do you ever worry that someone is going to act on the noncon/dubcon fantasies you post
do i
worry
that after reading this blog someone is going to look at the brainwashed super assassin they’ve been keeping cryogenically frozen in a bank vault for the last several decades and go, “shit, we coulda been tapping that ass this whole time!”
…… no. i can’t say that had occurred to me.
do you ever worry that someone is going to act on the noncon/dubcon fantasies you post
do i
worry
that after reading this blog someone is going to look at the brainwashed super assassin they’ve been keeping cryogenically frozen in a bank vault for the last several decades and go, “shit, we coulda been tapping that ass this whole time!”
…… no. i can’t say that had occurred to me.
🎶 What the world needs now, is trash, sweet trash 🎶 Since the fandom has become a pile of ash
Hey, do you like #HydraTrashParty premium garbage content?
Are you sad that it’s no longer 2014 and there’s less and less dumpster swill being produced by the day?
DO YOU LIKE PRESENTS?
Welcome to the Hydra Holiday Trash Party 2019.
What is it? - A gift exchange!
How do I participate? - Fill out this form!
Where can I learn more before I dive into this dump truck with you? - Read this document!
So this is just to write more terrible rapey HTP fic and put it out in the universe? - NO! We’re accepting art too!
Sign-ups: Oct 29 2019 to Nov 15 2019 Claims: Nov 15 - Nov 25 Publish: Dec 31st 2019
Sign up today and help your local garbage ecosystem to thrive.
We’ve updated our guide to blocking HYDRA Trash Party content with details of how to filter HTP fics out of AO3 search results:
It’s possible to block all fanworks tagged with “HYDRA Trash Party” from appearing in AO3 search results by adding a filter ID to your search.
The ID for the HYDRA Trash Party tag is 2197381. To filter out this tag, simply add “-filter_ids:2197381” to the “Search within results” field after performing your search, as in the screenshot below:
For example, using the method above, you can filter all fics tagged “HYDRA Trash Party” out of the tag “Captain America (Movies)”. Here are the filtered search results.
Thanks to filter-me-ao3 and flamebyrd’s Tag ID Bookmarklet for their help filtering tags on AO3.
What exactly is the hydra trash party? people who write about hydra/hydra characters in a positive light? I'd never heard the term before seeing it on your blog, so I was just curious
It’s actually kind of completely the opposite. The whole motto of the Hydra Trash Party is terrible things being done by terrible people NOT being romanticised. My work generally doesn’t fit into it (though the Rumlow/Ward Short DEFINITELY would fit in there) because I take someone who is seriously bad in canon - I do not deny this - and give him what I hope is a believable redemption arc.
Generally, HTP works take a bad guy and have him do Bad Guy Things.
I’m probably not explaining it terribly well. Definitely the best place to look is the @whatisthehydratrashparty blog. Look down the right-hand side and you’ll see a list of FAQs; click on these links to find out more.
HTP is not for everyone. I have to be in the right mood to read it, and some of it is too far for me. You need to know your own squicks and triggers, and to carefully read the tags put on fics.
However, if you do choose to partake or to participate, what you will find is that the people in the HTP fandom are among the kindest, most supportive and least judgemental people in ANY part of fandom.
Which is NOT something that can be said about their detractors.
I know which side I’m on, and it’s the side of those who don’t abuse real people for their fictional preferences.
Yo, I know you as an upstanding member of the HTP. I don't care about the Hydra is or isn't Nazi's thing. I don't care that people explore their trauma through writing fic. All I ask is that you maybe put a PSA out there about people tagging their fics and stuff as sam/bucky or other ships that are outside the HTP. Can people maybe just stick to obvious HTP ships in their tagging and maybe include the other ships in the description? I don't know if you get me or not, but I thought I'd ask.
If I’ve understood this right, what you’re asking for is for people who post HTP fics on AO3 not to tag them with “ships that are outside the HTP”, giving Sam/Bucky as an example…?
If that’s the case then sorry anon, I can’t agree with that. I mean, for one thing I don’t know how you would even define “obvious HTP ships”. HTP isn’t about specific ships, it’s about dark narrative content. Most of my favourite HTP fics are Steve/Bucky fics. One of the best I’ve ever read is heavily Sam/Bucky-centric, with their relationship being the driving factor for almost the entire plot.
I think the problem we’re running into here is a spillover from Tumblr expectations onto AO3, a place where Tumblr etiquette is not relevant or sensible.
The thing is, Tumblr’s search and browse functions are huge steaming piles of turd. You can’t search for tags within a tag, you can’t search for one tag and exclude another, you can’t do any kind of advanced searching at all. And so unwritten expectations have developed around tagging content on Tumblr – for example, tagging negative content with a ship name is considered impolite or inappropriate.
By contrast, AO3 has an absolutely fantastic filter system you can use to exclude literally anything when browsing fics. If you don’t want to see rape/non-con, you can filter out anything tagged with the rape/non-con warning. If you don’t want to see HTP content, you can filter out the HTP tag specifically, using -filter_ids:2197381 (more details on how to do this at @whatisthehydratrashparty).
AO3 tags are not, nor have they ever been, curated spaces where only “acceptable” or positive depictions of pairings or characters are allowed. AO3 tags are for content categorisation, regardless of whether that content is negative or positive. If a fic has Sam/Bucky content, it should have a Sam/Bucky tag.
The other tags on the fic should give you an idea of what kind of Sam/Bucky content the fic contains, and whether the fic is likely to be to your tastes. That’s how AO3 tagging works.
well first off, crou, I clicked on that link expecting some great fic I’d missed and then I felt very rickrolled, very rickrolled indeed ;P
secondly: what the fuck, anon. even tumblr tags are not private property. If you’re the anon harassing the author of the recent htp sam/bucky fic, which it sounds like you are, I find your “PSA” disingenuous at best given your cries about free speech to harass people on AO3.
Writers of fic you don’t like, whether it’s htp or some fluffy curtainfic trope, have as much right to correctly tag and advertise their fic as anyone else. In an attention economy like tumblr and AO3, asking someone to take the tags off their work is the same as asking it not to exist, because without the ability for readers to find it (or avoid it, as filtering out noncon in the sam/bucky tag would allow you to do), it might as well not exist. Asking for a fic to have accurate tags removed makes it more likely that someone who doesn’t want to see that content will come across it unawares.
AO3 was literally made to host fic that was being hounded out of existence elsewhere, so it’s disingenuous at best and laughably trollish at worst if you’re using AO3 with the expectation that content you don’t like should be somehow gated off away where the “real” shippers don’t have to see it. What a boring, narrow world of fanfic it would be if only a few people got to determine which fics deserved to be tagged with a ship.
I really think that a lot of this comes from expecting AO3 to work like Tumblr, which…no. It just doesn’t. This isn’t even a matter of social mores (although it’s that, too); mechanically speaking, they just don’t work the same. AO3 is an archive, not a social media platform. The tags are primarily functional, not conversational, and more to the point, it’s very easy to filter out content you don’t want to see. That’s one of the things the archive is designed to do.
Authors have a right to tag their fic accurately; moreover, any reader ought to prefer accurate tagging. It makes it easier on everyone: the people who are looking for a particular kind of fic, and the people who desperately want to avoid it.
All this presumes that anon is asking in good faith and just hasn’t bothered to learn how to use the archive, of course. Anon, if that’s the case, spend some time perusing the archive help pages. If you just want a particular tag to function as a personally curated collection of works that delight you, though, you’re going to have to get over that. People are allowed to write ships you hate; they’re also allowed to write content you hate in ships you like.
there’s a lot of talk on my dash right now involving people accusing artists and writers of “supporting pedophilia” (what is even with that phrasing, pedophilia isn’t running for president, it does not need your vote or your donations) and it made me have a huge, entirely unexpected realization regarding my own trauma with sexual abuse and grooming and such
but it’s going under a cut, in case people don’t want to read about this right now
recently there’s been rather a lot of wank about the hydra trash party. i say “recently” but i mean “always”. there has always been someone saying that the hydra trash party glorifies hydra, that it makes this darkness somehow appealing, that there is danger in talking or writing about the dark things that humans are capable of. to me, this comes across as a dangerous conflation of power and goodness. in hydra trash party fanfiction, of course, members of hydra hold the power in the stories. they do horrible things to our fan faves. there is torture, there is blood, there are all sorts of things - both realistic and unrealistic. there is no goodness in it. this is an important distinction. to say that all stories in which the villains - abusers, rapists, power-hungry madmen - hold the power are glorifying those villains is a dangerous assumption. this assumes the lord of the rings glorifies sauron and saruman. this assumes the hunger games glorify the capital. this assumes the fionavar tapestry glorifies rakoth maugrim. this assumes the lion, the witch and the wardrobe glorifies the white witch. to hold the power in the story is not to be the hero. if that were the case, we would all happily subjugate ourselves to whomever happens to oppress us - they’re the heroes, after all. if to simply hold power is to be well and truly Good, deserving of that capital letter, we’re all in trouble. but i don’t for a second believe that anyone who reads this will believe that people in power are necessarily Good. to believe that power in fiction equates to goodness is a mistake, and it’s one that we wouldn’t readily make in real life. so here, i am not going to ask for sympathy - i’m just going to ask for a little credit given towards the writers within the hydra trash party, who are in turns good writers, amazing friends, and absolutely brilliant people.
omg Chalk
You’ve managed to pinpoint something that was in the back of my mind but maddeningly hard to get at. Thanks for this.
We’ve updated our guide to blocking HYDRA Trash Party content with details of how to filter HTP fics out of AO3 search results:
It’s possible to block all fanworks tagged with “HYDRA Trash Party” from appearing in AO3 search results by adding a filter ID to your search.
The ID for the HYDRA Trash Party tag is 2197381. To filter out this tag, simply add “-filter_ids:2197381” to the “Search within results” field after performing your search, as in the screenshot below:
For example, using the method above, you can filter all fics tagged “HYDRA Trash Party” out of the tag “Captain America (Movies)”. Here are the filtered search results.
Thanks to filter-me-ao3 and flamebyrd’s Tag ID Bookmarklet for their help filtering tags on AO3.
Not that I was ever into it, but as of late I find myself so sick of darkfic wank. It is the year 2015. We should not have to defend the ability to write fiction about dark topics. The people pulling this garbage are perfectly aware that shows like Hannibal or Dexter have big fanbases without normalizing cannibalism or murder, but when it comes to fanfic, suddenly there’s no division between fantasy and reality and writers are clearly endorsing every word they put on the page.
It’s really transparent and really, really tedious.
6.-thoughts on critique
6. thoughts on critique
It…depends?
I think critique can be separated into two categories: critique of what I’m doing and critique of how well I’m doing it. And both of these can be done well or poorly.
For instance, if someone comes to (say) A Hostile Work Environment and criticizes it for not addressing Bucky’s experience of violence and abuse at HYDRA’s hands…well, yeah. It doesn’t. That’s not what the fic is about. I mean, it features peripherally, but that was a conscious decision that I made when I was writing and it’s sufficiently integral to what I was trying to do with that fic (oh, who am I even kidding, “what I was trying to do” = get you hard and/or wet, did it work?) that criticizing it is basically saying “you should have written an entirely different fic.”
On the other hand, I’ve written stuff that had really deeply fucked up consent issues going on that I didn’t recognize when I wrote it, and having people point that out to me was incredibly helpful both in terms of making me a more conscientious and careful writer (and person generally) and in making the rest of the fic a lot better in those regards.
So when it comes to what I’m doing, critique about things I’ve done on purpose is not particularly useful to me (okay, it wasn’t your cup of tea, that’s fine) but critique about things I’ve done by accident is very helpful. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which, and how you phrase your critique – and your relationship with the person you’re critiquing, whether you’re friends or if they even know who you are – matters enormously in how it’s received.
Now, in terms of how well I’m doing it, kind critique is always welcome but it isn’t always helpful.
I’m thinking of a particular piece of criticism I never gave because I didn’t think it would be helpful. It’s for a fic in an old fandom I’m no longer interested in, so I’ll be kind of vague, but: a lot of the action of the fic revolved around the main pairing having really really awful sex in their arranged marriage. Like, monstrously painful. And Poor Suffering Woobie A not complaining, and Kind Of Oblivious Woobie B not figuring out that something is wrong and falling in love anyway, and it’s this whole thing. (They get it together eventually.) So towards the end, the awful sex is revealed to have been due to Designated Villain, who gave Woobie B some terrible sex tips before their wedding night!
I’m like 84% sure this was intended to absolve Woobie B of the responsibility for the awful traumatizing painful sex – it wasn’t his fault! he was mislead! – but it really didn’t. It would have absolved him for the first time, maybe. But every time after that, when it was clear that Woobie A was miserable, he could easily have figured out that something was wrong. So it didn’t make it any better that he had been doing this all along, and Designated Villain had already done plenty to prove that he was Super Evil, and it just felt a little bit wrong. But it wasn’t a big deal, and it was a plot point that I didn’t think the writer was going to go back and change, and I didn’t know the writer at all, and it didn’t seem like it was going to impact stuff going forward, so I didn’t say anything.
So, critique of how well I’m doing it is helpful when it concerns things I might change going forward. Telling me what works for you, or doesn’t, in how I’m writing my 4F stuff is really, really useful. On the other hand, I’m probably never going to revisit the characterizations of Steve and Bucky I used in Secondary Function so critiquing that is less relevant to me (but still interesting, because I have my own critique of it and I’m curious how it compares!).
So, um, that’s a lot of words, but basically as long as your critique isn’t “I wish you had written something different than the thing you intentionally chose to write” I think it’s great, and if you can’t tell if it was intentional you can say that too.
This is an excellent essay about critique. SO I’m reblogging it.
See something negative, post something positive.
This is not an exhaustive list. But every single example on this list comes from real life — either from my own experiences or those of people I know. I aim to offer a few real, concrete examples of how engaging with rape and abuse in fiction can be part of a very healthy recovery for survivors.
That’s not to say that non-survivors can’t enjoy this stuff. I certainly enjoyed it before I survived anything. But Jesus, when I see a survivor being told that any sort of interest in fictional rape is SICK AND WRONG and means you need therapy I can’t just stand idly by.
And yeah, we’re talking Hydra Trash Party here (hi tonystarks). But we’re also talking non-con in fandoms the world over. Because really, there’s nothing new under the sun.
I got to thinking last night about the Hydra Trash Party fic I write. Some of it—the post-trash-party-recovery stuff—isn’t really an especially far stretch from the hurt/comfort I’ve written in any other fandom. I’ve written characters getting tortured before. I’ve written characters who survived...
I have been writing stories of this sort for a long time and many fandoms, and my stories end with the character triumphing, explicitly or implicitly. This is why. This is absolutely why.
You’re a Kitty (3676 words) by Dira Sudis Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: James “Bucky” Barnes, Brock Rumlow, Hydra Agents Additional Tags: No Sex, Animal Play, HYDRA Trash Party,...
Among other things, this is a perfect Hydra Trash Party story for the HTP-averse, while not being dumbed down or bowdlerized in any way. It's just defiant and glorious and really really funny.
Sometimes it gets a little hard to tell what is real and what is fantasy on tumblr, so I made a quick guide. Let’s save the SJ stuff for actual issues!
And here’s some more practice questions:
I follow a radical feminist blog who recently said that people who have kinks shouldn't be allowed into teaching, etc. I'm asexual myself but I still enjoy reading porn, and I honestly don't get off unless there's some aspect of dominance in it. I can't help what turns me on, right? I don't think it bleeds into my real life at all - I'm horrified by abuse in real life. I've experienced some myself, and I know how terrible it is. I just feel so guilty now for being turned on by kinky stuff. (1)
I didn’t get your (2), if there is one, and I feel like I’ve already said enough about how I feel about anti-kink arguments that don’t concern themselves with the difference between “men actually coerce women into submission” and “people of various genders engage in various forms of consensual play and fantasy.”
(Also, I’ve suffered abuse in kink contexts, and you know who came to help me? NOT THOSE FUCKERS. Ethically kinky people are the ones who actually showed up to support me.)
So I’m just going to say:
That is, no matter who you are and what you do, there is someone on the Internet who thinks people like you should be kept in dank caves away from polite society.
And it hurts so much worse when it feels like it’s coming from someone on the same “side” as you. Hell, I’m not immune to it; when people email me “lol u fat hairy feminazi suk my dick” I’m like “yeah whatever” and save it because sometimes I like to get drunk and read those emails in funny voices at parties. But when people email me “you are enabling abuse and oppressing women,” it hits me in a different, far more vulnerable place. When someone shares some of your values and disapproves of you, it’s a lot harder to brush off. And sometimes you shouldn’t. Sometimes you should question yourself.
But sometimes you just have to live your life. You have to come to the point of “my behavior is in accordance with my morality, I have questioned myself to my satisfaction, and now I’m done.” You have to go beyond “please, listen to my side of the story” and arrive at “I am so comfortable with myself, and so little interested at ripping my soul out for inspection every time a random stranger demands it, that instead of making myself vulnerable to this whole discussion I’m going to do a little butt-dance.”
I realize you’re not at that point yet. (There are many, many issues where I’m not at it myself.) But I want you to consider that as a goal. Not just answering the “am I a terrible person for having the wrong kind of sexual fantasies?” question, but having confidence in your answer, confidence to the point of even being a dick about it, the kind of confidence that becomes a shield.
