#maybe writers should never be moderators have we considered that

[unforth]

I started to write this as a reply to @vex-verlain but realized it should be it's own post.

To be clear, this is about @end-otw-racism and why I support this movement (even if I don't agree with all their proposals).

I am profoundly anti-censorship. It has been one of my biggest personal issues my entire adult life. I will absolutely defend the speech rights even of people I think are utterly reprehensible, even the rights of people who want me and my family dead. I think their speech has a right to exist, full stop.

But.

Being anti-censorship in no way means being anti-moderation. I often see people who are pro-ship, anti-anti, or "too old to use a name for telling yall you're clowning" say that AO3 is supposed to be a safe space for WRITERS, not READERS, and that to me is one of the big ways that the current harassment and moderation policies are badly failing writers of color. There's no way to 100% protect all writers, period, on AO3, and to me it seems like a no-brainer that if the goal is "protect all speech, avoid all censorship, minimize harm to real people," the only way to accomplish all those goals it to have a really robust, well-moderated system that prioritizes reducing harassment - ALL harassment - without looking the other way on certain topics just because they're harder and thornier to sort through. A way to section the groups that are oil and water away from each other, through blocking, powerful filters, comment options, etc (some strategies we do have now, btw! They HAVE been adding functionality in this direction, but it's clearly not enough.)

Currently, protecting people who write bigoted shit is causing active harm to fans of color. We see the impacts of this harm constantly; I personally have seen many, many Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans driven out of white danmei fandom circles for all sorts of reasons, and if yall are in fandoms that often have bipoc in them I'm sure you've seen the same (and if you are in a fandom that doesn't have many bipoc it might be wise to take a moment and consider why it doesn't.)

I just really want more people to take a step back and ask themselves why they think an anti-censorship position necessitates an anti-moderation stance, and also why they think being pro-moderation is the same as being pro-censorship.

I defend the rights of bigoted shit to exist.

What I don't defend is the right of the people who create that stuff to weaponize it against vulnerable people.

Regarding AO3, I personally support a solution that involves some way of sectioning off the bigoted shit. I'm not sure exactly how that would work but I think some kind of major archive warning is a solid start. Also maybe a way of flagging authors who are frequent offenders. And to be clear...it's not my job or responsibility to know exactly how to accomplish this. I'm no expert. That's why I'm supporting a movement that explicitly says AO3/OTW SHOULD HIRE AN EXPERT. And I know it would be expensive...and I know many, many of us would donate to a funds drive to raise the money to cover that expense.

I've seen too many friends get profoundly hurt, and I'm so tired of (overwhelmingly white) fandom circles pearl clutching over this not being an issue, that the real problem is that this will lead to censorship of (checks notes) Nazi shit, spitefic, and the other dregs of fanfiction (which, again, has a right to exist! But God why are so many of y'all favoring IT over ALL THE FIC THAT WILL NOW NEVER EXIST BECAUSE BIPOC GET BULLIED OUT OF WRITING IT.)

It's clearly an issue.

And we have to speak up and demand better or it will continue to be an issue.

Please, please listen to the bipoc who've managed to not be driven out of fandom and understand that *things need to change,* which means, for us white folks:

1. A lot of listening to the people who've been harmed

2. Using our voices to amplify theirs

3. Standing up to bigotry we see in our fandom communities

4. Shutting up when they ask us to shut up

5. Checking our own behavior and doing our best not to be part of the problem, and, if and when we go awry, owning it with maturity and apologizing and doing our best to make amends and not repeat our mistakes

...and probably more but those are the first things to come to mind.

Please stop siding with people who've decided they are entitled to spew vile shit, stop prioritizing their writerly protection over the safety of equally valid writers who also deserve protection and are being targeted and hurt. All you do by siding with the assholes is amplify their voices while silencing bipoc and create a space that protects bigots. Is that REALLY the hill you want to fight on?

None of us know it all. We can all learn to do better. I'm personally here to learn, and listen, and improve.

And I'm here to shout from the rooftops that we can be anti-censorship and pro-moderation.

I am, and you should be too.

[thelostgirl21]

Alright, here's the thing...

As the current main contributor/author of Radovid's Witcher wiki page, I would like to make something very clear:

The name "Radovid V" solely refers to the fact that, according to the family tree that was created by Andrzej Sapkowski (that I humbly attempted to put together in graphic form here), Radovid would be the 5th Redanian king to bear that name (note: I modified the family tree to make it fit the TV show's canon by putting Vizimir II and Radovid V as brothers, rather than father and son).

That's it!

The name "Radovid V" does not, in any way or form, indicate that the TV show's character has anything in common with the character of Radovid that we encounter in the videogames, except being the fifth of his name.

Why? Because the videogame character does not exists as he is shown in the games in the source material.

Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri's story on the Continent fully ends when Radovid is still a 13-year-old in the books, and King Radovid never gets the chance to even remotely interact with any of them.

He never becomes an antagonist to any of the main characters. There's no evidence that he ever develops any type of relationship with Philippa (or that she remotely raised him). They don't say that he ever grows to resent or hate any of the mages.

Everything you see, in the videogames, about King Radovid's personality and beliefs is pure videogame writers creation, and not part of the books' canon.

Andrzej Sapkowski himself has never played those games, and has been very adamant, in interviews, that he does not consider anything featured in "The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt" to be part of his own Witcher Universe canon's, and especially not a continuation of the story he wrote.

“Maybe it’s time to set the matters straight. The Witcher’ is a well made video game, its success is well deserved and the creators deserve all the splendour and honour due. But in no way can it be considered to be an 'alternative version’, nor a 'sequel’ to the witcher Geralt stories. Because this can only be told by Geralt’s creator. A certain Andrzej Sapkowski.”

The videogame writers created an adaptation of those books that took tremendous liberties with the source material (as they should, given that's sort of the point of adaptations), and included original characters not featured in the books (other than by name), to continue the story beyond the books' ending.

King Radovid is one of such original videogame characters, that was inspired by a mere sentence written in a paragraph of the books (as well as, perhaps, what they could interpret from his childhood persona), but does not otherwise feature in the source material.

HOWEVER, the Netflix TV show never refers to their own version of King Vizimir as "King Vizimir II", nor to their own version of King Radovid as "King Radovid V".

We assume that Netflix has chosen to go by Sapkowski's family tree (until the events of the show) and that the Radovid we see would be the 5th of his name, but there's nothing actually confirming that assumption.

Since the moderators of the Witcher's wiki made the decision to name Netflix's Radovid's page "Radovid V", rather than simply "Radovid" (as I personally would have), my understanding is that the moderators have chosen to assume that the TV show is following the family tree that was established by Sapkowski's books (and companion writing pieces), unless specified otherwise on the show and/or in interviews from the people that are actually working on the show.

But have the show-runner, the actors, or any other person working on the TV series ever referred to their own version of King Radovid as "King Radovid V"? No. Absolutely not.

There are no official sources - as far as I'm aware - that have confirmed that he was named "King Radovid V".

We are just assuming that the show is following Sapkowski's Redanian royal family tree until then.

However, even should Radovid eventually be referred to as being the 5th of his name on the show, it wouldn't invalidate the theory that the TV show's own original version of the character has actually been based on what Sapkowski wrote about Radovid III, rather than Radovid V.

It isn't rare, for people writing adaptations, to blend two characters (or more) from the source material together in order to simplify the storytelling, reduce the number of characters needed to be introduced and/or developped, address certain themes they liked with more depth, etc.

So, if you're going to write your own version of King Radovid, why not base your writing on another Radovid that's already featured in the books?

Here is everything that Andrzej Sapkowski himself wrote about who King Radovid (the fifth one to bear that name) will become in the future:

No one could predict or guess then that this boy of thirteen years, which at that time was a person without any relevance in a country ruled by the Regency Council and by Dijkstra, would become king. A king who, after he paid all the insults that had been given to his mother and him, would go down in history with the name Radovid the Stern.

That's it! This is all the canon information we have from the author regarding what King Radovid's reign will look like.

The end.

For all we know, the worst thing he might ever do, once he becomes King, is dismantle the Regency Council, strip a few nobles of their names and titles, and raise taxes for the rich.

And the nobility will get pissed at him and call him "the Stern" in retaliation!

Because the people that pissed him off as a child and took advantage of him and his mother were members of the nobility, not magic users, non-humans, or the common folks.

The videogame writers ran out of original material from the books to adapt when they reached the 3rd game, so they started expanding on Sapkowski's writings and inventing their own storylines an videogame canon.

They took that sentence in the direction that most suited them.

The TV show writers found themselves with a rather unique situation regarding King Vizimir's death.

This is every mention we get about Prince/King Radovid in the books (those were compiled by endiness):

Prince Radovid was a minor, Queen Hedwig had been devastated by the tragic death of her husband - the aristocracy, terrified, had become stupid, and was disunited and divided into factions.

— Baptism of Fire

“I know [Calanthe] had wedding plans for Ciri, to join her with young Tancred Thyssen of Kovir or perhaps to the Redanian prince, Radovid, I don’t know exactly.”

— The Tower of Swallows

‘Long live His Holiness!’ A few voices came from the crowd, obviously bribes. Novigrad’s hierarch Cyrus Englekind Hemmelfart rose and blessed the people and the army with his outstretched hands, while irreverently covering Queen Hedwig and young Radovid with the skirts of his robe. Nobody shouts, “Long live Radovid”, thought the prince covered by the hierarch’s fat ass. No one even looks at me. No one is screaming in honour of my mother. No one remembers my poor father. Even today, at a day of triumph, which he so richly deserved. After all, that’s why he was murdered. He felt a gaze on his neck. Delicate like someone he did not know - or knew, but only in his dreams. Something that was soft like a brush of a woman’s warm lips. He turned his head. He discovered the dark unfathomable eyes of Philippa Eilhart fixed on him. Wait, thought the prince, looking away. Just wait. No one could predict or guess then that this boy of thirteen years, which at that time was a person without any relevance in a country ruled by the Regency Council and by Dijkstra, would become king. A king who, after he paid all the insults that had been given to his mother and him, would go down in history with the name Radovid the Stern.

— Lady of the Lake [x]

And it works! Because the pacing of a book is not like the pacing of a TV show.

Queen Hedwig and 13-year-old Prince Radovid worked on paper, where we can just forget that they are even there… They just exist somewhere as part of the political landscape to justify why the Regency Council was allowed to take over.

But having Dijkstra and Philippa constantly reporting to a Queen that just keeps weeping and sadly gazing in the distance in the wake of the death of the man she loved (because women are like that, they collapse and become useless when they lose their man), while telling them to carry on with their work and signing whatever paper they are presenting her with on the show, would have gotten old pretty fast!

I mean, what type of story would you rather watch:

A woman crying over her dead husband all the time, locking herself in a room, and walking around like a zombie while letting Dijkstra and Philippa be in charge… With a 12-year-old kid described as, [quote] " a person without any relevance in a country ruled by the Regency Council and by Dijkstra" [end quote] occasionally sulking at them over the dinner table? (A scenario that would have been 100% faithful to the book's canon) Or

An adult King needing to figure out who he can trust in his castle, how much influence Dijkstra and Philippa truly hold over the people that are supposed to be serving him, and ideally, perhaps seek outside help to hopefully find a way to survive and eventually take his power back from them someday (a possibility of where the storyline with the current King Radovid could go on the TV show)?

King Radovid, the way he's been written on the show, can serve the same purpose that Queen Hedwig served in the books (i.e. being someone totally ill-prepared to assume the responsibility of ruling a Kingdom; thus allowing Dijkstra and Philippa to become the true power behind the throne for a while), but for less problematic reasons (i.e. Netflix's replacement for Queen Hedwig is not a lovesick woman that can't function after man's death).

He's a character that can allow the show’s writers to expand on Redania’s court intrigues, and maybe on Jaskier’s role as "the Sandpiper", should they wish to.

The TV show likely needed a viable replacement for Queen Hedwig (that would have been a nightmare to integrate in a TV series), so they made Radovid the King’s brother and the next in line for the throne in the event of Hedwig’s death.

Whereas the videogames obviously needed to create new political conflicts on the Continent and introduce a new villain. They thus invented some traumatic upbringing for that 13 year-old child Prince that involved Philippa, and made King Radovid their villain.

Both versions of "King Radovid" were created to suit the needs of two very different adaptations of the source material.

Also, I can't find the article, but I remember Joey Batey saying that one of their concerns - when they brought in the idea of a queer relationship being introduced on the show - was that the relationship needed to carry as much weight and significance (in terms of its ability to influence important events of the world in which that relationship exists) as the main heterosexual relationships (heavily implied Geralt/Yennefer).

And, in the TV series "Blood Origins", they introduced an original character named "Seanchai", that Lauren Schmidt Hissrich explained as:

"the name Seanchaí actually comes from… It was a position in Ireland where you were a storyteller, and you went between the halls of kings, and you went to chieftains and people, and you were the most powerful people in the land and kings were fucking terrified of them. And queens. Because one bad story would destroy you as a king. And they were far more worried about that than any army."

Those storytellers were often bards that recited long lyric poems.

And the first thing that Radovid tells Jaskier about himself is that "Song of the Seven" is his favorite.

If one bad story/song can destroy you as a king... Then, technically, it would be fair to assume that one good story/song might just help you rise as a king...

At the end of Season 3, Radovid is essentially "taken hostage" by Philippa (and Dijkstra, by association) in a context where he's essentially got no power, and no voice.

And the show paired him up with "the Voice of the Continent".

This is pure, raw, "power couple" potential right there!

And what's more? That power couple status can be 100% achieved without needing to "harden" Radovid's personality.

Because Netflix's Radovid is shown as being highly emotionally intelligent, empathetic, and sensitive on the show (traits often associated as being more traditionally "feminine"), without any hunger nor desire for power for himself.

I mean, look at him!

He literally huddles himself in a dark corner to cry after finding out that all of his guards have been slaughtered.

He tells his brother that he's no spymaster, nor even a good prince, and was willing to give up his claim to the throne to go help Jaskier be reunited with his family instead!

He was never that 13-year-old entitled brat that lost his father at age 12, and had to watch his mother fall apart and be manipulated by the Regency Council without being able to do anything about it!

Netflix's Radovid is a grown-up man - likely somewhere in his mid 30s - that has perhaps the least entitled type of personality I've ever seen any character have on the show, and openly argues with Philippa and Dijskstra that offering people things they actually want in return for their services - rather than resorting to force - would be the most effective way to get shit done!

So let him continue to be soft, tenderhearted, caring, selfless, yet still manage to outsmart Dijkstra and Philippa (thanks to Jaskier's help), defeat them, and become the most powerful ruler in the North, I say!

But yeah, my point is that if they wanted to give Jaskier a love interest that has the power to actually influence the political scene and global fate of the Continent, they sort of hit the jackpot with Prince/King Radovid!

And that yes, he actually does have a lot more in common with what was written about Radovid III in the books, rather than what they wrote about Prince/King Radovid V.

Those online arguments of "they aged up a kid destined to become a deranged madman to make Jaskier queer!" are essentially pure homophobic gamers propaganda.

They are often spread around by people that either believe that the books were written after the games (something that often gets on Andrzej Sapkowski's nerves), and/or assume that CD Projekt Red's writers made a "superior and more faithful adaptation" of the books, by making sure that everything happening in the games follows the books canon.

And those messages get so loud and angry, that even more reputable sources will report things like:

"In the books and the games, Radovid is the King of Redania: He rules the territory with fear and prejudice. He hates magic and spearheads the burning of anyone different than him. This is not the sensitive character we have come to know, suggesting that Jaskier will most likely turn bitter from heartbreak." (x)

Or

"The show introduced Radovid as a joyful playboy who likes to spend his days with food, wine, and other people’s company. In the books, on the other hand, Radovid is a tyrant who uses Redania’s forces to hunt down sorceresses and burn them at stakes. Radovid is such a grim character that CD Projekt Red even turned him into a boss battle in The Witcher 3." (x)

It's mind bloggling, to me, that none of the authors of those articles ever took the time to go check the source (i.e. the actual freaking books) to see what's actually written there!

They just assume that every person complaining about Radovid being a tyrant and going on witch hunts in the games *and the books* ever took the time to read them, and/or go read who King Radovid actually is in those books and the role that he actually plays!

This is about the laziest form of journalism / article writing I can think of! Listening to whatever misinformation fans are spreading, treating it as fact, and basing your whole analysis of what's happening in the show on it.

FACT: In the books, Prince Radovid is "a person without any relevance in a country ruled by the Regency Council and by Dijkstra", that becomes a "king who, after he paid all the insults that had been given to his mother and him, would go down in history with the name Radovid the Stern."

King Radovid is essentially a blank slate that only becomes relevant years after Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri's story on the Continent has come to an end.

As such, they can use him to replace other characters from the books that play minor but strategic roles (ex: Queen Hedwig), and allow Jaskier to play a politically relevant role in the story by becoming romantically involved with a freaking Nordling King.

No one has to like those changes, but Netflix's King Radovid is not CD Projekt Red's King Radovid.

Both are OCs inspired by different aspects of Sapkowski's work and writings. That's all!

And both work for different reasons.

If your way of making Dandelion canonically bisexual is to age up a child (that grows up to be a xenophobic megalomaniac) to make him his love interest I'd rather you kept him straight.

[jaystephevents]

Just a suggestion but maybe a discord server might help the jaysteph community and would benefit future events. writers could help each other out and readers could help with brickwalls and together could come up with prompts and ideas

Heya! There used to be a JaySteph Discord that shut down a long while ago due to eventual lack of participation, but there’s definitely a new resurgence of JaySteph love sweeping fandom!

Me @river9noble has no energy or desire to be a Discord mod, but if someone else wants to create an independent JaySteph server not directly tied to @jaystephevents they’re certainly free to! (And of course, people could chat about whatever they want on there, including getting help with writing for events.)

I’m gonna make some safety suggestions on that front before anyone impulsively proceeds:

Mods should be 18+

Mods should have a strong sense of responsibility for the safety of the server. It is not a role to take on lightly. Too many servers start out enthusiastic and fail wildly when mods can’t appropriately moderate abuse or drama or disagreements.

Being a mod WILL require you to confront people and engage in interpersonal conflict and resolution. If you’re not comfortable with that, don’t be a mod.

Mods should have time and energy to monitor the server and the willingness to guide members to correct channels when conversations stray off topic

Mods should be in it for the long haul and prepared to make that longterm commitment. Ideally, no one should mod a server alone but have 2-3 mods so that if life happens, there are others already on board to keep the server safely running.

No server should EVER ask for participants’ ages. Minors should never, ever be outed on the internet.

Either make the server 18+ and state in the invites and rules that anyone joining is affirming that they are 18+ and will be permanently banned if they are found out to be lying OR….

OR make the NSFW channels 18+ and state that anyone who requests those roles is affirming that they are 18+ (This doesn’t automatically out minors because some adults may prefer not to join NSFW channels too).

Also, as @jaystephevents we would only advertise servers that are in line with the values of our events, which are:

Protecting the safety of minors on the internet (*see more below)

Being ship-friendly, kink-friendly, and judgment and censorship free (with appropriate server channels for NSFW and triggering content) [EDIT: see this is why I mod events, not discords. It’s very appropriate to ban certain language and discussions on Discords, such as racism, active discussions of abusing children, etc. bc people have free speech in other areas of their lives. Yes I differentiate between censorship of written word and art on AO3 and events and real live discussions with real people. No I don’t care to discuss this position with antis who don’t actually give two shits about understanding the difference.]

Obviously anyone can set up their own server however they want, but we wouldn’t as a blog promote or endorse one that didn’t share our values.

Safety Precautions for Minors on the Internet

Modding anything, from a fandom event to a Discord, puts you in the position of being responsible for the safety of minors. If this is not a role you desire or are comfortable with, you should not become any sort of mod.

Even if you mod an event or server that is 18+, you still have to take the safety of minors into account - by not asking people their ages AND by setting things up in a way that doesn’t out minors WHILE firmly stating that only adults may join. Also, you need to be prepared to deal with minors who may lie their way in and later be found out.

If you mod an event or server that is all ages, as JaySteph Weekend is, there are more concerns to consider:

Aside from not outing anyone’s minor status, potential minors should not be put in a position of DM’ing with adults. (As they would be in a collaborative Big Bang open to all ages. I’ve seen Reverse Bangs get around this by having the artist and author create independently in reaction to each other’s work instead of collaboratively but even so, you don’t want minors choosing to work on NSFW or M rated work in an event where someone else will creatively interact with that work. Adults shouldn’t be put in a position of unknowingly being paired with with a minor on an NSFW/M project. But, it’s not safe to out minors. So it gets complicated and sticky. Either ban minors from event entirely or ban NSFW/M works. And realize that yes, people can lie, and all you can do is ban them if you find out. Which may be small comfort to a safe adult in the position of accidentally working on NSFW/M work with a teen who lied.)

Minors should NEVER DM with people online, even IF they’re not outed as minors, because here’s why:

A friendship may turn flirtatious or something more. An adult DM partner may make sexual or off color jokes and references, either not considering that their anonymously aged chat partner is a minor OR deliberately fishing.

Friendships have a honeymoon period where everyone’s putting their best foot forward. It takes 9-12 months at least for people’s true selves to completely emerge. A lot of trust and vulnerability can be established in 9-12 months. A lot of personal details may be shared in that time, too (even if not age) especially when the convo is taking place over DM, away from public eyes.

Abusers are EXPERTS at hiding their true selves and do it manipulatively, rather than as a natural and normal social precaution. Once trust is established and they have a wealth of personal info on their target, they began to subtlety manipulate and abuse, slowly pushing their convos and their targets further and further into their desired outcome.

Anyone can fall prey to that online OR irl, but minors more so.

Minors, PROTECT YOURSELVES by only chatting PUBLICLY with people - in public or Anon Asks and answers that you reply to with reblogs or in comments. By tagging people and chatting in their notes. By only chatting in public Discord channels on servers that HAVEN’T outed you as a minor.

On an all-ages Discords, mods should clearly state these safety precaution for minors - that minors should choose not to DM - but because it is UNSAFE to out minors, AND because mods have no knowledge or control over who’s DMing, there are uncontrollable safety variables.

For those reasons, I’m not comfortable joining or modding all ages servers. You can’t control what kids do. Yes, it’s ultimately their parent/guardian’s job to monitor their child’s internet activity, but let’s be real: most don’t. I don’t personally feel good creating an all ages environment where potential abuse is more likely to occur, such as a Discord. Because think about it: is an online child predator more likely to join an 18+ server or an all ages one?

Yes, minors can lie their way into an 18+ server, but on an all ages server, predators KNOW they’re in the water, even if they don’t know who specifically is a minor. And knowing that they’re there, predators will be on the lookout for people whose language and convos and thoughtlessly shared personal details expose them.

So, yeah. I’m not saying whether or not all ages Discords should exist, I’m just saying - if you choose to mod one, it is a HEAVY responsibility.

And this also isn’t to say that minors can’t talk to anyone online! Yes you can make friends and chat with people, but always do it publicly and never tell anyone you’re a minor (and don’t share info like “today in high school” or talk about living with your parents.) (Yes adults live with parents too especially in this economy but if you’re a minor, don’t give people any reason to even suspect that.)

Also, minors, don’t chat about NSFW stuff with people. It’s not safe for you, but also consider how icky and horrifying it would be for a safe adult to unknowingly be chatting about that with a minor! Which is why adults also have to be careful who you’re chatting or collaborating about stuff with, even when done publicly.

So yeah. Are you all exhausted yet? I am. But this is reality of minors existing on the internet. Keeping them safe IS heavy work and it DOES take a lot of effort and it is EVERY online adult’s responsibility.

That’s why I ain’t gonna be modding servers myself.

But if someone wants to responsibly take on creating an independent JaySteph server, as long as it’s set up safely and within our event values, we’re happy to promote it. 💜❤️

[dayseternal-blog]

You should honestly call yourselves the 'Naruhina Fanfic Detective Agency' from how often you get asked to find fics, and actually go out your way to do it

Thank you so much for finding so many fics and doujins for us, I haven't been able to stop reading them for about a month now lmaooo 😂😭 they've been amazing suggestions!

When people send nice stuff like this, I end up hoarding it for months 😅 I just keep in in my inbox and never post it.

@raseng0ne, @your-internetfriend, @darkmoi10, @amj338, @bornonthebreakofdawn, @alexis513, @mysterious-crimson-lotus, @nh-fanfics, @chloelapomme and everyone else who has helped out on the fanfic rec and lost & found asks ❤❤❤

To be honest, I see quite a few complaint posts from other fandoms about how fanfiction doesn't get enough reblogs/acknowledgement/sharing/appreciation, compared to fanart, gifs, headcanons, memes, meta...and I don't know if my own view is skewed because of the asks I receive, but the NaruHina fandom seems to be a lot healthier in this respect??? I personally feel like we share fanfiction and appreciation for fanfiction more than other fandoms. Maybe it's a do-if-yourself-if-you-want-to-see-it mentality, but writers and readers seem to be more vocal for each other ever since.........the pandemic started... in this NaruHina neighborhood.

Anyway, let's please continue to share fanfiction love with each other :D

I've seriously considered it, like making a separate blog especially for fanfic recs and lost & found, and then inviting you folks to also run it (kind of like those event blogs? that have co-moderators), teamwork makes the dream work!!, but I think I'm not up to the responsibility of having a quality second blog and setting up an organized system for answering 😥, or not up to the responsibility of being the "founder" of a blog like that. I'm too detail-oriented, I'd pressure myself needlessly about it. Plus, I'd still rather write...and writing already takes me a long time. but "NaruHina Fanfic Detective Agency" would be adorable 🥺

[ducavalentinos]

Hello, What were the opinions of the people who personally knew Cesare ? Thank you !

Hello ;) So, there were a lot of opinions made about Cesare by his contemporaries, but most of the opinions come from people who met him, not knew him intimately. The unfortunate thing here is that Cesare is mostly seen through the lenses of people outside his inner circle: ambassadors, orators, enemies who wrote daily dispatches, reports, letters to their employers and others. Some of this material has weight and it’s helpful, but still they all contain the unavoidable political element and focus towards Cesare as the political figure, not Cesare as a person. There are interesting glimpses of his personality and intimate life here and there, but never enough to make more than a sketch of it, and often much of it is distorted, with incorrect information and/or evaluations which were believed at the time to have been accurate. Cesare through the lenses of people inside his inner circle: people who knew him intimately, people he trusted and loved and vice-versa, are frustratingly limited, there’s almost nothing, which creates a big unbalance about his figure and his life. I believe the opinions of his beloved tutor Giovanni Vera, his most known secretary and adviser Agapito Geraldini di Amelia, or Miguel da Corella, or of his mother, his sister, his wife, would be incredibly valuable in order to have more precise knowledge, and a more rounded assessment about his person, in all of its facets, since we don’t have that, what fills up this gap are the words of one of his first secretaries, the alleged words of his father, Rodrigo, and the words of intellectuals and poets who interacted with him at his father’s court in Rome, some later following him at his own court in the Romagna, beneath the exaggerated flattery common in these writings, these men make some interesting observations, and express a genuine opinion about Cesare, aside from just the political man, which helps to shed a light into his personality, his qualities, and other aspects of his life. With this in mind, I gathered opinions that can be confirmed by Cesare’s own documented actions, and that I find are generally reliable: not entirely dominated by personal/political bias, and absent of the malice and gossip which became more common the more powerful Cesare and his family became. There are mix between the first group (ambassadors, orators, enemies, etc), the second group (people close to him, intellectuals and poets), and maybe there will be one or two which does not belong to either group, so I’ll leave them for last as a type of miscellaneous third group, in chronological order: 1488:

“What thanks can I give you, Cesare Borgia? May this auspicious day be celebrated as a festive day, in which this work comes to light only out of your love, and if our judgment is worth something, it will be most useful for general prosperity. In this book, we teach how to write a poem, exploring and manifesting all the secrets of metric art. Certainly a work that will please you very much. [...]Add to that your great and truly effective love for beautiful letters.You, Cesare, are truly worthy of much commendation, if at such a young age you act with the wisdom of an old man. Forward, then, O hope and ornament of the Borgia family, and accept with a good heart our Syllables, an offering of your devoted friend. So I believe that my name, joined to your eternal name and that of [your house], will have ornament and life."

- Extracts from a dedication written to Cesare by Paolo Pompilio,h in his Syllabica, a literature text-book of verse composition, published in the same year. 1492:

“Cesare Borgia profited so much that, with ardent ingenuity, he discussed the questions posed to him both in Canon law and in Civil law.”

- Paolo Giovio, concerning the Disputation for the laurea at the University of Pisa, where Cesare studied from 1491 to 1492. 1493:

"On the day before yesterday I found Cesare at home in Trastevere. He was on the point of setting out to go hunting, and entirely in secular habit. that is to say, dressed in silk and armed. Riding together, we talked a while, I am among his most intimate acquaintances. He is a man of great talent and of an excellent nature; his manners are those of the son of a great prince; above everything, he is joyous and light-hearted. He is very modest**, much superior to, and of a much finer appearance than his brother the Duke of Gandia, who also is not short of natural gifts."

- Disp. written by Gianandrea Boccaccio to his employer, the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole d'Este. 1497:

"Nature has engendered in you not the seed of virtù, but virtù itself, and in occupying herself to form you, [she] has adorned your body with an excellent form, dignity, and every beauty, and provided the soul with moderation**, decorum, gravity, benevolence, and above all royal liberality**, which nature seemed to have surpassed herself. And this liberality of yours, is shown with writers and artists."

- Extract from a dedication written by one of Cesare's secretaries, Carlo Valgulio, in the first transl. of Cleomedes: De contemplatione orbium excelsorum. 1499:

“By his modesty, his readiness, his prudence, and his other virtues he has known how to earn the affections of every one.”

- Letter written by Giuliano Della Rovere, to pope Alexander VI, concerning Cesare's arrival in France.**

"The Pope's son was very gallant..."

- Baldassare Castiglione, in a letter after seeing the entrance of Cesare and his suite alongside King Louis XII of France in Milan. 1500:

“To-day, about the twenty-second hour (four in the afternoon), after he had dined, he had signor Ramiro fetch me to him; and with great frankness and amiability his Majesty first made his excuses for not granting me an audience the preceding day, owing to his having so much to do in the castle and also on account of the pain caused by his ulcer. Following this, and after I had stated that the sole object of my misson was to wait upon his Majesty to congratulate and thank thim, and to offer your services, he answered me in carefully chosen words, covering each point and very fluently. The gist of it was, that knowing your Excellency’s ability and goodness, he had always loved you and had hoped to enjoy personal relations with you. He had looked forward to this when you were in Milan, but events and circumstances then prevented it. But now that he had come to this country, he --determined to have his wish-- had written the letter announcing his successes, of his own free will and as proof of his love, and feeling certain that you Majesty would be pleased by it. He says he will continue to keep you informed of his doings**, as he desires to establish a firm friendship with your Majesty, and he proffers everything he owns and in his power should you ever have need.[...]When I take both the actual facts and his words into consideration, I see why he wishes to establish some sort of friendly alliance with your Majesty. I believe in his professions, and I can see nothing but good in them.”

Postscript: “The Duke’s daily life is as follows: he goes to bed at eight, nine, or ten o’clock at night (three to five o’clock in the morning). Consequently, the eighteenth hour is his dawn, the nineteenth his sunrise, and the twentieth his time for rising. Immediately on getting up he sits down to the table, and while there and afterwards he attends to his business affairs. He is considered brave, strong, and generous, and it is said he lays great store by straightforward men.[...]He is great of spirit and he seeks eminence and glory.”

- Extracts from a Disp. of Pandolfo Collenuccio to his employer, the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole d’Este, from Pesaro. 1501:

"This lord is very magnificent and splendid, and so spirited in feats of arms that there is nothing so great but that it must seem small to him. In the pursuit of glory and to acquire a State he never rests, and he knows neither danger nor fatigue. He moves so swiftly that he arrives at a place before it is known that he has set out for it. He knows how to make himself beloved of his soldiers, and he has in his service the best men of Italy. These things render him victorious and formidable, and to these is yet to be added his perpetual good fortune."

- Disp. written by Niccolò Machiavelli to the Signory of Florence. 1502:

"He [Cesare] argues with such sound reason that to dispute with him would be a long affair, for his wit and eloquence never fail him (dello ingegno e della lingua si vale quanto vuole...)

-Disp. written by Francesco Soderini, from Urbino, to the Signory of Florence.

"The duke[Cesare] is good-natured, but he cannot tolerate offenses."

- Rodrigo Borgia, to the Ferrarese ambassador B. Constabili.

Miscellaneous: A certain author named Camillo di Leonardo from Pesaro dedicates to Cesare, in the year of 1502, his famous work Speculum Lapidum, in which he 'commends the duke for his great love of letters, his courteous liberality towards the scholarly, the care he used when collecting the beautiful and numerous [works] of the library of Cesena, and even his sweetness and his gentleness.' Gaspare Torella, one of Cesare's personal physician and advisers also dedicated to him his Dialogus de Dolore, in which he says he is "...pleased that [Cesare's] virtù surpassed those of the great ones of Rome, such as the justice of Brutus, the constancy of Decius, the continence of Scipio, the loyalty of Marco Regolo, and the magnanimity of Paolo Emilio.” The French commanders used to say of Cesare: “At war he was a good companion and a brave man." The Spanish historian Zurita, atypically pays a compliment to Cesare when assessing the situation in Italy and of pope Julius' panic when hearing about Cesare's escape from the Spanish prison in 1506, he writes: "The duke was such that his very presence was enough to set all Italy agog; and he was greatly beloved, not only by men of war, but also by many people of Tuscany and of the States of the Church." Lastly, during the winter of 1500-1501, a scholar and poet named Francesco Uberti, native of Cesena, adressed to Cesare a volume of epigrams, all which show the Romagnese opinion about him. According to Uberti, Cesare's Romagnese subjects learned his temper was 'mitissima' (gentle), 'placidissima' (calm) and his 'crueltà' (cruelty) was the severity necessary to repress political disorders. There is also other epigrams where Tiberti praises Cesare's clemency, "pious and kind Cesare..." ** The terms modesty and moderation, according to Gregorovius, can be also taken to 'understand as part and manifestation of a liberal education,...’ and the term liberality means generous, which Cesare was particularly reputed as being, to such a degree his genorosity was called at the time after his own name as “liberalità cesarea”. ** I decided to add Della Rovere’s words about Cesare, because as writer and historian Anthony Everitt said in one of his books: “Praise from one’s worst enemy is the most annoying, but also the most credible, of compliments.” and because even if Della Rovere’s words are insincere, likely, these words can nevertheless be confirmed by the opinions of others about Cesare, esp. in the historical records about his soujour at France. **Cesare had sent long letters to Ercole d'Este while he was at the conquest of Imola and Forlì, telling him the details of the military campaign.

[bondsmagii]

Hey read (some of) this blog post (long as hell), tries to pick it up where your old scp cult post left off: lackoflepers medium com/scp-is-not-a-cult-196e87ce6b11

(link)

this is insane. I've never written anything that's ever received a full response before, so that's exciting. what's even more exciting is that this piece does raise some really interesting questions, and is very well-written and thoughtful.

the strange thing is, I think we're both in agreement -- but I'm calling it a cult, and the author of this piece is calling it a "fledgling religion". I agree with this outlook, if I'm honest -- but at the same time I can't help but think that this has filled a hole in my cult theory, rather than poked a hole in it.

when I wrote the original cult post, the one thing I couldn't quite equate was the religion aspect. there was a lot of things to consider from that aspect, in terms of cults requiring a certain doctrine, rituals, etc, and while I was able to draw comparisons to the site culture and these things, it didn't quite fit. this article explains and illustrates exactly what all of these things are, and the sheer amount of similarities between the SCP wiki culture and religious fundamentalists. it's absolutely incredible, how it all still adds up.

however, some things are way off. I understand the author has a history with site and with staff, and they obviously understand that there's a complicated relationship between the two. the piece certainly tackles the question from an educated site-critical standpoint, but I can't help but notice some glaring omissions and in some places, assumptions which I feel are quite simply incorrect. under the cut we go, because this is long.

the author seems to be very ignorant of the site's cyclical patterns. one of their main arguments for the wiki's not being a cult is how people like Dr Gears and thedeadlymoose don't have more power over the masses, being such important figures. the problem with the wiki is that it is very cyclical, and big names of one era do not translate over to new eras. big names replace old ones, and the old ones either become fond grandparent figures (like Gears, who had the sense to take a step back before the tides changed against him) or they become irrelevant or reviled (like thedeadlymoose, or pixelatedharmony (Roget).) this means that if the former appeals to the group, they will get essentially a pat on the head and a gentle dismissal, or if the latter speak out they will be silenced, harassed, banned, etc. this is very cultlike behaviour -- if somebody goes against the grain, they become an immediate enemy of the people. the only way to survive fame on the wiki is to retire quietly, at your peak, and keep yourself to yourself.

going on from this, there are also different levels to how a staff member is seen. there have been eras of the site where the site admin might not be as impressive as one of the prolific writers, for example. who these days knows about The Administrator? it's all Dr Gears to them. different authors have different levels of unofficial authority, and the author of the piece doesn't seem to realise that it's a cult of personality as much as anything else. there are constant divisions among staff, even if they present a united front; frequently those not toeing the party line have been ostracised or purged, and this filters down to the average user. just because a person is on staff does not mean they immediately skyrocket to godhood, if we're using the religious metaphor. this is why it seems as though "staff" as a whole isn't uniformly worshipped -- they're not. there are complex currents of power at work here, and it's frustrating because at first glance it seems to invalidate the very real fact that a few site members have all the authority. the staff worship extends to staff members. those in lower tiers will act similarly to those in higher tiers as a new member would act towards all staff.

the author draws attention to thedeadlymoose's impressive efforts to bring the site forward from its 4chan beginnings and make it more inclusive to LGBT members -- something that has undoubtedly had an effect. however, the author does not mention that to date, the site's only successful splinter site (as in, a site that lasted more than a few weeks) is RPC, and while this website came about for multiple reasons, it's undeniable that one of these reasons was because of the fact that the wiki was openly supportive of LGBT people during Pride Month. it's also interesting to note that the author is also a member of the RPC site, so it's odd that this piece of the site's origins is not mentioned.

the acceptance of these pro-LGBT policies also seems to be less wide-spread than the author believes -- most people don't care, there does exist users who are homophobic or transphobic, and -- something I'm surprised wasn't mentioned at all in the piece -- when LGBT members of the site spoke up and said the new logo made them feel pandered to, and the resulting blowout made them feel targeted and unsafe, they were mass banned from the subreddit by a rogue moderator who, incensed by the fact his authority was so challenged, then ragequit and abused people on the threads for several hours. this is a typical staff response to discontent in the masses. so yes, thedeadlymoose did have some significant sway in the attitude changing somewhat, but it was not as widespread (nor as cared about) as the article's author seems to think.

now, I shall move on to specific quotations.

Furthermore, as a gaggle of creators, SCP should never feature the mass conformity of thought that defines a cult; theirs is an ecosystem that predicates itself upon creation, and obsessively on the new and original — that is to say, the different (but tempered).

while the author does elaborate on this idea of creativity and conformity, this is just wrong. again, I blame the author's ignorance in regards to the cyclical nature of the site -- which isn't the fault of the author, in my opinion. such cycles are slow, measuring out in years rather than months, which is insanely long for an internet community. in order to notice them, you would have to have been observing for some time -- which I have been. since I have been observing the site (which has been since its very creation -- I was on the 4chan thread in 2007 when 173 was created and I have seen the wiki from its infancy on EditThis over to wikidot) I have seen this happen countless times. a type of writing, be it style or genre, takes off. it could be LOLFoundation, grimdark, whatever -- it takes off, it runs the site for a year or so, and then it crashes and burns. when it takes off, there are rules for writing it that must be obeyed lest you be downvoted to oblivion. as the attitude turns against it, those who still write it are vilified and ostracised, and the new one takes over. there have been mass purges in the past, and there has always been, since the wiki's inception, conformity of thought. one of my oldest complaints about the wiki is that, for a site full of writers, they have no imagination and absolutely no desire to step out of the approved style.

To put it very broadly, things get accustomed to the status quo in a highly regulated environment, and get better at simply remaining and surviving in that.

this could be a decent rebuff to my previous point, but the fact is that while the SCP wiki harbours cultish behaviour, a vast majority of the users are casual readers who maybe write one or two articles. the stagnation is, at least partially, because of the fact that most users sign up, read some articles, think "cool, I have an idea for one!", write it -- and have it emulate the articles they've read, thus sounding similar in tone and content to the rest of the recent articles -- get a semi-decent response if lucky, and then move on after a few months or years.

the people who power the wiki, however -- who are prolific, who churn out insane amount of articles -- are suffering from what I outlined in my above point. a small percentage of the wiki dictates the direction it goes. it has always been like this -- and people who go against the grain that staff have employed, be it old user or new, will pay for it. this payment is often in downvotes, but occasionally comes in harassment, bans, or deletions, too.

Lastly a cult is really the most extreme version of a religion, it is a religion on steroids.

this is straight-up incorrect. cults began as religions gone hayware, yes, but the idea of a cult as a Jonestown-style compound in the middle of nowhere is outdated. cults are the most extreme version of an ideology -- be it religious, political, or otherwise. they are ideologies on steroids. thanks to the internet, they also no longer have to be in real life spaces. you can be in a social cult on Twitter or on Discord; you can be in a cult of ideology on an incel forum or in a social circle of TERF blogs. all of these things are cults. they have cult-like behaviour and thinking.

this is where the author proves my point beyond all doubt. the author says the following about the wiki's increasingly left-wing inclusive policies:

What was intended to be an executive extension in peace has, due to the force required to counteract the sheer hostility and persecution once leveled at this group at its peak, instead overshot its mark and has become a brutal bureaucratic sanctioning of political identity. (I can hear someone saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.)

the biggest shift in this cult-think, for me, was observed when the shift towards Terminally Online Woke Left attitudes began to be increasingly observed. I'm not talking about getting people to tone down the homophobia and whatnot. I'm talking about this culture of purity and suffering that the author outlines very well in the article; if you have read the article, I needn't go over it again. the wiki now holds a monopoly on suffering using the same kind of Oppression Olympics as other spaces devoted to purity culture -- and purity culture is a cult. this is straight-up fact at this point. it is my belief that staff identified the power available to them in a) targeting people from oppressed and vulnerable groups and giving them a so-called safe space and b) using their various oppressions to their advantage.

something that is prolific in purity culture circles is that somebody who is oppressed in any way cannot be held to blame for their actions. they cannot be a bad person. this is ideological armour, and staff wields it. they also use purity culture and apparently progressive ideology to shut down anyone who dissents, and to smear their name and have then ostracised as an enemy. why do they do this? liking the power and fame of their position is a big part of it, as the author outlined, but something major is missing.

throughout the entire article, the author does not once mention the detailed and extensive history of staff sexually abusing minors on the site.

this is well-documented by this point. staff has seen many predators in its ranks, including one of the most prolific site members of all time -- AdminBright, or The Duckman. staff has known about these staff members and has covered it up over years. I myself have heard testimony from countless victims, but whenever we raise enough of a stink, a staff member does an "internal investigation" and nothing comes of it. the fact that the cult-like behaviour of this website can be discussed without one of the cornerstones of cult activity -- using its members for financial or sexual gain -- is astounding to me.

to go on from this, there is also no mention of the SCP lawyer fund, which raised over $30,000 and then faced staff actively resisting transparency as to the case and the funds. financial manipulation is another major example of cult behaviour.

without acknowledging these two things, I do not think that a full argument against the idea of the SCP wiki as a cult can be possible.

the author raises a good point that illustrates both why staff acts the way it does, and why the users are so eager to imitate:

The answer is something that can turn someone into their nemesis; something that would make someone sell their soul for 1000 upvotes; that tragic commonality that binds all individuals who feel the need to write; the need to be received, but more, to be loved for it.

this is a big reason why staff clings to its power, and why people sell out their creativity, and why people emulate this behaviour, and why prolific authors burn out so fast. however, running through all of this at its core -- through the need to be received and loved -- is the power that comes with it. this is all about power.

to mention the specific example of LordStonefish, and his reaction when he found out that his interviewer was enemy of the people pixelatedharmony, now of "burning out, ragequitting the site, and going to talk shit on KiwiFarms" infamy:

[...] it was as if LSF was speaking to a leper, and that the ongoing participation in the salvation of public approval (not to mention site participation as well) was directly dependent upon LSF’s rebuke of pH as a demon who is only worthy of a terrible fate and, as we see in the screencaps, even death.

leaving my personal opinions on Harmony out of this, going from a perfectly civil interview to finding out that the interviewer was an enemy and not only dumping all of his private information to offset doxing, but also going into detail about some highly personal stuff for shock value... I don't think Harmony quite required that treatment. the fact is that, as the quote outlines above, the only way to ensure that he wouldn't be completely ostracised for fraternising with the enemy (KiwiFarms -- of which Harmony is apparently the ambassador) was to behave like a man shunning a sinner. Harmony has sinned -- she rejected the status quo, she defied the group and its authority, and LordStonefish, in order to remain safe from being tarred with the same brush -- has to react with suitable horror to her presence.

it should be noted here that while KiwiFarms has a reputation for being a hive of scum and villainy, its main reputation regarding the SCP Wiki has been for being the one place where complaints against the site are openly discussed, often by defected staff members such as pixelatedharmony and Cyantreuse, and perhaps most telling of all -- the place where a lot of accounts of sexual harassment and abuse have been filed. staff rails against it on the grounds of it being filled with people who use slurs and have questionable ideological beginnings (ironic, coming from a website which began on 4chan) -- but as a leftist myself with extensive knowledge of the wiki, I can confirm that no criticisms I've seen on there have been unfair or inaccurate, and in fact a lot of the evidence and testimony posted there is damning. it would be fair to not wish to associate with the site because of its content in other places, or even its past reputation, but the fact staff rail against it so hard when it's currently one of the only places (and certainly the only public place) where their deeds are on display? it's interesting.

of LordStonefish's reaction, the author says:

This is the behavior of a deeply religious figure.

it is. this is the reaction of a Mormon meeting an old friend who has left the church. this is the reaction of a Jehovah's Witness crossing the street to avoid a shunned neighbour. it is the behaviour, you could say, of a cult member.

in the conclusion, the author states:

And if anyone is to shoulder blame for the creation of this pathology and its complex, it are those true bigots of history and today, who don’t have the spiritual maturity to understand that someone’s sexual preference or identity shouldn’t be enough to categorically separate them from a definition of humanity; to beat, maim, and wish death upon them.

perhaps this might have been true, perhaps this might have drawn a thoughtful and damning line under the whole affair, if not for the fact that this behaviour has been occurring since long before the internet became known for its progressive and now increasingly often, ridiculous takes on inclusion and sensitivity. this kind of cultish groupthink has been ongoing since the wiki's very first inception. the cyclical worship of a group of staff members and other prolific writers (though the group are often one and the same) and their chosen theme or genre has occurred like clockwork since the late 00s. it has occurred when the website was still entrenched in its 4chan days and saying slurs was barely blinked at. it was still there back when staff was predominantly (or at least presumably) cis, white, and male. it was there when being gay was the butt of a joke and being trans was all but unthought of. it has always been there, and while the latest progressive policies and attitudes have had an effect on how the power is wielded, it has not changed the power itself. if the tides ever turn on the Terminally Online Woke ideology, staff will change with it and adapt their policies and ideologies to keep their power.

if anyone is to shoulder the blame for the creation of this pathology, it is the elitist attitude that has allowed a select few to be worshipped unquestionably. it is the power-hungry individuals who seek out fame and respect on a writing website and then use this fame and respect to treat others badly and their fear of a fall from grace to shelter others treating people worse. it is on the shoulders of the staff members who use their position to groom and sexually assault minors. it is on the shoulders of the staff members who keep it silent. as the severity of staff's secrets has increased, so has their attempts to silence dissent and reform at all costs.

the author agrees that this kind of religious think might lead to a cult in the future. the author says the cult will be a cult of vulnerability, but I disagree. I believe the cult is already there, and it is -- and always has been -- a cult of power.

[dragynkeep]

Hi, hello! 2016 story anon here. I didn’t know that manga was non canon… wow. When people told me about it way back when it first came out we all thought the manga itself was canon, so that’s… great. Also, saw your post about the queer rep, and when Scarlet was legit confirmed by Miles. Apparently I established Scarlet’s relationship two years before he was confirmed gay instead of one like I first thought. Yeesh. I’m glad you’re not getting much if any flack for Team AZRE tho. I guess since I’ve been dealing with this for a year I just… assumed it was the norm? Super glad it’s not.

Thanks for the advice, Owl & Luke! Moderation is on. I didn’t even know AO3 implemented that! Luckily most were guest reviews/comments so I just deleted them, but the mod will really help with the registered users. I put a little note in my tags asking for new readers to look at the CH1 notes. I’ve stopped live updating over on FF since August, but damn if they weren’t persistent on PM. Can’t do much about user reviews though, sadly. Maybe I should just delete my works on there. You’re def right, it’s not writer friendly at all, and is such a hassle to go through posting chapters. I feel bad for the peeps over there that are my “regulars�� but at this point it’s either them or my sanity. Just a shame. I’ve been on FF longer than AO3, and I actually used to prefer it over AO3.

If I build up the confidence I’ll definitely send a link, thanks so much for offering to read it! Ngl the main pairing is a super obscure crack ship so I stick to my corner, might not be your cuppa. CH61 is going out next week! Also the beginning chapters are not as polished. I’m kinda embarrassed by it sometimes. I still go in and tweak them, but I’m never quite satisfied. I have converted many to the ship though. No regrets, of course!

yup, all the manga outside the official rewrite are non canon which is good because a lot of stuff in there is very questionable especially in yang’s blatant racism against blake but like. you can’t just pick & choose miles. why is 99% of it non canon except for the bit you like because it gives you queer rep that you didn’t even have to put any effort into because someone else did it for you!

it’s definitely not the norm that you’re getting this much obsessive shit over a character who’s barely a character’s sexuality & i hope it dies down for you soon. ♥ i honestly thought fanfiction.net was a graveyard, it was so surprising to me that people still actively post there but i would say a move over to solely ao3 wouldn’t be too out of pocket considering it’s much more user & author friendly. hopefully your readers will follow you over though!

i adore obscure crackships, a lot of mine are so definitely drop it when & if you feel comfortable love. ♥ i definitely get being embarrassed over earlier pieces of work, that’s me looking back at my old shit like ... * hovers hand over the mass delete button aggressively before backing down. * wheeze.

[ao3-sucks]

An Archive of Someone’s Own: my experiences being groomed in fandom circles on AO3

TW: Childhood sexual abuse, grooming, mentions of incest and rape.

I used to be a big writer of fanfiction. It was the logical choice for me. I loved to write and create bold and immersive worlds, and I craved an audience who would enjoy my work as much as I did. Since my writing wasn’t actually good, I needed a community of other amateurs who wouldn’t mind that, and by tweaking my characters and settings into ones from canonical media, I got the audience I so craved.

I started writing fanfiction online when I was 14, posting initially on FanFiction.net and then moving to AO3 a few months later. As I got back into writing original fiction towards the end of high school, I lost interest in this community, and it’s been a long time since I posted anything much on AO3.

I’ve always struggled with the fact I display a lot of symptoms of CSA, and for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why. Throughout my teen years, I refused to get changed or bathe when anyone was even vaguely nearby, constantly paranoid about being spied on; I developed a severe touch phobia, and would have frequent panic attacks from something as small as brushing arms with a passerby; I resolutely identified as asexual and refused to get into anything resembling a relationship with others because the very concept disgusted and repulsed me.

Weird, considering I had grown up pretty normal and all of these symptoms had started around my early teens. It was only when I told my friends about my friendship with a 30 year old I had met online that the pieces started falling into place for me.

Child grooming is usually discussed in the context of one adult going out of their way to befriend a child with the goal of lowering their resistance to sexual abuse, through normalisation and friendliness. I’d like to talk about how that worked on the fanfiction website AO3. Since it’s an open website and most communication takes place between anonymous users or accounts in the comments section of a work, there is very little delineation between spaces for adults to discuss whatever dark topics they like and spaces for kids to do the same.

This frequently leads to pretty inappropriate conversations between people of widely varying ages and life experiences, which is how I ended up talking sex as a fourteen year old with people ranging from a couple of years older than me, who were generally okay, to more than twice my age. The 30 year old in question listed on her profile how many pedophilic ships she loved, and she knew my age but pushed me to keep discussing sexual topics with her. Sounds like a red flag, yeah? Well. I was 14, and very stupid.

This 30 year old woman, who I will call Aku (because it’s similar to her screen name and because it’s funny to name her after the bad guy from Samurai Jack) would start conversations with me whenever I posted anything to AO3 and would refuse to take no for an answer when I tried to back out of conversations with her, and since these conversations were public and occurring within comments, I didn’t want to be rude to her since this was taking place on content I was trying to promote.

I told her my age multiple times and she would either pretend she forgot from last time (saying her memory is super bad) or continue as though it was just trivia about me and not a sign she shouldn’t have been pushing me. My primary objection to what she would say to me (since most of it was just her being annoying) was her insistence on sexualising everything I wrote, and her determination to push me into writing pornographic content, which I eventually gave in to.

Yes, she was a terrible person. She emailed me using her personal email address, so I know her full name and place of residence, because she’s an idiot. These emails also contain sexually explicit materials. Nothing much ever happened between us except for these very creepy interactions and the fact we remained online friends for a few years. But here’s the thing: she wasn’t the only person pushing me into creating sexual content. Lots of people would comment on my writing demanding that I show explicit sexual content when I really didn’t want to.

After a while it felt like I couldn’t write a longer, romantic fanfiction without including explicit sexual content. Like my work wasn’t valid without it. Other, more popular writers were usually sexual in their content, and I wanted to be like them and bring in the views, right? So, when I look at my back catalog of works, I can see how my content moved from completely non-sexual to featuring sexual content over time, and the views usually came with. In this way, I was in an environment that was encouraging me on many levels to sexualise my own work, which impacted the way I thought about my creative process.

Here’s another example I remember. When I was a young sprout, I remember reading down someone’s list of fanfiction recommendations and seeing a work called Hug Therapy, which I promptly read. While the work is marked as explicit and containing the Loki/Thor pairing, the use of relationship and rating tags on AO3 is so poorly regulated that it didn’t really mean anything to me to see either of those. People tag hardcore material as non-explicit and tag friendships as relationships, because there’s no motivation to tag properly. Plus, someone I followed here on Tumblr had recommended it to me.

Now, you wouldn’t know from the listing, but while this piece starts out as comedy, it turns out in the end to include rape, incest, and BDSM in very explicit terms. The fact it was tagged as being explicit didn’t slow me down, because the liberal use of these tags could mean that an explicit tag was just there because sexual content was implied or mentioned, which I thought would be the case based on the rest of the listing. Out of curiosity, I recently tried to report this work to the moderators for containing no warnings about incest or rape, and I got this in response:

“Selecting “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” satisfies a creator’s obligation under the warnings policy. Users who wish to avoid specific elements entirely should not access fanworks marked with “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings”. Our Terms of Service note: “You understand that using the Archive may expose you to material that is offensive, triggering, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, grammatically incorrect, or badly spelled. ….. This decision is in accordance with our policy of maximum inclusiveness; we have therefore closed this case and will not be investigating further.”

Which, yeah, I guess. The frustration comes from how ‘Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings’ is an extremely commonly used tag, and most things that it’s used on are totally harmless.

This fanfiction, which I was recommended by a friend, is hugely popular, in the top 60 most read fanfictions in the entire fandom. You wanna hear the kicker? The author, Astolat, is one of the founders of AO3. They’re not just some random author who isn’t following the rules. They’re a creator of the whole website, and they made the rules. This is pretty telling about how seriously the website actually takes protecting their users.

My final example I want to give is one of fetish content. People in fetish communities generally (not always) say that fetishes are probably something one should work up to after the onset of sexual activity, especially potentially harmful stuff like BDSM. In the circles I was running in, if you weren’t sporting a fetish or two (no matter your age) you were a boring bitch.

Maybe this isn’t true of everywhere in the fanfiction community, but I used to feel that bizarre pressure until I got out. Bear in mind that my main time in this community was from ages 14 to 17. I never made my age a secret, either. I told people outright I was that age, I was in high school, I was playing hockey and studying The Great Gatsby when I wasn’t online.

Since I was in the Avengers fandom and I liked Loki and the Asgardians, I was frequently exposed to incestuous content between Loki and Thor, and a lot of it came out of nowhere or was poorly tagged. This was considered the norm, and while I at first felt completely horrified and repulsed, within a year or two I no longer gave a shit. It’s only in the last few years as I’ve begun to unpack everything that I’ve started to get that strong revulsion reaction to incestuous content.

In the circles I was in, it was relentlessly normal. Normal to the point that people who disliked it were usually shouted down. Even to this day, debate rages on in fandom spaces about whether or not content like this normalises this kind of abuse. In my own personal experience, which I don’t usually like to talk about, it absolutely does.

In real life, this normalisation started to have serious consequences for my mental health and interpersonal relationships. In fanfiction, any occasion when you are alone with someone could become sexual, any familial relationship is possibly sexual, and it doesn’t matter if you like it or not. I became incredibly anxious around male family members for fear of being sexually assaulted, and my OCD, which I had been developing since I was a child, turned from thoughts of physical violence to thoughts of graphically sexually assaulted by anyone and everyone around me.

My fear of being touched got to the point where I would have panic attacks if anyone came anywhere close to touching me. I quit sports, fucked up my romantic relationships, and didn’t hug anyone, not even members of my family, for years. All the while, I had bought my first laptop and was consuming more fanfiction than ever before. I struggled with my sexuality growing up, as I am bisexual, and while fanfiction provided LGBT content to help me, the content was frequently so disturbing that I viewed any expression of sexuality as something evil and predatory.

The community on AO3, whether you like it or not, is often sexual, and provides no barriers between the casual user looking for content and extremely intense fetish material. It’s sometimes called the Pornhub of fanfiction, but considering the wide range of people who use it, it’s more like if you opened Youtube and saw niche hardcore fetish videos just on the front page, recommended and trending.

Sure, you have to click a little button to confirm you’re 18 before you can actually read a story, but the tags and descriptions of readily available works can be extremely explicit. Fanfiction also brings you into close contact with fellow readers and the author, and encourages you to become a content creator, which in some ways makes it more dangerous.

I was affected much more strongly by what I saw than most people would be, because I was already treading shaky ground. But I’m also not the only person out there who has been hurt in this way. Most of my friends who grew up in fandom can report the impact that fanfiction culture had on them. One of my friends from high school knew a panoply of porn terms at age 14 or so due to reading fanfiction, and another of my other friends at high school almost exclusively read rape porn because it was her favourite. I didn’t have friends who watched porn; I had friends who read fanfiction. These are just as troubling to me as any other accounts of young people consuming visual porn from a very early age.

It’s frequently cited that fanfiction gives minority groups the opportunity for creative outlet. It was a great place for me to cut my teeth as a content creator, and a source of acceptance and kindness when times were tough. Fanfiction communities have historically been the domain of women and minorities, and create a space for these people to tell their own stories.

It’s largely because of this that fanfiction communities fear censorship and strict moderation, as they have been attacked in the past on homophobic or misogynistic grounds, resulting in mass deletions of works or the shutdown of websites. But there must be some middle ground between total censorship and the kind of free rein that puts vulnerable people in danger, and I strongly encourage the board of AO3 to seek this middle ground out.

But it’s the community itself that needs to shape up; AO3 is, after all, a community-led website built by fans for fans, so the fact that this website has such issues is a reflection of the issues that run deeply within the people who created it. Aku didn’t talk to me with the intention of doing me harm, or so I believe at this time, and she didn’t pursue me as a lone wolf or in isolation.

She was simply a particularly brazen member of a community that was used to having inappropriate conversations with young people and sexualising everything they did. Even people my own age were jokingly pushing me into discussing and consuming extremely sexual content. It was just normal. That’s what I want to say here. Inside the world of fandom on AO3, the grooming of children with sexual content is normal. And that’s scary.

- Mod Daft

[universitypenguin]

What happened to u? U okay?

Hello!

First off, thank you for your concern. I appreciate it and I needed it after the past two days. To answer your question - I'm doing great.

I don’t have a lot of context about your question, but I’m guessing your concern is due to my recent blocking spree. A day ago, I went through my followers list and found some minors. I’ve previously seen smut fanfic writers concerned by underage people interacting with their posts. Until I had to block a few of them, I wasn’t aware how uncomfortable it would make me feel.

Since the blocking spree, I've had a lot of thoughts. I'm about to spew them everywhere. You might regret asking me if I was okay. Sorry about that. No one needs to read this whole manifesto about my rollercoaster of emotions the past few days. But in the interest of transparency, I'm posting this very long note.

What I want my readers to know is the following:

Tumblr is both a place for fanfiction and a social media site.

When I interact with followers and write explicit content, I have to be careful about what I'm saying and who I'm saying it to.

I don't intend to block or purge my followers in the future.

As long as I appropriately tag and put warnings on my work, that is adequate protection for my blog. Everything I write containing explicit content is tagged.

However, I won't interact with users who don't have an age stated in their bio.

There have to be boundaries, given the content of my writing. But I've also come around to the realization that I'm not capable of policing every interaction. Tumblr is a public forum. Minors following me makes me uncomfortable. But by the same token, my work is clearly labeled at 18+ and so is my blog.

There's a lot of explicit content out there for minors if you really think about it. In my high school freshman English class we talked about the book "The Color Purple." Believe me, that was explicit and we were only 14. Any minor with a library card and a Google browser can access a lot more intense content than what I write. I hope they're all being safe, but I can't have a melt down blocking spree again.

I'm not a cop, I'm not a parent, and what minors consume is down to them and the adult responsible for them. If I know someone is a minor I'll block them, should I notice they're trying to interact with me. Otherwise, I'm not purging my followers ever again. It's too much drama. I'd rather leave Tumblr than do that twice. I'm tired and I'm starting to work on my post graduate classes, I work full time in a demanding job, I'm in the process of editing my novel, and trying to keep up with my personal life. Quite literally, I don't have time to block. Writing fanfic is supposed to be my fun time. Let's keep it that way.

Due to the fact that some people I blocked were later unblocked after I took a closer look at their blogs, I'm posting a full explanation below. A quick summary is this:

After only writing for three months, I'd amassed 500 followers. On Monday I blocked almost 200 of them. Then I reviewed my block list and editing down some people who were prematurely blocked. [I assume the anon is one of the unblocked who had me disappear from their dash. Sorry!] This blocking thing isn't sustainable. In the future I'll run my blog differently as far as interaction goes in an effort to be responsible.

Continue reading for the saga of:

The Great Blocking Spree and Existential Crisis of an Erotic Fanfic Writer.

The Blocking Spree:

On Monday I realized a thirteen year old was following me and interacting with my work. This creeped me out.

*Commence blocking spree*

Then I realized how daunting my followers list was. I had 500 followers prior to Monday. That day I blocked about 200 people (some of them prematurely - more on that later.) So after the daunting task of trying to assume, to check bios for ages, to review blog content and determine the user's age, I was tired. Today, I even took a moment to reconsider if I wanted to use Tumblr. Because if all this is my responsibility, maybe I don't have the time or dedication to manage it. When I can be chill, I try to be. This attitude also affected by blocking. It contributed to me unblocking people. When I was doing the blocking spree, I'd give people with no age in their bio a fair shot by reviewing their posts.

I blocked some bot accounts, then a bunch of blank blogs, some ambiguous people who very well could be of age. For the first 100 followers I was pretty aggressive. Then my attention span dropped off and I was a bit more ambivalent. I realized I was doing a crappy job of moderating and wondered what the point was.

The point was that the thirteen year old interacting with my work freaked me out. When I found two sixteen year old followers, it pushed me to continue the purge.

So on I go, blocking. I'm so responsible for doing this, right? But my methodology is crap. What is context for being an adult? Someone had posted about budgeting advice. I thought the budgeting advice was too good for it not to have come from an adult. But my father's a financial advisor and to be honest, I could have given that level of advice at fifteen just from osmosis. Someone had pictures of themselves entering their marijuana plants in the Oregon State Fair. Okay, you've got to be over 18. I didn't block them. Someone else complained about their stats professor and I didn't block them. But in retrospect, one of my high school friends got permission to take college level math courses when we were seniors. She was seventeen when she had a stats professor. The thought circles back - what am I accomplishing here? Next, I went back and unblocked someone who ranted about her Tinder matches being 60 year old men. I wondered if their post was even real. I've lied on the internet before. Nonetheless, I persisted and worked through all 500 followers. When I was done I had 312 followers left.

Post Blocking Spree Existential Crisis:

I know that all the blocking in the world can't stop a teenager who wants to read smut fanfic. I'm not much for posting on social media and I'm not used to a lot of anonymous interaction online. Honestly, I got rid of my SM accounts during college when I felt it was wasting my time. This is the first time I've really use a social media site to post content since college. My twitter account is unused, my Instagram is for close personal friends only, and my TikTok is for mindless consumption of cat videos. (I've trained the algorithm to feed me only cat videos, it's great and I highly recommend it.) I don't post on TikTok, so I don't consider it full use, just lurking.

Okay, Alice, get back to the point....

Right, being anonymous on social media. My blocks are a fence and it's based on self identification from the blogs that follow me. I have little faith in underage consumers to out themselves. I have even less faith in their honesty or respect for an adult's boundaries. They're at a stage in life where they want to push the boundaries. Telling them no is all but inviting them in. I did my blocking spree because I was worried about backlash from someone's parents. But what reasonable judge would come after a fanfic writer? Come on. Logical thoughts but me emotional distress was still brewing.

Why I am the one responsible for who clicks the follow button on my blog? I've always clearly identified what I write and tagged my work as smut.

That thought snapped me out of my whirlwind of anxious thoughts. So I started looking into the laws. My regular work involves medicine, not the legal profession, so I was lost. I found some state level laws that made me glad I'd gone on a blocking spree. California and Florida have specific language in their laws about 'providing minors with explicit content.' But what exactly is that? What I researched applied to the following activities: co-writing smut fanfic with other people, sexting, roleplaying and online messaging.

I run a fanfic blog with limited interaction. I've never done an ask. I don't roleplay on here and I don't want to.

The blocks weren't personal. They were partly based on the awareness that Tumblr is an interactive site and a place that's had a problem with child pornography in the past. But I'm not the smut police. I suck at blocking, and I doubt I did a good job of purging my followers list. This is when it hit me that boundaries are only what I can enforce. They've never been about how other people relate to me, only how I relate to them. (Wow. I've never sounded more like my mother in my life...) After this thought, I started considering what actions I ought to take if I wanted to keep posting fanfic on Tumblr.

My Post Blocking Spree Clarity...

It's up to me who I interact with. I don't have to reply to every comment and re-blog, but I'd like to. I'm stuck between wanting to write for everyone and handling interactions on a social media site that's mostly anonymous.

The fact remains: I can't be the smut police because I suck at it.

What I've decided is that I'll make it very clear on my blog that this is an 18+ space where I publish erotic fanfiction. Smut will always be appropriately marked. I'm not going to interact with reviews, re-blogs, and messages from accounts who don't have their age in their profile. I won't include them in my tag list either. The internet is a public forum. Just as with publishing erotica, once it's out there online for download, it's done. As a ghost writer and an author, I don't control who buys my original fiction, which is just as spicy as my fanfiction. (Trust me, it's explicit. I once had a romance editor tell me I should dial it back on the smutty parts of a novel because "it's a lot of sex for a non-erotica market.") The key difference on Tumblr is about interaction. And that's something I can control. I can decide when I reply to other users. What brought me around to this was the realization that even after the blocking spree, I can't review every single like I get. That's an amount of time and mental energy that's beyond me. Just the past two days have been exhausting and sapped my will to write. Which sucks because I need to go write the next chapter of "Restitution" before tomorrow.

I think the reasons I went on the blocking spree are nuanced. The thirteen year old freaked me out. So did the other underaged people who had ages in their bios. But it also relates to my work. In my job I've seen some nasty child abuse cases. Early on in my career, when I was a 23 year old new hire, I was working on an autopsy for a child abuse victim who'd been murdered by their parent. It was so terrible and graphic, I had to ask one of my older colleagues to take the case. This colleague didn't like me. But she took one look at my face and took the file. She closed out the review without a question and never brought it up again to anyone. I was very grateful. Where I used to work (and where this incident took place) was a major city that holds the unfortunate title of being the human trafficking capital of the US. And something I learned working there was that most human trafficking victims go with their captors willingly. In two years at that job, I never saw one who'd been kidnapped from a dark alley like you see on TV. They were all groomed on social media and thought they were escaping their families (who were often overbearing, toxic, or dysfunctional) for a get away with friends. It was a fun adventure with their internet buddies, until it wasn't.

In retrospect, the underage interaction I found on my blog made me react because of what I've been through. The autopsy case kept coming back to me today while I was at work and I've finally untangled my emotions enough to figure out what caused my melt down. When I was blocking, I was feeling an anxious motivation that I know can only stem from the stress I deal with at my job. Don't feel sorry for me about this - I know my work in medicine helps a lot of people and it's a tremendously satisfying career.

Our Saga's Resolution & How I'm Going to Deal With This In The Future...

- - - - -

In post block clarity, I offer this conclusion:

I'm writing on a public forum. My work is appropriately tagged as smut. In the future, I will also use the tag #no minors to help with filtering. I've always asked underage people not to interact. And on a public forum, what more can I reasonably do? Going forward I will only interact with those who have their age posted in their bio. But blocking sprees and policing every interaction isn't feasible.

I'll review how I'm going to run my tag lists as well. I need to think it over and let my followers know my decision as to if I'll continue using them. Because tagging is definitely interaction and my current tag list was not screened at all. *face palm*

Finally, to my readers who have blank blogs or don't have an age listed. I respect your right to privacy and I'm careful with my personal information as well. But I've also had an uncomfortable two days. If you've lasted through this venting session until now, you must understand that I'm upset by underage interaction. I'm setting my own boundaries and going forward, I'll own my side of the internet. No interaction from me, unless I know your age. Full stop - no exceptions. I think it is reasonable for me to suggest that you leave something on your blog that signifies you are not a minor, whatever that may be. Someone who I didn't block that stands out in my memory had a bio that said "90s baby." It was simple, direct, and left no doubt they were over 18. No age reveal and not even a name. If you put something like this on your blog it'll help explicit content creators feel more comfortable about their interactions.

I went on a spree this Monday and I admit to being heavy handed and aggressive about pruning followers. I had an emotional reaction due to work stress and I didn't think things through logically. I'm relieved for the chance explain myself and set new boundaries that I'm capable of sticking to in the future. But remember - the block button is on my side of the screen. At the end of the day, you might be unhappy with me for the block, but it's my button, it's my blog, and I'll use it as I see fit.

Thank you for reading.

[fantasysamsclub]

so the adventure zone was recently picked up for an animated series.

hooray! good for the mcelroys. i’m glad they’re getting more mainstream. i’m glad they’re able to financially support themselves and their family with this fame. i’m glad taz has a chance to get new fans! i’m glad fans get to see some of the most iconic balance moments animated!

i also think it’s a monstrously bad idea.

(this is long and this may seem pretty mean and radical, but please read before fighting me on any of this. also this isn’t an attack on anyone that’s excited for any of this adaptation stuff! it’s good to be excited for this success. but also there are some things to consider.)

okay! so, up front: i think the taz animated series is a bad idea. i also think, retrospectively, the graphic novel was a bad idea. also i think the vox machina origins comic and animated series are bad ideas.

okay so this is going to get. a little long and rambly. but i’ll try to keep it organized.

1. TAZ Graphic Novel

now, when the first book was announced, i was excited! i’m still excited for the next one. aside from the blue/green elves thing, which i won’t ever forgive, carey’s doing a great job adapting this piece. i’ve met her before and she generally does know what she’s talking about, comics-wise, so i do think she was a very good choice to pick up the graphic novel

there are still problems! oh, are there problems. for example, i think everyone in the novel is characterized in a wildly different way than the original podcast. i can also get into this later if people want to hear about it, but! people have picked at that one before.

out of all the adaptations i’m going to talk about, this one is the best!

2. Vox Machina Origins

alright. context. i don’t know if i’ve said this on this platform before, but i’m a comic book artist (my big project is coming out this year, i’ll announce it on here, that’s not the point of this rant). and i bought the comic on a whim! it was a christmas present to me.

now, i know a lot of people read it and enjoyed it! and that’s great. i’m happy you got joy out of the book, really. i think every piece of art means something to someone, no matter its popularity or quality. and it did well, as far as i know! so that’s very good for CR and its fans. also i think pike is hot.

all that aside, the comic does suck very much.

i could go into a deep analysis of it (i CAN, if enough people actually want to see that?) but tldr: it’s rushed, both in production and story pacing. the character art is good! but you can see the shortcuts. the lettering is. awful. (that’s mostly a problem of modern comics in general though)

and i’m not blaming anyone at CR for these problems! really, if dark horse wants to pick up an adaptation, any writers from the original project should be heavily coached on how to write for a new medium. i’m not blaming matthew for that one! i know from firsthand experience that comic writing is different from anything else you will ever write, and is so difficult to get correct. as far as i knew, matt had never written for comics before! it would be really nice if he had some more resources to get this done right.

but that would cost money.

and that brings me to--

3. The Vox Machina Animated Series

wow! look at all that money everyone raised for this animated series. this animated series that the creators said they were raising money for so they could do it independently. hope they don’t go pitch it to a bigger company to do m--

and, it was sold to Amazon.

like, it didn’t even take them a month.

and in the current climate of how animation is bought and sold, i understand the need to sell it to a streaming service! you need a platform to let people view it, and youtube is in the shitter with its copyright stuff lately, so it makes sense to go private to keep your show safe. and then, you can maybe make more episodes after you run out of kickstarter money. i don’t hate that idea!

but amazon...hm.

it’s probably fine, right?

3.5. Wendy’s

haha remember when CR got sponsored by wendy’s and played their shitty rpg that wasn’t even balanced properly and then people called them out for it and then they donated all the money to a cause wendy’s hated to make up for it (good on them!) and then deleted the VOD off youtube? gosh, good times.

money makes people do strange things.

4. TAZ Animated Series

so, peacock has taz. sure! that works. it’s not the best company to pick this up, but it’s also not the worst. i’ll take that. i looked up the guy that’s slated to direct this and i don’t think he’s ever directed an animated show? which isn’t great, but that’s not what i’m worried about.

you know what i am worried about?

these big corporations don’t care if these adaptations are any good. they just want to cram as many iconic moments from your quirky, small-owned d&d podcasts to get you to give them money. for the mcelroys and the CR crew, it’s a passion project. to amazon and dark horse and NBC, it’s an investment.

you’re going to buy the book to see vax and vex bicker!

you’re going to tune in to watch magic brian!

you’re going to want to read pike meeting scanlan, of course!

you want to see “phantasmal and resplendent” animated!

here’s the other thing. when i see people talking about the animated series, this is exactly what they’re looking for.

“i want to watch merle dirty talk the plants on screen!”

“i want to see the taakitz date!”

“i want to see magnus do the julia scene...”

now, this mindset isn’t bad! no, if you’ve been thinking this, that’s okay! it’s really not my personal thought (i think adaptations are best when they DO change things in the story to better fit the new medium they’re going on) but it’s fine.

we might get tom arnold!

but you know what we’re not going to get?

we’re not going to get apologies and revisions when something goes wrong. we’re not going to get cute extra scenes because that would require more writing. we’re not going to get the same respect for the LGBTQ+ characters on screen. the people working on this show will not get paid what they’re worth.

we’re probably not going to get a trans actress for lup.

we’re probably going to see less of carey and killain.

we’re probably going to see even fewer black and brown characters than we already have.

why’s that?

because it’s a money project. they’re doing it for money. and they want to reach as wide of an audience as possible, right? “really, we need to cut back on this gay stuff so that straight people aren’t uncomfortable. we need to stay more moderate on this project so that more people will watch it!”

(that was sarcasm)

now, NBC has had some good shows! but that’s really the responsibility of their individual writers, and it’s usually in spite of the companies they work for, and not because of them.

once an author or an artist sells their project to a company for adaptation, they often lose all rights to input from it. i don’t know what the mcelroy’s or CR’s contracts are, but unless they have better lawyers than NBC or amazon.....they probably got shafted somehow.

it’s not a mcelroy product. it’s not a CR product. don’t pretend like it is.

you can enjoy it, but please be cautious. this is just a pile of money in a cheap taako costume. don’t trust it as much as you would the podcast.

tldr: individual creators are always going to make more genuine content than corporations that buy those creations for larger adaptations. it’s okay to enjoy these adaptations, but please be aware that it’s not going to have the same spirit or heart as the boys talking about masturbation on a filler show they did quickly so justin could go support his wife in labor.

[trillgutterbug]

Fic Writer Questions!

tagged by @palamedessextus 😊 thanks friend!

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

64! only five more to the magic number ayyyyy and then i’m legally obligated to never post another one.

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

289,575 apparently??? which seems way way way higher than i ever would have guessed, wow. who knew!

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

31 on ao3, although that’s lumping, eg, all marvel subfandoms together. but i have a ridiculous amount of wips in all kinds of other fandoms that i haven’t/won’t post, soooo.... more than that! and i don’t want to list them all bc that’d be a long boring read!

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

it serenely disdains to destroy us, a magnus archives fic that, i somewhat vainly note, has been orbiting in the top few top kudosed fics in the tag since i posted it womp womp.

concerning flight, because we all thirsty for thor/loki+gender and i for one support us.

untitled porny snippet (yes that’s actually what it’s called), because same as above. (i see u, kudos-to-comment ratio and i aint mad but.... i see u. all you dirty birds out there shamefully yet silently jerking it. kudos to YOU.)

an experiment in posthumous subsistence, a batman/joker zombie au i wrote fucking TEN YEARS AGO ALMOST. why???? why is this fic so popular?? i’m barely a good writer now and i sure as shit wasn’t one a decade ago! the terrible title alone should disqualify it from being read, but i guess the people want what they want. and what they want is batman and joker handcuffed together, trying to escape the zombie apocalypse  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

all good things, some stucky hydra trash party-adjacent smut regarding piercings. i stand by this one 100%, it deserves every kudo(s?) tbh.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i do, depending on the comment! i don’t think comments like “loved this!” / “thanks for writing!” are written with the intent to receive a response (or at least, when i write them on other people’s fics, i certainly don’t expect one). they’re like an extra kudo(s?), and i appreciate them a lot, but they’re not really an invitation to Discuss. whereas if someone clearly has put a lot of thought into a comment, or asked a question, or made some observations that i jive with, or just seems like they want to engage, then hell yeah i jump in there. love that shit. 

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i guess arguably thine own self, which is some hydra husbands abo. laugh all you want, it’s one of my fave of all my fics lmao. probably specifically bc of the unpleasant/open ending.

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

probably moderation is a memory! since it, unlike 99% of all my other stuff, isn’t just total smut, and the whole point of writing it was to wallow as deep as possible in the sauce of giddy teenage infatuation, it got the opportunity to have an actual emotional arc (more or less). furthermore i could not possibly bring myself to break johnny lawrence’s tender little heart ever, that would hurt me far more than it would hurt him.

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

i only realised while answering this question that apparently.... no i don’t write crossovers! which is not at all a deliberate choice, i guess a compelling enough one just hasn’t occurred to me yet! 

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

shockingly no! by some accidental miracle i’ve managed to fly under the radar so far, despite some of the really buckwild stuff i’ve posted. however, considering some of the stuff i’m probably ABOUT to post.... that clean track record might soon come to an end lmao.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

lmao. uhhhh. almost exclusively, and i guess??? all kinds? this is clearly a question composed by someone who does not write smut.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of, and i wouldn’t really care if i did. 

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

yeah i think a few....? a number of people have asked anyway and i always say yes, so probably there’s at least one floating around out there somewhere.

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i have! just once, and we really made it count. it’s called a reptile dysfunction, which should tell you all you need to know. 

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

thorki, probably. i always have and always will come back to it, no matter what. it’s got such a ferociously timeless staying power and so much potential variation, i don’t think i could ever get bored of it, regardless of what level of marvel-exhaustion i might feel at a given time, or what tropes, kinks, or stage of literary pretension i’m at. truly the oh tee pee. 

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

ohhhhh all 836575927 of them, but. there’s this one thorki fic i started almost ten years ago as an experiment with a new-to-me style, which turned out over the intervening years to become my main style, and looking back on that fic, which for many years was a touchstone of writing-to-aspire to for me, it’s actually Not Very Good lol. but i still love the core concept, which is a canon divergence berserker thor au, but not only is it a somewhat inaccessible (admittedly less so since the deadpool movies came out, which was a hilarious pipe dream back when i started writing it) x-force comics crossover, but i wrote myself into a bunch of corners and have yet to dig up the energy to write myself back out of them! i go and reread it every year or so and think “hmm... maybe now...” but tbh it’s just not really good enough to bother! perhaps someday i’ll repurpose the best elements of it into something new.

16) What are your writing strengths?

man, it’s so hard to say. in much the same way that you can spend hours every day staring at yourself in a mirror, yet be utterly incapable of picking yourself out of a lineup, i spend a lot of time eyeballing my writing, but stepping back it seems like a chaotic mass of nonsense with few cohesive throughlines. i’m good at writing smut, i know that much! and in that vein, i think i am good at smut bc i am very good at committing to the bit, as it were. getting into the nitty gritty of experience and sensation (physical or emotional) and rendering largely abstract internal concepts in fairly comprehensible ways. i think my prose is quite decent on a sentence level too.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

utterly incapable of finishing anything! or plotting anything! can’t mange a cohesive emotional arc! write myself into overly structured corners or out onto a vast plain with no structure in sight! all the macro elements of storytelling totally elude me, which is very frustrating when i have all this tasty fleshed out micro-level character stuff, but no narrative skeleton upon which to drape it.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?   don’t! unless you are very sure you know what you’re doing, and the other language bits are a) very few, b) easily contextually understood, and c) actually adding something other than a weird flex that you know google translate exists.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

11yo me wrote spock/kirk/janice rand and thought she invented the concept of a threesome. brand been stronk since day one 🤘. (the vulcan salute is right next to the devil horns in my emoji list, so....)

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

i love the (ongoing) better with you series very much, not least because i’m still absolutely flabbergasted that i wrote something that long. i think it’s actually pretty good all things considered and it’s very dear to me on many many levels. but the fic that i just viscerally adore, that i love the style of, and that i had such a transcendent, invigorating, organic Experience writing, is temper its strength, adding honey until quite cold, which is a terror fic with the inexplicable pairing of edward little/hartnell, featuring crossdressing and gender stuff. it just burst out of me fully formed one day and i don’t think i’ve managed to top it yet! 

lowkey tagging @lingua-mortua @pitcherplant @kaasknot @froggy-babyy @deputychairman @nomercyonlytears @clockheartedcrocodile

[the-cookie-of-doom]

“If a Teen Wolf writer doesn’t want us Scott Stans to harass them and bash their non Scott centric works, they have the option not to publish them”

https://princeescaluswords.tumblr.com/post/615927026104352768/one-could-posit-that-this-is-where-stans-were#notes

Claude PEW Frollo:

1) If the Hales didn’t want Scott’s dating life to make their lives more difficult, maybe they shouldn’t have bit him? Absolutely, Derek should have sat down and explained, like a reasonable adult, that he once had a relationship with an Argent and it didn’t work out well at all, instead of breaking into Scott’s room, throwing him up against the wall and threatening “Do as I say or I’ll kill you!” or shouting “That’s who they are!” without further explanation.

When I talk about white privilege permeating the fandom, this is part of what I’m talking about. Parts of the fandom legitimately believe that Peter assaulting Scott in the woods give Derek and/or Peter the right to determine the course of Scott’s life. Maybe if Peter wasn’t trying to constantly mind control in order to force Scott to obey or Derek wasn’t obviously using Scott as bait to catch the alpha and actually took care of the scared teenager, Scott wouldn’t have turned around and said screw you to both of them. But they chose to treat Scott as if he had no choice, and they were surprised – and defeated – when he did.

As for genocidal Argents, Gerard was genocidal and Kate was genocidal, but the family wasn’t. They had a Code, which they should have followed. And they were necessary, it could be argued, considering that a single werewolf murdered nine people over the course of the show – one his own niece and the other right in front of the Sheriff of Beacon County and got away with it.

2) If you have a story with Data and and his cat on the Enterprise, and the cat nearly causes a warp core breach because he’s a naughty kitty, it is not at all rude for a reader to ask where the Captain of the Enterprise was during all of this! When writing a story about Data and a cat on the Enterprise, you are borrowing the setting, Data’s personality, and his relationships from ST:TNG, and that includes Data’s relationship to his commanding officer. There’s nothing compelling you to answer the criticism, of course.

3) I don’t think I will leave Sterek and Steter writers alone.

I don’t care if it’s done out of a labor of love or for a payday, and no one else has to care, either. If I see a man walking down the street with an orange MAGA hat on, I’m going to make judgments about him, because they are presenting their beliefs in a public sphere. It doesn’t matter if Mr. MAGA doesn’t want my opinion or not, he presented that information for my consumption. They’re communicating to me and I have a right to respond.

If I see a Hale Pack manipulation which has Derek, Stiles, Erica, Boyd, Jackson, Lydia, Liam, Cora, Peter, and Isaac as members of the Hale Pack, they’re telling me something to, and I have a right to respond to that. If I see a story with Scott in it that uses every anti-Latino stereotype known to humanity, I can (and should) respond to it.

If I see a piece of writing put out in the public sphere where anyone can see it or read it, I have the ability to criticize that writing. Many of these platforms seem to agree with me, as they give me the ability to comment. Or if I don’t want to do that on that platform, I can talk about the story on Tumblr, on Twitter, or in a newsletter I write out by hand. Just like the original show itself, once you put something out in the public sphere, the author doesn’t get to control how their audience reacts, even if the writer is doing it out of their love for racism or heteronormativity or anything, really. If a writer doesn’t want people to react to their work, they have the option not to publish, but once they do, there is no reason for the audience not to do so.

So, turn on your comment moderation. Forbid anonymous comments. On certain sties, make your plans clear in the tags or the summary. Report abusive commentators. Or, following your own advice, don’t read my or anyone else’s evaluation of your works. But a free society must have a free exchange of ideas, even for the smallest of topics, and that requires the ability to criticize.

-

COOKIE:

If I see a man walking down the street with an orange MAGA hat on, I’m going to make judgments about him, because they are presenting their beliefs in a public sphere. It doesn’t matter if Mr. MAGA doesn’t want my opinion or not, he presented that information for my consumption. They’re communicating to me and I have a right to respond.

But are you going to walk up and tell him your opinion to his face? Are you going to spend the next week following him to his house and place of work and insisting how you’re right and he’s wrong and he needs to change his way of life this instant? I doubt it, you’re too much of a coward for the former, and you know you would get arrested for the latter. You only get off harassing people online because you know there will be no real repercussions.

You’re going on and on about how you have the right to say whatever you want, and yet you seem to COMPLETELY forget that by that same token, we have the right to write whatever we want. It doesn’t have to cater to your narrow view of what fandom should be. 

And it would absolutely be rude to insist on the appearance of a character that the fic isn’t about. I don’t give a FUCK that Scott’s the main character of TW; if I want to write a fic about fkn Greenberg, who makes no actual appearance in Canon and has no actual interaction with Scott, then I’m free to do exactly that. If I want to write about Joe Schmoe the Hunter within the TW universe, again without Scott, I can do that too, and laugh in your face if you try to come at me demanding Scott be somehow involved with a character he never met. 

TRANSFORMATIVE fiction is exactly that; you take the pieces you like and transform them to what you want it to be. Sorry that no one like your fav. Die mad about it. 

[myulalie]

On modern comment culture

First off, I’d like to make the distinction between honesty, and being hurtful under the pretense of being honest.

Hate, be it anon or not, is hurting someone’s feelings on purpose.

You can receive hate and be a hater too. It might be easier, even, to go from the hate you receive on your work, and take it out onto someone else’s.

Here is how I picture a hater's mind: “easy to pour some hate into a comment section, you don't see the person and they receive nice comments. They probably won't even notice.”

Sometimes, constructive criticism, even with your best interests at heart, hurts.

We don’t expect it, it’s not what we meant to write, or we just didn’t worry about how our work could be perceived.

It might be a very European vs American perception of criticism, and I aspire to get better, so the choice I made is to receive constructive criticism (concrit for short).

I wish someone would tell me if I’m writing something that doesn’t work, and why it doesn’t. I wish someone would point it out if I misuse a word.

Positive feedback is great and encouraging, actual comments about what someone likes/dislikes and why is helpful.

Not wanting any concrit is the author’s choice and I respect it. This is the reason I only offer concrit to anyone who told me they’re interested.

I wish concrit was still a thing

Modern comment culture is protective of authors, and there is a general agreement that concrit, especially unsolicited, is unnecessary.

I fully support the fact that fanfic authors are writing for free, so they deserve basic respect for their work.

This doesn’t give them the right to be assholes.

You put your work out there, you have a responsibility to at the very least let people know you’re not interested in concrit, and to disable/moderate comments if you don’t want them.

If someone comes to bug you when you explicitly mentioned you’re not interested in concrit then yeah, by all means, tell them to fuck off.

I think it’s important to let haters know their behavior is unacceptable. As they say, the only way to deal with a bully is to punch them in the face (or make them face the consequences of their actions as a general rule).

The author’s reply to hate tells a lot about them, but their reply to concrit also does.

Being polite should be a given.

And it goes both ways!

Readers are offering concrit for free too, they take the time to do so because they genuinely want to help. They enjoy your story enough to want to interact with you.

I’ve had a lot more comments than usual with kinktober, and I’ve built up a new habit of replying the next day before or after posting my daily take on the prompts.

I am aware that the amount of comments I receive is manageable, and some people have to deal with a lot more every day (like, hundreds).

In my experience, replying to short and sweet comments can be challenging because a simple thank you message isn’t personal enough, and you as a writer don’t have much content to actually reply to either.

Longer comments often open up more possibilities to reply, even if it’s just to let the reader know how you felt when reading their comment.

I believe that no matter how shy or busy you are, copying and pasting a little thank you message isn’t that difficult, and doesn’t take that long. You could even leave a note in each new chapter to let your readers know you read their comments and appreciate them.

Acknowledging readers will encourage them to comment your fics more, and potentially to the benefit of other authors too.

Don’t start fights because of concrit

Readers, please know that a simple heart as additional kudos goes a long way. Saying what you liked or just that you're enjoying the story is really encouraging too!

If you’d like to leave concrit, maybe formulate your comment as a question instead of pointing something out, to avoid upsetting the author.

I’m sure you mean well when you leave a comment, and you don’t want to discourage the author if you like what they’re writing!

If the author is open to concrit, they’ll probably reply to your question and ask their own, which leads to a conversation. Better safe than sorry, offer concrit and wait for them to agree, there is no use in getting into a fight with the author.

A better use of your time as a reader would be to read even more, I’m not getting in the way of your fun, or go and offer comments & concrit to someone who is interested in what you have to say.

As a writer, I guess you can always write more, and maybe thank readers for their kind words!

How to establish dialogue with your readers

Disclaimer: I’m still learning, and the amount of comments I receive compared to my free time is manageable. Before you proceed, please note I asked my reader for permission to use their comments as examples.

Myulalie: I would like to make a tumblr post about comments and include yours as an example.

It's to explain why I value them and how I proceed to reply, because I have strong feelings about author/reader relationships ^^

Would you be okay with that? It's totally fine if you're not, I am asking for permission because I don't want to make you uncomfortable.

Also, if you agree and for some reason change your mind once you've read the tumblr post, I'll remove it, no questions asked ^^

Reader: I don’t mind at all, I know a lot of people don’t leave feedback, for a variety of reasons, so any education in how/why is always important. I’m just glad my comments fall in to the good category 😁

Thanks for asking, you have my permission to use any you like.

The context is as follows: The characters went on vacation and asked friends to pet-sit their cats. I then used the characters’ cats as plot devices for the characters to move in together. A cat hid under the sink and refused to leave, which brought forth the “moving in” conversation.

Reader: Alcohol + other person = trautamised cat and an empty drinks cabinet... which I would be making them restock, oh and embarrassed friends... the cat might want to stay but I know the signs of a traumatised let.. sometimes taking a chance on something turns out to be the best thing in your life, so far, until the proposal

This reader is lovely and has been commenting on every chapter of this story, as well as some other stories. We never had any issue whatsoever and even chatted about their cat.

This is what I consider a good relationship, and when I read this comment I was surprised. I did not expect them to interpret the story this way.

The fact is, this reader is “wrong” because it’s not what I meant when I wrote (nothing happened to the cat, the alcohol part of the chapter is not related to the cat’s behavior).

This reader is also right because this IS what I wrote. The cat is hiding for plot purposes, but the plot also includes the pet-sitters getting drunk. I implied them making out, then regretting it later, thus behaving weirdly around each other, which was meant as comic relief.

I have seen replies to similar comments and needless to say people get into fights over such misunderstandings.

Here is my reply:

Myulalie: I would like to make the official statement that nothing bad happened to the cats D:

Ragnor & Jace's shenaningans were meant to hint at drunk making out and nothing more. The worse thing Church had to go through is second hand embarrassment I promise ♥ I can't bring myself to traumatise Church and I'm glad you pointed out that it sorts of look like something was wrong with him ^^ The only thing "wrong" is the plot device I used to have malec move in together haha :')

I appreciate this reader trusting me enough to point this out and letting me know how they feel.

I think it’s important to be aware of how this can be read. A beta would probably have told me how the chapter looked from an external point of view and suggested writing the same idea differently. As things are, I didn’t have a beta-reader for this fic.

Here is the reader’s reply:

Reader: Lol, good to know, although in my experience cats bring it on themselves, nosy little voyeurs that they are....

See how we solved the problem by simply having a conversation? This is why I appreciate concrit and do my best to treat readers well.

edit: upon checking in with the reader to make sure the post sat well with them, they told me they never meant it as criticism and actually found the chapter funny, their comment was written in a sarcastic manner that I totally missed!

There, you have it. I am full of good intentions and I still miss some of the meaning of the comment!

There was a second comment on the following chapter.

I’ll just mention that one of the cats dipped his paws in a can of paint and made a mess on the wall. One of the character makes a pet account on Instagram to post pictures of the cat’s “artwork” with paint.

Reader: I always love a story that ends on a happy ever after, although I do think alec was taking a big chance tying the rings to the cats collars, especially after the paint incident... we won’t go in to what I think of people having Instagram accounts for their pets, although the paining does sound nice...

This was a very cute story and I’m glad that they found their forever person :grin:

If you don’t get it, this reader and me disagree on pet accounts.

The fact is, they are allowed to express themselves, and they did it respectfully. I don’t think this comment is rude, and I don’t think this reader feels “entitled”. Quite the contrary, they’re polite and felt comfortable enough to let me know what they think.

I didn’t argue with them. My reply consisted in politely reminding everyone who might read this story that this is a work of fiction, and that it’s here for both the reader’s and the author’s entertainment.

Myulalie: Well, I definitely don't recommend doing your proposal this way IRL, fortunately stories are a safe space to make crazy proposals for entertainment's sake :')

I'm glad you liked the ending! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me all throughout the story, I really appreciated our chats ♥

edit: I thought we disagreed. We chatted again and they told me they don't have IG so they don't see the point of running 2 accounts, which fair. Because I used to run a pet account for my dog, I felt "attacked" where I absolutely wasn't.

One more example of misinterpretation!

I think the only way forward is together.

Authors deserve respect for their work, it doesn’t exempt them from being polite. Readers might need some sort of education on “comment etiquette”, and should be respected in return.

I want this platform to be a safe space for authors AND for readers.

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Notes on Robert McKee’s “Story” 23: Tearing Down Act Design

☝ Maybe this post will make you throw out the storytelling map your English teacher gave you.

Every single person who has taken a literature class has seen a diagram along these lines at some point. This is the one-track path that all “Good Stories” must take:

But do all “Good Stories” really have to follow this trajectory? And where exactly do subplots fit in on this? In this post, I share Robert McKee’s answers to these questions.

How Many Acts?

First, what even is an act? Let’s make sure we have a clear understanding. 

“As a symphony unfolds in three, four, or more movements, so story is told in movements called acts--the macro-structure of story. 

Beats, changing patterns of human behavior, build scenes. Ideally, every scene becomes a Turning Point in which the values at state swing from the positive to the negative or the negative to the positive, creating significant but minor change in their lives.

A series of scenes build a sequence that culminates in a scene that has a moderate impact on the characters, turning or changing values for better or worse to a greater degree than any scene. 

A series of sequences build an act that climaxes in a scene that creates a major reversal in the characters’ lives, greater than any sequence accomplished.”

Okay. So how many should acts should we have? Most famous works we’re familiar with have three acts, as illustrated in our picture above. But is that the golden rule?

According to McKee and Aristotle, no, three acts is not the golden rule. A good story can have just one act--we may see this in a one-shot fanfiction or a short story. 

A story can have two acts as well, most commonly seen in sitcoms, novellas, or hour-length plays.

However, when a work reaches a certain length, such as a feature film, an hour-long TV episode, a full-length play, or a novel, three acts are the minimum.

Why is this? Who decided that three is the magic number?

“As audience we embrace the story artist and say: ‘I’d like a poetic experience in breadth and depth to the limits of life. But I’m a reasonable person. If I give you only a few minutes to read or witness your work, it would be unfair of me to demand you to take me to the limit. Instead I’d like a moment of pleasure, an insight or two, no more than that. But if I give you important hours of my life, I expect you to be an artist of power who can reach the boundaries of experience.’

In our effort to satisfy the audience’s need, to tell stories that touch the innermost and outermost sources of life, two major reversals are not enough. No matter the setting or scope of the telling, no matter how international and epic or intimate and interior, three major reversals are the necessary minimum for a full-length work of narrative art to reach the end of the line.

Consider these rhythms: Things were bad, then they were good--end of story. Or things were good, then they were bad--end of story. Or things were bad, then they were very bad--end of story. Or things were good, then they were very good--end of story. In all four cases we feel something’s lacking. We know that the second event, whether positively or negatively charged, is neither the end nor the limit. Even if the second event kills the cast: Things were good (or bad), then everyone died--end of story--it’s not enough. “Okay, they’re all dead. Now what?” we’re wondering. The third turn is missing and we know we haven’t touch the limit until at least one more major reversal occurs. Therefore, the three-act story rhythm was the foundation of story art for centuries before Aristotle noticed it.”

Act Length

(For the sake of explanation, let’s stick with the Three Act pattern.)

Take a look at that diagram that you were probably forced to memorize in lit class again. 

Here, we see that all three acts are equal in length.However, McKee provides a different distribution. He stresses that his diagrams are foundations and not formulae, and while his are specifically for the film medium, he believes that they are applicable to the play and novel as well. 

For now, let’s just look at the Central Plot timeline and disregard subplots. In his foundation, he has broken a 118 minute, three act film into the following pieces:

Act 1: 30 mins (25% of film)

Act 2: 70 mins (60% of film)

Act 3: 18 mins (15% of film)

Notice in particular how short the last act is compared to the others. McKee states, “In the ideal last act we want to give the audience a sense of acceleration, a swiftly rising action to Climax.” If we draw out the last act too much, we run the risk of slowing pace and taking away from the momentum we have built up.

Now let’s take a look at Act 2. It’s a whopping 60% of the film. That feels like a lot to me. McKee echoes something that Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing, that it is the second act where things can get claggy and boring. So how can we keep from getting stuck in the swamp that is Act 2?

Add subplots or more acts.

Subplots are such an important topic that they necessitate their own post, so for now let’s just discuss when we would add more acts.

How Many Acts?

“Not every film needs or wants a subplot: THE FUGITIVE. How then does the writer solve the problem of the long second act? By creating more acts. The three-act design is the minimum. If the writer builds progressions to a major reversal at the halfway point, he breaks the story into four movements with no act more than thirty or forty minutes long. 

A film could have a Shakespearean rhythm of five acts: FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL. Or more. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is in seven acts; THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER in eight. These films turn a major reversal every fifteen or twenty minutes, decisively solving the long second act problem. But the five- to eight-act design is the exception, for the cure of problem is the cause of others.”

So maybe you have a thriller you want to write, and you’re sick of there being a stupid romance in every single story that comes out these days (Oops, are my own opinions bleeding into this? lol), so you want to write just a straight up thriller, with NOTHING else going on but the central plot. Cool! 

In order to avoid the slowdown in Act 2, you may want to consider adding another act, thereby shrinking the length of Act 2, giving you another chance for another exciting twist. 

However, beware because adding acts can cause some of the following problems in your story:

The multiplication of act climaxes invites cliches.

For each act there must be a climax. And each climax must be progressively greater than the last. It is difficult enough to think of the three climaxes we need for a regular three-act story. You’ll be dipping down deep into that well of creativity.

The multiplication of acts reduces the impact of climaxes and results in repetitiousness.

“Even if you have a limitless well of creativity, turning act climaxes on scenes of life and death, life an death, life and death, life and death, life and death, seven or eight times over, boredom sets in. Before too long the audience is yawning: “That’s not a major turn. That’s his day. Every fifteen minutes somebody tries to kill this guy.”

What is major is relative to what is moderate and minor. If every scene screams to be heard, we go deaf. 

This is why a three-act Central Plot with subplots has become a kind of standard. It fits the creative powers of most writers, provides complexity, and avoids repetition.”

So feel free to have more acts, but in moderation. Next, let’s take a look at some non-standard act patterns you may want to use.

False Endings

What’s a false ending? You’ve seen it a thousand times over. It’s a scene so seemingly complete that we think for a moment the story is over. E.T. is dead--it’s the end of the movie. In ALIEN, Ripley blows up the spaceship and escapes, we think. The original TERMINATOR movie has a double False Ending. 

McKee issues this caution regarding them:

“For most films, however, the False Ending is inappropriate. Instead, the Penultimate Act Climax should intensify the Major Dramatic Question: “Now what’s going to happen?”

Act Rhythm

Here, McKee points out the importance of alternating between value-charges. (For a refresher on value-charges, please see this post on the values in your theme, and this post on maintaining balance between the opposite values.)

“Repetitiousness is the enemy of rhythm. The dynamics of story depend on the alternation of its value-charges. For example, the two most powerful scenes in a story are the last two act climaxes. Onscreen they’re often only ten or fifteen minutes apart. Therefore, they cannot repeat the same charge. If the protagonist achieves his Object of Desire, making the last act’s Story Climax positive, then the Penultimate Act Climax must be negative. You cannot set up an up-ending with an up-ending. ‘Things were wonderful...then they got even better!’ Conversely, you cannot set up a down-ending with a down-ending. When emotional experience repeats, the power of the second event is cut in half. And if the power of the Story Climax is halved, the power of the film is halved.

On the other hand, a story may climax in irony, an ending that’s both positive and negative. What then must be the emotional charge of the Penultimate Climax? The answer’s found in close study of the Story Climax, for although irony is somewhat positive, somewhat negative, it should never be balanced. If it is, the positive and negative values cancel each other out and the story ends in a bland neutrality. 

For example, Othello finally achieves his desire: a wife who loves him and has never betrayed him with another man--positive. However, when he discovers this, it’s too late because he’s just murdered her--an overall negative irony.”

☝This gave me a lot of thought. I tend to write for myself, and I like to have up-endings with all loose ends tidied up. Looking back at everything, I have set up up-endings with up-endings in many of my stories, and I can see now why even to me the finale feels lacklustre. 

Source: McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. York: Methuen, 1998. Print

[hqvalentineexchange]

Posting the gifts

You don’t know how to post the gift? Or just want to make sure how to do it? Are you curious if there is any official formating you should adhere to? This post is for you!

Before I get to the point though, a small reassurance that it's not too late to ask for beta! You can ask for beta till the end of the event! So if you finish your fic sometime during the posting week, you still can ask for beta as well!

Now to the revealing the gifts - so, since there are people who never participated in a fandom exchange before, as well as people who already did, I will do some explaining.

(a table of content of sorts:

1. How to reveal my gift?

2. Formating

3. AO3 collection

4. A few additional words to people who participate in an exchange for the first time

5. To summarize)

So, short explanation for exchanges veterans: you can reveal your gift however you want! There are no submissions (meaning - you don't have to send the gift to us first; you can submit your gift to this blog if you want your work posted on Tumblr but don't have an account, but there are no mandatory submissions)! The only important thing is making sure your giftee sees it (so you should @ them, send them the link etc., but well, you’re the veterans, it’s an obvious thing)! Of course you don’t have to @ them on every platform you post your gift on. You can also find a few words about proper tagging below in the "Formating" section ^^ Also there's AO3 collection if you want to add your work there! You can find more information about the collection below the "Formating" section.

Long explanation for those, who aren’t sure what “you can share it however you want lmao” entails: there are a few different ways to post your gift, briefly explained in the FAQ (mobile friendly link). The most important thing is you don't have to send your gift to us first. How to reveal it then? There are a few ways you can do it:

1. You can submit your gift here and we will publish it when the time comes (you can find more in depth explanation about formating below). It's not a mandatory thing! The option is here if you want to have your gift posted on Tumblr, but don't have an account! The "submit" window is easy to use, although a bit limited - it only has the basic formating options and doesn't accept HTML, which means that whatever HTML code you'd use, it'll stay as a code (for example when you put text between the <i> marks to make it into italics, it will stay as "<i>word</i>" in the post, instead of becoming "word"). Just remember to @ your giftee!

2. You can post it on your own Tumblr blog/Twitter page/etc. (you can find more in depth explanation about formating below). Remember to @ your giftee!

3. You can post your gift on an outside platform (for example if you’re writing fanfiction, the outside platform would be AO3, FF.net or whatever platform you use), copy the link to it and paste it in a post you make on your Tumblr blog/Twitter page/etc. (you can find more in depth explanation about formating below). Remember to @ your giftee! Also if you're posting on AO3 - there's event's collection you're welcome to post to (more information about the collection below the "Formating" section)!

4. If you are in our event Discord server and your giftee is there as well, you can just post your gift in the right channel and @ them, no need for any public posts.

5. If you decide to post your work on an outside platform, you can also just copy the link and send it directly to your giftee on their social media in a private message. No need for any public posts. The only additional requirement here is to let us know you shared your gift!

Formating

Let’s be honest, a fanart doesn’t really need any specific formating (outside of 1 small thing), so this section will be mainly dedicated to fanfic writers. The said one small thing is a thing that everyone should do if they decide to post their gift on their social media, and it’s:

a) @ing our blog or Twitter page (depending on where you post)

and/or

b) using the #hqvalentineexchange or #hqvalex2021 tags (in the five first tags if you post on Tumblr)

so we can reblog/retweet it. 

Now, to the actual formating part. Remember it’s only recommended formating! You can format it however you please. There are a few ways to do it tbh:

once you enter your work which you posted on AO3, there is a “Share” button right above the fic’s header, between “Comments” and “Subscribe” buttons. Once you click it, it will show you HTML code to copy and paste. There are also two buttons below the code (for Tumblr and for Twitter) that will create a post ready to publish when clicked, if you don't want to copy the HTML code or don't know what to do with it.

you can make your own text version of preview. You should include a pairing, rating and word count, then. If you post your work in its entirety on Tumblr, you should also consider putting the story under a read more for convenience of others. You also should include the things that can potentialy trigger others, even if your giftee is fine with such content (for example - the person you’re making the gift for asked for super angsty and dramatic zombie apocalypse au with a happy ending. You should warn others there’s violence and blood, and maybe gore, even if your giftee is absolutely fine with it).

you can make a screenshot of your AO3/FF.net preview and only put the link to your fic below it. Some writers decorate it in some way (putting the preview half-transparent on a pretty background for example), so you can play with it if you want something more special!

AO3 collection

You can find the collection here or by typing "hqvalentineexchange" in the collection field while posting your work. It has the same profile pic as the event blog and Twitter page, so it should be easy to find!

The collection is moderated, which means your work won't show up in the collection until we approve of it, so don't worry if it doesn't show right away! We will accept it in a matter of a few hours ;D

A few additional words for those, who participate in an exchange for the first time

There is no set etiquette of giving gifts in the exchanges, so don't worry about it! ;) Your message to your giftee can be as long or as short as you want. Some people compliment the prompts their giftee gave them, some say they enjoyed working on the gift, some wish their giftee a happy Valentine's Day (or holidays, speaking about exchanges more in general, since a lot of them are holiday themed/specifically Secret Santa events), and some are simply like "my gift for @giftees-name for @exchanges-page, hope you enjoy". Don't sweat it ;D

To summarize

there are 5 ways to reveal your gift (or maybe more if you came up with something else not on the list? Asks us first though, please! ;)), they are listed at the beginning of the post

you have to make sure your giftee will see your gift

you should put #hqvalentineexchange or #hqvalex2021 in the tags or @ this blog or the official event Twitter page; there's also an AO3 collection you're welcome to post to

all the formating suggested above is optional and presented here more as an inspiration - you're only limited by your creativity! ;)

If you have any questions/concerns/doubts, feel free to send us an ask or message us privately on our social media (mobile friendly link)! ;D

And have a nice day/night/whatever it is in your timezone! ❤️

[ljandersen]

Behind the scenes. 18, 19, 20, and 21.

Thank you for the ask, rpgwarrior!  You’re awesome.  This is from Behind the Scenes of Fic Writer 30 Questions.

18.  What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

This is a hard one.  On one hand, I like so many scenes.  On the other hand, I go back, read them, cringe, and want to change everything.  None of them are good enough to be “really proud of.”  Haha.  I’ll just go with one that I like.  It’s the flashback in part one of “Burning Barriers.”  Shepard and Kaidan are broken up, and Shepard is remembering a conversation they had by the fireplace in her Citadel apartment in ME-3.  After Shepard light-heartedly answers a question from Kaidan, she turns in back on him.  What would he want if not for the war?

  A grin tugged at his lips. He sighed and slouched back more on the couch. "Fine. You know what I'd want? I want moments like this, but I'd want them all with you. I'd want a house on the Pacific. I'd want to finish dinner and drink wine on our veranda overlooking the ocean. Then we'd roll up our pant legs and walk in the sand by the surf. Everything would be red from the sunset, and I'd hold your hand. Our feet would be cold, our faces chapped from the wind, and I'd kiss you. I'd tell you I love you, like I would every day. I'd feel lucky knowing I could say it the next day and the day after that.  Not just saying it, because it's the last thing I want to have said to you."

 She swallowed dryly and looked away. Her voice was a little raspy, so she cleared it. "Pretty tame fantasy there, Kaidan. Just hand holding and kissing, huh?"

  "Oh." A smile turned up softly on his lips, and he brushed back strands of hair on her face with his free hand. "Didn't know you wanted the director's cut."

  "I don't want the censored edition."

  She forced a brittle smile.  She tried to pull it wider as he looked down at her. His eyes studied her with a growing grin. Still holding her hand, he drew his other arm onto the back of the couch.

  "All right." The grin grew wider. "After the credits, if you're still watching and you're over seventeen or with an adult guardian – the sunset fade over the ocean. We tear off all our clothes –"

  "I want to tear yours off."

  "Okay," he allowed with a smirk and nodded. "You tear my clothes off. Buttons spray everywhere sending some seagulls off squawking. Then, we run into the surf. We swim out. I splash you with my biotics, and you dunk me with yours. And, it's you and this is supposed to be real, you dunk me a little too thoroughly. I stumble out of the water choking and gagging up water. You feel kinda bad and come rushing over kicking water around your legs. I'd have really swallowed water, don't get me wrong, but maybe I was exaggerating a little. You'd come over a feeling little guilty, and I'd catch you."

  "Now's the racy part." Shepard grinned. "Please continue."

  "But, we're cold. It's the Pacific, the sun's down. We race each other back to the house along the footprints we left an hour earlier."

  "Teasing your audience." Shepard clicked her tongue. "But we didn't put our clothes back on, right?"

  "Of course not. We never liked those clothes anyway, and mine are shredded. We leave them to the seagulls."

  "Please, tell me there's a seagull that shows up later, your underwear around its neck."

  "It's your underwear, and the seagull's wearing it."

  "Spoilers."

  "You asked."

  "Okay. Unpause. Naked, running back to the house …"

  "Right. We're cold and sticky from the sea salt. We tumble into the shower and turn it up as hot as we can stand, until it burns our skin."

  "That the only heat being turned up?"

  Kaidan chuckled and dropped his hand to her hair again. "Then, we make love."

  "Finally. Not nearly graphic enough for all the buildup, but I see you're going more for decorum than gratuitous spectacle."

  He rested his arm across the back of the couch and shrugged.

  "Maybe I'll get into the specific later. Easier if you can visualize them."

  "Oh. So, a live action performance?"

  "Right, and I'll need a volunteer from the audience."

  "I didn't realize there'd be an audience. This is kinkier than I thought."

  "Just you, me, and the seagull wearing your underwear."

  "Ooh. You are a deviant." Shepard gazed up at him. "Then what? Fade to black as we break out the shampoo and luffa? Too boring for broadcast."

  The smile was soft and reached his eyes. He lifted his fingers out from her hand and touched the side of her face. His eyes followed his thumb as it traced over her cheekbone, and his smile tightened deeper into his cheeks. He met her eyes.

  "After? We'd fall into bed then. Our bed. The one we've slept in too many nights to count. Our skin's warm and pink from the shower, and we'd leave the window open. I'd listen to your breathing as it slowed and deepened smelling the shampoo in your damp hair. The cool ocean air would stir the curtains in the moonlight, and I'd watch the breeze move stray hairs across your forehead. And I'd think: I'm the luckiest man alive."

 Her throat tightened, blood beating in her ears. She turned her face to the fire, focused on her breathing, and interlocking her hands across her middle. The flames moved in the shadows.

  "I would have liked that," she said.

This wasn’t a scene I included in the first draft of “Burning Barriers.”  I had a flashback in part 2 that Kaidan remembers that follows this scene.  At one time, I considered writing a story set before “Burning Barriers” and wondered how to show that moment without repeating Kaidan’s flashback. I needed to show that point in time, otherwise the flashback wouldn’t have a reference.  So I wrote this scene to see if I could hit the same emotional key but show a different part of the evening.  After writing this, I felt my question was answered, it was possible to write such a scene, so i tossed it aside and promptly forgot about it in a notebook.  After adding a flashback in part 3 of "Burning Barriers", I felt like, for consistency, it made sense to have a flashback in part 1.  I came across this scene that I’d discarded in a notebook.  It fit exactly what I needed.  

19.  Who is the easiest/hardest character for you to write about? Why?

Shepard and Kaidan are the easiest for me to write, because I’ve written their POV multiple times.  The hardest to write are probably the krogan, Wrex and Grunt.  For some reason, I have in my head how I think they should sound.  When I watch YouTube videos, I don’t feel like my version and what’s actually in the game align.  It’s something I work on, but they’re both harder for me write.

20.  What’s your favorite minor character you’ve written?

Favorite minor character from the game?  Oohs, that’s hard.  I’ve written minor characters, like the councilors, but none of them were especially exciting to me.  I love writing Chakwas and some other moderate-level character, but truly minor?  I don’t think I have one.  I have an OC who plays a minor part in my WIP “Someplace Like Home.” I’ve come to enjoy him.  He’s the Normandy’s physician, kind of irreverent and flippant, a sort of dorky high school science teacher type.  

21.  What is the one fic that got away?

I answered that one here.

Again, thanks for the ask!