titsay
AnasAbdin
Cosmic Funnies
Mike Driver
Sweet Seals For You, Always
d e v o n
★
roma★
izzy's playlists!
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
i don't do bad sauce passes
NASA
almost home
art blog(derogatory)
we're not kids anymore.
todays bird
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Kiana Khansmith
@theartofmadeline
$LAYYYTER
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Poland
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from France
seen from Brazil
seen from Georgia
seen from Ecuador
seen from France
seen from Chile
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Türkiye
@winnyverse
This artist doesn't realize he drew a scene from one of my first TMNT fanfic loves, @dorkinhighheels "2007 Raphael X OC:Amber" series.
Stumbled on it looking for Nightwatcher gifs for another post.
Good shit, good shit... I love @dorkinhighheels fanfiction as well. And this art was gorgeous. Tons of the art commissioned for that story was gorgeous, come to think.
ENTER THE FRAE! ~ Sept 27 & Oct 24th @ 2pm EST
Anybody out there who loves TMNT Fanfiction? HOLY HECK, DO I EVER!
So, got any big plans for tomorrow afternoon? PROBABLY STUCK AT HOME DOING SQUAT, CUZ PANDEMIC’S STILL A THING..
Then consider yourself invited to spend your Sunday afternoon with us nerds who will be hosting another TMNT FRAE!
_____________________________
What’s a FRAE?
FRAE stands for Fanfic Read Aloud Event! TMNT FRAE now takes place on the tmntFAM Discord server. Participants use voice chat between readings or when it’s their turn to perform. During performances everyone else mutes themselves and uses text chat.
When’s the FRAE?
FRAE is typically held on the last weekend of the month, alternating between Saturday and Sunday. Readings begin at 2:00pm EST. There is no requirement to arrive on time, and the audience may come and go as they please. Please try to arrive early if you may need staff to assist you with any sound checks or any technical support. The event will wrap up once only a few remain or if we run out of participants who are willing to read. This usually happens somewhere between 7:00-10:00pm.
Where’s the FRAE?
Click the invite to join the tmntFAM Discord server! You can use Windows PC, Mac, Mobile, or even just a web browser. https://discord.gg/rFuJhP3
What the heck is DISCORD?
If you ask me, it’s the best method out there right now for chatting and hanging out with your online friends or getting to know other people online who like the things you like! Here’s the best YouTube tutorial I could find that explained it in a clear and professional manner: https://discord.gg/rFuJhP3
Can’t make it Sunday, actually?
TOO BAD, FRIEND… BUT THERE’S ALWAYS NEXT TIME! We’ll be hosting another one the following month, on Saturday, October 24th at 2:00pm EST. That FRAE will have a “SPOOKY” theme, so get your ghost stories and horror themed TMNT material ready and we’ll try to scare the pants off each other!
Quick ink sketch card to celebrate the upcoming new #TMNT title Ronin. I’m really excited to read it, especially since both Eastman and Laird are involved! . . . #tmntart #tmnt #tmntronin #artistsketchcards #brushpen #indiaink #copicpens #teenagemutantninjaturtles #dailysketch https://www.instagram.com/p/CCTsPiRJ2bP/?igshid=lod4ukj4wq6a
Soooo much excite omfg... Your lone Ronin pic looks wonderful. Optimistic, even! Like... ok, sure. He is still the last surviving Hamato, all alone and making do in this sprawling urban dystopia wasteland. But somehow this guy is still managing to have a better than average day.
My kid and I were playing around with some Play-Doh... not even name brand, just some generic off-brand crap we found at the dollar store. Somehow, this unexpectedly adorable baby turtle was the result.
Wish I had used sculpey or something that could have been cured so I could hang onto him permanently! He's already dried out and crumbled to pieces after less than a day, so these photos I took will have to suffice.
Rise’s Changes Add to the Characters
So I’ve finally cracked why I was so ok with the changes Rise of TMNT made to the TMNT formula. It’s because in changing these what one might call essential things the Rise crew have in a sense forced themselves to expand on the characters in ways other iterations never really had to. I’ll list some things I’ve heard and how it helps to expand each of our heroes.
“Everyone is just a goofball like Mikey”
While I dont necessarily agree with this sentiment I will say that this is the most laid back we’ve seen the turtles since maybe the 90s? But then one has to ask the question if you take away fun party dude who is he? He’s the heart.
Mikey has always been more empathetic than his brothers but in Rise we really get to see him show this off. Because now he can’t just win people over with a joke and pizza slice his brothers wouldnt offer, cause now they would, we see Mikey work harder to connect with people. He wears his heart on his sleeve and gets swept up in his own emotions and not always for the best. But when he’s right it feels all the more satisfying.
“TMNT is way more Sci-Fi whats with the magic?”
Moving away from Sci-Fi is kinda two fold one it gives a new setting to work with and two it helps to show Donnie’s strength and insecurities.
What does the tech guy do in a world of magic? Donnie was always used more for his tech abilities than ninja skills, so many problems could be solved with Donnie hacking or building a thing, but in Rise this is not always the case. Not only that but now his brothers mystic weapons to solve some of these problems, they dont need Donnie to make weapons. And it weighs on him. Donnie in Rise is constantly seeking validation but is too proud so he acts like he doesnt care and this leads him into very avoidable situations. All Donatello’s have had a pride and smugness to them but this one actually gets into trouble because of it.
“Why is Raph the leader?! Thats Leo’s position!”
Now this is the big one and its kind amazing how this one little change effects the characters so much because this structure. Leo and Raphs rivalry all hinges on this dynamic, Raph’s need to prove himself because his arrogance causes him to act tougher and more distant than he is. So what happens when he has the leader position from start? Raph get to be honest.
Raph was always a secret softie but now because he doesn’t feel the need to have a front Raph expresses his feelings open and honestly giving him so much more character than past versions. When his impulsive actions fail he has no scape goat, he admits fault and tries again. All over we get a more earnest and open Raphael who gets to be a great way to show kids you can be tuff and cool and still show your emotions and cry.
So then we gotta ask another question “Who is Leo when he’s not the leader?” So much of Leo’s character is linked to being the leader that when you describe him its very hard to separate his position from his character. You gotta ask is Leo naturally responsible, good with strategies and level headed, or is it because he’s leader and he has to be? Rise gives us a Leo who’s witty, forward thinking and just a little devious, but has just enough of older Leo in him to see who he could have been.
Leo is consistently shown to be the one to see through others deceptions (unless he wants to be deceived like with Jupiter Jm), has a great ability to think 3 steps ahead, and use others perceptions of him to his advantage. This is a Leo without responsibilities and he uses that to his advantage. This Leo is fine deferring to Ralph because HIS plan didnt fail and if he was offered the position he’d try to turn it down, cause what if he’s not better? what if he’s worse? These are likely the thoughts Rise’s Leo is plagued with. Thoughts other Leonardo’s rarely had to have. The series is constantly giving us moments that show he could be a better leader, it is showing us WHY Leo is a leader even if he’s not ready to see it. But for now he gets to make jokes, have fun, and dunk on his brothers.
All of these changes were made to the TMNT formula in Rise for a reason. To show us aspects of these brothers that were always there but never got their time to shine before.
Great analysis IMO! You put a lot of thought into this and I agree with most of what you had to say.
Curiosity question: I’m wondering why people choose to completely remove their fanfics. On AO3 a writer has the option to ‘orphan’ a story rather than to completely take it down. I still see many really great stories removed entirely and I’m wondering why.
It is of course totally up to the writer do whatever the heck they want with their creations. I’m sad when it happens though, and trying to comprehend the reasoning.
If you’ve deleted a past account and removed your stories, I’d love to know why. If you have thought about going that route in the future, I’d love to hear the reasoning behind that decision. I’m not going to argue, reprimand, or put anyone down for their thoughts on the subject. I really am just curious.
Summer Blow Out Sale
A bit of brief and hilarious domestic bliss in the form of a TMNT fanfic co-authored by me and @bushido-bunny over on AO3
No prior knowledge of Epic Saga required. You should still be able to relate to ES Don at his most flamboyantly gayest, or ES Raph at his SO FUCKING DONE OMG grumpiest... both in their mid twenties and arguing like an old married couple over the most ridiculous bullshit.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/25598263
No sex, but it does contain references to a tcest relationship.... otherwise completely harmless and silly af. ENJOY!
Rant mode activate!
Anyone else find it super frustrating how hard it is to read content in chronological order in this fucking BLOG based era we live in? Remember back when people made websites for their story-driven fanworks (writing and webcomics) and it was always clear how to find chapter one and move on to chapter two? I'm so tired of dashboards. I'm so tired of search functions that are broken intentionally. I'm tired of dozens of available platforms perfectly suited to artists but hardly any that function well for storytellers.
FUCK Tumblr and FUCK the new broken deviantart and FUCK instagram and especially FUCK Twitter and Snapchat and Tiktok and all these other platforms catering to this new obsession everyone seems to have for bite-sized, soulless meme happy junkfood content when my brain and imagination is almost always craving an actual goddamn meal.
we better get Usagi in rottmnt
I started watching TMNT 2003 and I made this thing to show my love for it
Yesssss.
Chibi Donnie, 3D printed and hand painted by Winny
Believe it or not, the hardest step in making this figurine was getting him properly sanded! This tiny Donatello was gifted to my friend Hummerhouse and lives with her now.
every time I see more of the ‘ao3 is evil’ crap circulating I think, ‘well, tumblr is evil too and I don’t see you stop using it’
You know, the more I think about this, the more I think the real complaint isn’t that AO3 hosts “evil” content, it’s that it doesn’t allow harassment/dogpiling of “evil” creators as easily as Tumblr. Abuse won’t remove or even re-tag a work except in a handful of very specific cases, but they will suspend or ban users for harassment, including filing repeated unfounded Abuse reports. Authors also have at least some ability to screen/block comments on works, and there’s no direct messaging system outside of commenting on works through which to pursue harassment. You can follow a creator but you can’t block them (much less encourage others to do the same). Tumblr, by contrast, generally ignores any abuse report that doesn’t involve the DMCA, and aggressive anons can and have driven bloggers off the site entirely. The fact that the same tactics are used by social justice bloggers and neo-Nazis (for instance) doesn’t matter – they’re the affordances of the site, by accident or design, and an entire fannish generation have gotten very used to performing their fannish (and moral) identity in this fashion. (I thinks it’s relevant that AO3 was designed by fandom’s LJ generation and in some respect mirrors the affordances of LJ circa 2010. Tumblr is a very different site and that, moreso than age differences, seems to be at the root of this – though of course age intersect with site experience in a non-trivial way.)
ding ding ding ding.
Ao3 requires you to police your own consumption of content. Ao3 won’t let you destroy someone’s online presence simply because you don’t like it. Ao3 won’t let you impose your own morality on other without cause. If you have issues with this, and the fact that Ao3 requires you to have responsibility and agency, then you seriously need to sit down and have a damned good long hard look at yourself.
The question I usually fail to see being answered when people bitch about the content on AO3 is - so who gets to decide?
You? Me? A committee of my friends? Of yours? Of those who have the most kudos? Of those who have no interest in fandom, but want to protect other people from dangerous content, whatever it may be? Who gets that power, and how long will they have it?
Who are you comfortable with giving the power of regulating all the content? What happens in grey areas? What happens when something you like isn’t liked by the Decider? Is there an appeal? Who gets to make the arguments for and against something?
The world is complex and there are no easy answers.
The impossibility of creating a censorship board that curates based on content is a great reason why those things don’t exist, and shouldn’t.
Certain people are screaming that AO3 is bad because it’s not a “safe space.” The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space - for writers. And it does a pretty good job of that. It was designed to be a place where writers are safe from arbitrary content rule changes, random and unwarned deletions, and abuse-report abuse (which is common on ff.net). The Four Big Warnings + CNTW system is beautiful in its fairness and simplicity.
Antis can’t take control of it. And because control-freakdom is at the heart of their “movement,” this drives them into frenzies. Good. It motivated me to dig a little deeper into my pocket to donate on the last drive. For all the pleasure AO3 has given me over the years, that’s money well spent.
The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space - for writers.
Preach it loud and hard!
I’m a member of the LJ generation, and when I first came to Tumblr (grudgingly and out of desperation, I might add, since it tragically seems to be the only place to really connect with other fandom peeps) I was horrified at how people here had established this sort of fucked up bully culture, where nobody is responsible for monitoring their own consumption, and rather they expect everyone else to custom tailor content to the whims and desires of the Shrieking Banshee Masses. And woe be to the person who doesn’t bend and break! “I’m going to bully you while accusing you and your Big Mean Poopie Content of being the actual bully, so I can hopefully distract you and others from realizing I’m being a royal intrusive asshat who failed Astronomy 101 b/c I clearly believe the world revolves around me.”
The irony here is that this in itself is an abuse tactic - victim blaming with a side of gaslighting. Pot, meet kettle.
And it’s the exact same mentality that drives right-wing lunatics to kick up a fuss about the existence of icky cootie gay people in media because we need to “protect family values”, or who take to screeching at Starbucks because their particular religious symbolism isn’t portrayed on the winter holiday cups and OMG WAR ON CHRISTMAS, STARBUCKS STOP OPPRESSING ME BY NOT CATERING TO MY PERSONAL TASTE.
The mentality is one and the same - “Cater to ME ME ME or FACE MY DIVINE WRATH even if it means taking away other people’s freedom!” while hiding behind a flimsy-ass shield of faux righteous anger.
And when these bozos find an environment or situation where they’re unable or not allowed to bully people into silence and submission, they stomp their feet and pitch a tantrum and claim that they’re the ones being oppressed. Identical shit, different pile, and it’s the exact same infantile, schoolyard rubbish no matter which side it’s coming from.
This was a really interesting read. The last poster in particular but all of it.
Okay, so I find the history behind this discussion really interesting, because there are two things that stand out to me. One is the thought AO3′s culture is equivalent to LJ circa 2010. This is almost true, except you actually have to go back further. Ao3 and Dreamwidth are both specifically trying to recreate the fan culture of Livejournal from 1999-2007, and I can say that with some authority because A) I was there (olllld) and B) both were founded in 2008/09 as a direct response to the shit happening on LiveJournal and Fanlib. The other thing is the idea that anon-harassment culture started with Tumblr. Because, kiddos, did it ever not. Tumblr is very much Fanfiction.net circa 1998-forward. (That’s right, FF.N was basically always awful.) But how we got from there to here is actually really interesting And tangly. And long.
Up to the late 1990s, fan communities were often small and decentralized because there was a huge fear that fans would be targeted by content creators if they drew too much attention. Since several authors (Anne Rice, Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffery) actually DID issue cease&desists to fan creators, it’s kind of understandable where the fear came from. It’s also why you still see fanfic floating around with disclaimers, something young!tumblr loves to mock.
Harry Potter changed *everything*. Like, I really can’t emphasize how much. Fanfiction was always there, being shared on email lists or privately hosted or literally mailed cross country. But Harry Potter hit BIG in 1997. It had a massive crossover appeal that hadn’t been seen since probably the original Star Trek, and the baby Internet was all. over. it. If you weren’t there, imagine Twilight. But bigger. And J.K. Rowling stood out from other creators by condoning fanfiction in her very early interviews. Not to mention there was a lot of down time between books and, as you might know, the fans do not do well unpoliced.
This led to, I’m not kidding, an explosion of sites like FF.N. I don’t think a lot of younger users get how revolutionary AO3 is: not just because it created a safe space, but because of how much it’s done to centralize fanfiction on the internet. We used to get our fix through webrings and e-serves, so in the late 90s/early 00s we thought nothing of having dozens of scattered fanfic sites.
At the same time, the Digital Millennium Copywrite Act was coming down. The legality of fanworks was getting more and more complex. And no one knew how to handle these questions, because they had literally never come up before. When it was just authors going after individual fans, things usually went quick and brutal. Fans had neither the money nor the legal teams to stand up to creators, even if (as we were slowly beginning to realize) we had a strong case to create and share fanworks. So, if you got hit with a takedown notice, you took your fic down and laid low, hoping to avoid any further interest. But now the legal burden was shifting from individuals to well-funded corporations. Fanfic.net and LJ didn’t want to shut down their fan-contributors, who were creating a huge stream of free content and bringing in advertising revenue. At the same time, they didn’t want to get shut down by a lawsuit if Lucasfilm found Han/Chewie smut and decided to go after the real money. The next 10 years were basically all of us – authors, fan creators, website executives – stumbling through brand new legal territory and figuring it out by trial and error. FF.N erred on the side of caution by becoming more and more restrictive. They shut down the entire Anne McCaffrey and Anne Rice sections, and eventually banned “pornographic” fanfiction from the site in an attempt to cover their legal rears. (It backfired, unsurprisingly, because say what you will about fandom: we like our smut. Also, FF.N had other issues that we won’t get into here will discuss shortly.) A bunch of other sites folded or waned in popularity as fandom wars divided the fan population. Authors scattered to the winds, and a lot of them ended up on LJ. LJ started out very user friendly. We’re talking an open source code, an almost entirely volunteer staff. Even after it was sold to 6Apart in 2005, LJ was pretty permissive. A lot of that had to do with the aforementioned DMCA, which protected ISPs and hosting corporations. Like I mentioned above, a lot of the migration from FF.N to LJ (as a place for fanfiction SPECIFICALLY) came when FF.N started banning explicit fanworks. Why? Because FF.N targeted these fanworks based entirely on user reports. “Tell us if you find porn,” FF.N said, “And we’ll take care of it.” Backup real quick. LJ, in many ways, set the standard for online privacy in a way that was far ahead of its time. Friendslocked journals were the norm rather than the exception and many, many communities disallowed anonymous commenting. (I’m not saying LJ wasn’t toxic as fuck, by the way. It is 2017 and let’s all have a moment of acknowledgement for how terrible LJ culture actually could be.) But LJ, on the whole, was much, much better at self-policing than FF.N. On FF.N, all of your stuff was out in the open. It was just there. Anyone could read it, anyone could report it. And these two sites coexisted. All BNFs had a private journal and a public FF.N page. So if I hated someone and I wanted to harass them off the internet, on LJ, I’d have to make multiple sock puppets and concoct elaborate multi-journal ruses to do it on LJ (haha, who would do THAT?). What am I to do? Simple: Head off to FF.N and anonymously flame them there! FF.N became synonymous with anonymous hate long before the anti-smut censorship came down. But once those rules were in place, the system was rife for abuse by the Purity Police or grudgewankers. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay before it was cool to dm “kill urself” to someone on tumblr, it was happening on FF.N. All you, the early internet user, had to do was post a report link for your rival’s FF.N account on your LJ. Hate a pairing? A kink? Why not post a scathing rant, link included, to this captive audience of ALL YOUR FRIENDS. Yeah, this system had no room for abuse. So. FF.N opened the door and fandom came rushing through like the raging assholes we are. Certain Fandoms Alluded To Previously got so deeply divided that they split and formed their own fanfiction archives that occasionally rained hate on each other. Everyone else slowly withdrew to LJ, where locked communities offered some level of protection. Then, irony of ironies, fandom as a whole got targeted by the purity wankers. And of course, of course, it came back to Harry Potter. It’s 2007. Things have quieted down since 2001, when certain unnamed people’s fics were targeted for plagiarism and deleted from FF.N even though, just to be clear, they actually were plagiarized and, while there was an element of mob persecution, the actual fact remains that the work in question was legitimately in violation of FF.N’s TOS. Ahem. It’s 2007. And everyone’s fairly chill. Creators are far more comfortable with fanfiction and fan creators are confident in posting their work so long as they aren’t profiting directly from it. Hosting sites, meanwhile, are profiting from fanworks, but they’ve got the legal shield of the DMCA to hide behind, so they’re feeling A-OKAY. And then Warriors for Innocence appears. WfI existed before strikethrough, and they existed after, but they made their mark on fandom when they reported upwards of 500 journals, most of them fan journals and communities, to LJ. The theory runs as follows: 6A, the company who’d bought LJ 2 years prior, realizes that the DMCA didn’t protect them if the fan works in question are “indecent”. Compounding this, 6A is already trying to clean up the famdomier aspects of LJ. Either they’re looking for a sale, or sites like ONTD are bringing in massive amounts of hits. WfI brings 6A a perfect hit list, and 6A goes to work. So one morning we all wake up and find that hundreds of journals, including the pornish_pixies community and several BNF’s personal journals, have been deleted. Literally gone: a lot of the media stored on these communities has been purged forever. Hope you had backups. Also gone: large swaths of the Pretty Gothic Lolita community, Lolita book discussion groups, and rape survivor communities.
In a quest to rid LJ of “pedophilia,” 6A wiped out a large swath of ethically questionable fanfic, and woke a beast. Again: We like our porn. 6A took a step back and restored some of the deleted journals, but the damage had been done. AO3 was already being discussed as a response to Fanlib, a hosting site that wanted to charge for access to fanfiction. (Yes, if you’ve been following along, that was a terrible idea. But that’s a post for another day.) But as AO3 began to change and grow, creators specifically wrote provisions into the TOS that guaranteed a strikethrough-esque event could never happen on the site. A specific kink or pairing would never be considered a violation of the TOS. The onus was on the reader, not the author, to protect themselves with the information given. Basically, AO3 took the early fandom nugget “Don’t like, don’t read” and made it policy. When peole say AO3 grew out of Livejournal, they’re specifically referencing this. One event that proved ALL OF OUR LONGSEATED FEARS WERE TRUUUUUUUUUE. Rising from the ashes of LJ, you also had Dreamwidth. I’m actually kind of surprised DW wasn’t mentioned in the OP, since it grew out of the same ideology as AO3. Run by fans, for fans, because LJ (which at this point had been sold to SUP Media) had no idea what it was doing. Also like AO3, DW went to extreme lengths to make a safe fan culture inherent to the structure the site. Stay within the law, and DW and AO3 will back you up. It’s worth noting that Tumblr actually predates Strikethrough. But Tumblr, unlike DW and AO3, wasn’t designed for fans. It didn’t carry the legacy of Strikethrough with it the way AO3 and DW did. So I guess– I have no evidence, but I’m surmising – that’s how it fell into the role of Natural Successor to Fanfic.net and Livejournal. It’s kind of inevitable, actually, that since neither LJ nor Tumblr was made for fans, they ended up falling into the same black hole of fandom collision. Kinkshaming people off the internet for literally as long as there’s been an internet. And then, on the other hand, you’ve got DW and AO3, who’ve watched fandom rip itself apart AT LEAST 3 times and are determined not to let it happen again. DW and AO3: We haven’t cared about the filthy shit you’re into since 2008. That’s it, folks. Fandom mom wrote almost 2k words on early fandom and now she needs a nap.
AO3 was created to be a safe space - for writers
Kids read your fandom history research goddamit. Here are just a few, and these are not hard to find. We’re the internet generation - use a search field and read multi-source history checks, okay?
(almost all of these are linked from my personal reblogs, because i know i won’t change my username meaning the links will always work)
fandom history:
Yes, fic writers were harassed, sued, sent C&D letters - we published underground
Here is Some Fandom ‘Oral History’ for You Guys @copperbadge
The Places Fandom Dwells: A Cautionary Tale @mizstorge - so many must read links - our whole LJ-and-on online history is here
‘Intellislash’ [or ‘Your Fandom Culture of Origin Matters’] @copperbadge
History of Ancient Fanfiction (no really)
We started on Geocities and del.i.cio.us - then Yahoo came…
a brief history of the LJ strikethrough and subsequent fan migration @stardust-rain
Very First Star Trek Fic Published - 1974
What JKR and SMeyer did for fanfic
some good fandom knowledgebase specifics:
bangpaths - when you see slutty!Snape, for example
Squicks and Triggers - not the same thing (multi-thread)
Fandom-wank (what is it)
AO3 says descriptive/story-telling tags are a-okay
all the crap about policing fanficition for any reason:
Fandom and fac can only be a healthy outlet if it stops policing shit - be it taboos, dark sides, gender, orientation, kink, etc. (multi-thread - @televisiontelepath )
“Ship means something you want to see happen.” Bitch, no it don’t. @pyrebomb
I’m Done Explaining Why Fanfic is Okay @bookshop & others + links
I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn. @inkandcayenne
Foz on Hurt/Comfort fic
Why Do Fangirls Always Make Them Gay?
The Importance of Mary Sue unwinona
random fan history fun reads:
Fangirling after 30 (multi-thread)
Older fans run our Infrastructure (also, 90+ year old author who writes darkwing duck slashfic how awesome is that (multi-thread)
we built this kingdom, motherfuckers, with the trekkie zine housewives before us (multi-thread) older fans fun tories
STRAIGHT DUDES OF THE WORLD [in which @fozmeadows explains the best way to learn about female desire…is to read words written by actual females :D]
On Fanfic & Emotional Continuity (multi-thread)
It’s [never] Just Fanfic
Fanlore
Fan is a Tool Using Animal
my odds and ends cause i have actually been here a while
We made AO3 TO PROTECT WRITERS WHO WERE BEING SUED,AND HARASSED,AND ATTACKED.,you don’t wanna read something? check the tags and move on,that’s YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO YOURSELF,not our responsibility as the writers, as the fanartists,as the vidders,as the content creators of all kinds,ARTISTS MAKE ART,YOU DON’T LIKE THAT PARTICULAR ART? MOVE ALONG. THERE’S PLENTY MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM.,and for FUCK’S SAKE read the GOD DAMNED TAGS,we the writers TAG OUR SHIT TO HELP YOU KEEP YOURSELF SAFE.
So, I was reading this, and taking notes, and *boom* “Hey, that’s my article!” Thanks!
Why I will fight for AO3 and DW: “Rising from the ashes of LJ, you also had Dreamwidth. I’m actually kind of surprised DW wasn’t mentioned in the OP, since it grew out of the same ideology as AO3. Run by fans, for fans, because LJ (which at this point had been sold to SUP Media) had no idea what it was doing. Also like AO3, DW went to extreme lengths to make a safe fan culture inherent to the structure the site. Stay within the law, and DW and AO3 will back you up. It’s worth noting that Tumblr actually predates Strikethrough. But Tumblr, unlike DW and AO3, wasn’t designed for fans. It didn’t carry the legacy of Strikethrough with it the way AO3 and DW did. So I guess– I have no evidence, but I’m surmising – that’s how it fell into the role of Natural Successor to Fanfic.net and Livejournal. It’s kind of inevitable, actually, that since neither LJ nor Tumblr was made for fans, they ended up falling into the same black hole of fandom collision. Kinkshaming people off the internet for literally as long as there’s been an internet. And then, on the other hand, you’ve got DW and AO3, who’ve watched fandom rip itself apart AT LEAST 3 times and are determined not to let it happen again. DW and AO3: We haven’t cared about the filthy shit you’re into since 2008.” @rapacityinblue
All of this. So much. Don’t get me wrong, I love the aspect of tumblr that allows fans to be critical of source content and fan content alike. I think we should talk about the issues with things like incest ships and ships with large age gaps, and why white male villains often end up with massive fanbases while Black heroes end up with much smaller ones, or even with haters. And tons of other issues besides. I think the critical side of fandom is important and endlessly interesting. We should discuss and discourse and argue and meta the hell out of things.
But. The side of tumblr that bullies, doxxes, and harasses anyone who doesn’t fall in line with a person or group’s parameters of acceptable content is disgusting to me. And the calls for some kind of oversight or regulation beyond stuff that’s already illegal are concerning, because as others have said…no one calling for it seems to be able to articulate who decides this shit, and where lines are drawn. It’s one thing to talk in terms of what you personally will accept, condone, or do. It’s another thing all together to talk about setting overarching policies that large groups of people are held to.
(Under the cut because it’s long)
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“I think we should talk about the issues with things like incest ships and ships with large age gaps”
Okay, I… actually disagree with this. And I know you’re not trying to argue they should be banned on AO3 or anything and that wasn’t the point of your comment, but I really want to respond to this specifically.
Because the thing is, I do not know a single person who ships incest or abusive ships, or even minor/adult ships who doesn’t realize that in real life these things are harmful and abusive. (age gaps are… well that’s a whole other thing bc what do you even MEAN by large age gaps? Someone who’s 80 dating someone who’s 50 is not the same as someone’ who’s 19 dating someone who’s 25, but the age gap is bigger in the former. So that’s it’s own fucking thing and I don’t think it should automatically get lumped in with other obviously-abusive types of ships). Those people who take it into real life were doing that regardless of shipping or fandom, and it’s not about them shipping a “bad” ship it’s about them already being that kind of person.
Saying “we should talk about the issues with these ships” is essentially making a judgement call on the morality of a person’s shipping of fictional people and dynamics that I have never seen reflect a desire to see those things happen with real people. I have shipped, fictionally, a 19-20yo with a 35yo. In real life that would be so suspect and almost certainly unhealthy and likely abusive, but in fiction it’s fictional, it’s two characters who I think have an interesting dynamic. I have, yes, shipped incest ships. In real life they would almost certainly be abusive or at minimum deeply unhealthily codependent, and to be fair I often shipped them as deeply codependent, but like, I would never want these things to happen to real people? If they were real people I would be horrified.
But to me that’s like… no different than enjoying a film or a book or a fic or tv show that has copious amounts of violence and murder. Obviously irl I don’t support those things? But in fiction it can be interesting and even fun to explore. BECAUSE IT’S FICTION, because it’s not real and I am not limited to only enjoying media that I believe would be right and moral and acceptable in real life. I love watching horror movies. Scream is one of my favorites - but that doesn’t mean I approve of murder?
So like, if we notice actual young people coming in and supporting these kinds of things (ships or literally anything else that is fun in fiction but horrible outside of it) in real life, yeah maybe we should stop and say “hey you know that irl these things are NOT GOOD, right?” but that’s not an issue fandom has ever struggled with, because by the time they’re old enough to be in fandom spaces, teens know the difference between fiction and reality, and usually know the difference between right and wrong and what isn’t acceptable or right irl even if it’s done in their favorite movie.
So saying “We should talk about the issues with these ships” is essentially a straw man, because there is no large scale problem with these things being seen as unproblematic if they happened in real life, and that’s just feeding in to all the really gross purity culture bullshit that you find all over tumblr, that’s directly descended, ideologically, from the shit that caused strikethrough. That’s like saying to Hannibal fandom that “we should talk about the issues with murder and cannibalism” as if the Hannibal fandom doesn’t know that these are things that aren’t to be celebrated or done in real life. As if there’s people in the fandom who go “but we like Hannibal and he murders and cannibalizes, so it must be okay!”
We don’t actually have to talk about those kinds of ships. Because those ships are fictional and the shippers know it, and I think it’s really misguided to bring that kind of sentiment into this discussion.
... I do not believe you, Grammarly.
A helpful chart.
(Because, you know. Some of us are visual learners.)
Japanese abumi (stirrups), inscribed by Sanemitsu (probably 1700s).
These stirrups are completely covered with finely-inlaid silver decoration. Their designs include Chinese lions, peonies, and a waterfall flowing into a brook. The form of these stirrups is traditionally known as hato mune (pigeon breast), and they are the only known pair of stirrups to use a technique of raised silver dots to highlight and accentuate the decoration. They were made in Kashu (modern-day Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture), probably under the patronage of the Maeda clan. This was a Japanese samurai clan who ruled most of the Hokuriku region of central Honshū, and were one of the most powerful Japanese families at the time.
Real Girls of TMNT
What you are seeing is NOT cosplay! This gallery is a labor of love from me to you, dear turtle-fans! I spent WAY too many hours scouring the internet for the perfect ladies and then perfected each of them in Photoshop.
(…then several years later the evil Tumblr bots decided this must be porn and nuked the whole post without telling me. It is NOT porn, no exposed nipples or dingle-dongs whatsoever… so I am putting it BACK WHERE IT BELONGS. Grr.)
**TIME FOR A CHALLENGE!**
ARE YOU ABLE TO GUESS THE CORRECT IDENTITY OF THESE ICONIC TMNT LADIES?
CAN YOU ASSIGN THE RIGHT TMNT UNIVERSE TO EACH? WHICH VERSION DO YOU THINK THEY MOST CLOSELY RESEMBLE?
(HINT: None of the ladies are from TMNT movies which already feature ‘real girl’ live actors playing the female parts… seemed redundant!)
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Are you a grandmaster of TMNT canon? Try not to peek at the tags when you slam that reply button to show us your answers!
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So, how did you do?
(Check the tags below to see how many you got right!)
