Fuckboy Deadpool stans: *identify with Deadpool as some sort of outlet of their insecure masculinity/heterosexuality and rebellion against “PC” culture*
Ryan Reynolds: *reaffirms Deadpool as pansexual literally every chance he gets, wants Deadpool to have a boyfriend in the film franchise, makes Deadpool act campy and effeminate as fuck in the movies, does a charity campaign for cancer where Deadpool dresses in pink and sits next to a pillow that literally says “feminist” on it, goes out of his way to hire a woman of color to portray the female lead in Deadpool 2, literally hires Celine Dion to write a Titanic-esque power ballad for the Deadpool 2 soundtrack and makes a music video where Deadpool prances around in high heels feeling his fantasy like the gayest gay that ever gayed*
it’s not. that it sucks. i’ve just. seen it 48 times
Staff: huh? You want this post? Haven’t seen it yet? Here it is again. Don’t remember it? Here it is again! Still not sure you remember? Have it one more time
Me: please sto-
Staff: so you hate this post now? It’s awful, and horrible? Worst post you’ve ever seen, fuckface? Huh? Fucker? Is that it?
Here’s to the fanfic writers who can only write sporadically.
Here’s the writers who can’t output enough to keep up with the most popular writers.
Here’s to the writers writing even though they get no feedback.
Here’s to the writers who somehow manage to scrape together a little inspiration and a lot of hard work to write that story they know nearly no one will read.
Here’s to the creators who keep going even when it’ feels like screaming into an empty void.
You’re inspiration, and I don’t know how you do it.
People can come out or realize their identity at ANY TIME in life. I came out when I was 13, but I know people who didn’t come out until they were in their 50s or 60s. It’s completely individual.
This always struck me as a gatekeeping measure. I know I’m biased because the first place I heard that I’d been “too old” to discover something as inherent as my own sexuality was from some biphobic lesbians in my college’s GSA (I didn’t realize they were biphobic at the time, I just thought I was a Fail Gay :P). But I’ve seen it repeated elsewhere.
I don’t have any real evidence for this other than my own experience, but it always seemed to me like bi people might take a bit longer to discover that about themselves. A lot of stories I hear from gay and lesbian people involve not being attracted to the Correct type of person when they were growing up, which starts a search of self discovery. For bisexual people (and maybe especially women, who are already taught to appreciate female beauty), they don’t experience that lack of attraction, so they might not go actively searching for something else. It can take a while. That, at least, was my experience.
There is NO SUCH THING as too old for self discovery.
And other fanworks, for that matter, but let’s talk about fic: When AO3 was proposed, it was in response to Strikethrough and other similar events. Livejournal deleted a lot of accounts without bothering to distinguish between actual pedophiles, survivor support groups, and 100% consensual fantasy fandom activities being done by adults with other adults (most of which involved RP accounts for 16-year-old Harry Potter characters anyway).
I helped write the first AO3 Terms of Service and set up the Abuse committee. AO3 was always intended to be welcoming to all kinds of fic, no matter how dirty, sick, socially unacceptable, bizarre, or out of fashion. During those initial TOS talks, we specifically discussed grotesque RPF snuff porn as the test case for something all of us on the committee found distasteful but would nonetheless defend because, by defending it, we created a space where all of our own favorite things were protected too.
Policing fic content is a slippery slope. Even if you only police the “worst” stuff, you create an environment where the more sensitive authors and no few of the ones “shipping to cope” are no longer comfortable posting at all. Attacking people for posting fic about rape/abuse/etc. is demanding that all survivors disclose. No amount of whining and backtracking will change this fact. It is a disgusting behavior that drives people from your fandoms and creates needless misery while adding nothing of value to the community.
If you want to kick certain kinds of content off of AO3, you do not belong on AO3 in the first place.
o/
Emphatically seconded. And I’d add, also quit tag policing and telling people that they “should” be tagging for things. Choose Not To Warn is a completely valid choice, that’s why it is THERE, and if someone chooses No Archive Warnings Apply that means only that none of the FOUR main archive warnings apply and does not guarantee you a story free from all possible warnings anyone might ever have imagined.
AO3 creators are not obligated or even encouraged to use exhaustive tags. The tagging system is just one of the tools the archive has to help creators provide information they are comfortable providing, and to help fans find works they might want to check out based on whatever info the respective creators provide, and all AO3 users are welcome to use it in whatever way works best for them. There is not one right way to do it.
All this being said, if your fanwork contains NSFW imagery or adult content and you choose to rate this work as acceptable for all ages, you’re kind of an asshole. Perfectly within your rights, but a bit of a jerk.
I have seen several comments like this in the replies to this post and I want to make clear that is NOT TRUE and a complete strawman. That author would NOT be within their rights on the AO3! Authors are NOT allowed to deliberately mislead readers about adult or archive-warning material in their works on the AO3.
* If a story is clearly adult, and it was rated G or T, you should report it and Abuse will make the author set either an appropriate rating or Not Rated.
* If a story contains material matching one of the four Archive Warnings (Rape/Noncon, Graphic Violence, Underage [which means any character under 18 having sex], or Character Death), and the author tagged it No Archive Warnings Apply, you should report it and Abuse will make the author either add the appropriate warning or mark the story Choose Not To Warn instead.
You ARE protected by the AO3 TOS from having graphic adult material sprung on you, as long as you actually respect what the tags tell you.
But you are NOT protected from making the choice to dive into CNTW or Not Rated stories and then encountering graphic adult material you don’t like. You are NOT protected from encountering material you don’t like that is not covered under the archive warnings/ratings.
The fundamental underlying goal of the AO3 is maximum inclusiveness of content. The AO3 cannot achieve that goal if fan creators don’t feel comfortable and welcome to post all the content that we can legally host. We hope that a newbie fan twenty years from now can look at the archive and find the history and work of their community there waiting for them. Those of us who founded the archive and Fanlore and OTW had all lived fannishly through multiple waves of destruction and loss of history and community. That is what the archive is trying to protect us ALL against.
You… do realise that people tag works as containing rape/paedophilia/incest when the stories are explicitly about those things being bad, and not just because they’re writing dark themes for reasons that you personally disapprove of, right? That tags merely state the presence of a thing without explaining how it’s dealt with in the narrative, and that stories do not have to be morally instructional and perfect and pure in order to be allowed to exist?
Like. You might as well walk into a bookshop and stamp BLOCKED FOR BADWRONG CONTENT on every book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, half of Shakespeare, every YA novel about rape recovery, every adult novel about rape recovery, every biography of someone who has suffered from rape, incest or paedophilia and been brave enough to write about it, every book of Greek, Egyptian and Norse myths, the fucking Bible – just a truly massive percentage of the entire global literary canon,because there is literally no way to remove each and every reference to these themes otherwise.
Do you know why schools and libraries are pressured to ban books like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, To Kill a Mockingbird and Laurie Halse Andersen’s Speak? Because dumbass, scaremongering adults think that letting teens read about rape or racism or sexual violence or queerness or half a dozen other topics they think are Bad Things will lead to them down a path of Vice.
What happens to characters in stories, no matter how graphic or awful, is not the same as that act occurring to a real human person in real life, nor does reading or writing such works indicate endorsement of those acts. This is why a story which features paedophilia, regardless of whether it’s written as overtly sexual content or as a damning condemnation of the act, is not the same as child pornography by any legal definition: because no actual children are harmed. Are you personally still allowed to be angry and disgusted about the public availability of the former type of stories, even in instances where the writers are themselves victims of child abuse trying to process their trauma? Yes! You’re under no moral obligation to like any kind of content! But are you correct in asserting that the creation of such stories is illegal and hurting somebody in exactly the same way that a real abuser hurting a real child would be? No! Because fictional characters are not real people, and whatever our motives for creating or engaging with a particular thing, monkey see = monkey approve is not how it fucking works.
Have you ever watched an episode of CSI? Congratulations! By your own logic, you’re pro rape and murder. Ever watched an episode of Hannibal? Congratulations! By your own logic, you endorse cannibalism, Stockholm Syndrome and serial killing. Ever watched a historical drama where a young girl gets married to a much older man? Congratulations! By your own logic, you endorse child brides. And on, and on, and on.
I say again: you are allowed to be critical of particular works and/or the recurrence of certain themes across a particular medium. But arguing that an entire literary platform needs to end because some stories there contain Bad Things makes as much sense as banning the works of Octavia Butler or Sherman Alexie from school libraries because of their content. Which is – spoiler alert – a really bad idea.
UGH.
All of this.
Puritanical culture is really fucking dangerous. By thinking you’re being ‘pure’ and ‘good’ and condemning all these things, you’re actually playing right into the hands of people who want to control media content by pretending shades of gray don’t exist. It’s not as simple as Thing Good or Thing Bad. It’s “Thing Complicated And Needs Critical Thought And Review.”
Do not, in your quest for purity, lose your ability to think.
Fuck purity culture. Just unfollow and block me if you think FICTION in any way equals reality. I’m so over this censorship BULLSHIT.
– she gives ginny a stick and poke in their fourth year, the first tattoo she’s ever given anyone
– a tiny crescent moon on the inside of her forearm with magic color changing ink
– it tells ginny the weather, and glows when the weather is perfect for quidditch
– hagrid gleefully gets a tattoo from luna sometime in the fifth year
– on his inner ankle, a square of text tells him about the needs of the creatures around him
– he starts sitting with his ankle on his knee to more easily check it
– she gives harry a tattoo the summer before his eighth year
– a small horntail, but it moves from his chest to sit on his shoulder or cower in the crook of his elbow as it pleases
– it wakes him up from his bad dreams, and keeps him warm in the middle of the night
– she gives neville a tattoo before she was stolen into the malfoy’s manor
– it’s a ring encircling his middle finger
– the magic of it is simple, transforming into whatever word he needs to see most when he asks it
– seamus gets one not long after neville
– it’s a tiny bomb on his collar bone, ticking in time with dean’s heart
– hermione doesn’t want a tattoo at first, but as she grows closer with luna she asks for it very shyly in the middle of her eighth year
– it gently pulses with her heart on her shoulder blade, an hourglass on it’s side
– it will sometimes stand up and run sand, but only when hermione is very busy or stressed
– george asks for a tattoo that finishes his jokes, many years after the war, when he is an uncle and godfather
– luna refuses and instead gives him a non-magical tattoo, a china cup mended with gold over his heart
– draco, many years after luna is an established artist and healer, drops into her shop in diagon alley
– he asks her to fix his scar-slashed Mark, and she turns it into a sleeve of flowers, studded with snakes and turtles
– the flowers bloom with his moods, and shield him from hurting himself
Verilidaine's Scrapbook 