you know, there are a lot of posts about how transitioning as an adult is like going through puberty all over again. and I’m not medically transitioning (at least not yet, maybe one day), so I don’t know if I ever expected to exactly experience that. after all, my hormones are at normal adult levels for someone on birth control. but no, some of the stuff I experience does make me feel like a teenager awkwardly becoming an adult again, actually.
see, I’m attending a friend’s wedding, and I need new formalwear for it (protip: it is generally frowned upon to wear a wedding dress to someone else’s wedding, and that’s the last formalwear I purchased). and I just… really didn’t want to wear a dress, so I went to go get a suit. and I didn’t know how to get any of the required clothes for it and had to have a salesperson help me figure out how dress shirts work and nervously stood there while getting shown how to try stuff on and it really did feel like I was a lost teenager, despite being, you know, almost twenty-six.
but also: I own a three-piece suit now! it’s grey! it looks pretty good on me! I even got a blue tie with bees on it! so it was worth the temporary embarrassment of suddenly realizing I don’t know how men’s formalwear sizes work and, oh god, why are there so many variations of “white dress shirt” what does this mean.
and I figure as I very slowly work up the confidence to be out more irl there will be more and more moments like this, and I’ll lament the fact I didn’t do all this stuff as an actual teenager, but as weird and scary as it is, so far, it’s been worth it.
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I love that Elizabeth and Darcy are so ready to effectively tell each other they're full of shit. This happens a bunch of times, but I was re-reading their conversation at the Netherfield Ball and they're both kind of refreshingly Done.
[Darcy:] “Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?”
[Elizabeth:] “Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet, for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible.”
[Darcy:] “Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?”
“Both,” replied Elizabeth archly; “for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the éclat of a proverb.”
“This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure,” said he.
It's also pretty funny, because I suspect Darcy is thinking of this sort of thing in a later conversation at Rosings:
“You mean to frighten me, Mr Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me. But I will not be alarmed, though your sister does play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”
“I shall not say that you are mistaken,” he replied, “because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know, that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which, in fact, are not your own.”
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Hey I hope this is okay to ask. I saw that you sent the Sandman Big Ban a ask about the faq. Are you satisfied with their reply? I don't know if this is really common and if I should participate
Hey nonnie, that's entirely fine to ask yes!
Short answer: no, I'm not.
Long answer, giving a few reasons with none of my snark being aimed at you personally:
This is how it's done. No, this is absolutely not standard practise - I can name you at least 5 bangs off the top of my head that do not, in fact, do this. Including content restrictions is very much a choice that the mods are making, whether it also is their private opinion or not. None of those other bangs have problems matching, which brings me to:
No PWP: first of all, their word count requirement is incredibly low at 6k, and claiming that authors would struggle to hit that with "porn only"? That's, I'm sorry, ridiculous, not to mention condescending as hell - authors are perfectly capable estimating whether they can hit goals or not with whatever plot (or lack thereof) they are writing.
Artists/betas won't want to claim, or need to know what they get into: First of all, there is a huge bunch of amazing nsfw art and artists in this fandom who, I'd assume, would be happy to make nsfw/dark art. Second of all: have authors provide content notes/warnings for the claiming process, problem solved.
We're not banning dark/nsfw content, just any glorification of it: Right. And who decides what's glorifying? Do they vet this during sign ups? Claiming? Might I end up submitting a fic and get it pulled? Do I have to provide personal information about my trauma to be "allowed" to write dark content in a certain kind of way? This is a slippery slope at best. It is also massively hypocritical because, you'll notice, there are no such restrictions when it comes to violence or murder etc. It gives big ole "I can excuse the eye-eating serial killer, but I'll draw the line at porn" vibes which is a staple of anti culture.
On the above point, it is also worth noting that the entire argument is moot to begin with because even if it is "glorifying" or "romanticizing" it literally does not matter. It's fiction. It's not real. Tag your shit, give warnings during the claiming process, and it's fine. Everything else is cuddling up to censorship, there is no middle ground to be had here. (Which is arguably very ironic considering both the source material and the source material author's stance on such things. Yes I'm salty as fuck about this. Anyway).
All this is to make the event "more accessible." This is, frankly, absolute goddamn bullshit. If people warn properly for their content, and if in the context of a discord server for the fest you have designated spaces to talk about nsfw and/or dark content, people are perfectly capable of curating their experience, what they engage with or not. Conversely, banning content, considering yourself as mods an authority on what is and isn't glorification, is not only condescending as hell, it also makes your fest, in fact, less accessible for anyone who a) wants to write such content, or b) simply is not a fan of censorship vibes in their fandom spaces.
So long story short, I'm the opposite of satisfied and will absolutely not participate. People are, of course, welcome to run their events however they want. I am, of course, perfectly in my rights to run my own big bang without all this nonsense, which is something I am considering doing because I love big bangs, and hate the thought of relinquishing the fest format to something so inaccessible. 😉
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