Why did they delete this scene from A Scandal in Belgravia?? Mycroft and Sherlock sharing a laugh

wHERE IS THIS DELETED SCENE

you can find all the sherlock scripts here on the bbc writers website

The part that rips my heart out is that gorgeous look Mycroft gives to Sherlock when he figures it out. He goes all soft and smiley.

“Just hug already!” Was shouted at the screen right about then.

But they don’t. And you know they never will. That is all your going to get. Then they move on to targets and tie straightening.

It was beautiful. 😢💔

SO TRUE! Also, this:

That tiny ‘oh come’ on!’ smile of Sherlock’s - amused at his brother’s disregard of the very heart he’s so blatantly displaying here. So typical of the Mycroft he knows, has known all his life.

'Can’t handle a broken heart, how very telling.’

I love how Sherlock always sees through his brother’s facade. No wonder it makes him smile to see it being put up even at the very end. Old habits, old facades, same heart!

Ugh, I LOVE THESE TWO! :’)

The Lying Detective || The Final Problem

I´ve lately seen many young peeps in fandom spaces, worrying about openly shipping their ships because of what antis might do

so let me tell you something:

antis are huge losers who are gonna find something to hate you for no matter what you do

even if you ship EXACTLY what they ship, theyre gonna yell at you for "not shipping it right"

so, my piece of advice: just do whatever you want and tear up the house! antis are gonna hate no matter what, so ignore them and find some good companions by being yourself

Toastystats: Sherlock episode popularity over time on AO3

I put this together while working on a Sherlock chapter for my analyses about TV fix-its. I wanted to better understand how popular each episode had been overall in order to help give myself context for looking at the fix-its in that fandom -- and then I decided maybe others would want to see this data, too. :)

As always, click through to AO3 for more data, explanations, clarifications, and corrections.

ao3 users orphan_account and anonymous sure have some really banger fics ngl

Look, LOOK. My dumb ass thought for A WHOLE DECADE that orphan_account was a real person who tended to write some great, occasionally fucked up and often really spicy fic. The fact that you can't access the account somehow didn't seem strange to me. I even remember finding the account through seven separate fandoms and all my idiot brain could come up with was 'man, this person must do nothing but write fanfic' and for A DECADE I somehow didn't connect the fact that this is OBVIOUSLY where fics go when we talk about orphaning your works.

Anyway, orphan your works instead of deleting them! I beg you. Some of the best stuff AO3 has to offer exists on that account alone.

Do. Not. Delete. Your. Works. PLEASE.

Feed the orphan_account account instead.

So he’s not… I dunno - a criminal mastermind?

Close enough.

I don't think people realize that critiquing the media you enjoy is fun too.

Yes, you can tag your dark or triggery work on AO3 with the characters and ships that are in it

Okay, so I’ve seen enough purity wank at this point to notice a common slip of the fingers among multiple wankists that admits the main complaint: some people feel that tagging a work that has dark themes or triggery content in the ship or character tag that they follow on AO3 is akin to posting in a tumblr tag as an anti.

I’ll go ahead and clearly state: that is not true.

The tags on AO3 literally mean “X content is in here.” X may be a ship, a character, a trope, a setting, a fandom, a gender category, you name it. But that is literally all it means: “X is here.”

That doesn’t mean you’re going to like the X that’s in a given work. You might hate it. It might include your squicks or even your triggers. That’s okay - you don’t have to open it. The point of having multiple tags plus summaries on works is to help you make an informed decision. I break out into chills just thinking about opening a high school au. In some fandoms, that means there’s barely anything left. That’s okay. It’s not up to creators to make stuff that I like. It’s up to them to tag clearly and accurately so I can avoid stuff I won’t like.

(For the record, that includes both underage and character death, but I will absolutely stand up for anyone who wants to make those things in ships and for characters I love, because I don’t have to open them. Someone else out there does want those works, and that’s great. More power to ‘em. I’ll be over here buried in fluff and curtainfic, which I’m sure someone else out there hates.)

I have much more sympathy for those who complain that posters are tagging with ships or characters or concepts that don’t appear in the work or are only mentioned once, because that’s a case of tagging something that isn’t there on the screen, just in the creator’s head. But if something is there on the screen? Doesn’t matter what else is there with it. The work belongs in the tag.

Tags on AO3 don’t belong to a specific group of people. I have seen people be run out of tags by harassers dogpiling them, and I’m here to say that is not on. No matter how much you like a thing, the tag for it is not yours to decide who gets to use it and who doesn’t. Don’t like, don’t read. You have a scrollbar and filtering. Use them like a responsible adult.

(If you’re not an adult, don’t lie about your age to get through the age filter and then complain about what you find on the other side.)

The “anti” problem arose because Tumblr has no functional community structure, meaning people started using the tags themselves to replace the communities from back on LJ. In that context, tagging a negative post with the tags that apply was making the posts show up in the only viable community structure, which was a violation of LJ etiquette (where communities were self-selecting and moderated). This was exacerbated by the lack of functional cut tags, so everything was all completely visible, and you had to scroll past every post in its entirety. The culture of “don’t post anti in the tag” was a social concept developed to deal with Tumblr’s non-functionality for fandom purposes.

That’s unfortunate, but it’s Tumblr’s problem, not AO3′s. AO3 is not a blogging or social media platform. It’s an archive. It relies on a fairly unique tagging system that only works properly if posters tag fully. Don’t import Tumblr social norms about what belongs or doesn’t belong in a tag onto AO3; they don’t fit. All they do is break the tagging and filtering system by bullying people out of tagging fully.

Yes, Hydra Trash Party works belong in the Bucky/Sam tag if they are about Bucky/Sam (filter for removing all 8 htp works from Bucky/Sam). Yes, works about Derek Hale being Superman belong in the Supergirl tag (filter for removing all 2 Teen Wolf crossovers from Supergirl). Instead of dogpiling people, learn how to use the filters to your advantage. Here’s how to remove Hux/Kylo and Kylo/Rey and similar ships from the Star Wars TFA results, or remove the above plus Hux entirely. Seriously, I could go on all day. Ask me for any filtering need you have, and I will show you how to do it.

We need to stop harassing people for making what they love instead of what we love. That makes fandom a more awful place for everyone.

This is correct. AO3′s tags are descriptive categorizations. They are not a social space where a specific standard of taste needs to be maintained. Regardless of whether you think people should tag their hate on Tumblr or not, AO3′s tags are different.

‘You should only send hearts to ppl you’re romantically involved with’

WRONG! BOUNDLESS PLATONIC LOVE, WARMTH, AND ENTHUSIASM BE UPON YE!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I don’t like wading into Ao3 debates, but I want to give my professional opinion on Ao3 with regard to archives vs. libraries.

I am a professional librarian (MSLS) and I have worked in both archives and public libraries and a lot of the confusion and concern I see surrounding Ao3 is a fundamental misunderstanding of How Archives Work.

An archive is a collection related to a subject. That subject often a person but sometimes a field or concept or project. And the purpose of an archive is to keep everything. And I mean everything. I was going to say “short of biohazards” but since I know there’s a sealed R. Crumb Devil Gal chocolate bar in the UNC Chapel Hill archives, we really do mean everything.

When a collection of materials–which are usually unique and original and can be photos, manuscripts, letters, recordings (audio and/or visual), notes and notebooks, objects, published books, whatever–on and/or from the subject arrive at the archive, they are examined, preserved for longevity, accessioned and cataloged (added to the archive’s records), and added to the archive. You measure collections in linear feet. As in, once it’s all preserved and boxed and secure, you note how many feet of shelf space it takes up. And some of y'all on Ao3 have a lot of linear feet to your name (and I’m proud of you).

This is an archive: it is designed to preserve the original materials related to a subject. That is its purpose. Archives are how we have the original scroll manuscript of On the Road, for example, or the Lomax recordings of American folksongs, or Tijuana Bibles, or James Joyce’s loveletters to Nora.

Now you, a member of the public, can access some archives. Some are easier to access than others. The one I worked in was open to the public; good luck getting into the British Archives without a good reason.

So now apply this to Ao3–which is an archive both in name and in purpose. It is intended to preserve fan-created content long term. And this means everything, whether you personally like the materials or not. It is a repository for as much as possible.

And the “whether you personally like the materials or not” is important, hence why I mentioned Jim’s loveletters and Tijuana Bibles in particular. (RIP Jim, you would have loved pegging.)

If it’s made by fans and it exists, we should keep it to document the history and progression of fandom. That is the point. We have lost enough materials related to the subject of fans of media and we don’t need to lose any more.

The fact of the matter is that Ao3 is only one facet of the OTW, which preserves other fan-related materials (convention booklets and zines, for example). Somehow Ao3, an archive on the subject of fanfiction, has been divorced from the rest of the project, mostly by way of “purity culture” and panic over “dangerous” fiction.

The fact that you can go through an archive and find interesting information is the other side of archives. No, they shouldn’t be like the banker’s box of old letters stuffed in my closet. Yes, they should be organized and as accessible as is appropriate for the state of the materials.

It’s really, really cool to find stuff in an archive, I’m not even going to lie. I have done it before and I will do it again. And yet there are other items in an archive that I might not want or need or be interested in at all–but they’re still there. That’s the cataloging and accessioning: to keep up with what’s there, to stay “on topic” with collecting, and to be able to find things in that archive. Bless the tag wranglers who are doing the cataloging at Ao3.

The pearl clutching seems to come from 1. the creation of “dangerous” fanworks and 2. public access to those “dangerous” fanworks. These are issues of “purity culture” and opinions on censorship and should not involve Ao3.

Ao3, under the umbrella of the OTW, is a documentation and preservation project first and foremost.

Meanwhile: libraries.

We’re all basically familiar with libraries, right? A collection of materials designed to be used by the people who use the library. That’s the basics.

And that is not the same as an archive.

Library books, especially public library books, age like milk. I cannot tell you what a relief it has been to throw away dirty, smelly, stained, damaged, sand-in-the-covers books when a replacement comes in. I know there’s a Cult of the Book around here, but books are not all that inherently precious. The latest James Patterson novel is not a survivor of the Library of Alexandria (which was more of an archive anyway).

If a book is so rare that it cannot be replaced, it should be in an archive or a rare book collection and not a circulating library.

The first rule of libraries is “know your user population.” To use the example of public libraries, you need to know what books the people want to read (among other things).

Libraries, generally speaking, are more apt to adjust their collection to suit their users. A library in, for example, a prison is likely to have a lot of books on law. A church library will likely have a lot of religious books and, depending on the church, may not have any books by LGBTQ+ authors. These collections reflect their users (and also the controls or limitations placed on those users but I digress). A public library bookmobile taken to childcare centers will have a lot of children’s books. I have packed a bookmobile for that project so trust me on this one.

The news is full of challenges being laid against certain books in libraries–especially school libraries and public libraries. In some cases, the challenge may be valid. In most current cases, it’s really about exterting political and/or religious control over public institutions but couched in concerns about “the children.”

And, quite frankly, that’s what the “concerns” about what Ao3 contains feel like to me.

An archive with open and easy access to the public has been mistaken for a circulating library. A circulating library might adjust its collection to suit the wants, needs, and concerns of its user population. Ao3 is not a library. Ao3, Archive of Our Own, is an archive. It is designed for preservation and you, the user, can make use of its cataloging tools to examine the contents of the archive. It is not a circulating library. Things you don’t like or don’t want are going to be in archives.

@ufcosmo

Ao3 hate bot is going around leaving nasty messages. If you get a comment like this mark it as spam. According to comments it seems to be going to most recent not fandom specific.

And another post about it. Do spread the word guys.