feralsrock
faustandfurious

Basic rules for analysing fiction, an incomprehensive list jotted down in a hurry:

  1. The protagonist isn’t always right
  2. The protagonist isn’t always good
  3. The protagonist isn’t always written to be relatable or likeable
  4. The narrator isn’t always right
  5. The narrator isn’t always good
  6. The narrator isn’t always telling the truth
  7. The narrator isn’t always the author
  8. The protagonist’s moral compass, the narrator’s moral compass and the author’s moral compass are three entirely different things that only occasionally overlap
  9. Pay attention to what characters do and not just what they say
  10. Pay special attention when what the characters do is at odds with what they say
  11. A lot of the time the curtains are blue for a reason. If they aren’t, you should read better books
silvergryphon

One more:

12. The antagonist isn’t always telling the truth

animatedamerican

So many times I have seen people apparently just … forget that it’s possible for fictional characters to be (a) mistaken or (b) lying, and say things like “we know this to be true because [character] said so here” (or, worse, “this fact is canon because [character] said it”).

The antagonist isn’t always telling the truth, the protagonist isn’t always telling the truth, the secondary and minor characters aren’t always telling the truth, the narrator may be telling the truth but if the narrator is also a character in the story then don’t count on it.

olderthannetfic
Anonymous asked:

Please, please report people who put their ko-fi or Patreon on their AO3 without mercy. Just click the link at the bottom of the page that says Policy Questions and Abuse Reports and say the user is engaging in monetisation. Say where you saw their ko-fi link or mention (author’s note, whatever) and copy the info on their user profile, too, in order to make it easier for the volunteers.

olderthannetfic answered:

–

REPORT THEM ALL

olderthannetfic

If you're concerned, there's nothing punitive about this, it's just enforcement of the TOS they agreed to when they signed up. And there's no real risk of the fic being removed, either. AO3 will contact the author and nicely ask them to remove the link, and that's it.

Yeah, that too.

Literally the only downside is making too much work for the Abuse team. (Cry me a river, guys. In my day, we had like 2 active people, and even at the much smaller size, that was a problem.)

If you want, you can let authors know it’s not allowed and then report their asses if they’re rude about it. Or you can just report them in the first place.

But this bullshit should be stamped out.

dfnkt

Wait can someone explain what I'm missing here because it sounds like a bunch of whiny babies being upset that people are monetizing their own work. I get its a site policy but 1. Why are you being a cop you losers and 2. Who cares? Why is it a rule?

If I'm missing something here I'm genuinely curious. Who is it hurting to drop a ko-fi on your page? Or do y'all just love being cops?

olderthannetfic

I did not donate seven years of free labor to build AO3 so that some other dipshit could monetize my work.

And yes, it is monetizing AO3 itself because the whole reason people want to put kofi links there is that it’s easy to find fics on AO3. AO3 also lacks constant competition from other ads.

AO3 is as awesome as it is because we built it to not be monetized.

People who don’t get that are shitting on the people who made and still make AO3 possible with their work and their donations.

--

Go post your kofi links on a corporate site like tumblr/twitter/etc., not one built by your fellow fans. Disobeying the AO3 rules is just rude.

--

Look, when you do whatever on a big social media site, you're fucking with corporate overlords.

When you're doing stupid shit on AO3, you're coming to a dinner party I planned and hosted and then pissing into the flower arrangement in the middle of the table.

The only whiny babies here are the ones demanding other fans provide them with a storefront for free.

lierdumoa

You don't sell your vegetables at a charitable food bank. You rent a booth at the farmer's market.

You don't set up your book kiosk in the lobby of a public library. You go to a flea market, or somewhere else that allows you to set up a book kiosk.

AO3 is fandom's food bank. It is fandom's public library. It is not your storefront. If you want to sell your work, don't do it on a nonprofit website volunteers built for the *explicit* purpose of creating an anti-capitalist fandom oasis.

finnglas

There’s also the VERY REAL problem that the main defense of transformative work -- aka fanfiction -- to keep us from getting our asses sued into the stratosphere by Disney, Marvel, etc. is that we don’t profit from it. If you are writing someone else’s IP for money without their permission, they CAN sue you, and if it’s somebody as big as Fox, Disney, etc., they WILL sue you. The main way I can tell fandom has done a good job of making safe spaces for ourselves is that these young’uns coming up don’t remember getting Cease & Desist letters from very scary lawyers.

So that’s why you report people putting kofi links on AO3 - because by doing so, they’re painting a giant fucking target on fandom’s back.

princessfelicie

I'm sorry but when fanart gets to be rightly monetized by artists of all kinds and fan writing is the only form of fan creative endeavor that gets this weird ass "noooo don't monetize this you're gonna make *me personally* receive a lawyer threat" double standard, I don't care that Ao3 is "your baby", I still think it's a shitty rule to enforce and y'all are being fandom cops. I want my Ao3 account to stay up so I'm playing by the rules, but I still v much think that one in particular needs stricken off.

I understand that the legal threats used to be very real but when's the last time someone actually got sued for writing fanfic? because my google-fu couldn't find anything that wasn't at least ten years old by now.

olderthannetfic

1. Fan artists get their for-pay stuff taken down all the time.

2. You have missed the entire point about monetizing other people’s work.

Monetize your fic on Patreon (where it’s banned but you’ll probably get away with it), not on a site built by your fellow fans’ unpaid labor they gave with the expectation of it not being monetized.

It is disgusting to expect other fans to build you a free storefront, which is what “boo hoo, you’re cops” is saying.

If you sold on Etsy, you’d expect to pay Etsy a share of your proceeds. Ditto Patreon. Ditto any storefront. Those have paid staff building the site. They’re there to be stores.

AO3 does not have that automatic mechanic, and even if you personally chose to donate a portion of what you earned, adding commerce changes the site culture, which is precisely why it’s banned.

It’s much less about lawsuits and much more about ruining your community while taking advantage of your neighbors.

Anyone who thinks that’s cool is an awful community member.

the-blind-geisha
magnusbae

To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:

A post in 2023:

image

A post in 2014:

image

A zoom out of the same post:

image

This is what a community looks like.

See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn't need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.

It's not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it's the type of interaction people have. They're content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.

Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.

If you want more of something, reblog it.

magnusbae

Something I see mentioned often is "I don't have many followers, my reblog won't matter" which is untrue.

First of all, reblogging, commenting and interacting is how you start gathering your own micro community, second of all— you literally do not know how far a single reblog from you could go in the long run.

For instance, let's say you only have one person reblog from you, and that person only have one person who reblogged from them also, and so on, and somewhere ten reblogs down the line a very large blog reblogs it and boom, the post is getting more and more exposure!

You see, it does not matter if you don't have a large following so long as you cultivate a micro community with the people you do enjoy interacting daily with.

As you can see in the second picture I added, most of the reblogs were between very small groups of people, and occasionally it'll lapse into a large blog that would create a bigger reblog pool. BUT STILL. Saying that you don't have many followers and so it doesn't matter if you don't reblog is UNTRUE.

Even if someone just randomly wanders into your blog one day, it's beneficial for both sides because A. Seeing you reblog content they like might be enough for them to follow you B. They would be exposed to new content creators they didn't know previously and might also follow / reblog from them!

So yes, do not underestimate what your reblogs and words mean, just because you're not 'big' or whatever. It is not how tumblr works!!

P.S IT IS NOT CRINGE TO REBLOG 10 YEARS OLD CONTENT ON TUMBLR. YOU SEE IT. YOU LIKE IT? REBLOG IT. DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU DIG IT FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL ITSELF. XOXO :'D <3

very trueimportantnot a guilt tripbut this is also how this website works as opposed to othersyou simply cannot complain about not having enough of a or b or c and then never reblog / interact with the content you love.if you love something you cannot just leave a like and silently wait for more to happenyou need to understand that fandom content is made for the fandom for the engagement for the entertainment and fun it makes.
raeseddon
depizan

I see posts go by periodically about how modern audiences are impatient or unwilling to trust the creator. And I agree that that's true. What the posts almost never mention, though, is that this didn't happen in a vacuum. Audiences have had their patience and trust beaten out of them by the popular media of the past few decades.

J J Abrams is famous for making stories that raise questions he never figures out how to answer. He's also the guy with some weird story about a present he never opened and how that's better than presents you open--failing to see that there's a difference between choosing not to open a present and being forbidden from opening one.

You've got lengthy media franchises where installments undo character development or satisfying resolutions from previous installments. Worse, there are media franchises with "trilogies" that are weird slap fights between the makers of each installment.

You've got wildly popular TV shows that end so poorly and unsatisfyingly that no one speaks of them again.

On top of that, a lot of the media actively punishes people for engaging thoughtfully with it. Creators panic and change their stories if the audience properly reacts to foreshadowing. Emotional parts of storytelling are trampled by jokes. Shocking the audience has become the go to, rather than providing a solid story.

Of course audiences have gotten cynical and untrusting! Of course they're unwilling to form their own expectations of what's coming! Of course they make the worst assumptions based on what's in front of them! The media they've been consuming has trained them well.

this is why older fandoms are my safe harbor
gallusrostromegalus
curseworm

i think that every child should have unrestricted access to thick blackberry brambles or some other delicious fruit that grows encased in a painful fortress. i think wading through thorns to reach the cluster of shining ripe berries you spied through a gap between the tangled vines teaches you something important. not sure what though

curseworm

i just know no fruit has ever tasted as sweet as the ones i ate while bleeding under the blistering summer sun

loveoaths
clockwayswrites

So I thought this was commonly known internet navigation (but apparently it might just be those of us who have been using the internet since the 90's who still know it). Or so it seems based on... a grumpy comment I got.

When you see an arrow like this:

image

It means you click it to expand out a hidden section.

image

It's an accordion section/menu! It's useful in web design to hide information that may be overwhelming under specific headers so people can only see what they need.

Here I'm using it for people who need the content warnings to be able to check, but for those who don't need them and don't want to be spoiled to just move right past without accidentally reading anything.

It's still the user's responsibility to click the arrow and read things as they need! But it is all warned. (And, yes, the all encompassing issues are already a tag on the fic, I'm just providing additonal warnings per chapter.)

clockwayswrites

Ah, sorry yes! For those who want the html, it's the details and summary tags!

<details>: The Details disclosure element - HTML: HyperText Markup Language | MDN
The <details> HTML element creates a disclosure widget in which information is visible only when the widget is toggled into an "open" state.
developer.mozilla.org
cool stuffao3code
damn-bi-queen
secondbeatsongs

somehow instead of saying "as a treat", I've started using the phrase "for morale", as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.

and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.

I'm not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me

black-crested-jaybird

"Self-care will continue until morale improves" is a great tag, @callmebliss !