#but i specifically censored the images because i want people to actually see the post

[spirk-trek]

The Sensuous Vulcan | Artwork by Gayle F for her story Desert Heat (1977)

Read the full fic HERE. It's a quintessential piece of K/S history (featuring the first ever mention of double ridges... if you know, you know).

[runawaymarbles]

Hii!

I don’t understand what’s going on with AO3 and the election? I’ve been using it for about a year so this is all new to me! Is Tiffany getting elected actually bad?

I hate censorship, so seeing posts about them censoring stuff is concerning but idk how much truth to it there is 😳

I just want to be informed, and understand!

Hi! Welcome to AO3:)

since I'm not sure how much you know already, the background (background as interpreted by me: I am not speaking on behalf of the OTW) is: Ao3 is run by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that also runs Fanlore and publishes Transformative Works & Cultures. Anyone who has donated $10 to the OTW in the last year, and chooses "yes I want to be a member" at checkout is an OTW member. (This is not the same as having an ao3 account.) Every year, there is an election to fill either 2 or 3 seats on the Board of Directors. OTW Members (i.e. people who donated between 7/1/21 and 6/30/22, in this case) get to vote on this.

Most of the time, this election is only really followed by people on fail_fandomanon. Sometimes, it isn't.

Things the Board of Directors does: writes posts to send out to the general public when Things Are Happening (the recent csam attacks, the requests for more antiracism measures.) Writes posts to send to volunteers when Things Are Happening (see prev.) Keeps track of what all the committees are doing and how it ties in with whatever the strategic plan says they should be doing. Deals with the IRS/US laws. Approves large funding requests. Deals with emails that someone else has deemed outside their own wheelhouse. Herds cats. Proposes priorities. Points at something shiny, pats the org on the flank, and says "walk that way, walk that way!! Come on buddy, you can do it!!". etc etc etc.

Things the Board of Directors doesn't do: unilaterally determine ao3 content policy. Let us use the word "porn" on ao3 drive merch. Make decisions that are going greatly affect other volunteers' work without input and some level of agreement from said volunteers.

Anyway. This year, one of the five candidates for the three open board seats is Tiffany G. (More information about all the candidates and their platforms is at https://elections.transformativeworks.org)

Tiffany is a tag wrangler from an unspecified country that is, from context, assumed to be China. The candidate Q&A can be read here. Her answers were a little bit confusing, but she said she wanted to update the ToS policies on 'pedophilic and illegal content' because, quote, "people think we host child porn content and such things... It might... be helpful to clarify that to the public." Further down she said:

a) I support 100% “maximum inclusiveness of content”, yet there is always a boundary to everything. Since OTW is already an influential org, we need to protect our image and hold a better image to the public. I want the public to think of us as an inclusive and socially responsible community. So in general, we have to do something to change. Things like making the rating system more specific and obvious to users will be what I want to do. b) Not really restricting the content being posted. I hope it is like more warnings and ratings for posting work so people know what to expect. And all of these are not surprising to people who do not wish to see this.

I took this to mean "she wants to clarify to outsiders that ao3 does not host csam, is not only for erotica, and update the ratings and warnings system." I don't think that those things are necessary or should be a focus of the org, which is part of why I didn't vote for her.

Other people took it to mean "Tiffany is against pornographic or underage works and wants them to be banned." Some people took this, combined with her nationality, to the conclusion of "Tiffany is a secret plant of the Chinese Communist Party who wants to join the board, get all the ao3 user data, and then have the users from mainland China arrested" (despite the fact that this is not information the board would have access to, if for no other reason than ao3 is blocked in China so anyone trying to view the site from mainland china has to use a VPN anyway.) Some people are upset that the OTW elections committee "allowed" her to run in the first place, because they think that not letting anyone with opinions the current board or elections committee didn't like is an absolutely great precedent to set.

There are a bunch of comments on tw.org, and some in fail_fandomanon, that give more context to her comments in terms of Chinese fandom (though most posters still disagree with her position.)

This got... longer than planned. But to the question "Is tiffany getting elected actually bad" - If my interpretation of her statements are correct, I think it would be annoying, because she does not have the experience I think that being on the Board requires, and focuses on priorities I disagree with. Which isn't to say she'd never have a valuable perspective or ideas about something, but there are four other candidates that I think are much better suited to it at this point in time. If the people who think she is an antishipper bent on censorship are correct, she could probably make life very annoying for the rest of the board-- but considering the rest of them are not pro-censorship, I can't see how she'd have much influence in that direction in the org as a whole.

If the people who think she's doing espionage on behalf of the CCP are correct, then... look, I can't even finish that sentence because I find the idea of the CCP deciding that a) they need to get ao3 user data and b) the way to do that is to run a clearly unqualified candidate in a public board election absurd.

the tl;dr of this tl;dr is that there's a lot of fearmongering going around, and a lot of accusations and hate (and racism. let’s be real a lot of this is racism) directed her way. I don't know her, so I don't know what her "real" opinions are, but regardless of who wins the board election, ao3 is not going to be censored any time soon.

if for no other reason than if the Abuse team was told on top of all their other work, they now had to assess and remove fics reported for being "problematic", they would say "we'd prefer not to" and then proceed to not do it.

It's awesome that people are realizing the board elections and OTW membership are a thing now, though. We kept talking about how to encourage membership, and "running a very dramatic and wanky election" did not occur to us. In retrospect, I don't know why.

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

I still cant believe you and your wack fans found a twitter account posting gross art that used tags specific to that wack fetish in a way that made it very clear what the art was going to be, then clicked on the blurred image anyway and acted all shocked. You then proceeded to SHARE THE LINK TO THE ART. you were legit like "smh i cant believe this guy would post something so depraved in a public space" despite the fact you exposed a much larger audience to it than the twitter account would have ever gotten. I would have literally never seen any of that shit if your stupid ass didn't post the link. I would have gone my whole life never seeing it because i dont actively search "necrophilic feral art" on twitter.

Im not going to debate the actual ethicality of agro's art, but from your perspective: if you genuinely thought the content was harmful why did you share it???

I wonder if theres a term for this type of blunder. Theres definitely "dead dove: do not open" and "👀girl what were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament" elements at play here, but i wonder if theres a term for when internet people share niche disturbing content only to accomplish exposing the content to a larger audience and not actually do any "justice".

Anon I don’t have a twitter, did not visit his twitter, did not link his twitter, and just reblogged a few screen shots that showed his posts and heavily censored pictures of his art. I explicitly avoided any call out that posted the uncensored versions because I didn’t want anyone to have to actually look at the graphic material themselves.

And I only saw it in the first place because people linked me a call out post made by someone who has me blocked and doesn’t even like my blog lol.

You’re reaching very hard to try to catch me in a “ohoho you MUST have LIKED that stuff or you would’ve never FOUND IT” as though Agro and I didn’t have a previous falling out that made it relevant enough that my followers kept sending me receipts. I don’t know how or why the pit bull blog found all of that. You’d have to ask them, not me, because my answer is that I received some ten asks within an hour about it as soon as the post made by someone I’m not affiliated with was circulating.

Idk, anon. You’re grasping at straws on this one. I have also never gone to twitter and searched “necrophilic feral art”. I doubt the pit bull blog did either, Agro has promoted his nsfw twitter in his main account in the past. I think that just might be a more likely explanation for people finding it and being disturbed by what he posted since they could have followed his main for normal furry and warrior cats art.

[mercurygray]

I've seen a lot of people complain about lack of fic which I think it because people want to watch show in entirety first but also maybe people aren't tagging main character in fic they publish. As long as you tag the character/s it mainly features I would just do it. Just please don't tag fifty extra characters to widen reach who have nothing to do with your writing 🙄 it's so annoying when people do that. If they had your attitude my browsing experience would be so much more pleasant

Thank you, Kind Anonymous Friend, for reminding me that there is another half of the equation to NOT tagging fics - new people can't find them even when they want to! I often forget that part.

I, too, am annoyed when posts and fics are tagged 'for exposure', and I will try my best not to contribute to that problem.

Other suggestions I've gotten on this subject from the notes on this post and direct messages:

Only tag characters who actually have an active role in the fic. Tagging in this way helps increase the chances that people who track many tags will see the work in question.

Use an additionally specific tag, like 'character x oc' or 'show fanfic', to further help sorting.

Do not tag the actor's name in fic posts. This is also part of the 'exposure' tagging model and creates more ill will than anything else. Many people may be fans of the actor but not the project, or are looking for non-project related images. (The only exception to this might be if you're writing RPF for the actual actor, not the character they're playing.)

Original characters and reader fic are two different and specific classes of fanfiction, and should not be cross tagged. The audiences for these types of fic are often looking for that specific thing.

If you are using show specific or character specific tags, use a read more before longer fic posts so that people following the tag who do not read fic do not need to scroll ad infinitum past your posts. Readmores should always be used on NSFW content and warnings should be given above the readmore.

If you want your tags to be useful, don't self-censor them. Someone who doesn't wish to see content labeled 'turtles' will already be filtering on posts tagged 'turtles', not 't*rtles'. Don't make their lives harder.

If you're not saying something nice about the character, don't tag the character. 'anti-turtles' may be a better tag for that post.

[britts-galaxy-brain]

Just to clarify one thing with Lily: when you say CSEM do you mean film or photos of a real child, or animation/drawings of a fictional one?

Both are *bad*, but one is way, way worse: child sexual exploitation material/child sexual abuse material refers SPECIFICALLY and EXCLUSIVELY to the former because it is evidence of child abuse being committed and sharing those images, even in the context of a callout, is illegal.

I didn’t click on the links with those warnings but I wanted to ask, because if she’s showed or spread images of real children being abused you should report her to the police, but please please don’t link to them, you could get yourself or others in serious legal trouble, viewing those images is often traumatic, and it’s bad for survivors to have more people see their abuse.

I know why you’re sharing this stuff, but please be careful about language because I know a lot of survivors feel hurt by people equating drawings/animations which can be used to groom people to *their real life abuse*. I’m sure that’s not what you meant to do, but using CSEM/CSAM/“CP” to refer to photos of real children and to loli/shotacon characters interchangeably does survivors a disservice and I trust that you wouldn’t want to be doing that in the process of trying to call out an abuser.

Every time me or any of the other blogs refer to or post those links, they are plastered with warnings about the contents, and whether they are censored or uncensored. The only links I have in my pinned are censored at the moment. There are links floating around of her porn accounts that are uncensored, but those are only for archival purposes so when someone actually does manage to get the law's attention, there will be evidence. Lily habitually deletes incriminating things, so that's why we archive as heavily as we do. She ended up deleting the most incriminating account, so the fact that the archive exists is a good thing.

As for the contents, there are a total of four accounts across two porn sites that have been linked to Lily. Three of them are on the same site and are basically copies since she made multiple accounts. The first account that was found was the Alchorative account on e621, which still exists. That one has over 4400 images total. All fictional, with a little over 100 of those images being explicitly tagged as shota, loli, underage, etc. The other accounts were on a site called SankakuComplex. The contents in those are only fictional via technicality. Those accounts contain hyper-realistic 3D animations involving children in unspeakable situations, and at least one of the creators of those animations was arrested for using their real children as references. As I said in the warning on my pinned, the only link to that account has censored thumbnails that show nothing. The only way to determine what's in the thumbnails is to hover over it to reveal the tags.

As far ad what I've researched concerning Canadian law, they refer to ALL depictions of children in unspeakable situations as csem material, fictional or not. If the content is made in a way that obviously and specifically caters to sexual gratification, it is csem in the eyes of Canadian law. I'd appreciate you not telling me that I'm "doing actual survivors a disservice" when I am a survivor of it myself and have done my research to make damn sure the information I'm conveying is accurate. Furthermore, the reason I'm harping so hard on ALL of Lily's porn contents, including the fictional stuff that she has created and consumed, is because it directly correlates to her behavior to real life people and what she wishes she could get away with in real life. These accounts and her old fanfictions directly mirror things she's said to me directly and via her Tara Callie sockpuppet, things she's said and justified publicly, and the accusations her sister has made against her.

I have attempted to report her to the police. Since I live in a different country and law enforcement has a disgusting habit of brushing off online crime, I was ignored. All we can do now is warn others about her, and wait for her to slip up bad enough that law enforcement takes her seriously.

[opinated-user]

new sankaku accounts discovered: SpiritusKhayyamAliana

the link where you can find the google drives with the screenshots, both censored and uncensored, with the pertinent warning of the content can be found here:

(the post got marked as mature so you'll have to be older to agree to see it. but even older people should listen to the warnings. don't let curiosity get the best of you. keep yourselves safe.) in the past i have gotten alert about this account but i dismissed it as a potential troll, just like the anon originally did. my biggest reason for it was that the accounts have been pretty recently created and that messages made notice that it used a feature to recieve a constant flow of content coming from specific tags. a feature like that sounded to me like someone trying to inflate the number of an account to try to make it seem more legitimate. the anon who gave the alert has their own reasoning to think this is LO's account and i agree it sounds suspcious, mostly because of that feature and because this accounts was different to any others in the sense that they actually left comments. just 20+ comments, not that many for someone who was only making them to try to smear someone else, does it? but enough to be of an user who regularly used the site and wanted to have an active participation on it. the comments themselves are bad, but if you were someone getting out of your way to try to smear someone else... they're pretty tame for that. they don't stand out as particularly offensive, they sound like the average kind of user who would like that kind of content. this same user just dissapeared from their account for three months, around the time EOT started making her videos looking into the past history of LO. this have some connection, it might have not, but it's still weird that a recently made account that was so active and invested on the site suddenly dissapeared. just like it happened with the original accounts, we can't say for absolute certain these are LO's and since those accounts have dissapeared we can't prove it either. we only have suspicions and strong coincidences that seems to indicate her involvement, plus the whole past history of LO that makes it beliveable at the very least. if you believed that the first accounts were LO's then there's no reason why these couldn't be LO as well. this is not the only other new account i have been messaged about either, this is just the only one that got something else going on. the other account is ElethynAscentia, that reached 461 favourited images between fanart of TOH and star wars. this account recently has been "deactivated" on their profile and as far i know, nobody else has talked about it. i'm not linking it directly to keep this post on the main tags, but anyone can search for it on sankaku or i can give them the link i was send to on another ask. i don't know if it's LO's and i don't have that much of a reason to believe it, but the first one was so reprehensible and disgusting already that... if it isn't or is LO it doesn't matter anymore. she can't go any lower that supporting the works she did on those old accounts. this new account doesn't change or add anything to what we didn't already know about her. if isn't her, then it isn't hers. but if if is and LO feels even just a little bit that she can't keep being a creep without any accountability, then it's worth to spread out. LO is a creep. LO is a dangerous amoral predator. that is the only reason we care about these accounts being possibly tied to her.

Edit: Brittany recieved a time ago an ask about ElethynAscentia before and i forgot about it. either way it still had less weight behind it's possible owner than the spiritus one.

[michaelmilkers]

I'm sorry, I think you're mistaking "you are parroting the same rhetoric that conservatives wanting to ban queer content use and if you start censoring things they will push for censoring more and more, give them a hand and they'll take your arm" for "you are literally those conservatives, you personally want to ban queer content actually"

Wherever you stand on what fiction you think should be allowed (and please don't call fiction CSEM, that's a term reserved for material involving the exploitation - that's the E - of real children, applying it to fictional characters waters down the meaning and can lead to alarm fatigue like how accusing tumblr users of being pedophiles lost all meaning), all the best intentions will not stop people who do want to instate censorship like the Hays Code from taking a foot for every inch you cede. Once you concede that "censorship is good in some cases", they'll start pushing for more and more things to be counted under "in some cases".

To try and reduce this argument down to "Wow how dare you accuse me of wanting to ban queer content!" is to miss the point. At least address the actual argument - "I think people are exaggerating the risk of a slippery slope leading to conservative censorship" or "I think banning this type of content is more important than a 'what if' scenario that may or may not come up once we've banned it" or something

i was not calling fiction csem, i was directly referencing a post i saw, and the fact that tiffany g referenced CP explicitly. i know now that part wasnt clear but the post has already started spreading so i dont really know if theres a point in adding a disclaimer.

also, wrt fictional characters, the reason i stopped posting my stuff on ao3 is because i came across sexually explicit fanfics about irl minors, and when i emailed ao3 about it they said they draw no distinction between rpf and other fanfic and i should just blacklist and move on. there is also nothing in the ao3 TOS or guidelines limiting what images can be embedded in a fic, outside of what is illegal under new york law. so so someone could write a sexually explicit fic about an irl child, then embed a picture of that irl child next to graphic descriptions of them engaging in sex acts, and it would not be against TOS, as long as a copyright take down request wasnt submitted for the photograph. this is the primary reason why i take issue with ao3's mission of 'maximum inclusiveness', not because seeing fictional characters in certain situations squicks me out.

moving on, even if people were only accusing others of parroting rhetoric (they're not, i literally just now on my dash saw someone say tiffany g "tried to ban queer fic") that still holds no water if you actually break it down. the only similarities are in choice of language and the fact that the subject of children are involved. surprise, that happens sometimes! most people arguing for ao3 to change their policies are active in fandom, many of them have experience using ao3 and sites like it, many of them are queer, minors, abuse survivors, etc, they are in the same communities as you, and they disagree with you on how those communities should be conducted. that has nothing to do with conservatives wanting to retroactively erase lgbt people from public knowledge, or the hays code like you said. "children should be kept safe" or "content harming children shouldnt be allowed" are such broad statements that if you remove literally all other context, yeah, it sounds like people are saying the same thing.

see, i can do it too: when you (general you, not you specifically, anon asker) say minors shouldnt be allowed in certain fandom spaces, you are parroting conservative rhetoric that is used to argue against children being allowed at things like pride events and drag shows. fandom spaces are full of queer content, and you are denying minors access to that by making some spaces adult only. next thing you know minors wont be allowed to engage with queer fan content at all. (this is obviously completely made up and i dont agree with it, but this is the same kind of flimsy comparisons people are drawing)

and who is 'they' in this context? who is the 'they' that would push for more censorship if policies are changed? is ao3 run by conservatives who are only being kept at bay by everyone insisting the content policies shouldnt be changed? is there a huge population of conservatives in fandom spaces that somehow have more sway than everyone else and are just waiting to get their foot in the door? is there some kind of conservative governing body who have set their sites on ao3 (or even know what ao3 is) and are circling like vultures waiting to leap at the chance to turn the site into the next OAN? are the staff and volunteers at ao3 really so shit at their jobs that they would just let all of this happen?

you are making an incredibly flimsy comparison to a real world problem based on superficial similarities and then drawing the conclusion that, based on this incredibly flimsy comparison that you have convinced yourself is rock solid, the same consequences of that real world problem must also be a looming threat here, even though the context is entirely different, and the conditions for those consequences to actually happen simply are not there.

[majorbaby]

i have always flinched at the use of the terms ‘supremacist’ in a facetious way to announce ones fannish preferences because i’ve basically only ever seen that word used when describing the ideological basis for systemic racism: white supremacy and its subscribers, white supremacists. 

you’d be right to say that systemic misogyny (although i actually don’t see it called ‘systemic misogyny’ a whole lot even if that’s what it is) is a result of ‘male supremacy’ where that means a belief that men are superior to women but we don’t usually call it that, we commonly use ‘patriarchy’ or ‘toxic masculinity’ instead. in mentioning this, i mean to point out a pattern of re-appropriation of terms used to describe the oppression experienced specifically by racialized people for "harmless" purposes.

i’d been telling myself that i was being over sensitive and that no one meant anything by it and i still mostly believe the latter half. it’s true that ignoring and/or minimizing one’s own reactions to marginalization is both an inevitable consequence of being a underrepresented racialized person (or a woman, a queer person, a disabled person, a poor person or any intersections of these groups but this post is about being racialized) and also a frankly useful survival tactic... but it’s also true that i’m just more inclined to turn over rocks and look for the race angle. all of this had me thinking about writing this post and continuously coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t necessary or that i couldn’t really support it with facts.

but it turns out, I can:

supremacist, noun - plural, supremacists

1 an advocate or adherent of the supremacy of one group : a person who believes that one group of people as identified by their shared race, ethnicity, sex, gender, or religion is inherently superior to other groups and should have control over those other groups

2 WHITE SUPREMACIST

Synonyms: racialist, racist

perhaps using ‘supremacist’ colloquially, doesn’t share exactly the same weight as calling your s//b read/it of 7 million users, arr/pcmxstxrrxcx and thinking that is completely fine. The concept of the ‘master race’ was actually developed by the Nazis, but it’s been easily reappropriated as this harmless, cheeky name. I say “harmless” but i’m censoring the example because i have some concerns around that particular internet subculture. even in cases where it should be obvious why this is inappropriate, it’s still not seen as a problem.  -- edit because I used the example of the term “master race”, I should’ve mentioned here that while all racialized people have their suffering minimized, jewish people are particularly hurt by this for lots of reasons that i can’t succinctly address here but i want to at least say that people being largely (7 million subs) unbothered by this is a result of a willfully ignorance and denial of the seriousness of antisemitism - this is a result of white supremacy but all non-jewish people, particularly in leftist spaces need to take responsibility for this and include jews in social justice movements.  --

Maybe we think ‘supremacist’ is okay because it’s related to the words ‘supreme’ and ‘superior’, which have lots of benign uses:

(Lake Superior is so-named because it is the largest of the great lakes. A ‘Supreme Court’ is, in most cases, so-named because it has a higher level of authority than any of its counterparts that may exist in a particular region’s judiciary system. A Crunchwrap supreme is so-named because it’s marketed as being the answer to the question ‘hard or soft shell’ and therefore ‘the best of both worlds’ and also because it attempted to address the portability issues with tacos... burrito erasure if you ask me.)

i can’t account for every instance of the use of the word “supremacist” but i do think it’s worth mentioning that when i search the term ‘supremacist’ (not white supremacist, just supremacist) google images returns images of confederate flags, nazi imagery or anti-white supremacy protests. if i search the news i get the latest in white supremacist moves. and not that you absolutely must take my word for it, but i can’t really think of another way its commonly used. 

i’m sure people have thrown this word around in other hobbyist spaces, i’m just talking about fandom because fandom is one of my hobbies. i’m also not calling anyone racist and i’m definitely not calling anyone a white supremacist for declaring themselves to be a pancake supremacist or an air sign supremacist in their bio - i realize you’re having fun and identifying a preference or a love of something - i would assume it’s the same energy as calling yourself a cat person or a coffee enthusiast. but still i flinch, and after looking into it further, i think ‘micro aggression’ might apply here.

[deathlygristly]

Just saw an argumate reblog of old on my dash that made me think more about weird media stuff I've seen online in the last few years. And heard on kdrama podcasts.

A podcaster was talking about the kdrama Tomorrow, and she said she didn't like some of the rules of how the story's world worked so she had to think of it as just being part of that fictional world's rules in order to deal with it. I was surprised by this and I was talking to the spousal person about it later and I said "Shouldn't you do that with every fictional story?"

He agreed, but then we are both weird in similar ways.

The argumate reblog was about Gone with the Wind, and I remember once I posted about it in the long ago and some people got really mad at me. It's just...I can read a fictional book in which slave owners are the protagonists and yet somehow still understand that slavery is bad? Like I realize that I am reading something written in a specific POV and that I don't have to accept that fictional POV into my heart as true and real and good? I can't even find the words to describe this because it's just always been....like something I don't think about because it's under the conscious layer I experience. My brain just accepts that I am reading fiction without me thinking about it consciously.

I don't know. Is it a common part of being on the spectrum to be better at telling fiction from reality than neurotypicals are, or is it from growing up reading constantly, or what? The spousal person also grew up reading constantly as well as being on the spectrum, so he's not a good source of telling the difference.

Like speaking of kdramas, I can't say that watching the ones with chaebol leads has ever made me think that I should marry an extremely rich person, or that extreme economic inequality is good actually.

I don't know. It's just...fiction is fiction, and reality is reality, and it's always been so easy for me to accept the difference that it's hard to even start to comprehend people who think that fiction is real, that if you see something in a story you will automatically want to do it too or you will automatically assume that it's good and right or whatever? Like people blame their current problems on being "taught' things from the fiction they enjoyed when they were young, and I don't get it.

Maybe their desire for making some kinds of fiction unavailable or heavily censored or with disclaimers is kind of like what I read in a post once about young women who were anti-choice because they found having a choice hard, and they wanted the culture around them to force them into their desired life without them choosing it themselves. Maybe some people are projecting their inability to enjoy fiction without internalizing it to a great degree to everyone else. Like rather than realizing that they should be careful of fiction since they have a uniquely difficult relationship with it, they want the society around them to make sure they never encounter fiction that makes them feel bad or makes them feel like their real life should be exactly like the fictional story?

I have no idea. But then another thing I've noticed is that a lot of the same people who have a difficult relationship with media also find making the choices I made in my life 20 years ago to be revolutionary even in the current time, like not having kids or keeping your last name when you get married or the spousal person doing most of the housework or just in general not being an image of 1950s sitcoms.

I was reading a forum for ex-evangelicals earlier this afternoon and one poster said that the social dynamics in that culture tend to produce very emotionally immature adults, and I've seen a lot of people say that the young people online who are so weird about fiction and social justice issues come from fundamentalist culture, so maybe that's it? Maybe it's not the reading or the being on the spectrum, but the lack of ever believing in a religion or being in a social group based around a religion? Hmm.

I mean, the spousal person went to a Catholic school K-8, but he never actually believed in it either. I don't know. I will talk to him about it tonight.

[queenofthursday6599-blog]

Dear baby tumblr users

I just want to let any of the little baby accounts that follow me now because of the stupid new rule tumblr put in place to know:

If you don't have at least have some number of liked posts (not from me specifically but anywhere on here) in your Liked folder, by like a week after you've followed me, I will assume you are a bot and report & block you as such.

Or better yet start making posts yourself, like at least 1, or reblogging things you like. Have that be the first thing you do when you can start doing stuff.

I don't know what you think tumblr is, but this is a blogging site, you kind of gotta give the rest of us at least a vague idea that you're a sentient being with human experiences and desires ok.

What you should do on Tumblr

Now I don't mean put personal details like your real name, or where you live/work/go to school, or what your triggers are. That's none of any of our business, and honestly you shouldn't be putting that anywhere else either.

Stuff like your hobbies, or favorite books/tvshows/movies, or some weird out there thing that happened to you one time.

You want to interact with fandom more, this is a pretty good website to do it on, especially if it's for collaborative works.

You want to role play, there's entire role play communities on here.

You wanna do nothing but follow feel good blogs that posts nothing but cute animal photos you can do that.

Tumblr is what I like to call day-walking social media. In the fact that it allows you to be an absolute little creature on here in your own time, and be able to pass as a normal member of society IRL if you're doing it right.

If you're trying to get internet famous, you've infamously come to the wrong place as the most famous users on tumblr tend to be people the average tumblr user base has done their best to run off the site.

How tumblr works best is if what you're most easily identified as among your fellow tumblrites is your personal interests and quirks rather than your personal information.

There's no such thing as spam liking or spam reblogging on tumblr. You can dig into someone's post archive and like and reblog every single one of their posts and nothings going to happen to you or the person you're reblogging stuff from.

Blocking

You don't need a reason to block anyone.

I've blocked people for just seeing them spew hateful shit directed at another user and that made me uncomfortable.

I've blocked people who're in the same fandoms as me just because some of the stuff the write/draw makes me uncomfy.

I've blocked blogs who just makes posts about stuff I'm uninterested in but constantly come up in my search results because we're in the same fandom. As there's only so many variations of character/reader story tag variations I can be bothered to put into the block tag function before I just get sick of doing it.

I've blocked people for dumb blorbo opinions that I just cannot agree with, because that's far better than starting beef with a rando because I saw that they view a character differently than I do.

I've blocked people who I can only assume were making a trolling attempt in the comments of my own posts. Or they really were that illiterate and gutsy enough to come yell at me for their dumb interpretation of what I posted on my own post.

Tagging

There's the tag block feature as I mentioned earlier, though be warned it's not quite perfect.

Dumb people will try and censor themselves in the tags, which means it doesn't get blocked when you try and block that tag. So don't use numbers or symbols in place of letters. Not to mention improperly tagging all together.

Such as tagging a flashing image of something as Epilepsy rather than tagging it as Flashing, which is actually dangerous. As people who actually have Epilepsy tend to use their tag as a way to talk about their experiences and talk to fellow epileptic people meaning that they could get bombarded with flashing images unexpectedly if you're tagging flashing imagery as Epilepsy.

[nevergeneralize]

Hi! This might seem a strange question but: what is so saddening about the twitter thing. To be honest in my country twitter never really became a thing so I mostly observed sometimes what happened there. But to me it didn't really seemed like a useful thing, or to be honest a safe thing. I heard that many got censored there or were doxxed for saying the not correct thing. So my question: why is it now saddening? Sorry for my english. I really like your yuumori posts! Thank you!

Hi! Not a strange question! It’s actually one that I have been giving a lot of thought to, because your negative impression from the outside is also true in some ways. (Standard disclaimer that since the platform is so big and the user base is diverse, I imagine there are many many different perspectives on / experiences of Twitter, so mine is particular and likely not very representative etc etc.) This turned out so so long I’m sorry if this is way more than you asked for! Also thank you for asking and I’m very glad you enjoy my yuumori posts that’s super nice to hear!! 💚 (also no need to apologize for your English you were quite clear!)

I’ve spent most of my time on Twitter specifically in fandom spaces, and I think it is/was a good platform for having certain kinds of interactions/experiences in those spaces, so I will miss it for that. ALSO I think it’s such a big, popular platform (and one of the few to allow/host NSFW!) that it’s just absorbed a lot of creators which might otherwise be elsewhere; maybe it will be good and healthy to find artists and writers and friends on different platforms, but maybe the (re)atomization will feel scattered and I will engage less due to inconvenience and that will be a genuine loss. Hard to say!

Things I do/did on Twitter that I might miss doing specifically on Twitter or at least have to adjust habits:

1. Browsing art and writing! I used Twitter Lists to curate my experience fairly well, and had found many wonderful accounts to follow. Obviously that’s available here, too, though I do worry specifically that many artists I follow on twitter who post adult content will have a hard time finding new spaces and I will miss them. Honestly the tagging system and the format of image posts on tumblr is just a straight up improvement to this experience but not all the artists/writers I love to see are here! Hopefully they will be somewhere!

2. Posting art and thoughts! Again I think tumblr is just as good if not better for this at a structural level BUT I do find myself often feeling like I need to meet a certain standard of quality before I want to post something; on the art side there’s much less of a culture of posting WIPs here, in my experience, so I usually only post finished art when a lot of what I produce is just neat little sketchies. I don’t Need to post all things I create or am in the midst of creating but I do love seeing other people’s half-baked sketches and casual underdeveloped ideas and artistic processes and it is sometimes fun to post more of mine, which I have generally felt more welcome to do on twitter. And similarly on the writing side I feel like having One Good Joke or a cute hot take about a thing I’m watching/reading/thinking about is exactly what twitter is in the market for, and I come here mostly when I have an entire essay in my heart yearning to be free. Can I adjust that attitude? Yes! I can liveblog the next anime I watch or the Grand Prix series or my [redacted]th rewatch of Yuumori, people definitely do post in that format here and also who cares! It’s easier to feel freer to have a half-finished and conversational thought rather than a Fully Developed Thesis on twitter but it’s not the only place for that, so I will adjust!

3. Discovering specific things!

3a. Zines! A good network of zine promotion had built up on twitter at least in the fandoms I was in. I don’t (yet) see that on tumblr but maybe it is or will be here, I don’t see why it couldn’t be. Same deal for ship weeks and big bangs and other fandom events but I do see more of those cross over to or be hosted on tumblr so maybe the zine universe will move. Improvise adapt overcome

3b. Merch! Similarly I am more often led to Things To Purchase on twitter than from anywhere else on social media, which maybe should go in the negatives column but I really like financially supporting fandom artists, small makers, etc and I am fortunate to have the capacity to do so! People that I follow there often find and boost delightful art sales, commissions, merch, apparel from small makers, etc, and this adds to my life; weirdly I am markedly more fashionable since spending more time on fandom-twitter the last few years. [[Side note seriously everybody my best life advice is to wear more anime merch or whatever it is that delights you, people who know what it is get a shock of joy and recognition seeing you in the world and people who don’t know what it is still like to say “wow cool design what is it” and having either of those interactions available to happen in my day causes more positive interactions with strangers and thus probably a very slightly kinder outlook on humanity. I’m so serious about this, choosing Weird and Particular/Personal Fashion is good for you and you will feel 1-3% more connected to your fellow human beings]] As with zines I don’t really know why that’s not also here on tumblr from a structural platform feature perspective but it has not been, in my experience, so I think it’s just a platform culture thing? If we’re mutuals know that I would love to see your and your friends’ merch/prints/commission openings appear on my dash, I’m an easy mark, a real rube

4. Social or parasocial relationships with actual human beings! This one is probably its own real long post so I won’t go too deep but I have found a specific model of distant but warm internet friendship available via the model of: actually type out my excited/complimentary internal response to a piece of creative work or contribute to a conversation about a fandom thing, repeat many times, also post my art or my media opinions with no one particular in mind, begin to recognize people who engage with me often, begin to value and take interest in that specific person’s opinions, form a model of them as a person and include them in my social brain/universe (having thoughts like “what would X think about this” / “X would really like this” / “I look forward to hearing from X” / “I hope X is doing well” / etc). I think twitter specifically contributes to a super low barrier to entry on actually responding to things; I sometimes find myself consuming tumblr like it’s an rss feed of Very Important And Thoughtful Bloggers who I could never be as interesting/funny/insightful as, and it’s just… not as easy to fall into that mindset and build up a wall of unapproachability on twitter, maybe because everything feels sort of ephemeral anyway? So I worry there will be something lost, there, but I’m trying to maintain the idea that talking to other people online (with kindness and consideration obviously) is mutually beneficial (everyone is constantly asking for more interaction, right??) and that I have the right to respond to things. This is also something I have a hard time doing on chat servers, which I have a much more tumultuous relationship to: I usually join, chat for a while, read and wish I were participating, feel embarrassed about dropping in and out, feel embarrassed about inserting myself into what feel more like personal conversations between people I always imagine to already be closer friends with each other than I ever will be, eventually stop engaging at all due to a weird and specific FOMO guilt. And twitter by contrast makes available an extremely easy model of maintaining casual connections based on mutual interest. Where a chat server or forum feels like a party at which I must enter or leave particular conversations, twitter interaction is more like seeing the same person over and over again at the game shop / coffee shop / ice rink and giving them a friendly nod or saying “hey rad sweater” or “how’s the novel going” or “wow your [specific skating move] looks really good!” I find this type of mutually-low-demand social “ping” to be really pleasant, personally, and it’s nice to have that available online and in fandom. (Again, lots of thoughts left to unpack on this topic. It’s also maybe less relevant than it has been the past few years after the return to physical spaces and the “social ping” being available offline again, but oh boy did I truly need this in the depths of the pandemic, and twitter was generally pretty good for it!)

Things that make me actually feel a sense of relief that this garbage fire platform is dying and we are all free at last:

1. The danger of doxxing and/or getting threatened! Real and true! I could post a Whole Thing about cancel culture and fancop behavior and ship wars or whatever and I will refrain here but my god, I worried about Thought Crimes constantly on Twitter, to the degree that I stopped really posting to the platform months ago. I was directly(ish) threatened with doxxing as a member of an AO3 committee during the email attacks earlier this year, so that made me extra vigilant, and I witnessed several instances of people getting harassed or threatened or otherwise yelled off the platform during my few years of fandom there. And the consistent visibility of conversations about fandom (and broader) politics promotes a low-grade paranoia about the whole thing at all times so I just thought about it constantly forever! Unsurprisingly this pervasive dulling toxic sludge of social hypervigilance feels real bad for the brain! Especially having chosen to be there and to spend my free time and energy in the fandom community.

2. The constant intrusion of content topics that I at best do not care about and at worst actively do not want to see! As much as I praised the Lists curation above, this is imperfect and twitter honestly has very few robust tools for filtering things, so I just scroll past a bunch of stuff that is at best tangential to my interests. And even beyond The Algorithm I think also there’s a sort of platform culture about needing to engage in Big Topics which means that specifically the worst most “engaging”/contentious political topics break through on a repeating basis, and every twitter session was always at risk of ending in exhaustion and hopelessness. Also not great for the brain!

I mentioned to an IRL friend that I was worrying a little bit about where to take my fandom activities and he said “I don’t know why everyone doesn’t use Reddit, it’s so much better for that,” and I thought “what a bonkers opinion to have” (I said out loud “Well your mind is very different from mine and I treasure your friendship for that. Also that’s a bonkers opinion to have.”). Every platform has a culture that grows organically from its available features/mechanics of social interaction and from its particular history, and I will mourn the specificity of twitter if it really dies, even though I have/had a very complicated and not wholly positive relationship to it. It’s something like losing a job or graduating from school, on a smaller scale: I may have hated it there sometimes and I might have had complicated feelings even about the existence of the institution itself, but the shape of my life and the way I spend my time will change due to this thing being over, and I think change itself may sometimes be cause for a feeling that is very like grief.

[theorderofthetriad]

Hey op, you make a good point in your post but you might want to reformulate it a little bit..? Because a lot of pro-censorship people using CP are talking about fictional content (like underage fictional characters, etc) and not actual CP, which *is* absolutely banned on AO3. I know it's not your intention at all, but to someone who doesn't know the context, your reply might make it seem like there are real images of real, abused children on the website, when in fact anyone trying to upload any of those is getting banned and reported to the police.

((Oh also if it's ok, if you reply to my previous ask could you please screenshot it and censor the name instead of replying directly? I would prefer not to get harassed by the same mob that is currently attacking you 😅))

no, i won't screenshot this. you chose to send a message to someone who had anon off, you don't get to then dictate what happens to the ask after that. If you think your point is so important to make that you had to come to my ask box where anon is off to make it, then it's an important enough point to keep your name attached to. This response is specifically a response, to you, so, yes, i'm keeping your username attached to it. I will, however, turn reblogs off and not put it in any tags, because this response doesn't need to be spread around, it just needs to be on my blog.

Also, if I'm being attacked, it is news to me. There are some people responding to that post and clowning, but i haven't been, like, targeted, by people disagreeing with it.

The post in question

On to your actual point. The post has over 10,000 notes and is out in the tumblr wild, so i don't understand what you think me editing it now is gonna do about the wording issues you think this post has.

That being said, I was actually really specific about my wording. I used the phrase "CP" a total of once in that post, when i was roughly quoting a post made by someone for censorship: "[i saw] a post literally on my dash of the "if you're not for banning content on ao3 just admit that you like CP" ilk." I never referred to the content on ao3 as CP, somebody else referred to the content on ao3 as CP, that's literally the entire reason i made the damn post.

In my next paragraph, I say that "I do not like and do not want to see underage content," note i did not say CP. I said underage content because underage content is the thing that ao3 has, it's the warning tag that ao3 uses that I use to exclude content, its tag's existence is the thing that people for censorship are pearl-clutching about.

I didn't waste words on the post trying to specify that ao3 doesn't allow actual CSEM, or explaining how the "underage" tag includes a huge diversity of non-pornographic content because i was trying to make a very specific point concisely. The post was about how censorship will only censor the filtering system and not stop the content from being published and viewed on the site, and as such without those filters people will see such content unwillingly, I wrote my post with the focus on that.

Also I didn't waste words because, and I can't stress this enough, the pro-censorship crowd does not give a flying fuck about the semantics of CP vs CSEM vs CSAM vs "Underage", they will use all those phrases interchangeably as though they are all the same thing, they will not admit they're wrong or fix their word usage when someone points it out to them (and many many posts have been made to point this out to them.) So I saw no point in specifying those differences in my post. I'm not going to waste my time hitting my head against a brick wall when I've seen people do the same countless times before and not work, I'm not wasting my time making the same damn arguments on the subject that have already been hashed out to death.

If someone read my post without context, misunderstood what I wrote, and decided to assume they understand the situation based solely on my post without bothering to further look into the subject, that is 100% their problem, and not of my concern.

[destielficarchive]

The Wayback Machine and the Quest for Deleted Fics

What is the Wayback Machine?

The Wayback Machine is the time machine used by Peabody and Sherman in "Rocky and Bullwinkle." It's also the nickname of The Internet Archive (https://web.archive.org/) which, since the late '90s, has crawled the internet and just. Archived everything it finds. (You can read their history here). People now can enter pages they want to save (I used it to preserve some censored Chinese gay books, for example, entering all the URLs myself to be sure that Wayback captured them), and I don't even know how else it finds stuff, but it's pretty amazing. How amazing?

This is their capture of my Tripod anime webpage from when I was in college. Some of the graphics are missing, yeah, but like. I made this website in fricken 1999, and stopped maintaining it in 2001 or 2002. Back then my e-mail address was still "unforth@penpen.com" and webrings were a thing and I was well known for creating Winamp skins in Jasc. That it's there at all is pretty fucking incredible.

Who cares about your old anime page?

Other than me? No one. BUT. Wayback's "catch all, save all, store all" approach to archiving means it's an invaluable tool for finding deleted fic. For example, here's their capture of "Rock Salt and Feathers," which was (as far as I know) the first Destiel-specific fic archive made on the internet, and many of the earliest Destiel fics were posted there or x-posted there from LJ.

The owner deleted it in 2010, taking all the fics with it, but many can still be accessed - and saved by my project, and read by anyone who wants to - because they're in Wayback.

Okay, that's way more interesting. How do I use Wayback to find stuff like that?

The key to using the Wayback Machine to find old and/or deleted fics is that you need the original url. Thus, teaching someone how to use Wayback to find deleted fics ends up mostly being about teaching someone tricks for finding ancient urls for fics that have been deleted (and occasionally when you find the url you actually discover the fic isn't deleted at all, which is always nice!). Once you have the URL, the "how to use" part is easy, you just go to web.archive.org and enter the url in the search box.

The bar graph of years shows every time Wayback Machine "captured" (archived) the specific page at that url. Often, each of these captures will be different, especially for websites that update regularly (like an archive or an author's works page). When you click on a year, you'll get a calendar, and then you just pick the date and time you want (I highlighted April 18th, 2009, as an example, and because it was my dad's 68th birthday so why not? It's also about a month before I personally started watching SPN, ah, memories...). Once you've picked the capture you want, it'll load the next page and show you a capture of it - so here's a (different than above) capture of Rock Salt and Feathers, dating to within a week of when the website was first founded! The same bar graph is now up top, and you can click on the bar you want to jump to that date and see how the website changed over time - so this capture on April 18th, 2009, is pretty bare bones; by the time of the May capture I screen capped above, things have moved along!

Further, once you're in an archive of a deleted webpage you can (or at least, you can try) to navigate it as normal, just...all within Wayback's interface. So like, on this page, I can access their list of new works (and find different ones by trying the different captures)...

...and I can even read them!

Uh oh, better watch out for those 4.20 spoilers. Anyway, the point is - if you've got the original URL, you can use it to load a deleted page into Wayback, and then navigate that website as normal...at least up until you try a link that Wayback didn't archive, and then you'll hit a "sorry, we don't have that one" page (I'm not gonna screen cap cause at this rate I'll hit Tumblr's image limit in about 2 more minutes). Not everything will be there, ever. Rock Salt and Feathers is unusually well-preserved; when I did a deep-dive and spent three days trying to find things there, I was able to preserve nearly 90% of all the fic I know of that was posted there, and some of the rest I was able to find by tracking down alts for the people who posted there - many (though not all!) had x-posted their works to LJ, and later some ALSO x-posted to AO3, once AO3 existed (Rock Salt and Feathers predates the existence of AO3 by about 6 months).

So, as you can see - using Wayback is the easy part (at least until it isn't - more on that later...it's easy on a simple page like Rock Salt and Feathers, hence my using it for examples, but it can get hella complicated for more modern, dynamic websites like AO3). The hard part?

(cutting to a read more...I hate using them cause then people don't read but this post is just. so long.)

Where am I supposed to get the original URL for a fic that's been deleted for 5 years or a decade or more?

Google search is your friend (or your preferred search engine I guess, but I always use Google). If you know the username and the exact title, it's easy - especially using quotes, which is also your friend. So, for example, I couldn't remember the URL for Rock Salt and Feathers and I didn't actually have it saved, so I just googled "rocksalt and feathers" (in quotes). It prompt got mad at me and told me rock salt should be two words, and so I changed it, and sure enough the first result was an ancient LJ post that included the links I needed. Which is to say, what you're really looking for isn't the "thing itself," but rather other websites that reference the thing in question. For works that were originally posted on LJ, FF.net, personal websites like Rock Salt and Feathers, or elsewhere, ancient rec lists tend to be winners for finding the links. Learning some search tricks can also help - like, if you don't know the exact title, try variations, or try just the part you're sure of. If you remember a quote, try searching for that. If the title is something super common, try adding the author name or, if you don't know it, search for it using "(name of fic)" destiel. Anything you can think of, remember, etc., will help. Sometimes, you just get as close as you can, and then look through the results, and often there'll be something close that even if it's not right, will lead you to a resource that'll help.

Alternatively, again for older works, searching for a different work that you know was released around the same time. So, like, looking for a fic by...idk...Fossarian? Or cautionzombies? Try search for aesc, or bauble, or obstinatrix, or annundriel - someone else who was active when Fossarian and cautionzombies were. (Obviously knowing some Destiel fandom history helps in this case, but there are enough fandom olds around that even if you don't know this info, learning it is an ask away). Especially, try searching for a contemporary whose works are still up, because you can get titles for those more easily (for example, in this case, aesc, annundriel and obstinatrix all have some works cross posted on AO3, so finding the titles is easier, and then you just...keep going til you find what you want). You can also try looking for works where they were betas or editors or gift-recipients, and/or you can kinda...map out...their old friends groups, by seeing who commented where. For example, looking for links to cautionzombies stuff? cautionzomes and annundriel were friends, which I learned by poking around a fuck-ton, and annundriel's accounts are still up, and some old cautionzombie links can be found in annundriel's journals. The links don't work but that's not the point, you just need something to plug into Wayback!

And, as a side note - just because an old LJ link is dead, don't assume that the work is lost! Many of those authors x-posted onto AO3 once they had AO3 accounts (heck, Gedry was continuing to back up works to AO3 as recently as last year), and even among those who didn't (such as annundriel or CloudyJenn, who each only backed up a few) they often simply ported their accounts to Dreamwidth, so you can find their works just by reformatting their LJ url (username.livejournal.com) to a dreamwidth url (username.dreamwidth.org - works for me too, if you want to see the awful shit I wrote in 2005). Also, sometimes you'll find they x-posted to FF.net but not AO3 (which, granted, presents FF.net own array of challenges for backing up, but that's for a different post - drop me an ask if you want me to write that up sooner rather than later, otherwise I'll just do it whenever I remember). All of which is to say - before you assume a dead link means a deleted work you can save yourself some trouble (and some heartbreak, Wayback isn't great for LJ in general because of how LJ posts and blogs were structured) it's worth your while to take a little extra time and check - okay, was it x-posted? Did the person have alternate usernames they used on different platforms? Did they have a writing community on LJ where they posted (for example, a lot of authors posted their works directly to deancasbigbang.livejournal.com or deancas-xmas.livejournal.com, and also a lot of authors made communities even just for themselves, and those communities remained even when they deleted their personal accounts). Even if you find they deleted across all platforms, it's easier to find full works from AO3 or FF.net on Wayback than it is to find works from LJ, so it's worth a try. And, honestly, with really old stuff? Finding the old work x-posted somewhere, or just asking someone like me, or the folks at @destielfanfic, is more likely to find it for you than putting an LJ url into Wayback, though in a pinch that of course is an option too.

Unforth, stop babbling about LJ, I care about deathbanjo, or apokteino, or TamrynEradni, or...

...or anyone who posted on AO3 exclusively, and deleted more recently, yeah, I get it. Of course, the tricks for finding the urls remain similar - rec lists are your friends! But, for AO3, there's another super handy trick. It doesn't always work, but it's by far the best place to start.

Go to @ao3feed-destiel.

Search for the author's name, and/or the fic title, and/or anything you can remember about the fic.

Since mid-2013, the Destiel AO3 feed Tumblr has logged probably around 75% of all the Destiel that's been posted. There ARE gaps - works that weren't initially tagged Destiel, or times when the feed was down and just caught nothing, or "oops the author changed their name four times and I don't know which one they were using when they posted That Fic," or "there are three people with very similar usernames" or "the fic is called 'carry on' and there are a bajillion fics with the same title." It's not perfect, but as a first step it's essential. Because, whatever you find, it'll have:

The link to the original AO3 post

The link to the author's name page at the time

The exact date and time it was originally posted

The original title, tags, etc.

If the work was in a series, the series link

And all of the links can be put into Wayback to help you find The Thing You Want. So, to use a recent example from someone I know doesn't mind having their stuff distributed (or, in this case, discovered on Wayback)...

When you click on the tinyurl, you get an AO3 error page, but, more importantly, in the enter-the-url bar, you get the original url for the fic! Which, in this case is:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/8447584

And then you can go over to Wayback, and...

Well, lookie there, it's the fic that HazelDomain locked! (Note that you'll get a "do you agree to the terms of use" and potentially other pop-ups. Just say yes and click through, there's no way to avoid them because there's no way to access these pages in Wayback as if you are "logged in as you," so the notifications and, in the case of Mature and Explicit works, the "you must be 18+ to proceed..." warnings will pop up every single time (and the 18+ one will cause you depressing issues, which in general just make Mature and Explicit deleted works MUCH harder to find, more on that later, yes this post is really gonna be that long, sorry...)

Now, suppose you weren't looking for this fic by HazelDomain, but instead were looking for one that ao3feed-Destiel didn't have on their list. Well, now is when that link to HazelDomain username comes in handy!

http://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelDomain/pseuds/HazelDomain

You can put this directly into Wayback, and it'll show HazelDomain's home page or, alternatively, if you loaded the fic above (for example) you can just click where it says HazelDomain below the title, and you'll get to go to their main page, which'll list their most recent works (on the date that the capture was taken) and some other links. Tada! You've found HazelDomain fics on Wayback.

(Side note on all of this: AO3 links are stable and permanent, which means that they do not change even if the nature of a fic changes. If the fic's posting date is edited? If the author changes their username? If the title changes? If it's added or removed from a series or a collection? If it's orphaned or added to an anonymous collection? The link will never change. That's how I know that the so-called "orphaned" version of With Understanding is actually a fake - it doesn't have the same URL as the actual version of With Understanding that apokteino posted. So, if you find a link to a work and it turns out that work has only been orphaned, not deleted, that link will still work! For example...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063581

One of sir_kingsley's link, with the exact same link it had before it was orphaned!)

Okay, but the one I want isn't on the author's page even after I checked!

As I mentioned, a basic old site like Rock Salt and Feathers? Very easy to use on Wayback. A complex website like AO3? Much more messy, which means there are a bunch of tricks you can use to try to "get at" the data. There's always the chance it's not there at all; a random ficlet by a little known author? Unlikely to have made it into Wayback, unfortunately, especially if the ficlet was Mature or Explicit rated. But, there are bunch of things you can try, and there's never any guessing which will work until you try. When I'm looking for something that's been deleted? I try them all.

Trick 1: The "/pseud" trick.

See how in HazelDomain's author link, it's listed as "users/HazelDomain/pseuds/HazelDomain"? There's a few tricks you can use related to this. First, on AO3, both "users/(username)" and "users/(username)/pseud/(username)" function as links (even if the second instance of username isn't actually a pseud and is just a repeat of the same username, as in the HazelDomain example). As such, they are different urls for Wayback machine searching purposes. Sometimes, when you search "user/(username)" you'll get results but get none when you search for "users/(username)/pseuds/(username), and vice verse. To Wayback, these are two completely different urls, so you have to check them individually - AO3 knows internally that these links route to the same place but Wayback is just basically taking screen caps (well, HTML text caps) so it doesn't know they're equal - so check both!

Trick 2: The "they changed usernames" trick.

If you know that an author changed usernames, try plugging every single one into those "user/(username)" and "user/(username)/pseud/(username)" links. Is it a lot of work? Yes. How bad did you want that fic, again?

(side note: having trouble figuring out if they had alternate usernames? Yeah, it's a nightmare. Checking old rec lists is one way to find out. If the work is in a series, there's also a trick - even if the person changes username, the "Series created by: (username)" thing at the top will still show the username they had when they created the series. Or, if they had a fic with a really unusual title, try doing a google search for that title specifically, even if it's not the one you're looking for, because the odds that two people used that crazy-specific title are low, and you'll be able to see results that might give the different name. Or-or, as yet another option...my master spreadsheet lists every alternate name for a given user that I know of...for example, deathbanjo has also been loneprairies, beenghosting, and tumbleweeds. Also note - unlike WORK links, which are stable even if the person changes their username, orphans, etc., "user/(username)" links are NOT stable. If you search for, idk, bellacatbee...

https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellacatbee

...you'll get an error, even though fairychangeling is bellacatbee and still active...

https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairychangeling)

Trick 3: The "/works" trick.

Hope you're not done giving those "users/(username)" and "users/(username)/pseuds/(username)" links a work out, because you're not done yet! Those links will just give you their home page, which will only list their 6 (...I think it's 6???) most recent works. And then you click on "works" at the side and...oh no there's nothing there! Whelp, whichever link Wayback tried to use ("users/(username)/works" or "users/(username)/pseuds/(username)/works") ...try the other! And then try it for all their username changes, if they had any! Getting frustrated yet? If you're lucky you'll have Found The Thing and you can stop, but if you haven't, we're not done yet, cause yes, there's more...

Trick 4: The "?fandom_id=27" trick.

So, I'm writing this guide specifically for Destiel, so this trick is being shared in the SPN-specific format. Every single fandom on AO3 has a fandom ID number. Supernatural's is 27. If you're looking for a different fandom, you'll just have to find it's number - you can do this by going to any author you know wrote for that fandom, going to their home/main page (users/(username) or users/(username)/pseuds/(username)) and clicking on the fandom - the results will show the fandom_id in the link. So, like, I've still got fairychangeling's page open, Thor is fandom_id 245368, MCU is 414093, Good Omens is 114591, etc. Again, these IDs are stable - fandom_id=27 will ALWAYS be Supernatural, no matter who the writer is. AND, since Wayback treats every single one of these urls as unique, even if "users/(username)/works"/"users/(username)/pseuds/(username)/works" don't work, "users/(username)/works?fandom_id=27" or "users/(username)/pseuds/(username)/works?fandom_id=27" might. And you know what comes next - yes, it's try every variation again!

Trick 5: check every capture!

Captures on Wayback are a moment in time, which means there's always a chance that each one will be different. Trying to find a work that a user wrote in 2011, but Wayback /works is only showing works from 2021 on the first page, and going to page 2 produces a dead link? Try going to the oldest capture. Try going through every single capture, until you find the title you want, if you find the title you want. The /works page wasn't captured at all? Go through every old version of their main page, and see if there's any version of it where the story you want was in the 6 most recent works they posted. Etc. Try every capture on every variation of the /users/(username) links. Test and test and test until you either find it or you've exhausted your options.

Finding lost fics is about patience and about exhausting every option before you give up. All these small variations that look like nothing? Are another chance that Wayback may have captured the work. Skipping one isn't gonna do you any favors. There's never a guarantee. Lots is simply not there. But - more is there then you'll think if you just try one link then give up.

But I'm not looking for a list of their works, I'm looking for a specific work!

The above tricks are what I use when, for example, I've just heard a person deleted their account, and I'm trying to build as complete a list as possible of the works that have been deleted. Further, even if Wayback hasn't captured the actual work, the /(username) page and the /works page will have the links. Sometimes, those links will help you discover the work was orphaned or moved to anon instead of actually deleted. Other times, you'll click it, and bam, the fic will be right there in Wayback! Still other times, it won't be...or at least not apparently. But, sure enough, there are tricks around that too. Before you give up and assume a fic isn't in Wayback at all, you can try...

Trick 1: Remove the chapter part of the link

So, you've got the link to your fic - lets use, idk, "Carry On" by TamrynEradani (I haven't actually tested this as an example yet, hopefully it works lmao for everything I need to do here... lmao).

The original link to Carry On (found on ao3feed-destiel):

http://archiveofourown.org/works/775352/chapters/1458361

AO3 assigns every work a unique number AND every chapter a unique number. If you put in a work without the "/chapters/####" part in AO3, it auto-routes you to chapter 1 and fills in the chapter number. But, not to beat this dead horse again - Wayback doesn't know how to do that! It's entirely literally. It captures only the link, exactly as the link was fed to it. Thus, if you put that link into Wayback? It gets no results. BUT, if you remove the "/chapters/1458361" part (it actually DID loop me to the chapter ID, but when I put it in WITH the Chapter ID, it found nothing - welcome to the joys and vagaries of searching for deleted fics in Wayback...)?

There's Carry On...at least sort of! Because yes, there's still a problem - that pesky "Proceed" button. Because you can't log into Wayback as if it were AO3, and Wayback is (again) literal, you can often end up in annoying cycle where (with Mature and Explicit works) you just get looped back to the "Proceed" page over and over again. There are a couple ways you can try to bypass this.

Trick 2: Check past captures!

Are we learning yet? Yep, this is a repeat. Often, going through every capture will find one or more where, for whatever reason, the Proceed page just...isn't in the way. I have no idea why that's the case, but it works - it's how I opened that HazelDomain fic above, for example. And, it works for Carry On, too - when I tried a different capture of the exact same URL?

There it is!

However, even if that doesn't work, you still have recourse.

Trick 3: the "?view_adult_work=true" trick.

When you hit that "Proceed" button, AO3 auto-adds on "?view_adult_work=true" but (hits the horse with a stick again) Wayback doesn't know that necessarily, unless you tell it. So, you can sometimes bypass the endless-loop-of-proceed problem by giving it the direct link instead. In this case...

http://archiveofourown.org/works/775352?view_adult_work=true"

or

http://archiveofourown.org/works/775352/chapters/1458361?view_adult_work=true

(this trick actually DOESN'T work with Carry On, but it DOES work sometimes, especially with one shot mature/explicit works. That said, the "check every capture" trick works more often, so definitely try that first).

Okay, so...getting somewhere, but! Carry On is 34 chapters, and this one I've found in Wayback (it's here by the way - Wayback links? Also stable. https://web.archive.org/web/20131126180609/http://archiveofourown.org/works/775352/chapters/1458361) is showing just the first chapter. And when I try to go to Chapter 2? It gets caught up in that goddamn "Proceed for 18+" thing again, and there are only two captures now, and WHAT DO?"

Trick 4: The "?view_full_work=true" trick

There are two ways to implement this trick. One is easy - when you're on the page in Wayback, you see that "Entire Work" button over the tags box? YA JUST CLICK IT! It's like magic! At least, it's magic when it works. (It does, in this case - if you want to read all of Carry On and don't want to track it down? https://web.archive.org/web/20130911072416/http://archiveofourown.org/works/775352?view_full_work=true tada!)

And see the difference there? it's the same link, just with ?view_full_work=true added to the end! So, if you've found yourself in a position where you can't get by the "Proceed" loop, OR where you try to go to Chapter 1, try every link variation, and get nothing? You can always still try:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/######?view_full_work=true

Because there's always a chance that Wayback captured that even if it didn't capture the other variations.

Unforth...I've read all this...I've tried everything...I still couldn't find the thing! What can I dooooooo....

At this point? You've mostly exhausted what you can try in Wayback. But! Wayback actually isn't the only way to find a lost fic, it's just the most obvious and most easily used by the public. There are a few others!

1. I already tagged @/destielfanfic, so I won't again, but they're a great resource for finding deleted fics that authors have said "yes you may distribute," and they've also got a list of authors who've indicated "no." I used their lists as the base for mine (and their head mod and I trade notes, and fics, semi-regularly and have for years). So, I mentioned Fossarian above? Well, you can find Fossarian fics for download by going to destielfanfic, searching for author Fossarian, and going through the links - for example, "All the Hours Wound" is available in ePub format right here!

2. If you're willing to delve into Livejournal, spnstoryfinders (https://spnstoryfinders.livejournal.com/) is a still-active community that helps find all sorts of missing SPN stories (not just Destiel) and often posts will have links for x-posts, help with finding alts/different names people have used, or have people volunteering to distribute if contacted. Honestly, personally, I'm too shy to actually contact those people, and even if you're braver than I if they haven't posted since 2015 it's anyone's guess if you'll still be able to reach them, but it's always worth a try!

3. Me. Ask me. Even if it's not on my list. Drop me a note. I know tricks, as you can see, and I'm just really experienced at this point. I've been doing this for years. And, even if I did list most of the tricks I know above, I probably forgot something, and I also have the time (...well, sometimes I do, like when I'm not spending 2.5 hrs writing blog posts about how to use Wayback lmao), and I might know pseuds for a person you don't, and I have contacts who have collections, and, and, and...

4. Speaking of collections, the Profound Bond Discord mods graciously gave my archive a chat room (it's #fic-archive-project in the collections section of the server). AND, people who are on that server who have large private fic collections can opt to give themselves the @/archivist role, and when things get deleted or when we look for things, even if I can't find it, I can tag the other archivists and see if anyone else has it. When I exhaust MY options? That's where I go. So. You can too, you don't need me to mediate that, just join the Discord.

5. There's a smaller, Wayback-esque archive webpage called http://archive.is/. It has way less in it, but I've occasionally had luck on there finding LJ stuff that Wayback didn't have.

6. As a last ditch, you can always try Google. For example, if I google: tamryneradani "carry on" destiel download - the only damn result (I made this search up off the top of my head without testing it so I'm glad it worked lmao) is shiphitsthefans's master post of TamrynEradani fic which includes download links, because Tamryn made it clear from the moment they deleted that they didn't mind distribution (I was here then, which is how I know that...). So, like, literally, you want to read Carry On, yes I linked it above on Wayback but you can also just download the e-book from this post. There are all kinds of things in all kinds of pokey places on the internet. There's a small old archive that got permission from LJ authors to PDF their works and posted about it, with links, on Tumblr, and now a lot of those originals are deleted (I don't have the link sorry, I didn't bother to save it after I downloaded everything they had) but the Tumblr posts are still up and the DL links that still work. There's master posts for fics that have been deleted but the master post still has a functional link to a full PDF. Stuff is everywhere and you don't know unless you check.

There's so, so, so much Destiel, and so much as been deleted over the years. When you look, sometimes you'll strike gold right away by just plugging the link into Wayback and YAY THERE'S THE THING, and sometimes you'll spend an hour looking and think you finally finally have it and get so close and that last PDF link on the last place you had to check after everything else didn't pan out will be broken and you'll kind of want to burn down the internet, but...you'll know you tried.

This is how I built this archive - that, and downloading as much as possible before it was deleted, so that once it was gone, I didn't have to find it, cause I already had it. Basically every fic marked as "deleted and looking for copy" on my list? I tried all of this and still couldn't find it. Not always - sometimes I just don't have time - but. When I have the time, I check, and I even occasionally check again, just in case I missed something the first time. This is how it goes. You try, and you hope, and sometimes you'll succeed, and sometimes you won't. It's hard, but if you want the fic bad enough...you do the thing.

So. This is my general tutorial on how to use Wayback. What you do with that information is up to you. Don't ask me for help finding links for things I've said I won't distribute, but if you're willing to do the leg work and try the above strategies...well, authors can't do much about Wayback, they lost that level of control the instant they posted their works, and it's there to be accessed by anyone who knows how (if it's there at all, anyway, which, well, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't).

Now you know.

Go forth and get the fic.

(And if you know of, or learn, some tricks I don't know? PLEASE DO TELL! I am always ready to learn more!)

[funkymbtifiction]

subjective perspectives

I always find it entertaining to look at multiple perspectives on the same material or individual, but it always kind of surprises me how subjective viewpoints can obscure the truth. One of my friends loves to say "there's always three sides to every story: your perspective, my perspective, and the truth."

Reading Olivia de Havilland's biography painted her sister, Joan Fontaine, in a very specific light as an aggressive actress, ambitious and scheming, prone to stealing Olivia's roles and making nasty comments about her ("I am too glamorous for that part, you should ask Olivia!"). Reading it, you'd get a sense of ENTJ 3w4 for Joan. Now I am reading her autobiography ("No Bed of Roses") and not seeing any of that from her, including an alternative perspective on Olivia. From Joan's point of view, Olivia was always petty, self-serving, arrogant, and sometimes rude (showing up to a dinner in her honor two hours late, rendering the food ruined), even snubbing Joan when Joan tried to congratulate her for winning an Oscar (from Olivia's point of view, Joan 'made a grab for her' and she noped out of there). She recommended her sister for a part, after being told that she was out of the running because she made a mistake and wore an expensive outfit to the audition (they thought she was too glam, so she thought -- well, maybe Olivia will audition better than I did). Olivia blamed Joan for the feud and said she started it; Joan thought it was all Olivia's fault. Olivia said Joan was unreachable after their mother's death due to traveling; Joan said Olivia made no effort to contact her, and she had to beg to be allowed to go to the funeral. Joan doesn't come across as 3ish in her own book, she focuses more on all the bad things that have happened to her, and how unfairly she was treated, which probably indicates a negative type.

But it's weird to see them through each other's perspectives -- and to get a different view of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, whom Joan found insufferable (she went to their house once, and they both kept her waiting two hours in the garden before they eventually 'sauntered out'). It kind of hammers home how hard it is to type people who are dead, because all the information you are getting from them is either filtered through their subjective perspective (them painting themselves as the hero of their own story, and as better than they are and/or cultivating an image for you to look at and censoring the dirty details) or filtered through the subjective view of their observers. And whether a biographer likes them or not also taints the image -- a biographer who likes them ignores the bad or downplays it or casts it in a positive light; one who doesn't gives them no benefit of the doubt or emphasizes their negative attributes.

No one is all good or all bad, but sometimes people over-focus on one or another.

On a different but related note, I watched Last Night in Soho the other day, and that further emphasizes self-driven perspectives, where people see and think what occurs to them, rather than being objective about it. It's also about a withdrawn type / intuitive who would rather live in their mind / a fantasy world than in the real one (she actually resists going out with her friends to go home and sleep, where she lives vicariously through dreams about a girl in the 60s... until those dreams take a negative / dark turn, and then she starts actively fearing merging into them). Her hunches wind up wrong, because her own sympathy with a certain point of view obscures the truth -- which I suppose is the entire point of this post: the realization that most people are filtering life through a subjective perception of some sort, including how they see and feel about others, and even themselves -- which is why it can be hard to find your type. It takes a while to find the truth beneath the subjective ideals of what you think / want to be.

[wyrmoffastring]

Oh NOW you demand answers, okay, cool. Especially since you closed the thread.

No problem, Jason, I got you:

Purchasing a digital item gives you access to a form of that item that others, who did not purchase said item, do not legally have. Piracy exists, of course, but if you want to obtain something legally, you pay for it. if I want to buy a digital wallpaper, the seller will then provide me with a full resolution of the image, that I could not, legally obtain otherwise.

Now personally I believe piracy can be ethical. I think it is ethical to pirate and distribute media censored by oppressive governments. I think it is ethical to pirate old media that otherwise could be deliberately destroyed by a publisher simply because the publisher's policy is to destroy old stock. Or because the publisher employs a DRM that is destructive to the user hardware or contains malware.

Which leads me onto your second point:

NFT is not the same as DRM.

When you purchase NFT you get bragging rights. You get to say you paid money for an online picture that was not created specifically for you and was made only to be sold as a sort of internet trading card. You're allowed to transfer the link to the image into your own NFT wallet. That's it. Everyone else can see the NFT. Everyone else can right click and save the image. You get to brag you paid money for the image.

DRM limits the way a person can interact with digital media. A DRM will check if your copy of a game was legally purchased and stop you from using it if it detects, well, many things. Often even if your game was bought legally, you don't get to play it (thanks Ubisoft, I really enjoy not being able to play Anno 2070 after I paid full price).

Now, hold up, I hear you cry, but what if you don't pay for a specific quality of an image? What if you just pay for a commission and that commission is then posted to the artist's gallery anyway, for everyone to see? That's exactly how you said paying for an NFT is! Well, as someone who does that type of work, I'm happy to explain.

When you commission an artist, they create a bespoke image for you, that they would not have created otherwise. And often you will get a higher res version compared to what is posted in the artist's gallery, but if you don't, you still didn't just pay for your name to be attached to an image everyone else can access. You paid for the service of the artist creating a digital image that they wouldn't make if you never paid them. You paid for the time they spent creating something that caters specifically to you. Like when you order a custom birthday cake, you don't complain you paid full price for the whole cake, just because you only got to eat a slice, you paid full price because that cake was made for you and would not exist otherwise.

There are of course other ways artists can make money from already created digital content. Prints are a good example, but of course Jason already said how bad that is for the environment compared to XRPL, because oh no, you're using paper and ink! That's a higher carbon footprint than XRPL! So is buying a new sweater that I technically didn't need but I did it anyway because individual people decreasing their own carbon footprint to zero wouldn't be enough to stop, let alone reverse global warming, what we need to do is force the top polluters (corporations) to stop fucking polluting and besides, we've already been thru this, the carbon footprint of the NFT isn't what's actually the most concerning thing about them in this case. You can make prints and zines of your work with small and medium printers that you trust. I know MANY artists that do this, that do not employ print on demand corporations specifically because of their sketchy practices, and they're doing fine. But another option many furry artists are already screaming at me about is selling adopts. You create a character, design them, often even write a whole backstory, and then put them up for sale. It is a digital collector's item that's existed long before crypto. You can then use the character however you like, you gain all rights to the character and can legally roleplay as them, put them in your book, comic, whatever you want. And many people just collect them. And we didn't need NFT for it. But that doesn't allow for a middle man, so I don't think that option would work here, because CoG and Jason want something they can take a percentage off of.

Yes, artists can have other venues of getting money off their old art already. But the way you wrote about it in the thread made it clear you specifically want to be the one facilitating it.

The problem is, Jason, we don't need you to make money. But you need us. You need your authors. CoG will not exist if every writer decides to move to another venue, use twine, RPG maker, or hell, learn Python or HTML and code their own game from scratch. You have no idea how motivating to learn spite is, and what you're doing now is making a lot of people want to show they don't need you and your crypto bullshit simply out of spite.

[nibeul]

Ok, I know this will take a great deal of your time, but I was startled to see that socialism wont be able to benefit POC like us. I dont want a capitalist society, and socialism sounded appealing, but it seems like that isnt the case. I would always like to learn and understand more. If it's ok with you, are there any sources or posts that discusses this?

alright, it’s early morning hours and I’m tired but I’m up working anyways so I might as well answer this. I don’t have any linked sources atm because it’s actually not a topic that’s talked about a lot, though I’ll be grabbing some basic definitions from the dictionary and such. for the most part, I’ll be running with my own thoughts.

socialism and communism are political and economic theories. communism is the ultimate goal for a lot of people while socialism is the stepping stone to get there (aka socialism is the halfway to communism, in a broad sense). Below are your definitions for easy access:

now I’m going to assume that we’re talking about the US specifically. As of now, we know that the US is a capitalist society, I.e., market is controlled by private owners for profit instead of by the state. Surprisingly, China is also technically a capitalist society that is controlled by the communist part just in the way that it functions market wise (this is a broad generalization however, it’s a bit more complicated than that), so the argument that communism is bad because of countries like China, or that socialism is bad because of unions like the USSR (which.. also isn’t really socialist? it’s run by a communist party similar to China but it’s honestly authoritarian under the veil of “socialism”) isn’t really founded in fact.

(I apologize if you already know this information, I’m trying to make this as informative as possible so please bear with me) Imperial powers have actually intentionally meddled with growing socialist countries—I believe Brazil and Cuba are two examples of this, though again, it’s harder to find discussions on this because the US does a lot more censoring of its history than we’re led to believe/it just isn’t talked about as much thanks to propaganda/intentional framing—which has resulted in destabilization and makes the argument that socialism is inherently bad easier to make. That being said, communism and socialism aren’t the miracle “fix it” for all the issues the US has right now.

Now, I’m not going to claim that I have the end all know all on political/economic theories. I haven’t done extensive reading on these topics/systems and I’ve made some broad generalizations in order to get my point across in an err.. digestible manner? I don’t mean that in a condescending way, more so that if I tried to get into the nuance of everything I would confuse myself and probably everyone else reading because there’s a lot. With that cleared, socialism and communism are going to sound a lot more appealing than what we have going now (which is valid). That being said, capitalism is heavily engrained in US American society, and it’s going to take years to move toward that, assuming that it even gets to a point of acknowledgement with the higher ups.

The thing is, that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. Why’s that? Because the US political spectrum actually leans heavily right. The biggest lie of the two party system (which I do not like at all, and I think a lot of US Americans actually share that sentiment) is that it shows the full scope of political ideology when in fact we have one of the smallest political scopes in the world. Most countries have multiple parties (Ireland is a pretty good example, it has its own problems but it’s definitely more politically diverse) but the US is unique in the fact that we only have two, which forces you to mold yourself to its constraints (which is a whole other issue). I don’t want to get too far into that, but you might be familiar with this image:

which I won’t flat out say is a clear cut, accurate representation of the current spectrum, but it does give you the general idea (it should come up if you search on Google). We are nowhere near being able to convert to a socialist or communist system, much less function properly with one because of our current political spectrum. That is the first issue to kinda clear because a lot of people assume it is just a shift that will happen? Which is definitely not how it will work, sorry that it took me a bit to get here but I wanted to clear some background information before making conclusions.

Now to get at the core of your question, why doesn’t socialism and communism benefit us (in a broad sense)? The simple answer is racism functions separately from capitalism and can survive on its own, hence why converting to socialism or communism doesn’t actually address the problem. Here’s another issue: white leftists are just as racist as white conservatives, they’re literally just more deceitful with their racism. When a good chunk of the people backing the movement are ignorant of their own biases, you encounter yet another problem. Communism and socialism do not fix racism, as much as people want to believe it does, changing the political and economic system a country functions with does not address the core root of an already inherently racist system. My end goal is the dismantling of the current system of white supremacy, and communism/socialism are not going to suddenly get us there.