this is an incredible map

fml we gotta do everything ourselves here

GET BOOPED SUCKEEERS

fml we gotta do everything ourselves here

GET BOOPED SUCKEEERS

no but how much audacity and sheer entitlement do you have to have to tell people they need to stop posting their darkfic and porn fic and any other fic you don’t like to ao3 so you can have a safe space when ao3 was literally created as a safe space for writers to post their content without fear of it being randomly wiped out by pro-censorship assholes with an agenda like what has happened to plenty of other fic archives before?

“but a lot of us see ao3 as a safe space to get away from that kind of nasty content” - lol you can see the middle of a busy interstate as a safe space all you want too but that doesn’t mean that you get to walk into the road and scream at all the cars going by that they’re the ones infringing on your safe space either

ao3 is not, has never been, and will never be a site meant for nothing but children’s stories. you can “see it” like that as much as you want but there’s a difference between fiction and reality and that view of what ao3 is like is as fictional as the stories posted on it.

Caveat your policies and principles, because there’s a mad difference between children’s stories and stories that are harmful across the board.

A lot of writers on ao3 don’t care to tag their stories appropriately, or consider the harm they perpetrate with their stories, or take responsibility for the harm they cause with their stories. It’s one thing to write whatever you want, it’s another to publish it, publicise it, and not take care enough to note if it’s harmful.

Let’s be honest, a lot of supposed “dark fic” is generally just exploitive masturbatory fantasy. It’s often written by ppl who don’t care what bigotry they perpetuate, what harmful tropes they use, any of that, as long as they get their kicks.

You can write what you want, but if you choose to post it publicly, you need to be prepared for an audience that has its own opinions. And the audience might say, “This archive needs a better policy”.

The audience might - but AO3 wasn’t created for the audience. It was created for the authors, so they’d have a place to post their fics that kept getting thrown off of other sites.

You might think those sites were correct and some kinds of content shouldn’t be allowed in public anywhere. In which case, you might want to stay away from AO3, because it was explicitly and directly created to host stuff that was unacceptable elsewhere. That’s its core purpose.

Fics that aren’t tagged according to the archive’s rules can be reported. However, there’s not much tagging that’s actually required: Just the warnings (including the option of “choose not to warn,” meaning “not telling you if any of these things are here”) and a fandom. They can leave off the rating, and it’ll be sorted as if it were explicit.

AO3 was meant to be supportive of both “authors who want to tag major and minor pairings, every notable trope in the story, and several types of relationships” - and authors who tag NOTHING but the fandom and maybe a pairing. The “what tags are required?” debate was not new when AO3 was founded, more than 13 years ago. So they opted for a bare minimum of safety tags, added the option of adding a bunch more, and said “Reader Beware: We don’t require that tagging be complete.”

Bitch, if AO3 was just for authors, it wouldn’t exist, because we all would have gotten off our own dicks years ago and realized we didn’t need public acclaim to enjoy writing.

It wasn’t created “just” for authors. But it was created for authors first, with the for-readers features being most focused on, “hey authors - how do you want your readers to find you?”

There’s a difference between wanting to share writing with a community and “needing public acclaim.”

We knew damn well when we set up AO3’s terms of service, that there would be people who decided, “I am NOT putting my writing on a site that hosts THAT AWFUL STUFF.” (At the time, we kind of assumed “That Awful Stuff” was “Voldemort victorious; Death Eater orgies abound” fics, not “Harry/Draco underage” fics, but we also knew that what’s considered “wrong” changes over time.) (Some of us remember when just saying you read slash could get you kicked out of a fandom’s locked email list.)

We weren’t really expecting demands that AO3 change its policies, because… those weren’t after-the-fact decisions? It wasn’t, “hey, let’s build an archive, and oh, I guess we’ll let the icky smut in too.” It was, “The icky smut keeps getting banned/ deleted/ forbidden/ removed because the mods got into a fight about what to allow…. what can we do about that? How about… an archive?”

Complaints that AO3 allows the stuff that AO3 was created to host will get zero results. No changes in policy; no open consideration; no public discussions.

AO3 is now one of the busiest fanfic sites on the internet, because it turns out, a LOT of people like a no-censorship approach. But if popularity wanes and only the ultra-kink-friendly people are still active… that’s fine. That’s what it’s for. Everyone else has a whole internet that will host their content.

If you do not like AO3’s no-censorship policies, you are welcome to create your own site with heavier content restrictions. I believe the code is open source, so have at it.

This is also a great reminder that there exist many sites out there who DO regulate their content differently!

Anyone who doesn’t like to self-curate what they read and doesn’t want to go through the massive hassle of creating and maintaining a new website can use one of the other fanfiction websites.

Of course, at any time these websites might take down thousands of works at once or decide that gay stuff is icky and not allowed. They have done this many times before and they will do it again. In general, they could decide that certain tropes or narratives are not allowed, and they might disagree with you that your favorite trope is just a little unconventional but harmless, unlike those disgusting fantasies you want out of your face, so at some point they will likely take down works you love.

But that is the trade-off for giving up your ability to choose for yourself what you read. Someone else chooses what you’re allowed to read and you must accept their decisions whether they align with your preferences and values, or not.

If in time you find that all these people who are so eager to pick for you – eager to save you from engaging with any kind of complexity, eager to protect you from thoughts you might find scary, eager to decide what the inside of your mind should look like – seem not have your best interests at heart, you might want to ask yourself a few questions. But the bottom line here is that there is no shortcut for thinking for yourself and there is usually no happy ending when you give someone else the responsibility of making your choices for you – so by all means use a different website, and while you’re at it use the opportunity to reflect on what it really means to let others ponder all these complex moral issues in your place and then to have to accept their conclusions no matter what.

fuuuucck you guys I'm so done. I stumbled when bringing my knight's armour over as I prepped him for a tourney and when I dropped his platemail it was really loud and I was embarrassed and accidentally blurted out "oopsie daisy" before I bent down to pick everything up.... he was so quiet after that ughhhh it's so over. I'll be lucky if I keep my squire position but tbh he might just kill me when the tourney's over

HE WON...... every combatant had to be dragged off the pitch at the end of each match..... pray for me

false alarm it turns out he was just reeeeally horny. apparently he thought the oopsie daisy thing was endearing (though he did also call me a clumsy fool) and. well. I guess he melees really well when he's massively turned on. he told me all that while he had me pinned on the grass in our tourney tent to fuck me raw still covered in blood and sweat and half-dressed in his armour and using his banner to gag me cause I couldn't keep quiet and he couldn't wait. soooo a pretty big W for me actually

tumblr where are they

I'm not wizardposting per se, but I like making jokes involving them.

Not a part of the wizard community, but they are in my orb bit.

pondering jin guangyao’s insane customer service worker energy when i realized he has literally killed every single boss he’s had. wen ruohan? dead. jin guangshan? dead. nie mingjue? Extra Dead. employing this man has a 100% fatality rate.

Nie Mingjue wasn't initially dead; Jin Guangyao actually circled back and completed that one after he was fired.

So in case anyone wanted more evidence of how government suppression of free speech is spreading globally, in the UK on Thursday evening (March 27th), twenty police officers broke into Westminster Quaker Meeting House in London and arrested six members of the group Youth Demand who met to discuss concerns about the climate and Gaza. The charge was apparently conspiracy to commit a public nuisance - this raid is a direct result of law changes in 2022 and 2023 designed to dramatically restrict people's ability to plan and carry out protests. In addition to breaking into the Meeting House, there have apparently been twelve related house raids and three other arrests.

This is horrifying. It is happening under an allegedly left wing government (our current PM Starmer is Labour, but that name doesn't really mean anything under his government). There is no harm caused in meeting to discuss ways to challenge the government, except to the government itself. Yet apparently, a simple meeting is enough to justify police armed with tasers and more than a dozen raids.

We are allowed to believe that change is necessary. We are allowed to discuss ways to make change happen - and across history, the most significant social changes have only been made possible thanks to protest.

Screw Labour and the UK establishment.

I want to add some more context about why this is so terrifying. The last time a Quaker Meeting House was violated like this in the UK was in the 1600s, to disrupt people who were exercising their right to freedom of religion. The state of free speech in the UK is apparently in a worse position than it has been for centuries - and certainly within living memory.

Our Meeting Houses are places of worship. They are places of peace and contemplation and it is so utterly disrespectful to break down our doors to stop people talking to each other. And I only know about this because I'm a Quaker myself, and I think it should be spread across the UK so people know how the state is actively working ageist us.

Please share this if you can.

for april fools we’re deleting this entire site sayonara you weeaboo shits

The fact that Fountain is pissing off trads over a 100 years later is so fucking funny

As an art major, while I know Fountain is a valid piece of art that accomplished exactly what it set out to do, I also think it’s one of the stupidest things. We have a urinal in a museum display. I have yet to see a work I think is dumber.

The thing I love most about Duchamps urinal piece is that it was so “low cost” in terms of creative labour (compared to say, a large scale oil painting or sculpture for example), but it’s absolutely FULL of rage against the traditionalists and the world at that time and it’s SUCH a statement, it’s like, “oh just a mass manufactured item with a signature” but the reality of it is so many layers of meaning and without understanding the history at the time you don’t get it.

It’s an incredibly clever “fuck you” and I love it

An old professor of mine, an expert in Duchamp who has written several books, has a theory. In part, “Fountain” was a prank, a personal “fuck you” to the organization looking for artworks. It’s importance cannot be overstated, and this importance stems from the fact that “Fountain” is /ridiculous/. It is enraging, it is hilarious, and it is very fascinating.

Aside from Duchamp’s readymades, I love “Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even”. Pictured below, the work invokes a complex machine, one my professor spent a great deal of time studying. Eventually, he reached his conclusion. My professor had been pranked. He believes “Bride Stripped Bare” is a joke about masturbation, hidden to all except those study it excessively.

At first blush, Duchamp’s works are stupid. Upon further study, they’re very complex. And, upon true understanding, Duchamp is laughing at you. To me, it seems the closer you come to truly understanding Duchamp, the more he slaps you in the face with a large fish.

Let me rage about “traditionalism revival” here. This is a dogwhistle.

As a lover of art, there are many complex and technically impressive works being created today, which both embrace different artistic traditions and break from them. To ignore those is to ignore contemporary art.

Here, OP is raging against conceptual art, which stimulates thought and challenges tradition. He wants his followers to believe that art has “degenerated”, because the West has “degenerated”. OP is intentionally engaging with fascist ideas of “degenerate art”.

If OP wanted to be accurate, he would seek to restore the Salon System, the Beaux Arts Academy, and classical training in the arts. The collapse of this specific system allowed for Modernism to evolve. Of course, that’s not what OP is talking about. He’s evoking beauty as a moral standard, telling his followers to “restore Western tradition”, to fight against aesthetic “degeneracy” in culture.

(By the way, Duchamp is commenting ON MODERNISM with “Fountain”. Duchamp submitted the work to the Society of Independent Artists’ salon in New York, who would accept any work by any artist, for a small fee. In part, Duchamp is saying, “Is this what you Modernists want? A urinal? Look me in the eyes and prove this is not art.”

If OP dared to use his brain, perhaps he would agree with Duchamp here.)

The thing is that it isn’t even a urinal! It doesn’t match any model manufactured at the time. Also Duchamp was an accomplished ceramicist. It’s likely that he made the sculpture and absolutely everyone is like “I know what a urinal looks like. This is sufficiently urinal-shaped for me to assume it is one without looking at it closely!”

Duchamp had other readymades, like his snow shovel, where if you actually look at the photos, the handle is square and the bowl is way too flimsy. Why would manufacturers make a snow shovel with a squared-off handle? It’s impossible to hold! Duchamp slapped the “readymades” label on all these items and the hoity-toity art people who were so good at looking at things didn’t see it (probably because they’d never had to do labor like shovel snow imo, amongst other things).

Marcel Duchamp. In Advance of the Broken Arm. Museum of Modern Art. (4th Version [Ed.!!!] after lost original of November 1915)

wait what. there… what?!?! IT ISN’T AN ACTUAL URINAL?!? or might not be anyway. what the fuck.

if the dude seriously did that, his troll game is out of everyone’s league except Leader Kibo.

My favorite thing about Fountain (besides the fact it has been pissing off fascists for over a century, natch) is that the original was lost and he made a bunch of official editions to sell to various museums (after the original was lost, possibly on purpose).

And they’re different! If it was a real “readymade” he could have just bought some more at his local hardware store, but no. He changed them in OBVIOUS WAYS.

See the triangle of holes?

Here’s the one from the Tate Modern:

Oh hello, cross-holes. Fancy seeing you here.

SFMOMA’s edition has the triangle holes, but it also has a line of holes at the top that are completely different from either other version.

Here’s one from Moderna Museet. Line and a circular set of holes!

Duchamp definitely intentionally made these different on purpose. It’s a “readymade” but it’s not, really, each of these is a specific custom creation.

It’s not even clear if he made it! He wrote a letter to his sister claiming that a female friend sent it to him, and he just enrolled it in the art exhibit under his own name. There’s also a possibility that that female friend was himself, since he later had a female pseudonym of Rrose Sélav.

This whole piece of art is a fractal troll, and it’s a beautiful one.

art is a creative statement.

sometimes that statement is ‘go fuck yourself’

On top of the Yankees field cat there was a praying mantis on top of the nationals players hat tonight. Huge night in baseball

He was keeping the mantis updated on the number of outs, too

the mantis is making him good at baseball ratatouille style

Listen, nobody on earth is as superstitious as baseball players. My man knows better than to be impolite to the good luck charm that decided to grace him with its presence.

Take me away, soft Norwegian travel butch

I think that the real reason that Terry Pratchett is my favourite fantasy writer is that he’s the only one who really centres working people in his stories. I mean, Game of Thrones is almost entirely about the antics of rival aristocrats; Harry Potter is heir to two family fortunes and the subject of a prophecy and goes to an elite boarding school; even the Hobbits (save Sam) in The Lord of the Rings are minor gentry. Meanwhile, who are the main protagonists in Discworld? A recovering-alcoholic cop; an old peasant woman who lives in a cottage; a conman who was forced to take over the post-office. Pratchett writes entire novels about classes of people that other writers treat as background characters. He’s not condescending in his depictions; he’s willing to show enlisted soldiers as people, rather than arrow-fodder; and he’s aware that even ‘simple peasants’ know detailed information about things that wizards and knights can’t be arsed to care about; that everything about the world takes a hell of a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes and that most people never see, And he makes sure that you know this, too.

I cannot BELIEVE that Heinz has the AUDACITY to claim they know the perfect ratio of ketchup to mayo.

When the end of days is upon us men who foolishly claim to be gods will at long last face the righteous judgement they have earned. Then you'll see.

Ain't even the right fucking color.

"When the end of days is upon us men who foolishly claim to be gods will at long last face the righteous judgement they have earned. Then you'll see."

why do all the banger quotes come from shitposts

When you're only being dramatic for the bit you end up more open to artistic risk, and being unburdened by the fear shame or failure is the best way to stumble upon greatness.

what the FUCK