stratisphyre reblogged
a comic about fix-it fanfics
stratisphyre reblogged
Fandom PSAs
Dont’ Like, Don’t Read
or DL; DR
- You are responsible for curating your own online experience.
- If something upsets you, makes you angry or queasy or triggers you, stop reading/looking at it. Avoid things that might make you feel that way.
- Learn to use the Sort and Filter function on AO3, especially the Exclude tools.
- On social media, block and mute accounts / tags / words when necessary.
- If you hated something, you don’t need to tell that to the creator or start pointing fingers at them publicly.
- The Back button is free. Use it.
Addendum:
Yes, for this to work, creators need to tag their works accordingly, so that people know what sort of content they are about to engage with and can nope out if necessary.
I will probably make another PSA about the importance of proper tagging later.
Ship And Let Ship
or SALS
- You are allowed to ship whatever you want.
- Everyone else is also allowed to ship whatever they want.
- You are entitled to dislike or even hate a ship. If you want to do this online, in public, don’t use the ship tags for hate posts.
- If you see someone posting about a ship they like and you don’t, there is no need for you to start arguing with them in their replies / comments / QRTs / reblogs. Don’t throw your hate in their face.
- Do not harass fan creators or fans for shipping something you disapprove.
- All of this also applies to liking / disliking an individual character.
Addendum:
”I agree with this, except when…”
No, then you are NOT agreeing with this.
Let me make this VERY clear. There are NO exceptions. None.
You don’t EVER harass real people over pixels.
If you disagree with this, kindly block and move on.
Your Kink Is Not My Kink
or YKINMK / YKINMKATO
- The longer version is ”Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That’s Okay”.
- People have different tastes. Not everything is for everybody.
- Even if you don’t like a specific kink, other people are still allowed to use it in their creations.
- You are entitled to dislike kinky content and think that it’s ”weird”.
- Don’t kink shame or judge people based on their kinks.
- This goes both ways: your kink is not someone else’s kink, so don’t push it onto those who are not into it.
Be Kind
or Don’t Be An Asshole
- Focus on the things you like instead of the things you hate.
- Create and unite instead of destroying and dividing.
- Don’t harass real people over fictional things.
- Stop stirring up petty drama just to get some attention on social media.
- Stop trying to ”win”. Fandom is not a competition.
- Remember that your own experiences aren’t universally shared. Your perception of things can differ from someone else’s, but that doesn’t mean either of you is necessarily wrong.
stratisphyre reblogged
Autumn is here and spooky season approaches, so I'm going to take a moment and imagine the terror of a fandom world without AO3 in it.
Want to read this fic? Okay, just wait for a quick pre-roll ad first and good luck with reading the story when it finally opens because there are other ads all over the rest of the page. Some of them have sound. All of them are moving or flashing and distracting you from the story.
Want to post a fic? Okay, just make sure it's not too gay or not too kinky and it doesn't address any of the horrors of the real world without wrapping everything up with a cheerful bow and letting the reader know that it all works out in the end.
Oh, you like this story? Such a shame that no one tags anything beyond the ships and characters and now you've been traumatized by a sudden triggering scene that you had no idea was coming.
Congratulations! You've been served a cease-and-desist by: George Lucas, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, FOX, Viacom/Paramount, Anne Rice, JK Rowling/Warner Bros., Mercedes Lackey, Marvel, George R.R. Martin, Diana Gabaldon, and more. And on top of that, there aren't any volunteer lawyers around to help you out of this scrape!
Remember that site you loved to use for your fic? Was it Tripod? FanFiction.net? Gryffindor Tower? FanFiction.net again? Sakura Lemon FanFiction Archive? FanFiction.net again? And again? Quizilla? LiveJournal, twice in one year? GeoCities? Slash Cotillion? FanDomination.Net? GreatestJournal? Delicious? FortuneCity? Tumblr? Wattpad? Well, they decided to delete your fics without telling you. Or they decided to delete your account without warning you. Or the site itself just up and died, taking your content with it. Such a shame.
AO3 isn't perfect, and I don't think anyone out there really thinks that it is. Like everything else in this world, it grows and changes and sometimes the growth is too fast and the change is too slow. But imperfect as it is, it's still so much better than what we had before, and for that I'll always be grateful.
Thank you AO3, and all of the volunteers past and present who make you possible. I couldn't ask for a better "fan-created, fan-run, nonprofit, noncommercial archive for transformative fanworks." ❤
[all of the above links lead to Fanlore articles describing the events, except the GRRM one. That leads to his personal livejournal entry.]
stratisphyre reblogged
have I heard recent fandom stuff? interesting question. the answer is I did my fucking time and now I universally unilaterally refuse to learn anything ever again. thank you
stratisphyre reblogged
“You’re Not a Good Writer.”
I once received a DM comprised of just that sentence. Nothing else. No constructive criticism or any reason as to why this person clearly agreed with my own view of myself.
For someone who has never told anyone in their real life that they write anything, reading something like this from an anonymous user only solidified in my mind the fact that this person was right.
I’m not a good writer.
After an embarrassing amount of minutes passed, in which I thought about deleting every story I ever posted, I decided to delete the message instead. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean I could delete the feelings it caused or change the fact that I’m not a good writer.
Two weeks went by and I didn’t write anything, let alone post. Then I received a comment on a story I had posted three years prior, one I’d written after a death in our family. The comment read, “Thank you for sharing this heartfelt story. I really needed this. I just lost my mom and this really got me today.”
I stopped thinking about being a good writer after that. I thought instead, “what if I had deleted my stories and that one person three years later hadn’t read it that day?”
Here’s what I realized: no one is a good writer.
Good means to be approved of, but stories aren’t created from approval. They’re built from life experiences, feelings, and emotions Therefore, the impact of anyone’s story isn’t good or bad. It’s a million other things.
Heartfelt.
Sad.
Funny.
Inspiring.
Romantic.
So to all the story writers out there, hold your head up, write what is in your heart, and never doubt that there isn’t at least one person out there that needs to read your story.
So, no.
We’re not good writers, but why would we want to be?
Holy shit did I need to read this today
todorokitops
Never doubt that there isn’t at least one person out there that needs to read your story.
And if that person is just yourself, that’s okay too. I mean it, literally the only reason I started writing is that no one was writing what I wanted to read, and let me tell you, my writing may be a mess, but it’s a lot of fun for me to read. :)
Please write. Please. Even if you think no one else wants to read what you have to write, do it anyway. Even if it feels like you’re the only person who will want to read it, write it. My writing is so much better and so much easier when I write for me. If other people like it too, that is a very uplifting feeling. It makes me happy to see the awesome comments people leave on my writing. But at the end of the day, I didn’t write those stories for anyone but myself, and I am happier having done it.
Please, don’t stop writing. Don’t compare to other people, because we’ve all got difference styles and experiences and voices. Your voice cannot be anyone else’s because it is yours. Don’t silence yourself for the people who just want to tear you down.
Write, and never feel bad for doing it. Even the stuff you wrote years ago that doesn’t reflect how you write anymore. Accept it for what it is and where you were at that time in your life. Be proud of yourself and your growth.
So write, and keep writing. You got this.
stratisphyre reblogged
types of writing sessions
- got on computer, looked at document, was like “fuck this shit” and got off
- wrote like 150 words that consist of bloating the existing useless conversation or scene even more
- wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to escape the Bad Part
- wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to get closer to the Good Part
- got on your document, ran into research issue, spent like an hour on Wikipedia, ah shit
- the somewhat satisfying “fixing everything I hated about the scene I wrote the day before” session
- decent amount of progress that took like 3x longer than it should have because you were repeatedly distracted
- In The Zone and completely absorbed, just BLAZING through a few thousand words, probably close to the ending, probably listening to playlist
- Not actually a writing session, just listening to playlist
- the session where you write like a paragraph, suddenly realize the unfixability of your current plot predicament, and cry
- that weird session where you don’t have much time and you’re super tired and you write like a page but you reread it the next morning and holy shit these words came from the fingers of god why is it so good
- that session that is purely just navigating the boring shit of getting from one scene to the next and it sucks but you leave off on the cusp of something interesting and it feels good
- the satisfyingly exhausting session where you write the Good Part and you’re confident it came out pretty well and you’re full of thoughts and stuff about where things are going next but you need to let them rest
- get on computer, write exactly one sentence, get off computer. Now you can say you wrote today
#mood
stratisphyre reblogged
listen. l i s t e n. listen. kudos does not equal quality. popularity does not equal quality. i have read some “fandom classics” that i could barely fathom how boring or terrible i - personally - found them, and i have stumbled across some absolute gems that didn’t even break 100 kudos.
what is good doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. it’s sad, but true. just because you haven’t - or possibly never take - off in fandom doesn’t mean your work isn’t astounding and beautiful, it doesn’t mean you should stop writing; it just means that a very select corner of the internet missed the diamond in the rough.
fanfiction is flooded with content, there are so many of us out there producing it these days, and having a fic that takes off is almost as much about luck as it is about talent. never let a few artificial numbers on the internet dictate to you what is and isn’t worthy writing.
additionally, you don’t have to read or enjoy fics just bcs they’re big. i cannot count the amount of times i’ve read the first paragraph of something fandom adores and immediatly exited out of it.
just… do what makes you happy. write what you wanna write, read what you wanna read. understand that while we all want recognition - and some deserve it more than others - we did not get into fanfiction for that recognition.
recognition is good, but sometimes we get all tangled up chasing it and stop enjoying writing and reading and fandom as a whole along the way. be careful of that, please, or you’ll burn yourself out.
Twenty-five years in fandom and it doesn’t get truer than this. You absolutely CANNOT predict what will be popular and what won’t. It’s due to coincidence and timing and who happens to hit reblog and yanno…it’s a mystery. Write for yourself, read for yourself, this isn’t a job.
oh look i'm back on tumblr explicitly because of this post