#Unfortunately in the case of fanfiction very few people want to analyze how the most widely read kinds of fics and tropes are homophobic

[surpriserose]

Good morning everypony

[lefthanded-sans]

Hi! I've stumbled upon your "Determination, determinism and quantum mechanics" post while researching the topic of sans in connection to quantum mechanics, and I thought your post was pretty good. if you've written anything else on that subject i'd be interested in reading it (i think i found some just by searching your blog, but yanno how tumblr's search function is) and it'd be nice if you could point me in the right direction (but I'll understand if you don't have the time. Thanks either way)

Gosh, I'm responding to this a month late. My apologies! I hope you get this.

Howdy howdy, and thank you so much! It means a lot that you liked that post. You've probably already seen the My Analyses page, which is frightfully out of date. Anything that didn't make it onto that page will still have a my analysis tag. But yeahhhHhHh... tumblr's search function is.... yeah.

I know that, before I made this sideblog, I wrote a few ideas about Sans and Gaster on my main. It's still on the My Analyses page for lefthanded-sans, but I want to bring up Gaster Destroyed Himself with the SAVE Function in case you haven't seen that one yet.

Unfortunately, it's also been several years since I've analyzed Undertale, so I don't remember if I have other posts that discuss Sans + quantum mechanics. Going to the archive for the first year of this blog is where you're most likely to find things, I think.

I also was going to explore this idea in depth in a fanfiction, Reset or Resume. I had SUCH a long and COMPLICATED series of charts for how this story was to come together, and I was so excited for its epicness. Eheh. But I got tired and busy and never finished it, and instead of posting it with fanfare a chapter at a time as planned, shyly tossed the unfinished product all at once onto FFN at an obscure hour. I don't think I got to major quantum physics stuff, but I want to be helpful bringing up anything on the subject on the rare chance it helps you.

I do talk on the opening author's notes page on point #4 about a quantum physics inspo, but obviously, in many cases, creative writing details for flavor are going to be different than actually-thought-through-meta-theories (though I will say that if my characters make hyper-specific scientific references or name a paper author, that's probably referencing an actual article). Shoot, I'm sure I had story ideas that I never wrote down that were more meta...... hrmh.

If you have any posts that you've found or written, I'd be interested seeing those! This convo is re-sparking my interest in this area.

Lastly, I want to speak with humility to make sure people know the level to which they should be taking me "seriously." My college background was in linguistics and music. I enjoyed sciences in high school, but I am very, very clearly neither a hard sciences expert nor amateur, and shouldn't be taken as someone who knows or has any expertise on quantum mechanics.

I realize most of this was already on my blog, but I hope that helps! Thanks for bringing some smiles to me about UT!

[cfiesler]

thoughts on AO3 from a content moderation researcher

A few days ago I tweeted some thoughts about current conversations around content moderation and racism on AO3. I thought I’d reproduce here:

OK I'm going to weigh in on the tagging/content moderation conversation happening right now regarding Archive of Our Own. To be clear, this is me as a content moderation researcher who has also studied the design of AO3, NOT me as a member of the OTW legal committee.

To clarify the issue for folks: Racism is a problem in fandom. In addition to other philosophical and structural things regarding OTW, there have been suggestions for adding required content warnings or other mechanisms to deal with racism in stories posted to the archive.

Here's a description of the content warning system from a paper I published about the design of AO3, in which I used this as an example of designing to mitigate the value tension of inclusivity versus safety:

“Knowing that this tension would exist, and wanting to protect users from being triggered or stumbling across content they did not want to see, AO3 added required warnings for stories. These include graphic violence, major character death, rape, and underage sex. These warnings were chosen based on conventions at the time, what fan fiction writers already tended to warn for when posting stories elsewhere. Warnings are not only required, but are part of a visual display that shows up in search results. One early concern was that requiring these warnings might necessitate spoilers—for example, telling the reader ahead of time that there was a major character death. Therefore, AO3 added an additional warning tag: ‘Choose not to use archive warnings.’ Seeing this tag in search results essentially means ‘read at your own risk.’ Most interviewees found this to be a solution that did a good job at taking into account different kinds of needs."

The idea is certain kinds of objectionable content is allowed to be there as long as it's properly labeled. Content will not be removed for having X, but it can be removed for not being tagged properly for having X. This allows users to not have to see content labeled with X.

My students and I have studied content moderation systems in a number of contexts, including on Reddit and Discord, and I actually think that this system is kind of elegant and other platforms can learn from it. That said, it relies on strong social norms to work.

One of the big problems with content moderation is that not everyone has the same definition of what constitutes a rule violation. Like... folks on a feminist hashtag almost certainly have a different definition of what constitutes "harassment" than on the gg hashtag.

A few years ago we analyzed harassment policies on a bunch of different platforms and usually it's just like "don't harass people" but okay what does that mean? I guarantee you there are people on twitter who think rape threats aren't harassment.

So a nice thing about communities moderating themselves--like on subreddits--is that they can create their own rules and have a shared understanding of what they mean (here’s a paper about rules on Reddit). So you can have a rule about harassment and within your community know what that means.

I've talked for a long time about the strong social norms in fandom and how this has allowed in particular for really effective self regulation around copyright. In fact I wrote about this really recently based on interviews conducted in 2014. HOWEVER -

Generally, I think social norms are not as strong in fandom as they used to be, in part because it's just gotten bigger and there are more people and also some generational differences and we're more spread out. (My PhD advisee) Brianna & I wrote about this for TWC.

So the point here is that without those very strong shared norms, definitions differ - across sub-fandoms, across platforms, across people. Whether that thing we're defining is commercialism, harassment, or racism.

This isn't to say that there *shouldn't* be a required content warning for racism in fics, but I think it's important to be aware how wrought enforcement will be because no matter how it is defined, a subset of fandom will not agree with that definition.

That said, design decisions like this are statements. When AO3 chose the required warnings, it was a statement about what types of content it is important to protect the community from. I would personally support a values-based decision that racism falls into that category.

Design also *influences* values. An example of this was AO3's decision to include the "inspired by" tag which directly signaled (through design) that remixing fics without explicit permission was okay. Another quote from the paper:

“Similarly, Naomi described a policy decision of AO3 that was a deliberate attempt to influence a value. Prior work understanding fandom norms towards re-use of content has shown something of a disconnect, with different standards for different types of work [15,16]. Surprisingly, although fan authors themselves are building on others’ work, some don’t want people to remix their remixes. In Naomi’s original blog post, there is some argument between fans about what AO3 should do about this, with suggestions for providing a mechanism for fan writers to give permission for remixing. Naomi described their ultimate design, and feels that in the time that has followed the creation of AO3, the values of the community have actually shifted to be more accepting of this practice:

‘We had baked in right from the beginning that you could post a work to the archive that was a remix, or sequel, or translation, or a podfic or whatever, based on another work, another fannish work. As long as you gave credit, you didn’t need permission. In fact, we built a system into the archive where it notifies [the original author]. That was because we were coming from a philosophy where what we’re doing is fair use. It’s legal. We are making transformative work. We don’t need permission from the original copyright holder. That’s why fanfic is legitimate. But what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander… So, I think that’s an example, actually, where archive and OTW almost got a little bit ahead of the curve, got a little bit ahead of the broader community’s internal values. That was a deliberate concerted decision on our part.’”

A design change to AO3 that forces consideration of whether there is racism in a story you're posting could have an impact on the overall values of the community by signaling that this consideration is necessary AND that you should be thinking of a community definition of racism.

Also important: content moderation has the potential to be abused. And I know that this happens in fandom, even around something as innocuous as copyright, since I've heard stories of harassment-based DMCA takedown campaigns.

There's a LOT of tension in fandom around public shaming as a norm enforcement mechanism, and I would want to see this feature used as a "gentle reminder" and not a way to drum people out of fandom. (See more about that in this paper.)

That said, I think these reminders are needed. There will be a LOT of "uh I didn't know that was racist" and that requires some education. Which is important but also an additional burden on volunteer moderators who may be grappling with this themselves.

This is more a thread of cautions than solutions, unfortunately. Because before there can be solutions, we need: (1) an answer to a very hard question, which is "what is racism in fanfiction/fandom?" and this answer needs to come from a diverse group of stakeholders, and (2) a solution for enforcement/moderation that both makes sure that folks directly impacted by racism are involved AND that we're not asking for burdensome labor from already marginalized groups.

All of this comes down to: Content moderation is HARD for so many reasons, both on huge platforms and in communities. AO3 is kind of a unique case with its own problems but I am optimistic about solutions because so many people care about the values in fandom.

I’m still thinking about this and welcome others’ thoughts!

[wordsinwinters]

Hi! I love Then Again, it’s easily my favourite Peter Parker imagine. I have a few questions about it: a) what happened to the readers parents? Does she have siblings? B) does Flash like the reader? I know he used to like her but does he still like her? C) will we ever get to read from Michelle’s POV? And finally d) is the reader based on an OC of yours? If so, what is she like? Sorry this sounds like a pop quiz lol I just love this story so much

First, thank you so much for taking the time to send this! It means more than I can say to know someone is invested in the story enough to ask questions.

A.) This is actually something I’ve been wondering how to get around. Because I’m trying my best to write so all readers to feel that this is their story, I can’t be too specific about family. I think I mentioned a mother once, but I’m not exactly comfortable with that inclusion either, since obviously not all readers have mothers in their lives or good relationships with them, even if they are there. 

The best answer is: her family is a mirror of yours, and yours is what you should imagine when I mention her family in future chapters. 

B.) A few people have asked this! Since I don’t want to spoil anything, I’ll give the same answer I’ve been giving to others: Flash holds her in high respect, with fondness. The extent of that remains to be revealed.

C.) Yes! Unfortunately, it won’t be until almost the very end. (This fact kills me because I’m really attached to her and her chapters could do the exact opposite of Ned’s; whereas his are so limited by his semi-short-sightedness, hers would be an overflow of information and understanding. Not to mention, she’s handling a lot of conflicting emotions which I’d love to explore.)

Anyway, Michelle and Flash are two characters whose perspectives I’ve always planned to keep on the sidelines. The plot of this story isn’t that complex (I’m actually super self-conscious about how underwhelmingly simple it is [fun fact]), so it’s not that they’re holding big secrets or anything. 

Their stories, though, are ones I need to keep blurred in order to more fully realize a certain theme. If you have to wait to get their perspectives, it becomes an example of what I’m trying to say through their sides of the story, if that makes sense.

D.) The Reader character is based off the Spider-Man/Marvel fandom, Jane Villanueva from Jane the Virgin, and, as much as I could say otherwise, probably more of me than I originally meant. 

Before I began writing, I stalked/paid close attention (?) to as many SM:HC blogs as possible. I read a ton of fanfiction and took notes on the reader-inserts/OCs, how readers responded to those characters, looked at which fics/posts were the most popular, and did my best to sketch out a holistic view of the movie and its characters by analyzing (aka just lightly stalking) as many blogs as I could. Basically, I dove headfirst into the fandom and looked for personality traits that seemed to link everyone together. (As an example, it seems like a lot of us have anxiety and tend to overanalyze, in case that sounds familiar.) 

When I finally started writing the first chapters, I was binging Jane the Virgin. I loved Jane’s creativity, use of logic, caution, and sincerity. I couldn’t help but sprinkle those things into the character.

It wasn’t until I was pretty deep into the story that I realized how much of myself was in it; not only in the Reader, but all of the characters. (It could become a game, honestly: Guess Jane’s Deepest Insecurities Based Off Her Characters’ Personalities.)

Again, thank you so much for asking these questions! I looked forward to answering this all day, and I love the organization. 

Please, let me know if you have any other questions. I’m more than happy to answer 💕💕💕