#but not being a fanartist I couldn't tell you why

[ncruuk]

Reposting here a reply I've just typed up on AO3 to a comment I got about sending my fic to TPTB of that particular fandom's source content....in case there's people who don't know this (both in fearmongered early internet fandom history and it's current big reason not to do)

The way fanfic is connected to original content and the whole 'legal' space that AO3 and others before them helped to establish for us rather depended originally on fanfiction being never sent to showrunners/anyone connected with producing the 'official' content - because the minute they get even a hint of an idea of something existing in a fanfic, that basically makes it a toxic concept for the show itself for fear of being sued by the fanfic writer over use of 'their' element of the idea. Which has always baffled me as a fanfic writer since it seems such a big corporation mindset to react that way rather than the 'wow, people love what we made they're thinking laterally and some of these ideas are awesome and really worth thinking about' which is most fan reactions in conversation with each other.

I maybe an 'old school' fandom person who's slightly out of date on this point now, except it still applies even more strictly because it counts as 'unsolicited material' that apparently is a massive no in studio/streamer contracts with producers (thank you Neil Gaiman for explaining this so patiently on Tumblr a while back - link to one of his posts on the topic, (without tagging him here on tumblr because he's nice and doesn't need the spam referencing!)

But it is what it is, and if you want to guarantee something you read in fanfic never makes it on screen, do send it to TPTB with a flashy email subject saying 'this fanfic is so cool because X is Y' as the subject and 'bam!' not only will the email not be read or replied to, but that cool thing perhaps won't happen.

But thank you to you (and others) who suggest it periodically, I'm perfectly happy hanging out in fandom daydreaming and writing it down (albeit rather slowly at times due to real life regrettably having to take priority most of the time!)

[msnihilist]

Hey, hey!👋🏾

Number 12, 14, and 16 for the choose violence ask game?😈

For the choosing violence ask game.

12. The unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them.

The thing is, I don't ever really find myself getting attached to side characters. I'm one of those fans who's favorite character is ALWAYS the MC. I don't know why, that's just the rules. My favorite Ben 10 character is Ben, my favorite TAWOG character is Gumball, my favorite FOP character is Timmy, etc etc.

That being said, I guess I'll say that the Ben 10 fandom should appreciate Eunice and Elena more. People really like Looma and Attea, but not these two other ladies! I think they also have a bunch of potential for fanartists and writers to play with.

14. That one thing you see in fics all the time.

The "Zuko is an Awkward Turtle Duck" tag. It pretty much immediately tells me that the author is about to write him wildly out of character. Yes, in canon Zuko is kind of awkward. But SO MANY PEOPLE seem to conflate that with him being an uwu soft cinnamon roll when that couldn't be further from the truth.

Zuko is an asshole. Did people forget that even in the finale, his solution to not having his concerns taken seriously was to literally attack Aang? He's a jerk! He's a fuck-up! He doesn't think his actions through! The fandom woobified him so bad that it's honestly not even worth going into the ATLA tag on AO3, because every fic centers on Zuko and they're all wrong.

16. You can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Ben as asexual. Well, no, I know why people like it — because they're self-projecting. But Ben is very clearly NOT asexual.

He is immediately and physically attracted to Eunice, calling her beautiful when the pod opens to reveal that she's naked. Kevin even comments that, "Dude, you're drooling." Ben smiled when Jennifer Nocturne (a young, attractive celebrity) kissed him. Julie kisses him at the end of UA, and Ben says, "That was totally worth giving up all of that power!"

In Omniverse, Ben shied away from Ester's hug because he's already seeing someone. And then he says later to Rook, jokingly, "You think I have a chance with her?" He's happy after he kisses Kai.

Ben likes physical affection, just not unwanted affection. He doesn't like Looma or Attea enough to enjoy their aggressive forms of affection. He doesn't like Ester or Julie trying to put pressure on their relationship. If anything, Ben gives off the energy of having commitment issues and wanting a more physically casual relationship.

Ben likes to take his relationships at his own speed. That doesn't mean he's asexual.

[satisaranea]

🍬❄️🎨

🍬 — post an opinion about a popular fandom character ;

i honestly think that effie doesn't deserve the hype that she gets. as much as the movies glamorize her role in the war & within the series in general, through and through she is the sole reason why many tributes were sent to their deaths along with relishing in being a part of the hunger games. the movies change her character to be more empathetic and more rebellion-oriented, but i've always thought her to be cold and uncaring, especially within the first book & her remarks about district 12.

❄ — dream theme for a plot/fic & who could write it best ;

i couldn't tell you about who would write it best, but I'd really like to see a fic about the first quarter quell and how it shaped those to come.

🎨 — link to favorite piece of fanart and why ; this art by @/delizbin of haymitch 100%! i just think it encapsulates him & his physical descriptions perfectly, which is something a lot of fanartists tend not to do!

thank you for your ask by the way! ^_^

[ltleflrt]

AO3 tos anon here, thank you for all the explanation.

I actually sometimes wonder myself what’s my stakes in following a lot of spntwitter drama 🙈 I think in this particular case, I just wanted to know the truth. I understand you don’t have concrete proof but as I said I take your word because I know you from outside of the twitter echo chamber and trust you. I also wanted to figure out if AO3 is basically deleting fics just like that but your explanation makes sense as to why they’re doing it.

The fact that reporting trolls should chill, though, I fully agree with.

GAH, THE TUMBEASTS ATE MY FIRST ANSWER. I'm still gonna end up being long winded about this though cuz it gets me pretty heated. I try not to talk about it, but then someone asks me about it and oh lord here I go lol

I honestly don't care if there's a ringleader or just a well organized group. I just wish that the Reporting Trolls would consider printed fics the same as classic 'zines and get the fuck over it. Reporting printed fics can bring down the attention of the IP holders too, so they're not the Fandom Heroes they think they're being.

And when it comes down to it, I don't think they're really trying to protect fandom. If that was the case, there wouldn't be fanfics publicly posted on Lulu that have been sitting their for several years. They're targeting specific creators who have gone out of their way to keep the links hidden or private. So I think there's a kernel of truth to the idea that they're doing this out of jealousy. If it's That One Author that seems to be the ringleader, she may be upset that other people are getting more attention than she does. If it's her fans, they may be upset that their favorite author isn't getting as much attention as they think she deserves. It's even possible that they're not aware of what they're really doing, so they fall back on "BUt pRoFIT".

This whole thing about "but Lulu makes money!" will forever drive me nuts. Lulu would make the same amount of money selling paper and ink on a book that's just 700 pages of the word "Orange" typed on repeat as they would selling paper and ink on a book that's 700 pages of my story. The paper and ink is only worth paying for because of me, and I'm not making any money from the work I'm doing.

Look I can prove that, at least :D

Hell, I'm losing money on it. I pay fanartists to create covers for me. I'm bad at formatting the PDF, so I pay people to format it properly for me. I've spent hundreds of dollars to make these prints look nice and semi-professional. I give away copies for free to the artists and the people who help me with the formatting, and some of these are over $20 because of how thick they are.

Everyone is getting something out of this EXCEPT for me!

*huffs and puffs in irritation*

The AO3 stuff is, unfortunately, squidgy. Over the years I've heard of other things getting reported on AO3 where authors have complained that they weren't given enough opportunity to clean up whatever the violation was, or the AO3 staff wouldn't/couldn't tell them where the violation was hiding. If something is reported, it's going to come down to a judgement call from an AO3 employee. As someone who has had to make judgement calls on things that are grey areas, I can tell you it's tough. And sometimes it's best to err on the side of caution, which is usually not in the customer's favor. Without knowing exactly what was behind the AO3 staff's decision to delete, I can't say whether their decision is fair or not. It is scary though, because it's hard to tell whether an offhand comment will get you in trouble or not, and it puts us all on edge when we hear about something getting deleted.

Anyway, sorry I went on a vent session again. I'm glad you got some answers that at least made you feel better ;D

[heartshapedcreaturefromcriptoon]

@jaytarrant

... You have no age in your bio, your blog is unsearchable and on private, your art style is terrible, and you have pokemon wearing Christmas hats in your header... So I'm also going to go ahead and assume from your horribly generic reply guy response that you've only left here because you couldn't just quietly be obnoxious to me in my notes anymore, that you're a minor who probably shouldn't even be watching vivziepops current shows ether and I'm also going to assume that you have no money to even buy any of those shitty sharkrobot plushie let alone have enough money to support the actually good fan merch ether, that's being made by all these talented fanartists who just happen to be shippers (that have no problem shipping Al that way), with all their excellent work out there, that you've just gone and very blatantly disrespected by ignoring the whole point of me even talking about them here ...

Word of advice: Don't try to tell a powerchair bound crip femme who's going to have asexuality projected onto her as her default for the rest of her life (by abled-bodied people) about what it's like to have "such little representation" or lecture me about abled-bodied-ace "erasure" that's literally just shipping like you or anyone else thinks that I literally give a fuck (crippled humor, keep my reclaimed slur out of your mouth) especially in this fandom, about your abled-bodied whining cause you know you're gonna lose. ;)

And you're also going to be blocked.

... No wait.... Wait wait wait all of you goddamn fucking suck with these straw man ass arguments like I just goddamn fucking bothered to actually read what you're saying and wait a minute ...

"Like shipping with Charlie with Angel or Husk..."

Um, sooo... Charlie could absolutely be shipped with Husk if people wanted to, because Charlie is Bisexual and Husk is Pansexual? Did you think that Charlie was a Lesbian and Husk was Gay? Well, congratulations Silly! You just committed some Bi and Pan Erasure while trying to talk about your abled-bodied ace erasure, and this is probably the reason why the rest of the queer community thinks aces are a little bit annoying and need to try sitting the fuck down sometimes too. (Especially the aro/aces who wanna act all "Sex Repulsed" and "Personally Violated" during Pride Month in order to erase Sex Workers and Kinksters and Leather People and speaking of which...)

Medrano also confirmed Angel Dust, who is canonically a Sex Worker, as being "Straight 4 Pay" in her own words so there's actually a lot of fun experimentation to be had with that too honestly, within regards to shipping as well just doing character exploration and study for Angel, but I know that most of this fandom actually just hates Sex Workers enough to confuse all of the shitty (I guess environment typical?) whorephobia towards Angel's character as direct evidence of Good Ace Rep TM if said whorehobia is coming from Alastor, who canonically sexually harassed Vaggie to begin with in the pilot, which is still canon, but I guess you wanted to take those bitter pills I have for you today as much as I wanted to take all your shitty Bi/Pan/phobia and Erasure you've just displayed in the name of protecting and preserving the idea of a fictional abled-bodied serial killer who still sexually harasses female characters he doesn't like, being your "Great Ace Representation" and all, from you.. So now I'll be blocking you! ;)

Um, okay so some adult dipshit with a cartoon avatar with blue hair and a description implying they have an alter who's like a little kid or something (? I don't know) just posted that EXACT "u cant ship Al bc ASEXUAL!!!!!!!" video I was ragging on a couple days ago made by that turbovirgin brony with the brony dating profile DIRECTLY into main tags right now AND I'M REELING...

Don't let a DHMIS and Fnaf fan with a brony dating profile who sounds like Kate Micucci tell you anything about asexuality, fandoms or shipping especially if they label Al as a "Tumblr Sexyman" because they're so poisoned by their own bad taste I can't.

So much for keeping her anonymous.

The person who unironically posted that shit bronyscold video to the main tags too ... Like fandoms control your own cringe, self loathing and self flagellation and stop telling talented fanartists doing the most through fandom work and commissions what to do with their art for five minutes? Impossible!