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zukkaoru · 11 months ago

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could you tell me more about why you dislike femskk?

okay disclaimer before i begin: this is not meant to be a dig on every person who enjoys femskk. the biggest reason i don't like it is honestly because it's just not my cup of tea and honestly it really makes no difference to me if other people like it. but beyond that my biggest issues with it are

1. the phenomenon of fans "yuri-ifying" the most popular m/m ship and then using that to prove they like female characters and f/f ships. this is not a bsd-exclusive thing; it happens with stsg too and i don't like femstsg for the same reason. but there's a big difference between actually liking female characters and just genderbending (or even making transfem) the big m/m ship. i literally went to the f/f category in bsd on ao3 the other day looking for fics and about half of them are skk fics instead of fics about like. the actual female characters in bsd. who i was looking for fics of. similarly, there have been some redraw trends going around twitter - specifically the i prefer girls cover redraw - and i have seen. i don't even know how many femskk redraws of that (along with a couple femfyolais and a femrimlaine) but only one redraw with actual female characters from bsd. same with the scene 14 redraw that was going around, and while that one wasn't originally two female characters, i have still seen significantly more femskk (and femsigzai, femsigchuu, femfyolai, etc) than i have ships with even one character who is female in the source material.

and imo this phenomenon is made even worse in the bsd fandom bc so many fans just see bsd as the skk show. so of course they're writing off the actual female characters; they literally don't care about anything besides skk. and obviously i can't do anything to force anyone to care about other characters but like.... bsd has so many other wonderful characters and dynamics (both romantic and platonic) that a good half of the fanbase won't even glance at because they're not skk. i do like skk, but bsd is about so much more than just them. they are, objectively, only one small part of it. like if you only care about skk, then just be outright about it and don't pretend you're "proving" you like female characters and sapphic ships bc you like femskk too

2. of the fans who only like skk and nothing else about bsd, most of them. don't even characterize dazai and chuuya correctly? i think the some of the best skk characterizations i've seen have been from people who actually like other characters and ships too, and some of the worst skk characterization i've seen has come from people who literally don't care about any other ships or characters. this isn't a hard and fast rule obviously but even with 30k skk fics on ao3, i have struggled to find ones that actually feel true to their characters. and the characterization seems to only get worse when it's femskk. if you're just going to turn femdazai and femchuuya into two completely different people, what's the point in it even being skk? why not write k.ousano or h.igugin or even a ship with one canonically female character? if you have to change the core characteristics of both dazai and chuuya... do you even really like them?

3. about femdazai: i actually don't mind the transfem dazai headcanon in general but most fans get her wrong. i made a post about it here but basically so many times i see femdazais that are just. completely unrecognizable as dazai. you can't strip away core aspects of dazai like idk the fact that dazai doesn't show any skin from neck to toe just because you made her a girl. i have seen some femdazai that's good! but i have seen so much that is just fundamentally wrong for dazai's character as a whole. mostly on twitter.

4. about femchuuya: i really truly just don't get femchuuya. i THINK the hype here is probably bc lesbians seem to get attached to chuuya (which. valid. i am also a lesbian chuuya fan.) and so they want to draw a chuuya they can be attracted to (i.e. femchuuya) which like. cool whatever i'm not here to judge. but looking at it from a "would this character actually identify as female" perspective, i don't actually think i can picture that for chuuya. maybe it's just because i so strongly hc them as nonbinary? idk. this one is honestly just a neutral "i don't see that but you do you"

tl;dr: from what i've seen, femskk is often mischaracterized, and genderbending the big m/m ships in a fandom is often a way fans "prove" they like the female characters and f/f ships while not actually caring about anything other than their main m/m ship

#the first point is also why i don't particularly care for fem any m/m ship in any fandom. that's not exclusive to femskk #femskk is just. there is a LOT of it that i see and i would much rather see more art/fics/etc. for the canonically female characters #i don't like k.ousano but i would prefer they have more fics in the bsd f/f tag on ao3 than a ship that. isn't canonically f/f #like it's already hard to find f/f content (and just stuff for female characters in general) in ANY fandom #so to have to filter through not only femskk fics but also other canonically m/m ships made fem #while i'm specifically looking for fics with yosano lucy higuchi lucy louisa margaret gin etc etc is. frustrating #i'm not saying femskk shouldn't be a thing or that they shouldn't be in the f/f tag but #i wish they weren't the number 1 f/f ship in the fandom #i wish there was more of a balance and the canonically female characters got more appreciation from the fandom in general #so anyway this isn't me trying to sway people out of writing/drawing femskk bc i know that's never going to happen #it's just a wish for more bsd fans to appreciate other characters too #also sorry if this doesn't make a lot of sense; i had to pause halfway through to go pick up my sister sfdghjkjl #and once again this is not an attack on femskk enjoyers or anyone specific!!! just me having opinions abt the fandom in general #asks #anon asks

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alicesadventuresinffxiv · 2 months ago

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What are the most popular F/F Final Fantasy XIV ships?

(*on AO3, as of October 13, 2024)

I like writing femslash, so while I was doing the FFxivWrite challenge, I had the thought: wouldn’t it be fun to try writing each of the top 10 most popular FFXIV F/F ships?

I figured it would be a good way for me to learn to write characters I wasn’t used to, plus hopefully it would mean some of the well-liked but rarely-written pairings would get more fic for them!

But then I ran head-first into the question: what are those F/F ships? I hit some interesting challenges attempting to figure that out, so here’s a post about how I reached my answer!

First things first: I’m using AO3 stats for this analysis, entirely because AO3 has the most robust searching and filtering tools. Trying to wrangle this kind of analysis on tumblr or twitter would be a nightmare, as much as I’d love to know the answer on those sites!

Second, let’s quickly double check my assumption that F/F ships are indeed rarepairs in this fandom.

Yep, if you’re at all familiar with @centrumlumina's work on AO3 stats (which this analysis is somewhat inspired by ^^;), this is exactly in line with general fandom trends! For reasons that I understand intellectually but not in my heart, F/F fics tend to hover at around 6% of AO3 output overall.

Interestingly, this small slice of femslash makes FFXIV more similar to large, broad fandoms like the MCU or MHA (pictured above), and less similar to other online multiplayer videogame fandoms (pictured below). You might think that given its friendly reputation, FFXIV would attract more women and/or LGBTQ+ players and therefore have a higher proportion of femslash. But nope!

(Admittedly, pitting FFXIV against the fandom that contains Arcane feels a little unfair... :P)

So alright, with that out of the way, let’s start by doing the obvious thing. Hey AO3, what are the top 10 relationship tags when searching FFXIV on the F/F category?

[Note: Since the Warrior of Light is typically written as the author’s original character - especially in cases with multiple WoLs - I am combining the WoL/WoL and WoL/OC tags together.]

If you’ve been in FFXIV spaces for a while, you probably already guessed the #1 result! But as someone relatively new to the fandom, I was actually quite surprised. None of my previous fandoms had nearly this much focus on original characters!

Indeed, WoL/NPC ships and OC/ OC ships absolutely dwarf the numbers for any NPC/NPC ships, with the exception of the three largest M/M pairings (Aymeric/Estinien, Emet-Selch/Hythlodaeus, and Thancred/Urianger). Also, given that not everyone tags their OCs using either of the WoL or OC tags (ack! please use tags, your works get lost otherwise!)… you can always expect results for OCs to be an undercount. Woah!

Anyway, since WoL ships are so huge, I decided it made the most sense to give them their own list:

Another thing that surprised me is that male characters in FFXIV are so many times more popular than female characters that genderbent M/M pairings will show up in these F/F lists.

And… I wasn’t quite sure how to count those ships in my tallies.

On the one hand, genderbending (not to mention trans headcanoning-ing!) characters is a fun and often subversive way to approach popular ships. More power to everyone doing it!

On the other hand, part of the underlying motivation for my own writing goal was that I wanted to write pairings that fandom somewhat overlooks.

As such, I went with a compromise: I’m including pairings with canonically male characters in my graphs (those are the pink bars), but I kept the lists going until I reached 10 pairings involving characters who are portrayed as women in the source material.

(There were no nonbinary FFXIV characters which placed on any of my lists, sadly. Apologies to Feo Ul, who is still the loveliest of branches in my heart.)

Other than that caveat, the results here aren’t too far off from my own guesses. Anecdotally, I’d seen that a lot of WoLs are self-inserts for their players, so it makes sense that typical WoL ships are with NPCs that are generally considered to be attractive by the fanbase. Correspondingly, the Reader/Character fics that are somewhat common in other fandoms don’t even rank on these lists, which might suggest WoL/NPC ships are largely fulfilling that niche.

(Something something, FFXIV is a dating sim with combat, in this essay I will…. :P)

Anyway, WoL ships are nice, but what I actually wanted to write were NPC/NPC ships. So let’s add a bunch more excludes to the filtering… and…

Hm. That's interesting. There's a bunch of F/F ships that I know I’ve seen fic and art for that are missing from this list!

Out of curiosity, I did a few searches specifically on these missing pairings, in case they were so rarely tagged as purely F/F (or so commonly shipped alongside a WoL ship) that trying to find them via excludes didn’t work. These were:

Alisaie/Tesleen (20 total, 13 tagged F/F)

Krile/Tataru (14 total, 7 tagged F/F)

Ysayle/Heustienne (5 total, 5 tagged F/F)

Wuk Lamat/Sphene (4 total, 4 tagged as F/F)

[Note: The first number is what I used during the writing challenge last month… which is how I ended up putting Krile/Tataru over Lucia/Hilda. Oops! But the second number is more in line with the rest of the analysis here, so I will use that going forward.]

Seems my expectations were flat-out incorrect! Of these four, only Alisaie/Tesleen makes the top ten. Meanwhile Wuk Lamat/Sphene is a pairing consisting of very new characters... so perhaps it will grow over time!

Right then, let's add Alisaie/Tesleen in, and while we're at it, let's run direct searches on all the potential candidates rather than using excludes to ensure no fics are getting needlessly thrown out.

With those adjustments in place... I reached my final top ten!

Not bad! Predictably, pairings that get more focus in canon (Gaia/Ryne and Sadu/Cirina) tend to place high, as do pairings involving Y’shtola (since she’s a very popular character overall).

As a Lyse-enjoyer, I found Lyse getting 3/10 spots on the list to be pretty funny, as was the heavy presence of Stormblood characters! Apparently I’m not the only one who thought StB was a good expansion for lesbians. :D

There are also a few pairings here that I hadn’t ever considered before doing this analysis. But hey, that was the point of making the list! And trying to figure out the dynamics for pairings I didn’t usually ship did indeed turn out to be a fun writing exercise last month.

So what do you all think, tumblr? Did the results surprise you like they did me? Or did I overlook a pairing that really deserved to be included?

In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading this analysis!

#ffxiv #ffxivwrite #ffxiv analysis #fandom stats #fanfic #wolship #femslash #wlw #my ramblings #read more #I was thinking of analyzing race/ethnicity stats too #but boy oh boy attempting that would be like...#multiple nested cans of worms #if there's interest I might make an attempt though!#also it looks like I owe everyone a lucia/hilda fic sometime #hehe

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blackbird-brewster · 2 years ago

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CM Fanfiction on AO3

I'm a bit of a stats nerd, and I've been wanting to put this together for ages. The following are some statistics regarding Criminal Minds fanfiction of AO3. Do with this what you will, but if ever someone tries to tell me this fandom isn't misogynistic -- I will just point to this post.

I spent an abhorrent amount of time putting this together, hope it's interesting to other people. Please don't send me hate mail for my opinions.

Base Statistics

Total Fics Tagged Criminal Minds: 34,561

These stats were compiled by me on 20/06/23 via AO3's filtering system.

Note: These were taken at face value, meaning these numbers may not be exact. In order to get exact statistics, I'd have to stringently filter out things like mislabelled fics, spam, fics with multiple categories (to find pure slash, femslash fics), etc.

Tumblr will destroy the resolution of the graphs, just click to see full res :)

Fanfic statistics gathered from AO3, episode totals gathered from IMDB.

CM Fanfiction by Category

Most Popular Tag: Fluff (21.7%)

Fics Counted in This Statistic: *indeterminate due to crossover (multiple tags per each fic)

I honestly expected angst/whump/hurt/comfort to be first on this. I guess if you add up all the variations of those type of fics, they'd be top tag.

Obviously this one isn't ever going to be perfect, because tons of people either don't tag their fics, or they don't use the prescribed tags above. Still, I thought this was worth adding to the post.

For more stats please see my, [Tara Lewis Fic Stats Post]

#criminal minds #spencer reid #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #emily prenitss #jennifer jareau #penelope garcia #luke alvez #tara lewis #criminal minds fandom #criminal minds fanfiction #cm fanfiction #cm reference #master post #ao3 stats #cm commentary #cm meta

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scientific-tricorder · 3 years ago

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Star Trek AO3 Stats

Compiled some data comparing the different Star Trek series on Archive Of Our Own. Numbers collected 10/10/2021.

For overall number of Star Trek fics, the Kelvinverse/reboot films (AOS) dominate, making up over a third of all the Star Trek fanfics. Next comes The Original Series (TOS), Voyager (VOY), and Deep Space Nine (DS9), each making up a reasonable amount, from about 11-18%. Below that, The Next Generation (TNG), Enterprise (ENT), and Discovery (DIS) all have about 5-8%. And then there's the 1% and under series: Picard (PIC), Lower Decks (LWD), and coming up last at 0.13% of fics is The Animated Series (TAS). PIC and LWD are pretty new, so it would make sense that they are pretty low, and then TAS is, well TAS, and most people writing those characters are probably going to be doing more TOS.

Comparisons regarding ratings, categories, crossovers, completion status, and most common additional tags below the read more.

Then there's the ratings:

On the whole, Star Trek fics are about a third General and a third Teen, a small percent Not Rated, and Mature a bit more common than Explicit. The biggest standout by far is that over half of the LWD fics are rated Teen. Doing a representative comparison (the individual series' ratings compared to the overall Star Trek ratings) emphasizes the overall anomalies.

As expected, LWD has the greatest differences from the franchise overall, mostly due to that large percentage of Teen-rated fics, and to a lesser extent lower percentages of the other ratings, particularly General-rated. PIC also has a pretty big deviance, with fewer fics being rated Mature or Explicit and more being rated General and Teen. ENT has noticeably fewer Mature-rated fics. Overall, the most representative in ratings breakdown of the franchise is DS9, although it does have a slight skew towards the 'lower-rated' fics.

Then there's the categories, defined by relationship types. Any one fic can fall into multiple categories, so the percentages do add up to over 100%.

As is to be expected from fanfic in general, M/M generally dominates, with exceptions from TNG, VOY, and LWD where F/M is the majority and PIC, where Gen fics are the most common. Multi and Other are pretty low across the board with the very definite exception of AOS, with about 48% Multi. F/F is most common in PIC and DIS. TNG seems to be the most spread out overall.

If we look at comparison to the whole franchise, LWD is the most divergent overall from the general franchise, mostly due to that comparative excess of F/M fics and slightly more to a comparative paucity of M/M fics, with the second most divergent, VOY, being in the same boat. Once again, AOS stands out for the very high level of multi fics; high enough to make it the third most divergent. The least divergent from the overall franchise is actually TAS. The range across the franchise is much greater than for ratings, so relative frequency of categories is much more series-specific. This is undoubtedly due to the most popular ships of different series; i.e. F/M is so common in LWD and VOY due to Mariner/Boimler and Janeway/Chakotay fics and F/F so common in PIC due to Raffi/Seven fics, etc.

Then there's the number of crossovers (both intra-franchise and with unrelated properties).

TNG is the clear standout, with nearly 12% of its fics being crossovers. AOS also has a lot of crossovers. DIS has the least, with similar numbers in VOY, ENT, and PIC, all of which makes sense, given that DIS, ENT, and PIC are (mostly) unique in their time periods within the overall timeline and VOY is set primarily in a different quadrant than all the other shows.

Next is complete works.

On the whole, over 90% of Star Trek fics are complete. The highest percentage goes to ENT, with over 95% being complete, and behind it VOY and TOS with about 94% and 92% respectively. The lowest percentage of complete fics is TAS, with only about 80% being marked as complete.

And lastly I looked at the most common additional tags. The only one to be found across every series was 'Fluff', which was also the most common in the franchise as a whole. It was the most common for TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, and DIS, and was the rarest in ENT, at the ninth most common tag. 'Angst' (second most common in the franchise) almost also made it into the top ten for every series, but was stymied by TAS. The third most common overall was 'Hurt/Comfort', which was on the top ten lists for everything but LWD and ENT. 'Alternate Universe' (and 'Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence') was also a common top ten tag, being absent only in TAS and LWD. Three series had some sort of 'Post-Canon' tag in their top ten: DS9 ('Post-Canon'), VOY ('Post-Endgame'), and ENT ('Future Fic'). AOS was the only one with 'Polyamory', 'Threesome - F/M/M', 'Threesome - M/M/M', and 'Threesome' among its top ten tags, which lines up with its high levels of Multi category fics. When it comes to very specific top tags, TAS has 'Five Year Mission', DS9 'Post-Canon Cardassia', VOY 'Post-Endgame', and PIC 'Hugh | Third of Five Lives'.

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mindibindi · 3 years ago

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I write fic for a another show that couldn’t be more different than Ted Lasso but I’m on the receiving end of a lot of similar antishipping comments. It’s a lead duo that have been bffs for years and are each other’s primary support system but most fans are like, almost *viciously* adamant that if there was even the slightest hint of attraction between them it would be ‘cliché’, ‘add nothing’ and ‘completely ruin the show’. I’m all for shipping whatever you want to ship, but the arguments against virtually always boil down to a weird kind of Puritanism (that sex automatically destroys friendship), misogyny (that desiring romance is stupid and frivolous, platonic relationships should be fulfilling enough), and ageism (my pair are slightly younger than Ted/Rebecca, but they’ve also been around the block with divorces and breakups and it’s notable that people liked the idea of the ship more when the characters were still in their 20s). I totally get the argument that platonic m/f relationships are undervalued on screen! But constantly reading that the idea of romance is silly makes me want to ship even harder almost out of spite lol. Ted and Rebecca are quickly falling into the same category for me. Sue me, I like romance! Shipping is fun! And slow burn ‘second chance’ ships built on a solid foundation of trust and friendship are the absolute best kind.

Hey Anon.

First of all, thanks. I have been holding that antishipperism rant in for a while and *could* say so much more. In fact, you know what, I think I will...

1. Like you, I'm really intrigued by the viciousness of antishipperism, which I have started calling shipper contempt because it better describes the assumption of intellectual superiority as well as the strangely strong emotional reaction that lurks beneath it. It doesn’t take the opposite stance so much as a superior one. I hope that those who suffer from shipper contempt soon begin to check themselves for unconscious, internalised misogyny. Otherwise, they might find themselves complicit in a centuries-old cultural war against all things associated with or ascribed to Woman.

2. I'm really curious what your other ship is now. But in a way, *tired sigh*, it doesn't matter because the arguments against shippery are ALWAYS THE SAME. Seriously, if shippers had a dollar for every time we were told a pairing was ‘cliché’ or that consummation would ‘completely ruin the show’ we could take over the entertainment industry and start creating character resolutions that threw endless deferral out the window and actually made some realistic sense.

At this point, offering actual resolution to a storyline, actual character growth is so fucking rare that it's practically revolutionary. This is, imo, one of the reasons that "Ted Lasso" hit a chord with viewers. It told a story with a beginning, middle and....wait for it, wait for it (!!!)....AN ACTUAL FUCKING END. What a mind-blowing concept! Despite being an episodic TV show, it refused to defer to the well-established rule (esp. in comedy) that characters have to snap back to where they were at the beginning of the episode as if nothing has happened, nothing has been revealed and nothing has been learned. It takes an anti-Seinfeld approach by assuming that there is more laughter to be had on the other side of growth, communication, emotion and resolution, rather than less. This makes for a show that feels far more expansive and generous than comedy series of the past.

3. I agree with "ship and let ship" to a degree. This may be a an unpopular opinion but I come from an academic background so, for me, everything needs evidence. Textual proof. You can posit any kind of ship or any kind of interpretation of a show, but you need to be able to back it up if you’re claiming it as or expect to become canon. Fandom is all about playing around with characters and universes and I would never take that away from anyone. Canonical relationships do need to be supported by evidence though. This evidence could come in the form of dialogue, character background and interpretation, paratextual info (actor/creator interviews etc), design elements (music, costume, framing etc).

You could, for instance, posit that Ted is an alien and that is why his attitudes and behaviour contrast so starkly with those around him. But there is no evidence to back up the contention that Ted comes from outer space and not from Kansas. Likewise (and I'm going to pick a ship from the show that I think no one will actually ship as I don't want to piss anyone off), you could ship Rebecca and Higgins, claiming that they are romantic soulmates who should end up together. There is no evidence in the text of the show to support this though. What does exist is ample evidence (however subtextual) that a romantic connection between Ted and Rebecca could exist and prove fulfilling for them both. Another cliche of shipper contempt is claiming that they 'just don't see it' when the evidence is right in front of them. This kind of low-level gaslighting attempts to convince shippers that they are reading a text wrong and seeing things that aren't there. Shippers and fangirls (for fandom is largely maintained by women and girls) are thus characterised as stupid, inept and misguided.

The caveat to this argument is that queer relationships have not been well-represented...well, pretty much everywhere and always. In order to find this representation, queer people and relationships have had to dig their ships out of heavily coded pieces of media (esp. in puritanical ole America). Queer representation in "Ted Lasso" is very disappointing so I do understand that some shippers will ship Rebecca and Keeley or Roy and Jamie. And to be fair, there is some evidence to support these ships (or at least, space between the lines for a queer reading to exist). There just is not as much evidence as there is to support Ted and Rebecca or Roy and Keeley. Is it problematic that this show centres two het ships? You bet. Do I wish these shippers fun with their ships? Of course. But the solution, in my mind, is not to expect an in-universe romantic resolution to such non-canonical ships cos that will just break your heart. The better solution would be to see some queer representation, via characters and relationships, within the show. I’m really hoping the show does better on this in s2 and 3, because so far it’s a pretty glaring omission.

4. I agree that puritanism plays a big part in this, and America, as the unofficial entertainment capital of the world is especially puritanical. But seriously, how much of a killjoy do you have to be to be anti-love, anti-sex? Antis would have you believe that love, sex and relationships are not universal subjects worthy of representation when in fact everyone on this planet has had an experience of love, sex and/or relationship, even if these differ based on age, sexuality, gender, relationship status/model etc. And these interactions do not happen in isolation, hidden away in private spaces (where most girly/womanly stuff is relegated), separated from the world. Our romances and relationships are interwoven throughout our lives, our work, our play, our days and nights. How can you possibly represent a life, without representing love of some kind?

So this sexual puritanism is also, imo, a kind of genre puritanism that would like to stop ‘girl stuff’ from integrating with ‘boy stuff’. Romance, according to this kind of narrow mindset, is acceptable as a genre in and of itself. There is a whole marketplace of chicklit and chick flicks that keeps romance safely separate from ‘real’ culture. And as long as the girl stuff stays in its own low culture lane where it can be ridiculed as it entertains the silly women and girls, there’s no problem. The problem arises when girly romance, ‘woman’ culture tries to invade the infinitely more important male territory of space, sport, finance, business, espionage, law & policing, war and, of course, bloody cars. It is when romance enters masculine inscribed spaces that shipper contempt appears. The most heavily policed genres, in my experience, are action (think about reactions to “Bodyguard” when it became about more than war and bombs and spy stuff), scifi (despite the fact that women arguably invented and developed the genre) and comedy.

“Ted Lasso” is a good example here as it combines two traditionally masculine pursuits: comedy and sports. (And no, *groan*, I am not saying that no women/girls like or perform in either.) But despite this, and the largely male cast, this show, at least, according to Jason Sudeikis, possesses a deliberate feminine sensibility. I don’t have time to unpack that. And I don’t know where this weird genre purity comes from, this strange urge to keep things separate and unequal. It could be just a weird hangover from structuralism or, you know...everything that came before it. Point is, life is not neatly compartmentalised into genre (or gender for that matter). As Sudeikis also says “Every man and woman is living in a comedy, a drama and a tragedy.” Genres blend and influence and benefit each other. Always have. Attempting to gatekeep protected and revered areas of media and culture in the end only creates a less rich and less realistic portrait of life.

5. For me, all this is indicative of is either/or thinking rather than both/and thinking (which is one of my fave feminist concepts ever). This kind of gender/genre divide traps people into thinking that it’s a choice of one or the other. You can watch a sports movie OR a chick flick. You can watch a comedy series OR a love story. You can be a man who likes cars OR a woman who likes crafts. It creates a false binary by dividing cultural products and gendered acts into two categories when we know that in most cases there are actually more than two categories or options available to us (gender included). This is another common strategy of the gaslighter (presenting limited options to corner you into agreement) but it’s a logical fallacy.

This is what antis do when they argue FOR m/f friendships and AGAINST romantic relationships. They make it appear like it’s a choice when it is not. They trap people into binary thinking because binary thinking is very familiar to us. Our brains have been trained to only think of two options. And nobody can really argue against friendship cos...friendship! It’s a perceivable good. Meanwhile romance is (re)configured as a perceivable bad because of some vague notion that it “ruins things”. This vague premonition of narrative doom is accepted as a truth due to ONE show which has given its name to the antishipper cause: The Moonlighting Effect. Meanwhile, I’m gonna coin a new phrase: The X Files Effect that will invoke all of the various disaster stories of shows that tanked because they refused to follow the natural trajectory of their universe and characters by providing realistic and fulfilling resolution. Cos what an utter shitshow that one became.

Again, “Ted Lasso” is a great example because, assuming you take Roy/Keeley and Ted/Rebecca as the central romantic relationships, there are still plenty of other relationships represented, whether m/f, f/f or m/m (or even relationships of MORE than two! There is already a 4-way friendship between the Diamond Dogs (m/m/m/m) and anything above 3 messes with binary thinking and brains caught in its evil clutches). Even if Ted and Rebecca become canon, Rebecca has friends in Higgins, Roy, Sassy and Keeley while Ted has friends in Beard, Nate, Keeley, Michelle and well, let’s face it, the world. Because he likes everyone. (Except Rupert). It can be argued that heterosexual romantic relationships should no longer be centred as the kind of “gold standard” of relationship. Other relationship models ought to be given priority, including queer, non-monogamous or non-romantic relationships. But in the case of “Ted Lasso”, the ensemble nature of the show means that there is a pretty even-handed approach to the various relationships. And the writing is so thorough that none of the relationships are really treated with less care or respect. There are plenty of friendships represented and celebrated. So it isn’t a choice between friendship and romance. It isn’t an either/or proposition. It is a both/AND type deal. We can have romance, we can have friendship AND we can have other relationships besides that. Father/son dynamics are v strong in “Ted Lasso”. Themes of mentorship. Group/team dynamics. And I, for one, look forward to them developing ALL these relationships. The familial relationships, the friendships and, yes please, I would like a lovely, funny, touching romantic conclusion for Ted and Rebecca who can be BOTH friends, colleagues AND more. I hope they ignore the shipper contempt and just both/and the heck outta this show and this ship.

#ted lasso #ted x rebecca #antishipperism #i am done #seriously people #do not ask me a question #i will write an essay #and do not at me if you arent prepared #shipper contempt is SO 1990s #get in losers we're going shipping #i honestly think everyone should just get onboard with this ship #why rob yourself of such joy?#the ageism thing is true too #but i had to stop #otp: i appreciate you #i ship and i don't apologise for it

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taxominn · 4 years ago

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A Comprehensive Guide to Archive of Our Own Filters

It’s complicated, I know. I’ve been using the website for years and there’s still stuff I don’t understand! I thought it’d be a nice idea to add a little guide for the filters on here for all those who need it. Enjoy!

What is Archive of Our Own?

Archive of Our Own, called Ao3 for short, is an “archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic.” (Official Statement on the website.) It’s a place where fans can find and enjoy work from the others within their own fandom, as well as upload their own work!

What are Filters?

On Ao3, Filters allow users to narrow down their searches so that they can find the specific things they’re looking for. BUT, the Filtering system — as well as the tagging system — on Ao3 can get a little complicated.

That’s what this guide is for, so continue on!

Understanding Filters

After selecting a fandom to search in, you’ll see the following image, slightly varied depending on if you’re on desktop or mobile:

(I’m on mobile and I used the Naruto fandom as an example.)

Upon clicking the Filters button, you’ll see a number of choices and drop-down menus:

I’ll be going over these in order!

What is Sort By?

The first option you see is the Sort By menu. Upon clicking the drop-down menu, there are nine things to choose from. What Sort By allows you to do, is choose the order you want your search results to appear in. If, for example, you want the longest fanfics with a bunch of words to appear first, you would click the Word Count option.

If you want the most recently updated fanfics to appear first, you would click the Date Updated option. If you want the fanfics to appear in an alphabetical order (A-Z), you would either click Title or Author.

NOTE:

Numerical Order — Word Count, Hits, Kudos, Comments, Bookmarks.

Alphabetical Order — Author, Title.

Chronological Order — Date Posted, Date Updated.

Include or Exclude?

After Sort By, there are two sections: Include and Exclude.

If there are tags you want to see, make sure to select them under the Include section.

BUT, if there are tags you do NOT want to see, select them under the Exclude section.

What are Ratings?

Content ratings are used for games, TV shows, and movies. They rate how suitable the work is for its audience, and Ao3 does the same.

Ratings are as follows from most widely suitable to least suitable:

General Audiences - E for everyone can read it!

Teen and Up Audiences - 15 and up, leave the children behind.

Mature - 18 and up, sorry teens, adults only!

Explicit - Even some of the adults left the room. 🤐

Not Rated - In limbo, the author decided not to use a rating.

What are Warnings?

Warnings are assigned to works that contain triggering content that can make readers upset or uncomfortable.

Ao3 Warnings are as follows:

Major Character Death - If a work includes an important character death that doesn’t happen in the source material.

Graphic Depictions of Violence - If a work includes gruesome scenes, blood, murder, death, torture, or fighting.

Underage - If a work includes minors participating in illegal acts, specifically regarding sex.

Rape/Non-Con - If a work includes scenes where non-consensual sex takes place.

No Archive Warnings Apply - None of the above warnings are included in the work.

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings - For one reason or another, the creator does not disclose the warnings in the tags, or the warnings just don’t apply.

What are the Categories?

Ao3 Categories allow you to pick the relationship dynamics you wish to search for, or exclude from your search. They are as follows:

M/M - Two male characters in a relationship.

F/F - Two female characters in a relationship.

F/M - One female character and one male character in a relationship.

Multi - More than one kind of relationship and/or a relationship with more than two people.

Other - A relationship that’s not covered by the above categories.

Gen - Fics that aren’t primarily about shipping or explore different types of character relationships.

What are the Fandoms?

Obviously, fandoms are the different fan communities for pieces of entertainment media (musicians, games, tv, anime, etc.) Since you usually select the Fandom you want before filtering, this might confuse you, but it does have a purpose.

The Fandoms section allows you to choose other fandoms within the one you’re searching for. This is for crossover fanfics, or fics that take inspiration and story elements from more than one source material.

When you click the Fandoms tab, it shows you the top ten most used fandom tags under the fandom you’ve already picked. My example fandom was Naruto, so Naruto is the first fandom that shows up.

What are Characters?

The Characters tab shows you the characters in the source material of the fandom you’re looking in. It shows the top ten most used character tags within your search and the amount of fics that they are tagged for in parenthesis.

Select their names to include/exclude different characters.

What are Relationships?

Under the Relationships tab, it shows you the top ten most used relationship tags for the characters within your fandom. The relationships might include characters from other fandoms as well as the commonly written Blank Character/Reader or Blank Character/Original Character fanfics, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Select any of them to include/exclude from your search.

What are Additional Tags?

When you click Additional Tags, it shows the top ten most used tags in general for your fandom that don’t apply to the prior sections. Here, you’ll probably find the Alternate Universe tags, the Angst tag, the Fluff tag, and other common subjects found in your fandom’s fanfiction community.

Other Tags To Include/Exclude?

If the tag you’re looking for couldn’t be found in the previous options, then type it into the Other Tags search bar and you’ll likely find it. If it's a common tag, then it’ll show in an autofill selection pop-up underneath the search bar. If it doesn’t show up there, then you can still type it in yourself and see if you can find any fanfics that fit your search.

...

Now, after all that, there’s still a few more things to tackle, and that would be the More Options section. Under More Options, there are miscellaneous things you can choose to further refine your search.

Crossovers?

We talked about crossovers earlier! Under this section, you can choose one of three options: Include Crossovers, Exclude Crossovers, and Show Only Crossovers.

Include Crossovers allows crossover fanfics into your search, Exclude Crossovers removes crossover fanfics from your search, and Show Only Crossovers is for if you’re only searching for crossover fanfics.

What is Completion Status?

Completion Status is how much of a work is finished. Here, you have three options: All Works, Complete Works Only, and Works in Progress only.

All Works includes both complete and incomplete works in your search. Complete Works Only filters out any works that are not finished. Works in Progress Only filters out any works that are finished.

What is Word Count?

Under Word Count, you can decide how long you want the fanfics in your search results to be. Depending on the amount of words you specify, it will filter out any fanfics that do not fit into your range.

There are two search bars. The first search bar is labelled From. The second is labelled To.

If you put a number in the From search bar, your search results will only show you fanfics with a word count that is equal to and more than the number you searched for.

If you put a number in the To search bar, your search results will only show you fanfics with a word count that is equal to and less than the number you searched for.

Putting numbers in both search bars will give you fanfics with a word count that falls between the two numbers.

What is Date Updated?

Under Date Updated, you can search for works that were updated within a specific time period.

Like the Word Count tab, there is a From search bar and a To search bar. Clicking on either of these search bars should cause a mini calendar to pop up, where you can select the date that you want to specify.

If, for some reason, that does not happen, then the date format should look like this: YYYY-MM-DD.

If you put a date in the From search bar, your search results will only show you fanfics that have been updated on that date and afterwards.

If you put a date in the To search bar, your search results will only show you fanfics that have been updated on that date and previous.

Putting dates in both search bars will give you fanfics that have been updated within the time span you have searched for.

What is Search Within Results?

The Search Within Results search bar allows you to further specify what you want. Here, after you select all your tags, any thing you put in this search bar will be found in the title or summary of your search results. You can search for specific authors or specific phrases, if you want. NOTE: all the stories you search for will have all the tags you selected.

There’s a small blue question mark next to where it says Search Within Results, and that gives you instructions on how to use special characters/symbols to include or exclude which words you’d like or would not like to find.

What is Language?

After choosing all the different tags and all of that, you have your last selection option. Here, you’ll see a drop-down menu where you can choose one language that you want all of your search results to be in.

Anddd… done!

When you’re ready, click the Sort and Filter button and your search results will pop up!

I hope A Comprehensive Guide to Ao3 Filters has been helpful for anyone confused about the filters and search options. If you’ve got anymore questions, don’t be afraid to ask.

ℋ𝒶𝓅𝓅𝓎 ℛℯ𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓃ℊ!

Taxomin, out! ⭐️

#ao3 fanfic #how to use ao3 #ao3 guide #confusion #filters #tagging #archive of our own #fanfiction #ao3 writer #how to #guide #questions #help

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loreolympians · 5 years ago

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How To Publish Well (What These Tags & Warnings Even Mean)

In order to publish to Archive of Our Own (AO3), you must fill out several data fields for each piece of fan fiction. Beyond improving your fic’s searchability, these data points are important for a more crucial reason - your readers’ safety.

Too Long; Didn’t Read (TLDR):

TAG WITH THE READER IN MIND: Try to get outside your head as the writer and put the readers’ potential triggers, preferences, and experience first. Take the time to learn the details below. Once you know them, it’s hard to forget.

USE A CLEAR WARNING: Think twice before keeping the default “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings.” If your story has no graphic violence, major death, rape/non-con, or underage sexual activity, go with “No Archive Warnings Apply.”

BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT: Keep your summaries & tags brief to be easily digestible to the reader.

Category

This designates the romantic relationships present. Most fanfic involves romance, so for the few who don’t, your ‘category’ is “Gen/General” - For all others, read on:

F/F & F/M & M/M - Female/Female, Female/Male, and/or Male/Male romantic relationship, respectively.

Multi - More than one kind of romantic relationship, or a relationship with multiple partners.

Other - Romantic relationships that do not fall in the above. This is RARE. Do not tag family relationships with this. You will confuse/alarm your readers.

Gen/General: Either no romantic or sexual relationships or relationships are not the main focus of the work.

Relationships

Very simply, a: / (slash) indicates a ROMANTIC relationship - Jill/Joan are getting sexy & (ampersand) indicates a PLATONIC relationship (friend/family) Jill & Joan are best buds

Note: I beg of you (as a lover of side character ships) to only list those relationships that are SIGNIFICANT to the story. If two people are together or friends but their relationship has no change or spotlight in the fic, please do NOT include their relationship tag. Your story will populate when people search for that couple and irritate readers (such as myself) who find the coupling has no significant ‘story’ to tell. Readers are also learning to use a new “otp= true” search functionality which may limit your reach. If people are looking for just a story about H+P but you include 3 other relationships, you wouldn’t show up in that search.

Characters:

Self-explanatory. List all the characters in the story that are important enough to name (more than a brief flash of them in the background).

Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply - Reader doesn’t need any warnings as there is NO graphic violence, major character death, rape/non-con, or underage sexual activity.

Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings - One of the warnings below apply, but you don’t want to tell the reader.

Note: This the DEFAULT. Please consider other options, as this is very vague and many readers, like myself, avoid fics with this tag because it sounds like it's saying “The writer should warn you about something awful but is choosing not to.”

Graphic Depictions Of Violence - Gory, graphic, explicitly described violence.

Major Character Death - A central character to your story dies.

Rape/Non-Con - Non-consensual interactions, often sexual, are present in your story.

Underage - Characters under age 18 engage in sexual activity (doesn’t include kissing or vague references).

Rating:

Not Rated - Default. This is treated the same as mature/explicit re: warnings since the site cannot detect what content is in your work. Please avoid this and be clear!

General - Suitable for all ages that can read. Should have no disturbing content.

Teen And Up - Appropriate for ages 13 and up. Can have romance but not explicit whatsoever

Mature - 18+ Adult themes present (sex, violence, etc), but not overly graphic or taking up a large portion of the story. Like a rated R movie.

Explicit - 18+ The story revolves around adult themes (erotica-level sex, very graphic violence and/or disturbing imagery).

Additional Tags

This is where it gets interesting. Ideally, tags are simple ways to inform the reader about the content. However, the way you use tags can either be super helpful to your reader, kinda funny, or come across as annoying (even callous/harmful). My suggestions:

KISS - Keep it Simple, Stupid. Stick to the tags that truly represent the fic. Help readers search and find it based on the content. Don’t go overboard.

Look over the most popular tags and pick a handful that fit. Ask your beta reader or other writers for ideas on good tags to use! As of May 2020, these were the most frequently used tags in the Lore Olympus fandom: Fluff, Romance, Smut, Oral Sex, Angst, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Fluff and Smut, Fluff and Angst, Not Beta Read, Shameless Smut

If you have to make a joke with a tag, please limit to a couple. Many people make their tags humorous, though hearing from backend (unpaid) AO3 staff, this becomes a hassle for them to clean up down the road. If you do make humorous tags, please be mindful and perhaps pare down their use.

Why is tagging/warning/rating important?

The better you tag/code your fiction, the better AO3 as a search engine operates. See “How to Search AO3.”

More importantly, your fiction affects your reader. We hope positively, but some content can be triggering or harmful. The beautiful thing about AO3 is its rating, warning, and tagging system, but it’s only good if the writers utilize it.

Many readers will seek out your fics based on how well you categorize. Perhaps they are seeking out a long-form angst with a Mature/Explicit rating.

Other readers will avoid your fics for the same reason (to protect themselves). Perhaps they explicitly avoid angst, sexual content, abuse and violence (to not trigger their own trauma).

Treat your readers kindly. Be transparent about your work (don’t try to trick people to read by avoiding tags/warnings). Warnings and tags should not be seen as “spoilers” but rather a necessary precaution to keep the reader informed and safe.

Part of a Series or Chapters?

Deciding whether you want your multi-part fan fiction to be one “work” with multiple chapters or separate pieces that are part of a “series” is a tough one. This is just a suggestion and not always the case:

One fic with multiple chapters - There is one main story. The first chapter and last chapter form a cohesive journey, and each piece cannot really be read (enjoyably) alone.

A series with multiple parts - The reader could read one part and be satisfied. They could even jump into part 2, 5, or 12 and read it without much context and find the story enjoyable and with its own individual, unique arc.

Summary

Give the reader a sense for the story in 2-4 sentences (think of it like an ad copy tweet for your favorite book).

Maybe include a short quote to entice or give a sense for your voice. Short being the operative word.

Avoid self-indulgent apologies or overly personal context. Chapter Notes (which you can place either before or after a chapter) are designed more for these personal messages, such as if you’re nervous because it’s your first fic or what it was that inspired you or saying thanks to a friend/beta reader.

There is more to AO3, such as co-authors, challenges, collections, etc. But that’s enough for now :)

Sources: This excellent Tumblr post, AO3’s lengthy FAQ section, and personal trial and error as both a reader and writer.

#Guide #Writing Tips #Writers Guide #fanfic #ao3 writer #ao3 #how to

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shadowofthelamp · 5 years ago

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Fandom Trades: Tips and Tricks

I’ve been running a secret santa for five years now, and a few people expressed interest in a sort of ‘guide’. It does take some elbow grease to get things up and running, but it’s very rewarding and gets easier as you go. Click the ‘read more’ for some stuff I’ve picked up over the years! It’s a bit general to try and cover anything, but if you have any questions, you can ask! (And if you’ve run one yourself, feel free to add on!)

FAQ: Something that’s a really good idea to have. Here’s the most important stuff on it that would probably be applicable to most trades:

-Basic summary of what the trade will be- some could be fic-only or art-only, or even specific-ship-only. Mine’s general to ‘all sonic sfw content’, but setting guidelines so people know what they’re getting into is a good idea so you won’t have to answer the same question over and over.

-Deadlines. Make them clear. Mine’s easy (Christmas Eve) but depending on what size the gift is expected to be, the time frame can be adjusted.

-Related, set up rules for if people need to drop out. It happens, so be prepared. (This is why I ask now if people are alright giving a second gift.)

-Any particular rules for your trade- is it sfw or is nsfw acceptable? (In that case, set age limits.) Are there ships that will or won’t be allowed? Is there a punishment for violating the rules or turning things in late, like not being allowed to participate in the trade again?

PROMOTION:

A promo image is a good idea! I’ve been using the same one for a few years that was put together by a friend no longer on tumblr, but images catch people’s eyes faster than a text dump. Make something that’s easy to understand but gets the point across, and the text below should have enough information without overwhelming the casual scroller.

Space paragraphs often to make it less intimidating. Include links to the FAQ, the sample entry, and the submit box right in the post, as well as a way to contact you- you want things to be as easy as possible for anyone interested. Here’s my promo post.

You also want to start promotion early- I start posting and reblogging my promo a full month before the entry deadline, to give as many people the chance to see it as possible. Any earlier, and they might not care- (who wants to see a Christmas trade post in October when you’re hyped for Halloween?) and any later and you might not get as many participants as you could have. A month-ish is a good time frame. (I also have a tag for the promo post, so people can blacklist it if they aren’t interested and don’t want to see it 15 times.)

SAMPLE ENTRIES:

Also something that’s good to have. Having a template for what you want entries to look like will make sorting easier for you. Here’s mine. It’s a good idea to scout around for other trades to find out what would work for you.

MAKING ASSIGNMENTS:

Next, setting up how to arrange who gets assigned to who. I personally use google spreadsheets. These are the categories I use, feel free to steal them: Username, medium (art, writing, amvs, ect), whether they’ll work with fan characters, what they’d like to receive, what they won’t do (one year I even added ‘if there’s anyone you won’t work with’ so if it’s a fandom with drama, that one might be good), who they’re gifting to, who they’re receiving from, if they’ve submitted their piece yet, if their piece is in the queue, and if they’re alright with doing backup.

I also had a category for if they’ve confirmed they’re still in once assignments were sent out. (Boy, was that one nerve-wracking during the whole tumblr purge debacle of last year- I didn’t know if anybody had just quit tumblr mid-month.)

You will run into people who only want two or three things nobody else wrote on their sheet. If you can’t find even one match, then just put them with someone who had a wide variety on theirs, or who doesn’t have anything on their ‘won’t do’ list. Trying to match with multiple likes is a better bet, though, so encouraging longer lists of what people want makes things easier for you in the long run!

I personally just went in a line- I picked one person, found who they would give a gift to, and then found who THAT person would give a gift to. Rinse and repeat down the list, and it’ll end with everyone paired. I ended up making a closed loop and then sorting the last 8 or so, which was fine. An easy way to check that you didn’t double-classify anyone is control-f and searching names. If their name pops up 3 times, you did it right.

SENDING OUT ASSIGNMENTS:

Just copy-pasting the part of the entry that includes the person’s name and their likes makes this way easier for you over trying to type them out individually. Ask for confirmation that people got their assignments so you don’t have to worry if they missed it.

HOW TO KEEP THINGS ORGANIZED:

My system is this: I’ve mentioned it before, but I utilize a combination of my spreadsheet and the queue function. Let’s say Sally’s making a gift for Jake, Jake’s making a gift for Taylor, and Taylor’s making a gift for Sally. Sally submits her piece of art for Jake. I mark that off on the sheet, so when Taylor submits the gift for Sally, that gift will go in the queue to be posted whenever the deadline is up because she turned hers in already.

This keeps people motivated to complete their parts of the trade, since they won’t get their gifts until they do. If someone drops out, tell the person making the gift for them- if you’re lucky, they can rework what they have for the person that the drop-out was supposed to make something for, but if not, bring in someone who didn’t mind making a second gift. Person making the gift for the dropout can choose if they want to continue making it or not- if it’s mostly done and not a fan-character, they can just post it on their own blog unrelated to the trade.

It’s also a good idea to have a ‘hub’ where things are posted. If it’s a fic trade, ao3 has a function specifically for this, but I’ve found having things submitted directly to you makes it a million times easier to keep track of who’s finished their pieces, as well as keeping things ‘secret’ until the big day. (People have gotten confused or excited and posted early before.)

If people want to post elsewhere after it’s posted on the main hub, set your own rules- I say it’s fine as long as it links back to the blog and links the giftee, particularly if it involves fancharacters. You make your own judgement.

BE PATIENT:

This is one that’s very important. Some people don’t check the FAQ, and some people are going to be new, asking questions that you swear you’ve answered before or thought would be obvious. They generally just want to know, so take a deep breath. They don’t know they’re the fifth person to ask that question. Answer politely, or steer them towards the FAQ. (Running the same event year after year, you run into this a lot- they’re just new, be nice!)

Don’t start an event that you expect to have plenty of people participating if you aren’t prepared to hear the same questions a couple of times. Things might get a little annoying- take a step back for a few minutes, cool off, but try to remain professional. You signed up for this. For me, it’s always worth it to see how happy people are about their gifts, but know yourself and your limits- running a themed week where people post art at their own pace is less hassle, so you could try that if you don’t feel up to organizing a full trade!

If you can have a friend to bounce things off of, that can help too, but don’t use them as just a dumping ground. Tumblr allows multiple ‘mods’ on a blogs, so splitting work can make things easier, particularly if it’s your first run doing something like this. I had a friend who helped me the first few years before leaving tumblr. Be sure you trust the person, though! They’ll be able to edit posts and delete submissions, so if any drama happens, beware. (This never happened to me, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.)

TAGGING:

Add tags to the submission box. I don’t know why this took me four years to think of, but it saved me a lot of time last year. If it’s a trade that covers an entire fandom and dozens of ships, you can add the shipping tags as they come in, but adding the ten or so most popular character tags helps a lot. If it’s going to involve potentially triggering content, common trigger tags are a good idea too. (A Halloween trade might need this, for example, or one that involves nsfw content.)

PEOPLE TURNING THINGS IN LAST MINUTE:

It’s going to happen. I think one year I was panicking on the 23rd because I only had half the gifts, and all but one had been turned in by the time I went to bed on the 24th. People procrastinate- if you get in most of the gifts ahead of time, you can thank your lucky stars. Try not to stress over it, but feel free to post reminders in the week before/days leading up to the deadline. My family travels around the holidays a lot, and I managed to get everything queued up properly through airport and hotel wifi more than one year, so you’ll be just fine if you try and stay calm.

OTHER/GENERAL:

It’s absolutely worth it, in my opinion- I’ve been doing this for years for a reason. My favorite thing is knowing I’ve done something that made others happy. Going through all the excited responses Christmas morning is equal or above getting presents from my family, because I know it’s on some level because of me facilitating the trade in the first place. I hear over and over this is something people look forward to, and it genuinely warms my heart.

It might take a few years to get established, but if you find a niche (there was a blog called sonic secret santa, but it hadn’t been updated in years) you might be surprised how fast you can gather people! I like seeing people show up year after year, it’s how I know I’m doing something right.

It is definitely work, and there is stress involved, (especially if people drop out or don’t send in their gifts on time) but the benefits outweigh the negatives, I say. People are generally understanding if there’s a problem, as long as you make it known you’re working on it.

You have to commit to the responsibility if you do this- people who are making gifts are putting their trust in you that you’ll keep things organized and they’ll get something for the gift they’re giving. You can’t guarantee everything will run exactly as planned, but you can be as transparent as possible when you hit a bump- ‘I’m sorry, but your person said they’ll be late because they were having internet problems/personal life issues and is doing their best’ is going to get a lot better of a response than radio silence. Be sympathetic, but be firm on the rules if need be.

I hope this helped a bit, and thanks for reading!

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featherquillpen · 6 years ago

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AO3 Meme

Picking up this meme from @convenientalias. Pick it up from me if you like, it’s fun!

Rules: Go to your works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions! (Note that sometimes AO3 filters lie.)

1. What are your first and second most common work ratings?

General Audiences: 90

Teen and Up Audiences: 46

I have spent a lot of my fandom energy writing worldbuilding- and plot-driven gen stories – not that I don’t write more explicit sex and violence sometimes.

2. What’s your most common archive warning? Least common? Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?

Most common: Graphic Depictions of Violence: 17

Least Common: Rape/Non-Con: 0

I’m an adventurous writer for sure, though I don’t think that has anything to do with the archive warnings I use. Almost the violence-tagged works are for Animorphs fics, and Animorphs is canonically very gory and violent, so I’m mostly just matching the source material.

3. How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?

Gen: 92

Multi: 37

M/M: 25

F/M: 14

F/F: 10

I’m definitely largely a gen writer because I love to write about familial love and about big thinky thoughts and worldbuilding. But when it comes to shipping, I go wild for polyships. I imprinted on triad relationships with Doctor/Jack/Rose in Doctor Who fandom and haven’t stopped since. Looking at this I really need to write more femslash though.

4. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?

Doctor Who: 61

Animorphs: 60

Leverage: 18

Torchwood: 15

Doctor Who and Torchwood were my first fandoms, and I wrote prolifically in them, but I haven’t been active in them for years, and I don’t think anyone here on Tumblr follows me for that content – Doctor Who and Torchwood were from back in my Livejournal days. I’ve been active in Animorphs fandom for a long time now and don’t really see myself stopping, as it’s a lifelong passion of mine. Any day now my Animorphs fic total will surpass my Doctor Who total. I was more active in Leverage fandom when I was watching the show a couple years ago, but I’d still consider myself an active fan of the show today.

5. What are your top 4 character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?

Jack Harkness: 42

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill: 37

Tobias (Animorphs): 29

Rachel (Animorphs): 25

Captain Jack Harkness was the biggest reason I loved Doctor Who and Torchwood, really. He was the first canonical LGBT character I ever saw on television, and he was so, so important to me. All I wanted to do was write endless fic about him. My feelings about Doctor Who have never really been the same since he was permanently written out of the Whoniverse.

I’m honestly not sure why I’ve written so much more fic about Ax than the other Animorphs? I love Ax with all my heart, but I love all the Animorphs with all my heart, so.... *shrug*

Bonus, the top 4 relationships tagged:

Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer: 17

The Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler: 17

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill & Tobias: 9

Rachel/Tobias: 8

Yes, hello there, my two favorite triad relationships that own my soul. And then hello there, my favorite platonic soulmate/found family relationship that owns my soul. And then Rachel/Tobias, which... I don’t even ship all that much? How did that happen?

What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?

Top Two:

Angst

Canon-Compliant

Bottom Two

There’s a lot of tags I’ve used only once, so I’m going to pick two at random.

Awkward Flirting

Teenage Drama

If I combined all four of these into a fic I’d just get.... an angsty Jake/Cassie fic in Animorphs, probably?

How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

My only current WIP is Destroyer of Worlds, which I will post a new chapter of every Wednesday until it is complete, rest assured.

#meme

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until-theend-oftheline · 6 years ago

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FAQ and Guidelines

Do’s and Don’ts Fanfiction Addition

1. About until-theend-oftheline

Sideblog for Marvel Content

This is a sideblog. Follows and likes and replies will come from my main blog @thing-you-do-with-that-thing. My main blog is mainly SPN content but you’ll see none of that here. This blog is marvel only and maybe an occasional personal post.

Positivity and Zero Hate Tolerance

I DO NOT tolerate hate of any kind towards any actors, spouses (girlfriends or exes either) or characters. Yes, there are actors and characters I dislike but I’ll spew no hate and I’ll not tolerate you do so on posts coming off my blog either. No, I am not willing to tell you who I dislike since that always bring debate and hate with it.

Discussions are welcome, but hate is not. If you sent me hate I will block you. If you hate on the actors or their s/os on my positive posts or send it to my inbox I will block you. If you feel it is okay to send the actors or their family hate on twitter or Instagram you aren’t welcome on my blog either. We don’t have to share an opinion to be friendly, but there is behavior I just simply won’t tolerate.

Any character hate will make me unfollow you and if it ends up in my inbox or on my posts I will block you.

I also don’t tolerate Starker on my dash or any other ships that encourage child abuse - I will unfollow, report and block you if I see it.

Zero Hate Tolerance for my followers as well

Any race, gender, and sexual orientation are welcome to on my blog. You’ll see no hate towards anyone here. If I ever call people out it is based on opinions and behavior - never skin color, gender, religion or who they do or do not sleep with.

That being said I myself am a cis white bi female. I try and make my readers fairly neutral but often they fall into the cis women category. I try and not show race though (unless I have a specific reason too in the plot) and my sexual orientation show in me writing both m/m, f/f, f/m, and poly fics.

Original Content

I am a fanfic writer. I write reader inserts for characters and actors in the MCU fandom. I write mainly write reader inserts but I write ships also. I write both rpf and character fics.

There are ships I don’t write or read but again the blog is hate free (I got zero tolerance for underage ships though). Otherwise, Ship and let sail.

Every fic is tagged what it is and only what it is. Everything I write doesn’t have to be your cuppa tea to follow me. Just don’t be a dick about it and we’ll get along nicely.

I write FICTION. Which means the few times I’ll write a rpf ship it’s just that! I don’t think Chris and Seb are getting it on while we aren’t looking. It is all in good fun and I treat the actors and characters with respect in my fics. My fics hurt no one and I am under no illusions I write REAL PEOPLE, I write my perception of who they are and sometimes a fun fantasy of what could be.

Aside from my writing, I create Aesthetics and Icons - which I have heaps of fun with but my blog is mainly a fanfiction and fangirling blog ;)

2. How to Navigate the Blog

In my bio to the left, you can read what this blog is all about. There is a link to my FAQ which you are currently reading. There is a link to my masterlist, my taglists (where you can add yourself and read the rules that go along with being tagged) and a link to my main blog.

Further to the left, you find Talk to Me where you can send me asks about anything you'd like. And a list of Kari's Reading Lists which is MCU fic recs from yours truly. Go read and send the authors some loving.

I tag pretty carefully, so if there is something or someone you wanna blacklist - just let me know and I will tell you the tag or create one. I won’t be offended.

3. Who do you write for?

So far mainly Steve, Bucky and Stucky x Reader along with Seb and Chris x reader.

I write a bunch of the other character too but not as often. I am open to expanding to both more ships, rpf, and characters in the future - including Hardy/Eddie Brock and Reynolds/Wade Wilson.

I sometimes write for some of the actor's other characters as well, but that is rarer.

4. What genres do you write?

I mainly write Angst and fluff. A crack fic sneaks in at times and smut occurs in some fics - mostly series, but rarely. I don’t write porn without plot anymore but if the plot calls for it my characters can have fun. Everything is tagged and warned for.

5. A SFW blog with NSFW content

All smut/porn on my blog is tagged and warned for. Original content and not.

6. Requests and Posting Schedule

I don’t have a set posting schedule.

My requests are closed and they won’t open for real. Sometimes I take ideas for bingo cards or I take requests for preferences, headcanons or aesthetics BUT one shot and series I won’t open my requests for again. I simply got too many ideas of my own. Sorry.

7. Do you tag people in your fics?

Yes. Feel free to take a peek at the list and put you on any open tag lists you would like. You can find the link here. The way I set up the doc (because people kept messing with the format and taking people other than themselves off) you need to be on a computer to work it. Sorry.

If you are interested you can turn on notifications for my side blog: Kari-Writes-Fandoms - all my writing will be reblogged to it and it will only hold my original content. That being said my SPN writing is also reblogged there but you can just ignore what you don’t wanna see - I haven’t written anything SPN in a while anyway.

8. Can I tag you in my fics?

You can tag me in any genre you like. It’s not a guarantee I read it. I’ll try and read as much as I can but I got a life.

I won’t read your fic if it has no warnings. There are things that angers or makes me feel bad and I won’t be surprised by them.

It’s also not a guarantee I’ll put you on Kari’s Reading List. Only my very favorite things go on that list.

DON’T TAG ME IN NOT MENTIONED PAIRINGS!

Characters x Reader I read: Bucky, Steve, Tony, Sam, Clint, Wanda, Valkyrie, Nat, Thor. And even if they aren’t MCU - Wade Wilson and Eddie Brock (no monster porn with Venom though please)

RPF x Reader: Evans, Hemsworth, Tom Hardy, Hiddles and Sebastian (RPF Ships as poly only: Elsa x Chris x Reader and Evanstan x Reader)

Ships (all solo or as poly with reader): Stucky, Winterhawk, Winterwidow, Winterwitch, SteveSam, Cap3, Winterfalcon, Clintasha and Steggy.

If your fic contains hate against any spouses or former girlfriends or current S/Os don’t tag me. If your fic contains hate towards any actors, don’t tag me. If your fic contains non con, dub con, mommy kink, daddy kink, underage smut or incest in any shape or form (I count Thorki) please don’t tag me. Don’t tag me in A/B/O either it is not my thing. No BDSM, choking or tying him or his partner up for Bucky either!

FAQ

1. I sent you chainmail - why didn’t you answer?

Honestly, they are a huge pet peeve of mine. I don’t answer nor do I sent them to anyone else. I delete them as soon as I get them. Thank you for thinking of me but save it for someone else. I much rather you send me something you wrote or a heart or something.

2. How old are you?

So many... I was born August 26th, 1987

3. I got another question. Can I ask?

Sure my asks are always open. Just remember to be polite and I will be the same :)

#faq #the blogger diaries

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willag42 · 7 years ago

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Yuri!!! On Ice Fanfic Recs with Reviews ["F” Authors]

Note: Doing some major reformating of the YOI fanfic rec pages. The pages that include my reviews are now having the posts separated alphabetically by author (see below). I am also creating separate page(s) that allow filtering the fanfics by category. It's a work in progress, but I'm having fun with it.

This page includes my YOI fanfic recs (with reviews) for authors whose names begin with "F".

Note: For any authors whom I don't know the gender, I refer to them with they/them. If any authors wish to correct me, please do so.

AUTHORS REC PAGES: #0-9 -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z

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Refer to this masterlist for all of my YOI fanfic recs.

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Fahye (@fahye)

Stargazer

Rating: Teen Words: 22.9k Status: Complete Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Space AU; Alternate sports AU; Ballisting - fictional sport; Royalty AU ❤❤❤❤❤ Summary: "No, see, we've all been trained a certain way. The training system is traditional; it's centuries old. Nobody taught you. You ballist like it's got nothing to do with war at all." A sleepy, extraordinary smile crawls over Victor's face. "Nobody else does it like that. That's why we're going to win." ❤❤❤❤❤ Review: One of the reasons I fell in love with YOI so hard is because it is about ice skating. It is beautiful, graceful, athletic, about creating a performance, and each competitor's main source of conflict is themselves (which I prefer to rival stories where your main source of conflict is other people - I'd rather the focus be on bettering yourself and overcoming your weaknesses). So when fanfics move away from that setting, they have to have some other grab to it. This story is also sports story, but it's about a (as far as I know) made-up sport called ballisting that is very similar to ice skating in that it's beautiful, graceful, athletic, about creating a performance, and each competitor's main source of conflict is themselves... except it occurs in zero G's. It's gorgeous! And major props to Fahye for creating such a gorgeous sport. The plot is similar to the anime, with some key differences being that Victor is royalty and ballisting only has one major competition that is mainly performed by royalty, which Yuuri wouldn't normally qualify for. Also, Victor and Yuuri's relationship has a decidedly more romantic route. In addition to Stargazer, Fahye has written a sequel, Gravity, that focuses on Otayuri with some Victuuri on the side. Otayuri is not normally my style, but the story is still worth the read for the continuing storyline (which has more politics that the first), the ballisting, and the side Victuuri (who start planning for children, d'aww). Overall, an amazing "other sport" story, probably the best one out there.

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fangirlandiknowit (@fangirlandiknowit101)

I see the universe in your eyes

Rating: Teen Words: 21.4k Status: Complete Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Space AU; Captain Victor; Captain-in-training Yuuri ❤❤❤❤❤ Summary: Before Yuuri realizes what’s happening, he’s been kissed by Viktor Nikiforov. It's a small kiss, but Viktor's lips are soft and dry, brushing over his slow enough that he can feel the tingle of it for minutes afterwards. It was a kiss, and- If Yuuri wins, he can ask for another. Maybe more than one, even. (Maybe he’ll ask for as many kisses as there are stars in the universe.) ❤❤❤❤❤ Review: This is a fun, light-hearted, sci-fi adventure one-shot that starts off with a bang: Viktor, space Captain extraordinaire, is stranded on a ship ready to explode after a space pirate attack, and Yuuri, Academy trainee, saves his life. Viktor is smitten and proceeds to constantly invade Yuuri's space, while Yuuri is flabbergasted with his idol's attention. The test for becoming Captain of his own ship is coming up and Yuuri is anxious yet determined to get first. (And then he proceeds to destroy all records). Sweet and charming, this is the perfect fic if you needed a dose of infatuated Victor, successful Yuuri, drunken dancing, and mutual pining.

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feelslikefire (@feels-like-fire)

Maelstrom

Rating: Explicit Words: 43.7k Status: Complete Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Canon divergent; Time loop AU; Groundhog Day AU-ish; Sochi GPF ❤❤❤❤❤ Summary: Victor Nikiforov is poised to win gold in his fifth consecutive Grand Prix Final. He has the world at his feet, is unparalleled in the sport--right up until a snowstorm blows into Sochi, and he finds himself repeating the same day over and over and over. He stumbles over Yuuri Katsuki, and everything changes. ❤❤❤❤❤ Review: A story where Victor learns to appreciate his life and his loved ones and not take any of them for granted. The story follows similar to the structure of the Groundhog Day movie, where things initially take a turn for the worse (though Victor never gets to the point of committing suicide) before he makes a conscious effort at improving his life. And falling in love with Yuuri is a big factor in this change. Different from the movie, falling in love with Yuuri and having Yuuri fall for him isn't the trigger to finally stop the loops - in fact, his relationship with Yuuri is the first thing he tackles. They're able to develop the start of a loving relationship that Victor fights for with every loop before he finally learns to appreciate everything else around him. Also different from the movie, the story provides some explanation for the time loops, alluding to Baba Yaga, a creative bit of Russian mythology added to the mix. The story also gives a full chapter after the loops have ended to show how everything has impacted Victor's life, what he's learned, and what he still needs to improve upon, which I really appreciate seeing. Overall, a wonderful, romantic, positive story.

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forochel (@forochel)

say not a word; I can hear you

Rating: Teen Words: 20.9k Status: Work In Progress Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Pacific Rim AU ❤❤❤❤❤ Summary: "He was from Hasetsu," Chris tells him quietly. "Oh." Caught mid-laugh is a slight, young man with kind, brown eyes. He's soft all around where edges should be, nothing like - nothing like a Ranger. "You think he's gone back there? Really?" There's a pause, Chris spinning his spanner around his knuckles. He shrugs. "I dunno, Yuuri's always had a streak of crazy in him. So. Maybe." ❤❤❤❤❤ Review: Pacific Rim is one of my favorite movies, and seeing Yuuri and Victor in the lead roles with their own unique Jaeger is awesome. I hope this story eventually has an ending, because it's a fun read.

The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On

Rating: Teen Words: 36.1k Status: Complete Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Merpeople AU; Archaeology; Nerdiness; Fluff ❤❤❤❤❤ Summary: Katsuki Yuuri, an archaeology post-grad, gets drunk on a remote beach on Rebun Island, Hokkaido. It's sunset, and he's about to discover a whole new world. ❤❤❤❤❤ Review: AKA: The best Victuuri mermaid AU with 314% more accurate archeology. That’s a whole fucking heap-load of archeology, and my head, though aching with all the research done to help understand terminology and concepts, still says thanks because I love learning such things. And I love how Yuuri and Victor are passionate and knowledgeable about such things, and transcend cultures on that shared passion to create a heartfelt relationship.

#Victuuri fic recs #YOI fic recs #F authors

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femslashrevolution · 8 years ago

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Towards A Darker Femslash by holyfant

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

Hello everyone! I hope your Femslash February is going great so far. I was stoked to be asked to write a little something for I Am Femslash, particularly because while I’ve written bits and pieces about my experience as a young, queer, multishipping and writing young woman in fandom, I’ve never really tried to put any of my thoughts together in a truly coherent way. So, here I go, attempting to write about a topic that is dear to me. Feel free to engage me on any of the points I make in this little essay!

So, hi. I’m holyfant, a 26-year-old ESL fanfic and (aspiring) original fiction writer. I’ve been active in fandom for nearly fifteen years, and have written fic for a lot of that time, picking up English and fannishness along the way. Writing fic gave me a way to connect with other people who had to same interests I did – and only later did I realise it also paved the way to more self-knowledge. At some point during my teens, the question of my own sexual and romantic identity became pressing; maybe paradoxically this first drew me to male slash, and only later to femslash – perhaps because the former was and is more visibly present in fandom than the latter, and perhaps also because reading and writing femslash was still too direct a way to engage with my own identity at that point. I still don’t fully understand this; I remember that when I was first playing with the idea that I might not be straight, it felt safer to read about men in love than women in love. Maybe seeing male characters discover their non-straightness was close enough to my own experience to stir up emotion and feeling, but far enough removed from it that it didn’t stir up panic. Who knows?

Either way, when I was more comfortable with who I was, I returned to f/f and found it infinitely rewarding. I read a metric ton of femslash fic and wrote lots myself – for a fairly long stretch of time I enjoyed deep obscurity in the Harry Potter and Greek mythology fandoms as a niche femslash writer with two or three loyal readers, and it was truly a lovely time. I engaged with femslash in a curious, non-discriminatory way – I shipped everyone. I’d take two minor female characters who perhaps had never even interacted in canon and found a way to put them together. I took prompts for characters that were only featured in throw-away lines, and wrote a lot of fic for the now sadly defunct LJ community hp_rarestpairest, which encouraged the nichest of pairings. Basically I was honing my writing skills, while also representing my questions, hopes and fears about my own sexuality at the same time. In my fics I dealt with women falling in love, being rejected, having sex with each other, coming out to their families and friends, dealing with heartbreak – all of these were things that I was thinking about, was experiencing or wanted to experience, or was scared of. I think it will surprise few queer femslash writers to hear that reading and writing femslash taught me a lot about my own identity and sexuality and gave me a community of queer women that I would otherwise never have found.

Despite the fact that I was mostly a femslash writer in my early times in fandom and the fact that I write f/f in my current fandoms today, it remains a curious truth that my growth as a writer from someone who wrote 1,000-word oneshots in one go to someone who wrote novel-length fanfic over several months coincided with going into a different fandom where my main focus was a m/m ship (BBC Sherlock, where I was sucked into the black hole that was Sherlock/John). I said I “shipped everyone” earlier – it would be just as correct to say I shipped no one, because I had no deep emotional investment in the ships I wrote about, and often wrote only one fic per ship. (Perhaps the only exception was Lavender/Parvati, which I wrote often and regularly gave me the warm fuzzies to think about.) It wasn’t until Sherlock happened that I started to understand what people meant when they said a ship was their OTP, or how people could get so intense about their reading of a relationship. As a result of this increased feeling of investment I read and wrote so much fic that I became a much better writer for it, by pushing myself to write more and more complex stories. This was all fine in itself, but even as it happened I was aware that it was curious that this sudden spur of feeling and craft was because of a juggernaut white dude ship, something that had never held much interest for me before. I felt – even at that heady time when you’re in a new fandom and it’s like being in love – like I wanted to continue to write smaller pairings and explore female characters, too. And I did, but the point remains that when I look at my story stats now, it’s clear that my f/f stories are shorter in word count and are less varied in their plot and execution than my m/m stories.

All this to show that I am 100% part of what I am about to describe: not a problem, per se, but an observation that I think is useful to be aware of and think about. The fact is that femslash, across fandoms, remains a niche category, and that while there are great amounts of people who read and write almost exclusively m/m this is barely ever the case for f/f. A lot of the f/f writers I know have talked at some point about the realisation that f/f in general seems to lack novel-length stories and stories that have the diversity of plotting and thematic exploration that we easily find for m/m ships. Most f/f stories are shorter stories or oneshots that focus on meet-cutes, sex and domestic bliss. Longer fics are rare. Darker themes, such as character death and grief, trauma, relationship issues, adultery, abuse and so on are also rare. I am not the first to notice this and not the first to theorise on it, but I would still like to identify why I think f/f fandom has developed in this direction, and to formulate some ideas as how to diversify our creative experiences a little.

I think there are a lot of possible reasons that f/f writers are in general less motivated to write long stories that explore complex themes, and these will surely differ for everyone. For me, I’ve identified three causes, in increasing order of importance: 1. a small audience, and therefore a smaller possibility of extensive feedback, 2. a lack of variation and complexity in female characters and their relationships in a lot of canon materials, and 3. the awareness that f/f is often rooted in a deeply lived experience for many of its readers and writers, and that it’s therefore necessary to be wary of representing “bad” female characters or negative tropes about lesbian and bisexual relationships. The most complex of these is certainly no. 3, which is why that’s the one I will be writing about a bit more.

Statistically f/f is most likely to be written and read by cis queer women, which of course influences our relationship with the characters we portray, because they refer to our own lived existence. This makes f/f different from m/m – m/m is also mostly written by cis women (straight and otherwise), which creates a certain leeway for “true” realism. Anecdotally I can share what happened when my housemate and my best friend, both cis gay men, delved into the world of m/m fanfic on some of my recommendations. While they enjoyed a lot of the stories I told them I’d liked, they also talked about many of the things they felt were inaccurate about gay sex and romance – for instance, they could name several often-described sexual acts that they said didn’t quite “work that way”, and they were generally uncomfortable with the fannish (certainly often problematic) tendency to label characters as strictly tops or bottoms, especially if this was based on stereotypical characteristics outside of the bedroom. If gay men were to write these stories (which they do, of course, only in much smaller numbers), they might look different – they might be less fictionalised, less genre-specific; the language developed to talk about men in love might be different, there might be different focuses. It’s hard to definitively say what it would be like. Either way, it would seem logical that it follows, from the fact that lesbian and bisexual women overwhelmingly write the fannish stories that we have about lesbian and bisexual women, that we should find it easy to access their spaces and write about many different aspects of their lives. In reality this doesn’t necessarily seem to be so. Perhaps the scrutiny, both internal and external, is larger – perhaps because we are writing about ourselves we put more pressure on ourselves to “get it right”, and perhaps our audience, who is looking to see itself represented, does the same at times. Or maybe we simply perceive our audience as being more critical than it truly is.

What is a “bad” female character? Most people will agree that women often get the short stick of characterisation in most media – to such an extent that there are tropey names for them, like the Girl Next Door, the Femme Fatale, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and so on. Women are still often used as crutches for men; their stories are supporting stories, their pain is used to further a male character’s pain. Writing about women in fanfic is often already a rebellious act in itself, one that reverses harsh or flippant treatment by canon writers. While this is fine in se, and sometimes even lends a pleasant sheen of fannish disobedience to writing female-centric fic, I do believe it has the unintended and unsavoury result of effectively also policing the sort of woman that can be written about. This may seem like a paradox, but in reacting to the one-dimensional representations of women in fiction it can become important to “fix” those wrongs, and this makes it hard to write about women who don’t overtly challenge assumptions about womanhood: unsympathetic women, women who are perhaps weak-willed, petty, bigoted, jealous, aggressive, criminal, highly sexual, or abusive. Considering that, at least in a Western vision on literature, stories derive meaning at their base from conflict, removing the option to write “bad” women removes a lot of possibility for thematic conflict. This might be part of the reason why there are significantly less plot-driven f/f stories than there plot-driven m/m stories; plot usually requires conflict, and conflict often requires flawed characters and flawed relationships.

I know that when I write about women I’m conscious of the fact that I have internalised societal ideas about what it “should” mean to be a woman, but I’m also aware that in trying to combat those ideas it’s easy to get mired in different ones. I know that I sometimes interrogate myself about what it is that I’m saying about women when I write about this particular woman cheating on her partner or being generally secretive and untruthful – doesn’t that reproduce a societal prejudice that women are untrustworthy? It’s very hard to separate a single performance of fictional womanhood from the general performance of womanhood – this is not usually a problem with (white) men, who are allowed to represent only themselves, and not their entire gender.

The above paragraphs talk about “women” – clearly the problem of treatment that I write about becomes many times more pressing when dealing with women who are on other intersections of oppression. Women who love women are more vulnerable to prejudice and abuse than straight women, and wlw of colour are again many times more vulnerable than their white sisters. And when these wlw or woc are not cisgender, again their situation becomes many times more dire. These societal realities are often reproduced in media – 2016 was the year in which no lesbian or bisexual woman on tv seemed to be safe, and their pain and deaths hurt all the more because we are confronted with this pain in real life, too. I remember my tumblr dash around the time that The 100’s Lexa died; the pain there for many queer women who watched the show was very real, because – I think – it echoed a feeling of being unsafe, of being cruelly treated in society. I remember fans writing about how hurtful it was to see a brave female character who loved another woman killed off like this; in their pain many people stated that it was unacceptable that lesbian or bisexual female characters should be killed in fiction at all. Of course, this was understandable considering how hurt fans were, and how often they had been disappointed – still, the typical fannish tendency towards lack of nuance frustrated me. In capable writers’ hands, tragedy can be performed very meaningfully. I wrote a little about this on my blog at the time, because I was starting to feel insecure about my own tendency to prefer darker thematic material – was I complicit in my own oppression, and was I hurting other queer women by writing what I enjoyed? Clearly my own privilege was also part of this question: I am a wlw, but I’m white and cisgender, and I hail from a country where legal equality has been realised for the entirety of my adult life. Obviously homophobia is still a problem, but my close environment has been nothing but supportive and accepting from the moment I first came out as lesbian at 16, and again as bisexual at 24. So I haven’t experienced much of the tension and fear that other wlw might have experienced. Does this make me a part of the oppressive machine that performs queer women’s pain for shock value? I seriously thought about this question before tentatively concluding that I had to have faith that I was a thoughtful enough writer to avoid these pitfalls.

It might seem from this essay that I find writing femslash to be an exhausting trial of constantly having to think about what prejudices I’m reproducing – this is not the case. I love writing femslash and I love my femslash-writing friends. I’ve learned heaps about myself and others by reading some of the stellar f/f stories out there, and with every f/f story I write I become more aware of how much I love to write about queer women – and I remind myself that I should certainly do it more often, and more ambitiously. As I stated above, this is something that I’ve noticed in my own writing practice, so it’s not an accusation leveled at anyone else. It’s simply something that I find worthwhile to examine. Judging by some of the conversation that periodically does the rounds in my f/f-loving circles, I’m definitely not alone in that.

Now how to deal with this in our f/f-writing community? There’s no singular answer to that, and whatever we can do is both blindingly obvious and hard to actually do. One of the possible answers is, as it is with so many complex questions that have complex roots, to simply push through and do it anyway, to try to ignore some of the fear and uncomfortable associations we might feel in writing unsympathetic f/f narratives and write them anyway. Diversifying the stories we write will automatically diversify the stories we feel we’re allowed to write. Audience response is probably important too; I think that there must be plenty of people who feel, like me, that it’s a shame that so much of femslash is short and that a lot of it focuses on narrative happiness rather than also exploring narrative unhappiness and conflict, which (in my opinion, at least) yields more fertile literature. And if we feel that way, then we have to try to reward people who write the things we like to read, through our attention, our comments, our kudos, our podcasts, our recs, et cetera.

I write this mere days before the beginning of Femslash February, and I’m certainly planning to walk the walk that I’ve talked in this talk; I’m absolutely sure that the strong core of people who love to read about women loving women will continue to keep this community vibrant and alive and that there are plenty of new directions our stories can go in. I’m looking forward to seeing what the other voices who are participating in I Am Femslash have to say, and I’m looking forward to all of the new content that will be produced. I’m grateful that as a young teen I stumbled upon fandom and that I found my way towards femslash a few years later; I’m pretty sure my own journey of discovery and creativity would have been very different, and probably more difficult, if I hadn’t found this community. So, to all of us: We Are Femslash! <3

About the author

holyfant is a 26-year-old bisexual woman from Belgium, who’s been writing about women and their relationships since she was a budding young wlw. She loves to think about literature and how it relates to the core of our human experiences: the only thing she really wants to be, in the end, is a storyteller.

Tumblr: http://holyant.tumblr.com

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant

#holyfant #I Am Femslash #Type: Meta #Femslash February #Femslash February 2017 #submission

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occasionallydiverting · 8 years ago

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Statistics, Shipping, and Smut (Overwatch Edition)

This post showed up on my dash earlier today, and it made me feel like revisiting an old pet project of mine. After all, Overwatch is (contrary to what I was inclined to think--thanks for correcting me, Ivory) a fairly balanced work in terms of character gender. It’s also wildly popular, which means that I can get a good sample size from its AO3 tag.

So, on to my findings.

As of 1/11/2017, there were 9271 total works on AO3 under the Overwatch fandom tag. Of these 9271 total works:

3544 (38.2% of all works) were rated M or E

1564 (16.9% of all works) were categorized as F/M, 690 of which were rated M or E (44.1% of the category)

4894 (52.8% of all works) were categorized as M/M, 2246 of which were rated M or E (45.9% of the category)

1733 (18.7% of all works) were categorized as F/F, 623 of which were rated M or E (36.0% of the category)

In the remainder of this post, I break down the percentages of M+ rated works (or “theoretical smut”) in each category, as well as in the three most popular pairings for each category.

More detailed statistics, graphs, and rating analysis below the cut.

RATINGS ANALYSIS

RATINGS (F/M) Teen And Up Audiences (470) Explicit (388) Mature (302) General Audiences (293) Not Rated (111)

RATINGS (M/M) Teen And Up Audiences (1542) Explicit (1297) Mature (949) General Audiences (796) Not Rated (310)

RATINGS (F/F) Teen And Up Audiences (632) General Audiences (379) Mature (330) Explicit (294) Not Rated (98)

M+ RATED FIC*

F/M = 690 (111) – 44.1% (51.2%) M/M = 2246 (310) – 45.9% (52.2%) F/F = 624 (98) – 36.0% (41.7%)

*The parenthesized values and percentages incorporate the possible range of deviation, as the “unrated” fics could potentially be sorted into any category. I call these percentages “the smut threshold,” because in theory, smut makes up a large portion of fics in those rating categories.

POPULAR F/M PAIRINGS

Genji/Mercy have 206 overall tags, 174 of which are categorized as F/M; 46 (13) are rated M+ – 22.3% (28.6%) overall; 26.4% (33.9%) category

McCree/Reader have 158 overall tags, 98 of which are categorized as F/M; 78 (16) are rated M+ – 49.4% (59.5%) overall; 79.6% (95.9%) category

Soldier76/Reader have 139 overall tags, 102 of which are categorized as F/M; 85 (11) are rated M+ – 61.2% (69.1%) overall; 83.3% (94.1%) category

It actually took a fair bit of digging to find out what the popular F/M pairings were, since a fair number of the high-up pairings in the tag were [coincidentally?] M/M. AO3 was also a little inconsistent with the numbers here; at some points I had more works in the tag than works that... actually had the tag. Not sure how that happened. (This is also assuming that S76/Reader isn’t an overlooked typographical error of S76/Reaper. Which is plausible, given the contents of the next category.) None of the ships stand out particularly much--note the significantly smaller scale in comparison to the next two graphs.

POPULAR M/M PAIRINGS

McCree/Hanzo have 1888 tagged works, 1757 of which are categorized as M/M; 760 (129) are rated M+ – 40.3% (47.1%) overall; 43.3% (50.6%) category

Soldier76/Reaper have 1468 tagged works, 1320 of which are categorized as M/M; 666 (74) are rated M+ – 45.4% (50.4%) overall; 50.5% (56.1%) category

Junkrat/Roadhog have 537 tagged works, 485 of which are categorized as M/M; 296 (39) are rated M+ – 55.1% (62.4%) overall; 61.0% (69.1%) category

This is about what I expected, based off of the demographics I picked up in my prior analysis of FE14 fandom. McHanzo and Reaper76 are, far and away, the most popular pairings--the “alpha ships” of the fandom. My personal hypothesis is that it’s because of their conventional attractiveness (Reyes and Morrison used to be lookers), a conclusion that is somewhat strengthened by the sharp dropoff in fics about the less conventionally attractive Roadhog and Junkrat. It is, however, interesting to note that Roadhog/Junkrat fans are more likely to write fics with higher ratings.

POPULAR F/F PAIRINGS

Pharah/Mercy have 786 tagged works, 724 of which are categorized as F/F; 240 (39) are rated M+ – 30.5% (35.5%) overall; 33.1% (38.5%) category

Tracer/Widowmaker have 541 tagged works, 489 of which are categorized as F/F; 209 (26) are rated M+ – 38.6% (43.4%) overall; 42.7% (48.1%) category

Mei/Zarya have 132 tagged works, 104 of which are categorized as F/F; 44 (6) are rated M+ – 33.3% (37.9%) overall; 42.3% (48.1%) category

I had to refine my search techniques a bit to find Mei/Zarya, whose romantic relationship is outweighed by several less-popular M/M pairings and a few platonic tags. Similar to the statistics found in M/M pairings, there seem to be two “alpha ships” dominating. When compared to the statistical average of other popular pairings, F/F pairings have a lower smut threshold overall. It’s also worth noting that--given the difficulty I had finding non-M/M pairings listed as popular--it is probable that at least a few of the tagged works don’t give the relationships in question much focus.

CONCLUSIONS

The Overwatch fandom, like many others, is overwhelmingly skewed in favor of M/M pairings, regardless of whether or not the pairing in question has any canon interactions.

In the case of F/M pairings, the highest percentage of Mature or higher-rated works falls under the reader-insert category, where some truly astounding percentages can be found. Although Genji/Mercy is relatively popular, there are no “alpha ships” for this category.

While F/F pairings are more popular than F/M pairings as far as quantity, they still fall far short of M/M’s popularity (and they are still considerably less likely to be [hypothetical] smut, by 8-10 percentage points).

“Enemies With Benefits”/“Enemies to Lovers”/“Enemies to Worse Enemies Who Are Still Lovers For Some Reason” is one hell of a popular trope, and those character dynamics are a few percentage points more likely to be M+ rated.

This is based purely on raw archive data, and doesn’t take hits/kudos into account. (If someone wants to follow up on this and do all of that math with a more efficient method, be my guest. I am tired.)

As always, any commentary or questions you may have on these findings is welcomed. Bear in mind that, although these numbers were accurate at the time of their collection, they’ve probably changed already--after all, this is a rather popular fandom.

If you found this interesting, go ahead and share!

#overwatch #fandom analysis #fandom #statistics #statistics shipping and smut #mchanzo #reaper76 #pharmercy #widowtracer #ao3 stats #long post #100+#250+

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thedoctorishereguys · 7 years ago

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Stole this from @hawkland

Go to your works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions:

1. What’s your first and second most common work ratings? Any surprises?

· Explicit (48)

· General Audiences (39)

Okay, so, uh… Not sure what to make of that. Either I write porn or I write the exact opposite, apparently. I’m not entirely surprised so much of it is porn – frequent readers will remember that I have a long list of making Munch and Fin do kinky stuff together. I am honestly way more surprised that so much of it is so firmly in the G area. (And a lot more of my fic these days will wind up there – lately I’ve had zero interest in writing porn. Suggestive is about the best I can do. So, idk, T? Let’s go with T).

2. What’s your most common archive warning? Least common? Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?

No Archive Warnings Apply (110)

Major Character Death (5)

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings (2)

Yeah, not surprised. I generally dislike deathfic, so I don’t write much of it. The ones I do write tend to come when they’ve lived long lives (not always, I’ve written a suicide fic, but that’s not on AO3, and I’m not a fan of that one for many reasons). I have two tagged with the chose not to use warnings, and for one, I’m not even sure why I tagged it that way – I read it and have zero idea why I chose that. Coming Around Again definitely should be tagged that way, I think, since it involves canon-typical violence and potential non-con that others may find objectionable, but it is canon-typical. And that’s absolutely clarified in the tags, although by now, the tags are a paragraph!

And what the fuck do you mean by ‘adventurous writer’? I write out of my comfort zone all the time – pairings I wouldn’t normally consider, kinks I wouldn’t normally think of, issues I wouldn’t always tackle. I write kinky smut as a pastime, isn’t that adventurous? God, I have at least five fics where Munch dresses up in women’s clothes to seduce Fin, and several where Fin whips Munch before fucking the life out of him. Is that adventurous? Or are we just classifying it based on using those tags? Because I don’t care for deathfic, and rape/non-con is not something I particularly write into my pairings. I’m not against it; I just don’t see it happening in my pairings.

3. How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?

M/M (116)

F/M (5)

And that sums that up. There is literally nothing accidental about that. I prefer m/m ships by far. I’m more comfortable, for god only knows what reason, writing men having sex than I am writing women having sex (even though I’ve had sex primarily with women and am myself biologically female. Go figure). I find male characters far, far more developed and fleshed out on screen than females, and that is not a coincidence – they are written that way for fuck’s sake. I’m absolutely not against f/f or f/m ships, provided they give me an interesting female character, but I don’t hold my breath waiting for the primarily male writers of such shows to do so. (The only show where I could see myself writing F/F or F/M would be Doctor Who, and I don’t write Doctor Who fic. Or not much, anyway.)

4. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?

Law & Order: SVU (91)

House MD (16)

Doctor Who (5)

Jeeves & Wooster (4)

I migrate a lot. I’m not active in House, haven’t been for years. God, about… 8 or 9 by now. Law & Order I still write some for, but I’ve been withdrawing more and more as the show spirals rapidly downward and the fandom wank goes crazy (yes, I’m looking at you, Barisi fandom. *sideeye*). It’s hard to keep coming up with ideas and wanting to write for something when the new canon is so consistently disappointing. I honestly feel like I’d be more invested if they had just cancelled it and let it be.

Doctor Who is one of my all-time favorite shows, but I rarely – if ever – write fic for it, because it’s a little too special, if that makes sense. I don’t like adding to that fandom. I don’t even partake in that fandom at all. People don’t understand don’t spoil or tag for spoilers, so I stay the fuck away, because I hate spoilers. The fics I have read for that can be wonderful. They can also be horrendous, though.

Jeeves & Wooster is one of those I barely write for – the ones I wrote were all Doctor Who crossovers. It’s very, very hard to mimic that style! However, that’s a fandom I go back to time and time again to read the stories!

And my new one, which doesn’t show up on the list but should soon – Sherlock. That’s one I’m throwing myself into whole-heartedly. And that’s really the way I do it. I find a new one and give it basically my all, and if the fandom is really good, if the canon and the fic is excellent, I’ll keep a part of it when I move on. If not, I’ll let it go completely. (So yeah, serial monogamist is a good way to describe me too, ha)

5. What are your top character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?

Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (68)

John Munch (68)

The rest aren’t even worth mentioning – the next one is Olivia with 27 mentions. And yes this matches how I feel about the characters. Munch and Fin were the only reason to watch the show in the 1.0 and early 2.0 days. Lack of Fin these days makes the show dull, and while I adore Sonny, that partnership between Munch and Fin is irreplaceable. (And Olivia may be mentioned often, but it’s not always with kindness. Elliot Stabler, when he’s mentioned… well, that’s never nicely. Mentioning is not the same as treating well).

6. What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?

Established Relationship (82)

Humor (31)

Semi-Public Sex (2)

Roleplay (2)

Uhhh… Pretty sure I did write this. Okay, no, I checked, and I didn’t. But please, that would be supremely easy to do. I checked the ones with semi-public or public sex, and those tended to be funny-ish fics. Roleplay ones are easy enough to write funny. And most of those are established relationship. Yeah, this would be literally the easiest one to pull off.

7. How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

Only one. Coming Around Again, cowritten with the wonderful @hawkland! (And, to be strictly truthful, due to many, many reasons, I have bowed out of the writing process after a long discussions of where we’re going with this with her. It is for the best, and I still have a hand in the planning process, if not the actual writing. And she has been gracious in that if a specific scene appeals to me, I have the option of writing it. It is for the best! I’m assuming she plans on finishing it!) Anyway, that is my only one, because I loathe posting WIPs. I’ve found far, far too many WIPs that I fell in love with, started reading, and went… fuck, where’s the rest, then found out that it was posted 2 years ago with no updates.

Also, I’m an inveterate meddler when it comes to my fics. No matter how good I think something sounds when I’m writing, I end up changing bits. Something doesn’t work later with bits I end up writing. A bit of canon occurs to me that I realize I should mention. Something gives me an idea that I want to add in, but first I have to set it up. (For example, in my current WIP – not posted – I wanted to poison someone, and to have someone else have the antidote on hand. First I had to set it up that the other someone carries a medical kit with poison antidotes, and why, otherwise it’s a bit Deus Ex Machina that said someone else just happens to pull out physostigmine right when the first someone ingests belladonna. Had I started posting when I first wrote the fic, I wouldn’t’ve been able to do that, because that idea occurred far later, and I had to go back and set up the medical kit with the poison antidotes).

I’m not tagging anyone, so feel free to take it & answer it if you wish!

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