't like you showing up randomly like this. You should let me know earlier if you're planning to come over so I know ahead of time".

Your tone is the complete opposite of his- cold, mechanical, distant, and especially unamused. You hate yourself for talking to him this way, but you can't help yourself. Normally you're good at putting on an act, but he really caught you off-guard with his little visit. You figure it's best to keep this conversation as short as possible so you don't fly off the rails and lose your cool.

"Please just get up. We need to talk because this is urgent".

Wait..... what?

Was he breaking up with you?

Nonononono! I'm not ready for this! Please!

Were you too late? You were planning on breaking it off eventually, but you wanted to do it before he truly saw you for who you were before he could resent you for it. It's not like you really wanted to stop being with him, but you simply wanted to avoid the pain of rejection. Plus he deserved better anyway. If he broke it off first, that means you were too late. You couldn't bear the idea of him abandoning you first.

Externally, you look fine but internally your brain is flooded with anxiety, as you silently panic and pray that you're wrong. You silently sit up and glance at him. Every ounce of your focus is now put into appearing as calm and unbothered as you can, but your heart continues to pound and you wonder if Shikamaru can hear it.

"Alright, what did you want to talk about?"

Shikamaru turns his body towards your direction and takes note of your messy hair, dazed look in your eyes, and unclean appearance. As you watch him examine your appearance briefly, you feel embarrassed. You had neglected to bathe for a few days and you wonder if you smell. The back of your neck burns with shame as you wonder if he's repulsed by your smell. It doesn't really help that your room looks like grabage with how messy and unkempt it is. He looks around and sees clothes and papers strewn about everywhere. You feel blood rush to your cheeks and wish you could crawl in a hole to escape the awkwardness of the situation. You really needed him out. Now.

"I'm worried about you, sweetheart. Please just talk to me and tell me what's wrong. I want to help".

"What are you talking about?"

"Why are you so distant from me all of a sudden? Everyone is so worried about you! It feels like you're always in a different world than me. I never know what you're thinking and how you're really feeling. And you're clearly not taking care of yourself! I'm aware it's hard to do that when you're depressed, but you seem to be getting worse and I'm worried! Please just trust me".

"You can't. Because you can't understand what I'm dealing with".

Shikamaru lets out a gruff sound of frustration and scowls at you.

"Then help me understand, dammit!"

And all of a sudden, something inside you just..... breaks.

You slowly put your head in your hands as the tightening in your chest becomes so unbearable that there are now tears rolling down your face. Your vision is blurring. Breathing feels so difficult. You hear ringing in your ears. You hold your breath and gasp for air simultaneously to avoid making noise- a habit you developed as a child to prevent drawing attention to yourself when crying. Your shoulders violently shake as your body wracks from your silent sobs. Your face is slowly turning red, adding to your humiliation. You feel Shikamaru's faint touch on your shoulder recoil away from it immediately.

"LEAVE! GET OUT, I SAID I DON'T WANT YOU HERE!"

Your voice is shrill and watery as you make a beeline for the bathroom, and your face was still hidden away from his point of view.

For a brief moment, Shikamaru just sits there frozen in shock. He had never seen his sweetheart cry, let alone snap at him like that. He knew you were diagnosed with depression even before you two started dating, but..... things only seemed to be getting worse. Are your medications not working? Are you skipping out on it? What is going on and why didn't he notice something was wrong sooner? However, he quickly snaps out of his shock and speedwalks his way to the now locked bathroom. He knocks at the door.

"I'm not leaving. I love you too much for that, even if you're being unusually stubborn and childish right now".

God. You really don't deserve him.

There's a pause of silence before you finally speak up:

"I want to break up with you, Shikamaru. I'm done with this relationship. I'm so incredibly exhausted and I don't see a point of continuing this when I know it's not going to last. So please leave".

Now it was his turn to panic.

"....what...?"

#shikamaru x reader #shikamaru nara x reader #shikamaru #shikamaru nara #angst #shikamaru fic #shikamaru fanfiction #naruto #naruto angst #naruto x reader #sfw #tw: mental illness #tw: depression #depressed!reader #shikamaru smut #shikamaru x y/n #shikamaru x you

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

Note

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

#long post #anonymous #ask

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butwhatifidothis · 3 years

Text

So. Took a look into that fic @nilsh13 is going through the comments of. Dunno if I’ll actually go through the entire thing - 300k words is certainly a lot of words to read through, especially with it still updating, but I’ve read through/am reading through longer ones - but I jumped to the latest chapter to get a feel for where the fic’s at now.

I’m not halfway through the chapter and I have Words To Say lmao, under the cut

This is going to be as serious a critique about the sections I’ve selected as possible - I want to be clear why I think what is being written is not of high quality, pointing out specifically what I have wrong with it.

Here are some snippets of the fic (boldened), and following those snippets are my thoughts on them:

“My actions have caused immense turmoil, pitting friend against friend, mother against daughter, and brother against sister*,” muttered Edelgard, desperately trying to drive any hint of self-pity (emphasis mine) from her voice. “My best friend has been disowned by her family, Hubert and Ferdinand’s fathers are dead or imprisoned, and the woman I love is now deemed a heretic by the Church that once offered her shelter. The weight of my decisions seems to pull down all who are caught in the shadow of the Imperial crown.” The Flame Emperor gave Professor Hanneman a wan smile. “Whatever imagined slights you believe you have committed against me, they pale in comparison to the carnage my own words and deeds have unleashed.”

""I made my choice, the only choice I could make, and dragged this continent down to hell with me. It makes me a poor ruler, and an even baser person, but that was the path I knew I must take.""

“"It is funny you use the word ‘choice’, Miss Edelgard. When I resigned my title to study at Garreg Mach, I lost marriage prospects, became penniless outside of a small stipend…I even renounced the opportunity to have a family.” Hanneman smiled, his whole body suffused with melancholy. “Really, how could I dare to dream of bringing a daughter into a world this senseless and cruel, knowing that someday, she too, could be hurt in such a way? I…I would not survive it.” The man’s body shook. “I sacrificed those things, things I desperately wanted, because the chance to allow my sister to rest in peace was more important. And I would make that choice again, despite all that it has cost me. You are much the same.”"

"“But your sacrifices were your own,” protested the Emperor of Adrestia. “Thousands bleed for the choices that I have made, and sacrifice themselves for the cause that I have placed before them. There is a profound difference-“"

"“We are both wise enough to know a painful truth,” said the scholar with a melancholy smile. “No matter how grave the sins, no matter how many innocents suffer…there will be countless individuals who will defend the law not because it is just, or righteous, but because it is the law. They will permit a hundred Abysses, and a thousand women to be raped, and a million dead children, as long as such actions do not disturb their order.” He placed a hand on Edelgard’s shoulder. “To stand against such moral rot, knowing that the world will despise and vilify you for it, is the truest sign of not only a just ruler, but a good woman.”"

"The academic’s words blazed with the passion of both a scholar and a man who had watched his world crumble to ash. A man who had been forced to live in the remnants of a life forever altered by the cruelty of both society and of humanity. And yet he had fought, the only way he could, to make the world better. It gave the Flame Emperor new resolve."

"“I…” He turned and looked away. “I believe in you, Miss Edelgard. When I see you, and your determination, your spirit, your bravery in choosing not what is easy, but what is right…it reminds me of her.” Fingers clenched around his locket. “I will fight for you, in the way I should have fought for my sister, long ago. My strength is meagre, and my courage more meagre still. However, all of it is yours.”"

The author writes Edelgard as one trying to give pity onto herself for her actions, despite how negatively they affect her, due to the immense ramifications those actions have had on those both around her and those under her care. This is the appropriate response to someone who has done as morally dubious an action as starting and spearheading a war that has led to the deaths and suffering of countless innocent people, some of whom were undoubtedly already going through immense suffering without war compounding itself onto their already existing pain. She - rightfully - points as, as a negative towards herself, that she has forced thousands of people to sacrifice their lives, livelihoods, friends, family, homes, etc. in order to continue with her war. Edelgard's canonical self-justification - that she had no other choice to do this - is properly utilized, and further characterization is given to her when she herself recognizes that performing such horrendous actions on the people under her care makes her a poor ruler and terrible person. This is, in truth, a decent set-up for her to go onto a possible path of redemption or self-realization.

However, that progress is forcibly stopped and reverted by Hanneman justifying her actions and recontextualizing them in a morally good light. In fact, the entire story does this, as characters act wildly out of character in order for Edelgard to be seen as good in comparison to them. Focusing on the quoted lines, however, Hanneman relating him giving up nobility and going into momentary poverty - whether true to canon or not - to Edelgard's war actively paints her actions as something that she had a right to be making, which she does not, as they force others to make sacrifices for her cause. When she herself rightfully points this discrepancy out, Hanneman excuses her actions by pointing to another - supposed - source of turmoil and essentially saying "You are more right than x, therefore your y actions are not only better, but objectively good, and make you a good person." He says nothing of the inherent injustice of taking away the choice of the people to live as they want and fight for who they want as well as deliberately taking away any semblance of safety from them, and makes objective statements about Edelgard's moral righteousness despite her taking actions that would, by definition, make her moral righteousness a subjective matter at minimum.

Hanneman is projecting the image of his sister and his own personal sense of justice onto Edelgard, and thus sees her as just as much a victim of the war and society as everyone else. Edelgard is a young woman who has gone through trauma due to Crests, as was his sister, and he himself (in this story, though not within the quoted lines) wanted to beat the man who abused his sister to death, and so he sees Edelgard using violence as a means to achieve justice as not only not questionable, but morally good and brave, as he felt he was not brave enough to enact "justice" onto the man that caused his sister's death. Instead of this being settled, focused on, or even mentioned, despite its obvious nature due to deliberate connections Hanneman himself makes, it is used as a means to showcase that Hanneman is a, for lack of a better term, "expert" on what he is saying when speaking to Edelgard. He knows what it's like to want to force change, he has by-proxy experienced the apparent injustice of the Church - not human society, not his family's decision to allow his sister to be married off, not the man who caused her death's decision to discard her, but strictly the Church and only the Church - and so he can "rightfully" justify and excuse Edelgard's morally questionable actions and paint them in a solely positive light, with no nuance or gray whatsoever.

Edelgard, in the first quote, attempts to say her actions without a tone of self-pity, and yet the narrative itself pities Edelgard. She should be allowed to feel bad about her actions - not because they are causing unfathomable suffering on people who were underserving, but because they’re just hard decisions that she was good and brave to make and maybe she can feel a little bad for herself for making them. She shouldn't feel responsible for choosing to start the war - in fact, did she really have a choice, or did everyone else in society force her to? She shouldn't question whether she's a good person or not, because she simply is - no debate, no question. She is - “justly” - standing up against "moral rot"; that she does so with even more moral rot is irrelevant, because, according to the story, it is not as rotten as that she's up against, therefore it is no longer rotten in the first place. War has been completely justified, as it is now not the last resort of desperation that could only ever be morally grey at its absolute best, but an objectively morally white decision of an objectively morally white person who is facing an objectively morally black opponent.

The actions of other characters attempt to paint Edelgard as someone closer to the former, but I will - maybe - eventually go over how those characters are extremely mischaracterized in order to prop Edelgard as their moral superior.

#anti edelgard #Anti-edelgard #Edelgard critical #o captain my captain #<- borrowing nilsh's tag for this lmao in case I do end up continuing this #but yeah from just the latest chapter there are characters that 100% cheerlead for the pure righteousness that is Edelgard #so yeah that's... gonna be fun lmao

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starryfictionalgirl · 3 years

Text

If Fandom was a Cookie Store

I’ve seen a lot of pointless ship wars, and people complaining that certain types of fics are cringe and just pointless fandom discourse in general so I came up with this analogy to explain why most of this fandom hate makes no sense.

Imagine you’re out at a cookie store that’s giving away free cookies and one of the bakers is handing out chocolate chip cookies that they baked themselves.

You don’t say “Ew gross, why did you bake chocolate chip cookies instead of sugar cookies?” You just kindly decline their offer and move on.

Just because you don’t like chocolate chip cookies, doesn’t mean that nobody likes them or that people that do like chocolate chip cookies are weird. People just like and dislike different things and that’s life!

Just because more people in this store bake sugar cookies, and that sugar cookies are their most popular item, doesn’t mean that they’re better than chocolate chip, and that people shouldn’t be baking chocolate chip cookies for the store.

It’s a cookie store, not a sugar cookie store. So they offer all types of cookies there. People may prefer one type of cookie over the other, but that doesn’t mean that the less popular cookies shouldn’t be baked, or that the people who bake them are weird for not baking the most popular cookie.

Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that it’s inherently bad or that the people who like it are bad people.

Is it possible that some of the store’s customers and bakers that prefer chocolate chip cookies are bad people? Yes.

But does that mean that chocolate chip cookies should be banned from the store because a few of the store’s customers and bakers were bad people and they liked chocolate chip cookies, so everyone in the store that likes and bakes chocolate chip cookies instead of sugar cookies is a bad person? No.

We all have different preferences when it comes to desserts, and the same applies when it comes to fiction and by extension fandom. And those preferences do not determine if we are a good or bad person.

So if you wouldn’t harass a stranger because they baked chocolate chip cookies instead of sugar cookies, you shouldn’t harass a stranger on the internet for writing an AU or reader insert fic instead of a canon-compliant fic, shipping one pairing over another, liking one character more than another, etc.

You may not like chocolate chip cookies, but they’re allowed to exist and be offered in the cookie store.

If you walk into the cookie store and you see someone take a chocolate chip cookie instead of a sugar cookie, you don’t harass them asking them what they have against sugar cookies and that they’re a horrible person for not liking sugar cookies.

Just because someone prefers the store’s chocolate chip cookies over their sugar cookies, doesn’t mean that they hate sugar cookies in general.

Maybe this store makes them too sweet and they don’t like that, and the one across the street are less sweet so they like those better, so they get their sugar cookies from that store instead of this one.

You wouldn’t assume someone hates all sugar cookies for preferring a store’s chocolate chip cookies instead of their sugar cookies.

So why would you automatically assume someone is homophobic for not shipping a popular m/m or f/f pairing in a fictional story?

If you wouldn't judge someone’s morals based on what types of cookies they enjoy, you shouldn’t judge their morals based on what they enjoy in fiction.

So if you don’t like chocolate chip cookies, you don’t harass the kind person that baked them, or harass the other people who are accepting their cookies. You just ignore them and take your sugar cookie, and everyone in the store enjoys their preferred cookies in peace.

And people can like more than one type of cookie. Someone in the store might like both sugar and chocolate chip cookies. Or someone may prefer sugar cookies but see a chocolate chip cookie that looks really appetizing and give it a try and like it.

So if someone in the fandom typically creates content for a particular ship, character, AU, etc. but then decides to create something or support a creator who likes something different, that doesn’t mean that creator is a bad person.

Just because the baker typically bakes and offers sugar cookies, doesn’t mean they’re only allowed to bake and offer sugar cookies.

Maybe their friend bakes chocolate chip cookies and they want to support their friend by telling the customers to try their chocolate chip cookies because they bake them well and are under-appreciated! Or the baker may have found a really good recipe for chocolate chip cookies and wanted to try baking it themselves.

That doesn’t mean that they’ll never bake sugar cookies again or that they’re now against sugar cookies and will only bake chocolate chip cookies. Nor does it mean that they will now hate on anyone who ever bakes sugar cookies. They just wanted to try something different.

And if you really like how that baker makes sugar cookies, then odds are you’ll like the chocolate chip cookies they bake too!

So if you wouldn’t harass a baker for baking different types of cookies, you shouldn’t harass fandom creators for making content for or supporting different ships, characters, AUs, genres, etc.

In fact, why would you harass the bakers in the cookie store at all? They work hard to bake these cookies for everyone who doesn’t bake to enjoy.

Say the baker is offering you a free chocolate chip cookie. You like chocolate chip cookies, and decide to taste one. If you don’t like it, you don’t spit it out in front of the baker and tell them it’s gross and that they’re a horrible baker. You just smile and move on, then toss the cookie in the trash when the person who baked them isn’t looking.

If you did not pay for the cookie, you should not be upset if you think it’s a bad cookie.

The baker put in a lot of work to make those cookies and they’re kind enough to give them away for free. Those cookies are a gift to the customers for supporting the store so why would you complain that it’s not the type of cookie you like or that it doesn’t taste good if the baker didn’t ask for feedback.

If someone doesn’t ask for constructive criticism on their work, don’t give it to them!

If you don’t like chocolate chip cookies, then don’t eat chocolate chip cookies.

If you don’t like the fic, don’t read the fic.

If you don’t like the art, don’t like or reblog it.

They’re not bothering you by offering something in the store you didn’t like. Just ignore it and let those people bake and enjoy their cookies in peace.

And just because you didn’t like how the cookie tastes, doesn’t mean that every customer won’t like it either. Some of them will!

The cookie might have been too sweet for you, but there are people in the store who like sweeter cookies so they’ll love the ones the baker made.

But if you try the baker’s cookie and tells them it’s gross and then the baker tosses out the rest of their cookies, thinking that if that one was gross then all of them must not taste good, then no one else in the store gets to taste cookies they might have loved and the baker will be upset and not want to bake because they’re doubting their abilities.

Because if people say they hate what they make, why would they keep making it?

Some bakers in the store have more experience and are better bakers than others, but in order for the newer bakers to get better, they need to practice their craft.

If a baker asks you to try their cookie and asks you for feedback on it and you only tell them things that you didn’t like, then the baker assumes that you didn’t like the cookie at all and that maybe they shouldn’t bake cookies.

But if you tell the baker “I like the texture but it’s just a little too sweet” then the baker not only knows that their cookie isn’t completely terrible, but they know what to improve on for their next batch!

Critiquing fan works is the same way. If someone asks for feedback on a piece, don’t just tell them “It sucks” and list all the things you didn’t like about it without offering them advice on how to improve.

Also, what exactly you are critiquing matters.

If a baker asks for feedback on their chocolate chip cookies and you tell them “You should have baked sugar cookies instead because they’re better and I like those more.” That’s not constructive criticism, that’s you asserting your opinion onto the baker. The baker did not ask whether or not they should be baking chocolate chip cookies. They asked on how they can make their chocolate chip cookies taste better.

So if a creator asks for feedback on their piece. Don’t tell them their idea was bad, tell them how they can execute their idea better.

The customers are not in charge of telling the bakers what to bake for the cookie store. The bakers are going to bake whatever cookies they feel like baking and that’s all that’s going to be available to the customers.

If a baker is unsure of what to bake, they may ask the customers for suggestions. But just because they ask for suggestions, that does not mean they have to bake what the customers suggested if they don’t want to and they don’t have to bake it right away either.

Because unless you pay one of the bakers in the store to bake you a batch of cookies, the baker is not obligated to bake you the specific cookies that you want in a timely manner.

The same applies for fan works. Unless you commission a piece from an artist or writer, that creator is not obligated to tailor their works to your specific tastes.

Even if there’s something being offered in the store that you’re allergic to.

Lots of cookies have nuts in them, and some people can’t eat cookies with nuts because they’re allergic to them.

Say you’re allergic to nuts and you go into a cookie store and you see bakers baking cookies with nuts and people eating cookies with nuts. Do you think those bakers and customers are bad people for eating cookies that have an ingredient you’re allergic to? No.

Just because you can’t eat cookies with nuts, doesn’t mean that cookies with nuts are bad and that other people can’t eat them and that bakers shouldn’t be baking them.

The bakers putting nuts in their cookies isn’t a problem. Other customers who aren’t allergic to nuts eating those cookies isn’t a problem either.

The only reason it would be a problem is if you, someone who’s allergic to nuts, eats a cookie that has nuts.

And thankfully, this is why most bakers put labels on their trays that list the ingredients used to bake the cookies so that way everyone who has an allergy knows which cookies to avoid and which ones are safe for them to eat.

Not all bakers do this though. And if you’re allergic to nuts, and you eat a cookie that has nuts from a tray that did not specify it had nuts and you have an allergic reaction, then that’s the baker’s fault for not properly informing the customer about what they were eating.

But if the baker listed all the ingredients for their cookies on the tray and you saw that these cookies had nuts, and you, knowing you are allergic to nuts, choose to eat the cookies with nuts anyway and have an allergic reaction, then that’s not the baker’s fault. It’s your own fault for choosing to eat cookies you knew would harm you.

The fact that there were cookies with nuts in the store is not what caused you to have an allergic reaction. The fact that you chose to eat the cookie, knowing it had nuts, is what caused it.

And if you are so allergic to nuts that you can’t be in a cookie store that has cookies with nuts, then don’t go in the cookie store.

Have a friend go into the store for you and they’ll bring you the cookies that are safe for you to eat.

The same applies to fandom.

Just because a particular ship, character, trope, type of fic or art is probelmatic or triggering for you, does not mean it’s inherently bad no one else is allowed to like it or create fan content for it.

If you’re allergic to nuts, and a cookie store sells cookies with nuts, would you yell at the bakers and call them terrible people for baking something you’re allergic to?

Do you think that people who enjoy and bake cookies with nuts are bad people just because they enjoy something you can’t stand?

Would you harass someone and get all your other friends who are allergic to nuts to gang up on that person and bully them because they like cookies with nuts and eat cookies from the bakers that bake cookies with nuts?

Would you complain every time you go into a cookie store and see that they have cookies with nuts just because you don’t like cookies with nuts and say that the store would be better if it didn’t offer cookies with nuts?

No! You wouldn’t would you?

So then why are people getting hate for shipping pairings, liking certain characters, or creating fan content that some people have a problem with.

You can mute words on twitter, you can filter tags and words on tumblr, and you can filter tags on Ao3.

So if there’s particular content in fandom that you don’t care for, you don’t have to see it! But it’s allowed to exist.

You’re allowed to not ship pairings or not like certain characters or tropes in fan works.

But that doesn’t mean that no one else is allowed to like them either.

If you’re allergic to nuts and you don’t think that people who like cookies with nuts or bake cookies with nuts are weird people who shouldn’t shop and work in the cookie store, then why do you think someone is a bad writer because they write reader insert fics or someone is a weird person for reading a reader insert fic.

And if you're allergic to nuts, you don’t demand the people in the store to write essays to justify why it’s morally okay to like cookies with nuts.

So why would you demand that people who ship pairings and like characters that you deem problematic to write metas to try to prove you wrong and be allowed to ship the pairing they ship or like the character they like?

The bakers in the cookie store do not need to justify why they like to bake the types of cookies they like to bake.

And the customers in the store do not need to justify why they like some cookies better than others.

And if you are allergic to nuts, then you do not have to justify why you are allergic to nuts and try to make other people who like and bake cookies with nuts feel like bad people for liking and baking cookies with nuts.

Bakers are not obligated to justify why they like to bake the types of cookies the like to bake, and why they think the types of cookies they like to bake are better than others.

And customers are not obligated to justify why they prefer to eat certain types of cookies over others.

They have their reasons for their preferences, but they do not have to share them.

And just because they think one cookie is better than another, that doesn’t mean they have to find a reason for the cookie they don’t like to be bad so that they can justify why they don’t like that cookie.

Something doesn’t have to be problematic for you to not like it, you’re allowed to just not like things.

We don’t judge bakers and cookie lovers morals based off of the cookies they like to bake and eat, so we shouldn't be judging the morals of people in fandom based off of what aspects of it they enjoy.

The customers are not the ones who decide what types of cookies the bakers bake. The bakers decide what cookies they want to bake.

And if there’s a specific type of cookie that you want, and no baker bakes it the way you like it, then either pay a baker to bake it the way you like, or get yourself an apron, head to the kitchen, and make it yourself.

If everyone can get along baking and eating the types of cookies they like in the cookie store without any drama, I don’t see why we can’t do the same in fandom.

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queenangst · 3 years

Note

YOU COULD’VE JUST REPLIED ‘STOP’ TO MY COMMENTS INSTEAD OF FREEZING THEM I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN IT, PRICK

I was going to reply to one of your comments on AO3, but I suppose I'll do it here since you've sent me this. Whether you see it or not, read it or not, take it into consideration or not—that's up to you.

To respond to this ask specifically: what about freezing comments is me encouraging you to continue? To be clear, I chose to freeze those comments because I didn't want other people to respond to the threads, but I also froze your first comment—which didn't stop you from leaving two more on pick yourself up.

I hold no contempt for you. I have said it before, but I don't care if you (readers) dislike my works, aspects of my works, etc. That's fine. I understand not every fic is going to be everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay. But what I don't understand is how you failed to see how disrespectful you have been to me as a writer.

For a fic I wrote specifically about management Izuku and hero Shinsou, to focus on themes of heroism and failure and so on, the only thing you remarked was that I should write a version of this fic for Bakugou and Izuku. This story is not about them, you know that. But you shouldn't imply that a BKDK version would be better. You shouldn't demand, multiple times, for me to write another version of my fic. You could have shared this in a polite way. You could have said you loved the concept, and that you think it would also be interesting with management Izuku and Bakugou. Instead you spammed me, sounding entitled and demanding (not only to me, but to multiple writers who I spoke to initially). If I wanted to write a fic like the one you suggested, I probably would have. If you'd brought it up even a little more politely, as someone who enjoys Bakugou & Izuku, I might have thought about it. But multiple demands definitely did not endear me to the idea.

For that note, I also already do requests and commissions sometimes. If you had bothered you might have known that, and you could have asked when they're open, or even just asked me now in general what I thought of the idea. I write things I enjoy; but I also enjoy writing for ideas that other people share for me, that I may not think of. But those start with people respecting my work, my time, and me as a writer, with no expectations that I might actually write if I don't feel up to it.

After those comments, you then went through multiple fics and: critiqued my characterization because it doesn't fit your personal view of Bakugou, called that critique constructive, emphasized ships (Kiribaku, Bakubowl) at me, told me to write more, and bashed a character/s (All Might, and by implication, Izuku).

I understand that not everyone gets when they're being rude on the Internet. So I'll explain: my characterization is my choice, by my preference, and you were critiquing me because how I write Bakugou doesn't align with how you see him. Because he's not, to pull from your comment, harsh enough. (Does Bakugou have to be mean all the time? Doesn't he change, develop, and grow? And have more than one aspect to his personality?) And I didn't ask for constructive/criticism. If I wanted any, I would have stated so. You could have at least asked first if I did, if it wasn't clear. Following that, I think I make it very clear in my works and in the tags that I write about platonic relationships. Focusing on my work through ships (though yes, you ARE allowed to interpret something as romantic, I can't stop you and that's up to you) is disrespectful to me as a gen writer. Again, if I wanted to write ships, I would. And then you said All Might, a character I clearly like, sucks (character bashing, not criticism) and also implied Bakugou would be better with OFA. On a fic that is All Might & Izuku centric, where Bakugou isn't even there. On top of all of that, very, very little of your comments are about the fics themselves, and mostly about what you, the reader, wants. Which is, apparently, not what I write. Again, you don't have to like my work. You are welcome to have your own opinions. But if you don't like what I'm writing: don't read my fic, don't comment on my fic, ask me to write something else when I have requests or commissions, find an author you do like better, or even write it yourself. I encourage you to do so!

I don't know how else to explain the ways you have been rude to me as a writer. I shared (some of) your comments so people would see what not to do as a reader, and others because it was frankly a little ridiculous and I wanted to make light of a situation that while wasn't hurtful to me, was completely baffling. I blacked out your name and froze the comments for you—because I was worried other people might go looking, and regardless of what you said to me, I wouldn't like to encourage people to go after you for something that doesn't even offend me. Because yes—a lot of people agreed that you were being very rude. I stopped sharing them because I saw it was spreading, and I didn't want more people to get on your case. And once I saw they were picking up attention, I wrote a disclaimer that mentioned what I just said, and also states something I think is a good ending point: I'm not here to post hate about commenters. But if there is a comment that makes it off AO3 and onto my blog, then there is probably a reason why.

Addition: I dearly wish that you are kinder to other writers than you are to me. And I hope that whatever circumstances you are in that lead you to saying anything you have to me change, for your sake. And I hope everything is kinder to you, too. Continue reading my fic, continue commenting if you want. Hate me, be rude. That's okay. But I won't say anything more to you. I have said what I think you could listen to, and keep in mind that other writers might be hurt by what you comment and how you say it.

#asks #anonymous

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dreadfutures · 3 years

Text

aight let‘s talk ao3 tags again

the very nice tag wrangler I’ll be quoting from has given me permission to share their kind and thorough responses (all bolding/emphasis is mine) without identifying information. and we very nicely go through some of my own tags from my long fic Dead Pasts, Dread Futures. Many, many thanks to this wrangler for explaining so much to me.

Anyway. I present these discussions as a peacable offer of: these are many writers’ concerns, and they are valuable, and worth considering. don’t dismiss concerns about the tag limit off hand, and don’t insist that edge cases don’t matter.

tldr; at the moment, after all this discussion and back and forths and bullying, I still believe that having 75 tags, period, as the limit across ALLCharacters/Relationships/Fandoms/Additional Tags penalizes longfics. Period. If it were even a limit of 100 tags, or broken down by Tag Type, it would be a little more forgiving. For advertising and for content filtering purposes, it only helps writers and fic visibilty to be specific and thorough in tags. A limit like this just so clearly has the potential to negatively affect large fandom/large ensemble/long fics.

It feels like this decision is being very broadly based on a "for the majority" mindset, which has never been what AO3 is about, without actually physically looking at the kinds of fics it will affect. The tag system on AO3 has been able to give fic filtering and reader-judgement a nuance that no other platform has accomplished, and longfics and large ensemble fics still, I think, depend on that as both a courtesy and necessity. I saw the rough math someone did and know that almost all fics currently on AO3 are <25k or something like that, and sure, for the average oneshot, or for even a fic <100k, a tag limit that's very strict across all tag categories probably won't be felt at all. But it's clearly something that people who write certain types of fics, and take them very seriously, will feel. Like I genuinely don't want to have a million tags. I want to tag relevant content that allows potential readers to filter & include & exclude my fic as they so choose, but also, if it does show up in their search, I want to give them the information they want to be able to decide if they want to read my fic or not. I don't want to have to put all my content warnings into a giant summary, or into a giant author's note that grows and grows. The tags have been a very helpful way of accomplishing those. Being able to cut down on parallel/synned tags is great, but it still seems like longfics that deal with multiple fandom entries, large casts, and require content warnings will butt up against that limit very quickly.

tag limit discussions:

- long fic writers adding tags as they go

- writers of franchises with many installments and ensemble casts

- writers with extensive content warnings

- use of tags to clarify a filtered tag

- use of tags to demonstrate how content is handled

off the bat - stop being jerks

look, I know objectively fics don’t need to be tagged at all. I lived in the wild west, too, when “lemon” meant anything from the merest mention of arousal to an explicit vanilla sex scene to all out dead dove craziness. a large part of me still is of the opinion that readers should just read shit, and if they decide they don’t like it, just dip. but that’s not what we’re about here. tagging is a kindness that we voluntarily undertake, and it’s also a form of advertising.

tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes

(that’s one of the cruxes of the arguments both pro-shippers and antis make: you can filter things! But you can only filter things if they’re tagged.)

I also understand that a few asshole writers have ruined this for all of us by purposefully adding so many tags it slows down the site and makes pages fail to load and hides other fics because the tags take up 10 pages. i also am frustrated with kinkmemers who just have prompt fill fic dumping grounds that span multiple unrelated fandoms and are impossible to navigate.

...the answer is not to suggest to writers that we put all our content warnings and pairings and etc. in our summaries, or our A/Ns, or to insert a first chapter that is a placeholder summary/tags page/world state. tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes.

I also have been dealing with people being murderously angry, and super self-righteous and targeting and mean about my own tags, and tags in general. people who are anti-tag are being giant fucking dicks about it. like get over yourselves and let’s just talk about a website function lol. tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes.

THE ANSWER IS NOT TO GET RID OF TAGS.

Alright, so now that we’ve gotten that flippin’ straw argument aside.

The next thing anyone has been doing is going to my page and critiquing my tags. Let’s address redundant tags.

(the wrangler has done this nicely! no ridicule necessary!)

using my fic as an example:

If you tag your fic Female Lavellan/Solas (only), it will show up in the following searches: Inqusitor/Solas, Female Inquisitor/Solas, Lavellan/Solas, Female Lavellan/Solas. If you tag your fic Inquisitor/Solas (only), it will show up only in the Inquisitor/Solas search and in none of the others. If you tag with the most specific version, it will show up in the more general versions, but not the other way around. So there's no real reason to tag with the more general tags.

Though I will point out that if you don't use the canonical tag and tag your character or relationship with a custom name it will be synned to the nongendered version, because at some point the DA wranglers decided that they didn't want to make gender assumptions. So "Annabelle Lavellan" will be synned to "Lavellan (Dragon Age)" rather than "Female Lavellan (Dragon Age)", and someone searching for works with specifically "Female Lavellan" won't see it.

Response: In the fanfic writers server I'm in, we've talked about how tags work and are supposed to work extensively in the past. There's just always been a lot of confusion, which I think has been added to when people go and try to double-check for themselves and find instances where this treeing/synning is broken. Someone put out this guide (also here) for AO3 meta text this year, which has been referred to by multiple people in the server, and it says:

What if you wrote a fic for something where there's a movie based on a book, but the movie's really different, and you've used both things that are only in the movie and things that are only in the book? In that case you either tag your fic as both the movie and the book, or see if the fandom has an “all media types” tag and use that instead of the separate tags. If the fandom doesn't have an “all media types” tag yet, you can make one! Just type it in.

“All media types” fandom tags are also useful for cases where there are lots of inter-related series, like Star Wars; there are several tellings of the story in different media but they're interchangeable or overlap significantly, like The Witcher; or the fandom has about a zillion different versions so it's very hard, even impossible, to say which ones your fic does and doesn't fit, like Batman. Use your best judgement as to whether you need to include a more specific fandom tag such as “Batman (Movies 1989-1997)” alongside the “all media types” fandom tag, but try to avoid including very many. The point of the “all media types” tag is to let you leave off the specific tags for every version.

Which I believe is in direct contradiction to guidance to use the most specific tags, so that's definitely one source of confusion. The most recent ao3 meta text guide (https://archiveofourown.org/wrangling_guidelines/2 I think this one) doesn't present itself in a way that makes this clear for writers tagging their own works. The way authors usually go about tagging things (and what's in the FAQ) is to start typing into one of the boxes and look for what populates the drop down, which doesn't lend itself to knowing that there are trees, or knowing what tags are interrelated (it seems like a whole grab bag of tags get suggested, some in-fandom and some outside of fandom, some canon/parent/meta and some children/random freeform, in just about any field you start typing in).

I'm not sure what can really be done about this. Many of us have turned to ao3-comment-of-the-day and their posts about using Tags, and various sources on google, and have clearly come up with a whole load of conflicting advice.

Fundamentally, finding parent/meta tags for a tag as you’re tagging a fic is NOT clear to writers. The fact that a nested and a meta tag can both be suggested one after the other when filling in tags largely contributes to redundant tags.

Writing for Multiple Fandom Entries

Here’s what a tag wrangler had to say about my fandoms:

As with the relationship tree, you can look at the fandom tree here: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Dragon%20Age%20-%20All%20Media%20Types and see how the fandom tags are related. Going back to your story Rogasha'ghi'lan as an example, it's tagged with Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: The Last Court. But as I said, you only need to tag with the lowest relevant level(s) on the tree in order for your fic to show up under the higher levels. So if you tag with Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dragon Age: The Last Court, it will show up not just under those categories, but also under Dragon Age (Video Games) and Dragon Age - All Media Types. And of course because you've tagged with the specific, if someone searches under, say, Dragon Age (Video Games), but doesn't want Inquisition or Last Court fic, they can use the exclude filter to show only the earlier games.

(So that's two more tags you can remove with no effect on searchability!)

In my (but not only my) own case, I am indeed writing for Origins, DA2, Inquisition, and Last Court extensively within the same fic, so I should be tagging for all of those, specifically, still. In order to make sure my fic is seen by the correct fans, I need multiple specific tags.

Longfic Tag Bloat (adding tags as you write a fic)

And like many other longfic writers, even if I narrow down my character tags only to those with dedicated character arcs longer than 5 chapters, I still have Loads & Loads of Characters (including Dalish from the Chargers!).

A lot of longfic writers I know add characters, relationships, and content warnings as they go along.

At 170 chapters/580k words, Dead Pasts had a ton of important relationships (for example, like Vivienne & Lavellan), and as a story it's nowhere near done. I found myself planning an arc from 171 onward that would introduce a very important relationship (Felassan & Lavellan). This is how longfics end up with so many, many, many character tags and relationship tags, which is another major criticism people seem to have about "people who abuse tags."

A solution that people propose online is "split your fic." Which is actually what I ended up doing...but the old relationships and fandoms from DPDF still apply to Rogasha'ghi'lan, so Rogasha'ghi'lan will have the same number and more tags than DPDF.

If I hadn't split the fic, I would have just kept adding tags to Dead Pasts...and still had the same problem of continually adding tags. They're not superfluous tags: someone who wants to see a plot that is deeply influenced by Vivienne & Lavellan will find that in my fic; someone who is looking to see a major Felassan & Lavellan friendship grow and drive plot will also find that in my fic.

My fic is long; there are other fics that are longer, or are going to be longer, with casts that are just as large or larger, with many relationships, and that's not even talking about content warnings.

Polycule / Relationship Tags

"Tagging a polycule like Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan requires four tags: Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, Bull/Dorian, Bull/Lavellan, Lavellan/Dorian"

This assumes that people who like Lavellan/Dorian will want to read Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, which is often not the case. If your story Is Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, tag it that way! It doesn't make any sense to me to tag with the pairs as well unless the story would be of interest to people who read for that pair, or unless that pair relationship is a big step in the story (like, if you have established Lavellan/Dorian, and then they bring in Bull, you might tag for both that pair and the trio). I mean, you can tag how you like, there's no requirement that tags correspond to content. But for me, personally, if I search on Dagna/Lace Harding (I am weak for dwarf women!) I do not want to get a Dagna/Lace Harding/Sera fic.

My personal tastes don't include poly fics, but several writers I know who write poly fics are adamant that: tons of readers will not know of the possibility of the poly fic until it shows up in a search result, and the individual relationships often are significant to the fics, especially in fics that are not oneshots. For example, a great number of "fav fics" are stumbled-across! We aren't interested in the Sera/Dagna/Lace polycule ourselves, but someone might not have considered it, found it, and said, "Hey! That's my new favorite." But if polycules are segregated and only searchable by the polycule itself, alas, what's the option for visibility at all if not tagging it as Lace/Dagna in addition?

Additional Tags

Knowing when something is a "character" and when something is "additional"

Knowing that "Warrior Lavellan" (or the [Name] Mahariel) would be more useful in an Additional Tag vs. a Character Tag is also something I'm not sure how we're supposed to know? Like, I'm glad to know it now, but it's definitely not at all obvious without you telling me why it would be more useful in Additional vs in Character. Especially when to me: Warrior Lavellan is a character, and the fact that it populated the Character tag for me says that it's a Character. Because like I said, the guidance has been: start typing, and if it appears in the drop down, use it. Or, for example, my friend has the Well of Sorrows personified as a Character. Like an actual character. Does that have to go under Additional Tags, or as a Character? How do I know?

Additional tags as tone/content indicators

A lot of writers / readers have approached the Additional Tags as a surface-level overview of understanding how an author is approaching many topics concerned in the fic. Like, Vivienne is a character in my fic, but specifically I am Vivienne-positive, which I feel is important to denote because she's important to my fic, and she's a divisive character. Mood/tone/theme indicators like "Pro-Vivienne" or "we are Vivienne-positive in this house" (or like Male-Female Friendship, or "Expansive Lore" vs "Lore - Freeform" which denote different things to me) in tags (which in the comments section on the ao3 blog post get derided as "chatty tags") are still important to me, though they're useless or far less likely to be used for filtering. (I had the thesis of the conflict of my fic: “empathy is the enemy of free will” “but hope is a choice” as “chatty tags,” among some that were more mundane but important: “sera shows up late in fic”)

More seriously, there are fics that have content warning tags for filtering purposes but also clarify those content warnings to give context to readers and allow them to make a decision whether or not the content actually fits their preferences, ie, one that specifies domestic abuse as a tag (which would be in the Additional Tags) for filtering purposes but also specifies "domestic abuse not present in x relationship" (which would also be in the Additional Tags, but is useless for filtering purposes, but is immensely helpful and demonstrably used by readers to decide if they're going to even bother reading the author's note of that fic).

People are also nervous that not being able to thoroughly tag content warnings is going to end up with unhappy readers amid all the purity culture flaming that's going on lately.

Like, personally I err on the side of "suck it up, reader, and just read and find out," for a lot of things (not talking about content warnings, but talking about mood/tone additional tags), but also, given that there is already a venue here to let readers know what they're in for...taking that away sucks.

I hate a giant fic summary as much as people hate 10 pages of tags, but at least one can hide tags in their preferences, and likewise the thought of starting a fic up front with a giant author's note that gets continually updated with content warnings also isn't super appealing. Leading with a giant author's note that lays out: this is my world state and this is my character's spec and this is my character's background so you know how I'm going to approach this and these are all of the content warnings for the fic as a whole, just feels like getting into "My Immortal" territory. There's definitely a balance to be had between the art of writing a summary, what to include in an author's note, and what to include in tags, but this still seems like it's going to be fairly limiting for writers in these large franchises, especially for longfics that span a lot of topics.

Like I genuinely don't want to have a million tags. I want to tag relevant content that allows potential readers to filter & include & exclude my fic as they so choose, but also, if it does show up in their search, I want to give them the information they want to be able to decide if they want to read my fic or not. I don't want to have to put all my content warnings into a giant summary, or into a giant author's note that grows and grows. The tags have been a very helpful way of accomplishing those. Being able to cut down on parallel/synned tags is great, but it still seems like longfics that deal with multiple fandom entries, large casts, and require content warnings will butt up against that limit very quickly.

#ao3 #ao3 tags #long post #writing #look i really don't want to engage with anyone else but the amount of dimissive takes #and bullying #i see on my dash / have been targeted by / my friends have been targeted by #when we're trying to be conscientious?#is ridiculous #i'm just going to leave this here

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drop-the-not · 3 years

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Drop the Not! Rules

Drop the Not! is a multi-fandom fanwork challenge where authors create written fanworks that are prompted or inspired by oral not!fic. An oral not!fic is a type of podfic not based on existing text, such as a fic. It is often improvisational or conversational in tone.

This challenge follows the idea of reverse big bangs and prompt communities, but puts a unique spin on things. Here's how it works:

Oral not!ficcers submit their prompts or inspiration in the form of oral!not fic, and writers claim individual oral not!fics and create a story inspired by the not!fic. The claiming period happens over three weeks, and then writers have five weeks to write a minimum of 1k based on or inspired by the not!fic. In some cases, the oral not!fic may be very detailed and follow specific plot lines with specific characters and in some cases the oral not!fic may be more general, similar to the "I wish someone would write me a fic where..." prompts.

Not!fic can be as detailed or general as the creator likes, but we do ask that writers clearly honour the spirit of the not!fic to the best of their ability. This means that things like fandom, characters, and setting should be similar. We won’t be policing how writers are inspired, or how they take the prompt, and the work an author produces may be very similar or radically different from the podfic they received. That’s part of the joy!

This challenge was inspired by the remixapod challenge. We sincerely thank the Remixapod mods for their encouragement and advice!

Check out our AO3 collection here!

Authors: Your mods have created an example if you’d like to see one. We’re in no way holding you to the same style or level of detail, but wanted to provide this if needed. Feel free to put your own interpretation and spin on the challenge. We're so excited to see what you all create!

Challenge Timeline:

Monday, March 15 - Monday, April 5: Not!Ficcers submit not!fics

Monday, March 22 - Monday, April 12: Authors claim not!fics

Monday, May 17 (10am US Central Time): Fics Due

Monday, May 24 (10am US Central Time): Fics Revealed

Rules:

1. All fandoms are welcome. This includes RPF.

2. Oral Not!Ficcers can submit up to five oral not!fics of any length. We cannot guarantee that any of your not!fics will be claimed.

3. When submitting a not!fic, please specify DNWs, hard triggers, and other rating requests (e.g. Teen or below) in the "description" box. This will allow your author to write a fic you will be able to read without getting triggered.

4. Authors may claim one not!fic at a time; in other words, you may drop a claim on a not!fic and claim another one in a claiming period.

5. Each fic must be at least 1000 words long. There is no maximum length.

6. When writing your fic, please avoid DNWs and other hard triggers listed in the "description" box (if any). If the "description" box includes a rating request, please respect it; for example, if the not!ficcer has specified Teen or below, then please do your best to keep the fic Teen or below.

7. There is to be no bashing of fandoms, ships, characters, tropes, kinks, and/or creators. If you engage in hate or character bashing, the mods will ban your participation and remove your work from the collection. That said, we recognise that there can be a lot of harmful content in fandoms or canons, and we want people to feel safe naming and critiquing racist, ableist, or otherwise oppressive content within canon or fandom without fearing banning, If you are unsure whether something crosses the line from criticism to bashing, please feel free to contact us for more guidance, and if you do include critical content in your fanwork, please tag accordingly.

8. Please use the Archive warnings as they apply. Alternatively, if you choose not to warn, please use the "Choose Not to Warn" option instead of the "No Archive Warnings Apply" option, as they mean different things.

#mod post #podfic #fanfic #challenge #fest #fanworks fest #not!fic

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onemoresoultothecall · 2 years

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so, I'm going to first make a few clarifying statements: I'm glad that trigger warnings are more and more prevalent/findable/accessible (through sites like “Does the Dog Die?” and authors posting on GoodReads and Does the Dog Die? now including book-related trigger warnings).

but also I'm continually seeing people go after creators for not making them even more accessible. if an author puts the trigger warnings on GoodReads, they haven’t done enough because they’re not listed in the inside cover. or a movie being given a negative review for content (because it was triggering - not because it was a bad portrayal of the content) even though a simple search before the movie would have allowed for an awareness that it contained that content.

growing up, I read and saw a lot of stuff that I wish there had been trigger warnings for. I read books way above my maturity level. I read books with incredible disturbing content. I started watching horror movies in middle school and saw some ones with pretty explicit content. and I love that now there are ways to find out what triggers are in movies and books, what types of content there would be, in order to make an informed decision.

and it seems like an off-shoot of purity culture that people are always pushing for more. like, again, it doesn’t matter that an author specifically put warnings on GoodReads and laid out the exact types of triggers and content in their book - they’re still getting flooded with 1 and 2 star reviews specifically because the content was too much and/or the people felt that it should have been included in the first page. yet there’s no responsibility taken for one’s own lack of research or cultivating ones own experience in consuming media.

I know there’s been a lot on the fan fiction front too and that’s it’s whole other discussion but that also makes me salty because, once again, I've always been someone who has been diligent in cultivating my own experience. I can remember there being certain tags for mcu fanfic that involved disturbing and triggering elements and you know what - I paid attention to those tags and did not read those fanfics and I had a great time. it did not ruin my ability to find fics I did enjoy.

we are so lucky to have so many different resources to help us find out if triggers are in different media we might consume. I just recently found that “Does the Dog Die?” now includes books as well - amazing, another way to find trigger warnings, if the author has not included them on the book page (which many of them do). this is a huge change from even 10 years ago (give or take, I know Does the Dog Die started somewhere in the 2010′s but was also just starting to grow at that time) where, outside of fan fiction being tagged or already knowing the plot of a movie/book, we would have had no idea of what we were getting into.

now we can look at most movies and know in an instant whether certain content is included - I've even seen movies on an opening weekend where I was able to see whether there were certain triggers thanks to Does the Dog Die? that's amazing. that’s a gift to help people make the choices that they need to in order to be safe while consuming media.

but attacking someone because you didn’t do your research, even though the information was there, is not okay.

(whether the particular trigger was handled well is a different thing - obviously if it was not handled well, that deserves critique. but saying that the trigger was there and you didn’t like it because you didn’t do your research is a whole ‘nother problem)

I think it also worries me because I just see this continuing. it almost feels like if authors, for instance, did take the next step and put a list of trigger warnings in the front of each book (which I'm also not saying is a bad idea - I'm just saying we shouldn’t be beating up authors who took the time to make sure that information about trigger warnings was present because it wasn’t in the exact way you wanted it) that people would then be like, “well, this content shouldn’t be there at all.” which I've already started seeing - “this Jewish author writes about Antisemitism - how dare they because it’s so disturbing” which is YIKES.

I could go on a lot longer about this but it’s on my mind this morning after finding out that an author I admire is being bullied and attacked on both GoodReads and Twitter for book content that is identified as being triggering because their tags weren’t enough and the triggers are Too Much.

#trigger warnings #books #movies

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