"choices made in anger cannot be undone" well i have regrets and nothing to lose. so we'll just see about that.

guess who ✨️ made it worse ✨️

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

Intruder

Sometimes people get their start in fandom with something like, idk, the MCU or light action shows like Supernatural or children's fantasy like Warriors (this last example said with love), where the writing is an inconsistent mess, characterization can change on a dime, there's no themes stronger than like "family" or "stop the bad guy from changing our way of life". And their fandom experience is taking the hints of interesting ideas presented and dropped and spinning them into something interesting, or just fluffy and fun, and then discarding the rest.

And then these people come to a piece of art that like. Actually has themes and good writing and a coherent vision, but they're still trained on The Giant Trash Heap That Must Be Sorted Through, so they start their routine of excising fun yaoi moments and throwing the rest in the trash, except now the rest is like. A professionally made passion project by a group of skilled writers with a hundred years writing experience between them, and this fan is writing the same coffee shop AUs as ever. And it makes something that feels same-y and fandom out of something unique and well-made and, well, interesting.

And like. That's their prerogative, more power to them, but it makes me wanna pull my hair out to talk to these people about a piece of media I actually care about beyond that Trash Heap level.

And if you're someone whose only fandom experience has been Trash Sorting and you're running into people arguing with you abt their favorite piece of media, give them a second thought I guess?

love and peace, @kingofgoblets. this is a good addition

[ screencapture is of tags that say: #and honestly i still like that stuff. i too was born in the trash. raised by it. #but you gotta know when you're just scrapbooking bits and pieces #versus when you're reading a full rich text thoroughly #there is room in your brain for both i promise #but even on days when you only have scrapbook energy #don't. do NOT. Pick fights with the people doing the intense reading. #if that isn't what you're into today? you're allowed to scroll on #or open a new file and make that coffee shop au. ]

tags from @annabelle--cane are good

I don’t know which author needs to hear this right now but even if you never update your wip i would never regret reading it a time of joy is never wasted

creature and robin

Tim drawing as my part of an AT for mutual on Insta ✨

This is what Rasputin would've wanted.

I feel like I'm being seduced like one of those fancy rainforest birds

is it working

Yes

matching shirts for you and your bff

people always talk about leaving comments on ao3 like it's a nice thing to do, or the best way to encourage writers to keep writing, or overall like it's how you Do Your Part in fandom

and yeah, all those things are true, but having spent the past few months leaving enthusiastic comments on as many things as i can, i have a different perspective

you should leave comments on fics because it's fun

taking the time to stop and focus on what i like about a story has made me way more aware of what's going on in stories and what i like about them. there's bit more actual comprehension and appreciation and not just beaming content into my eyes to fill time

i like noticing cool little things in fics, or riffing on funny events. i've never been very good at speculating or picking apart characters, but sometimes something clicks and it rocks.

and of course it's pretty nice when you get a response and it's clear you've made another person happy

so yeah, you should leave comments for your own sake, too. it makes reading better!

^^^ Yes!!! It helps you to be a more aware and active reader, and you really start to notice the small details of things. I love it

this “job” stuff is sooooooo fucked up. i have to get out of bed? when it’s cold?

i am once again banishing the idea that bruce was never affectionate with tim/was mean to him/was a cold, distant mentor to him. begone.

@captainragtag i mean. you're not wrong. look at them!!

one of the most important cheek squeezes ever.

weird anti ideology finally leaking out into the mainstream

I'm so exhausted by all of this.

I think we're seeing the consequences of surveillance, honestly. Like they're policing themselves this heavily because they've never had privacy before, not from their parents, not from their peers, not from advertisers, not online, nothing. And with all that constant and conflicting criticism, there are no consistent rules for when they're going to be attacked so they're responding by making elaborate, false rule-sets as a coping strategy. LIke "maybe, if I act this way, I'll finally be safe" but it doesn't work so they get more desperate.

Add on all the school shootings in the US, inaction on climate change, and a pandemic that was allowed to rip through schools unchecked, kids and young adults have a deep sense that their lives are disposable. And they're right! Our society is systematically hostile and abusive to children in so many ways! However, the only child abuse society gets riled up about is pedophilia. Adults act like pedophilia is the only kind of child abuse that counts as abuse.

And that's why I think we are seeing kids stretching the meaning of pedophilia. They are looking for language that encompasses all of the kinds of abuse that they're experiencing. All of the emotional abuse of children is normalized, quite a bit of physical abuse is normalized, and the lack of privacy, agency, and bodily autonomy is all socially enforced. The truth is that all of these other forms of abuse can and do lead to sexual abuse, too. These kids are on to something, but it's getting deflected and warped by the fact that they still live in the dangerous environments they've been abused in. I think more specific language will be empowering here and will also bridge the gap between the current generation of young people and other anti-violence movements.

So if you are a child or young adult who resonates with any of the above, I want you to know that as a child abuse survivor, I believe you when you say that you've been abused. I think the anxiety about fandom websites and queer people and kink is misplaced because strangers don't usually have the structural power and access to you to hurt you but I know that there are people in you life who do have that power and I'm worried about you. I think ao3/queer/kink are just the issues that you feel safest speaking up about. I see you speaking up and I think there's more going on.

So what I can do for you, as a random stranger on the internet, is give you some resources and language so you can start to articulate your experiences and find solidarity with others.

Some terms you might find helpful:

Here's a copy of the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child. The US has refused to sign this but it's still a good idea of what the rest of the world believes you deserve and what we know will help you thrive.

Here's a copy of the power and control wheel for child abuse. Power and control wheels are commonly used in many forms of victim advocacy to help map abuse. To be clear, we count these things as abuse because we know from research that they are traumatic. Many laws have not been updated to include all these forms, so you'll notice that many of the things on this wheel are completely legal even though we know they are harmful.

Additionally, I'm including a zine I found on peer support for suicide ideation. I know that growing up, my friends and I were always told to tell a trusted adult but we didn't have one and ended up trying to help each other through some really awful shit. This is a guide written by someone with a similar experience and it details ways to informally support someone who is feeling suicidal.

I'm so so glad to see a response to this other than:

This is a real problem with real causes. Things don't just happen for no reason because a group you don't like is inherently worse than you or incapable of making good decisions.

We are like this because of the unprecedented cultural conditions surrounding our development & socialization!!!

I think it's also worth noting that in the US there has been a major push in schools to devalue & defund subjects that would help these kids develop critical thinking skills. If you don't know how to process information in an analytical way, you rely on your emotions and instincts -- which are not always correct in assessing the content. When school overworks these kids & tells them that art and English are a waste of their time and won't get them very far in life, it's easy to see how these kids will reject those subjects and embrace reactionism. They're genuinely exhausted from all the expectations put on them, which is not conducive to the "sit down and really mull it over" kind of work that critical thinking requires.

And I also 100% agree that kids are abused, exploited, and generally undervalued in our society. They are also taught that sex & expressing sexuality is one of the worst things they can do (whether directly from a parent or indirectly from the wider cultural attitude towards sex) and sexual abuse is often (as the person above said) the only abuse that gets validated by adults. So you get a whole group of kids who will police their own sexuality and don't know how to effectively question whether they have the full picture about those subjects. They are not taught to think for themselves. When someone else is found thinking for themselves and says something that seems alarming to these kids, the ones who have not learned to exercise critical thinking will react instead of consider, and are more likely to attempt ostracizing and shaming their peers. They reject media that seems problematic because they never learned how to analyze what's being said or how to engage with problematic themes in a critical way, or that doing so is a valuable practice to begin with.

It is, in part, adult society failing to teach our children the very basics of independence & free thought. By doing so, we create children who will grow up to be those same reactionary adults who don't foster critical thinking or free thought because they never learned how to do it either, and they don't see the problem in forcing everyone to prioritize their own comfort & worldview.