hey now...

Couldn't have nailed me any harder to the floor if you had a fucking hammer.

I literally put “there was only one bed” in the comment before the results 😬

Shut up m'dudes, it's a national holiday

Sounds more like character’s from DuckTales. Woo-oo….

LOL

“How would someone be able to not read a fic-” that is actually very easy to do

Was fandom just better before AO3 because fics didn’t come with warnings and tags, so people had to actually be mature about interacting online? About what they interacted with?

It used to be ‘I read something i shouldn’t have’

Now its ‘you wrote something you shouldn’t have’

Side-swipe but bear with me–

Triggering.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

A concept can scare you, offend you, horrify you, disgust you … and not trigger you. A psychological trigger is stimuli that causes an overwhelming physical/emotional reaction (for me, it’s people screaming at their kids– instant panic attack). When it’s bad, it can kick off deep depressions, panic attacks, self-harm episodes.

As adults, it’s our responsibility to know where our triggers are, avoid them where possible, and know how to deal when they happen. Artists cannot account for every single possible trigger in every single person in the world … and they shouldn’t have to. Take responsibility for your own well-being, and accept that consumption of art is done at one’s own risk.

You keep using that

word. I do not think it means

what you think it means.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Also not for nothing but… there’s a comment section that’s open in most AO3 fics. If you are truly concerned a fic may contain one of your specific squicks or triggers that you absolutely cannot read about, you can try asking before reading. If you ask “hey does this contain X?” and the author is still around, they’ll probably answer to the best of their ability. I know I would, and have done in the past. I’ll spoil anything someone wants, if they ask me. My fics don’t have a “does the dog die” page but I’m happy to answer if the metaphorical dog does or does not die if asked. Maybe some authors won’t respond, or won’t tell, but then just don’t read that fic (which you wouldn’t be doing anyway if you didn’t ask… right?).

Authors may not be able to account for every squick or trigger out there up front - and again, it’s not their responsibility to do that anyway when it comes to their leisure time activity - but fandom IS a community and I think most fanfic authors won’t have a problem helping another member of their fandom stay safe if directly and politely asked for help.

I have a lot to say about Jeannie Epper. Most of all, I loved her. I always felt that we understood and appreciated one another.

After all, it was the 70s. We were united in the way that women had to be in order to thrive in a man’s world, through mutual respect, intellect and collaboration.

Jeannie was a vanguard who paved the way for all other stuntwomen who came after. Just as Diana was Wonder Woman, Jeannie Epper was also a Wonder Woman.

She is so beautiful to me. Jeannie, I will miss you.

Let's take a moment to appreciate just how amazing the title cards were for Batman the Animated Series.

Oh! I actually know what made these look so iconic!

The backgrounds for the entire series were done on black paper, a first for any animated show. It's Batman, which means everything is at night and incredibly dark. So, the majority of the backgrounds were going to be black anyways and using black paper would cut down on the time it took to create all of the backgrounds. Adding color over the black paper instead of the traditional method gave it a much more stylized look that helped make it iconic.

It also forced some other creative choices, such as using an airbrush to do all of the background art. During the early testing, they found that using an airbrush was easier to apply paint with than a paintbrush and that it looked better. Airbrushing let them be more experimental with painting techniques, such as the spattery fades you can see in the "Bane" and "Deep Freeze" title cards above or the soft, deeply shadowed face on "the Last Laugh." The overall effect of airbrushing on a black background is a much darker, moodier vibe than could be achieved with a traditional approach.

They cared very deeply about the art of the show and how they were going to create it. It wasn't just about the story or the character. In the words of co-creator Eric Radomski: "As opposed to making shows just to sell toys, we've made quality films."

Slash vs Ampersand: the AO3 tagging convention nobody bothered explaining to you

If a relationship tag contains a slash, i.e. [Character A/Character B], this means relationship dynamic is romantic and/or sexual in nature.

If a relationship tag contains an ampersand, i.e. [Character A&Character B], this means the relationship is neither romantic nor sexual in nature.

If the relationship is ambiguous, you can tag both, and specify elsewhere in the tags or story summary that this relationship is ambiguous in nature.

.

I occasionally see people use a slash in a relationship tag and then specify elsewhere in the tags or summary: "Obviously these characters are siblings and I didn't mean that tag in an incestuous way! Y'all are freaks with dirty minds!!!"

Well honey, if you didn't want people to think you wrote incestuous fic, you shouldn't have tagged your fic that way. This is your fault for tagging it wrong. A slash is not the correct tagging convention for a purely platonic sibling relationship.

Use an ampersand.

The ampersand is your friend.

.

This tagging convention has been around a long time. It's how fanfic writers on livejournal and yahoo groups used to tag ships before AO3 was built. I'm not entirely sure, but it might even date back to the Star Trek: The Original Series 1960s fanzine era of fanfiction.

Obviously at one point in time all their faces were being plastered across the galaxy for assorted bounties, but I like to think that as time goes on post-RotJ, Leia goes and becomes the extremely recognizable President of the New Republic, Luke becomes the still fairly-recognizable Grand Master of the Jedi Order (even if it’s mostly because of the robes/lightsaber), and Han becomes the galactic equivalent of Tony Hawk, who is still extremely famous but absolutely no one realizes it because his Just Some Guy energy is off the charts.

He’ll be out in public and something will prompt him to make an offhand comment about having been in the Rebel Alliance and people will be like “Oh, you were in the Rebellion? That’s so cool. Did you ever know anyone important? Like President Organa-Solo?” and he’ll wearily snap “THAT’S MY WIFE!!”

At least one assassination attempt on Leia’s life has been thwarted because the person planning on slipping something in her drink at an important function started chatting with him as cover not realizing who they were talking to and he sensed something was fishy before they could slip away.

One day he goes to the Jedi Temple to pick up his kids from a training thing and a new-ish Jedi recruit who’s a little too overzealous about security calls Luke in to make sure he’s the right guy, and when Luke shakes his head and, holding back laughter, very seriously says “No, I’ve never seen that man in my life” Han just looks him dead in the eye and replies “We were alone on Hoth, kid. I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”

#oh im obsessed#han has the space equivalent of twitter where hes like ‘was in the spaceport with the falcon today#the attendant said ‘oh hey that looks like the ship senator organas always flying around in’ and i was like ‘yes. because it is.’’ just like#tony hawk’s twitter via @harriisonford

#the smuggling circuit all know exactly who he is tho#tragically recognizable in all disreputable dives  - @whetstonefires

Well, of course. Han’s particular curse demands he be recognized or not recognized based on what would cause him the maximum inconvenience and irritation.

#like...why use this baby word when you can just say how you feel about it

Found this in the original post tags and I just... SIGH

Here’s the thing, anon. Squick isn’t just ‘I don’t like this’, it’s ‘I think this is gross and it makes me deeply uncomfortable but I pass no judgement on those who enjoy it, because I acknowledge that everyone is different and those same people may have the same visceral reaction some of the things I enjoy’ and was originally made popular in the kink community.

So yeah, if you want to say that every time you come across a trope or whatever you find icky then go ahead, say that every time.

Also, this term dates back to Usenet in the early nineties, so sure, go off.

This frustrates me so much because squicks and triggers are fundamentally different things and as someone with PTSD, the distinction is super useful!

Squicks are things I find personally gross but may not be gross to someone else. They don’t upset me or provoke my PTSD, they simply do not pop my corn. Example: Omegaverse. I don’t like it, it makes me uncomfortable and I’m not going to read it, but if you like it, you do you.

Triggers are things which directly provoke my PTSD. This means that my triggers may seem completely normal and innocuous to someone else, because my triggers are so personal and intrinsically linked to a specific event in my life. My reactions to these triggers can include panic attacks and flashbacks to this traumatic event. Sometimes being triggered can affect me for several hours or even days.

Describing something as either a squick or a trigger allows me easily establish the difference in my potential reaction to something without having to go into painful detail about why bodily fluids might make me back button quickly but poker games might leave me a crying wreck. 

Making this distinction, and having a specific word for something that is not your slice of pie, but also not an actual psychological trigger, is also REALLY important for making sure that the word “trigger” can retain its original, specific, purposeful, and collectively understood clinical meaning (both inside and outside online fannish communities).

If we encourage everyone to lump things that just make them slightly uncomfortable or simply aren’t to their taste in under the word “trigger”, it actually dilutes the meaning of the word. It makes it harder for us all to, for the most part, collectively agree on and understand what exactly is being described when the word gets used.

And that destruction of shared precise definitions is a problem! It is really useful to have the communal language to be able to clearly and quickly delineate between “this grosses me out, no thanks” and “this is going to set off a trauma episode, rattle my brain, and probably throw off the rest of my day/week as a result” while also maintaining your privacy, and to know that you will be understood in what you are saying. Not having it is actually detrimental to the effort of making our communities safe and navigable for people living with trauma. Which is a goal that is much more important to me, personally, than the idea of not being “cutesy” (a word which in this case which sounds a lot like it’s being used as a euphemism for “cringe”).

(Also, one has to wonder if people told Shakespeare he was being childish when he made up entirely new words that are still widely used in the English language today...... 🤔)

My understanding is that “squick” was also created to avoid using more judgmental terms like “gross” or “disturbing”--like yeah, I do find X kink gross or disturbing, but that’s my personal feeling, not an objective fact about the world, and if I’m explaining to my friend who is super into X that I’d prefer they leave it out of the story they’re writing me in the fic exchange, I want to use politer language!

“Squick” does sound silly, like onomatopoeia, but I think that’s part of its role--it’s a word that defuses if, again, you’re saying something squicks you in front of an audience that may include its connoisseurs. When I say I’m squicked, I’m clearly not getting onto a high horse of dignity and moral righteousness. At the same time I’m not being so indirect for the sake of politeness--”oh, it’s not my favorite thing, I’m not sure it works for me, I haven’t found a fic about it that clicks for me”--that someone could misunderstand how much I do not want to see it.

And, to reiterate, it is a grown up word made by grown up nerds in the 90s so if you think it was somehow born on and limited to Tumblr I'm going to need you to actually do some fandom history research before you ever speak authoritatively again about anything fandom-related or adjacent.

I love and deeply miss the term “squick” and really want to see it brought back. It allows dislike for its own sake and without judgement. It’s polite, gentle, and has an air of “you do you.” A squick is not a trigger. Triggers are related to trauma. You’re allowed to not like things and not have them related to anything other than just finding them unpleasant. And that aversion can be strong! That’s okay! I really don’t like watersports. Like, gag-reflex levels of aversion, but it’s not triggering. I just really don’t like it.  I feel like we’ve lost the right/ability to just... quietly not like things and move on with our lives. Not everything is for everyone, and you don’t need a reason to not like something. Just politely and quietly excuse yourself. No need to draw attention, and if someone asks you why you just say, “No, it squicks me out.” No judgement. No narrative necessary. 

There is a sad trend of trying to make everything you personally dislike morally reprehensible in some way to justify your dislike of it. You're allowed to just not like something for no real reason. You do not have to justify why you dislike something, and the word "squick" is perfect for that. It say "look I really really don't like this thing, but it's ok if you do" and that is useful.

I think the biggest problem is that a lot of these kids are VERY into the whole fandom purity culture thing, so they actually DO want to make it out to be morally reprehensible, and they DON'T think it's ok that other ppl might be into it.

Cheerfully using “squick” since 1992, because it means a specific thing and other words do not mean that thing.

Very much SAME.

So I see 11pm was absolutely the right time to post this in terms of striking a nerve.

They're all lined up to beat your ass

Coming in with the fake out!

Bonus: And where is Catalyst during all this?

Bonus Bonus: Aaaaand Rabbit Fu

Ko-fi | Patreon

*SIGHS*

Another AO3 app that's pretending to be official when it's not (or at least isn't making it clear its unofficial.) They're using AO3's name and logo, and embedding ads.

There is no official AO3 app

Someone else is gathering your data, potentially your log in information etc and making use of it how they please. (They say they're not but their privacy policy says otherwise)

They are making money from the ads without the fic writer's consent.

They've also rated it Pegi 3 (which is ludicrous)

Please, even if you care about nothing else, for the safety of your data, please don't use this app. Certainly don't give it your AO3 log in details.

I've told AO3 that it's infringing on its copyright. I will be requesting they remove access of my work as I do not consent to my creative content being used to generate ad revenue for them.

I will be reporting it as incorrectly rated.

The only email address I can find is Narusta@gmail.com which is included in their privacy policy, and boboxway13@gmail.com as their developer.

THERE IS NO AO3 APP