there’s been a few folks talking about the state of webcomics in my last post, particularly how the landscape has changed since webcomics became something bigger corporations could make money off of…. and, well, exploit people to get it.
I want to talk a little more broader on the topic at one point, but yeah, it’s been a tough few years seeing ‘new shiny thing’ and uncovering the rot beneath.
Please support your fellow indie creators however you can- tell your friends about your favourite comics, make posts reccomending them, share your fics, fanart, your fave moments, etc etc. Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful and nebulous ways to support folks!
I’ve seen a few additions on my webcomic posts talking about the ‘barriers for entries’ when making webcomics and my stomach just dropped.
It wasn’t always like that. The expectation to feel the need to be perfect before you begin a webcomic, the need to be Super Popular On Social Media to be ‘relevant’, the want to have 1million subs to feel you’ve ‘made it’ even though the payout is scraped from the platform for their benefit (and nice 50% too).
The amazing part of webcomics is the fact that you can and WILL grow as you make them. This is what makes them special.
I will be honest in the fact that, there are Very Few People nowadays that can make a living off of webcomics. Even those who seem most successful still have other avenues to generate income.
I think it’s unfair that theres this corperate greed that drills this expectation in folks to match industry standards, and imho, that is the opposite of what webcomics should be.
They should be wonky sometimes, have some typos, linger too long on things, read imperfect, and most importantly- show that growth of creation over the years.
I have a webcomic podcast (screen tones) and our theme always comes back to anyone can make a webcomic, because its what makes webcomics unqiue and accessible. It’s what makes them what they are.
So please, if you feel like you’re ‘not good enough to start a webcomic’- stop lingering on the Expectations these greedy companies have to make you obsess over subs and likes and contests, and make your comic.
And make it as unhinged and wild and indulgent as possible. Because i guarantee you, even if they are silent readers, SOMEONE needs your story.
I just want to say, (at least in Korea) the corporate-sponsored webtoons/webcomics industry literally shoves people into the meat grinder to fuel their weekly updates of 80+ full-colour illustration-quality panels. There’s separate people for putting down flat colours, shading, and lines. and even then people literally die from overworking. I’m not joking. People have died because of how hard the webtoon industry works them. You get a bit of leeway depending on your style and genre but this is what happens as a result of corporations setting the goalposts to attain.
No single person can compete with that.
Webcomics used to be something you did because you wanted to, because there was a story you wanted to tell, and the line has now blurred between these personal projects and the “comics that are held to a quality standard that also happen to be accessible via web”.
If you have a story that you want to tell via comic, you should go for it. You probably wouldn’t make money off of it, but the discipline of making something consistently (not even of consistent quality, but literally just having something to post weekly) is pretty gratifying! It literally doesn’t matter what the quality is like. If someone is mean about it, it will hurt but also what have they made? what kind of effort have they made into being creative? have they pursued a project with any kind of effort? you’re doing so much more for yourself and for the world by making something and putting it out there.
The social aspect can and might bog you down, because it’s nice to have that quantifiable validation that your work is liked. It might even stop you from posting. But it’s not the core aspect of making a webcomic, and it’s certainly not a Necessity to getting started. And if there’s readership to be gained, you won’t get it by never starting it. Just make your thing. Also your art will improve so fast when you’re literally drawing so many panels every week. Don’t worry about it. Post on a private blog if you’re really afraid to show people. But really, just get started. And don’t worry about it.
This is something deeply personal to me and yes, the landscape has changed SO much. I started making webcomics in 2005, fresh out of high school and have been making them ever since. I make mostly grayscale comics on a schedule that doesn’t overwhelm me (1 comic updates twice a week, the other once a week, and the third twice a month). I use the same program I used back in 2005, though the newest version of it that came out in like 2010 I think.
The very first comic I worked on was silly and fun, but I still get the occasional email today of folks telling me how much it meant to them. After years of rejection & getting better each year, I started working on the stories I wanted to tell. I managed to get an agent, and one of comics was picked up by Dark Horse. I did not go to art school, I never got the networking a lot of the bigger folks got, and I don’t live in the US (which, fun fact, locks me out of being able to use Webtoons fully - they’ve region-locked their app AHAHAHAH FUN).
So yeah, start whenever the heck you want! If you have a story you want to tell, that is the only reason you need to start. The more YOU enjoy your story, the more that’ll show through. If you want your art to grow, nothing will improve you faster than starting a webcomic. Also, read comics, look how your favs construct a page. Panel composition is more important than you think. The main key to a good webcomic is “is what I’m trying to show clear” and just keep on pushing.
You can start anywhere. You can show whoever you want, or no one at all (I did comics for me all through elementary school). Everyone has their own personal goal of where they’d like to be. And I’m by no means a success story. but only YOU can determine your success, and I’m happy where I am.
START THAT COMIC! you’ve got this ^_^ (also, if you don’t want to do color comics YOU DON’T HAVE TO! If anyone bugs you about it, just tell them Elaine said it was fine and they can go make their own comic in color if they care so much XD)
And readers? SHARE THE COMICS YOU LIKE! Word of mouth does so much, and if we ever want the little folk to have a chance against the mega corps, or even just the highly popular aggregate sites, boost the heck outta the comics you love ^_^
So I was having a conversation with a friend about old anime and in the middle of it she forgot the word "canonical" and she instead inflicted a spectacular new aesthetic and slew of mental images on me by saying the phrase "Biblically Accurate Ouran High School Host Club".
Which is exactly why she used it! The problem is that I'm a feral agnostic and the connection I made was to the eldritch depictions of "Biblically Accurate Angels" so the image that popped into my head and that I've been compelled all week to draw was:
But the thing is often people haven't written it because it's not profitable to, or not feasible to make it widely accessible. It also serves as a tool for synthesising information in one central place, it's common to see/hear people in education asking (mostly chatGPT) to explain things because the explanation at their level isn't available, or the information is sparse, or hard to find. It's like a search engine for human knowledge, which is an amazingly powerful tool.
It has flaws, yes, but shouldn't be condemned by an unduly high value put on what humans have published
Bots like chatGPT will straight up lie or make shit up or give demonstrably false answers when asked simple questions. It is not an information repository or search, it is a text generator. It is completely incapable of verifying if the text it generates has any correlation with reality, only with whatever text it's trying to replicate the patterns of.
Do not buy into the idea that it is some revolutionary tool for writing or learning.
Also it will not write anything new /by design/ because all it can do is source from existing writing and regurgitate it. This doesn't seem novel when all art allowed under capitalism is overly crowd sourced, derivative crap but the reality of art is that it should be unique to each creator and AI /literally cannot do that/ it can only copy existing work.
Frankly, I won't be considering anything (visual, written,etc) to be 'AI generated' until the artificial intelligence responsible is able to actually choose to pursue that medium and is actually using it to say something. What we have now aren't AI, they're just complex algorithms that mimic human activity without sentience.
AI art will probably be a real thing one day, and it will be incredible because it will be created by a thinking being with its own motivations and identity. What we have now is very much not that.
I got like 30 hours into Baldur's Gate 3 when one of my PC's drives started failing. I am still working on fixing it because I'm neurodivergent and trying to figure out what drive cloning software to buy is so confusing.
Yo, in COFY, is Zuko/Azula's Typhlosion a regular one or a Hisuian variant? Asking because I feel like there's some absolutely DELICIOUS angst to be had from Azula taking a pokemon that's supposed to purify lost and angry ghosts and inflicting her particular training style upon it. Bonus points for the Hisuian variant being half-ghost, and therefore only being touchable by humans when it wants to be (once it figures out it can refuse without punishment anymore, that is).
That’s brilliant for the narrative and I wish I could say that yeah, that’s totally how I planned it, yes….but it’s not lol.
Azula’s typhlosion is just a regular garden variety with added anxiety. I think Ozai would specifically go for a regular one anyway what with him being a type purist and all that. Zuko’s fire-breathing pikachu is Ozai’s worst fucking nightmare.
LOL Ozai foaming at the mouth during every one of Zuko’s televised exhibition matches where Peony participates is TOTALLY worth Azula’s Typhlosion not being a 9-foot-plus fire-weasel.
Okay, so I know I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll never actually do anything with this Spirited Away/Avatar AU,’ but things have Happened since then and it is now 6000+ words in my drafts, which I guess means it’s probably Going Somewhere.
So here, have a rough cast while I hammer together the rest of the first part of it. These are like, ROUGH approximations of the roles people will play, and the cast includes a LOT of fan-made characters. Some belonging to @muffinlance, Teruko belonging to Vathara (from Embers).
Sen/Chihiro: Li (Sokka).
Haku: Li (Zuko).
Yubaba: Ozai
Lin: Teruko
The Boiler Man/Kamaji: Hanako
Yubaba’s Son: Azula (DW, she plays a very different roll to the giant baby).
Zeniba: Iroh
Bathhouse Manager Guy: Zhao
Staff Supervisor: Jee
Greeter/Concierge: Kyo, Kazuto (He‘s still learning, okay?)
Staff W/O Specific Roles Yet: Genji, Satomi
Head Cook: Dekku
The Lamp Thing That Hops Around in the Swamp: Toph
No-Face: Let’s be real, I haven’t decided how/whether that’s going to be a plot point in this fic. I don’t really see Sokka making the same mistake that Chihiro did in letting the dude into the bathhouse.
Not Appearing In This Fic: Katara, Aang, Hakoda, Bato, etc.
Still working out the details of this, so feel free to shout at me about it.
Okay, a further development of this idea that I just had an LITERALLY cannot keep to myself for another minute:
The name Zuko got when he ended up at the bathhouse?
Li.
What name does Ozai gives Sokka when HE ends up in the bathhouse?
Li.
-X-
“Okay, when I asked ‘What now,’ I was kinda hoping you’d come up with a better plan than ‘become a ‘masseuse’ at my asshole dad’s bathhouse,” Li says the minute the door slides closed behind him.
Scarred-Li glares at him and smacks him in the chest with a bundle of cloth in the same black-and-red that all the rest of the staff wear.
LOL Avatar/Spirited Away AU. Where Sokka the Spiritually Oblivious wanders into some abandoned amusement park and then... Well...
Sokka’s on his way back from college when he makes a wrong turn and ends up at what looks like an abandoned amusement park.
There’s a weird sign by the entryway warning passers-by not to enter because of ‘Strange Energies.’
And because he’s Sokka and inquisitive to a fault (especially when confronted with clearly-bullshit keep-out signs), he parks his car, grabs his jacket, and gets out to have a look around.
The entryway is built in a distinctly Japanese style; A curving tiled roof rising in tiers above the entry arch and capping the high stucco-covered wall that stretches out into the low underbrush in either direction. He can’t see any signs of rides or other attractions beyond it.
It doesn’t look like the sort of amusement park that belongs in Alaska. Probably why it’s abandoned.
He wanders down the entry tunnel, peering ahead in the darkness to try and figure out what’s at the other end. Weird, it didn’t seem this long when he started walking…
It’s getting warmer, too. Warm enough that he’s unzipping his jacket.
Finally, he gets to the end of the end, and blinks up a sky that’s WAY bluer than the watery-spring-blue sky he remembers from just a few minutes ago. The cutting breeze and shreds of low cloud are conspicuously absent as well.
There are the ruins of carnival stalls and a few eateries scattered around the entry-building, the smooth-worn paving stones interrupted by weeds and grass that look a little too green for Alaska, even in June.
It’s eerily quiet. No songbirds or bugs or the ever-present arguing of the sea-birds. Sokka can see wind-chimes and bells hanging from the corners of a few of the surrounding pavilions, but the air is too still to move them.
Strange.
He walks a little further away from the entrance, picking up speed when he realizes that the rows of little stalls aren’t actually that deep. He turns a corner and stops, staring.
The paving stones become a set of shallow steps a few yards away, leading down to what looks like it used to be a water feature of some sort, but now is full of beautifully-lush green grass. Across the green expanse, maybe a hundred yards away, is the rest of the park; rising up the slope of a low hill in tiers of red-gold-green buildings, with a grand, castle-like building with faded red walls and a green-tiled roof at the top.
Strangely enough, the tall, rusty smokestack that stands next to the castle-building is putting out drifting clouds of black-grey smoke.
Maybe this place isn’t as abandoned as he thought.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket to text a picture of the place to Aang, only to discover that there’s no signal. He snaps the picture anyway, then turns his phone off to save the battery.
Go back to the car, or see if there’s still part of this place that’s open for business?
Sokka looks back towards where he remembers the entrance being, but the maze of carnival booths and abandoned noodle stalls block his view of it. He steps out onto the strip of clear pavement between said stalls and the grass and looks down it to see how far it is to the wall, but he can’t see that either. In either direction.
“Must be painted to look like the horizon,” Sokka mutters to himself, shading his eyes with one hand and squinting at where the wall should be. He can’t see the mountains that should be visible to the east, so there’s definitely something in the way.
“Weird.”
He looks around again, but the entry gate is still obscured, and the mystery of that maybe-still-open castle-building is way more appealing than the three hours of driving he’s still got to do before he gets home.
Onward it is, then.
The grass is soft and dotted with patches of clover and wildflowers when he gets to the bottom of the steps. A little way down the bank Sokka sees the wooden skeleton of what was probably a gondola of some sort, now overgrown with tall blue flowers and moss. Something metallic clinks against his boot, and when he looks down he realizes that the grass near the bottom of the stairs is full of coins and little things people must have dropped while getting in and out of the boats that must have ferried people across.
He crunches down to get a better look. Most of the coins aren’t the American and Canadian ones he recognizes. Instead, they’re much bigger, with blank faces and a gold-metallic coloring. Carnival tokens of some kind, maybe? There are a few pieces of jewelry too, but nothing interesting enough to bother taking with him.
“Wonder how long this place’s been here?” Sokka tosses the ring he’s been inspecting away into the grass and starts walking again. The coins and other junk peter out a few yards away from the bank, leaving nothing but the grass underfoot. “Can’t have closed that long ago if all that stuff’s still there.”
The further he walks, the warmer the air gets. Sokka pauses about halfway across the gap to shrug out of his jacket and tie it around his waist, just to keep himself from sweating through it.
“Weird weather today,” he mutters, casting a glance up at the still-too-blue sky and starting to wish he’d brought a hat. He turns a slow circle in place, hoping that the distance will make it easier to pick out the entrance gate’s tower or where the walls are, but he can’t see either. In fact, standing where he is, the only real landmarks he has to orient himself are the dry riverbed itself and the castle in the distance.
It’s maybe making him feel the tiniest bit uneasy.
Still, he didn’t come all this way just to chicken out. Sokka squares his shoulders and keeps walking.
A breeze picks up as he nears the other bank, ruffling the flowers and the grass gently and finally doing something to break the weird silence of the place. Sokka can hear the distant sound of the chimes and bells that must be hung from the eaves of the roofs the same way they had been around the entrance as he gets closer.
There are more boat-skeletons on this side. Way more boat skeletons. Enough that Sokka has to pick his way between their ribs and the long poles and oars that must have been used to propel them across the channel. There’s also a notable lack of any of the junk he’d seen in the grass on the gate-side, like everything that might have been dropped has been meticulously removed.
There’s still no sign that anyone’s been here recently other than the smoke coming from the stack, though. The booths and pavilions, while much less of a mess than they had been on the other side, are still clearly abandoned and weather-worn. There are still weeds growing between the paving stones, but there’s no trash or animal nests or actual damage to anything, as far as he can tell.
“How does a place like this even happen?”
The hill’s steeper than it looks from a distance, although not so steep that there are steps anywhere. Every once in a while Sokka stops to look back toward the park entrance, trying to get a feel for how far he’s come, and how wide the park is, but he can’t seem to pick out the gatehouse OR figure out where the walls are.
The closer he gets to the castle, the less it looks like one. What he’d thought were battlements at a distance actually turn out to be large, many-paned windows and balconies. There’s a cheerfully-waving flag at one corner emblazoned with a symbol he doesn’t recognize, and no signs of an outer wall to speak of. But if it isn’t a castle, what is it?
Sokka’s been following a wide, winding path between the pavilions and restaurants on the hillside, so it’s hard to judge exactly how close he is to reaching his destination until he rounds a corner and realizes he’s arrived.
The place is enormous up close. It looms over the other structures of the park like the giant cruise ships loom over small seaside ports.
“Sweet Tui and La, what the fuck?” Sokka stares in disbelief. Instead of an ornamental moat or a ditch of some kind, there’s a sheer fucking four-hundred-foot drop down to what looks like a flat flood-plain that separates the castle-like building from the rest of the park; the cliff face extending off for miles in either direction until it gets lost in the haze. The castle itself stands on a completely-physics-and-geology-defying pillar of rock that stands straight up from the muddy plain below, with plumbing pipes and occasional structures built out of it. The smokestack stands off to one side on an even more logic-defying stone spire, connected to the main building by an arch of stone and a tangle of rusting pipes.
There’s a delicately-ornamented arched wooden bridge spanning the thirty-foot gap from the cliff edge to the building’s entrance. Unlike the rest of the park’s structures, this one shows no signs of wear whatsoever.
Sokka stares at everything for a minute, then reaches automatically into his pocket for his phone.
It’s dead.
“Well, shit,” he sighs as he shoves it back in the pocket of his jeans. He’ll have to charge it in his car enough to put a map pin down for this place before he gets back on the road.
“What are you doing here?”
The voice comes from right the fuck over his shoulder. Way too close for comfort. Sokka may or may not scream like a six-year old as he flails and tries to get a bit of distance from the asshole who’s snuck up on him.
It’s a guy, maybe a few years older than Sokka. He’s got a nasty burn scar splayed over one side of his face, bright-bright-bright gold eyes that are kind of impossible not to notice, and a Defcon-2 level scowl.
“Dude!” Sokka feels like his fucking heart’s about to give out. “What the fuck, man? Have you been following me this whole time?”
With a bit of distance, Scar-Face-McCreeper turns out to be dressed to match the rest of the park in an old-fashioned red-and-black yukata and a pair of geta. Sokka has no fucking clue how the guy managed to move so silently in what is essentially a pair of wooden flip-flops, but here they are.
“Only since you crossed the channel,” Scar-Face-McCreeper answers, like that somehow makes things any better. “Most people are smart enough to turn around before they get that far.”
Wonderful. Now he’s being insulted. “Dude, if you didn’t want people coming in here to see what’s up, you’re gonna need to do better than a cheap-looking poster covered in nonsense about ‘bad energies,’ Sokka retorts. “What even is this place, anyway?”
“It’s a bathhouse,” Scar-face is still looking at him like he’s an idiot. “And it’s private. By invitation only.”
The guy takes a step toward him as he says that last bit, and Sokka subconsciously finds himself taking a step back. There’s something weirdly dangerous about the way the other guy’s looking at him. He suddenly seems… bigger, somehow, his shadow lengthening toward Sokka strangely, even though it can’t be more than half-past noon and the sun won’t set for almost another eleven hours…
Something, Sokka has no idea what, causes the sudden tension to snap like an overstretched rubber-band. Scar-Face’s head snaps around toward the horizon, and Sokka feels like his eyes are about to bug out of his head when he looks in the same direction and realizes the sun’s somehow more than halfway set already.
“What-”
One of the lightpoles at the end of the bridge flickers on.
There’s a hot-hot hand around his wrist, nearly jerking him off balance as he’s hauled bodily back across the bridge away from the bathhouse.
“Run. Now!” Scar-Face shoves him back toward the street leading down the hill. He sounds almost… Scared? Worried? “Get back across the channel before the sun sets! Go!”
Definitely scared.
Scar-Face turns on his heel to face the bathhouse, striking a strange pose, like some sort of predatory snake poised to strike.
“Run, you moron. Before you can’t. Go!”
Sokka’s not normally the sort of dude to let stunts like this get him, but something tells him this guy isn’t fucking around. He takes one look back at the lone figure on the bridge and fucking books it down the street.
When the fuck did it get so dark? Sokka wonders as he sprints past shops and stalls and pavilions. More and more lights are coming on the longer he runs; illuminating walls and pillars and roofs that don’t look nearly as dilapidated as he remembers them being just a few minutes ago. He doesn’t stop to take a closer look, but he’s pretty sure the grass that was growing between the paving stones earlier is gone too.
A breeze blows down the street after him, and Sokka yelps when a hand grabs him by the wrist and drags him bodily in the direction of a narrow alley.
“You’re never going to make it if you go the longest way, numbskull,” Scar-Face hisses as he nearly pulls Sokka right off his feet with his speed. “Faster!”
Sokka nearly trips on the suddenly-steeper slope of the alley, but manages not to faceplant as he pushes himself to try and match the guy’s speed. The hand on his wrist feels like an iron band, like he could fall flat and the guy would just pull him along the ground without slowing down.
The next minute or so is a blur of dark alleyways and bright flashes across the main thoroughfare as the two of them sprint down the hill. The sky above is getting darker and darker, but the slope is getting shallower, which must mean they’re close to the bottom. Nearly there-
One minute Sokka’s running like his life depends on it, and the next Zuko’s twisting them both into a narrow doorway and flattening Sokka against it. Sokka’s breath wheezes out of him with the force of the impact, but before he can draw a fresh breath to complain there’s a hand clamped over his mouth.
“Quiet.” Scar-Face is so close, his lips brush against Sokka’s ear. “Listen. We’re too late.”
Sure enough, Sokka can hear voices chattering a few yards away. Footsteps and clinking jewelry and somehow the sound of water slapping against stone. A loud hiss comes from the other side of the door, and a cloud of steam issues from a window just a few feet away, carrying the smell of soy sauce and spices and frying meat with it.
Which might not sound particularly remarkable if the guy hadn’t been doing his whole ‘Avatar State’ thing at the same time.
“Are we dead?”
Sokka lets his head loll to one side to see Zuko staring back at him, brows furrowed in confusion. He can also see the short stretch of distinctly-not-Fire-Nation beach behind him.
“Probably not? There’s no leeches,”
Zuko frowns at him. Sokka sticks his tongue out.
“One day I’m going to get you drunk enough to tell me that story and I’m going to laugh when it turns out you were held hostage by pickens.” He lifts up a hand and a short tongue of flame shoots out of the tip of his finger. “This isn’t the spirit world.”
“Cool.”
“I don’t think it’s the regular world, either.”
Sokka pushes himself upright, looking around. It looks pretty regular to him. “You sure?”
“Sun feels different.”
“Riiiiiight.”
“And I vaguely remember this big yellow thing going on and on about the world and people coexisting even though they poked each other a lot? I think it wanted me to poke everyone?”
“Are you sure you didn’t hit your head? That’s some Aang-level nonsense.”
Zuko shrugs and reaches out to prod Sokka in the side. Right in the spot that he knows is ticklish, the asshole.
“Hmmm, not sure. That was pretty satisfying...”
“Excuse me?”
Sokka jolts in place. Zuko, the gymnastic show-off that he is, does some sort of impossible-looking maneuver that lets him flip right up on his feet, body settling into what Sokka’s come to recognize as ‘guard’ stance.
Their interruptor is a strangely-dressed man in an even stranger blue-and-white hat.
Sokka has a bad feeling that whatever happens next is going to be either exceedingly dangerous or upsettingly ridiculous.
So, it’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to realize that Ao3 has a statistics breakdown. I honestly would not have called four as being in my top-five-hits.
I have a lot of pet peeves but I think the biggest one is when people say things like “oh it’s such a small town, only 35,000 people” like bitch my town has 200 people, you need to pick a new adjective
According to Wikipedia, a small town is 1,000-20,000 people. So although you are correct in stating that 35,000 people is not a small town (it is a large town), you are incorrect in thinking that you live in a town. You live in a village. You are a villager.
Here are the hierarchical classifications from Wikipedia
Ecumenopolis - a theoretical construction in which the entire area of Earth that is taken up by human settlements, or at least, that those are linked so that to create urban areas so big that they can shape an urban continuum through thousands of kilometers which cannot be considered as a megalopolis. As of the year 2009, the United Nations estimated that for the first time more than 50% of the world’s populations lived in cities, so if these were linked, the total population of this area would be about 3,400,000,000 people as of 2010.
Megalopolis - a group of conurbations, consisting of more than ten million people each.
Conurbation - a group of large cities and their suburbs, consisting of three to ten million people.
Metropolis – a large city and its suburbs consisting of multiple cities and towns. The population is usually one to three million.
Large city – a city with a large population and many services. The population is <1 million people but over 300,000 people.
City – a city would have abundant services, but not as many as a large city. The population of a city is between 100,000 and 300,000 people.[citation needed]
Large town – a large town has a population of 20,000 to 100,000.
Town – a town has a population of 1,000 to 20,000.
Village – a village is a human settlement or community that is larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town. A village generally does not have many services, most likely a church or only a small shop or post office. The population of a village varies; the average population can range from hundreds to thousands.
Hamlet – a hamlet has a tiny population (<100) and very few (if any) services, with only a few buildings.
Isolated dwelling – an isolated dwelling would only have 1 or 2 buildings or families. It would have negligible services, if any.
@osha-official, speaking of things that aren’t safe for work, some friends and I were wondering if there are OSHA standards specifically for the more NSFW professions out there. How does OSHA protect those who work in porn/other legal kinds of sex work?
after seeing yet another huge post where young people rail against AO3 and older people have to explain that censorship is bad actually, I gotta say that as someone who reads a fuck ton of books a year, these younger people could really benefit from doing the same for a little perspective. fucked up content is not just a fanfic thing, and with books, you don't get any warnings! you just turn the page and gaze upon the most fucked up scene of your life! these people do not know how good they've got it tbh just filter tags my lieges
Okay, I already reblogged this but now that I have read the comments I have to add.
The things people are complaining about in fanfiction all exists in more traditionally distributed storytelling. Some very popular and successful stories contain these things. Don’t believe me, here are some examples:
Incest: The Flowers in the Attic (both the book series and the films), Game of Thrones, The Blue Lagoon.
Rape: Well, the enitre rape-revenge horror subgenre exists but beyond that we again have Game of Thrones, A Handmaid’s Tale, Vikings and I can go on. There are actually a lot of great articles out there about how prevalent rape tropes are in fiction.
Underage sex- Every teen drama on television (yes, CW I am looking at you). A lot of period piece type stories (again looking at Game of Thrones) include what would be considered underage sex by modern standards. A lot of those Coming of Age type movies/books include underage sex.
*Also, and I feel this is important to include is that at least in the US, underage in many states is a kind of complicated thing. In many states there are laws that sets different rules regarding age of consent based on the age difference between the two parties. For example, if a sixteen year old has sex with their eighteen year old partner, in a lot of states that is fine but if that sixteen year old had sex with a twenty four year old that is statutory rape. So when people complain about the inappropriateness of a story involving two 16 year old's having consensual sex, they are complaining about something that isn’t even illegal in most states.
Significantly underage sex- It has been a real long time since I read it but pretty sure Flowers in the Attic would fall in this category. Blue lagoon might as well. A few Anne Rice novels definitely do. More tame, but movies like Eighth Grade also touch on this.
Pedophilia/Predatory Sexual behavior- Anne Rice, I’m looking at you cause this was all over her work. Lolita is a pretty easy one to look at. No sex is explicitly described but I got some real questions about what was going on in Man without a Face. There was some classic grooming behavior going on in that book.
Yes, some of these things are really uncomfortable to read about and you as a reader may want to avoid them, which really is the beauty of things being tagged.
The thing that people who complain about Ao3 and the content there don’t seem to get is that just because someone writes about something, that doesn’t mean they endorse that thing, believe it is right or okay, are advocating that you or anyone should go out and do it, or engage in it themselves. It is FICTION and exploring the darker side of humanity and uncomfortable topics is sometimes a part of that.
Just because Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein that doesn’t mean she was grave robbing or telling people to stitch corpses together.
Just because Jeff Lindsey wrote the Dexter series that doesn’t mean he is out there killing people or advocating for vigilant justice.
Vladimir Nabokov wasn’t suggesting middle-aged men should abduct and rape 12 year old girls when he wrote Lolita.
Wealthy publishing companies aren’t being expect to eliminate this kind of content from their catalog or even warn people when a novel includes such content. Films and tv shows continue to be made containing this kind of content. Why is Ao3 being expected to censor content to an extent no one else is?
I would add to this that AO3, unlike any bookseller I’ve ever been to (and any of the online ones I’ve used) has a tagging system that is useful and actually works. They’ve even got a specific ‘tag exclusion’ feature, which I wish more places implemented in a way that didn’t require you to know and remember search-jargon. I feel safer picking something out of the archive to read because I can be reasonably sure at the outset that I’m not going to run into things that trigger me (although I realize that it runs on the honor system and there are doubtless works out there that intentionally omit tags just to gain hits).
Also, remember that, problematic as things on the archive might be; the people who stand to gain the most benefit from it’s closure aren’t the victims of abuses who could be triggered. It’s going to be the aforementioned publishers and IP owners who want to force you to pay them. I have my own reasons to dislike and distrust these people (as does anyone who has ever been involved in community theater or other performing arts) so I’m definitely biased already; but I’d like to think I’m rational enough to have cause for that bias. Before everything else, these entities are companies that exist to make money. Any moral high ground they claim will come with a monetary incentive. There are better ways to combat abuse and other similar practices in society. Not talking about it just means we don’t know what we’re seeing when it happens in front of us.
#Uncle: *THROWS HIS SHIRT TO THE GROUND IT'S GO TIME*
@muffinlance
#also Uncle: *Realizes that Agni Kai are only for firebenders* #*and that of the members of the royal family on this boat he is not the one with any weapons training* #Panuk and Toklo: *Organize a totally-not-biased-or-shenanigan-inducing contest to determine who is the best Parental/Avuncular Unit*
