Little Things For LittleMe

Me collect, like a shitty goblin

[i-enact-postvore]

You ever think about many peices of media have zero women and thats just perfectly normal but if a peice of media has an all female cast people get... like that? Women should be allowed to kill over this btw

[loveshoplifter]

same but it's black people

[i-enact-postvore]

That's right

[misfitwashere]

I wrote a eulogy

"I wrote a eulogy for my best friend last week. Then I read it to him. At the pub. On a Tuesday."

He was alive, holding a pint, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I have.

I'm Mick. I'm 70. The man across the table was Barry. Seventy-two. Best mate for 46 years. Met on a building site in 1979. He dropped a plank on my foot. I called him something unrepeatable. He bought me a pint after the shift. Haven't gone a week without talking since.

Three months ago we went to a funeral. Bloke we'd worked with. Cancer. The eulogies were beautiful - people saying what he meant to them, things they'd clearly never said to his face. And all I could think was, he can't hear any of this.

Every beautiful sentence. Every "he changed my life." Said to a room of crying people and a box of wood.

I turned to Barry. Whispered, "What a waste."

Drove home. Couldn't sleep. Because I realised, if Barry died tomorrow, I'd stand up and say extraordinary things about this man. Things I've never said in 46 years. And he'd be in the box, missing all of it.

So I wrote them down. Took a week. Harder than expected - not finding the words, but admitting I had them.

Rang him. "Tuesday. The Crown. Need to read you something."

"Have you joined a book club?"

"Just come."

Same corner table. Pint of bitter. Crisps. I pulled out the paper. He saw my hands shake.

"Mick. What's this?"

"Your eulogy. I'm reading it now because I'm not wasting it on a day you can't hear it."

"Have you gone mad?"

"Probably. Shut up and listen."

I read it. In a pub. To a man very much alive and very much uncomfortable.

I told him about the plank and how it was the best injury of my life. About the night he drove forty minutes in rain to help change a tyre. About how he rang every day for three months after my divorce and never once asked "Are you alright?" - just talked about football and weather, because he knew I didn't need a question. I needed a voice.

I told him he was the funniest man I'd ever known and his jokes were terrible and both things were true. That he'd been a better father than he thinks. That his wife's a saint and he knows it. That I'd have been a worse man without him.

He didn't look at me. Stared at his pint. Jaw tight. Doing that thing men do when the feelings arrive and they'd rather swallow glass than show it.

When I finished, long silence. Then he picked up his pint, took a sip, and said,

"You're paying for the next round. And the one after."

That was his answer. Perfect. Because Barry doesn't say "I love you too." He says "you're buying."

But in the car park, he hugged me. Not the quick back-pat. A real one. Thirty seconds. Neither let go first.

And he said quietly into my shoulder, "Don't read that again at the real one. I want new material."

Who would you write a eulogy for - while they're still here?

Don't wait. The flowers can't hear. The box doesn't laugh. Say it now. At the pub. Over a bad cup of tea. You'll feel ridiculous.

They'll look uncomfortable. It'll be the most important thing you've ever done.

Read them the speech while they can still hug you in the car park.”

.

[northstareclipse]

There's a recurring online tendency to aestheticize consensus itself. The imagined future village is full of emotionally compatible people who enjoy communal gardening, conflict resolution circles, acoustic folk music, mutual aid potlucks, and repairing bicycles together at sunset. Which is nice for the people who genuinely enjoy that lifestyle. But plenty of humans are solitary, prickly, obsessive, urban, nocturnal, sensory-seeking, technologically attached, contrarian, novelty-seeking, private, or just plain difficult. Those people do not evaporate after the revolution. They do not get Left Behind while you are Raptured into the Utopia. They become your neighbors.

[circusheart]

I do think the post that's like "when they torture you to insanity and then torture you for being insane 😂🤣" is one of the most succinct and foundational analyses of interpersonal violence and conflict that had ever been written

[quietwingsinthesky]

like the betrayal’s always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didn’t matter. someone discards you because they didn’t give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say “I love you. I would make the same choice again.” You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.

[quietwingsinthesky]

“I thought they cared about me, but they were lying this whole time.” <- tired. boring. removes all the nuance of this relationship to make it easier to move on from.

“I thought they cared about me, and I was right, and every minute they were there for me, every time they said they were proud, every laugh we shared leaning against each other bruised and breathless, all of it was real. and they still left me behind. They could put their love aside. I couldn’t.” <- insane. will never leave you alone. reminds you that even the worst people are still people and can still care about even the ones they hurt the most and that undoes neither the harm nor the love.

[quietwingsinthesky]

okay. something about the way i worded this is making people think this is a vent thing about real relationships. and it’s fine if that’s where it took you. but i feel like i need to be transparent here: this be blorboposting. karlach cliffgate and her terrible awful no good very bad betrayal.

[louisegluckpdf]

i think every publisher should have to institute a ban on books that fail what i’m calling the “little life” and “what else?” tests

[louisegluckpdf]

for reference.

[phantomrose96]

I think it's funny world-building how like, so at the center of Life we've got Water. Arguably The most important resource. Colorless transparent substance that molds to any container and we die without it and quickly. And all organic functions of society hinge on its availability. Could fight a ton of wars over this thing.

And well beyond organic life, modern society's great human invention is the Electronic Magic. Our greatest minds invented the Electronic Magic and it sends information around the world instantly. Our infrastructure our economy our modern life, minute by minute by minute, hinges on utilizing the great Lighting Technology.

BUT ☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️ DO NOT. DO NOT EVER. get the magical Elixir Substance of Life and Living and Healing, Water, IN the Electronic Device. The water keeps you alive critically but it KILLS the Electronic Device instantly and catastrophically. This Says something.

[phantomrose96]

and this Says something...

[argumate]

I keep thinking this! very frustrating

[argumate]

fuck!

[herpsandbirds]

Trip Report: Light House & Tide Pools, Crescent City, CA, USA

Evan and I have a great time tide-pooling near the light house in Crescent City. There were so many species of sea weed. Not as many animals as other places that I've done this, but lots of limpets, crabs, and Black Tegula Snails.

As far as birds go, we saw Pigeon Guillemots, Western Gulls, Brown Pelicans, Cormorants, and Northern Rough-winged Swallows.

I could have spend hours doing this... Evan had to drag me away from it!

Pictured Above:

Black Tegula, Tidepool Sculpin, Striped Shore Crab, Little Rockweed, Coraline Red Alga, Plate Limpet, and Bleachweed.

Photographs by Paxon Kale CC

[wildehacked]

things in fic I'm used to people kind of faking their way through writing about:

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

what french toast is

[headspace-hotel]

read through the notes on this one trust me

[kiragecko]

Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

ANIMALS:

catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear

piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave

pluto-lichen: horses

misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like

pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially

SEX:

dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.

dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”

SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:

thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad

shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze

sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon

alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices

dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.

the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes

typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy

draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices

11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note

fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is

emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣

NON-FOOD STUFF:

red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.

bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket

nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English

sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp

danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author

meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does

vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'

leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake

fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?

dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic

msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate

shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September

baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird

twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)

waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up

violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours

purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.

[xiaq]

One of the best things about being a writer is thinking of something small you can add to your work that’s just. Devastating. Like you’re sitting there going. Oh. That would be diabolical. People would get really riled up about that. Exquisite. Let’s do it.

[renthony]

Your personal triggers and squicks do not get to determine what kind of art other people make.

People make shit. It's what we do. We make shit to explore, to inspire, to explain, to understand, but also to cope, to process, to educate, to warn, to go, "hey, wouldn't that be fucked up? Wild, right?"

Yes, sure, there are things that should be handled with care if they are used at all. But plenty more things are subjective. Some things are just not going to be to your tastes. So go find something that is to your tastes and stop worrying so much about what other people are doing and trying to dictate universal moral precepts about art based on your personal triggers and squicks.

I find possession stories super fucking triggering if I encounter them without warning, especially if they function as a sexual abuse metaphor. I'm not over here campaigning for every horror artist to stop writing possession stories because they make me feel shaky and dissociated. I just check Does The Dog Die before watching certain genres, and I have my husband or roommate preview anything I think might upset me so they can give me more detail. And if I genuinely don't think I can't handle it, I don't watch it. It's that simple.

[renthony]

#this excludes writing pedo or incest.

If you look at the tags on my original post, this post was originally about hospital horror, and how it's allowed to exist even if an individual has medical trauma and doesn't like the genre. But since someone wanted to go and put some shit on my post that I disagree with:

No, actually, it doesn't exclude those things. Dark themes in fiction are allowed to exist whether you like them or not.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita was not a real little girl who really got brutalized. She was a fictional character. No real child was harmed. People are not reading Lolita and going out thinking, "oh, this told me to abuse children, and clearly it's morally okay now." The existence of Lolita is not responsible for the existence of CSA.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare was pretty meta, but Freddy Krueger was still never real and never hurt any real kids, either. He's a story. None of those kids ever died, none of them ever got abused, and Fred Krueger never got burned to death, because they're all fake and never existed. Murder and CSA in the real world aren't Freddy Krueger's fault.

Jaime and Cersei Lannister are not real people. They are fake. They are words on paper, and actors on a screen. Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau are not siblings, and did not ever have real sex in the show. It was fake, simulated, not real sex. No siblings actually fucked. Nobody is watching/reading Game of Thrones and thinking, "oh, I can totally go fuck my sibling with no repercussions now!" The existence of Game of Thrones is not responsible for real-world incest.

Guillermo del Toro's film Crimson Peak didn't kick off an epidemic of everyone deciding it's okay to fuck their sister and kill their wife. William Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily" isn't making people kill men and sleep with their corpses, and Emily never really killed Homer because neither of them actually exist in the first place.

John Wick isn't making people run out and become hitmen. The very cute doggy that infamously dies in the first movie was not actually a real dog death--the dogs in John Wick were treated very well, according to a ScreenRant article I found!

Ghostface was played by a combination of stuntmen and a very talented voice actor, and all his murder victims were actors who were filming a pretend story. It was all choreographed and nobody really died. The benind-the-scenes stuff for the Scream series is actually really cool if you're into that sort of thing like I am.

Arcane didn't put grenade launchers in people's hands and turn them into vigilante fighters juiced up on Super Drugs--and you know what, neither did any of the things the Batman franchise has churned out. The Joker and Scarecrow and Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn aren't out there terrorizing New York City, because they're fantasy supervillains who aren't real and can't hurt you.

The endless waves of bandits in Skyrim are pixels on a screen, and I'm not killing real men when I cut them down. No real people got hurt when my Sims 4 house caught fire. Playing Super Smash Brothers hasn't gotten me into underground fighting rings, and neither did watching Fight Club.

It's all fiction.

None of it is real.

The characters are fake and do not exist.

Curate your own media experience and get your head out of your ass.

[karnivil]

Just to clarify op is saying: explore these things however way you want but also add trigger warnings and disclaimers when you do.

If the audience saw "This film contains pedophilia view at your own discretion."

"The pedophilic acts portrayed in this film are performed by actors and not real. Pedophilia is illegal and extremely harmful to the victims..." Etc etc

And still watched the film and had a freak out, that's on the dumbass audience, yes. But you better fucking add the trigger warnings else I'm coming for you with 27 sharpened steak knives.

[xenosagaepisodeone]

it's absolutely frustrating to see that for many people, the main point of contention with the internet archive lawsuit is that they personally do not feel like what the internet archive did in 2020 was copyright infringement. it literally does not matter if what the internet archive did was copyright infringement, because copyright is a blight on society and largely exists in service of whatever corporate entities can afford to "own" concepts or ideas. the art world suffers from people interacting with art within this framework. I don't understand how you can be someone who claims to hate corporate slop but endorse the right for branding to exist.

[karnivil]

Sorry OP, I'm not trying to start shit. I get why OP is upset but the cons of copyright and branding do not outweigh the pros of it. I'm an artist and a writer. I have published comics under my name. I am virtually a nobody. Under the copyright laws of my country no one can steal my work. It gives me the confidence to publish without fear that it will be stolen by someone who had nothing to do with its production but will profit off it and leave me destitute, just because they have more capital, and are living in a richer country . Despite all the cons, if Disney were to steal my work I have a chance of taking them to court and winning. That chance is more precious than you could ever imagine. That miniscule chance keeps people in line like you would not believe.

In regards to branding, it also holds companies accountable for their products and protects consumers. Like the trademarked name of the medicine you always take or the cereal you always buy. You buy them with the reassurance that some guy out of his basement isn't selling his own homebrew experiment under the same name.

Also patents. Do I think patents should be able to be bought and be stopped from entering the public domain? Absolutely not. Do I think having a patent allows the inventor the funds to continue research? Yes.

The abuse of copyright, trademark and patent laws are not an issue of Intellectual Property Protection Rights. It's an issue of abuse of it and monopolies. I feel like taking a sledgehammer to an issue that needs scalpels will end up hurting everyone else, but large corporations who already have the capital to steal and distribute the creations of literary everyone on the planet and then some? They'll be fine.

[karnivil]

Also. I saw a lot of comments saying copyright has never protected any small artist from anyone and that could not be more untrue especially right now. The entire reason artists around the world were able to band together to fight generative AI from stealing our work is because those rights exists. The reason you can have sites like redbubble and society6 take down thefts of your artwork is because these laws exists. The reason cover artists have to say "Cover of *insert song by Bella Porch or something*" and not claim it as their own. Even the anger at sites like Shein for stealing designs exists because people believe in copyright laws. Just wanted to add that.

[elljayvee]

Genuinely don't know what it's called but there's a particular way of violating reality that doesn't work. For example, I am willing to accept an omegaverse university AU of nearly any fandom you care to name (except, for some reason, Sherlock, because I have an inexplicable hatred for unilock). However, a lot of Star Wars university AUs specifically fail on this aspect: they make Anakin an engineering PhD student and Obi-Wan something like literature or classics, and then they make Anakin his TA or GA.

You can't do that. Absolutely not. Anakin is unqualified for that and a university would not do it in any case. A university would literally hire a junior or senior undergraduate workstudy student to do as much of that work as possible first. They would do NOTHING other than do that and make the prof do all his own grading.

Is there a name for "I will accept [wild fantasy premise] but not [ordinary wrong thing]?" Please tell me there's a name for this. Probably someone who studies lit will know? I'm a systems person I don't know from lit theory just like Anakin

[tzikeh]

No idea if there's a formal name but I think of it as "you have to play by the rules of the universe you create". Like okay, I'll buy that Superman can fly into outer space because those are the rules set up by the Superman universe and so the author and audience both agree that this can happen in the story. The minute Superman picks up a human woman and flies her into space with him, the author broke the compact they made with the audience and now that story is bad.

[penwiper26]

Ironically, the wikipedia article for verisimilitude cites Superman as an example

[elljayvee]

I think "it violates the rules of verisimilitude" is as good a name for it as any

[karnivil]

Aight gang am I wrong, I've just been calling this the "suspend my disbelief" theory my whole life

[elljayvee]

I mean, it's a very specific way in which suspension of disbelief can be forcibly ended. It's related to Wells's law, which someone else pointed out -- that when you are writing speculative fiction, you need to ask your reader to believe only one impossible thing (for example, "magic exists") and not more than one. The traditional "suspension of disbelief" is about intentionally allowing that implausible thing ("magic exists") to be "true" for the piece of fiction you're experiencing. So, for example, if someone rejects The Last Unicorn as a viable story because there's no such thing as a magic immortal horse with a horn -- that's refusing to suspend disbelief.

What I am talking about is when you've happily suspended your disbelief ("magic exists!" "unicorns exist!" "omegaverse biology ahoy!") but something else that should not require suspension of disbelief makes the entire story collapse. Thus the example of "omegaverse university AU" -- omegaverse doesn't exist, but it does in this story, so OK. Disbelief, suspended: I've accepted this premise for this story. "The characters are normally in space but now they're in a university" doesn't actually require suspension of disbelief: I know what a university is, and if they're specifically and clearly in an American university, I know that even better.

"This real-world thing is completely wrong in this piece of fiction" is a really common way to collapse someone's ability to accept the story. You don't even need to have a suspension of disbelief in the first place to ruin a story this way -- it's just, for me, a harder (and funnier) way of a story failing. Because when it happens, I'm like "OH COME ON. I was with you on the completely wack biology thing and you failed on...hiring practices that are observable by a first-year university student. Right."

[karnivil]

Marry me

[upsettingandunfortunateclasshate]

[bauliya]

arundhati roy is an Indian leftist activist and author, and this is a criticism of Gandhi and Gandhian politics. this context is important. she's lived through the failure of gandhi-esque politics.

[doomhope]

[ID: Tweet by M. @nuhhhnsense posted May 12, 2021. It reads: "Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation." -Arundhati Roy. This quote knocked like 16 years of liberal pacifism out of me in one go. /End ID]

Source

[idlnmclean]

*taps the Kwame Ture quote*

[2spirit-0spoons-deactivated2024]

[karnivil]

As an Indian we were never taught in school that Gandhi was the sole reason we gained Independence from the British. Subhash Chandra Bose is a name here that's as famous as Gandhi because he and his freedom fighters bombed the Brits left and right.

These guerrilla fighters killed so many Vice Roys sent from Britain that most of them refused to take a post here regardless of how rich they could become.

The ongoing World War made the British so weak it actually made it impossible to keep a hold of their far away territories.

Gandhi made the rest of the world care but the violent freedom fighters made the British care. Non violence is a tool of sympathy for the watching crowd, not the oppressor.

The reason Britain tells everyone about Gandhi and not Bose is because it makes them look benevolent. Like it was their mercy that gave us freedom, but that's a lie.

[blautitlewave]

Not contradicting you but when I learned about the British giving up India I interpreted it as “these English fucks are being made to look like monsters and are trying to save face by giving up a colony because white liberals in other countries are (hypocritically) judging them for being imperialists.”

[karnivil]

That's not contradictory at all. That was Gandhi's entire plan, he talks about it openly to his followers on several occasions. His pacifist activism was a tool to gain sympathy from the crowd in the sidelines. But that narrative is not at all the whole truth about their forfeit.

The Brits like to keep quiet about what the violent freedom fighters cost them and that they were already losing their footing in every territory they colonized, which is what I wanted to highlight.

Especially in relation to activism in this day and age when the attention of the desensitized masses shifts so quickly, when taking a stand against a country means risking nuclear warfare. Everyone has a lot of sympathy for North Koreans, for example, and no country can step in to help them. And peaceful activism will not make their dictator care any more or less. In such a situation, following Gandhi will only hinder you.

[the-pen-pot]

Nah, fam. It's not about "taking" criticism. It's about the fact that unless a writer asks for it specifically, it's a dick thing to do on a website that is rooted in community.

If a writer wants critique they will ask trusted friends or professional associates (in the relevant field). When a writer shares a fic on AO3 it's not necessarily with the aim of improving their craft (there are better places for that). It's about sharing joy.

Positive comments enhance that feeling of joy and community. Negative comments do not.

Fic isn't a product to be evaluated. If it's not for you, then you can just walk away. 😁

[the-reading-lemon]

I'm so tired of this discussion - why do all these people think they're entitled to offer critique on a fic author's work?

When you get a hand-made gift from someone, do you verbally rip it apart in front of them and point out every flaw or perceived flaw you can find? Congratulations, that person will never put the time, love and effort into making anything for you again, and they may question themselves so much they won't ever make anything for anyone else again, either. Well done, you've now deprived a whole community of art and an artist of their source of joy because you're an ungrateful walnut who can't say 'Thank you' and appreciate what you got for free.

Your opinion is not universal. Your tastes are not universal. Your preferred style is not universal. Authors can write whatever the fuck they want and unless you specifically commissioned a fic, you get no say in it.

Tl;dnr: If you don't like a fic or piece of art, hit the back button and keep your mouth shut. If you didn't like something, it likely wasn't meant for you and your 'criticism' is not wanted or helpful. Fandom is about community and lifting each other up, not about you shitting all over another person's work because you think your opinion matters.

[noirsongbird]

Legit, if I want critique I will go to someone who actually knows the fic I’m writing, my goals in writing it, and what I plan to happen later in the fic. Critique from a random stranger has none of that, only Random Stranger’s decisions about what they THINK I’m going for. That makes the critique less than worthless and often frustrating and demoralizing.

Unsolicited critique is never, ever, ever constructive, it’s you deciding that your opinions and your judgements are more important than the writer’s. It’s that simple.

[karnivil]

Commenter seems to have conflated Reviews with Critiques/Feedback.

An author should never see a review unless they go looking for it. Whereas, a critique/feedback is like when a game dev studio hires alpha/beta testers before releasing the game.

One is done without expectations of changes to the material and one is done explicitly with expectations that changes might be necessary.

A review is where you'll find ONE useful feedback for every 100,000 reviews. Where all spectrums of the political rainbow go share their Brilliant™ takes like "Shakespeare was a pedo because Juliet is 14" or "the media is trying to make our kids gay". Leave reviews, you're more than welcome to, on your own blogs without tagging the writer/creator. Don't leave your dookie in the writer's gallery. Do it at home, in your own toilet.

But you know, sometimes you just have to accept that the "super important review thing you feel you have to say" is actually not important or useful. And that's OKAY. Move on.

[damnfandomproblems]

not submission. I really hate the "My OC, my rules" thing. Cause like, no? Just because they are your oc doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with them. If you want to make your oc suffer and not like them get help, you deserve to lose rights over them. Especially if you only do that stuff to purposely trigger people. Once you do that, your oc no longer belongs to you. they belong to the public who will take better care of them instead

Making a comment to get this to post.

You do not get to take someone else’s OCs for yourself just because you don’t like how their creator is treating them.

[theworldlookswhite]

[as-thou-will]

I’m absolutely adding this to my Online Entitlement collection. Raymond’s already on there.

[goldenzingy46]

this reminds me of the time that someone asked me to change my name because they had bad memories of someone named trixie

god what a wild day

[valentineish]

I took the liberty of harvesting more examples from the notes. This genre of guy is an invasive species to fandom and freelance art spaces alike.

[elanorpam]