There Might Be More Than Just 2 Idiots But Otherwise Definitely Me.

ao3 is down. what am i supposed to do?? continue writing my own fic??? HA you almost got me!! absolutely not. u can't fool me ao3. i'm not falling for that trick.

Somewhere in my notes in the last few days I saw someone add some tags that I’ve been thinking about ever since. I wish I could find them again (or that I’d just saved their post at the time) because I think they made a lot of sense.

They were talking about how fanfic is becoming more and more mainstream while still remaining largely transgressive. It’s such an interesting dichotomy to think about!

On the one hand, you have sites like AO3 and realities like widespread high speed internet access being more and more accessible to larger and larger groups of people. This makes it incredibly easy for anyone at all to find and read fanfic.

On the other hand, you have the roots of fanfic. It was born out of marginalized groups such as women, people of colour, and members of the queer community deciding to take the stories that had been aimed at a largely male, white, heterosexual audience and inverting them into something they could enjoy and relate to. To this day, fanfic is a place where people write the kinds of stories that don’t get made into movies and TV shows. The kinds of stories that don’t get published or end up on the New York Times bestseller list.

Fanfic used to be written and shared in secret. People used to hide it. People still do hide the fact that they read or write it. But it’s becoming something that more and more people are becoming more and more aware of.

So now there’s a spotlight starting to shine on fanfic. People who aren’t looking for transgressive works are finding them where they always were. People who think the status quo is fine are getting upset when they enter a place where the status quo is constantly being upended.

The tags on that post that I can’t find made the point that popular media is curated and sanitized and stripped of most of its controversy in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. But that also makes that audience expect all media to be curated and sanitized in the same way. When they encounter the messy, controversial, ugly, radical, difficult things that people write in fanfic, they’re unprepared.

Fanfic isn’t big media. Fanfic authors aren’t being edited and filtered and polished - and nor are their works. The clash between the expectations of people new to fanfic and accustomed to popular media and the realities of what fanfic is and what it’s being written for - that’s part of this struggle that fandom is going through right now. It’s been going on since the beginning of course, but it’s getting louder every year.

I’m still thinking my way through this, but it really does make a lot of sense to me. If those were your tags, please let me know so I can credit you with the ideas at the core of this post.

And if you have any ideas for how we as fans can better introduce the newbies to the culture and expectations in fandom, I’d love to hear it. The better we can guide people into our space, the better they’ll fit in when they join it.

Good morning! I’m salty.

I think we, as a general community, need to start taking this little moment more seriously.

This, right here? This is asking for consent. It’s a legal necessity, yes, but it is also you, the reader, actively consenting to see adult content; and in doing so, saying that you are of an age to see it, and that you’re emotionally capable of handling it.

You find the content you find behind this warning disgusting, horrifying, upsetting, triggering? You consented. You said you could handle it, and you were able to back out at any time. You take responsibility for yourself when you click through this, and so long as the creator used warnings and tags correctly, you bear full responsibility for its impact on you.

“Children are going to lie about their age” is probably true, but that’s the problem of them and the people who are responsible for them, not the people that they lie to.

If you’re not prepared to see adult content, created by and for adults, don’t fucking click through this. And if you do, for all that’s holy, don’t blame anyone else for it.

I wish they'd get this message out there in every sport.

meempoweringme:

So Beautiful.

meempoweringme:

Isn’t this just precious.

Seems like a good first post. I would so watch this Disney movie.

So if I’m going to get chest surgery, I’m dealing with the harsh reality that my insurance will never cover it and that my credit is too shot to get a loan. Which means that I’m going to need to raise this money on my own. I’ll be getting a job outside of commission work. But...

Don't know what I'd do if I couldn't read. It'd make being a physiotherapist so hard. There's so much reading to do.

Reblog if you actually like reading.

OKAY TUMBLR. IT'S TIME TO SETTLE THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Reblog this if you pronounce “.gif” as “GIF.”

NOT JIF,

GIF.

And here is the link for the opposite.

WE SHALL SEE WHICH ONE PREVAILS.