#acting like they created the fandom meanwhile some of the most famous fics are from 2005 before half of them were even born

[kayrma]

kids on tiktok really turned regulus black into their timothee chalamet oc like aw baby he would have joined the death eaters for his family no matter what he only went against voldemort because he thought his only friend kreacher the house elf might get killed he would never have associated with lily let alone be in a polyamorous romantic relationship with her and james 

[fromthefishbowl]

People who complain about Ao3 don’t remember what sites like ff.net were like

Every few months, a bright-minded Tumblr blogger peeps up with the never-heard-before: “Ao3 is a completely amoral site. If they want to prove to us they have a moral backbone, then they need to purge X, Y, and Z tags, and then create a team of mods who will regularly check the stories that are reported because since now there aren’t tags that tell the readers about X, Y, and Z, these goddamn perverts will slip through the cracks and create toxic environment in which children shouldn’t be” take, and the posts routinely receive thousands of notes.

Well... let me tell you how things actually work on sites that don’t use tags but have a team of mods that checks the authors and stories that are being reported.

I’m a fandom old: even if I’m young, I began reading and writing fanfics back in September/October 2012. I’ve used a site that was basically ff.net’s twin, Wattpad, and then Ao3. I was there, when Wattpad slowly turned into a money-making farm and implemented micro-transactions and ads. I have seen how these platforms evolved and who they were protecting, and it really doesn’t matter how much you whine and complain about Ao3, but it’s the only platform that actually protects both its writers and readers in equal measure.

According to the many theories made by people who have already forgotten how actually lawless fanfiction sites were, having mods would solve all the problems regarding the “moral issues” presented by Ao3. In their opinion, mods would be these perfect creature who never take sides and are always impartial, ready to defend ThE cHiLdReN from the evil, amoral content. They’d scrub the site clean from the “toxic” and “dangerous” content in order to create a wholesome environment where parents and kids alike can happily frolic together.

In truth? Nothing about mods ever worked like that. No one is able to be completely impartial, and some people only need to be given an ounce of power to lose their minds and do as they please.

On the site similar to ff.net, people were encouraged to report all the stories that didn’t strictly follow the rules of the site, including the ones where the spelling wasn’t as great as it should’ve been. It wasn’t rare to find that users had reported an account or a story simply out of revenge, because said author hadn’t commented their work favorably. If you were a fandom favorite with a lot of readers, it was also possible to find in your DM box people asking you to report and ask your readers to report someone, even if you had to make up things in order for the report to go through.

Thankfully, mods were extremely lethargic (I love the idea that people think that they’d act briskly and not sleuth around the site, posting stories with their modding accounts in order to receive a higher number of comments), so most reports ended up in stand-by, catching proverbial dust, for years and years, until everybody forgot about the report itself as well as the story, the author, and whatever had happened there.

But when they acted? Ooooh, and here’s the interesting part, because there were three options!

The story was taken down, the account banned, and the only thing left of them would be a notice from the mods that they had been stricken because they had done this, this, and a little bit of that too. But do you know who was usually hit, by this? Smaller writers, writers whose stories didn’t pull in a lot of views and comments, people who were “forgettable”. It also happened a lot with writers who would put themselves against bigger authors by writing negative reviews for their stories;

The mods closed an eye because the people and storied reported where at the top of their category in a very trafficked fandom. There was a case in which people were so distressed by the presence of a very specific story (Jewish girl falls in love with the Nazi guard that abuses her while she’s in a concentration camp), that the headmistress of the site had to write a special comment that could be viewed by all the people who were going to review that story that said that there was no reason to leave a negative review nor to report it to the mods, as it followed the rules of the site (it didn’t, but it brought in a lot of views and attention to the platform, so... it could stay!);

The mods would hunt the authors on their social medias too and ban them from the site because they’d been rude. It happened more than once, that an author was reported or they were the ones reporting, and have found themselves submersed in insults by members of the mod team on their Facebook page. Two cases:

An author was accused of having plagiarized a story written by another, more famous, user. The author denied, and asked for proof of it. The mod taking care of the case didn’t offer any, but deleted their story and blocked their account until they said they were sorry to the more famous user. In order to have their account back, the author said they were sorry to the famous user, but on their Facebook page wrote that it was a crock of shit: they hadn’t copied from that person, and the fact that the mod hadn’t offered any proof of it was suspicious enough. The mod saw that Facebook post, sent them a DM with nothing but insults, and then banned them permanently because they had been rude to the administration;

An author posted a story, and two other users plagiarized it. The author reported both stories and waited a week for the mods to send them a DM telling them to screenshot all the passages that had been copied and put them all in a document because they didn’t have time to read three different stories. Although the author complied, they wrote a post complaining about this lousy job on Facebook. The post caught the eye of another moderator who blocked their account and told them they wouldn’t have had access to the site unless they apologized to the entire team of mods, to the users they had accused of plagiarizing their story, and took down the Facebook post. In the meanwhile, the first mod was caught chatting with one of the two other users on the forum. The author didn’t back down for another two weeks, when the headmistress of the site herself showed up and told them she would’ve been the one to take care of the question. In the end, although it was clear that the two users had copied the author’s story, the author still received nasty and threatening messages from the entire mod team because of that Facebook post, to the point that they decided to delete their stories and their account altogether and move to another platform.

This is what happens with mods that are always asked to answer to reports and to take care of stories personally: authors are not protected against anything unless they are big enough to be an attraction people subscribe to the platform for. Fics with “moral backbone” issues were left up if they had the views and the comments for it.

And the readers? Well, the readers used to get the short end of the stick too, as those sites didn’t have a tag system and there wasn’t a way for them to know if a story contained something they didn’t like to read about, nor a way for them to “obscure” the ones that did. Finding specific things was a mess too.

This to say: you need to curate your own fandom experience. You are in charge of what you read, and it’s not my place to take care of the children and make sure that everything they put their saintly eyes upon is wholesome. Ao3 is the only platforms that allows the readers to have an absolutely complete control of what they consume and that allows the writers to warn the readers of every single issue their story can contain that might trouble them. Learn to curate your own fandom experience, rather than spending your time whining about “moral issues” and “think of the children”, coming up with ideas that are simply not doable on a massive site like Ao3.

[pers-books]

5 works tag game

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (ish) favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and post or link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

I was tagged by @imagebender​. Thanks for the tag.

This has been quite the year in more ways than one, but falling down the Berena (Holby City) rabbit hole wasn’t something I’d predicted back in January when I was still all about the Bering & Wells (Warehouse 13) love! I mean, yeah, I’d read a few of the Berena fic on AO3 but since I’d never seen Holby and have a pathological dislike of seeing operations, I didn’t imagine falling in love with this ship, even though I love Jemma Redgrave to bits and pieces. But then, back in early February, when my biggest concern was surviving the freaking winter storms, I wrote a triple drabble called ‘Storm’ and that was that. The Bitch Muse had a new love in her life and I was gone!

Anyways, my five favourite fics that I’ve written this year, are as follows:

The Name's Wolfe, Berenice Wolfe: 007, Licensed to Thrill - Bernie Wolfe as a James Bond style MI6 Agent and Serena Campbell as Head of Station in Jamaica. The funny thing is that I was in the James Bond fandom for some time and wrote a ridiculous number of fics, most of them featuring Daniel Craig’s Bond and Judi Dench’s M. 

Two to Tango - Bernie and Serena tango on a train, inspired by this photo, which sent the Berena fandom into a bit of a frenzy:

I just couldn’t not write it.

It's not a date - it's just dinner at a fancy restaurant - Serena’s been let down by Robbie the bobby once to many times as far as Bernie Wolfe’s concerned. Being an officer and a gentleman she, of course, rides to the rescue.

The Marathon Runner - Bernie Wolfe meets Serena Campbell for the first time in dramatic fashion on the day of the Holby Marathon - by saving Elinor from a car accident. One of my fave Berena fics that I wrote. 

Bean and Gone - I wrote this one for @batnbreakfast​‘s birthday in the summer. Bernie Wolfe is a coffeeshop owner and Serena Campbell is in need of a fake girlfriend. 

The Long Road to Happiness - I wrote this from an old prompt of @slightlyintimidating​‘s when I was trawling through her Berena tag. Bernie and Serena were child actors together, when Bernie fell in love with Serena. Bernie remains an actor and becomes very successful and famous. Serena, meanwhile, gave up acting, but they remain friends. When Bernie is outed on national television, it’s to Serena that she flees...

Jason Haynes: Matchmaker - Jason’s friend Bernie Wolfe is in need of somewhere to stay. Since he’s about to go to summer school and leave his Aunty Serena all on her own, he suggests that Bernie stay with Serena. A ridiculously slow Bern fic that I nevertheless loved writing.

The Softness of the Wolfe, or Five Times Bernie Wolfe was Soft - I decided to write soft!Bernie as a change from her being all Big Macho Army Medic. I’d like this to be a trend, TBH.

Stocking Filler 4 - a *ridiculously* long AU Berena Secret Santa Stocking Filler I wrote for @fortytworedvines​ in which Bernie, who’s living in Devon, takes Serena in over Christmas after she sprains her ankle. 

(Blimey, only just noticed I recommended 9 fics, not 5! I lost track, somewhere!)

Tagging @slightlyintimidating​, @lapalfruity​, @rauzadian​, @corvidden​, @doctorjameswatson​, @professorflimflam​ - if you want to play. No pressure, though.

[anghraine]

Would you mind elaborating on your thoughts re: parallels between han/leia and jyn/cassian? I was reading your tags on it and they are glorious (and so is your fic :DDD) Thank you!

Heeeh, sure!

(The tags in question are here.)

The Jyn-Han parallels are definitely the most overt and widely acknowledged, so I’m going to start with Cassian-Leia.

One of Cassian’s most piercing lines is “Suddenly the Rebellion is real for you? Some of us live it.” And it’s difficult to think of anything that could better describe Leia Organa. It’s the essential tragedy of Leia’s character. She doesn’t die. She just lives and lives and lives it, and when danger signs crop up again as a fifty-something general, she doesn’t palm the fight off on someone else but consumes herself in the cause all over again—if she ever stopped, which, not really.

(You know that if Cassian had lived, he’d be right there the moment that Leia came calling. RED, Star Wars edition.)

And, like Cassian, the cause has been the cornerstone not just of her adult life but her entire life. Leia is the natural daughter of one of the founders of the Rebellion and Darth Vader. She is adopted by one of the other founders. She’s brought up in the heart of the Rebellion. She’s an Imperial senator at around sixteen, not because she has any flair or liking for legislative politics, but as a shield for her activities as a covert agent of the Rebellion—again, shades of Cassian. We don’t know when, exactly, Leia got involved with the Rebellion, but she’s a hardened Rebel agent by her teens, refusing to reveal her secrets under torture or even genocide.

Speaking of genocide, it’s hard to think of a character who more profoundly “lost everything” than Leia in ANH. We don’t get as close an examination of its effects with her, despite her prominence over three movies (*hiss*), but we certainly get enough to see its effects. Leia’s horrific loss only intensifies her dedication to the Rebellion, to the point that she’s completely consuming herself in it come ESB. Her conviction, her sense of duty, her relentless determination—that’s where her grief goes. Just like Cassian.

Leia is also the hardest of the main three, I’d say, despite Han’s pretenses to it. She’s not the most brash; that’s clearly Han. She’s not the angriest; it’s Luke who loses his mind in rage, never Leia (fandom reductionism aside). But Leia is tough, and abrasive, and doesn’t stop at much in pursuit of her ends. She’s judgmental of the less committed and the less capable; she can be intensely self-righteous, without feeling the high of righteousness that many other characters do, the sense of glory. She just believes so, so much, and she’s willing to throw everything she has into the service of that sharp-edged idealism.

On top of that, Leia is tightly linked with hope. There’s the famous That boy was our last hope -> There is another—Leia as the true last hope. There’s the bittersweet hopeful ending of ROTS, with baby Leia on doomed Alderaan. There’s Leia’s single-minded dedication to the plans and explicit description of them as the last hope. And of course, there’s Leia in RO and her one word—hope. Yet it’s not that Leia is at all positive by temperament. We don’t see much in the way of silver linings from her; if anything, she tends to the doubtful and fatalistic (as does Luke btw). For Leia, hope is an ethical approach to the world, a conscious moral choice. 

For me, it’s best understood through another fandom—JRR Tolkien. Tolkien distinguishes between forms of hope in his various works. Probably the most prominent exploration is Frodo vs Sam. Sam has “hope unquenchable,” an innate optimism that is never quenched by his suffering and loss. It’s a matter of staying true to the integrity of his character. But Frodo loses all sense of optimism, and yet trudges on through sheer belief and endurance, even though it ultimately breaks him. Leia and Cassian are much more the Frodos of the equation.

Meanwhile, it’s clear (and has been repeatedly admitted) that Jyn’s character is essentially based on Luke and Han rolled into one. She definitely has Han’s devil-may-care, I-take-orders-from-me attitude. She never exactly says “I’m not in this for your revolution,” but the sentiment underlies plenty of what she does say. And that attitude is at least as fundamental to the clash with Cassian as Han’s is with Leia (and Luke).

There’s some fandom bullshit about Jyn “stealing” Cassian’s line that rebellions are built on hope. That’s stupid. But I do believe it matters that Cassian is the source. 

There’s a criticism (I think a fair one) that we don’t really see how Jyn and Cassian get from their ideological showdown to his intense faith in her and her swerve to hopeful idealism. But it’s evident that Cassian, without relinquishing a sliver of his ideals or commitment, pulled his eyes from the skies enough to really consider the living people around him and work towards balancing the two (a struggle that dominates Leia’s life). 

And I think that’s the significance of the fact that her big speech on hope, on hope as action, includes a word-for-word repetition of what Cassian told her. Jyn’s hope is born from his. And this happens pretty directly after Cassian lashed back at her over her self-interest and apathy. I don’t think she’s just parroting him; her feelings about him are in general much too complex at this point for that, even if it were at all characteristic. And it’s—

Well, let’s go to Han for a moment. His actions are overwhelmingly driven by the self: self-preservation, self-interest, and the people who matter to him personally. While he more or less supports the Rebellion in theory, he’s propelled into action not because he believes, but because he loves people who do. (As a sidenote, he seems to be drawn to those sorts of people; Chewie, Luke, and Leia are all hardline idealists, and in a twisted way, so is Kylo Ren.) 

We see some of this with Jyn. She is there for personal gain (her freedom) and over her personal relationships to Saw and especially Galen. It’s hard not to feel that her father’s work and sacrifice is a significant motivation for her swerve (as she is a significant part of Galen’s motivation!). But even after the message, she remains very much in ME AND MINE mode until the fight with Cassian. While he isn’t the source of her newfound belief, IMO he is the clear inspiration for it.

I don’t think Jyn is someone who bothers much with abstractions on her own (again, like Han). But she has a sort of subterranean idealism that leads her to impulsive acts of principle like trying to protect the little girl at Jedha. Her instinct isn’t going to be “save the galaxy,” it’s going to be save this person right in front of me. Unlike Han. 

People, actual living individuals in front of her, matter more than abstract conglomerates. But when someone bothers to make her understand—even as furiously as Cassian did—she can translate personal benevolence onto a broader scale. At heart, she wants to believe in something, and the conscious, disciplined ethic of hope in those around her can kickstart her own good will into good will for the galaxy. And it becomes not just borrowed vision, but a heartfelt one of her own. 

That’s actually most like Luke. He’s an idealist at his core, but also often descends into fatalism or apathy. Early on, his Call to Adventure is framed specifically in terms of the fight against the Empire. Far more than Han, he supports it—he’s eager to hear about the Rebellion and freely admits to hating the Empire—but nevertheless, he rejects it in favour of personal concerns. His own family needs him, and it’s so far away from here. That is very, very close to Jyn. 

Also like Jyn, he has an innately kind, generous personality. But it’s very much in the personal, immediate sense. His own commitment to the Rebellion is propelled by the Empire’s destruction of his life, his intense preoccupation with his father’s legacy as filtered through Obi-Wan, but most of all, Leia’s example. From the first he’s both deeply concerned by her and inspired by her. But again, it’s not that he simply adopts her ideals. He develops ideals through, among other things, her influence. I think what goes on with Jyn and Cassian is fundamentally the same thing.

(It’s worth mentioning that Luke ultimately wanders out of the Rebellion to follow his own spiritual path and connect with his father. Both of these are in line with Rebellion goals, but that is a happy coincidence. This isn’t to say that his belief in the Rebellion is shallow, because I don’t remotely think it is, but Jyn is ultimately more dedicated to the cause as far as we see. Now, Jyn also dies early in her potential character arc, and I think it is very, very probable that she would have the same struggle and, where urgent, choose the people she loves over serving the cause. Nevertheless.)

The end result, I think, is that Cassian as a clear variation of “the Leia,” with Jyn functioning as the Han and the Luke, creates a similar but very distinct relationship from Han/Leia. Like that one, there’s a mix of raw attraction and quickly developing respect vs radically different priorities and ideologies. But Jyn/Cassian is at all points milder than Han/Leia and much more, hm, symbiotic. Certainly so after their conciliation—from that point, there’s this bedrock of mutual faith, a deep affinity and tenderness that’s more like Luke and Leia’s relationship. 

Jyn and Cassian don’t just accept each other’s differences. They actively close the gap between their personalities, that mutual influence bringing out the latent similarity beneath Jyn’s self-absorption and Cassian’s ruthlessness. It allows them to recognize themselves in each other and easily sync up, even after knowing each other such a short time. Han and Leia, a married couple of thirty years, can never cross that gap. They love each other, they try to be gentle and tolerant with each other, but as we see in TFA, it’s not something they can seriously maintain. 

[kayrma]

#they're all 'but the marauders fandom was created by the fans it's just for fun' #acting like they created the fandom meanwhile some of the most famous fics are from 2005 before half of them were even born #like girl there's still established canon about these characters what are you on

Lmaoooo but PREACH! What nonsense is that, as if we weren't here for decades? Why they acting like they came up with these characters? Kids nowadays discover something yesterday and are instantly convinced they created it lmfao!

right like i joined the fandom around ten years ago and i was reallyyy young so i looked up to the older creators!! i LOVED their works and they built my perception of the marauders and i feel like these tiktok kids genuinely believe the marauders fandom didn't exist until they read harry potter for the first time in 2020

i think some of it is also their reaction to jkr's transphobia – by saying that the marauders fandom is created by the fans they feel like they're disconnecting from her association to harry potter but they'll still continue to spend money on official merchandise and disregard the fact that regulus, barty crouch, and evan rosier were all still literal wizard nazis in canon so that they can romanticize them like they did to draco and snape back in the day