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.

Do you ever have a problem where you just don’t know how to reply to an argument, not because you don’t know the answer, but you just don’t know where to begin? Like, the foundation of knowledge you’d need to impart to this person before you could even begin to drag them out of their sinkhole of ignorance would cost thousands of dollars if it were coming from a university?

That’s what this is for

@thebibliosphere is this the mental, and occasionally physical, reaction to people trying to impart upon you the knowledge of a magical cure/treatment? Especially any that involve essential oils?

At this point, if they bring up essential oils, I just go straight for the matches.

The real horror of Dracula is having a boss who’s a talker

Philosophers:

Full offense and pun fully intended, but I genuinely think the very existence of "dead dove, do not eat" was a fucking canary in the mines, and no one really paid attention.

Because the tag itself was created as a response to a fandom-wide tendency to disregard warnings and assume tagging was exaggerated. And then the same fucking idiots reading those tags describing things they found upsetting or disturbing or just not to their taste would STILL click into the stories and give the writer's grief about it.

And as a response writers began using the tag to signal "no, really, I MEAN the tags!"

But like.

If you really think about it, that's a solution to a different problem. The solution to "I know you tagged your story appropriately but I chose to disregard the tags and warnings by reading it anyway, even though I knew it would upset me, so now I'm upset and making it your problem" is frankly a block, a ban and wide-spread blacklisting. But fandom as a whole is fucking awful at handling bad faith, insidious arguments that appeal to community inclusion and weaponize the fact most people participating in fandom want to share the space with others, as opposed to hurting people.

So instead of upfront ridiculing this kind of maladaptive attempt to foster one's own emotional self-regulation onto random strangers on the internet, fandom compromised and came up with a redundant tag in a good faith attempt to address an imaginary nuance.

There is no nuance to this.

A writer's job is to tag their work correctly. It's not to tag it exhaustively. It's not even to tag it extensively. A writer's sole obligation, as far as AO3 and arguably fandom spaces are concerned, is to make damn sure that the tags they put on their story actually match whatever is going on in that story.

That's it.

That's all.

"But what if I don't want to read X?" Well, you don't read fic that's tagged X.

"But what if I read something that wasn't tagged X?" Well, that's very unfortunate for you, but if it is genuinely that upsetting, you have a responsibility to yourself to only browse things explicitly tagged to not include X.

"But that's not a lot of fic!" Hi, you must be new here, yes, welcome to fandom. Most of our spaces are built explicitly as a reaction to There's Not Enough Of The Thing I Want, both in canon and fandom.

"But there are things on the internet that I don't like!" Yeah, and they are also out there, offline. And, here's the thing, things existing even though we personally dislike or even hate or even flat out find offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable existing is the price we pay to secure our right to exist as individuals and creators, regardless of who finds US personally unpleasant, hateful or flat out offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable.

"But what about [illegal thing]?!" So the thing itself is illegal, because the thing itself has been deemed harmful. But your goddamn cop-poisoned authoritarian little heart needs to learn that sometimes things are illegal that aren't harmful, and defaulting to "but illegal!" is a surefire way to end up on the wrong side of the fascism pop quiz. You're not a figure of authority and the more you demand to control and exercise authority by command, rather than leadership, the less impressive you seem. You know how you make actual, genuine change in a community? You center harm and argue in good faith to find accommodations and spread awareness of real, actual problems.

But let's play your game. Let's pretend we're all brainwashed cop-abiding little cogs that do not own a single working brain cell to exercise critical thinking with. 99% of the time, when you cry about any given thing "being illegal!!!" you're correct only so far as the THING itself being illegal. The act or object is illegal. Depiction of it is not. You know why, dipshit? Because if depiction of the thing were illegal, you wouldn't be able to talk about it. You wouldn't be able to educate about it. You wouldn't be able to reexamine and discuss and understand the thing, how and why and where it happens and how to prevent it. And yeah, depiction being legal opens the door for people to make depictions that are in bad taste or probably not appropriate. Sure. But that's the price we pay, creating tools to demystify some of the most horrific things in the world and support the people who've survived them. The net good of those tools existing outweighs the harm of people misusing them.

"You're defending the indefensible!" No, you're clumsily stumbling into a conversation that's been going on for centuries, with your elementary school understanding of morality and your bone-deep police state rot filtering your perception of reality, and insisting you figured it out and everyone else at the table is an idiot for not agreeing with you. Shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and read a goddamn book.

relevant everywhere tbh

They are so mystery gang coded, someone get these kids a dog

like four decades of feminist historians have not labored tirelessly in the archives against male chauvinist viewpoints on the past to open up the compromised and hard fought but very real ways queens managed to assert aristocratic power in the medieval period for you people to call alicent hightower a MIDDLE CLASS SERVANT

Queenship in Medieval Europe, Theresa Earenfight

I don't know when everyone somehow collectively forgot the actual definition of queerbaiting but like... yall know queerbaiting was never about REAL PEOPLE'S actual identities right? It's about the MEDIA they put out.

Queerbaiting is when media hints that there will be queer rep to lure in a queer audience with no intention of ever delivering on that rep.

Queerbaiting is NOT when a celebrity experiments with gender or sexuality without coming out. They are allowed to explore!

Queerbaiting is NOT when an author writes a queer book without explicitly stating they share the same sexual or gender identity!

Queer media is NOT queerbaiting just because you don't know the creator's sexuality or assigned gender at birth!

Is the media explicitly queer? Then it's not queerbaiting! Simple as that! No one owes you an explanation of their own identity, full stop.

Also like... queerbaiting is a marketing strategy. If something just... isn't queer or feels vaguely queer without ever confirming to your level of satisfaction that it is actually queer, that's still not queerbaiting. It is literally only queerbaiting if someone uses the promise of queerness to lure you in to a piece of media only to not actually deliver on that promise.

Things that are, by definition, NOT queerbaiting:

also not queerbaiting:

canonically queer characters not ending up in your preferred ship (or any relationship)

Also not queerbaiting: unrequited love.

Also not queerbaiting: slow-burn with a actual canon resolution. It's not queerbaiting even if you feel like it took too long.

Note from Anon:

“Please say your opinion in the tags! I’m asking cuz I have two oc ships and I’m afraid that the age differences might be a problem, the first is a 28 year old x a 31 year old the other is a 41 year old x a 46 year old.”

From the bottom of my heart, anon, I am so sorry that internet culture has done this to you. I hope you make it out of whatever space taught you those lies, and find spaces and communities you can enjoy without fear of being judged for a non-issue like this.

Like…those numbers don’t even particularly qualify as age gaps in real life. I know people in real life with gaps larger than the “biggest” option in the poll. But it doesn’t matter; it’s not my business, not my relationship. Consenting adults can do whatever the hell they please, it’s not my place to judge. An age gap is not a signifier of an abusive relationship, it is a place where there is a potential for a power imbalance, that is not the same thing.

And, as if that discussion point wasn’t enough, anon is asking about *fictional characters*! The important word there is “fictional”, as in “not real”. They don’t exist except for words on a page, or lines and colors on a screen. Anything that “happens” to them, good or bad, is not real either. They are not really in a relationship, because neither person involved is real. They cannot really be hurt, and their creator is not a bad person “hurting” them; they are a human being engaged in the act of creation and creativity.

28 and 31. A three year age difference. That is what drove anon to ask the internet if they were being inappropriate.

I need a fucking drink.

Wildfire Preparedness Day 2024

(Alt text included within image.)

May 4th is not just Star Wars day, it's also Wildfire Preparedness day! So what better time to finally share my new preparedness poster?

One thing I hear a lot when discussing wildfire preparedness is that people want to protect their most treasured items, so they have them pre-packed to make them easy to grab in the event of an emergency. I've always found this kind of sad. Understandable! But sad. You shouldn't have to hide away the things you love.

Which is where the concept of a preparedness shelf comes in. The idea here is to keep all your evacuation based stuff AND your "save first" items in one spot where they can be displayed instead of hidden away, but still easily grabbed and evacuated.

This has several advantages. For one, you don't have to hide away the things you love but they will still be easy to access in one central spot. For two, if you are not home at the time of evacuation and someone else is (maybe a partner, or your neighbor, or an older child) and they call you and ask what you want them to grab, you do not have to direct them all over your house, just to one central location.

As always, use your best judgement about the hazards in your area and what works for you.

If you are in the U.S.A. and experiencing disaster related anxiety, call the Disaster Distress Hotline at 1-800-985-5990 for support and resources.

If you would like a print of this poster, you can get the high quality digital file on my website for $3, and discounted rates are available if you would like to purchase the right to make more prints! You can get files of the evacuation prep poster the same way!

raise a glass to the posts you love that end up deleted. to the fanart and fanfics you lose track of and can’t locate. to the blogs you used to look through that ended up unexpectedly disappearing. to the things you didn’t archive because you always assumed they’d be there.

This is why reblogs are important. They keep circulating posts even when the blogs are long gone.

And this is why telling artists/writers/creators their work matters means so much. You might be the only one who says it.

It is entirely too easy to get tired or despondent or feel worthless and just give up.

I’m so sorry but in the nicest way possible do yall actually read books or just read words??? Cause I’ve been seeing that trend of people not understanding how “snarled” and “eyes darkened” and “eyes softened” etc. was used in a book and like…

Genuinely, do yall just not have imagination?? Or not understand figurative language??? Also eyes do literally darken and soften have you not lived a life??? How do you read with no imagination? Is this how you get through so many books in one month - you simply don’t take the time the understand the words as they are read?

I have been so confused by this discourse. I gobbled up the 90s fantasy doorstoppers and these sorts of expressions were such mainstays that they've never tripped me up.

I remember a reader was annoyed by my use of the phrase "the column of her throat" once and I suddenly realised not everyone reads copious amounts of fanfic or historical romance growing up, either. I always loved that phrase: "column of [her/his/their] throat." It makes you imagine marble smoothness. Annoying if overused, sure, but a well-placed one is evocative.

They're simply shorthand for various creative expressions or nice images. Darkened: dangerous or horny. Softened: fondness, vulnerability. Snarled: animalistic anger (v. useful if you're writing a dragon character in human form). Writers need to have physical reactions and emotional beats for rhythm, pace, and flow, no? If you say the emotions too straightforwardly, the writer gets dinged for "telling, not showing."

Maybe a higher percentage of the population than I thought has aphantasia? Or have reading tastes really changed that much in the last few years?

Tonight, we remember one who lent his enormous talent to telling the story we have all come to love. Hail, the victorious dead!

May the Simbelmynë cover his tomb as it did the tomb of the one he so accurately portrayed.

Bernard Hill Dec 17, 1944 - May 5, 2024

my blog is a safe space for me. the rest of you are in danger i think