These posts are sisters

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Andulka

Love Begins
Jules of Nature
d e v o n
tumblr dot com
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

Kiana Khansmith

Kaledo Art

blake kathryn

tannertan36
Stranger Things

JVL
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Peter Solarz
Cosimo Galluzzi

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
cherry valley forever
todays bird
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

seen from Türkiye
seen from France

seen from Netherlands

seen from South Africa
seen from Germany

seen from Germany

seen from T1
seen from Germany
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia

seen from Germany

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States

seen from India
seen from T1
seen from Uzbekistan

seen from Australia
seen from France

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
@dontbestupidstupid
These posts are sisters
Here, have the top ten video game fandoms on The Archive of Our Own every year since the archive started
These tables show the current number of extant works (including archive locked works) on the AO3 created before Jan 1st of each year.
This is just the top fandom lists from a much larger project. For graphs, full details on methodology, a separate section on the Dragon Age tags, these lists in text rather than screenshot format, and more, see the full work here here
https://archiveofourown.org/works/62226781?view_full_work=true
EDIT: First error spotted! Legend of Zelda was missed in the 2024 list, I've updated the screenshot and it now correctly appears in ninth place
EDIT 2: Somehow the screenshots for 2019 and 2020 were missing? I'm blaming Tumblr, they're here now.
Oklahoma is attempting to pass a bill that would ban explicit romance novels. Authors, narrators, and sellers could all face fines of up to $100,000 and up to 10 years in jail for each instance.
If you live in OK, call your representative and tell them this bill should not be allowed to pass.
This is likely a test case. Republicans will try to pass it in OK and if it passes other states will likely try to pass similar laws.
In the meantime, get physical copies of books you like. Download those pdfs. Archive your AO3 stories and keep them on a physical hard drive. (Storing those files in the cloud could be problematic in the future as the company managing the cloud service can see what your files are)
A bill proposed by Oklahoma Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, seeks to raise punishment for child pornography but also aims to ban pornography al
@thebibliosphere
I know this doesn’t apply to any of the romance authors on here, but I really hope the Twitter/tiktok authors who cheered on the porn bans and told the rest of us we were crazy to “fear monger” that Romance would fall under fire are having a very “stub your toe for the rest of your natural lives” kind of day.
For the love of all that you enjoy: DON’T PAYWALL YOUR FANFICTION.
Again, but louder:
DON’T PAYWALL YOUR FANFICTION
It’s getting more and more common. I’ve seen three posts about it in the last 24 hours - patreons where you’ll get “exclusive” fanfiction stories if you’re a subscriber.
Don’t.
Don’t do it.
It’s annoying, but mostly it’s fucking dangerous.
The whole fanfiction community prosper on someone else’s turf under “fair use” laws. In simple terms: we can play with other people’s creations for as long as it’s done for our own amusement, and that of our followers.
Once any kind of financial benefits are made, it becomes another abuse of someone else’s rights.
And look, I get it. It sucks, especially seeing the artists take commissions while the authors get nothing, and it takes hours and hours of our time, and I understand people are looking for a side hustle to make ends meet in this monstrosity of a capitalist society, but if we don’t stop it from happening, the rights owners will stop it.
And they’ll stop it for everyone.
It’s not worth it. Don’t do it.
The key issue (and difference between fanfic and fanart) is what boils down to "market substitution".
A piece of fanart cannot substitute fandom media, generally. [1] That is, someone cannot meaningfully replace a fandom media via fanart illustrations, because an illustration does not provide the same thing the original medium does.
Fanfic, however, by its nature, can. I could replace a fandom media with fanfic and get the same thing as a consumer -- plots with these owned characters in this owned setting -- and in theory could then decide to stop purchasing the original media, because my needs are met by the fanfic.
This is also the reason media creators *cannot* meaningfully interact with fanfic -- it is a more complicated mess if there is an overlap of ideas if you know the lead writer reads fanfic, and pursuing it as the fic author puts that market substitution piece on the block in a bad way.
So, yes. It is frustrating. But there is a very good legal reason that Ao3, for example, has mentions of monetization explicitly against its ToS, and it is for the protection of everyone.
[1] fan comics could run into this issue too but commercial, self-published fan comics is less of a thing out of the US space, generally. Your Artist Alleys and Patreon spaces primarily involve singular piece works
"#author is chronically ill" "#author is disabled" "#author is trans" "#trans character written by trans author"
I understand the desire to signal to other marginalized people that you're not here to jumpscare them with regressive drivel. I also recognize the appeal to mercy, re: "Hello, random bully! Please don't harass me over this fic for X when I myself am Y."
However, I implore you to consider the precedent this sets for fanwork (and art overall). By normalizing these disclaimers, we are legitimizing a police presence at the gate of every fic. No one should ever feel the need to show an ID to an armed guard just to be "allowed" access to a certain kind of character or subject matter. There is no "you must be this disabled/queer/traumatized to ride" sign, and anyone who tries to card you for the art you create and consume should be treated like a fucking weirdo. Please do not let these trolls goad you into answering their riddles three or fulfilling their identity fetch quests. You don't owe them any personal information, least of all the bits that could be used against you in the future (like your triggers, your marginalized status, etc).
A couple nights back I read a fic where a disabled character did something that made me go, "A disabled person would never write that." The actions of the character were so nails-on-a-chalkboard incompatible with my own experience of disability and chronic pain that it seemed unfathomable to me that the author could share my background. But my experiences are not universal!
If I may beat a dead horse, what art and representation uplifts one marginalized person will surely offend another. If I use the #author is disabled tag on my Ao3 fic to signal safe harbor to other disabled people, I've set myself up for failure, because the kinky sex scene that reads like empowerment to me will read like fetishization to someone else; the heroic rescue that reads like validation will read like infantilization; the tragic ending that reads like catharsis will read like punishment. You being from X group does not guarantee the comfort of the fellow X who reads your work.
And fuck, even if you disagree with me and believe there IS an objectively "correct" way to portray X marginalized character or Y subject matter...where does this ticket system leave people in the closet?? Where does it leave survivors who don't feel comfortable broadcasting their trauma to complete strangers?? Even if you believe certain types of fiction should only be created and consumed by certain types of people, you have to admit that a lot of X people writing about themselves and their experiences will be caught in the ID crossfire.
Normalizing these kinds of disclaimers just empowers bullies to gatekeep more and more art. Plus, I can tell you from experience that once you're in a troll's crosshairs, the gateposts shift. Your clearance level is never high enough to justify your work.
"You're a gay author with gay characters? I bet you're not really a man. No gay man would write something this blatantly fetishistic."
"You're a survivor writing about abuse? That's actually worse because you should know better than to harm other survivors with such a romanticized depiction of abuse."
The conclusion is always the same regardless of your credentials: you're the wrong kind of X. You're a danger to other X people. If you want to be the right kind of X and help other X people, you need to delete Y.
Would you let a Moms for Liberty protestor card you on your way to the library? When she stomps your feet and tells you the stories you read make you a bad and dangerous person, would you assume she wants the best for you and your community? Would you nod and promise to wear an "I'm gay" pin and burn your books? Or would you tell her to go fuck a cactus??
Honestly I'm glad to see others sharing this opinion. It's one I've had for a while now.
"As an [x]" feels very... defensive. It's a pre-emptive defense from a perceived attack, and that has its place. But how we make imagined barbie dolls behave and act isn't one of those places?
The way I write trans characters is extremely empowering to me, but is probably extremely dysphoria inducing for others and definitely fetishistic. And that sucks for the folks it makes dysphoric, but I'm not going to stop writing what makes me feel good. And I understand why someone would want to basically check my trans card for it, but it's. Not their business. Magical sex changes make ME feel empowered and I write for Me, for example.
For me, a setting where everyone is just inherently fine with queer stuff is. Idyllic and sweet, but usually unbelievable without worldbuilding behind it! I don't usually like those stories on their own! I prefer writing and reading stories where queer characters being queer means something and affects their place in society, unless I am specifically looking for the warm fuzzy sweetness of the former category. But if I'm looking for Empowerment? I want the struggle because I want to see them overcome something.
For a lot of people? Bayonetta is a feminist masterpiece and a power fantasy! For me it makes me very uncomfortable! And that's okay! That doesn't mean that Bayonetta wasn't made to be a feminist work it just means that it didn't resonate with me in particular and that's okay.
#of course you can talk about your identity and how it affects your writing and themed if you feel like it!#and i get the need of wanting to connect#with our trans authors etc#but this type of 'disclaimer'#is only the flipside of purity police types demanding to know#whether authors/actors etc REALLY are queer#and forcefully outing them#don’t support that culture
(Fantastic tags from @pandirpus! Thank you!)
Tbh I think fandom generally needs to get better at sitting with the uncomfortable fact that a story/fanwork/meme/whatever can hurt one person and help another
This is why I think “tag warning” culture is kinder and more constructive than cancel culture / “no problematic content” culture. One size does not fit all, but if we learn to be more aware of the fact that the same thing can be emotionally validating or cathartic to one person and upsetting to another, and pick up a general mindset of thinking before we post, “what might people need a heads up for in this content?”, we grow more compassionate, more thoughtful, and more understanding of the differences in people’s experiences.
Listen to me. Listen. I need you to dig up your old LJ fan fiction and move it to ao3 or Squidge. I need you to do this. I know, I know! It’s old fic! But please, for the love of those who will come after you, do it. Nobody can get into those communities. The doors are locked and the mods are gone. You must bring the treasures out for the next generation 🙏
True... I have lots of fic on Live Journal that languish there... I've moved some fic, but I have lots still there...
I do need the push once in a while to at least poke at it... thanks.
feedback and fic in fandom (3 f's of our own)
This conversation about feedback on fic says everything I’ve been wanting to say better than I could say it. But I’ll go ahead and try anyway.
Over the last five years or so there have been some great discussions around the rise of commodification of fanworks and decline of fandom community. This commodification looks a bit like enshittification of the internet: a cool site exists; its popularity makes someone realize they can get money from it; it has more and more ads; the site adds features to drive engagement, including The Algorithm; the things that made the site cool start to fall away. The site exists now as a vehicle purely to get clicks, and the people on it are on it solely to get clicks—to make money, to be successful, for some kind of social cachet.
AO3 doesn’t have advertisements. It’s not making money. But what is happening to fandom is proof of concept that enshittification changes the way we as humans engage. A cool website in 2004 was often a community space where you could meet people, have conversations, find cool things, and make cool things. A cool website in 2024 is either a content farm that will continually feed you enough content to hold your attention, or a social media site where your participation will come with stats to show you whether you are holding the attention of others.
AO3 wasn’t built to be a community space. It doesn’t have great functions for meeting people and having conversations. The idea was that, because fandom community spaces already existed, AO3 would serve the part of that community where you can find the cool things and store the cool things you made. It was meant to be a library in a city, not the whole city itself.
But it was also never meant to be a website in 2024, a content farm constantly generating content solely for your clicks and eyeballs and ad revenue, or a social media site where the content creators themselves vie for your clicks and eyeballs.
The most common talking point when people discuss the enshittification of fandom is the folks out there who are treating AO3 as that first kind of enshittified website: the content farm. This discussion is about how people treat fanfic as a product for consumption.
The post that kicked off the discussion on @sitp-recs’s blog was about someone who wasn’t getting very many kudos or comments on their fic, and was feeling pretty demoralized about it, then joined a discord server and found an entire channel dedicated to people loving their fic. But those on that server had never come to share that love with the author, which the author found really discouraging.
There are more and more stories like this. Someone on tiktok pulls a quote from a fic on AO3 and makes a 10-second video with them staring at a wall, the quote pasted at the bottom, music playing over it. It has 100,000 hearts, and 100 comments with people gushing over the fic, which has 80 kudos on AO3. Overall, people notice more and more hits on their fics, but fewer and fewer comments or even kudos. Fewer and fewer people seem to feel the need to interact with the author, instead treating the fic like a product to be used and discarded—which the enshittified internet (a stunning feature of late-stage capitalism!) encourages. The fandom community is dying, these stories conclude.
I agree. 100%. Both of the stories above have happened to me—viral tiktoks about my fic, secret discord channels to follow and discuss my fic—and let me tell you, it fucking sucks.
But from these observations about fandom enshittification, the discussion continues in a very odd direction. The solution to the death of fandom community is our favorite enshittification buzzword: engagement. We should engage the authors. They’re producing these products for free. We consume them at no cost. We must demonstrate our gratitude by paying them back.
It’s as though the capitalist consumption that the enshittified web encourages is so ingrained within us that we must think in terms of payment, in terms of exchange, transaction. Or as though, by forgoing payment, authors are some kind of martyrs defying capitalism, and the only way to honor their great sacrifice is comments and kudos.
Indeed, the discourse around this sometimes does veer away from capitalist rhetoric into something that smells almost religious in desperation. Authors are gods who bestow us mere mortals with the fruits of their labor benevolently, through love; the least we can do is worship them. Meanwhile the authors adopt the groveling sentiment of starving artists: I produce great art; I only humbly ask that you feed me in return.
These kinds of entreaties make my skin crawl for a number of reasons. I’m not a god. I’m not writing because I love you. I don’t expect your worship or even your praise.
I think the thing that disturbs me the most about it is that it suggests that authors (or, if the OP is feeling generous fan work creators) are the most important people in fandom. I’ve even seen posts stating that without creators, fandom wouldn’t exist—as though readers aren’t just as important. As though conversations where people discuss characterizations and plot points and randomly spin out interpretations and ideas and thoughts related to canon are meaningless. I’ve even seen people scramble to include folks having these discussions as “creators,” as though realizing that these people are necessary and integral to fandom communities but unable to drop the idea that the producers are the ones who are important. As though that person who just lurks can never count.
Is this what community is? When you join the queer community, are you expected to produce a product of your queerness? If not, must you actively participate and give back to the queer community in order to be considered a part of it? Or is it enough that you are queer, that you exist as a queer person and want to be around others who are queer, you want to be a part of something? What is community, anyway?
The problem with people raising the authors above everyone else in the community and demanding that tribute be paid is that they are decrying the “content farm” style of 2024 website out of one side of their mouth, but out of the other side are instead demanding that AO3 become a 2024-style social media website. Authors are influencers. “Engagement” and clicks are the things that really matter. They are in fact suggesting that the way to solve the commodification of fanfic is by “paying authors back” with stats.
Before anyone comes at me with the idea that comments aren’t just “stats,” I will clarify what I mean. There are literally hundreds of posts on tumblr alone claiming that any comment “helps” the author. Someone replies that they are shy to comment. Someone else replies that incoherent keyboard smashes, a single emoji, or the comment “kudos” are all that is required to satisfy the author, all that is required as tribute—all that is required as payment to keep this economy healthy.
I’m not condemning the comments that are keyboard smashes or emojis or a single kind word. I receive them. They make me happy. If anyone wants to leave such a comment on my fics, I’m really grateful for it. But this is not community-building. This is a transaction. In @yiiiiiiiikes25’s excellent response in the post linked at the beginning, they point out that “you have a cool hat” is something that is “perfectly nice” to hear from someone—and it is! We all want to be told we have a cool hat! But as they go on to say, what builds community is interactions that are deep and specific, interactions that are rich in quality, not in quantity. A kudos or a comment that says only ❤️are lovely things to receive, but they don’t build community.
My reaction, when I see people begging for kudos and comments as the only means by which to keep fandom community alive, is very close to @eleadore's. I want to say, “No. Readers do not need to comment or kudos. Believe not these hucksters who claim to know the appropriate method of fandom participation. Participate as you feel able, or not at all; nothing is required of you.”
I’ve been told before (several times) that I’m not qualified to participate in such discussions because I am an established author who has some fics with very high stats. It doesn’t matter that I have also been a new writer with almost no one reading my fics. It doesn’t matter that I still write in new fandoms where no one in that fandom knows me. It doesn’t matter that I, like any human being, still care about receiving recognition and attention and praise.
And maybe that’s correct. I personally don’t think that billionaires have a place in deciding the direction of the economy, and--if we're really going to consider fandom an economy--in fandom terms, if I’m not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, I’m definitely in the infamous “one percent.” So, just as no one wants to hear Elon Musk say “money isn’t everything,” maybe it’s not my place to say “kudos isn’t required, actually.”
That said, I’m not the only one who has a problem with the stats-based discourse around fandom community. However, the main counter-response to this discussion I see goes something like this: you shouldn’t be writing fic for validation. If you’re writing for attention, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Authors should write fic because they love it without any expectation of return.
This is, in my opinion, missing the point of what is meant by fandom community.
I wrote fanfic before I knew that fanfic, as a concept, existed. I read books; I wanted them to be different; I wrote little stories for myself with new endings, with self-inserts, with cross-overs, with alternate universes. I did it for myself in the 90s. It never occurred to me that anyone else would do this, much less that people would share.
As @faiell points out—creating and sharing are two different things. I created fics for myself, but I decided to share them in the early 2000s because other people might like them, too. And of course, I wanted to hear whether other people liked them. How could I not? I might decorate my home just for me and not for anyone else’s preferences, but when people come over and say my house is nice, how can I not enjoy that? And if a lot of people think my house is nice, which encourages me to post pictures of it online, isn’t it understandable I might do so with the hope that more people will say my house is nice? And, honestly, if no one is appreciating my pictures, I probably won’t continue to go through the trouble of taking them and posting them. I’ll just enjoy my house that I decorated without sharing, the end.
When I found out there were whole fannish communities where people discussed canon and tossed ideas around about it, made theories and prompts and insights into the characters, fics they had written and recs for other fics and analyses of fics and art based on fics and fics based on art—I wanted to be a part of that, too. Now, sometimes, I write fic not out of an internal need to do so but out of a desire to participate in that community.
The idea that we write fic only for the love of it, then post it only because we possess it, is a process entirely centered on the self. It’s fandom in a vacuum. The idea that we share this thing, that we feel pleasure if someone likes it but feel nothing at all if no one says anything about it, that it’s completely okay to be ignored and unseen—that’s not what a community is either. That’s some weird sort of self-aggrandizement through self-effacement—because yes, there is often a weird kind of virtue-signaling in this kind of discourse.
I say this as someone who has virtue-signaled in that way: “some people write for stats, but I write for myself.” It’s bullshit. Sure, I write for myself, but why post it on the internet? Honestly, said virtue has a whiff of the capitalist machine, which would like you to produce for the sake of production, work for the sake of work. The noblest among us expect no recompense for that which they give!
The reason that I’m bringing this back around to capitalism is that capitalism actively works to dismantle community. The reason that folks are out here pleading for “engagement” in order to “pay back” authors for the products they give us “for free” is because people no longer even have the language to discuss how to participate in meaningful community. And frankly, how to build back fandom community, in the face of enshittification, is getting harder and harder to see.
But I do think that if we value fanfic and the fanfic community, it’s really, really not constructive to judge whether someone’s reasons for writing fanfic are valid. It’s also weird to me that it would be considered wrong that someone’s reason for sharing fanfic is because they would like to receive some recognition for it, when in fact that seems to be the most natural reason in the world for sharing something so private and vulnerable with the world.
Let’s go back to that idea of how hurtful it is to find out your fanfic is trending on tiktok without anyone from tiktok saying anything to you about your fic, or how it can be painful to find out there’s a secret discord channel dedicated to your fic. The people who respond to that with, “Ah, but you shouldn’t be writing to get attention!” are missing the point. The fic did get attention. It got lots. Attention obviously wasn't why the writer was writing--they were writing to participate, and they didn't get to. At all.
However, if your conclusion is that the author was upset because these particular stats were not accruing under this author’s profile, thereby preventing them from achieving the vaunted status of BNF and influencer—I don’t know, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think that’s why I, personally, have been hurt by these things, and I doubt it’s what hurt the people in these posts either. They’re hurt because they want to participate, and they have been systematically excluded by the very people they thought were part of the community they thought they could participate in.
Sure, if those folks from tiktok and the discord server all came and showered the author with kudos and comments that said “kudos,” the author might have felt satisfied enough with the quantity of this recognition that they would continue writing. But in the end, this still does nothing to address the problem of fandom community, in which the deep, meaningful recognition, interactions, and relationships in fandom are getting harder and harder to have and to build, as a result of how people now expect to engage in online spaces.
So, how to address the problem of fandom community? You probably read this long, long post hoping that I had an answer, and for that I must apologize. I don’t have solutions. My intent was to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. I wished to outline the problems that I’m seeing in what was hopefully a slightly new or at least thought-provoking way, rather than offer solutions.
But, now that I’m talking about being prescriptive, maybe I can offer one suggestion, which is—maybe the solution to this isn’t about prescribing behavior. I do understand the irony in writing a prescription saying we shouldn’t prescribe people, but I’m going to write it anyway:
Maybe we shouldn’t be telling anyone the appropriate reasons for writing fanfic or for sharing it. Maybe we shouldn’t be telling readers they need to kudos or need to comment. If we’re going to go pointing fingers, we should be pointing at the institutions of capitalism that have made the internet what it is today—but I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem either.
But I do think that describing this problem, understanding what it actually is, not blaming readers for it and not blaming authors for it—I do think that helps. The discussion I linked at the beginning of this post is what I think of as the fandom I miss, the fandom that's now harder and harder to access, the fandom that is dying. That fandom was a social space where people had opinions and disagreed and went back and forth and gazed at their navels and then talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
In the words of @yiiiiiiiikes25, it was a fuckin’ discussion about hats. And we’re hungry for it.
I've seen a number of people worried and concerned about this language on Ao3s current "agree to these terms of service" page. The short version is:
Don't worry. This isn't anything bad. Checking that box just means you forgive them for being US American.
Long version: This text makes perfect sense if you're familiar with the issues around GDPR and in particular the uncertainty about Privacy Shield and SCCs after Schrems II. But I suspect most people aren't, so let's get into it, with the caveat that this is a Eurocentric (and in particular EU centric) view of this.
The basic outline is that Europeans in the EU have a right to privacy under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive (let's simplify things and call it an EU law) that regulates how various entities, including companies and the government, may acquire, store and process data about you.
The list of what counts as data about you is enormous. It includes things like your name and birthday, but also your email address, your computers IP address, user names, whatever. If an advertiser could want it, it's on the list.
The general rule is that they can't, unless you give explicit permission, or it's for one of a number of enumerated reasons (not all of which are as clear as would be desirable, but that's another topic). You have a right to request a copy of the data, you have a right to force them to delete their data and so on. It's not quite on the level of constitutional rights, but it is a pretty big deal.
In contrast, the US, home of most of the world's internet companies, has no such right at a federal level. If someone has your data, it is fundamentally theirs. American police, FBI, CIA and so on also have far more rights to request your data than the ones in Europe.
So how can an American website provide services to persons in the EU? Well… Honestly, there's an argument to be made that they can't.
US websites can promise in their terms and conditions that they will keep your data as safe as a European site would. In fact, they have to, unless they start specifically excluding Europeans. The EU even provides Standard Contract Clauses (SCCs) that they can use for this.
However, e.g. Facebook's T&Cs can't bind the US government. Facebook can't promise that it'll keep your data as secure as it is in the EU even if they wanted to (which they absolutely don't), because the US government can get to it easily, and EU citizens can't even sue the US government over it.
Despite the importance that US companies have in Europe, this is not a theoretical concern at all. There have been two successive international agreements between the US and the EU about this, and both were struck down by the EU court as being in violation of EU law, in the Schrems I and Schrems II decisions (named after Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist who sued in both cases).
A third international agreement is currently being prepared, and in the meantime the previous agreement (known as "Privacy Shield") remains tentatively in place. The problem is that the US government does not want to offer EU citizens equivalent protection as they have under EU law; they don't even want to offer US citizens these protections. They just love spying on foreigners too much. The previous agreements tried to hide that under flowery language, but couldn't actually solve it. It's unclear and in my opinion unlikely that they'll manage to get a version that survives judicial review this time. Max Schrems is waiting.
So what is a site like Ao3 to do? They're arguably not part of the problem, Max Schrems keeps suing Meta, not the OTW, but they are subject to the rules because they process stuff like your email address.
Their solution is this checkbox. You agree that they can process your data even though they're in the US, and they can't guarantee you that the US government won't spy on you in ways that would be illegal for the government of e.g. Belgium. Is that legal under EU law? …probably as legal as fan fiction in general, I suppose, which is to say let's hope nobody sues to try and find out.
But what's important is that nothing changed, just the language. Ao3 has always stored your user name and email address on servers in the US, subject to whatever the FBI, CIA, NSA and FRA may want to do it. They're just making it more clear now.
Fun fact! You don't currently have to worry that a US spy agency has taken your data from AO3. (Have they spied on you in other ways? Eh, probably.)
AO3's parent nonprofit, the Organization for Transformative Works has a neat thing on their website called a warrant canary.
This thing. It's hard to read on my screenshot, so I'll copy the text here.
"The Organization for Transformative Works has not received any National Security Letters or FISA court orders, and we have not been subject to any gag order by a FISA court."
What's that mean? National Security Letters and FISA courts are how US security agencies secretly subpoena data from US-based websites. They send the website owners and order to turn over data and NOT TELL ANYONE that they've done so. That's called a gag order. Disobeying this gag order is big time illegal and the US government WILL ruin your life over it. You cannot tell people, "The US government gave me a secret order to turn over my data."
BUT! The government cannot compel you to lie. A FISA court order cannot make you say on your website, "We have never received a FISA court order." So websites put the warrant canaries on their sites, and if they ever get an order for data that they aren't allowed to tell you about, they take the order down. Like a canary fainting from gas in a mine, the warrant canary stops singing.
So right now, we know that the OTW, and therefore AO3, has never had to secretly turn over data to the US government. Keep an eye on that canary. Check in on it occasionally. As long as the little bird's singing, don't panic.
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/privacy/what-is-warrant-canary/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq
if you're worried about the new ToS for AO3, please remember that you are primed to distrust because of the way politics are intertwining with the internet right now. remember to look into definitions yourself, fact check, and look through the logic lense before jumping to conclusions.
AFAIK right now, the update clarifies terms that have already existed. it's not changing as much as it is clarity-rewriting. i'm still looking through the legalese (law student, i'm learning as I go) and I will be checking in again later, but don't despair.
however, don't get lax. download fics, connect with the authors, build out your communities. comment and bookmark and save, and please don't stop writing.
UPDATE:
the privacy policy update Ao3 asks you to agree to is vague, but already required. in the same way your IP address is required when submitting content, personal information is provided when a complaint is submitted about you--to email you. and address the complaint.
in the same way that any investigation from a department of law requires a business to provide information, Ao3 is asking you to agree that, in the occurrence of a legal investigation, your personal information (IP address included) will be given if legally required.
NOW, this means:
An investigation has to occur (uncommon);
The investigation involves you, due to a complaint or a suspicion of criminal involvement (situational);
The investigation specifically requires your personal information to be resolved (very rare);
Ao3 deems your information necessary, and divulges it in accordance with law (a clear layer of common sense between you and reckless investigation)
so. what can you do to avoid this occuring?
Don't do crime;
Don't harrass people;
Don't put your real name/age/address/SSN online;
Clearly warn your works in tags and notes;
and follow the general rules of online safety
there. we're not over project 2025, we're not over the safety of ao3 being threatened via law, but your personal information will not be divulged without Very Clear Proceeding Steps visible to literally everyone around you that scream "WE'RE LOOKING AT INDIVIDUALS". the government simply does not have time to target every single person online. this is something every online service has to provide--in the case of a personal investigation.
so don't become the subject of a personal investigation, and you should be fine.
Out of all the explanations I've been reading today for this, this is the one I've found the easiest to understand and most helpful, so I'm reblogging in case this helps anyone else. I was worried about the update because the last time I read the TOS was when I created my account years ago and don't remember much lmao.
But yeah, don't be complacent in case the current situation changes but it should be fine for now. Probably. Check for yourselves and read the TOS in case you're still doubting is the best advice I think I can give here.
Reblogging to add @dear-massacre very on point tags which I feel deserved to be in the body of the post itself: #I feel like people are just#completely panicking#and they shouldn’t be#he hasn’t even taken office yet#let’s just take a breath here#the government is not coming for fanfic writers#there’s a long line of people that Trump would go after first#before he gets to us#the first amendment protects fanfics and dissent against the government#overturning that requires a supermajority in congress#which he does not have#just relax and stop deleting your fics and writing posts about how republicans are going to take away your yaoi#it’s not productive or helpful rn
So…
Does AO3 have a plan if queer content get ban in the usa ? Like… they allow everything that is allowed per USA’s law so if they don’t (and even if they do) I strongly advise that y’all download all the queer fic you can…
This is where they are. I saw this comment yesterday. Now as far as I am aware they run on what New York says is or isn't legal.
At this moment in time ao3 should be fine. But I am just putting it out there otw code is free should people want to build their own archive, maybe even out of the US so it isn't touched by any laws they bring in
Thank you for putting this ! I’m glad users are protected
(I don’t think making a new archive would be the way tbh, we would be losing so many queer works if we just did another one instead of moving the whole ao3 in a safer place in emergencies )
Archives are made every day, they just don't have the user base ao3 does which isn't a good or bad thing just different.
I would advise people to always keep copy of their works just in case the worst does happen or simply just because
Like, they aren't kidding, tho. otw-archive collects nothing of note. Nothing genuinely traceable. If you use a throw-away e-mail, that's it, there's literally no linking you to anyone else. And even THEN, if you're worried about IPs, it's very hard to match user to IP address. Like-- you can't do it from the software, you'd have to do it from the access logs, and lemme tell you, trying to do that would be absolutely fucking bonkers if not logistically impossible.
Also, like-- yes people should make archives! EVERYONE WHO CAN SHOULD. Decentralization can only ever be good for fandom.
People will claim to be a fan of some thing and then hate all of the themes and motifs and story lines and plot lines and protagonists and antagonists like man I don’t think that you actually like it here
i knew this screenshot would come in handy
like i'm sorry but we as a fandom have to stay firm on our anti-AI values. we cannot suddenly start giving AI a pass when it's something we "want to see" like destiel kisses. it's not suddenly fine. we're not going to start using AI to make fanfic scenes come to life or audio AI to make characters "say" stuff we want to hear. you have GOT to be firm on your anti-AI stance. if you start making exceptions then suddenly anything will fly. fandom is for real art and creations made by real people. no AI fanfics. no AI art. no AI rendered "bonus" scenes. no AI audio. none of it has a place here.
preserving @freedom-of-fanfic's tags
Thank you for preserving these!
Coming back to say: here’s some reasons to hold out against using generative AI as much as you can*.
On the ethics side:
The ‘free’ AI programs available to the general public are unethically trained on stolen data
(Said stolen data has been found to include CSAM/CSEM)
AI generation requires lots of electricity & is bad for the environment
AI is heavily supplemented by underpaid human labor that’s hidden on purpose
On the labor side:
AI has only one real value for companies who look to incorporate it: reducing its reliance on human labor. If it’s not doing that, then why spend money on it? It needs to be a cheaper replacement for something else, and that something is human labor. That’s its selling point.
And thus: generative AI is being sold to your boss/potential commissioner as your cheaper competitor.
Although the actual potential for generative AI’s output is doubtful, companies are eager to use AI to cut creative labor out of the production process and thus the profit structure. artists are noticing.
For example: Companies refusing to include anti-AI language in contracts, prompting strikes
AI is replacing people … but mostly making jobs for those who remain even harder than before
That last point is important to me bc if you won’t try to avoid using generative AI for the sake of the people whose work was stolen to train it, or for the environment, or for creatives getting financially squeezed by it … you should avoid it because it’s not going to be around forever.
On the economic side:
Generative AI as it stands … really can’t replace humans no matter how hard AI companies try to sell it as a replacement. If it turns out to be a useless expense, then why buy it?
If it turns out nobody will buy it … why keep selling it? & in fact that’s the problem: not nearly enough people are buying use of generative AI services/models to make it profitable.
If it’s not profitable (bc ppl actively don’t like it & it doesn’t work well), the companies selling generative AI will stop selling it, will close their doors, will stop offering generative AI for free …
And all we’ll have is a bunch of collapsed AI startups & lost creative jobs for no reason.
The AI bubble will crash, & when it does, all that will happen is a lot of wealth will have transferred to already-wealthy people who were willing to throw massive amounts of money down the drain just to make everyone else a little poorer
Outside of fandom, AI is getting rammed down our throats bc it’s all about profit. Generative AI is meant to steal what little profit artists still make commercially. Let’s not let it take up space in fandom, too!
I can’t force anyone to not use AI, of course, & I don’t expect ppl who already use it to respect any of my reasons to not use it. But i hope this post gives you some reasons to not use it.
(You know who’s actually profiting heavily from AI? Scammers.)
*a lot of things are labeled ‘AI’ but aren’t really generative AI, & sometimes you can’t avoid using AI bc of work or something. But do your best, even if only for yourself.
Hot take: Actual literary analysis requires at least as much skill as writing itself, with less obvious measures of whether or not you’re shit at it, and nobody is allowed to do any more god damn litcrit until they learn what the terms “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” mean.
Pacing
The “pacing” of a piece of media comes down to one thing, and one thing only, and it has nothing to do with your personal level of interest. It comes down to this question alone: Is the piece of media making effective use of the time it has?
That’s it.
So, for example, things which are NOT a example of bad pacing include a piece of media that is:
A slow burn
Episodic
Fast-paced
Prioritizing character interaction over intricate plot
Opening in medias res without immediate context
Incorporating a large number of subplots
Incorporating very few subplots
Bad pacing IS when a piece of media has
“Wasted” time, ie, screentime or page space dedicated to plotlines or characters that are ultimately irrelevant to the plot or thematic resolution at the cost of properly developing that resolution. Pour one out for the SW:TCW fans.
The presence of a sidestory or giving secondary characters a separate resolution of their personal arc is not “bad writing,” and only becomes a pacing issue if it falls into one of the other two categories.
Not enough time, ie, a story attempts to involve more plotlines than it has time or space to give satisfying resolutions to, resulting in all of them being “rushed” even though the writer(s) made scrupulous use of every second of page/screentime and made sure every single section advanced those storylines.
Padding for time, ie, Open-World Game Syndrome. Essentially, you have ten hours of genuinely satisfying story….but “short games don’t sell,” so you insert vast swathes of empty landscape to traverse, a bunch of nonsense fetch quests to complete, or take one really satisfying questline and repeat it ten times with different names/macguffins, to create 40 hours of “gameplay” that have stopped being fun because the same thing happens over and over. If you think this doesn’t happen in novels, you have never read Oliver Twist.
Another note on pacing: There are, except arguably in standalone movies, at least two levels of pacing going on at any given time. There’s the pacing within the installment, and the pacing within the series. Generally, there’s three levels of pacing–within the installment (a chapter, an episode, a level), within the volume (a season, a novel, a game), and within the series as a whole. Sometimes, in fact FREQUENTLY, a piece of media will work on one of these levels but not on all of them. (Usually the ideal is that it works on all three, but that’s not always important! Not every individual chapter of a novel needs to be actively relevant to the entire overarching series.)
Honestly, the best possible masterclass in how to recognize good, bad, and “they tried their best but needed more space” pacing? If you want to learn this skill, and get better at recognizing it?
Doctor Who.
ESPECIALLY Classic Who, which has clearly-delineated “serials” within their seasons. You can pretty much pick any serial at random, and once you’ve seen a few of them, you get a REALLY good feel for things like, for example…
Wow, that serial did not need to be twelve episodes long; they got captured and escaped at least three different times and made like four different plans that they ended up not being able to execute, and maybe once or twice they would have ramped up the tension, but it really didn’t contribute anything–this could have been a normal four-episode serial and been much stronger.
Holy shit there were WAY too many balls being juggled in this, this would have been better with the concepts split into two separate serials, as it stands they only had four episodes and they just couldn’t develop anything fully
Oh my god that was AMAZING I want to watch it again and take notes on how they divided up the individual episodes and what plot beats they chose to break on each week
Eh, structurally that was good, but even as a 90-minute special that nuwho episode feels like it would have worked a lot better as a Classic serial with a little more room to breathe.
How in the actual name of god did they stretch like twenty minutes of actual story into a four-episode serial (derogatory)
How in the actual name of god did they stretch like twenty minutes of actual story into a four-episode serial (awestruck)
If you’re not actively trying to learn pacing, either for literary analysis or your own writing…honestly? Just learn to differentiate between whether the pacing is bad or if it just doesn’t appeal to you. There’s a WORLD of difference between “The pacing is too slow” and “the pacing is too slow for me.”
“I really prefer a slower build into a universe; the fact that it opens in medias res and you piece together where you are and how the magic system works over the next several chapters from context is way too fast-paced for me and makes me feel lost, so I bounced off it” is, usually, a much more constructive commentary than “the pacing is bad”.
And when the pacing really is bad, you’ll be doing everyone a favor by being able to actually articulate why.
Show, Don’t Tell
This is a very specific rule that has been taken dramatically out of context and is almost always used incorrectly.
“Show, don’t tell” applies to character traits and worldbuilding, not information in the plot.
It may be easier to “get” this rule if you forget the specific phrasing for a minute. This is a mnemonic device to avoid Informed Attributes, nothing more and nothing less.
Character traits like a character being funny, smart, kind, annoying, badass, etc, should be established by their behavior in-universe and the reactions of others to them–if you just SAY they’re X thing but never show it, then you’re just telling the audience these things. Similarly you can’t just tell the audience that a setting has brutal winters and expect to be believed, when the clothing, architecture, preparations, etc shown as common in that setting do not match those that brutal winters would necessitate.
To recap:
Violations of Show Don’t Tell:
A viewpoint character describing themselves as having a trait (being a loner, easily distractable, clumsy, etc) but not actually shown to possess it (lacking friends, getting distracted from anything important, or dropping/tripping over things at inopportune moments.)
The narration declaring an emotional state (”Character A was furious”) rather than demonstrating the emotion through dialogue or depicting it onscreen.
A fourth-wall-breaking narrator; ie, Kuzco in The Emperor’s New Groove directly addressing the audience to explain that he’s a llama and also the protagonist, is NOT the same! This actually serves as a flawless example of showing rather than telling–we are SHOWN that Kuzco is immature and egotistical, even though that’s not what he’s saying.
A fictional society or setting being declared by the narrative to be free of a negative trait–bigotry, for example–but that negative trait being clearly present, where this discrepancy is not narratively engaged with.
(For example: There is officially no sexism in Thedas and yet female characters are subject to gendered slurs and expectations; the world of Honor Harrington is supposedly societally opposed to eugenics, yet “cures” for disability and constant mentions of a nebulous genetic “advantage” from certain characters’ ancestry are regular plot points that are viewed positively by the characters and are not narratively questioned.)
A character declaring that their society has no bigotry, when that character is clearly wrong, is not the same thing.
The narrative voice declaring objective correctness; everyone who agrees with the protagonist is portrayed as correct and anyone who questions them is portrayed as evil, or else there is no questioning whatsoever. For example: in Star Trek: Enterprise, Jonathan Archer tortures an unarmed prisoner. What follows is a multi-episode arc in which every person he respects along with Starfleet Command goes out of their way to dismiss the idea that he should bear any guilt, or that his actions were anything but completely necessary and objectively morally correct. No narrative space is allowed for disagreement, or for the audience to come to its own conclusion.
NOT Violations of Show Don’t Tell:
A character explaining a concept to another character who would logically, within that universe/situation, be the recipient of such an explanation.
An in-universe explanation BECOMES a SdT violation if the explanation fails to play out in reality, such as a spaceship being described as slow or flawed in some way but never actually having those weaknesses. Imagine if the Millennium Falcon was constantly described as a broken-down piece of junk…and never had any mechanical failures, AND Han and Chewie weren’t constantly shown repairing it!
Information being revealed through dialogue, period. Having your hacker in a heist movie describe the enemy security system isn’t “telling” and thus bad writing. Having information revealed organically through dialogue is what “show” means.
The “as you know” trope is technically a Show Don’t Tell violation, despite being dialogue, because it’s unnatural within the universe and serves solely to let the writer deliver information directly, ie, telling.
Characters discussing their own actions and expressing their motivations and/or decision-making process at the time.
The existence of an omnipotent narrator, or the narration itself confirming something. Narration saying “there was no way anyone could make it in time” is delivering contextual information, not breaking Show Don’t Tell.
Keep in mind that “Show, don’t tell” is meant to be advice for beginning authors. Because “telling” is easier and requires less skill than “showing,” inexperienced authors need to focus on getting as much “show” in as possible.
However, “telling” is also extremely important. Sometimes, especially in written formats, the most appropriate way to deliver information to the audience is to just say it and move on.
Keep in mind that a viewpoint character in anything but…a portal fantasy, essentially…is going to be familiar with the world they’re in. Not every protagonist needs to be a raw newcomer with zero knowledge of their new world! In most cases, a viewpoint character is going to know things that the audience doesn’t. Generally, the ONLY natural way to introduce worldbuilding in this situation is to just have the narration point them out. (It makes sense for Obi-Wan to have to explain the Force; it would make no sense for Han to explain the concept of space travel to Luke, who grew up in this universe and knows what the hell a starship is. So, if you’re writing the novelization of A New Hope, you need to just say “and so they jumped into hyperspace, the strange blue-white plane that allowed faster-than-light travel” and move the hell on.)
For that matter, in some media (ie, children’s cartoons) where teaching a moral lesson is the clear intent, a certain level of “telling” is not only appropriate but necessary!
The actual goal of “showing” and “telling” is to maintain a balance, and make sure everything feels natural. Show things that need to be shown, and…don’t waste everyone’s time showing things that would feel much more natural if they were just told.
But that’s not nearly as pithy a slogan.
(Reblog this version y’all I fixed some really serious typos)
Quick addition: When you Show, you Slow.
Taking the time to Show something rather than simply Telling it slows the moment down–and that can be a good thing! When you want a moment to have real emotional impact, when you want the audience to linger and really connect with the scene, use Show to slow them down and really make them live in it. Use descriptive language, engage the senses, and make your audience spend some time with it.
This is Not always desirable. If you’re heavily Showing in moments that aren’t truly important, your audience will disengage and get impatient and then bored. I always err on the side of over showing in a first draft, over trimming to lots of telling in a second draft, then marrying them together in a third once I’ve gotten a better understanding of the pacing with the second Telling draft.
I am begging tumblr to understand that "proshipping" doesn't mean you condone taboo subjects in real life please i am on my fucking KNEES
I literally see people being like "I am pro choice! A woman's body is her choice!" then go around and be like "YOU CAN'T SHIP THESE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS FOR *insert reason* IT'S GROSS/MORALLY WRONG/TABOO/BAD/SINFUL/I DON'T LIKE SEEING IT!!!!"
If it does not hurt a real life person, if it is not pushing someone into something they dislike, if it's not pushing for hate/harm to others- it's HARMLESS.
Naruto and Sonic do not have real feelings to hurt. Don't like what you're seeing/reading? Cool! No need to make a big deal about it! JUST HIT DA FUCKIN BRICKS!
You missed the point of the post. We are talking about fictional characters and you agree because you said canonical.
Whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, whether you would throw up at the very idea of it or not, you are talking about fictional characters who do not exist, who are not alive, who have no feelings, who cannot and will never be real.
They are NOT real people. Phineas and Ferb are not real children. They do not have real emotions. Elmo is not a real 5 year old. Elmo does not have real emotions, real feelings or a real living body. It's a puppet played by a person doing a voice. Elmo can't come to your door and tell you his feelings, they're made up.
Again, you can hate it all you want, be as disgusted as most us would be, but you can't say "I agree that there should be freedom of expression BUT-"
There is no BUT in this. It is morally wrong and uncomfortable to many, but it is not hurting ANYONE. The only time it can hurt someone is if a person sees art and writing about it and goes out and does the actual deed. That is not the responsibility of the artist or fiction writer, that is the responsibility of that one singular person. Thought does not equal action. Hell, writing about it does not equal action.
This is the harsh reality of life my dudes:
Just because you wrote a murder mystery doesn't make you a murderer.
"Your honour this person wrote about the death of scooby doo, therefore he has to go to jail for murder" seems pretty fucking silly when you say it out loud.
just because you wrote about incest doesn't mean you fucked your brother
"Your honour, this person drew a picture of the supernatural brothers fucking, therefore she must have fucked her sister!" Like that's not even a thing that could be taken seriously in court. If you went out and fucked your sibling, they're checking your psyche, they're not going to assume a piece of writing somehow made you do it because that's insane.
Just because you wrote about kidnapping and rape doesn't mean you went out and kidnapped and raped.
"Your honour, this person wrote about sonic the hedgehog being kidnapped and rawed nasty against his will, lock them up for kidnapping and rape!" - again, this is stupid when you say it out loud. Unless you're doing the act,m it's not a crime to think about it.
It's incredibly common to think about murder. It's NOT common to actually murder people.
Thought does not equal action.
A story does not equal reality.
Even if you ABSOLUTELY despise the concept with every fiber of your whole being, you CANNOT start deciding what is good and moral and pure, and what's not allowed. If it was real people, yes obviously that's horrendous, anyone without major issues understands this, but it's still fiction. You can hate it all you like but that's the truth.
Dora isn't real, bluey isn't real, he-man isn't real, the ninja turtles aren't real, the avengers aren't real, zeus and hera aren't real, zach and cody aren't real, the sanders sides aren't real. Drawing Timmy Turner with fat tits isn't hurting people. You and I and a large majority of people, I'm sure, might be EXTREMELY uncomfortable and disgusted, but that doesn't mean it's hurting anyone.
I know you feel for them, I know you imprint because you have empathy and the thoughts of horrible things are scary to accept, but they're thoughts and stories alone. We've been telling taboo stories since the darn of time, it's in our nature as humans. Sometimes it's how people process their own trauma, sometimes it's easier to figure out the world through experimentation, sometimes it's how we discover what we like or dislike, sometimes a writer and artist is Haunted By The Visions(tm) and just needs to draw something fucked up. There is nothing behind it, and even if there IS, again, so long as no action is taken, it harms no one and becomes only an outlet.
I know your reaction is to run away and shun what scares you, I know these things make you uncomfortable and that's totally normal and understandable, and fine! But they are your personal preferences.
How you experience the world is singularly for you to curate, to stay away from, to say no to, but it's not right for us to decide that everyone else has to also follow along with that viewpoint. We can't decide which taboo subjects being written and drawn are vile enough to force everyone to stop, because at the end of the day, it's all fiction, friend, please understand that it literally hurts no real living people to write this stuff and it costs you nothing to not interact with those things.
I am not trying to be mean I'm just trying to let you understand that it's ok, my friend, you don't have to justify or clarify for anyone. I know tumblr will rise up and be angry about this post and interacting with it makes you a target so a lot of you probably feel like you have to protect yourselves but it's ok to live in a world where people write and draw stuff we find fucked up. It's ok to live in a world alongside people expressing themselves even if we don't agree with it.
Sally Sallyson isn't going to fuck her brother because she enjoys writing about fictional brothers fucking. Bob Smithingworth isn't going to murder a baby because he wrote a mystery about it and went into gorey details. Blair Blairsworth isn't going to fuck a child because she drew phineas with a massive hog or whatever.
It's ok.
Breathe my friends, relax, enjoy life, enjoy living, know the world is fucked up and we don't have to interact with the parts we don't agree with. We can just live. We can just live and accept that fiction is fiction. Properly tag our stuff so it's not seen by people who don't want to interact with it, and just enjoy living.
Let's stop worrying about fiction and pay more attention to the actual real life problems around us, ok?
media literacy would automatically go up 100% if people knew how to consume stories without self-inserting themselves into the characters' shoes. "if i were him..." you're NOT. you may relate to his story, his past, his traits, his quirks, his identity but the moment you start treating the story accepting what you feel/think as what the character feels/thinks, you're misunderstanding the story.
ao3 was founded on the idea that the archive needs to own the servers or the archive and it's works will not be safe and free of censorship.
this is what happens when the servers are owned by frightened puritanical investors