āPeople should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.ā
ā Kurt Vonnegut

izzy's playlists!
sheepfilms
cherry valley forever
Three Goblin Art
I'd rather be in outer space šø
Stranger Things

pixel skylines

JVL

#extradirty
Claire Keane
Aqua Utopiaļ½ęµ·ć®åŗć§čØę¶ćē“”ć
Not today Justin
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

Andulka

ellievsbear

ē„ę„ / Permanent Vacation
we're not kids anymore.
will byers stan first human second

tannertan36
i don't do bad sauce passes
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@karin97rn
āPeople should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.ā
ā Kurt Vonnegut
āTo finish is sadness to a writer ā a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isnāt really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.ā
ā John Steinbeck
Miss it. But itās definitely still going on. Just without me ā¹ļø
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Let's have a chat about AO3
Hiya friends and loyal followers! My last post about AO3 blew up yesterday so I figured now would be a good time to continue the conversation about AO3.
As I mentioned in my previous post (and probably in multiple other previous posts):
AO3 is NOT a social media site. AO3 is an ARCHIVE.
So let's delve into that a bit more since people don't seem to be getting that. Fanfiction predates the internet, and was transmitted via the internet way before sites like AO3 and FF dot net. Relatively speaking, I am a fanfiction newcomer, as I first started reading fanfiction in ... 2011? or thereabouts. I say this to say that I obviously don't have as personal of a memory of a time before fanfiction archive sites (my bitty fan experiences were on teaspoon and lcfanfic), but I certainly know plenty of people via fandom online that absolutely do.
For the newest children to fanfiction please check out the following pieces of reading to get started on your fandom history education:
āFanfiction.ā Fanlore Wiki. Accessed June 15, 2023. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanfiction. Archived [https://archive.is/yJpOq].
āSo Iām on AO3 and I See a Lot of People Who Put āI Do Not Own [Insert Fandom Here]ā before Their Story.ā sonicenvy.tumblr.com, July 2, 2016. https://sonicenvy.tumblr.com/post/146818589611/mikkeneko-thepioden. Archived [https://archive.is/FRNCy]
ofhouseadama, Emily. āA Brief History of Fandom, for Those on Here Who Somehow Think Tumblr Invented Fandom.ā sonicenvy.tumblr.com, May 21, 2014. https://sonicenvy.tumblr.com/post/131935827010/ofhouseadama-a-brief-history-of-fandom-for. Archived [http://archive.today/j2Rfq]
mizstorge, fantastic-nonsense, and fanculturesfancreativity. āThe Places Fandom Dwells: A Cautionary Tale.ā fantastic-nonsense.tumblr.com, June 29, 2017. https://fantastic-nonsense.tumblr.com/post/162395547190/the-places-fandom-dwells-a-cautionary-tale. Archived [https://archive.ph/QK2wI]
As you read through this stuff, three things should become apparent to you:
Fanworks have always existed in tenuous space -- that is, they have always been under threat of removal, or threat of loss, whether this loss was through events like the livejournal strikethrough, the loss of a fandom specific website, destruction of physical copies of the work, or C&D/legal action from original creators of the work.
Fandom has a long and colored history with many of the most defining events of early fandom history being related to threats to the community.
A need was ripe for a place to save and ARCHIVE fanworks and protect them from deletion, legal action, corporate sanitization efforts, site deaths due to the deaths of admins, etc etc.
Out of all of this, comes The Organization For Transformative Works (2007), and their brand new site Archive of Our Own (2008). The stated intention of Archive of Our Own (AO3) (bolding mine):
The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization, established by fans in 2007, to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. We believe that fanworks are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate. We are proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. We preserve our fannish economy, values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans. The Archive of Our Own offers a noncommercial and nonprofit central hosting place for fanworks using open-source archiving software.
Source: Works, Organization for Transformative. āArchive of Our Own Beta.ā Archive of Our Own. Accessed June 15, 2023. https://archiveofourown.org/about. Archived [http://archive.today/QYtbM]
You may also want to check out the original LiveJournal Brainstorming sessions for AO3 by astolat as archived here [https://web.archive.org/web/20220627134339/https://astolat.livejournal.com/150556.html] if you need further clarity on this point.
Some neat stuff from astolat's original posts that I find are relevant:
making it easy for people to download stories or even the entire archive for offline reading (thus widely preserving the work in case some disaster does take it down)
code-wise able to support a huge archive of possibly millions of stories.
allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult ...
As we can see both from the mission statement of OTW/AO3 and from astolat herself in the brainstorming sessions, AO3 is an ARCHIVE. It is a project that is meant to preserve and provide access to fanworks. Run for fans, by fans and meant to host any and all kind of content with none of the commercialization or censorship that fans found elsewhere. Before AO3 there were certainly numerous, disconnected, fandom specific archives for fanfiction or other fanworks. Many of these old sites have been archived (see we're getting that word again) via the opendoors project. Some, like teaspoon or lcfanfic still exists and are semi-active.
A common thread is that writers and readers weren't just using the archive site to connect. They were doing more connection through other sites like dreamwidth, livejournal, facebook, their emails and later tumblr or twitter. Archive sites were meant as a supplement to other fan spaces like message boards, blogs and journals.
So, dear friends, you might ask, what is an archive?
An archive is a place where documents, artifacts and records are kept and preserved for future reference, use and access. Archives help us maintain a better understanding of the past and protect objects, writings, documents, records and more in longevity. In the context of fanwork archiving, this means preserving fanworks in longevity/perpetuity so that fans can continue to access them for enjoyment and for historical purposes. Archiving fanwork is vital to preserving and, indeed creating fan culture and identity.
To read more about archives in general, check out this article from the American History Museum of the Smithsonian (https://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/about/what-are-archives) or this one from the US National Archives (https://www.archives.gov/about/info/whats-an-archives.html).
So AO3 is an archive. Why does this matter?
Oh, boy, I am about to get LIS nerdy on y'all. At this point in the post we can all agree that AO3 is and always has been an archive (it's in the name...). When we view and understand the site starting from this premise, a lot of, frankly stupid as fuck arguments that people have about AO3 look even dumber. Understanding AO3 primarily as an archive helps us understand:
The tagging system. Given AO3 is an archive, the tags for content on the site function exactly the same as headings in a library archive. They are designed to store information about the fic (that is, they are intended as metadata) which is then used to find the record of the fic in the archive. This is why it is important to tag what is in your fic, and to use tags properly, using the agreed meanings of particular tags.
The kinds of content that are permitted and excluded under TOS IV. The archive permits fanworks, which include: fanfiction, fanart, podfic, and fan videos. The archive thus excludes things that are not fanwork (records with no content (aka "placeholder fics"), posts asking for writing prompts or submissions, posts looking for fic, commerical promotions of ANY kind, original fiction with no relation to fan content, spam etc). Every library and archive has their own collections policies, and AO3 is not an exception. Collections Policies are generally guided by the mission statement(s) of the archiving party/library. As we saw above in both the official about page and the original brainstorming posts from astolat, AO3 is a library for fanworks, meant to preserve fanworks and is in opposition to advertising and commercialization. Therefore, if the thing you want to add to the library of AO3 is not a fanwork or contains commercialization, it does not qualify to be an object of the archive. Re: the "placeholder fic" post that I didn't know was going to blow up so much: imagine you go to the library to get a book and open it to find that it is empty or you get a DVD and play it only to find that it is the movie theater trailer for the movie. Doesn't that make no sense?
Why there is NO censoring of "adult" or other quote on quote "objectionable content". The archive does not chose to preserve works based on subjective quality or "moral purity" type standards. This is true in libraries and museums as well. We keep and save materials that people find objectionable as archiving and librarianship are and have always been diametrically opposed to censorship. As an archive AO3 follows this. Moreover, you can see in astolat's original post "allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult" as a founding idea.
Why there is no advertising, and why this includes you adding your Ko-fi or paypal or whatever the fuck. Outside of the fact that doing this violates TOS and invalidates OTW lawyer arguments for the legal existence of fanworks under US Fair Use, AO3 as an archive is meant to be a keeper of fan records, not a space for promotions. Archives do keep records (and indeed some archives keep records of advertising) but they, themselves are not using their platform to advertise for anything else.
Why there is no "AO3 algorithm". The kinds of algorithmic feed generators that sites like the t*kt*ok or whatever use are antithetical to the mission of archiving stuff and providing access to it. In an archive you search for content based on terms and headings and self-select. I'm not on the t*kt*k or whatever and I actively block and disable all "suggestion" type things so I don't entirely understand what y'all are looking with this.
Ok, that's great, why are you telling us all of this?
There is a concerning trend of newcomers both young and older to fandom and fanfiction that have not taken off the social media brain filter before coming on board. Some excellent tags I've seen on The Post⢠that spawned this one include:
#guys quit bringing the worst elements of capitalism to AO3 (via @watchtowersystem)
#algorithms have rotted people's brains i swear (via @pearly--rose)
#omg stop trying to social mediaify ao3 (via @greyduckgreygoose)
There were also some bangers on my reddit post on this topic as well, but the reddit I posted it on is (rightfully) on blackout at the moment.
I think the sociamediafying of fanfiction that a lot of these people are bringing has a few major negatives:
social mediafied fandom views fanwork soley as consumable content, creating more passive, entitled participants in fandom. For fanwork=content social media brain folks, the fact that fanwork is meant to be an active and engaging thing is lost. Fanwork is a gift from one fan to other fans, it is a point for discussion, a result of people's passion and creativity. It is transformative, out of the box and part of building a niche community. When you start to see it as "content" like a random object on a feed you stop valuing it, analyzing it, and interacting with it in the same way, and are more likely to passively consume what you see as content. Social media has made "content" out of everything, and everything becomes something to scroll past in a few seconds, always looking for more stuff, the newest stuff, etc etc. It's obviously very tied to the experience of social media being used to sell you shit, but that's another conversation I think.
fanwork=content social media brain also allows some of these people to post incredibly demanding comments for "more content" on fancreators works or makes them think it's ok (and indeed creates the same result as what the writer is creating) to feed someone's incomplete fic into an ai to get a "completion".
fanwork=content social media brain also means that when these folks start creating content they feel entitled to views, hits, kudos, etc etc, and feel like it is ok to do things that they see as "gaming" the system to get their fics to be at the top of the pack. They begin to care too much about posting to get their "content" the most views because that's how things work on social media.
fanwork=content social media brain also makes some of these people think that "fic" that is "written" by an ai is acceptable fanwork, because they do not view fanwork as artwork/writing with merit, as much as an entertainment property to be consumed. How the meat gets made becomes irrelevant, because the end result is the only thing that is important.
social mediafying of fandom is something that has helped a lot of advertising and commercialization sneak its way into our spaces, which actively hurts our chances of building good communities.
social mediafying of fandom turns fanwork creation and fandom into popularity contests, which is bad for all fan spaces. The point is that we're being weird together. I've seen new, young authors post on reddit about how they feel so bad about their fic because it doesn't have 1000s of hits or because they feel incapable of writing things (even things they might want to explore) because "no one will read it, and it will not become popular". This makes me very sad.
social mediafying of fanwork also turns right around into .... wait ... you guessed it .... censorship! people are now practising self-censorship that is utterly unnecessary and completely sad to me because they are afraid of getting deleted from anywhere for "objectionable content". This carries over into new users on AO3 doing things like using leet speech for curse words, sexual content and more in the TAGS or the body of their AO3 fics. Stop Don't. You can say fuck, dead, kill, murder, cunt, cock, and whatever the fucking hell you want on AO3. That was the whole goddamn point.
These people are trying to bring fanwork=content social media brain to places like AO3. I'm not entirely sure why.
tldr; AO3 isn't a social media site for talking with your following or posting about ideas that you've had. It isn't a popularity contest. It isn't a place where there will be no inappropriate content. It isn't a place for advertising or commerical promotion. It is an ARCHIVE OF FANWORKS meant to be "allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult."
Anyone of you fans older, wiser, more well versed in fan history, and more articulate than me, please feel free to add to this. Ditto on any of you other funky LIS friends out here on tumblr dot hell.
Good read.
I'd watch :)
āGood writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader ā not the fact that is is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.ā
ā E. L. Doctorow
This.
A body like a clear-cut forest
Once there were arms that reached
Into a blue forever, sap and song and
So much life it vibrated under bare feet
Once the flowers whispered promises
To the aspens and they prayed to the
Ponderosa, there was light and warmth
And wonder where the rocks cradled sky
Now the sticky scent of sadnes smells
Like sacrificial blood and all the beauty
Is roaring under a diesel orange glow
While the smoke smirks its goodbye
This is such an incredible poem. Idk, it just gave me so many feels. Bravo to the writer
By the way, the cast of <i>Asteroid City</i> is STACKED with people like Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, T
And Rupert has no shoes on.
When you think of Rupert Friend, chances are you remember his five seasons as CIA operative Peter Quinn on āHomelandā or his turn as the Grand Inquisitor on āObi-Wan Kenobi.ā But recently heās becoā¦
Jake Tapper talks to actor Rupert Friend about "Peak TV" during the 2010s decade, and how the show "Homeland" made the risky moves, at the time, to raise questions about patriotism and the war on terror. Tune in at 9pm ET., Sunday to watch "The 2010s."
Ah, the wonder years.
I write a lot of original fiction, and that's okay, but when it comes to writing fanfiction it's like... my brain goes 'no stop, you're not allowed to write this' and basically I'll write like a paragraph and then stop and hate everything that I wrote. I'll go through revisions for my original stuff but with my fanfiction it's like I feel ashamed I'm doing it. And there's noting really un PG about it so I don't know why I'd feel bad about writing it. I used to do it a lot more. Can you help?
Hi sunshine-lollipop-swirls,
Iām Graphei. Iām one of the new mods here at Fix Your Writing Habits and your ask hit close to home.
Back in March 2013, I began my WIPĀ (a fanfic). I had one friend, who is a walking encyclopedia of comics help me, but I told no one else because I was so ashamed of it. In the back of my head that Evil Inner Editor was talking nonstop. āWhatās wrong with you? You canāt come up with your own characters! You are LAZY! Or are you just stupid? I canāt decide because you suck so much!ā Iād be hanging out with friends and theyād want to know what I was working on, but Iād hide it and change the subject. They knew me as the super-smart, went to grad school in England, badass of a gal. What would they think of me writing a fanfic? Iād get so worked up thinking about their reaction, Iād make myself sick.Ā
One day, I decided I couldnāt live like that anymore. I worked up enough courage to tell a friend, who is an author, what I had been working on, and you know what happened? She thought it was awesome. Turns out she writes fanfiction in addition to original stuff. After that, I told another friend and she confessed she had her own writing project that she was afraid to tell me about it because of what I may think of her. Since then, Iāve told all of my friends and their feedback has been tremendously helpful. I promise you my story wouldnāt be half as awesome as it is without their insight. (Sandy, I know youāre reading this. I <3 you!)Ā
Does fanfic get a bad rap? For certain. Is there fanfic out there that is just people thinking of creative ways for their favorite characters to have sex? You bet, but you know what? The people who wrote it had fun, and fanfic is supposed to be fun! You get to take your favorite characters and write all the what-ifs the official writers didnāt, or you can take them on new adventures and have them meet new characters you create. If you want to write more adult oriented fic (slash and the like), do it! If you want to put your fav characters sitting on Jupiter, eating pasta, while watching martians float by you rock on with your bad self! The only rule to fanfic is that you have fun writing it- and for Peteās sake use spell check and proper grammar- but thatās it.
I guess what all of this was trying to say is that you are not alone out there with these feelings. We all have hang ups about our writing and what people think of it. However, when you sit down to write, tell that Evil Inner Editor to pound sand. You have a story to share!Ā
Whether you share your stories on tumblr, deviantart, fanfiction.net, or another forum, whatās important is that you get them out there. Itās hard taking the plunge but it gets easier.Ā I promise.Ā
-Graphei
The merit of your writing.
So, youāve read something that has resonated with you. Itās everything youāve wanted in terms of characters, prose, plot and pace. Itās the best youāve read in years. You reread your favourite lines. You have to take a break just to absorb every meticulously crafted line. You are in awe of how something so small can seem to take up so much space.
And in a perfect world, it would inspire you to go out and create. To work on that story that is languishing in your save files, to pick up that WIP you abandoned, to make you want to write something different and new and better.Ā
Instead, it makes you feel inferior. The words are too good. You could never write like that. The characters are too perfect. You donāt have that insight. The story is too captivating. Your ideas are boring, cliche, plain. The insight is remarkable. You can barely string a thought together coherently.Ā
Why even bother, you think.
Donāt fall into that trap. I have been there so many times. I have abandoned writing for years because of āwhy even botherā. I have let it destroy my confidence, only to patch it back up in a cheap imitation of what it once was, just to let it invade my thoughts again. I have questioned every thing Iāve written, every choice, every line, because why even bother if someone is so much better.Ā
YOUR WRITING HAS MERIT. What you donāt realize is that itās not in terms of better, but different. Different style, different story, different interpretation, different mind.
Someone out there will loveĀ the way you describe the night sky in poetry. Someone out there will love the way you describe the look on someoneās face when their heart breaks. Someone out there will loveĀ your idea, that strange one that seems impossible or already done, because itās new and exciting or they love endless amounts of that same story. Someone out there will love your interpretation of that character, whether more gentle or bitter or broken or healed. Someone out there will love the words you write, the grandiose use of adverbs (my guilt) or the minimal scattering of dialogue. Someone out there will love your abundance or lack of something you saw in that story you so loved, the one that rendered you speechless and snuffed out your fire.Ā
Someone out there will love your words. And you need to share them.Ā
Speaking as a writer, no one sets out to create something to discourage others. No one wants to dominate their corner and be the only one there. No one wants to be alone in their craft. If they do, they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Speaking as a writer, I would never want you to read my writing and think, why bother.Ā
I want you to think, why bother waiting?
Your story matters. Your writing matters. Itās beautiful and defined and gorgeous and a work in progress and growing and already there and insightful and mysterious: it all has merit.Ā
Never stop. Never stop writing and practicing and doing and creating and learning and loving the words you weave.
You may think someone has done it more beautifully or better or too many times or never because who wants to read it?Ā
They maybe have done all those things, but they lack one thing: they havenāt done it like you have.
Thank you, I needed this.
Inappropriate laughter is how most nurses survive their jobs
Iām not about to confess to my brother that Iāve recently been plagued by visions. They come on without warning, and feel like electroshock therapy but without the satisfying afterburn.Ā JENNA ORTEGA as WEDNESDAY ADDAMS WEDNESDAY |Ā Season One
My hero.
10 Things I Hate About You (1999) dir. Gil Junger
Movies I can watch again and again šæ
Journalistļ¼"Nina is the Cate Blanchett of Germany"
Cateļ¼I'm the Nina Hoss of Australia. I should be lucky."
Cate Blanchett has great taste. Nina is the best. ā¤ļø
She really is!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09JZP9B36/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1654620825&sr=8-1
Amazon.com: Aurora: A Novel (Audible Audio Edition): David Koepp, Rupert Friend, HarperAudio: Audible Books & Originals
Today is a good day! š