Arduous Litany

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I think ao3 is literally the only site where no censorship means no censorship. you can post the most vile things on there — things that will get taken down on any other platforms — and ao3 will protect you, your works, and your rights to create whatever you want, however you want.

and no, this isn’t me saying “write that messed up, disgusting thing” because while, yes, write it if it’s what you want (I myself enjoy writing dark fics, something I believe would be considered “vile” to a lot of people), this is me saying in a world of censorship and capitalism, ao3 really is a treasure.

everybody say thank you ao3

[themoonandmyman]

having completely opposing headcanons at the same time is important for the diversity of the fandom ecosystem. yes I believe this would happen. but I also don’t. hope this helps

[newtonpermetersquare]

Magnets: I want to commit diamagnetic

[squided]

how did I never once think to use tape fuck

[rubykgrant]

one time as a kid I forcefully shoved two magnets together, and these were the strong magnets my dad used in his shop to pick-up missing little metal bits, and I held them really tightly in the palm of my hand, went up to this one kid who legit said things like “I think black cats are bad, they should be drowned” and drew crosses on the notebooks of kids if she found out they didn’t go to church, I told her “Hey. I’m a witch. If you don’t stop trying to hurt animals and picking on kids, I’ll use my magic to throw you into the sky”, and when she dared to doubt my powers I told her that I had two “rocks” in my hand that I could send across the playground, then I opened my hand the the magnets shot off in two different directions (we were over in a spot that was empty, so no other kids were around, nobody got hurt), one of them stuck to a drainpipe and the other stuck to a fence. This kid SCREAMED, and ran to the office, and I guess had her mom pick her up from school, and then she wasn’t there for a couple of days, finally her mom called my house and claimed I had “traumatized her daughter by performing a terrifying magic trick”, and when my parents asked what I did I just said “I showed her a magnet and she flipped out. She’s not gonna be happy when she finds out about gravity, either”. eventually this kid came back to school and always made a point to come up to me and say “Hey, my mom told me not to talk to you!”, and would just be like “Good job, you already screwed that up”

[iliveinmyblanket]

Holy shit

[trapny]

Oh my god this is so fucking funny

[embercub]

10/10 story would read again and recommend to others

[lilmiaowkittie]

[noodles-07]

"what if you regret it" what if I don't?

[trekturtle]

I understand your point, however this maybe wasn't the best post to cross my dash while I'm fighting the temptation to text my ex.

[noodles-07]

this is about transitioning DO NOT TEXT YOUR EX ITS NOT WORTH IT DONT DO IT

[catnippackets]

the hardest pill to swallow about being in a fandom is that some people are only ankle-deep in it and aren't taking things too seriously and other people are up to their necks and taking it as seriously as a heart attack and yet everybody thinks that every other person is in it just as deep as they are and will get very upset to realize otherwise because they don't know how to engage with the different perspective

[dovebane]

If you have a fucked up sicknasty fanfic you've been thinking about sharing but are unsure, this post is your sign to run to AO3 and Just Do It: 1. Someone somewhere wants to read it. Even if it's only one person, that person matters

2. Your creativity matters and so does your ability to share it

3. Serial harassers in fandom spaces are beginning to express discomfort that sites like AO3 completely strip their ability to do anything about fic they don't like, sometimes going as far as leaving entire fandoms due to the influx of "problematic fiction without a chance for consequences to the author". Posting your fanworks to AO3 actively contributes to making harassers feel unsafe and powerless in fandom

4. Militant anti-fanfic content creators also cannot do anything about fic posted to AO3

5. You can post anonymously to AO3, with the ability to de-anonymize at any time

6. You can moderate comments before making them visible on your fic, restrict comments to logged-in users only, or turn off comments altogether, meaning you can post anonymously and completely turn off comments if you choose

[charlataninred]

Character duo where one *remembers I don’t like fitting characters into trope boxes* is a completely fleshed out and realised person *remembers treating characters as real people and not story devices written with intent is bad* who is written by the author and *remembers death of the author* uh. And *fumbles and drops my pile of queue cards* ah fuck wait no *the menacing horse* what was that.

[sunriseverse]

fanfiction so bad it made me open up my drafts

[what-even-is-thiss]

Religion in fantasy worlds: Everyone believes the exact same things about Green Nature Goddess and has official rituals for her that are the same everywhere

Religion irl: Technically it’s heresy for me to worship this skeleton but my spiritual advisor said that it’s legit so I’m gonna keep giving it offerings of yogurt

[what-even-is-thiss]

Religion in fantasy worlds: We’ve gotta pour water over this statue or else the god will get angry

Religion irl: We’ve gotta pour water over this statue? Why? Idk man that’s just what you do. Just do it alright.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Religion in fantasy worlds: These are the rules. The rules are law. Nobody can break the rules.

Religion irl: Okay you say that there are “rules” but how exactly are we defining “rules” here? Like is a suggestion a rule? How are we defining suggestion? No come back. Listen. Are we going by nuance in the original language or are translations fine or-

[what-even-is-thiss]

High control religions/cults recruiting in fantasy worlds: Join us! For we shall all eat the moon! This is a legitimate position to have!

High control religions/cults recruiting irl: We have free snacks. That shirt looks sooo cute on you btw. What, you heard that we wanna eat the moon? The media is always telling lies about us you know. We may have some unorthodox opinions about the moon but, tell you what. Come get some snacks, make some new friends, maybe chat about the moon a bit. See what you think. We’ve got pizza.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Religions in fantasy worlds: We must make a sacrifice to appease the gods! *draws up a sacrifice circle and completely destroys the sacrifice*

Religions irl: We must make a sacrifice to appease the gods! *has a communal barbecue*

[dancinbutterfly]

you can say Christianity if you mean Christianity

[what-even-is-thiss]

No I don’t actually. You’ll notice that I referenced sacrifice here. Christianity doesn’t generally practice sacrifice.

In order my inspirations were things I’ve seen that Catholics, Buddhists, Jews, Scientologists, and many traditional local religions do that are referenced in research that I’ve done or people who practice those religions in the modern day have actually told me about something that they or their families do personally.

In fact I have Hmong friends whose families still do animal sacrifice for their own personal traditions. They sacrifice chickens, spill the blood in a specific way, and eat the animal afterwards.

As a Christian myself I’ll remind you that religion does not automatically equal Christianity. And in fact that sort of assumption is sort of what annoys me about fantasy religions. I have my faith but I also have an interest in world religions in general and human spirituality in fantasy media is often just completely flattened out to being a misunderstanding of Christianity or a satanic panic view of satanism sloppily copy pasted over a misunderstanding of how paganism or spiritualism works.

[macrolit]

[loveridden1999]

doing things at the right age is literally a made up concept. you can start/pursue anything at any age. btw.

[loveridden1999]

remember remember

[prof-grace-aspen]

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

[nope-the-weeb-deactivated202408]

I know this has good intentions, so I will just add the "how you treat them, even as objects of fiction, can speak about your own character, be careful out there"

[prof-grace-aspen]

Your addition is actually completely antithetical to my message. It is literally the opposite of what I am conveying.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

I can write tentacle noncon of my favorite character all day long and be a fierce anti-sexual assault advocate in real life because what I do in my head is not the same thing as what I do in real life.

[askinfresh]

These tags were too perfect to not include

[kawaii-pigeon]

In case y'all need pictures sorry it aint in crayon 🖍️-

[oakenroots]

Ok class, art literacy time. This image "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe) is meant to illustrate this exact lesson. A pipe is paraphernalia, a tool used to consume tobacco and drugs. Some places make it illegal to carry one on you. But this is AN IMAGE, not a pipe. It is art depicting a subject. You can have feelings about pipes and their use and risks but when you begin censoring art, you begin to surrender your freedoms as a human being.

A fictional story about a fictional person being abused is not abuse of an actual person. As uncomfortable as our society has become with so much as using the words for uncomfortable subjects is indicative of our society's slide towards fascism and puritanical repression. Art depicts life and, whether we as a society like it or not, abuse, domestic violence, rape, suicide, incest, child sexual abuse, addiction, homelessness, sex work and murder are all actual things that actually happen and most real life villains are never caught by the legal system. Burying discussions, censoring depictions and silencing artists only helps these villains.

You are allowed to dislike a subject and choose not to engage with media that depicts that subject. You do not get to villainize artists that produce art of the subject, you don't get to censor the words and images just because they make you uncomfortable and you certainly don't get to restrict production of that art.

[meanao3thoughts]

in ye olden days of fic it was super common to ask for concrit (constructive criticism) in the author’s notes. i did it at the end of almost all of my fics from like 2007-2011. but something shifted and everyone stopped and at first i thought it was like how people stopped tagging smut as lemons/limes but now i wonder if it’s because the crit stopped being con.

[depsidase]

[jarl-deathwolf]

If anyone would like to read a thorough take down of Sparta as a state not worth emulating, then ive got just the series of articles for you!

[heroineimages]

Reblogging because pissing on Sparta is one of my hobbies. And yes, totally check out the link above. Brett has a lot of great discussion and scholarship on why Sparta was proto-fascist garbage, and he presents it with both snark and accessibility.

[fierceawakening]

Holy shit. That’s… that’s worse than I thought it would be. Yikes.

[doctorjanedee]

Reblogging because more people should read the ACOUP Sparta takedown and fewer people should get their concept of history from fucking 300.

[fierceawakening]

No one should get their concept of history from 300, and I say that as someone who enjoyed 300. 300 is a comicbookification of a legend, and legends are already exaggerations.

[disorganisedautodidact]

A Great Divorce has also done an audio version of the ACOUP Spart takedown if audio is easier for you!

[tayasui-mono]

Some of the discourse around the Game Changers books comes across as so pseudo intellectual to me, and all my issues with the various, aggressive discourse online has everything to do with this. These books are not hobbit or god of small things; these books are romance. That doesn't mean they get away with bad writing or that the standards for critique are, for some blasted reason, lower—it means the standards for critique are different. The readers of this genre are not looking for intellectual insight or a dissection of social tragedies; they're looking for compelling main characters with good romantic and in some cases, sexual chemistry. They're looking for tension, resolution, and in most cases, a happy ending. The romance between characters is the story. Everything else that exists in this world—the universe of the story, discrimination, grief, other characters, mental health issues—are props to affect the relationship between the characters. As long as a romance novel reads like a compelling romance, the writing style can be anything. Because all the skill, all the muscle work, lies in the construction of the characters and the romance between them. That's all it takes to make a romance novel people want to read.

This is not easy to do at all. It's very difficult to create characters that stand out as new. Fanfic writers borrow aspects of original characters and often create less complex versions of them in their own romance fics, but creating interesting original characters, suited especially for romance, takes incredible skill. You see a lot of this in shows like bridgerton, for example, where most of the characters in the show are derived from their originals and have the hallmarks of complexity but not the depth. Or After, where the characters are based on Harry Styles and come across as caricature-ish.

One of the reasons Heated Rivalry was famous even within the MM romance genre (and I've read a ton of books within this genre), is because of the characters. They're incredibly well constructed and their romance is very believable. This is a good romance novel; it fulfills it's intention. Everything else in this book is a prop for the romance, and, again, it's a romance book! It's not an academic textbook on gay sex and mental health disorders!

However people seem to treat it as such. Calling the books too trashy for their taste or that Jacob 'elevates' the books—Jacob's adaptation is successful because he stayed as true as he could to the source material, because, guess what, he is a romance reader and understands what makes a romance story work. The reason you like his show, additionally, is because it's beautiful to look at. The cinematographer and the editor did a wonderful job as well. And of course, the actors get all their flowers. So you are consuming romance, and sneering at the creators for creating romance as a lesser artform?

It frustrates me additionally that the readers of these books are put down as stupid or seeking cheap art. Firstly, people who read romance also read other genres. Secondly, people who read romance understand that they're reading romance and have defined expectations for them in most cases. If they consumed all cheap art due to lacking standards, ALL romance books to ever exist would be popular. Not saying bad romance novels don't get popular, they do, as in any genre. My point being, people judge a good romance differently than how they'd judge a good murder mystery, because the requirements are different. And Heated Rivalry, and the Long Game are good romance books. Otherwise, so many talented people wouldn't have rallied around it to bring it to screen while repeatedly emphasizing that the key to success was staying true to the source material.

[elierlick]

We should all be talking about KOSA. The bill would mean the end of the open internet in the US, and it was just approved by a House committee for a floor vote. The act is ostensibly designed to regulate the age of social media users. However, it actually deanonymizes the internet and allows the government to sue LGBTQ+ websites.

Unsurprisingly, the Heritage Foundation is one of the main lobbying groups behind this push. They have publicly stated they want to use the law to restrict LGBTQ+ and abortion-related content. Blocking children under 16 from accessing the internet means young people will be isolated within their communities. They cannot discuss LGBTQ+ issues with their online peers. They could not request help to access abortion clinics. Senator Marsha Blackburn, who once personally sent the FBI to my doorstep to harass me, admits the law is intended to shield “minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture.”

“The through-line couldn’t be clearer: destroying online anonymity is a way for government to be able to identify ¬— and ultimately punish — dissenters,” explains Ari Cohn, lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The DHS has already subpoenaed hundreds of anonymous accounts tracking and protesting ICE. KOSA would make it even easier for the government to access your data.

Read the full article in The Intercept!