@deer-two / deer-two.tumblr.com
I went off on Twitter about this for a while, so I’m just gonna extend that thread here giving a little introduction for context and trying to sound less aggressive (sorry, I’m very passionate about this as I am an English major). I’m not tagging it as ships to keep this off the ship tags.
purge of 2002? of 2012? what ARE those?
Oh, how quickly the past is forgotten.
They are part of the reason A03 is a thing now. Not the whole reason, but part of it.
The Great Purges of 2002 and 2012 are when ff.net got a wild hair up their ass about THINK OF THE CHILDREN and nuked any fic posted on there that was explicit. Thousands upon thousands of nc-17 smutfics were lost.
It’s what led to the creation of alternate hosting sites for smutty fic…AdultFanfiction was the one I went to…but thousands of fics would never be recovered.
Shit like the Great Purges and the Strikethrough of Livejournal eventually led to fans banding together to create A03, which I would have absolutely KILLED for when I was 15.
Back up ao3 was created by fans?
It’s…right on the main page.
I love this because I will bet you that persefv has read that bit we are all so inundated with hyperbole and advertising that says that the consumer is somehow in charge of whatever product they are shilling that we all just assumed this was another sales tactic.
But we’re not even… selling anything… *quiet sobs*
No ads. No subscriptions. No data selling.
We are the definition of “what it says on the tin.”
Is there any way to spread this info?
THE OTW WAS CREATED BY FANS SO WE’D HAVE AN ARCHIVE THAT WASN’T SUBJECT TO CORPORATE REVIEW.
Nonprofit, so that nobody could ever say, “this isn’t making enough money; it’s getting shut down.” (See: Geocities, Quizilla, Figment, G+.) With lawyers involved and a firm awareness of the legalities of fanfic, so nobody would decide “we’ve gotten a nasty letter from a megacorporation with lawyers, so we’re hiding because we can’t afford to face a lawsuit. (Jedi Hurtaholics, Trevizo’s Millennium site.) With teams, so that an argument between co-mods didn’t result in the destruction of a whole archive. (Gryffindor Tower, Detention.)
AO3 IS OUR SITE.
It is by fans, for fans. Fans do all the coding. All the legal paperwork. All the abuse/tos violation complaints. Fans make all the choices about policies. Fans decide how to run the fundraisers. Fans write the blog posts. All the volunteer staff are fans; all the people who train them are fans. Fans wrangle all the tags.
(And the other OTW projects, too. Fans manage the entries at Fanlore. Fans run the Open Doors project. Fans publish Transformative Works and Cultures.)
EVERYONE WORKING FOR THE OTW LOVES FANDOM. Wants it to survive. Wants it to be awesome for everyone.
(Knows that it can’t be awesome for everyone; some approaches to fandom just clash hard. But they strive to minimize those clashes as much as possible, because they love fandom.)
AO3 is not some company that decided, “we’ll make a site for fanfic and then…” I don’t know what people are thinking is the reason. Money? Data harvesting? Tax shelter? Amusement and pity?
Nope; AO3 was fans saying, “Livejournal sucks; we’re tired of this fucked-up ‘rebuild every three years’ garbage; WE NEED TO OWN THE DAMN SERVERS.”
That’s the “of our own” part of the name. OTW isn’t a “them” running the site “for us.” It’s “us” making places for “us” to share what we love with others of “us.”
Nonprofit, so that nobody could ever say, “this isn’t making enough money; it’s getting shut down.”
THIS IS WHY YOU CAN’T PUT LINKS TO YOUR KO-FE OR PATREON OR ADVERTISE FOR COMMISSIONS ON AO3
All of this hard work is dependent on them maintaining non-profit status
Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via rembrandtsw (via finkspiration)
“It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.”
Oh dang that is spot on!
(via rosalarian)
Oh man, so true!!!
(via tripperfunsters)
Remember when we had to read fanfiction on our desktops… Not even laptops. having to get get plopped down in the family computer room to pull up your naruto and yugioh self insert stories on lunaescence archives and fanfiction dot net with god & everyone watching you.
the dark ages
Cory Doctorow, “In Praise of Fanfic” Content (via dionetaofavalon)
Hey guys, sign my guestbook. // Please do not repost nor remove captions.
“where did this weird trope even come from?”
well, statistically speaking, probably star trek
pros of long fics: well thought out, character development, builds relationships
cons of long fics: impending sense that something is going to go wrong at any moment
They’re together and happy, but there’s still ten chapters left.
I have discovered that you do not need to build any tension into a fic in order to maintain suspense. Readers’ own anticipation of impending doom will maintain the suspense for you.
FANFICTION IS THE GREATEST FOR THIS THOUGH. IN ORIGINAL FICTION YOU HAVE TO MAKE THE READER CARE ABOUT THE PROTAGONIST, YOU HAVE TO WORK AT IT. IN FANFIC THEY COME IN CARING SO HARD THEY’RE PRACTICALLY ON THE VERGE OF ANEURYSM. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS HAVE FUN AND TRY TO PACE IT TO MAXIMISE THEIR EMOTIONAL RESPONSE.
i mean, you often don’t even have to introduce what the character is going to be traumatized by because everyone already knows because of a) canon or b) fanon, so as soon as they hear key words like “ice” or “cave”, they start going OH SHIT SHIT IS GONNA GO DOOOOOOOWN. it is honestly the greatest.
fanfic is also great, because you 100% don’t have to include any tension, and because people are already so invested in the characters, they are THRILLED to read that. THAT IS MAGICAL. YOU COULD NEVER GET AWAY WITH THAT IN PUBLISHED FICTION.
the deeper i get into fandom the weirder it is to me that Whedon-style nerdboys ever managed to convince people that the True Fans™ are the people who memorize shit and lord their knowledge over other people. like ok you know the exact dimensions of Batman’s cave penny. sure. but did you survive the HP ship wars? do you know how to customize your Ao3 search to filter out all the creepy and/or poorly tagged shit in the massive fandoms? have you ever gotten in a fight over SuperWhoLock? would you last more than ten seconds on _coal or FFA? have you felt the burning pain in your fingers as you scramble to bang out just a hundred more words before the exchange deadline comes down? can you do research to make your in-universe artifacts accurate? can you vid? can you edit .gifs? can you sew costumes and do makeup? like yeah ok you love Jace Beleren enough to know his backstory and all his stats but i’m sorry did you personally stitch what looks like over two hundred eyelets onto your stockings so you could cosplay Liliana Vess? fake geek girls my ass. get back to me when you can do something with the worlds you love other than memorize them.
So I’ve been thinking:
Yesterday a Super Junior text post went viral on Tumblr, a post retelling an infamous Strong Heart Choding Junior story, and there were so, so many new young fans asking ‘wait, is this for real? did this really happen..??? WHAT?’ and I realized the new generations don’t know SuJu - at all! They missed the time when there was Strong Heart, when SuJu used to go on these shows and tell this type of crazy stories, missed the heroic Dream Team episode they shot right after the fight and which helped them make up, missed the iconic Inkigayo incident which had fans in a meltdown and racking their brains trying to understand what went wrong for over a year(!) until members finally explained it in the above mentioned story. They probably weren’t given info about ‘it’s refreshing!’ game, about the airport fashion traditions, even classics like EHB, Full House or Intimate Note! But I bet they were instantly given Hate 101 about each member’s misstep with 5 different variations of exaggeration, reaching and taking out of context straight to space. And it’s so sad that the negative moment has been given a priority over 10 whole years of non-stop sheer fun, warmth, happiness the group had (and still has) to offer, of endless unimaginable antics the likes of which you haven’t seen with new groups, or how when a young group does something silly you smile to yourself remembering that time SuJu already did it on a crazier scale.
I don’t know what brought this on but I just find it so sad and such a pity that so many are missing out on Super Junior because of image and hate.
And I haven’t even said a word about their musical side yet.
shoutout to the way we nickname our own fics so much and p much call them that nickname exclusively (”the hellbeast” “the egg fic” “lots-o-handjobs”).
sometimes i see the title of an old fic and it takes me a minute to place it, like “that’s what i named the fake!married ot3, right. it has a name.”
Today I met a woman, whose age she did not mention because she is a lady, was buying a lot of Star Wars merch because we had it on sale. And she was telling me that she couldn’t wait to see the new one and how she was going to stay up and see the midnight release and take pictures of people in costumes. She was so excited, and then she leans in close:
“You know, all these young men at these conventions- they see me and they ask me trivia about this that and the other thing and I tell them- ‘Son, I went to see the first one in 1977 before you were even a twinkle in your daddy’s eye.’ If I don’t know the answer, its because I damn forgot.”
[#i'm getting flashbacks to draco in eyeliner and leather trousers fic] w...what...
okay so about 10ish years ago, for some reason (early/mid-2000′s emo/pop punk — this is the reason) there was an upsurge in fanfiction in which Draco dressed like a cross between Davey Havok and Ryan Ross. eyeliner, skinny jeans, fringe falling in his eyes, the whole shebang. this phenomenon usually occurred in oneshot lemon songfics (three terms that are no longer in vogue, which saddens me deeply). they varied depending on the pairing, but they were guaranteed to be badly-written, ooc, AMAZING THRILL RIDES.
imagine: WALL/FLOOR SEX, ALWAYS. “his length”, never anything else. tongues battling for dominance. no rimming or oral, at all, ever, because everyone on fanfiction.net was 13. “her core” (is she an APPLE?). Harry and Draco always bumped into each other while storming, angst-ridden, around the school at night, and punched each other with their MOUTHS. Draco and Hermione always became head boy and girl and had sex in a train compartment on the way to school (Granger had changed so much over the summer! Malfoy was so tormented and delicate!) OR, even better, in THE HEAD BOY AND GIRLS’ SHARED DORMITORY AND COMMON ROOM, which was a figment of the collective fandom’s imagination and came in so, so useful. I’m sure Draco and Ginny got up to similar shit too, probably titled “Fire And Ice” with a quote from the Frost poem at the beginning instead of Taking Back Sunday lyrics.
what else? AUTHOR’S NOTES were such a big thing, and sometimes appeared IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIC to explain something the reader might not have picked up on. the xD emoticon. “don’t like don’t read” pasted all over everything, usually preceded by something like “SLASH!!! BOYLOVE!!! BOY/BOY!!!” and “I suck at summaries!” EPITHETS, which unfortunately are still a thing, but were particularly horrendous and off-putting when sprinkled liberally throughout terrible Drarry fic. “the Slytherin.” “the Gryffindor.” “the grey-eyed boy.” “the green-eyed lad.” sometimes “the boy who lived” or “the rival seeker” — oh, and fucking “Dray.” DRAY. DO YOU THINK DRACO MALFOY WOULD EVER LET ANYONE CALL HIM “DRAY” AND LIVE TO TELL THE TALE?
in conclusion: it was the best of times/it was the worst of times.
(Author’s Note: I don’t feel at all bad mocking the shit out of this type of fic and its writers because I AM ONE OF THEM xD! I wrote terrible early 00’s oneshot lemon songfics. boy/boy! don’t like don’t read!!! the only one any I can remember with anything approaching clarity (thank you @mists of time) was called XO, after the Fall Out Boy song, and genuinely was about Harry and Draco angrily stomping around the school at night and bumping into each other, lengths-first xD. I am guilty of this bangin’ sin. *glomps Draco*)
I want to take some time to think about Soulmate AUs in broader social and historical context. (I’m sticking to the ‘first words written on your body’ version of those aus)
Thoughts on Society:
Pop Culture
Interpersonal:
It fascinates me because the idea is so much bigger than just meet-cute scenarios and fluff fics. It would change society from the ground up.
I want to write the one in bold a little bit.
I would love to read in-depth discussion about each of these ideas. Sadly, there’s not much available. What does exist, though, is discussion about fannish tattoos, which are voluntary physical marks of things we value. Transformative Works and Cultures has a couple of interesting articles on this topic by Bethan Jones, which you can read here and here.
I hate soulmate AUs because of all of the (often unintended) societal implications so this is a really interesting discussion
If you’re ever like “but what do fic writers even WANT.”
a book report
They want a book report.
They want you to get 9th grade English up in their shit.
Remember having to write ad nauseam about the symbolism of that stupid conch in Lord of the Flies? They want you to do that about Steve Roger’s shield and Emma Swan’s jacket.
WHoa seriously?? People WANT this? Holy crap, I always thought I’d be really rude to leave an overly long comment on something, or it’d just be super creepy for me to babble a load of emotional attatchment I had to their product, or all my wild fan theories which are probably wrong… I mean.. I know if I ever created something I’d wanna see comments like that, but I’m a weirdo and I haven’t even created anything anyway so what do I know? Umm.. yeah.. so… at my followers and friends and stuff: does anyone agree with this? Do I have permission to really ramble embarrassingly and honestly when I like your stuff, or would you prefer short and semi-rational comments?
I agree! I really like to read people toughts on my stuff, no matter the writing style.
I always LOVE knowing that readers understand why I chose certain ways of getting things across! I also love seeing which bits OTHER PEOPLE liked best! Since I’m the author, I’m biased. I either think my work is brilliant or I have crushing doubts.
So - whichever you want, or feel comfortable with!
YES
YES YES YES
We ABSOLUTELY want you to ramble at us! We put a lot of work into our writing and seeing someone love it enough to ramble about their reactions is EXACTLY what we want.
If you’re ever like “but what do fic writers even WANT.”
a book report
They want a book report.
They want you to get 9th grade English up in their shit.
Remember having to write ad nauseam about the symbolism of that stupid conch in Lord of the Flies? They want you to do that about Steve Roger’s shield and Emma Swan’s jacket.
WHoa seriously?? People WANT this? Holy crap, I always thought I’d be really rude to leave an overly long comment on something, or it’d just be super creepy for me to babble a load of emotional attatchment I had to their product, or all my wild fan theories which are probably wrong… I mean.. I know if I ever created something I’d wanna see comments like that, but I’m a weirdo and I haven’t even created anything anyway so what do I know? Umm.. yeah.. so… at my followers and friends and stuff: does anyone agree with this? Do I have permission to really ramble embarrassingly and honestly when I like your stuff, or would you prefer short and semi-rational comments?
I agree! I really like to read people toughts on my stuff, no matter the writing style.
I always LOVE knowing that readers understand why I chose certain ways of getting things across! I also love seeing which bits OTHER PEOPLE liked best! Since I’m the author, I’m biased. I either think my work is brilliant or I have crushing doubts.
So - whichever you want, or feel comfortable with!
YES
YES YES YES
We ABSOLUTELY want you to ramble at us! We put a lot of work into our writing and seeing someone love it enough to ramble about their reactions is EXACTLY what we want.
