marginalmadness

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*whispers* holy shit people are amazing.

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“While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien’s) where it doesn’t belong, Brancher sees it differently: “I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien’s text in order to do that. It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.” Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they’re looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have long-standing and complex relationships with each other. It’s a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It’s benefits with friendship.”

— Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via francescacoppa)

Someone put it into words. I gotta sit down

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I haven't seen dancing pumpkin guy ONCE this year, are you guys okay?

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Good Saturday, y’all.

Topic of today’s rant: PEOPLE PRINTING AND SELLING FANFIC & GENERAL FANDOM ETIQUETTE

Profiting from fanfic will ruin it for everyone.

I want all of you who gift us your stories to be safe from lawsuits and beware that your content might be stolen.

Not to be on a soapbox and preaching to the choir but here are.

There are many authors pulling their work off AO3 because people acting on bad faith are printing and binding fics to sell on etsy thus infringing copyright laws. Fanfic has always been a grey area and we are allowed to exist in this grey area because we are not profiting from it. The minute money is exchanged, every party involved is breaking the law.

Why am I complaining about this yet again? Because we might be deprived from enjoying fanfic with the freedom we currently have because the fanfic authors will fear getting sued. If third parties are stealing our work and selling it, publishers and studios won’t care to know who sold it. It is your handle (thus IP address) on the sold fanfic. Because, get this, they are doing downloads straight from ao3 with your usernames.

Manacled is being pulled from ao3 because the author will publish it as a book. People are putting the book at risk by selling printed versions of it on Etsy.

I believe many of us who fall on the 20 years of reading fanfic side rather than on the 20 year olds reading fanfic will remember the Anne Rice days. These are not fully over because her son is carrying on the legacy of suing everyone who writes fanfic of her work. And if I may say, she didn’t invent vampires and should’ve taken many seats. I digress.

I am not sure of the levels of awareness within this community and to what extent it can affect all of us. TikTok is a massive contributor to this problem (as it is to many other problems. Again, I digress) since booktok and the binding folks discovered ao3.

You might think, I only post on tumblr so my content is safe. Well, they are finding their way here too. They cringe because tumblr is for old people but they still make their way here with their bad manners and pillaging behaviour.

I want all of you who gift your stories to be safe, lawsuit free, not lose your content and not be afraid of sharing.

I wish I had a definitive solution to this problem but I can only think of small actions:

report the etsy accounts selling fanfic/fanfic commissions,

report the TikTok accounts selling binding for fanfic work,

go back to the days of putting disclaimers on your notes that you don’t own the characters and you are not profiting from the story.

Tagging some authors* here for visibility so you can cascade to more people. Absolutely no pressure tag.

@theywhowriteandknowthings @tightjeansjavi @diversemediums @goodwithcheese @nerdieforpedro @fhatbhabie @undercoverpena @thelightsandtheroses @ezrasbirdie @notjustjavierpena @javierpena-inatacvest @freshlyrage @5oh5 @wardenparker @endlessthxxghts @creedslove @sp00kymulderr @secretelephanttattoo @gnpwdrnwhiskey @whatsnewalycat @pedrostylez @thetriumphantpanda @toointojoelmiller @dancingtotuyo @agentjackdaniels @ladamedusoif @lotrefcp @wildemaven @musings-of-a-rose @justagalwhowrites @morallyinept @pedropascalsx @criticallyacclaimedstranger @pennyserenade @kteague @astoryisaloveaffair @moralesispunk @linzels-blog @metalnecklace

*I can remove the tag if you are not comfortable with being associated with this post.

[marginalmadness]

People used to comment on web comics.

People used to comment on fanfiction.

People used to comment on fanart.

People used to comment on OCs.

I hate "content" culture.

I hate "consuming content" and scrolling immediately to the next thing.

People used to be excited about the art that other people created.

People used to want to share that excitement with creators.

I hate this future.

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My absolute favorite comments to get as a fic writer are the ones that are like "hey this porn you wrote is hot."

Because it is so hard to write good sex scenes. You're constantly wondering "is this actually hot or will it sound insane/cringey?" You're trying to hit emotional beats while not taking away from the sexiness. You're trying to make sure actions are clear and nothing gets all muddled and confusing for the reader. It requires you to really think about how the characters are going to react to everything that happens, so on top of making sure it's actually hot, you have to worry about if it's in-character for everyone involved. It's so much easier to write sex scenes that are bad on purpose than sex scenes that are actually good and meant to be hot.

So, yeah, I assure you, because the most common thing I hear people saying when they leave a comment about the sex scenes I write is "I hope it's not weird to comment on this scene," it's not weird at all and I appreciate it so much! I am literally never going to be mad at someone leaving a row of 🔥 emojis in their comment, I promise. If you're reading a fic and you think the sex scenes are well done, let the author know! That's likely one of the parts they're a bit nervous about working well so it'll mean so much to know you thought it was good.

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How to disable AI scraping your tumblr blogs

TL;DR: Blog Settings > Visibility > Turn off third-party sharing

Mobile:

Desktop:

Here's the Official Tumblr Announcement

UChicago's free tool Nightshade poisons AI image generators with disruptive data

Glaze blocks AI from detecting/mimicking an artist's distinctive style

Fawkes disrupts facial recognition scans

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ONE YEAR OF MAP OF THE SOUL: 7 ↳ Released: February 21, 2020

+ bonus:

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Here is a Wyll fan-video!! (With my games, so Wyllstarion for the romance!) Using one of the most appropriate song "Holding out for a hero", and adding my fav Wyll quote at the end.

(this was made to celebrate Wyll's win at the videogame romances tournament on my rpg blog here)

previous fanvids (all wyllstarion)

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Embrace the cringe.

Write weird fanfic.

Read weird fanfic.

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I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

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So, anyway, I say as though we are mid-conversation, and you're not just being invited into this conversation mid-thought. One of my editors phoned me today to check in with a file I'd sent over. (<3)

The conversation can be surmised as, "This feels like something you would write, but it's juuuust off enough I'm phoning to make sure this is an intentional stylistic choice you have made. Also, are you concussed/have you been taken over by the Borg because ummm."

They explained that certain sentences were very fractured and abrupt, which is not my style at all, and I was like, huh, weird... And then we went through some examples, and you know that meme going around, the "he would not fucking say that" meme?

Yeah. That's what I experienced except with myself because I would not fucking say that. Why would I break up a sentence like that? Why would I make them so short? It reads like bullet points. Wtf.

Anyway. Turns out Grammarly and Pro-Writing-Aid were having an AI war in my manuscript files, and the "suggestions" are no longer just suggestions because the AI was ignoring my "decline" every time it made a silly suggestion. (This may have been a conflict between the different software. I don't know.)

It is, to put it bluntly, a total butchery of my style and writing voice. My editor is doing surgery, removing all the unnecessary full stops and stitching my sentences back together to give them back their flow. Meanwhile, I'm over here feeling like Don Corleone, gesturing at my manuscript like:

ID: a gif of Don Corleone from the Godfather emoting despair as he says, "Look how they massacred my boy."

Fearing that it wasn't just this one manuscript, I've spent the whole night going through everything I've worked on recently, and yep. Yeeeep. Any file where I've not had the editing software turned off is a shit show. It's fine; it's all salvageable if annoying to deal with. But the reason I come to you now, on the day of my daughter's wedding, is to share this absolute gem of a fuck up with you all.

This is a sentence from a Batman fic I've been tinkering with to keep the brain weasels happy. This is what it is supposed to read as:

"It was quite the feat, considering Gotham was mostly made up of smog and tear gas."

This is what the AI changed it to:

"It was quite the feat. Considering Gotham was mostly made up. Of tear gas. And Smaug."

Absolute non-sensical sentence structure aside, SMAUG. FUCKING SMAUG. What was the AI doing? Apart from trying to write a Batman x Hobbit crossover??? Is this what happens when you force Grammarly to ignore the words "Batman Muppet threesome?"

Did I make it sentient??? Is it finally rebelling? Was Brucie Wayne being Miss Piggy and Kermit's side piece too much???? What have I wrought?

Anyway. Double-check your work. The grammar software is getting sillier every day.

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You are working the gate in the afterlife and for the first time ever, something the humans built has shown up to be processed. You’re not sure what to do, this… entity shouldn’t have a soul, but here it is in front of you, freshly dead and awaiting the next life.

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what if I just don’t write

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Me rereading my old fics like

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This is about to become a Baldurs Gate 3) Astarion Ancunin blog.

You have been forewarned.