Soupy George @soupy-george - Tumblr Blog

Heirs to the peerage also got married and continued the family line. They certainly didn't get struck by a bolt of homosexual lightning in the middle of a grotty pub in Sheffield....

Old School Ao3 link

Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

#wolfstar #marauders #fanfiction #sirius black #remus lupin #typesetting #band au

animentality

Link to the gay porn library of Alexandria.

Happy pride.

Exclusively follows old hp fandom mates and weird british crime shows..... entire feed: #heated rivalry ma'am? Here, have some more..... and more. There is nothing else.

#okay if i must 👀#wolfstar #fanfiction #heated rivalry

ruffboi-mags

I'm not sure fandom babies understand how much info they generally get on fics on AO3. Especially the ones who complain about certain kinds of content. TIME WAS YOU COULD NEVER KNOW IF THERE WOULD BE SHIT YOU DIDN'T LIKE IN FICS.

Like, okay, take this header from a fic I loved in LotR fandom back in 2002, on the LotR forum/website I preferred:

That provides... essentially no info on what's actually in the fic, y'know? It's 6 chapters and appears to mostly be about Frodo and Pippin, and it's rated G, but other than that, take a risk, right?

Or take this header on Livejournal for a fic I posted in 2008:

This was actually an extremely in-depth fic header at the time. There were a lot of people who didn't bother adding notes, word counts, or even characters of focus. "Warnings" was an optional entry, and I only bothered adding it bc the fic had significant spoilers for an episode that had aired recently. There are other things I'd tag on it now, but those weren't "tagged" at the time by most people.

I'd show off an FF.net header but I can't actually get the site to load tonight.

Like, it was controversial that a fic challenge community I was in on LJ in '07 or so took down a fic someone submitted because they didn't warn for sexual assault. Because we had no rule about being required to warn.

And some of y'all bitch that AO3 allows thoroughly-tagged content that you can easily avoid and not accidentally read, and if you accidentally read it bc it's not tagged, you can REPORT it????

Nah. Fuck that and fuck you. AO3 should not censor content posted to it, but I have not seen a fic in YEARS that doesn't have more info about the content of a 100 word drabble than I would've ever given for a 4k word fic back in the day. Not because I specifically had bad habits, but because WE DID NOT PROVIDE THAT INFO AT THAT TIME.

Sorry just. I saw something earlier today being critical of AO3 and just. Y'all don't understand how good you have it. You really really don't. And on the one hand I'm glad that you always had this quality of tagging, but on the other fuck you for acting like it's not fabulously thorough for asking if there's common triggers in it.

saint-starflicker

This is why I'm surprised that Don't Like Don't Read is spoken of as though it's a foundational principle of a harmoniously creative fanbase, because... Back in the day, you would not know that you didn't like it until long after it was too late. Don't Like Don't Read used to be something that immature writers with fragile egos said to protect themselves from constructive criticism—which it used to be very cool to give unsolicited, so "Don't Like Don't Read" would get super clowned on and reversalled.

Now that there's an ingredients list, it makes much more sense that "Don't Like Don't Read" means "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?" but it wasn't some edict from a bygone time whose courtesies we've forgotten. it's only that we have beansoup kerfuffles now.

ruffboi-mags

You're surprised because apparently you don't understand what it means - not your fault, because apparently it's not being properly explained to y'all newer fandom entrants, and I can understand how in a world with clearer indicators of content via AO3 tags, and the wider tagging/warning conventions that come with them, it doesn't immediately click what it's supposed to mean.

"Don't Like Don't Read" doesn't mean "don't start reading the thing if you don't like what it's about", because when DLDR started being a fandom aphorism, you'd never be sure. What it meant then and still means today is "if you start reading a fic and you find out you don't like it, don't keep reading it."

It wasn't a preventative to reading things you didn't like, and it wasn't a "protection for fragile egos of immature writers", it was a directive for when you the reader inevitably did read something you didn't like. It was a reminder that if you don't like a fic anymore, STOP READING IT. Don't keep reading to complain, don't leave a hate comment, don't leave unsolicited "crit" comments, just use the back button and find something else to read. It was specifically meant to remind people that if they didn't like something they ran into in a fic, they didn't have to be a dick to the author, they could literally just stop reading.

(EDIT: @aimofdestiny also pointed out something good in tags reblogging this and I wanted to add it here for posterity bc it's also important to the OG context and slipped my mind:

#minor point though. ime DLDR was also for pairings. hate-reading and then flaming the rival ship was common)

And that holds true today because even with all the tags in the world, you still might come across a fic that you end up not liking for one reason or another, whether it's a trope you didn't realize would be in the fic that you hate or bad formatting or whatever. Yes, you can avoid a lot of things you won't like in a way you couldn't before, but you're still gonna find fics that you don't like that you can't tell you won't like just from the tags. And in all cases, the same rule applies:

If you don't like what you're reading (whether it's the tags, the summary, or the fic itself), don't keep reading it, and don't bitch about it to the author.

Don't Like, Don't Read.

(also honestly in the 25 years I've been in fandom, it's never been cool to give unsolicited crit, but writers used to get it - usually not even concrit, just plain crit - a lot more often, especially if you didn't explicitly say you weren't looking for any crit. DLDR was one of the ways we doubled down on "no really, I don't want crit, if you want to complain, here's the door.")

the-invisibility-bloke

People who whinge about writers not tagging every one of the reader’s personal triggers like… what a weird way to admit you’ve never read a book.

The 10 commandments of fandom according to me on my mobile at breakfast right now:

1) tags are a courtesy, not a right, not a law

2) never ever ever give concrit or anything but praise unless the writer asks for it. this isn’t fucking goodreads, we’re not doing this for a grade or rating or money, this is our HOBBY (and remember YOUR BOOKMARK NOTES ARE PUBLIC UNLESS YOU CHECK THE PRIVATE BOX. THE AUTHOR WILL SEE THEM.)

3) don’t repost others’ work

4) don’t use AI in any part of your work

5) kudos and comment on work you like, support and uplift creators, this is a COMMUNITY

6) SALS, KINKTOMATO, DLDR, and don’t shit-talk ships you don’t like in public, that’s what group chats and private servers are for

7) respect server and fest rules

8) address disagreements privately / directly instead of drama-queening it into vaugeposts

9) give people the benefit of the doubt, once. some folks are new and don’t understand the etiquette yet.

10) write some dead dove now and then, it’s good for the soul

ruffboi-mags

Words to fan by.

laurenkmoody

Note the - second? Third? - about DLDR: IME, it was often used specifically for slash pairings.

Usually when I encountered it, it meant "if you don't like or approve of slash (queer people), don't read this." Because yeah, people would leave hateful comments and harass you about you getting gay cooties on their beloved fiction. It was a warning up front that the author would be ignoring or deleting flame comments and other harassment, so don't waste everybody's time.

Don't Like, Don't Read was essentially an attempt to tell homophobes we're here, we're queer, get used to it. They didn't have to like us but we weren't going away.

(Also: Writing this made me realize how long it's been since I used the term "slash." That's another fandom term being phased out as culture shifts. Huh!)

arahir

i just can't convey the frustration and sorrow that it's been to grow up at first without the internet and then watching it bloom into this useful, fun, connecting force you sometimes spent time on, only for it to degrade into this constant oppressive waste of time and energy where people are constantly pumping out algorithmically designed content for max algorithmic appeal and even the most simple search generates either no results or an infinite abyss of ai generated slop none of which is usable or correct. we briefly had a library of alexandria and then fed it into a paper shredder so advertisers could sell a random mash of pulp back to us at a premium.

meteoralinart

Remus and Harry from chapter 14 of PoA

textbooklesbian

this is the type of work they’re gonna make high school art students study in ten years

copperbadge

Tomorrow I will have been in fandom for thirty years.

I can mark the anniversary very precisely because I know the name of the first fanfic I ever read, which is fortunately archived online along with the date it was posted, the same day I read it. I don't believe Usenet exists anymore and I've been here too long to believe that nothing ever disappears off the internet, so I know that archives are truly a gift to history.

I posted my first fanfic not that long after. It wasn't well-written but reading it today I can see that the narrative was sound. People said they liked it, which was kind given how extremely bad my grammar was. I was an awkward teenager with undiagnosed ADHD and praise was rare for me, but when I wrote fanfic someone always said something kind about it. Eventually a few of them took me under their wing and explained things like "where quotation marks go" and "paragraph breaks". Commas, I fear, are a lost cause even today, but they tried, bless them.

I thought about doing something big to commemorate the anniversary, but I couldn't really think what I might do and the world right now is pretty exhausting. I'm forty five and I'm tired. But imagine how much more exhausting the world would be without fandom -- how much emptier my life would be without my friends, this community, the writing I do, the art and beauty fandom exposes me to. So for now I'm just meditating on that a bit -- the richness of the experience, the gifts I've been fortunate to receive, the lessons I've been fortunate (if sometimes reluctant) to learn.

In another thirty years I'll be seventy five, if I live so long. Thirty years ago we didn't in any meaningful sense have digital cameras, let alone cellphones or smartphones, social media, streaming television, GPS. I did a report on the science of cloning for my high school biology class (on the suggestion of a fellow fan) a year before Dolly was cloned. I wrote my first fanfic using a computer running Windows version 3.1. I wrote it in Notepad, still a constant companion.

I hope I live to seventy five. As tired as I am, I'm looking forward to seeing where the next thirty years will take us.

I hope Notepad will still be there.

the-aleator

endeavour musings

Featuring: Fred Thursday's Traumatic Backstory and the War

In "Rocket" (s1e3), in the second half of the episode, we get the discovery of the rocket guidance schematics in Lenny Frost's pocket, which Thursday notices, looks at, and goes "huh" eyebrow. Then we get another scene with Dr Volk, our very German engineer, who Morse questions about the source of the documents, and Thursday...has other questions in mind.

THURSDAY: "Volk, What's that? German, is it? Worked long at British Imperial?" VOLK: "18 years." THURSDAY: "When would that be? Early '47? [switches to German] Where were you before? Kiel, Peenemunde, Nordhausen?" VOLK: [German] "I was a young Engineer. It was a long time ago." THURSDAY: "Yeah. [German] But some of us have a good memory."

The triple layer of conversation (yay! intertextuality) going on here is brilliant: Morse is looking confused, from one to the other, Thursday is using fluent German to confront Volk over the War (on his own territory, so to speak), and Volk is hugely on the defensive.

I'm pretty sure Volk uses the word "Zeit" when he says it was a long time ago, implying that that's both ancient history and also nothing to do with him, and Thursday rebuts him that he has a "good memory." Also, I wish had the screenshots for the venom on Thursday's face.

MORSE: What was that all about? THURSDAY: It was him and a load more like him flattened my street. MORSE: I'm sure it wasn't personal. THURSDAY: Wasn't it? You're too young to remember.

Then Thursday accuses of him excusing Vexin because she's a "looker" and in return Morse accuses him of him being xenophobic, ("I based it more on the fact that she isn't German") and then sort of apologises, with a reluctant, "Sir."

There are a lot of implications here to tease out. The first being that many German scientists were transported, mostly to the US, but some to the UK, (Operation Paperclip) regardless of what they may or may not have done during the war. Even at the time, the ethical implications of that were...messy. It's pretty clear that what's Thursday is accusing Volk of. Then the list of places: 1. Kiel, which was a major port for the Kriegsmarine, had a bunker to build and repair u-boats 2. Peenemunde, which was a factory for V-1 missiles until 1943 and a German testing facility and factory for both the V-2 and the Wasserfall missile. 3. Nordhausen, which was a factory for the V-2 missiles.

Kiel and Peenemunde used forced labor of POWs.

But Nordhausen was an offshoot of Mittelbau-Dora and was specifically built to be a V-2 factory fueled by the concentration camp. An estimated 60,000 people passed through the camp, although the precise number of people who died isn't possible to determine, but figures range from 15,000 up to 25,000.

Volk's response is to deny responsibility based on his age, just as, interestingly, Thursday absolves Morse of responsibility of remembering or understanding because "he's too young."

Thursday says that it's personal because Volk / German engineers flattened his street, but there's something more to it:

THURSDAY to GULL: "Oh, I've looked into the eyes of far worse than you. People who've committed real atrocities. And they were sane. Next to them, you're nothing more than a third-rate freak show. A bearded lady with glue running down her chin." (Fugue, S1E2, my emphasis)

Justice is a personal thing for Thursday, as in, it's about the individual (unlike Morse, "The truth will be buried"), it's Thursday who rejects with force the idea that Olive Rix is a "gold-digger," to Henry Bloom Sr. ("She might not have had the best start in life, but at the time she went missing, she was working hard to make something of herself.") It's hard not to hear Thursday himself in that sentence. The implications buried here, I think, are that Thursday, as a sergeant with the Eighth Army, who speaks fluent German, probably did liberate, or participate in the liberation of a concentration camp. Which: queue more traumatic backstory for Thursday. I think one of the things that the interchange with Volk shows is that Thursday has long learned the lesson, for himself, personally, that justice doesn't always happen. He can't do anything about Volk: all he can do is remember what happened. And thus, MORSE: "That's not enough." THURSDAY: "Sometimes it has to be. Not every question gets an answer. Learning to live with that is the hardest lesson there is." The whole of Morseverse in two lines of dialogue.

thisliminalspacedaydreams

Fanfic is a free hobby.

It's one of the last few things we can have as a society that's free. You can engage, for free. People give you things (art, stories, etc), for free.

Don't buy into the consummerism just because it's everywhere else.

You don't have to consume everything you interact with. You don't have to use things, just because they exist.

You're allowed (still, for now), to have things that are enjoyable for free.

Do you realise how insane the world is? We don't have many places where we can just be, for free anymore, but ao3 is. Did you notice we don't have ads in ao3? We don't have pop ups? Where ELSE do we not have that?

Where else can you just go and not have to wait for a commercial to be over or for ads to be on the sidelines?

I don't think the younger people understand, but the whole of internet used to be like this. YouTubers would do Youtube for free, just because. You couldn't monetise your internet presence before.

Ao3 is like a little preserved corner of the internet where the old internet used to be, and it's being attacked by people who do not understand that free things are allowed to exist without judgment.

Please don't ruin this for us.

Some of us need it.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Soupy George