Fandom PSAs

Dont’ Like, Don’t Read

or DL; DR

Addendum:

Yes, for this to work, creators need to tag their works accordingly, so that people know what sort of content they are about to engage with and can nope out if necessary.

I will probably make another PSA about the importance of proper tagging later.

Ship And Let Ship

or SALS

Addendum:

”I agree with this, except when…”

No, then you are NOT agreeing with this.

Let me make this VERY clear. There are NO exceptions. None.

You don’t EVER harass real people over pixels.

If you disagree with this, kindly block and move on.

Your Kink Is Not My Kink

or YKINMK / YKINMKATO

Be Kind

or Don’t Be An Asshole

People know that the whole "don't portray [harmful action] because viewers might recreate it" thing is a rule for children's shows right? It's supposed to be shit like "don't show peppa pig playing with fire so we don't get sued if a kid watches it and burns their house down." Not like, fanfiction for adults.

prev i hope u dont mind me sharing ur tags bc yeah this is an interesting add on

When I was a kid, maybe 14 or so (which is, you know, 20+ years ago), I belonged to a Yahoo! mailing list for an anime called Gundam Wing. It was mostly populated by other teens, of varying ages, as it was started by a teen and her friends. Eventually it migrated, when Yahoo! groups started as forums, and even branched off into non-GW related stuff in a second forum.

One of the things I remember the most clearly is the oldest person in the group. Her name was Steelsong. She was a 40-something Dom with a sub whose name we knew even though we knew nothing else. She ran her own fanfic archive because the web was still handmade HTML and navigated in webrings and I’m pretty sure Google didn’t exist or was only barely, barely launched and not well known. She was kind and patient and we loved her. She treated everyone on the group with the respect given any adult, even though most of the rest of the world was still treating us like we were children. Not teenagers even, but children. She never once condescended to any of us, never made our youth a barrier to her respect, never treated us like we were incapable of being full people or like we were less than her because we were young.

I remember that she hosted our fanfiction, as absolutely terrible as it was (and I still have some of it, I am WELL aware of how cringingly terrible it is, just absolute nonsense garbage), right there alongside of other fic that was soul-achingly beautiful. Not a separate section for her friends or for kids, just right there like we were good enough to feature alongside other authors. I never once received crit from her that I didn’t ask for, only support. Only love. I am still writing today partly because Steel was so kind about our fic, fanfic and original.

I remember that when I started doing clay sculpture, she commissioned a tiny pair of dragons from me, to support me doing artwork. She sent a check my mom cashed for me, and my mom helped me mail it when it was finished. It broke in transit, and Steel assured me that she mended it and that it was still beautiful. It was a small gold dragon curled up with a small silver dragon.

I remember that her patience knew no bounds. I remember that she was there for us, regardless of reason. When we wanted to know silly things like what to do with a single AA battery, she answered. When we had serious questions about sex, she answered.  When we had questions about writing, she taught us. When one of our group members, a young gay teen in Australia, ended up in the hospital and then stopped making posts, and we all knew what had happened, she let us talk to her about it because we couldn’t go to our own parents, even though we had just lost a friend.

She was not a replacement to my parents, but she was an extra parent, in some ways. A friend, certainly, but someone that had been through more life than we had and was willing to pass on knowledge if we asked for it. Someone older that we trusted with things that were too uncomfortable to go to our parents or teachers or whatever about, because we already knew she wasn’t going to judge us or something, and that we would get an honest answer.

I don’t know why I’m remembering this so hard tonight, and I’m not sure if there’s a point to sharing this, except that I know she’s gone now. She was ill the last time we spoke, and her site went down a long time ago, and I miss her. She was a huge influence on my life, then and now. She was hope, for me, that life as an adult didn’t have to be boring, it wouldn’t have to mean giving up the things I loved and Becoming Only Responsible With No Fun. Her presence meant I had hope I could still write and play with friends even when I wasn’t ‘a kid’ anymore. And she’s gone, and I miss her, and I wanted to share her from the perspective of youth, and the perspective over twenty years later has provided me.

And I think of her, when people go off about older folks being in fandom with younger folks. I’m an older folks now, or at least middle aged folks because there are certainly folks older than me still, but I wasn’t always. I’ve been here since i was a younger folks, and I know how much Steel’s presence and support meant to me, how much she helped not just me but everyone on that group. And I think of the people saying older folks don’t belong in fandom, and that they shouldn’t interact with younger folks at all, and I just think… I can’t agree. I needed that kind of solid presence in my life back then and even at the age I am now, I need the folks older than me to stay. I want them here.

So I guess, like, if you’re here and you’re 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or whatever, I want you here in fandom with me, still. Your presence here is a comfort. It is hope. It is a reminder that life will continue to be fun, even as I get older, myself. And if you’re younger and you have this sort of elder in your groups, I hope that they are like Steel. I hope they are kind and patient and supportive, and that knowing them gives you hope for your own future. I hope in twenty years you look back and remember them fondly.

Sometimes people get their start in fandom with something like, idk, the MCU or light action shows like Supernatural or children's fantasy like Warriors (this last example said with love), where the writing is an inconsistent mess, characterization can change on a dime, there's no themes stronger than like "family" or "stop the bad guy from changing our way of life". And their fandom experience is taking the hints of interesting ideas presented and dropped and spinning them into something interesting, or just fluffy and fun, and then discarding the rest.

And then these people come to a piece of art that like. Actually has themes and good writing and a coherent vision, but they're still trained on The Giant Trash Heap That Must Be Sorted Through, so they start their routine of excising fun yaoi moments and throwing the rest in the trash, except now the rest is like. A professionally made passion project by a group of skilled writers with a hundred years writing experience between them, and this fan is writing the same coffee shop AUs as ever. And it makes something that feels same-y and fandom out of something unique and well-made and, well, interesting.

And like. That's their prerogative, more power to them, but it makes me wanna pull my hair out to talk to these people about a piece of media I actually care about beyond that Trash Heap level.

And if you're someone whose only fandom experience has been Trash Sorting and you're running into people arguing with you abt their favorite piece of media, give them a second thought I guess?

love and peace, @kingofgoblets. this is a good addition

[ screencapture is of tags that say: #and honestly i still like that stuff. i too was born in the trash. raised by it. #but you gotta know when you're just scrapbooking bits and pieces #versus when you're reading a full rich text thoroughly #there is room in your brain for both i promise #but even on days when you only have scrapbook energy #don't. do NOT. Pick fights with the people doing the intense reading. #if that isn't what you're into today? you're allowed to scroll on #or open a new file and make that coffee shop au. ]

tags from @annabelle--cane are good

Fic writers, put in the tags what the difference in hits is between your most and least viewed fics. Mine is 7,720 (7,779-59).

So it’s a little bit of a difference, lol

AO3 easy trick: sometimes when I want to leave a comment on a fic but I dont know what to say specifically I'll just paste my favorite line(s)/little paragraph and then write something like "I loved this so much/this fic is amazing" or even just a string of hearts.

writers love knowing what lines stuck the most and this way you don't need to elaborate too much of your own

Also it helps writers know what parts of their writing resonates most with people. I’ve learned a lot about what works in my stories by virtue of people reacting to specific scenes and lines and even tropes.

someone I follow on the bird app just announced they're starting a very exclusive private fic server because they and a bunch of other people want to talk about how much they love the fics they're reading, and as an author can I just say that a really great place to talk about a fic you love is in the comments for that fic

I understand that people are trying to create safe spaces, but as the number of comments that I get on my fics dwindles with each passing year, knowing these spaces exist where my fics are being discussed, places that I am excluded from, makes me want to write fic LESS

I mean I guess who cares, right, because if I stop writing, there's 10,000 other people that will continue...but if you participate in a fic "book club" server and you say nice things there about a fic you loved, maybe copy and paste that into a comment on AO3?

the only thing fanfic writers are asking for in return for hours of hard work is attention. please don't rob us of the one thing that we hope for when we hit "post"

this is directly related to this post I made about how fanfic authors now are treated like content mills, and not like valued members of a creative community who thrive on interaction. for the past decade, we've watched the fandom ecosystem disrupted over and over, as NSFW fan artists seek safety by putting their work behind paywalls, and self-conscious fic readers squirrel away their feelings in invite-only communities

an easy way to do your part to fight against the evils perpetrated by social media is to leave a comment on a fanfic you love

but don't take my word for it -- here are some responses that my fellow authors have left on this post:

The fact I had a fic that was fairly beloved and NO ONE commented on it because it was all being done in a fucking book club server made me want to scream.

I haven't updated that fic in two years now.

I cannot express enough how imperative it is to show the writer how much you love their work. The comments don't have to be novels themselves - even just an "I loved this so much!" Or keyboard smashing works wonders to keep the writer going. Please, we need to bring back supporting writers and artists now more than ever!!!

one big thing i think people outside fandom (like, all fandoms, fandom in general, not any particular one) tend to misunderstand is they know it's a subculture of people who are weirdly deeply invested in fictional media, and they hear about drama caused by people in those subcultures being unhinged in not-fun ways, and they think the unhingedness comes from the fact of being overinvested in works of fiction.

which is a natural assumption, but in my experience that's not really the case? like in my experience the drama llamas in fandom are usually not the ones who are just genuinely very deeply into the fiction. i've known people who are basically thinking about star trek or x-men comics or supernatural pretty much 100% of their free time and ime that type of person is usually very nice and surprisingly functional in their regular life. when someone's a constant nexus of fandom drama it's usually not that they are obsessed with the actual work of fiction the fandom is about, it's at least one of the following:

and very often you get the same person doing 2 and sometimes even all 3 of these, and that's where the trouble really starts

Hey here's a hot tip:

If you don't like the way a fave fic of yours ended, don't worry! There are a few things you can do.

1. You can daydream endlessly about how you would have ended it. It's totally free!

2. You can write your own story and end it however you want to!

3. You can speak privately with your friends/family about it

4. You can shut the fuck up- this is the easiest and cheapest option

Things you should NEVER do:

Go into the writer's ask box on anon and tell them how much you hated it, how big of a disappointment it was to you, tell them they are dumb or that their story is dumb

Genuinely fuck ALL THE WAY OFF if you think that is appropriate.

Yall wonder why writers are dropping like flies off this hellsite. This is why!

Hope this helps!

the thing about CC is that she did plagiarize. she was found guilty of plagiarism and banned from fanfiction dot net! she plagiarized pamela dean, among others, and lied about it repeatedly! it happened! and regardless of whatever else she writes, regardless of whether the publishing industry and her fans trust her not to do it again, regardless of how many times her wikipedia page gets scrubbed clean, that will always have happened! so it is not in fact cruel gossip, but a factually true statement, to say that she plagiarized and i'm not interested in supporting her or giving her the benefit of the doubt because she plagiarized and lied about it repeatedly! fuck!

what really incenses me about cassandra clare — and forgive me for bringing this up again, but i don't think i've articulated this point yet — is not that i believe she is currently plagiarizing. any accusations i've seen about recent work seem to me to be superficial. but even if one could prove that she never plagiarized again once she started publishing, it wouldn't matter to me, because she chose to capitalize on her fandom history. while trying to distance herself from what she did, she made a brand out of the fanfic pen name "cassandra clare" and continues to profit off the reputation and fanbase that she amassed while she was, provably, a plagiarist.

you don't get to do that and bury the things that made you famous. as an individual, as a human being, she is capable of change and any other good qualities you may want to ascribe. but she built her career on lies. professionally, i don't understand why she gets to move on.

Fandom friends, we have won the battle (although we definitely did not win the war).

Yesterday, I wrote this post about lore.fm, an AI scraping app that was being marketed as an accessibility tool. Now, the person that has been promoting this app decided, in the light of plenty of backlash, to backtrack and pull it down, as they "feel uncomfortable" with how authors reacted to it.

Of this video, it's very important to highlight a couple of things:

At this point of the conversation, I think it's clear that the entirety of the project was relying on the perceived naïveté of fanfic readers and writers, who are oftentimes seen and stereotyped as being silly teens and not adults with real jobs and real knowledge of the law. When they saw dozens, if not hundreds, of authors contacting them to ask their works to not be featured, some of them threatening legal consequences, they had no other choice but to backtrack.

For now, the issue is closed, but don't think it'll be forever. Know your rights, even if you're "just" a fic author, and defend yourself and your works too from these scummy companies that see us as nothing but machines that churn out material for them to steal and profit off of with no consequences.

the last line hit me like a fuckin sledgehammer

The ending is sweet

Full offense and pun fully intended, but I genuinely think the very existence of "dead dove, do not eat" was a fucking canary in the mines, and no one really paid attention.

Because the tag itself was created as a response to a fandom-wide tendency to disregard warnings and assume tagging was exaggerated. And then the same fucking idiots reading those tags describing things they found upsetting or disturbing or just not to their taste would STILL click into the stories and give the writer's grief about it.

And as a response writers began using the tag to signal "no, really, I MEAN the tags!"

But like.

If you really think about it, that's a solution to a different problem. The solution to "I know you tagged your story appropriately but I chose to disregard the tags and warnings by reading it anyway, even though I knew it would upset me, so now I'm upset and making it your problem" is frankly a block, a ban and wide-spread blacklisting. But fandom as a whole is fucking awful at handling bad faith, insidious arguments that appeal to community inclusion and weaponize the fact most people participating in fandom want to share the space with others, as opposed to hurting people.

So instead of upfront ridiculing this kind of maladaptive attempt to foster one's own emotional self-regulation onto random strangers on the internet, fandom compromised and came up with a redundant tag in a good faith attempt to address an imaginary nuance.

There is no nuance to this.

A writer's job is to tag their work correctly. It's not to tag it exhaustively. It's not even to tag it extensively. A writer's sole obligation, as far as AO3 and arguably fandom spaces are concerned, is to make damn sure that the tags they put on their story actually match whatever is going on in that story.

That's it.

That's all.

"But what if I don't want to read X?" Well, you don't read fic that's tagged X.

"But what if I read something that wasn't tagged X?" Well, that's very unfortunate for you, but if it is genuinely that upsetting, you have a responsibility to yourself to only browse things explicitly tagged to not include X.

"But that's not a lot of fic!" Hi, you must be new here, yes, welcome to fandom. Most of our spaces are built explicitly as a reaction to There's Not Enough Of The Thing I Want, both in canon and fandom.

"But there are things on the internet that I don't like!" Yeah, and they are also out there, offline. And, here's the thing, things existing even though we personally dislike or even hate or even flat out find offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable existing is the price we pay to secure our right to exist as individuals and creators, regardless of who finds US personally unpleasant, hateful or flat out offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable.

"But what about [illegal thing]?!" So the thing itself is illegal, because the thing itself has been deemed harmful. But your goddamn cop-poisoned authoritarian little heart needs to learn that sometimes things are illegal that aren't harmful, and defaulting to "but illegal!" is a surefire way to end up on the wrong side of the fascism pop quiz. You're not a figure of authority and the more you demand to control and exercise authority by command, rather than leadership, the less impressive you seem. You know how you make actual, genuine change in a community? You center harm and argue in good faith to find accommodations and spread awareness of real, actual problems.

But let's play your game. Let's pretend we're all brainwashed cop-abiding little cogs that do not own a single working brain cell to exercise critical thinking with. 99% of the time, when you cry about any given thing "being illegal!!!" you're correct only so far as the THING itself being illegal. The act or object is illegal. Depiction of it is not. You know why, dipshit? Because if depiction of the thing were illegal, you wouldn't be able to talk about it. You wouldn't be able to educate about it. You wouldn't be able to reexamine and discuss and understand the thing, how and why and where it happens and how to prevent it. And yeah, depiction being legal opens the door for people to make depictions that are in bad taste or probably not appropriate. Sure. But that's the price we pay, creating tools to demystify some of the most horrific things in the world and support the people who've survived them. The net good of those tools existing outweighs the harm of people misusing them.

"You're defending the indefensible!" No, you're clumsily stumbling into a conversation that's been going on for centuries, with your elementary school understanding of morality and your bone-deep police state rot filtering your perception of reality, and insisting you figured it out and everyone else at the table is an idiot for not agreeing with you. Shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and read a goddamn book.

relevant everywhere tbh

not proshipper not anti but a secret third thing (person who has a career in the media and, through covering legislative politics, has watched "associating with problematic fiction or entertainment is an indicator of moral degeneracy" rapidly become a mainstream GOP position that they are encoding in legislation to target the queer community under the guise of protecting children, thus coming to the conclusion that positioning the "can people enjoy things that would be immoral IRL in their fiction" debate as a proship v anti fandom debate is akin to pretending that "should we have the death penalty" is a discussion that only matters in Death Note discourse — the extent and manner to which fiction affects reality is an issue that is immediately relevant to today's US politics, and to summarize my opinions on the matter in fandom terms would be to diminish the ways this debate is affecting america Right The Fuck Now. and i have stopped taking "this person is bad for shipping the wrong anime thing and being horny about it" in any sort of good faith ever since I saw it literally used as part of a GOP smear campaign against a transgender state legislator in an attempt to defend the right from backlash after they used their supermajority in the Montana house to prevent her from speaking on the floor. Anyway I think everyone on this site, especially Americans, could benefit from ceasing to think in proship v anti vocabulary and instead developing coherent political positions on the nature of fiction that do not directly align with current fascist political tactics)

and yes, this does pretty much align with the "proshipper" position — to be clear, i'm firmly in the camp that it's literally fine to ship whatever and engage in fiction however you want and people are not morally wrong for making art that engages, even gleefully or pornographically, in dark topics. the reason i still choose to not call myself a proshipper is for a few reasons:

-there are so many different implications under that umbrella, and i resent the dichotomy that reduces so many different positions on so many different aspects of media studies to two different labels. such a framing actively stifles discussion and prevents people from having tough and thorny conversations about media with people they mostly agree with

-i think "proshipper" is only a useful positional label for people whos primary mode of engagement with media is through fandom. but as a journalist and queer person, the main ways in which the "does fiction affect reality and how" issue interfaces with my life have nothing to do with fandom, so it feels backwards to me to define my opinions regarding media in relation to the area that has the least relevance to my life

-i want my actual opinions to be the most visible part of how i engage with fandom, rather than a label that will cause everyone to draw nuance-stripped conclusions that vary depending on which "side" they fall on. i want people to listen to me, not project their expectations onto me and listen to a phantom of me they've created

-why should i? if people are willing to engage with me regarding media discussion, it shouldn't matter whether i choose to identify as a proshipper or not — they should treat my ideas on their own merits. and if people think that i'm a sick freak for "condoning" whatever is problematic these days, they're not going to care what i call myself, they're going to call me a sick freak anyways. and im kinda petty and want them to actually have to read my posts and rub two braincells together to interpret things and think critically about how to label me instead of seeing "proship" and slamming the cancel button

(via @vinelark)

(via @cairoscene)

Reblog for a larger sample size!

No "show results", if you're not a fanfic writer just be patient.

I saw a post about an anon saying it was embarrasing to have an ao3 account in your 30s (it's absolutely not), so I want to do a poll and see what the age range actually is.

someone I follow on the bird app just announced they're starting a very exclusive private fic server because they and a bunch of other people want to talk about how much they love the fics they're reading, and as an author can I just say that a really great place to talk about a fic you love is in the comments for that fic

I understand that people are trying to create safe spaces, but as the number of comments that I get on my fics dwindles with each passing year, knowing these spaces exist where my fics are being discussed, places that I am excluded from, makes me want to write fic LESS

I mean I guess who cares, right, because if I stop writing, there's 10,000 other people that will continue...but if you participate in a fic "book club" server and you say nice things there about a fic you loved, maybe copy and paste that into a comment on AO3?

the only thing fanfic writers are asking for in return for hours of hard work is attention. please don't rob us of the one thing that we hope for when we hit "post"