#may it be useful for other people's fanworks if you see this

[daeva-agas]

Casually lurking in Sailor Moon fandom and when I see posts mentioning the Shitennou's knightly titles, I think the translation are off. I don't know if those are just fansubs being wonky, or if even the official ones are not entirely correct...

I've also seen some posts say that "I don't understand what these means". The knightly titles are based on the image and properties associated with each gemstone in Japanese (so, if it has different meanings internationally, it's quite beside the point).

Jadeite: Knight of Resilience 忍耐 and Harmony 調和

忍耐 is often translated as "Patience" in fanworks. 忍耐 is better translated as "resilience", "perseverance", or "endurance". Even when colloquially used to say "be patient", the connotation of it is more along the lines of "endure this". The Harmony one is correct.

"Resilience" is because jadeite jade is the harder jade. "Harmony" because of its traditional usage in spiritual matters, so jade in general has the image of "peacefulness".

Nephrite: Knight of Wisdom 知恵 and Peace 安らぎ

This one makes me kind of laugh because of what Nephrite is like as a character/person. I almost always see 知恵 translated as "Intelligence". It's not wrong per se, but this term here refers to something deeper than just brain smarts, thus "wisdom". Things like wisdom that come from age, or innate perceptiveness, and so on.

安らぎ is peace, as in "inner peace". Basically, "serenity", though it's probably not a good idea to use this word in Sailor Moon for obvious reasons.

Nephrite being the native jade of China, it has been given very sagely meaning to it that persist even in Japanese symbolism. That's why it's like this, for somewhat similar reasons to jadeite's "harmony".

Kunzite: Knight of Virtue 純潔 and Benevolence 慈愛

純潔 can also mean Purity or Chastity. 慈愛 is sometimes translated as Affection, which is also not entirely wrong. It's just that the standard meaning is benevolence or mercy. "Affection" tends to be used in the context of parents and children. In this context probably not the best meaning to use.

This gemstone is associated with the Holy Mother Mary, of all things, that's why it's got very saintly imagery associated with it.

Zoisite: Knight of Purification 浄化 and Healing 癒し

The most straightforward one so I've never seen any wonky translation with this one. Those who are into healing crystals might already know this, but this title is based on the healing and purification qualities that a blue zoisite/tanzanite supposedly have.

[cannibalistic-deer]

It baffles me that I've seen people say "Alastor is canonically sex and touch repulsed" as a reason people "shouldn't" be shipping Alastor sexually/romantically.

Why assume that the sex repulsion applies to every relationship in his life, permanently? Some aces are sex favorable, or may develop more favorable feelings for specific people, even if otherwise repulsed.

And the same applies to touch repulsion. That's such a weak argument. Alastor canonically, and very clearly, is okay with or possibly even enjoys touch in specific situations. He does seem to be touch repulsed in general, but again, there are specific people it doesn't apply to. (Rosie is the best example, since with anyone else it is more brief, but Rosie touches him, and is the one initiating that, frequently.)

All types of attraction, or comfort levels with different manners of affection, are fluid. This isn't ever an excuse to invalidate real people who are telling you their identities, but it does mean that assumptions really can't be made about what a person would or wouldn't do.

And this type of thinking is what really leads to invalidating real people, because even if you think "being asexual means never having sexual attraction," and then an ace person shares that they think they might have experienced sexual attraction at some point but still identify as ace... then you have to be open to that. You cannot put sexualities in boxes. This applies to all sexualities.

I'm a fictive of Alastor myself, and I am sex repulsed, so I understand the discomfort, but I also understand that people are not harming any real, living person by making fanworks where Alastor is having sex. It also doesn't mean they're inherently rejecting his asexuality.

If people want to ignore Alastor being aroace completely, that's different. Alastor is canonically aroace (or asexual at minimum), and he always will be. But jumping to conclusions about what people think because you're too naive and stubborn to understand that sexuality and attraction doesn't fit into tidy little boxes is harmful and is a way of thinking that must be changed.

This became longer than intended because I was mostly thinking about the "Alastor is touch repulsed to everyone!" claims some people make, which are frankly incompatible with canon. But the rest of this post is also true.

[hermitadaymay]

WELCOME TO HERMIT-A-DAY MAY 2024!

I'm thrilled to bring this challenge to you all for the second year in a row! Hermit-a-Day May is a challenge inspired by Hermitober, but with a twist: instead of theme prompts, we focus on a specific Hermit every day!

THE RULES: 1. Any type of fanwork is welcome so long as it features, or is otherwise inspired by, the Hermit of the day. 2. Tag #hermitaday to have your fanwork reblogged, or submit it directly to the blog (Please note that while I recognize the value of fanworks involving more mature themes, and they can certainly count toward challenge completion if you're keeping track for yourself, content on this blog will be kept "PG-13" so that all may enjoy.). 3. Fanworks for one Hermit posted after the day rolls over to another Hermit's day (per the US Central time zone) will be reblogged in a big queue in June. 4. I am not interested in seeing captions or tags in which you disparage your art/skills. We're all improving all the time. Be kind to yourselves.

WHY SHOULD I PARTICIPATE? To show love to every Hermit, from the most to least subscribed, from those who have been on the server from day one to those who only joined this season! And because challenges are fun! And because, this year, there's an extra dimension to the event: a fundraiser for Gamers Outreach, featuring art incentives by @rendiggitydog and @belmarzi.

GRAND TOTAL INCENTIVE: For every $150 we raise for Gamers Outreach, belmarzi will make 10 seconds' worth of animatic, featuring as many Hermits as she can fit into the time frame.

INDIVIDUAL DONATION INCENTIVE: For every $50 (formerly $65 - changed 5/3) you personally donate to the fundraiser during the month of May, Rae rendiggitydog will draw you a shaded flats commission of a Hermit of your choice.

WHO’S RUNNING THIS? Hi! My name is Luna! You can use she/her, he/him, ze/hir, or ro/ros/roseself pronouns for me. My main blog is @as-if-unreal. Yep, before you ask, it really is just me, but to be fair I've had a lot of help.

BONUS SUNDAY PROMPTS EXPLAINED UNDER THE CUT

TFC - May 5th While he may no longer be with us physically, TFC left behind him a legacy of quiet care and good humor, and Hermitcraft would not have been the same without him.

FRIENDS OF HERMITCRAFT - May 12th There are plenty of shows, podcasts, competitions, other servers, and more woven into the internet ecosystem around Hermitcraft, and plenty more people involved in them: just as a small number of examples, Season 9's Rift opened up to a whole server of Emperor friends, and there are always allies to be made in MCC and enemies to be made in the Life Series. Today is for celebrating all of those who, while they may not be Hermits themselves, exist and entertain in proximity to them.

FAVORITE "ALT" HERMIT - May 19th HoTGuY and Poultry-Man. Helsknight and Evil Xisuma. Renbob and - look, you get the idea. This server is full of theater kids ready to toss on an alternate skin and play into a brand new character at the drop of a hat. Who's your favorite?

GROUPS AND COLLABS - May 26th This month is all about one Hermit a day... but what we really love is when they interact with each other. What does your favorite duo or group of Hermits get up to together?

[end-otw-racism]

End OTW Racism: A Call To Action

A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization

This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies

AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.

In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)

As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.

We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.

On AO3

Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note

Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post

If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note

Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit

Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish

Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!

For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.

On tumblr

Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism

Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit

Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts

On Twitter

Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet

Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism

Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism

Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!

What Do We Want?

Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:

Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.

OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:

Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

Why Are We Doing This?

16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.

In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.

Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:

Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team

Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others

And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS

By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.

Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.

It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.

This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.

We, as fans of color and our allies, find the current state of fandom and current actions (and lack thereof) unacceptable. Fandom is our space, all of ours. We, as a fandom, have a right to a racism-free space and have a duty to our fellow fans to create that space. Unlike so much of the world, this is a space we can control and make better. It is a space we must make better. To read even more about this movement, visit our FAQs.

[sonicenvy]

Let's have a chat about AO3

Hiya friends and loyal followers! My last post about AO3 blew up yesterday so I figured now would be a good time to continue the conversation about AO3.

As I mentioned in my previous post (and probably in multiple other previous posts):

AO3 is NOT a social media site. AO3 is an ARCHIVE.

So let's delve into that a bit more since people don't seem to be getting that. Fanfiction predates the internet, and was transmitted via the internet way before sites like AO3 and FF dot net. Relatively speaking, I am a fanfiction newcomer, as I first started reading fanfiction in ... 2011? or thereabouts. I say this to say that I obviously don't have as personal of a memory of a time before fanfiction archive sites (my bitty fan experiences were on teaspoon and lcfanfic), but I certainly know plenty of people via fandom online that absolutely do.

For the newest children to fanfiction please check out the following pieces of reading to get started on your fandom history education:

“Fanfiction.” Fanlore Wiki. Accessed June 15, 2023. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanfiction. Archived [https://archive.is/yJpOq].

“So I’m on AO3 and I See a Lot of People Who Put ‘I Do Not Own [Insert Fandom Here]’ before Their Story.” sonicenvy.tumblr.com, July 2, 2016. https://sonicenvy.tumblr.com/post/146818589611/mikkeneko-thepioden. Archived [https://archive.is/FRNCy]

ofhouseadama, Emily. “A Brief History of Fandom, for Those on Here Who Somehow Think Tumblr Invented Fandom.” sonicenvy.tumblr.com, May 21, 2014. https://sonicenvy.tumblr.com/post/131935827010/ofhouseadama-a-brief-history-of-fandom-for. Archived [http://archive.today/j2Rfq]

mizstorge, fantastic-nonsense, and fanculturesfancreativity. “The Places Fandom Dwells: A Cautionary Tale.” fantastic-nonsense.tumblr.com, June 29, 2017. https://fantastic-nonsense.tumblr.com/post/162395547190/the-places-fandom-dwells-a-cautionary-tale. Archived [https://archive.ph/QK2wI]

As you read through this stuff, three things should become apparent to you:

Fanworks have always existed in tenuous space -- that is, they have always been under threat of removal, or threat of loss, whether this loss was through events like the livejournal strikethrough, the loss of a fandom specific website, destruction of physical copies of the work, or C&D/legal action from original creators of the work.

Fandom has a long and colored history with many of the most defining events of early fandom history being related to threats to the community.

A need was ripe for a place to save and ARCHIVE fanworks and protect them from deletion, legal action, corporate sanitization efforts, site deaths due to the deaths of admins, etc etc.

Out of all of this, comes The Organization For Transformative Works (2007), and their brand new site Archive of Our Own (2008). The stated intention of Archive of Our Own (AO3) (bolding mine):

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization, established by fans in 2007, to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. We believe that fanworks are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate. We are proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. We preserve our fannish economy, values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans. The Archive of Our Own offers a noncommercial and nonprofit central hosting place for fanworks using open-source archiving software.

Source: Works, Organization for Transformative. “Archive of Our Own Beta.” Archive of Our Own. Accessed June 15, 2023. https://archiveofourown.org/about. Archived [http://archive.today/QYtbM]

You may also want to check out the original LiveJournal Brainstorming sessions for AO3 by astolat as archived here [https://web.archive.org/web/20220627134339/https://astolat.livejournal.com/150556.html] if you need further clarity on this point.

Some neat stuff from astolat's original posts that I find are relevant:

making it easy for people to download stories or even the entire archive for offline reading (thus widely preserving the work in case some disaster does take it down)

code-wise able to support a huge archive of possibly millions of stories.

allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult ...

As we can see both from the mission statement of OTW/AO3 and from astolat herself in the brainstorming sessions, AO3 is an ARCHIVE. It is a project that is meant to preserve and provide access to fanworks. Run for fans, by fans and meant to host any and all kind of content with none of the commercialization or censorship that fans found elsewhere. Before AO3 there were certainly numerous, disconnected, fandom specific archives for fanfiction or other fanworks. Many of these old sites have been archived (see we're getting that word again) via the opendoors project. Some, like teaspoon or lcfanfic still exists and are semi-active.

A common thread is that writers and readers weren't just using the archive site to connect. They were doing more connection through other sites like dreamwidth, livejournal, facebook, their emails and later tumblr or twitter. Archive sites were meant as a supplement to other fan spaces like message boards, blogs and journals.

So, dear friends, you might ask, what is an archive?

An archive is a place where documents, artifacts and records are kept and preserved for future reference, use and access. Archives help us maintain a better understanding of the past and protect objects, writings, documents, records and more in longevity. In the context of fanwork archiving, this means preserving fanworks in longevity/perpetuity so that fans can continue to access them for enjoyment and for historical purposes. Archiving fanwork is vital to preserving and, indeed creating fan culture and identity.

To read more about archives in general, check out this article from the American History Museum of the Smithsonian (https://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/about/what-are-archives) or this one from the US National Archives (https://www.archives.gov/about/info/whats-an-archives.html).

So AO3 is an archive. Why does this matter?

Oh, boy, I am about to get LIS nerdy on y'all. At this point in the post we can all agree that AO3 is and always has been an archive (it's in the name...). When we view and understand the site starting from this premise, a lot of, frankly stupid as fuck arguments that people have about AO3 look even dumber. Understanding AO3 primarily as an archive helps us understand:

The tagging system. Given AO3 is an archive, the tags for content on the site function exactly the same as headings in a library archive. They are designed to store information about the fic (that is, they are intended as metadata) which is then used to find the record of the fic in the archive. This is why it is important to tag what is in your fic, and to use tags properly, using the agreed meanings of particular tags.

The kinds of content that are permitted and excluded under TOS IV. The archive permits fanworks, which include: fanfiction, fanart, podfic, and fan videos. The archive thus excludes things that are not fanwork (records with no content (aka "placeholder fics"), posts asking for writing prompts or submissions, posts looking for fic, commerical promotions of ANY kind, original fiction with no relation to fan content, spam etc). Every library and archive has their own collections policies, and AO3 is not an exception. Collections Policies are generally guided by the mission statement(s) of the archiving party/library. As we saw above in both the official about page and the original brainstorming posts from astolat, AO3 is a library for fanworks, meant to preserve fanworks and is in opposition to advertising and commercialization. Therefore, if the thing you want to add to the library of AO3 is not a fanwork or contains commercialization, it does not qualify to be an object of the archive. Re: the "placeholder fic" post that I didn't know was going to blow up so much: imagine you go to the library to get a book and open it to find that it is empty or you get a DVD and play it only to find that it is the movie theater trailer for the movie. Doesn't that make no sense?

Why there is NO censoring of "adult" or other quote on quote "objectionable content". The archive does not chose to preserve works based on subjective quality or "moral purity" type standards. This is true in libraries and museums as well. We keep and save materials that people find objectionable as archiving and librarianship are and have always been diametrically opposed to censorship. As an archive AO3 follows this. Moreover, you can see in astolat's original post "allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult" as a founding idea.

Why there is no advertising, and why this includes you adding your Ko-fi or paypal or whatever the fuck. Outside of the fact that doing this violates TOS and invalidates OTW lawyer arguments for the legal existence of fanworks under US Fair Use, AO3 as an archive is meant to be a keeper of fan records, not a space for promotions. Archives do keep records (and indeed some archives keep records of advertising) but they, themselves are not using their platform to advertise for anything else.

Why there is no "AO3 algorithm". The kinds of algorithmic feed generators that sites like the t*kt*ok or whatever use are antithetical to the mission of archiving stuff and providing access to it. In an archive you search for content based on terms and headings and self-select. I'm not on the t*kt*k or whatever and I actively block and disable all "suggestion" type things so I don't entirely understand what y'all are looking with this.

Ok, that's great, why are you telling us all of this?

There is a concerning trend of newcomers both young and older to fandom and fanfiction that have not taken off the social media brain filter before coming on board. Some excellent tags I've seen on The Post™ that spawned this one include:

#guys quit bringing the worst elements of capitalism to AO3 (via @watchtowersystem)

#algorithms have rotted people's brains i swear (via @pearly--rose)

#omg stop trying to social mediaify ao3 (via @greyduckgreygoose)

There were also some bangers on my reddit post on this topic as well, but the reddit I posted it on is (rightfully) on blackout at the moment.

I think the sociamediafying of fanfiction that a lot of these people are bringing has a few major negatives:

social mediafied fandom views fanwork soley as consumable content, creating more passive, entitled participants in fandom. For fanwork=content social media brain folks, the fact that fanwork is meant to be an active and engaging thing is lost. Fanwork is a gift from one fan to other fans, it is a point for discussion, a result of people's passion and creativity. It is transformative, out of the box and part of building a niche community. When you start to see it as "content" like a random object on a feed you stop valuing it, analyzing it, and interacting with it in the same way, and are more likely to passively consume what you see as content. Social media has made "content" out of everything, and everything becomes something to scroll past in a few seconds, always looking for more stuff, the newest stuff, etc etc. It's obviously very tied to the experience of social media being used to sell you shit, but that's another conversation I think.

fanwork=content social media brain also allows some of these people to post incredibly demanding comments for "more content" on fancreators works or makes them think it's ok (and indeed creates the same result as what the writer is creating) to feed someone's incomplete fic into an ai to get a "completion".

fanwork=content social media brain also means that when these folks start creating content they feel entitled to views, hits, kudos, etc etc, and feel like it is ok to do things that they see as "gaming" the system to get their fics to be at the top of the pack. They begin to care too much about posting to get their "content" the most views because that's how things work on social media.

fanwork=content social media brain also makes some of these people think that "fic" that is "written" by an ai is acceptable fanwork, because they do not view fanwork as artwork/writing with merit, as much as an entertainment property to be consumed. How the meat gets made becomes irrelevant, because the end result is the only thing that is important.

social mediafying of fandom is something that has helped a lot of advertising and commercialization sneak its way into our spaces, which actively hurts our chances of building good communities.

social mediafying of fandom turns fanwork creation and fandom into popularity contests, which is bad for all fan spaces. The point is that we're being weird together. I've seen new, young authors post on reddit about how they feel so bad about their fic because it doesn't have 1000s of hits or because they feel incapable of writing things (even things they might want to explore) because "no one will read it, and it will not become popular". This makes me very sad.

social mediafying of fanwork also turns right around into .... wait ... you guessed it .... censorship! people are now practising self-censorship that is utterly unnecessary and completely sad to me because they are afraid of getting deleted from anywhere for "objectionable content". This carries over into new users on AO3 doing things like using leet speech for curse words, sexual content and more in the TAGS or the body of their AO3 fics. Stop Don't. You can say fuck, dead, kill, murder, cunt, cock, and whatever the fucking hell you want on AO3. That was the whole goddamn point.

These people are trying to bring fanwork=content social media brain to places like AO3. I'm not entirely sure why.

tldr; AO3 isn't a social media site for talking with your following or posting about ideas that you've had. It isn't a popularity contest. It isn't a place where there will be no inappropriate content. It isn't a place for advertising or commerical promotion. It is an ARCHIVE OF FANWORKS meant to be "allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult."

Anyone of you fans older, wiser, more well versed in fan history, and more articulate than me, please feel free to add to this. Ditto on any of you other funky LIS friends out here on tumblr dot hell.

[korrasamiweek2024]

Hi everyone! This December will mark the 10th anniversary of Korra and Asami walking hand in hand into the Spirit Portal and changing the animation game forever. Korrasami means so much to so many people, so let's give them the celebration they deserve💖

Here's a general idea of what to expect and when:

February 1st - April 30th: Prompt Submission. Let me know what kind of prompts you'd like to see! Send me a message here and I'll add it to the list.

May: Prompt Voting. Depending on how many prompt ideas are submitted, this could take one week or a few weeks. We'll see when we get there!

June - December 14th: Long stretch of time during which I'll be on my hands and knees begging you not to forget this event is a thing, and you can brainstorm and work on your submissions!

December 15th - December 21st: Korrasami Week!!!

Keep reading under the cut for rules and guidelines😊

Rules and Guidelines:

1. What's allowed? Pretty much anything! Artwork, fanfiction, gifsets, headcanons, analysis/meta, memes, etc. are all welcome, as long as they're your own work and are Korrasami-focused.

2. Explicit content is fine, but the characters need to be adults, and everything depicted MUST be consensual.

3. Please abide by Tumblr's guidelines about explicit content, otherwise there's a chance Tumblr might delete your submission! If you're not sure, you can always post your work to another site (AO3, twitter, etc.) and then link to it here. All explicit content posted and reblogged here will be tagged "nsft" so be sure to block that tag if you'd like to filter out such content!

4. No whitewashing, racism, misogyny, transphobia, ableism, or other bigotry of any kind.

5. When submitting visual or audio media, please include a description either in ALT text or in the body of the post itself.

6. Other characters and relationships from The Legend of Korra are welcome, but your submission should be primarily about Korrasami.

7. Be kind. No criticism ("constructive" or otherwise) of other people's work unless the creator explicitly requests it. If you don't like something, just keep scrolling!

8. Follow the prompts if you can! They're meant to be helpful, but if you get inspired by something else entirely, please feel free to submit whatever you make!

9. Tag for content warnings if you think something might be triggering.

10. Submit your fanwork either by mentioning @korrasamiweek2024 in the body of your post and using the #korrasamiweek2024 tag, or by submitting it directly to this blog. You can also add it to the Korrasami Week 2024 Collection on AO3. All submissions for each prompt will be reblogged or posted by the end of the day.

11. There's no such thing as a stupid question, so if you're unsure about something, feel free to ask!

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for bitching about fics I dislike on my blog?

as a foreword, this is kind of a non-issue and no one's ever told me to stop, but I'm curious what other people think of fandom etiquette.

the fandom: a fairly small one. 2.4k fics on ao3 small. I recognize most people posting in its tumblr tag small. if I tell you the name of the source you'd almost definitely be able to find me small.

the source: pornographic, which means everyone involved is or should be an adult. it's BL with a switch MC, but the fandom overwhelmingly prefers bottom MC/top LIs (love interests), to the point where I've had people be astonishingly rude to me because my favorite character is a bottom LI and some of my friends have been outright harassed for the same. I used to not care about sex positions in the slightest, but now when I see bottom MC fanworks I can't help but remember how poorly I was treated.

the fics: wildly and inexplicably popular, even though they are, frankly, poorly written. it's eternal bottom MC turned up to 11, complete with copious amounts of OOCness in order to turn every ship into the worst ye olde yaoi gender roles dynamic you can imagine. it's things like MC, canonically a 23yo plank of a dudeguy, being written as a big titted milf in his 40s (which is made more confusing by the fact that one of the LIs is already a big titted milf). it's also things like the MC being written as disliking sex and having to be coerced into it when one of the most charming things about him is that he's a hilarious sex pest, or writing the LIs sexually harassing the MC when they really would never do that. I've likened it to replacing the characters with OCs that share the same name and my friends have agreed with me. I'm honestly convinced that the author and his readers don't actually like any of the characters if they feel the need to change everyone so thoroughly.

why I might be an asshole: it's assholish to hate on free fanworks, and I've bitched about these fics on my public tumblr blog. the fandom is small enough that there's a non-zero chance of it getting back to the author and a reasonable chance that fans of the fics have seen my bitching. I'm probably projecting the hostility I've received onto someone who's done absolutely nothing to me, and I am absolutely just straight up jealous that their fics get better stats than mine. I may also be being an asshole to myself, because being critical of other people's fics has made my hypercritical of my own.

why I don't think I'm an asshole: I think everyone has the right to be bad at things, but I also think everyone has the right to be a little hater. I don't put the fandom tag on these posts; they stay on my blog and my blog alone, and if later on I feel like I was unfairly vitriolic I'll delete the posts. I only post on tumblr because I'm certain the author in question only uses twitter, which dramatically lowers the odds of him stumbling across my posts. the fics are so popular that it's definitely possible that their fans would see my posts, but I think it's unlikely that they'd bother looking at my blog because 99% of my posts are about one of the bottom LIs. I have never and would never leave comments on the fics themselves, and I generally try to keep the bitchy posts to a minimum; it's far from a constant thing.

tl;dr - I publicly bitch about fics that (in my opinion) are poorly written and extremely OOC, under the assumption that it's unlikely the author would ever see it. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[thelittlelegends]

THE LITTLE LEGENDS

This is a blog for sharing and spreading love for the smaller Zelda games in the fandom!

For everyone crying over Spirit Tracks being forgotten, to people who wish someone else remembered the struggle to find a fourth player for Four Swords or sobbing at the end of online co-op for Tri Force Heroes – this is a home to join others in that love. Mainline and third-party Zelda games are all included!

The criteria for which Zelda games count as “small” is hard to quantify. To make things easier, we went by the numbers posted to Archive of Our Own, which has the option to disambiguate which game you’re writing for and is the current best-known fanfiction site. From there, we removed some things to try and narrow it down to core game fics and picked everything that was under 1000 works.

The resulting list of Zelda games is as follows:

CDI games = 14

Zelda cartoon = 29

Cadence of Hyrule = 50

Tri Force Heroes = 51

Oracle of Seasons = 76

Oracle of Ages = 85

Zelda II: Adventure of Link = 93

Zelda (1986) = 180

Spirit Tracks = 183

Phantom Hourglass = 191

Link’s Awakening = 256

Link to the Past = 260

Minish Cap = 290

Four Swords = 359

Four Swords Adventures = 423

A Link Between Worlds = 587

Wind Waker = 739

Some of this will be a case of poor tagging, and things winding up in the wrong place. (eg. Four Swords has 1200 entries, but upon removing all Four Swords Adventures or Manga story tags it reduces to 359.) Others may not be here at all because nobody has posted it under it’s own name vs a related game or “& Related Fandoms.”

While this means these numbers are not absolute, they still represent the problem: it’s hard to find content for your favourite games if it's in the list above, and we want to fix that!

WHAT DOES THAT ENTAIL?

The event we’re planning is very chill, very low-stakes way of building up interest and knowledge, and then collecting and sharing fanworks produced.

The event month will be AUGUST, 2024.

Every few days in August we’ll make a post for each game on the list (and any bonus games that were highlighted alongside the main ones), which people can reblog with a link to the fanwork they created! You can also make your own posts and tag the blog plus the game of the day but we cannot promise to see and reblog everything.

In the lead-up to August, we will be doing round-up posts for each of the above games.

Some will be doubled up and treated as “bonuses” due to their small pool of fans (CDI, the Cartoon), and if there are some we don’t know about we may take them on as suggestions!

Each of these initial game posts will include basic stats about the game: when they were released, on what hardware, where you can find them now, and what their story was. It will also include links to a walkthrough or two, for those without access to the necessary hardware.

The purpose of these posts is to be shared!

Reblog them with your favourite artwork, current fanworks you love and adore, your favourite AU they’re featured in! Share the lore you wish everyone knew, and the characters who get forgotten!

Share prompts you’ve never gotten around to using, or ones you don’t feel competent to handle!

Do not feel bad about doing this! Every exchange or event I’ve been in, people desperately wanted prompts and ideas to spark their own imagination!

The goal is for people to learn more about games that they may have never heard of before, or not had the time or ability to engage with in full on their own. And from there we can push up those numbers on AO3 for everyone to enjoy!

The scheduled games to be “main” features of this event, and their respective introductory dates, are as follows:

May 5th = Minish Cap

May 12th = Zelda II: AoL

May 19th = Oracle of Ages / Oracle of Seasons

May 26th = Cadence of Hyrule

June 2nd = Phantom Hourglass

June 9th = Four Swords Adventures / Four Swords [Game]

June 16th = Link’s Awakening

June 23rd = Zelda (1986)

June 30th = Link to the Past

July 7th = Tri Force Heroes

July 14th = Spirit Tracks

July 21st = Link Between Worlds

July 28th = Wind Waker

Exact dates for the posting schedule of new fanworks in August will be released soon!

[olderthannetfic]

"Why I don't write F/F" thread proceeded just as unproductively as I expected. It wasn't about moralizing about the women not writing F/F, it was a question about why personal reasons for avoiding a configuration aren't reflected in opposite directions by other groups. Unlike race, gender has an almost 50/50 split, there's a scale to the proportions not there for other types of identity category. "The femslash police suck" is a factor I can understand. But why wouldn't "personal reasons I just don't feel it towards this configuration" end up an even distribution across the population? The expectation for women to write about women isn't a moral rule, it's that if you allow the logic "men in control of stories write about men (and that's why more mainstream stories center men)", then the flip side is, well, why people clamor for more women behind the camera and in the writers' room. Either accept the logic for both sides or challenge it for both sides. Instead we have the worst of both worlds, we accept it for one side and challenge it for the other. Where's the parallel universe where this imbalance somehow resulted in a different quadrant being the smallest proportion of ships?

--

Why wouldn't "personal reasons" be even? Because the kinds of issues people face based on their demographic aren't.

But I think the larger factor is how socialization affects choice of hobbies and volunteer efforts. Cis men and cis women, on average, go in for different flavors. The dudes tend to be more bothered by the idea of "not getting anything back" for what feels like work. When they do do unpaid labor, it's often the kind that accrues glory and career prospects rather than less showy social ties. Open source coding projects where they can be important, yes. Writing fanfic, no.

Looking up any analysis of volunteering and unpaid work that makes such-and-such a part of society function will get you a lot of discussion of this gendered difference. It's pervasive.

Of course, this is just a broad trend. Plenty of guys do write fanfic, and when they dominate a fanfic space, we see tons of fic focused on the female characters they find attractive, including f/f fic.

And if you're asking about cis gay men specifically... well... again, gendered socialization means that the issues faced by cis lesbians and cis gay men are not equivalent. The reasons and ways that people employ allegory to talk about things "too close to home" will likewise not be exactly the same. Traditional US gay male culture goes in for drag and for an obsession with Hollywood divas and The Golden Girls. Plenty is being mediated through female personas; it's just not translating into fanfic specifically. But most people making "Leave the fujoshi alone" arguments are not thinking about cis gays: they're thinking about people in messier identity categories.

The biggest difference is not behavior but simply that cis men are a small minority on FFN, AO3, and Wattpad, the three big fanfic archives. (Some ancient FFN research found that it was 78% female, and that's the archive known for having more men!) The places with more cis guys are much smaller and don't get talked about as much by most fandom history and fandom meta types from the AO3 side of things.

The reason cis men's taste in favorite characters isn't being "pushed back against" isn't a double standard: it's because:

Cis men simply aren't that relevant to site-wide trends on AO3

and

2. The reverse pattern does happen all the time with vanishingly little m/m and lots of f/f

You sound like you think we'd make this fanfic-specific argument about pro media. In fact, plenty of queer women are open that they produce original f/f but not f/f fanfic or they produce f/f fanworks but not fic. A lot of the "too close to home" arguments are specifically about the kind of id fuel, naked-in-public vibes of AO3-style fanfic. Writing that is less id-driven may not feel that same way. A given woman might have a much easier time writing a mystery novel about a lesbian detective who never gets laid on page than a steamy f/f bodice ripper.

The parallel universe you ask about exists. It's horny imageboards full of fan art of anime girls.

The reason you sound judgmental and are getting "unproductive" responses is that you're phrasing things as though we're refusing to solve a problem. In reality, we're attempting to analyze the situation that exists. It's a descriptive approach.

[tanoraqui]

Girl Genius Spontaneous Fanwork Event: #GetWellSoonKaja

Sat Feb 10 – Sun Feb 11

As you may have heard, our beloved Professor Kaja Foglio—writer, webmistress, and all-around madgirl—has been in and out of the hospital this week for emergency gallbladder surgery + some ambiguous, painful complications thereof. So we haven’t had any new content in a full week, not even a sketch…which means idk about you, but I am both:

jonesing for new Girl Genius content like an addict who, quite literally, is pretty sure I haven’t gone this long without some sort of update since I started reading in 2014, because these people are insanely good at regular delivery; and

very much wanting to send Kaja my support!

So! Do you have a Girl Genius WIP that’s nearly done, or could use an update? Do you have a plotbunny that’s lurked in the back of your brain for years, which you always meant to write but just never got around to? Or do you want to just grab a brand new idea from one of these event prompt lists I just scrounged up?

Event Week 2023

Event Week 2020...2: Celebrations

Event Week 2020!

Event Week 2019: Fics That Pass in the Night

Event Week 2018

Write, draw, record, film an interpretive dance or an homaging science experiment, or create any other fanwork your mad mind can dream up, and share it this weekend with the tag #GetWellSoonKaja

She will not, technically, legally, be able to read any fic, but it is the thought that counts.

Depending on where you’re posting and/or linking, I encourage you to also tag the Foglios directly to be sure she sees it! Sites include:

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

TikTok

Feel free to ask me any questions, but really, the logistics on this one are minimal. You're just energetically encouraged to spend 48 hours making and posting Girl Genius content, and to tag it #GetWellSoonKaja.

ADVANCE WITH EXCITEMENT! [x]

[cannibalistic-deer]

About Alastor and Shipping

I'm going to be completely honest here, as an Alastor fictive who is also aroace.

I think it's quite ridiculous in a sad way that aroace people who aren't fictives at all are so sensitive about people shipping Alastor.

Do you take it personally that someone is shipping an aroace character? Because you're aroace? It's not personal, and as long as nothing about canon changes, there's nothing wrong with it.

I put up with seeing drawings of this character, who I am a fictive of, doing things I would never do and am repulsed by. I hate seeing it. I'm unhappy with a significant portion of fandom content. And I just scroll past it. Because I know it's not about me, personally.

If such things became canon, it would be a problem. But no reasonable person is saying the shipping is canon.

There aren't very many "canon" ships in terms of the characters actually, currently being officially together. There's Charlie/Vaggie. And I think that's all. There are some characters who canonically have some feelings for others (ie. Pentious for Cherri Bomb) or have previous relationships (Lucifer and Lilith, etc.), but they are not presently, canonically, doing most of the things people are putting into shipping material.

But the point of shipping is NOT to make it canon. A lot of people don't want their ships to be canon at all. It's just exploring relationships between fictional characters.

And really, it's easy to imagine why so many aroace people also have Alastor ships. If a person is aroace, they may want to (or just be naturally inclined to) use a character they relate to when they are using shipping to explore topics or relationship types they don't want to personally be involved in.

NONE of the fanworks that people are making have any effect on canon. Canon!Alastor is not becoming any less aroace (or asexual at minimum) just because people are making fan content about him being in sexual or romantic relationships.

So what is the goal of complaining? To stop shipping? You can't do that. To stop people from posting about their Alastor ships? That's censorship. Being pro-censorship is not the right move.

In any case, it's all ridiculous to me. Just ship what you want. Let other people ship what they want.

And if they canonically put Alastor in some kind of relationship that changes his identity? Then sure, grab the pitchforks and have at it, because that would be erasure.

But until then, stop thinking you can police fandom content just because you personally don't like it.

[hermitadaymay]

-Removed double name tagging. This year, all submissions for each day's Hermit will only be tagged with the shorter version of their name (where applicable). For example, fanworks for Stress will be tagged "#stress," not "#stressmonster101, #stress." Notably, fanworks featuring Joel SmallishBeans will be tagged #joel.

=Updated desktop blog theme. (please look at it I did actual coding for this)

=Changed Bonus Days to Sundays.

=Time of rollover between dates will now be 12:00am US Central time (6:00am GMT).

+Added credits page.

+Added people to credit! HADM24 comes to you with the help of boatloads of my friends both online and irl and even some names you might know (keep reading).

+THE BIG ONE: Added a secondary goal for the Hermit-a-Day May event: a complete fundraiser for Gamers Outreach.

The way this community comes together to celebrate the Hermits and each other is incredible. There are something like 1,800 fanworks on this blog from last May and early June! And that's not counting what was posted on other social media platforms as the prompt calendar spread.

I wanted to do something with that momentum - something with a little more substance behind it than last year's spontaneous "hey we should all donate $14!" So I've partnered with two amazing fandom artists you may remember from their daily posts last year - @belmarzi and @rendiggitydog - so that as a community, we could make even more awesomeness come from this event.

I have created a Tiltify campaign so that donations can be made directly to GO - I will never touch the money - and tracked for our incentives:

GRAND TOTAL INCENTIVE: For every $150 we raise for Gamers Outreach (to a minimum of $300, and a maximum that is yet to be determined, but we currently have support for up to $2,100), belmarzi will make 10 seconds' worth of animatic, featuring as many Hermits as she can fit into the time frame. You can expect to see the animatic published in early July.

INDIVIDUAL DONATION INCENTIVE: For every $65 you personally donate to the fundraiser, Rae rendiggitydog will draw you a shaded flats commission of a Hermit of your choice. These will be finished in the order in which the donations are received, and may be sent to you in May or early June.

I've put a lot of work into making this happen, and I cannot tell you how excited I am for May to arrive! The campaign will be opened in mid to late April together with the posting of this year's prompt calendar.

We've got some great stuff cooking up for y'all this year, between the whole month of fanart and the fundraising incentives! Thank you all for being a part of it! The askbox is open for questions, if you have them.

Next time: the official release of the prompt calendar!

-Mod Luna

[end-otw-racism]

#Vote to End OTW Racism

A Call To Action

Earlier this week the OTW responded to our previous action and reaffirmed their commitment towards combating and preventing racism within its platforms. 

They also thanked us for working to keep holding them accountable to their goals and we intend to keep doing so. 

To that end, Fandom Against OTW Racism is calling for our Second Action!! This action is centered around the upcoming Board Elections set for August 11-14. We want to encourage everyone who can to participate in the election process and spread the word far and wide about these elections! 

Currently, 4 of the 7 Board positions are up for election, which is a majority. Now is the time to get involved. In light of multiple accounts coming forth about the state of the organization, it is clear that fundamental changes need to happen – and those can only happen with a shift in leadership, from what we currently have to one that is capable of supporting and implementing those much-needed changes.

Please join us in calling upon our fellow fans to vote to make things better for all of us!

How to get involved:

With four Board Seats open, now is the perfect time to act and make this issue a key component of this election to select people who demonstrate a commitment to combating racism in our fannish spaces. So if you can, please plan to vote this election cycle!!

If you already are a member, use your voice and Vote. If you have donated in any of the fundraising drives for AO3 in the last year, you are likely eligible. You can check your eligibility status here by selecting “Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?”

If you are not currently a member or eligible, consider donating $10.00 so that you can gain membership in OTW and be able to vote. In order to vote your donation must be received by June 30th. 

When donating you can add ‘End OTW Racism’ to the ‘In Honor Of’ field if you feel comfortable doing so.

If you donate, ensure you select the yes to the ‘Do you want to be an OTW member?’ question

[alt text: image of text that reads “Do you want to be an OTW member? ($10 minimum donation)” with two radio buttons to select from with the choices of “Yes” or “No”]

We understand that many people may not be comfortable doing so or may be unable to and that is perfectly fine! You are under no obligation to spend any money and we do not want to pressure anyone into doing so. There are plenty other ways to get the word out to encourage others to vote as well as continue to show support for this issue.

Other ways to get involved:

When posting a new fanwork between now and August 14, add ‘Vote to End OTW Racism’ to your title and provide a link to the End OTW Racism blog in your top Author’s Note. Reminder: New fanworks participating in the action are always welcome to join our AO3 collection.

For those who may not be creating works or who use AO3 just for commenting/ kudosing, create a Pseud named Vote To End OTW Racism. AO3 will automatically append your default name at the end. So it would look like “Vote To End OTW Racism (Your Name)

Add a link back to this call to action on your profile page, for anyone clicking on your name to see. 

Update your pfps/avatars/user icons across social media

Participate in the upcoming Board Meeting between now and the election (August 11-14). The next Board Meeting is scheduled for July 2 and we will post an explainer about how to participate soon!

Send a letter to the Board encouraging them to be more transparent and to better advertise their Board Meetings. (credit to Punk who allowed us to utilize their work for this template)

Submit questions during the Q&A period with the Board Nominees. (We will post about this closer to election time)

Follow us on Tumblr, Twitter or Dreamwidth as we will be reviewing Board Candidates through the lens of our goals and providing more information on how to be involved over the election period. 

[carnivore-voyeur]

CW - Unmasked Ghoul Discussion Re: Use of Fandom Names vs. Nicknames & Maintaining Respect for Privacy

I’ve seen an uptick in people using the name “Sodo” in fanworks that are clearly based on the fictional Ghost / Ghouls universe. This is just a polite reminder that “Sodo” is Per Eriksson’s personal nickname that has nothing to do with Ghost. If we want to respect boundaries, it’s best to refer to the ghoul he plays with another name.

I know part of the problem is a result of Dewdrop and Sodo being conflated in fandom to the point that on AO3, content involving the fictional ghoul he plays has been labeled as Dewdrop | Sodo. That doesn’t mean that fans should use Sodo as a stand-in for Dewdrop, the fictional ghoul you are creating fanworks about.

I may use the term “Sodo Ghoul” in the tags whenever I’m referring to Per Eriksson performing as a Ghoul, but the fictional persona that was created by fans for the “character” he is playing on stage is “Dewdrop.” Of course, you can call that “character” something else if you like, but again… “Sodo” is not a fictional person. Sodo is Per Eriksson. Per Eriksson plays lead guitar for Ghost.

If you hear Papa Emeritus IV calling out “Sodo” on stage, it’s because he can technically call him that without revealing his identity as it’s a nickname. It’s not because “Sodo” is the name of the ghoul. I’m clearing this up, too, because there are people who comment on Ghost content with the belief that Sodo was a fan given name that they adopted for the Ghoul and/or they don’t know what Sodo means.

e.g.

As you can see by the dates, the misinformation regarding his nickname persists to this day.

There was a rumor started by fans that was never validated that Per Eriksson read a fanfic about his Ghoul persona and expressed that he hated the nickname “Dewdrop.” This is utter nonsense. First of all, please keep fanworks in fandom spaces. Don’t share them with the band. Second, Per Eriksson doesn’t spend much time on the internet let alone fandom spaces. So, that’s just bull.

If you don’t want to call the fan-named ghoul, Dewdrop. You can pick another name. It’s all fictional. There are no rules. Rules and boundaries come in when we’re dealing with real people. Per Eriksson has on more than one occasion talked about how uncomfortable he is with people finding out private information about him.

Here’s an excerpt of an interview you can find here discussing his feelings on privacy for context:

This was from 2012, so you can imagine how he feels about it now. You can probably understand why he doesn’t post often or only puts his content up for a limited amount of time. You can probably understand why he snapped at fans digging into his personal life a few years back, deleting everything he ever posted online. We’re not entitled to know everything about him.

Using his personal nickname for fictional content is blurring the lines between the fictional and Per Eriksson’s personal life. There are aspects of the “character” he plays on stage that can be inspired by him, but there are other things about him that are very personal or they’re unique to him. Maybe he cares. Maybe he doesn’t. I can’t speak for him, but I do think it’s important to draw a line.

I’m not trying to lecture or shame anyone specifically. I just want to remind everyone that Dewdrop is fictional, but Sodo is not. Dewdrop may be portrayed by Per Eriksson, but Sodo is Per Eriksson. Using his personal nickname for fanworks would be just the same as calling Swiss Ghoul, Jutty, which is Justin Taylor’s personal nickname. If that’s obviously crossing a line to you, then it shouldn’t be any different when it comes to using Sodo and Dewdrop interchangeably in fanworks.

[ao3commentoftheday]

Someone asked: What is the most common misconception or mishap users have/make?

There's a lot of misconceptions! I won't say this one is the most common but it's the one that's sticking out in my thoughts. It's not uncommon for someone to say that the volunteer handling their case is out to get them or doesn't know what they're doing. AO3 has millions of users — most of the time we've never heard of the user whose case we're handling. We also have a recusal policy. If someone thinks that they may have any conflict of interest, they don't interact with the report.

For the "doesn't know what they're doing" part, our team has standard procedure and protocols. The majority of situations already have established precedent to follow. With more novel or borderline situations, those cases are reviewed more closely by more people and we'll often ask for additional opinions on top of that too. Sometimes we're missing context or key details aren't in the report, and it's always possible to make a mistake, but no volunteer makes a decision that isn't grounded in our policies. PAC is very collaborative and decisions aren't made in a vacuum.

Another person also asked: What's the biggest misconception you see in either discussion around the TOS or reports people submit?

I hinted at a common reporting misconception when I did my first Q&A here. Reports only contain the information that someone lists in their report and nothing else. Lots of people will only type "Spam" or something similar in both fields of the report. Or "stolen work" and don't share what the source work is. We also get people who seem to think the report form asking for "A quote from or summary of the reported content" means they should pick a random TOS or FAQ quote (instead of giving a description of the work they're reporting). We don't need you to provide an essay, but a few details about the situation go a long way towards making it easier to handle a report.

About the TOS in general? Personally, I am surprised when people claim that AO3's TOS only prohibits what is illegal in the US and anything else is fair game. We allow a lot of different topics in fiction, and that fictional content might not be allowed on other sites (especially sites from other countries). But we have plenty of rules that have nothing to do with US law and more to do with what kind of environment we want AO3 to have (for example, our harassment and commercial promotion policies).

What's fair game on AO3 is what's allowed by our TOS. We want to allow all fanworks within reason, but we don't have to allow all legal everything. I'd imagine a site that stopped at what was legally allowed would become intolerable very quickly. Keysmash posts, advertisements, harassment, and such would overtake a platform like that pretty easily.

— guest mod tealight

If you have a question you’d like answered, you can ask here.

Disclaimer: I’m speaking for myself and not behalf of AO3 or PAC. I can only answer general questions. I cannot tell you if a specific work or user is breaking the rules. If you want to file a report or otherwise need an official PAC response, you can find PAC’s contact form by clicking on the “Policy Questions & Abuse Reports” link on any AO3 page.

[misc-obeyme]

DID BEELSCUSTARD GOT TERMINATED WHY

Okay I saw about this when I checked Tumblr this morning before work. Normally I don’t post during work hours (thanks to the queue), but I couldn’t stop thinking about this & I think it’s important for people to know.

beelscustard & I think a few other blogs that did image editing were terminated due to copyright laws.

I don’t know enough about these laws to speak on it & presumably they’re going by the laws in Japan. I was always under the impression that as long as no money is being made from it, fanworks of all kinds are permissible. But that may not be the case for Japanese laws & there may be some ambiguity when it comes to editing of images from game content.

That being said, I think this is a really shitty move.

The fandom has been lagging already & now they’re going to come in & hurt their own fans by not only deleting years worth of dedicated work but depriving other fans of that work as well? This is something that will only hurt them, not help them.

They have continually made some upsetting decisions, but this really takes the cake in my opinion.

I don’t know if they’re planning on doing anything else like this. My understanding is that it has to do with data mining & image editing, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come for other fanworks as well. I’m not telling anybody to panic about it, but just make sure you’ve got your stuff somewhere. There’s a way to backup Tumblr blogs I think. I’ll see if I can find the post about it after I get off work & then I’ll reblog it.

As fans, all we can do is support each other. It sucks, but this game exists to make money. That’s always going to be their priority. We get to decide for each of us as individuals how much money we’re willing to give to support the underlings who are working on the game that actually care about the content they create.

I don’t think it’s likely that they would crack down on fanfiction blogs, but I have posted plenty of screenshots. So if you’re worried about losing me, you can go follow me on my main blog @misc-magic if you would like to. It might not matter but I’m not sure how serious they’re going to get with this.

I’m sorry to use your ask as a more general announcement, Kian. I know you already follow my main 💕 but hopefully this also answers similar questions for others as well.

If I see anything else that I can share I’ll keep you all updated.