A Star-Forged Ruby

some people on tumblr are really like "of course i love female characters! which is why i ship this girlboss and malewife. men get pegged by powerful woman! i'm calling this m/f ship yuri. this canonically male character is a woman to me but not in a transfem way and i'm not exploring it further. yeah i love lesbians uhhh i'll headcanon background character #9 as a lesbian because she doesn't get in the way of my ship. lol ew why do you ship blorba and blorbette together when blorbette is canonically married to a man? no i don't actually have a favorite female character because all fictional women are poorly written!"

being so fr when I say that transmisogyny has put feminism back like 50 years

what i thought we had distanced ourselves from was the reduction of women to vaginas and wombs and the ability to bear children. i thought we had progressed past ‘dresses are for women and pants are for men.’ i thought we progressed past the idea that someone is less of a woman if she does not adhere strictly to beauty standards. i thought we progressed past the idea that naturally being comfortable adhering to highly feminine standards is vulgar. but i (sarcastically) guess no one could have predicted that trans-exclusive feminism would be the downfall of all the progress we’ve made

It's hilarious to me when people complain about AO3 and its policies, and what they allow on the site - but it's ESPECIALLY funny when people complain like "Why can't the freaks make their own site and just go there?"

Sweetie... AO3 is the site for that. Y'all invaded our space.

Wattpad and FFN still exist. Go there. They're as shitty and G-rated as you want. You can't have the luxuries that AO3 offers if you're gonna be a little bitch about its policies. Imagine walking into a strip club and complaining about the alcohol and naked ladies when there's a god damn Dennys next door you could have gone to. Christ.

AO3 is the equivalent of someone with oppressive family who - after their bedroom was ransacked, phone stolen, computer hacked, half their contacts deleted, and personal property thrown into a bonfire by said family - moved out and got their own place.

Except the fact that they’re successful and have such a nice house they invite all their friends, who obey AO3′s house rules, to visit who means that all the unwelcome family members want to come over as well because the house is just so nice.

Except those relatives are just as unpleasant and entitled as before and start trying to enforce their own house rules despite the fact that said relatives don’t live there, don’t own the house, and have never been invited to live there and are only allowed inside because AO3 is better than they are.

“If you don’t like my rules then get out of my house.”

AO3 didn’t like the rules. AO3 left that house. AO3 got its own place and set its own rules. But then the asshole relatives followed them home and started pretending they owned the place as soon as they were let into a guest room.

y’all this is so fucking funny. firstly, this kind of metaphor seeks to ignore that ao3, as a platform with a frankly huge budget for a nonprofit of its size (they have a $1 million excess budget - meaning, funding that they haven’t even planned to spend, and only about 25% of which they say is for emergency purposes), is not, at this point, just a house owned by a family. it’s an institution with power.

and that’s not inherently a bad thing! but we’re all nerds around here, and you know what they say comes with great power. so the leaders at otw (the organization for transformative works, who runs ao3), unlike perhaps some people who threw a house party, does have a responsibility to make sure that what’s happening on the archive are running well.

that means that when people talk about racism on the archive - which does not necessarily mean creators whose content was accidentally racist out of their own ignorance; it can also mean creators specifically targeting people of color with racist “spitefic” or by using slurs, all of which has happened  - ao3 should take notice and act on it. when people are being harassed through the archives mechanisms, ao3 should act to protect its users. not least because otw/ao3 promised, three years ago after george floyd’s murder, to do exactly that.

sure, there are some bad actors who are seeking to tear ao3 down and/or ban certain types of content. but the important thing to remember is that those people do not have the institutional power here. otw/ao3 does, and their practice so far has not in any way indicated that they would change major foundations of the archive like non-censorship and maximum inclusiveness of content.

but people asking for change around bigotry and harassment have every right to expect ao3 to act, especially when they have already promised to!

it also infuriates me every time people mythologize the creation of ao3 as a way to obstruct change. y’all, i was there too. i was there for fanlib and strikethrough. i was super excited when otw was founded. i volunteered on one of the first otw committees in 2008-2009; i’ve been an ao3 member since 2008; i’ve donated countless times since otw was founded. (and you know what, i shouldn't even have to give my ao3 credentials in order to know that ao3 needs to be anti-racist and anti-harassment. people who are newer to the archive can believe that too.)

but as someone who has been here the whole time, what i’ve seen over the past 15 years is an outright refusal on otw’s part to take people of color seriously on racism and harassment. and it’s extra disappointing to see how ao3′s supporters will act as if those of us demanding change are "invaders", not valid members of the archive as well.

Classic reframing of ppl who criticize ao3 as ppl who want censorship and "g-rated and shitty" websites.

Classic reframing of ppl who criticize ao3 as outsiders invading a fan space instead of the reality that most criticism of ao3 comes from long term fans (of color usually) who want the space to be better

The anti-racists criticizing the AO3 for failure to follow through wholeheartedly on its own anti-racist pledge are not the same people who think that some pairings are evil and should be banned. They may think some specific forms of harassment should be banned, but that would be protecting people from active malice.

There is more than one kind of person who wants the AO3 to be better. The catch is, the anti-racists want it to be better in ways it has pledged to be better and has not yet achieved, while the Antis want it to be "better" in ways that are contrary to its mission.

Fanworks about any situation your heart desires: yes.

Permitting fans to abuse each other: no.

It's fascinating how fatphobes' brains kind of stop at "people shouldn't be fat" or "fat people should lose weight". Like if it's tough to fit into airplane seats, or find clothes, or get a doctor to take you seriously - their solution is weight loss. As if anything and everything can wait until you've become skinny.

I mean even if we play along and pretend that long-term weight loss IS achievable for everyone and not just a small minority - that takes time? Even the handful of fat people who will be skinny in five years are still fat now, and they'll be fat tomorrow too. They will be here on earth for the duration of those five years, living and partaking in society.

It just baffles me that some people will always be like "I just don't think anyone should be/stay fat" and that's the end of their argument. Like.. ok bro. Fat people are still here though, regardless. I'm gonna keep needing clothes to wear.

mansplaining isn't "man talks a lot about a thing" it's specifically when a man talks down to a woman about something he has no reason to think she won't understand. like if they both work for a law firm, and he starts lecturing her on email etiquette like he's talking to a grade schooler when like, writing emails is a major part of her job and there's no reason for him to think that she wouldn't know about it. not just a man getting excited about vide game and infodumping

things that keep happening over and over

- a work of media comes out with a compelling and interesting Black female character - fans love her - fans like her interactions with another character so they start shipping, as fans will do - it’s a white dude - many many other fans start getting huffy about this ship - not because it’s an interracial relationship where a Black woman’s being loved and prioritized by a white man (the world’s biggest prize) no that’s definitely not it, in this specific case it’s definitely not it, it’s just that (reasons), it has NOTHING to do with centuries of misogynoir which we are disconnected entirely from as a concept - we are good allies we just think she deserves better - (never gives her anything, better or not) - fans of the ship kind of grin and bear it at first, then start getting annoyed, then start calling people out - inevitably someone realizes an argument they can make is about homophobia, so they accuse the shippers of prioritizing straight people and oppressing their m/m ship - fans of the ship say, oh, this is happening again, and they seclude themselves off - (character still not getting anything better from the other fans) - repeat repeat repeat

anyway, it’s just that if you’ve been in fandom for longer than a few years, you start to see patterns

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Friendly reminder that Sharon Carter is more than one kiss or a no homo card you fucking assholes.