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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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There is also also a difference between criticism and censorship.

What a lot of people seem to want AO3 to censor these fics that aren't perfect, or they do not like or they think are harmful, or they don't agree with. (I have a good guess who the virtue signallers will come after they come for the racists too). That is the slippery slope.

Criticism is good. Write a comment explaining why the story is wrong to the author, put on Tumblr a 'stay away from this story it is horrible in these ways (and list them)', or on all the socials. Get the word out it's not a good story.

Censorship is not. The point of AO3 was always that they weren't going to censor. As long as you tagged properly, so people could avoid what they wanted to, you were welcome.

I get that it's a hard thing to say, but, a racist work has the right to exist too (as long as it doesn't break laws, etc) even if it makes someone feel bad or the like. It sucks, but, in the US we still have free speech, and if someone is ignorant enough to believe those beliefs are ok (racist, homophobic, etc), they have the right to write about characters that way.

The hardest part of free speech (and the most essential) is to stand there and allow someone with an opposite opinion to speak too (literally speak, violence is not speech). It's not just AO3 and fanfic. We as a society have forgotten how to do this vitally important part of free speech these days.

For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King’s It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a trans man? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the trans men who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

#ao3 #words have become too imbued these days #people don't always know the right words #or take care with their words #sometimes people will say words and mean something different #the problem is that no one is given any opportunity to explain their words #they are simply put in a box #and disregarded #or worse #sometimes the wrong words are use on purpose #for ill #sometimes their not though #and because we all live in an immediate swipe left or swipe right world #where you're either for or against whatever or whomever #no one critically reads anymore #hence all the 'what's the tl dr' in this thread #🤦‍♀️

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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People just don't get it.

They don't get that it always starts with one.

It always starts with good intentions.

Always.

Sometimes the best intentions.

It never ever ever ends that way.

Hell, it happened, what, HERE a couple of fucking years ago? Not exactly the same, but, close.

Is a porn bot ban a good idea? Of course it is. But, who did it hurt, did it hurt the porn bots? Yeah, not really. It did hurt artists though. A lot of artists that I really liked just.... aren't on here anymore.

This AO3 shit. This talking about censoring this, or that, or whatever. It will not work how you all think it will.

When you let a group of people choose what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'. It doesn't matter how good natured they are. How much they want to do it correctly and well, it will never stop there. It will never ever stop at the first good intention. Ever. I'm fandom old I've seen this happen before. Seriously.

That's why AO3 was so damn amazing. Because there was no overarching 'BAD FIC, GOOD FIC' decision makers.

It meant that every individual got to decide for themselves what they wanted to read. No one was stopping someone from reading Anna/Elsa fic if they wanted, and, if I didn't want to (sorry, definitely don't want to), I didn't have to. It was fucking perfect.

And, now, I see in the fandom future that that is going to change. The idiots are just too loud for even something as usually stubborn as AO3 to stand up against them.

Fuck Vox too. That was a horrible fucking article.

#angry #will probably delete later #not like anyone will see it though #all 180 of my followers most of whom I'm pretty sure aren't even on here anymore #ao3 #fuck vox

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

Why is that important?

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a transman? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the transmen who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

#moderation #All I know is that no matter where it starts #no matter why it starts #even if it starts with the best intentions #no matter what #censorship of fanfiction will get to the lgbtq+ stories #always #you people who want think that it's a good thing #you think that it will be okay #we just need need need to moderate this one thing because #'gasp'#and it will be okay #just this one thing #but #it will never stop at whatever that one thing is #racist stories #too many tag stories #stories with kids #but I say again #that it will never stop at that one thing #whichever thing you think is just so so so so bad that it needs to be moderated #it will NOT stop there #ao3 was brilliant because it didn't moderate #period #and #when that stops on ao3 #no matter the reason that the moderation starts #it's the beginning of the end of yet another fandom place #i'm pissed #and sad

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Emmerdale Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Vanessa Woodfield/OC, Charity Dingle/Vanessa Woodfield Characters: Vanessa Woodfield, Charity Dingle, Johnny Woodfield, Diane Sugden Additional Tags: Original Character(s), TV Type Violence Summary:

Vanessa is back in the village to visit her sister and her new Niece. Vanessa brings a new person in her own life with her and Johnny.

Charity is still trying to recover from their break-up (not always in the best way) and her ostracization from her family, and the Dingle family.

Will they find happiness with each other, or with others?

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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That Vox article..... *sigh*

It's gonna happen again on, of all places, AO3.

It'll look slightly different than the previous purges on various sites, but the end result will be the same. It always is. A small # of people (the loudest) will get to virtue signal what is "right" to write and what is "wrong". Again.

Fuck.

#ao3

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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Yeah. They cancel Supergirl, we get an... unfortunate (and by that I mean I had more fun watching the frog storyline on Lois and Clark than watching that Pilot, and Superman has always been one of my favorite heroes) Superman show.

They cancel BL, and instead we get Painkiller... and it's not just CW making those choices.

CBS keeps the hellishly long in the tooth NCIS, and cancel NCIS New Orleans, the show with a lesbian, not to mention a much more diverse cast, not just skin color wise, but able body wise too, go Triple P! (Plus, the reason I'm most pissed... no more Necar 😩)

Then again, none of these 'networks' seem to really get it. Netflix the other day is all like... we seem not to have enough Latinx show on. No shit Sherlock, maybe don't cancel ODAAT? 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Black Lightning is powering down in 2021.

On Friday, the CW announced that the Cress Williams-led superhero drama’s upcoming fourth season will be its last. A reason for the show’s cancelation wasn’t given at the time of the announcement, but showrunner Salim Akil did release a statement thanking everyone who has watched and been involved with the show.

“When we first started the Black Lighting journey, I knew that Jefferson Pierce and his family of powerful Black Women would be a unique addition to the super hero genre. The love that Blerds and all comic book fans around the globe have shown this series over the past three seasons proved what we imagined, Black People Want To See Themselves in all their complexities,” said Akil in the statement. “Thank you to the phenomenal cast, writers and crew without whom none of this would’ve been possible. I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve been able to do and the moments we’ve been able to create in bringing DC’s first African-American family of super heroes to life for the culture.”

News of Black Lightning’s end arrives eight days after the CW and Warner Bros. TV announced that Akil was developing a spin-off centered on Jordan Calloway’s Painkiller, which would be introduced by a backdoor pilot in season 4.

“I’m very grateful to Peter Roth, Warner Bros. TV, Mark Pedowitz, The CW Network and Greg Berlanti for their partnership and support of my vision at every step of this journey. While Season Four may be the end of one journey, I’m extremely excited to usher in a new chapter and continued collaboration with The CW as we tell the story of Painkiller,” Akil said.

Black Lightning returns Monday, Feb. 8 at 9 p.m. on The CW.

#black lightning #supergirl #ncis new orleans #ncis #odaat

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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In the US SyFy had it. And one of those random over the air secondary channels. (El something?) I personally own all the seasons 'cause I'm a fandom old. And, 2 of those I did find second hand!

Hiiii where can I watch Xena???

I remember hearing that you could stream it on Roku. Other than that, I’m not sure who has it at the moment :(

I’ve been asked this before, so I’m gonna put this back out there and maybe my fellow Xena peeps can help you out :)

#xena #xwp #xena warrior princess

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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I'm pissed because, unlike all the other characters (newbie last season excluded), she never got a proper love story (Kara or whatever the hell her name is) this season is so pathetic it doesn't count. And, while I loved the 2 epis with the Russian assassin. That doesn't count either.

Pathetic. (They freaking had Bakula getting with his real life wife over the seasons even).

But, based on the history with JAG, NCIS, and the others in the Bellasario universe, not at all surprising.

CBS canceling the only NCIS with a canon gay character is homophobia

#so pissed #angry #not surprised #until the old white assholes die #there will be no change

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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Superman and Lois

Me. 🤐🤨

Lois Lane: Enemy of the people is better.

Everyone should go read that (Hoopla has it, libraries have print, etc)

Much much better, with a complicated family there too.

And.....

Lois gets to participate in the story too.... 🙄

And....

Lesbian Renee Montoya and a girlfriend subplot that rocks!

#superman and Lois #lois lane enemy of the people #lois and clark the new adventures of superman #was better #jon kent in the comic too #and lois is there for more than just her dad #ugh 🙄🙄🙄#renee montoya #dc comics

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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CAPTAINS + Superhero Landings

#hell yes

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weaverlegaspi · 3 years

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Lolita

Considered a classic even.

*shudder*

"ao3 is a rare gem in this social media dystopian hellscape" lmao when it the last time you've been outside? go read a real book

Hi there anon! I assume you’re joining me because you’re trolling the notes of the pro-ao3 post I just reblogged, looking for people to harass. Thanks for coming out.

The AO3 is a fantastic, Hugo award winning space built by fans, with the specific goal of providing a nonprofit space to archive fanworks. It has a history within fandom that is important and meaningful and protects fanwork creators, specifically authors, in a unique way. Its parent organization, the OTW, also does fantastic work in preserving and archiving fanworks and preserving and archiving fanworks is something worth doing.

It is also a big deal as the AO3 is not monetized. Their platform runs on donations, instead of using clicks to sell ad revenue. This means that creators’ work is not being exploited for profit, and that creators’ work is their own while the archive hosts it. In the current internet climate, that’s very rarely the case - most social media sites that don’t cost money run on a platform of marketing content for ad revenue in order to generate product, which means that their business model is based off of profiting from the unpaid labour of their user base.

Look, anon. I don’t know how old you are, but I’ve been in fandom and writing fic for nearly 25 years and I’ve seen platforms rise and fall more than once. The AO3 is based on work done by fans who have a similar kind of institutional, historical knowledge about how fandom as an entity has grown and transformed. These fans have learned where the gaps in the system are and have built something beautiful to fix it. The archive is a testatement to thousands of volunteer hours and love and attention to detail and hard work and it‘s an example of what fans can do when they come together instead of getting bogged down in shitty trolling. It fits into a niche that nothing else does, it’s usable and organized and accessible and there is nothing else like it. It is a gem.

I see that you’re currently in a place where you really just want to attack other people, anon, so we’re probably not going to have a productive discussion about this. But I would encourage you to take a step back and stop focusing on being angry and using that anger to destroy things without thinking about what you’re doing.

If you and your buds trolling the archive are doing so because you don’t like the way that AO3 runs things, you’re welcome to migrate your content to another archive or start an archive of your own that markets to the content you prefer! But you don’t have to tear down a space that’s serving other fans well in order to do it. The internet is a big place.

In conclusion, anon, thanks for the feedback. Go fuck yourself.

#ao3 is amazing #ao3

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