Older Than Netfic @olderthannetfic - Tumblr Blog

"🥀" emoji is now forever associated with antis with me. I wish it wasn't but why are they all using it so much...

IDK. Right wing lunatics use it about a loss of purity, maybe? Antis are basically the same people.

I'm a non-usamerican in a discord server with almost exclusively usamericans and I've run into a very weird communication problem.

Background: disagreeing loudly, complaining, and hurling low-level insults at each other reddit-style is not only normal in my culture, but also a way of bonding with people. I'm aware that this is not the case in female- and/or queer-dominated usamerican spaces (including said server) and have always been careful about that point.

Only, in this server, there doesn't seem to be ANY expressing of alternative opinions allowed. You agree, or you keep your mouth shut. How did I find this out?

At first, I was having a great time in the server, until one day another member with whom I thought I had a good relationship and even co-wrote a oneshot with said (not in the vent channel) that people who write rpf are "cruel and disgusting" and I, a known writer and reader of one historical rpf show, very politely and in a friendly way went haha yeah modern celebrity culture breeds parasociality like crazy and some people don't respect boundaries, but there are all kinds of rpf and there's nothing parasocial or cruel about most of them, like historical rpf (Hint-hint nudge-nudge like the one I don't know how she could've missed that I write/read?? Not that I think any rpf is cruel and disgusting, but this seemed to me like a gentle way to check a friend, as I assumed her to be) The conversation in that channel ended instantly. By all members involved. For the entire rest of the day. I thought, oh, well, thorny topic, must've hit a sore spot.

Another day, another person was complaining about mint-free products, of all things (also not in the vent channel), so I said haha as a mint allergy haver, those are a godsend for me, leave them all to me. Insta-end of the conversation. By everyone. Weird, I thought, but maybe it was a boring convo?

Yet another day and the exact same thing happened over a minor difference in how I see a certain blorbo's certain action. I was starting to get a bit creeped out at this point.

That same day, a mod refered to me as "confrontational" when talking to another member (where I could see) and that's when I got fully creeped out and started scrolling through the past conversations in that server and realized that NOBODY ever expressed disagreement over anything, as far as I was able to find in almost half an hour of scrolling and reading people's convos.

And no, the server's rules said nothing on the topic, so it wasn't a violation. And no, this didn't happen to me when I was agreeing with people, so I don't think it's an attempt at bullying me either.

Is this as insane and creepy as it seems to me, or am I so influenced by my culture that I literally never noticed that I shouldn't express disagreement ever and that disagreement=confrontational??

This sounds like a toxic pit of 20-somethings who need to grow spines and learn boundaries, thus allowing them to also learn to weather minor momentary discomfort in a conversation.

Yes, lots of fandomy spaces full of Americans can be broadly conflict averse. The tone in which you would naturally argue with people at home would be unwelcome, but this isn't that. This is wall-to-wall red flags.

Granted, we only have your own description to go on, but if what you've written here is accurate, no, that's not normal for us either.

Small Fandoms Fest anon here, thank you for the help!

I'm genuinely sorry to hear the news. My condolences to anyone here who knew this person.

At the risk of being insensitive, though, could anyone recommend me another good event for people in small fandoms? I'm really not sure what else to do, because if I don't find some event for it, I'll lose interest, and I really wouldn't like to

I'd look at that other post about fests in general and see if any could be relevant.

The biggest small fandoms thing is Yuletide, which is around Christmas, as its name suggests.

olderthannetfic

I can't go shopping right now and the only chocolate in the house is still the ant-flavored one. >:(

olderthannetfic

It's pretty meh, in my opinion. But yes, it's flavored with ants.

Currently trying to archive old LJ-era visual kei/Jrock RPF fandom, and what I'm seeing is really interesting in light of "back in the olden days people didn't warn for rape and any kind of trigger warnings was controversial" discourse.

Because, like, from what I'm seeing, people did warn for blatant, in-your-face rape. If it was a hot badwrong rapefic or the uke (it's always the uke) was horribly traumatized by being raped, that did get warned-for (also, self-harm. Self-harm was the other topic that I find to be fairly consistently warned-for, which doesn't suprise me given how fucking common it was as a plot device).

But! But. The main cultural difference I'm seeing is that dubcon didn't seem to exist as a category- you get fics where the bottom is screaming no and stop, which would nowadays be tagged as dubcon, but which have no warnings. Rape/rape-adjacent topics was also much more common as comedy, and basically none of these cases were warned-for.

"May contain eggs" tagging also didn't exist, from what I'm seeing. If the author warned for rape, you bet your ass that it would be in-your-face, blatant, and taken some degree of seriously even if you were supposed to find it hot.

Anything besides that? Nope. Not warned-for at all.

(this probably sounds very silly to anyone who was There, Gandalf, but LJ-era stuff was a bit before my time and so I find it all super interesting!)

Yeah, it's definitely interesting to go recheck people's memories. They can be fallible. (FWIW, the most blatant lack of warnings for overt noncon I remember were in old cop show fandoms. It may have varied by fandom or sector of fandom.)

fell in love with bazazilio on youtube recently since she brought new point of arguments in the problematic/dark romance discourse i never thought of before. i've pretty much watched through her entire vids tho, so asking here if anyone know any similar channels with similar vids? <3

I can't go shopping right now and the only chocolate in the house is still the ant-flavored one. >:(

i fully, completely understand why people tend towards certain A/B/O designations for certain characters (believe me, i have my own) but sometimes i feel like people are not seeing the potential for angst in their smut with making a very headstrong and dominant character an omega or a timid, quiet character an alpha and making them have to deal with that. not saying that smut has to include angst to be good, but if you're gonna write angsty smut, why not try some "secondary gender and expectations about it contrasts badly with the character's personality"?

it's a pipe dream honestly, but it could be so nice!

(i realise that part of my like of this trope is that i'm generally a "idc who tops" shipper as long as it's compelling, so this flips the usual "he's the alpha because i only view him as a top" reasoning on its head)

Find a larger fandom?

I found omegaverse boring until I started reading BTS fic, which I haven't even read in a couple of years. There was so much omegaverse that I was only reading the ones with plots like Mild Mannered Food Blogger Has To Stop His Long Term Suppressants And Deal With Unwelcome Alpha Instincts. Some of them flipped the obvious choice of designation. Some of them messed around with weirder takes on the obvious designation. Lots of alpha/alpha and other combos. Lots of threesomes messing around with omegaverse world building. The occasional fic with the omega topping. etc. etc.

I'm sure there's ten times as much of the bog standard stuff. I just didn't read it, so I don't know what's in there.

Even something like Thousand Autumns (a danmei novel where it's obvious who the top is) has at least one ridiculous fic where he's the most obnoxious omega ever. (He uses it to troll and then beats the shit out of everyone while going "How can you be mad at poor little me". Of course.)

This energy is out there, just not always for the particular characters one wants to read about today.

As I was looking through the discussions on fanfic.lol, I noticed a lot of my replies disappearing into the void and posts I knew were there not showing up.

Aside from anything else, it seems like tumblr is being A Functioning Website even more than usual.

(And the discourse is just people failing to understand that AO3 forks already exist and are normal.)

olderthannetfic

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/817906538544054273/theres-this-ship-i-love-but-soured-on-because-of?source=share

(same anon here)

Everyone keeps talking about exchanges and I'm ashamed to admit that I don't know where to look for them and how to participate.

Is there a centralized place where you can go and find a list of exchanges?

That Exchanges After Dark discord server, I guess? Or Fandom Calendar on Dreamwidth? I haven't looked for exchanges in years.

A lot of exchanges are run in a similar secret santa style via AO3 these days.

thebigbangblogproject

I wouldn't say centralized - but we try to collect as much as we can find and add them to a spreadsheet. And promote any currently running events as blog posts here on tumblr. Also have a discord where even non tumbler events can be shared more easily.

finnglas

when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they weren’t really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

“…it’s a cock and a pussy, Jules,” she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.

People called moonlight a DL movie what are you talking about a whole thirds of the movie is about being a child and another third is about being a high schooler. Like why are we upset that for like 20 minutes towards the end we saw him as a gangster and he was not out of the closet. The level of fucking white ass male privilege if takes to tell a man in a gang he needs to come out like he’s not going to get shot if he’s caught with a man.

He’s not even a DL he’s not having any sex, he confirms he hasn’t had any sex since high school that one time. What’s he doing on the down low exactly? Jerking off? Was wasn’t ever going to reveal his porn history to the public anyway. No one ever called Nick Nelson a DL, even when they treated him like a grown adult who should be at the club in a jockstrap. This is pretty unsubtly just racism, and just weird complaining that he’d dare be in the closet.

And I guarantee it would be called wattpad/tumblr bullshit if he was an out and proud gay gangster. You can never win with these people! They just wanna complain that god has yet to come down on high with the least problematic gay people in the universe for them to stan, and that they’re stuck watching flawed people existing in a flawed world.

I think you need to hang out with different people.

What is with the sentiment I've started seeing regarding "taking back" kudos? Probably not a new thing and something I'm personally just stumbling upon. Still, why do some people want the ability to un-kudos a story? "later it ends up being icky" so? Why does it matter that much? There are many books and shows that I've enjoyed and publicly talked about enjoying that ended up finishing horribly. Who cares if I couldn't see the future? Do people actually check accounts that kudosed "bad" stories?

Yes, people absolutely do, and that is why AO3 won't let you follow a kudoser back to a list of what else they liked. It would be a good way to find things to read, but it would also be a vehicle for massive harassment campaigns.

I'm honestly fascinated by (818217933884063744/recently-getting-back-into-reading-star-wars) for in my expierence, the aggressively pro jedi crowd has only grown larger and overtaken most of the fandom with their fanon (blatantly ignoring canon) and if you dare to have a different opinion you will be flooded with threats.

This is what huge fandoms are like. There are enough people to have enclaves of nuts in all directions.

olderthannetfic

I need help finding a series- There was a book series that I started reading back in 2007 or so that was recommended to me because I was reading "The Dresden Files" novels at the time, and it involved a pair of half brothers, one of whom was named Caliban (I think? I could be wrong) who's mother was Romani, and I remember it being kinda awful in the normal, extremely insensitive ways pulp paranormal "mystery"/noir pastiche urban fantasy written for an audience of 20-30 something year old dudes is, but I kinda wanna re-read it because maybe I was just being super harsh on it nearly 20 years ago. I remember it being less bad than the 3rd and 4th "Maximum Ride" books at least, but that bar is so far in hell that it froze over.

I can not for the life of me remembering the name of the author or the book series, so any help from the front porch is extremely welcome. Also any other series in that vein, even if they are utter trash, since I have a need to dissect that era (1990s - 2000s) of urban fantasy out of a sick and twisted sense of curiosity.

Ahahaha.

As someone who was a teen in the 1990s and desperate for urban fantasy, the 90s and the 00s are extremely fucking different eras of the genre.

olderthannetfic

OTNF, could it also be that you were an extremely different reader in your teens and your 20s?

I was presumably at least a little different, but no, I'm talking about a shift in what "Urban Fantasy" referred to and how much was available.

When I was a tween/young teen, I was looking for the kind of thing that we later had plenty of in the (early) Anita Blake knockoff era. These are the kind of books I sometimes summarize as "werewolf P.I.".

What was available at the time was Diana Tregarde (1989, 90, 91) and those books where arthurian characters were in the modern day that were super 80s feeling the names of which escape me now. I remember many discussions where people were like "What else is like Diana Tregarde?", and nobody really had recs.

The Anita Blake books did start coming out in the early 90s, but it took a while for them to get really famous. I remember the wave of imitators getting started right around the end of the 90s.

2001 is when the Anita Blake series switched tones and ushered in a Paranormal Romance boom. Some of the energy went out of early 90s-flavor UF and PNR heated up.

Twilight came out 2005-2008. That particular YA boom was around then, and some of it was urban fantasy.

It's obviously not as simple as some exact 90s vs. 00s cutoff, but there were several significantly different things going on in these decades that are good reference points for periodization of UF and related genres. I would not group the 90s and 00s into one category unless we're talking like 98-08 or something.

I wish more erotica talked about hard clits, rather than just wetness.

For me personally getting wet is just an indicator of arousal that I can notice, but it's not the *sensation* of arousal. I find "throbbing cocks" much more relatable in regards to what being horny feels like, but I find that authors don't talk enough about cis women's throbbing clits.

Huh! You know, you're right. I haven't seen that much.

So I saw a fanart of a character from a game I play. They were the only character in the image, yet it was tagged with a ship (that this character is one half of, but still). Why do people do this?

~Reach~

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