#ao3 isn't banning legal fiction

[unpopularfanopinion]

how is banning real child erotica from ao3 comparable to banning drag queen story hours? One of nsfw of real kids and one is some queer people dressing up and reading kid friendly books. I see comparing them as more conservative than anything.

You do realize that conservatives would be more than happy to ban both right? I mean they can’t stand the idea of anything that falls outside of sexual and gender norms, so nsfw fanfic(especially queer fanfic)  Nor do truly believe in the right to freedom of expression, and hence their desire to ban harmless fiction based on their own personal feelings of disgust and preferences.  Because that’s the similarity between the two. The ultimate reasoning behind that ban. It makes some people feel icky and gross, at which point they shut off their brain, assume that it causes harm (despite no actual evidence of harm) and therefore shouldn’t exist. It’s very much a conservative minded way of thinking, and approaching things.

(Apparently literally as research has indicated conservatives have far stronger disgust reactions than liberals https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/the-yuck-factor/580465/ )

Censorship and banning of fiction is and always has been a tool of controlling people and of authoritarians and fascists. Can you look at history and find ANY point in time where banning a book, or entire genre of fiction hasn’t been in service to conservatism?

And one more note. as has been pointed out the VAST majority of the rpf written about teens is also written BY teens who are dealing with their own personal sexual attraction and fantasies(however dark) to their age appropriate peers across the entire straight and LGBTQ+ spectrum. Is there a reason you don’t want teens to explore their own sexual feelings in a way that is safe and harmless? Or are you one of those people who are trying to convince teens that their sexual attraction to other teens makes them dangerous predators(they’re attracting to people under  the age of 18 after all, that makes them pedos) and are why we have teens talking about how they’re trying to train and force themselves to ONLY be attracted to adults(which, let’s face it is kinda yikes and dangerous)

#anti censorship #ao3 discourse #ao3 isn't banning legal fiction #you want RPF gone from Ao3 #you have to get outlawed by the state

[olderthannetfic]

regarding the rpf anon. I know that ao3 follows u.s. laws and that's not going to change, but legal isn't always right and I think when real children are pulled into this it becomes csa. I'm pro ship i dont care what anyone writes or draws, but doing it as an adult about a real child is wrong. whole point of pro ship is understanding that fiction isnt reality and csa and pedophilia are terrible because they involve and harm real children. I don't understand the point of view that this is ok to do.

--

Do you have any idea how many times I've answered this same stupid question? Or how many of them were about the same damn teenager?

If you want to ban underage people from being streamers, I am on board. Let's do that. Ban every single form of internet celebrity-seeking until people are 18 or 20 or whatever age of majority from whatever country we pick. Ban all tiktok use by underage people. None. Finito. I'm for it.

But if you expect me to conflate people thirsting over some teenage internet celebrity with a disorder or with actual child abuse, you're a fool.

First, conflating some fictional story somebody posted to a site for fictional stories with actual assault is disgusting.

No decent person does this.

Second, pedophilia is a disorder where people primarily experience attraction to prepubescent children, not 16-year-old Minecraft streamers.

How many years are people going to keep crying about this for? He's turning 19 in a couple of weeks, for fuck sake!

Can all of you idiots who pretend to be clear on the difference between fiction and reality shut the actual fuck up about this now?

[aenor-llelo]

why do you actively hate ao3? mostly wondering cause you mentioned it in your recent post

for a "non-profit", they fundraise for money goals far beyond what are actually needed to pay for their site upkeep, all their executive decisions are pay-to-vote, most of their mods are unpaid volunteers, and they actively protect rapeporn and CP under the guise of protecting the freedom of their archive.

a new admin suggests regulating harmful, bigoted, or CP content, they're blasted as (squints at handwriting) a planted agent of the chinese communist party when the site is banned in china

additionally, most defenders of keeping CP content on the site do so with the claim of defending QUEER content.

however, a sizable chunk of the popular creator/reader body and execs consist hetero cis white women, and implying that they, the people in charge, censoring legitimately illegal content, would be the gateway to them having "no choice" but to go on the "slippery slope" of regulating queer content, creates false alarms that the censorship of CP is the censorship of queerness.

...which continues to enforce the idea that pedophilia is queerness. which it is not. pedophilia is not a sexual orientation, it has never been considered a sexual orientation, and it is proven in multiple studies that it is a choice, not a inherent identity the way gender/sexual orientations are.

and for people about to say rape porn and CP is an author's "coping fiction", it's not! writing a narrative about rape/abuse survivors and aftermath is coping- but creating and distributing CP is reopening their own sexual trauma and normalizing readers to engaging in both ends of sexual trauma.

everyone saying their therapist reccommended it is also, bluntly, a Fucking Liar. because if their therapist knew they were writing CP, said therapist would be legally obligated to report them for pedophilia.

AO3 is a culturally significant site on the internet home to many impactful pieces of transformative fiction, and few sites offer the extensive features it does for content curation and moderated interaction. but they're still run by CP defenders and an active shelter to people who want to create and consume pedo content.

i actively plan to cross-post most of my works onto an independent site once they're completed. if ao3's management and policies do not change, i will most likely stop posting content there entirely.

tl;dr ao3 is a useful site but it's not the non-profit it claims to be and actively shelters CP of both fake and real minors without regulation. don't donate to ao3!

this post isn't a debate btw. google is free, and crawling through ao3's own rules and tags is not hard. anyone who starts trying to engage me in "debate" about whether it's okay to write novels about how fuckable real life minors are, and why defending them is key to defending the queer community, is giving me a free blocklist.

#pedophila mention #ao3 critical #sa mention #aenor-llelo

[ruthlesslistener]

i hate to tell you but AO3 absolutely does have child porn. and of real minors too. and the devs have defended it. i know you don’t like antis either but those are full blown pedophilia fic apologists who think every criticism of ao3 is an attack on their precious “fictional” child porn but there is genuinely problems with REAL PEOPLE being written about in smut and raceplay etc. pls don’t fall for their bullshit

feel free not to respond i just, i know you don’t like people thinking you’re a pro shipper but you reblog stuff from them unknowingly and i used to think u were one bc of it

Oh believe me when I say that I'm aware of that particular fic and that I believe it should be submitted to law enforcement, or at the very least struck from the site. I've reported that fic myself and do not stand with the admins for doing nothing about it. Ao3 is an archive, but it is one for fictional characters. The fact that some fucking pedophile out there posted a drawn-out fantasy about an actual minor is fucking disgusting, inexcusable, and warrants legal action against the writer. The author should be in jail for creating child pornography. If I ever met them, I'd beat the everloving shit out of them myself. My stance will never change on that.

However- and I hate to sound like I'm defending this at all- I think you missed the point of the original post, which is that reporting fictional depictions of child porn clutters up the searches done on actual child sexual exploitation material. My major gripe with antis is that their repeated claims that fictional csa is the same as irl csa puts actual minors in danger by 1.) cluttering up the case studies of people tracking down irl predators, and 2.) creating a sort of 'cry wolf' effect where predators who DON'T create public content involving csa are completely ignored, but people who have no attraction towards children that write gross shit (and im using ONLY FOR HORROR HERE, stuff like lolita and the like) are considered pedophiles. Both give irl predators a lot of leeway or extra time to groom or sexually assault children, which is unacceptable. The rpf involving a minor is also an extreme exception, so it should be counted as a statistical outlier that DOES warrent legal action vs the other small subsection of disgusting shit targeted at fictional characters that really should be locked behind like three fucking disclaimers and struck from the algorithm so nobody has to see that shit.

So yes, I hate it, but when it comes to shit like this, you have to be logical and admit that the vast majority of reported content should merely be ignored instead of reported, because it mucks up the system designed towards protecting actual children and punishing pedophiles. I feel slimy and gross for saying it, because I don't want to sound like I think that fictional csa is okay (it really isn't), but if I had a theoretical gun for shooting down suspected pedophiles, I'm pouring all of my bullets into the confirmed irl cases than the others. It's always better to protect actual children than risk the alternative.

As for rpf in general, I personally believe that it should be banned from the site altogether :P Throw tantrums all you want, but rpf will never not be a violation of privacy done without consent. Fanfiction should be for fictional entities only. The one exception I allow are for crackfics involving long-dead fuckers like Thomas Jefferson, but even then I draw the line at porn with them because again- that's fucking disgusting and still stands for a violation of privacy without consent.

#anon #reply #long story short i fucking hate it just as much as you do #but im always going to take the route thats more effective at keeping kids safe than the one that feels right

[reginarubie]

Hey, so AO3 is going to have an update which would allow authors to block logged in users. Would that help in your decision to safe store your metas there while taking care of your mental health? ( To be clear, I'm fine with you safe storing your metas anywhere ex.a blog outside of Tumblr that you control and won't have to worry about being wiped, or Google docs) it's just all meta creators pour so much thought into their works I want a way to preserve it for the future fandom people.💙💙

Ciao anon!,

first of all I agree with you that we should have some more secure way to keep our metas and stories and content from being wiped out by whatever site we choose to post it on, not much for future fandom people, because I have every conviction that, as with anything, next generation of fandom people will better than ours, I hope especially more healthy, because let's face it, if some of us (those ‘some’ that are the bane of this fandom enjoyment) had an healthy way of coping we wouldn't have this discussion to begin with, because no one would have to second guess using one platform or the other to post their opinion out of fear of being harassed; but out of respect of the hours of work many pull through to enjoy a fandom. So, here I agree completely with you.

And, while I do believe that once something is on internet it's never completely lost some things are more difficult to get back than others.

Now, ao3 giving — finally, can you feel me exhale in relief from there after all the bulls*t I had to go through for one piece of fiction?, and with me countless others who have fought and are fighting this battle —the possibility to specifically block logged users certainly will help, but I argue it still isn't enough.

I don't know the specifics yet, so I will refrain from dressing down the whole matter and take everything I will say with a grain of salt, but it sounds to me still subject to too many possible loopholes.

How many people have a back-up account on ao3? I personally don't have one, because I write directly on my pc on my pre-saved and safe-stored cloud and usb drive, and post once it's over, so I never felt the need to have one, but I've known of a few who have one of their own to use in case the main one has problems or is banned for any length of time — the difference, as far as I have understood is that, while on Tumblr you can have any number of side-blogs but they are related to the main one (unless you made a brand new one with a new mail), is that this is not true for ao3, making the ‘back-up accounts’ formally and substantially separate from one another.

How much do you think the creation of these “back-up accounts” — officially subscribed with different e-mail or references, I guess — will spike up once logged users starts being blocked, in order to keep up their harassing ways? I predict some people shall have more than three or four, and, while the whole point is that you could block them all, it still would take time for the whole process of going through the number of ‘back-up accounts’ (or fake accounts, I guess?) of some of the most harassing ones.

And that is one just one — the most ‘standard’ and easiest — of the countless way (I can think of another few but I won't share since, I've said already I have not read yet the specifics of this ‘revolution’ ao3 seems to be going through); then one should also take in consideration that just as on Tumblr many of us still take anon asks because we can't make of one bundle of all grass and leave out the lovely anons who actually are respectful and delightful to interact with, the very same can be argued for ao3. I've received plenty of lovely anon-comments as well as harassing ones, should I take away the possibility to interact from those lovely anons because of the few harassing ones that cannot be prosecuted for their conduct on the site since they are ‘untraceable’ for all a series of legal reasons?, and how would ao3 defend me from the harassing anons? and we know that when they are blocked here some of them resort to send anon-hate and we are powerless to stop it. So what's to stop them from doing the same on ao3?, while we may keep for us and not share some of them to avoid to ruin the fandom experience from those around us that we appreciate, it almost sounds like sending anon-hate has become a sport.

And this I say, thankfully, as a third party in all of this, since on Tumblr I've received perhaps a total of 5 anon hates and some of them were caused by my own inadvertently unfair and offensive behaviour and I have been free since I've understood my mistake and resolved it.

When I've had problems with harassing anons on ao3 I've alerted the site and the most they've been able to do is erase the comment itself (we were speaking of blasphemy and death-wishes, so it was pretty grave) and suggest I took away the possibility to comment from anons (which I find unacceptable on an ideological level — everyone should have the possibility to share their opinion whether positive or negative as long as they do so respectfully and politely).

Other times when I signalled harassing comments from logged users they simply warned them or banned them for any length of time (I suppose, I wouldn't know for certain since I've never been on the receiving end of one of ao3 restriction for any motive so I can't put my hand on the fire about it) and simply suggested I enabled comment moderation which did nothing ultimately for me, yes, it might have left the comment-section better for the viewer and reader which is awesome — as they would not have to go through harassing comments or be subjected to — but ultimately the often overlooked victim of all this harassment, the creator of the content, still has to read and go through all the comments good and harassing they receive. Which is no victory at all, as it wouldn't be a victory to simply disable the comment section. Because the whole point of this all is interacting on common interests and share opinions and if you take away the debating part from “sharing and debating” which compose the fandom experience you cripple the whole experience as a whole, imho.

And while I think that enabling to block logged users is a step in the right direction, an overdue step in the right direction and I applaud them for that, I still think the site should take in consideration all of above (and countless other ways people can loop-hole through this new possibility, some the less internet savvy of us wouldn't even dream of) to put in place methods that would disable or at the very least make more difficult for the harassing part of the fandom to continue in their ways. As we say in Italy ‘created the lock found a new way to picklock; made the rule, found the loophole’, so I am sure there will be even more ways because people adapt to their environment and that is true for internet as well.

To answer to your inquiry... I have quite the stubborn streak, you could say, so I managed to withstand their harassment and even managed to make them shut up about it by standing my ground — they will eventually grow tired if they see they can't faze you as all bullies tend to do, but I know that some of them on some other platform *cough cough* Twitter *cough cough* have reached peaks of exaggeration by actually stealing someone account to pressure them to stop posting their preferred content and ruin their whole experience over fiction — so I could take a leap of faith (still to be seen) and try my hand at it anyway, especially since the tagging system is way better on ao3 than it is here.

For now I still reserve the right not to decide until I know more and for certain. Surely this new step might make me reconsider my stance on not using ao3 to share my metas, but it must be a first step of many, though I suppose it might difficult to stop people from creating fake-accounts and that possibility is, imo, one of the easiest and most proficient ways to work around any kind of procedure the site might decide to implement to make the whole fandom experience more enjoyable and less unhealthy.

As always, anon, thank you for your ask — I am honestly stunned and flattered that you'd consider my metas worthy of being preserved together with some of the real deal™️ metas that are on this platform and on others besides — and hope you have a very nice day!

#anon asks #ask the hag #is it worth to put metas on ao3 yet? #will this implement be enough? #ao3

[roseblings-moved]

I wanna address some common concerns real quick!

How do you define NSFW? Explicit sexual content. Kissing, implied sexual content, and gore are fine. We're mostly banning NSFW because of issues with moderation- most of our mods don't feel comfortable handling nsfw content and we don't want to just have one mod handle all the NSFW content on the platform. AO3 still exists for the smut writers out there. (As an aside, we don't look down upon smut writers, we just feel uncomfortable handling that content.*)

How is MCYT defined? The term "MCYT" is used broadly in terms of scope for this archive. This includes any content creator who has created Minecraft content or has been associated with those who do. This also covers things outside this general scope but still in the same area of content such as original fiction based on people's own SMPs, MCYT fandom-created characters like Penis SMP, Podcasts and Web Series not tied to Minecraft but tied to MCYT CCs (or adjacent CCs), and non-Minecraft roleplays with creator overlap such as SBI Rust and Just Roll With It.

What are "common triggers?" Abuse, graphic descriptions of violence, major character death, bigotry, self-harm, suicide, torture, and alcohol/drug use. Note that this tagging system is also set to change at any point.

Who will be paying for the server space? We're gonna be paying for it out of pocket. If it ever becomes too big and we need more space, we would ask for donations, though I don't see that becoming an issue. AO3's entire database approximately takes up 100gb-1tb, and that's 8,000,000+ works, 40,000+ fandoms, etc. I've already figured stuff out to allow us to have 50gb of space, which should be more than enough.

Other notes:

We will be leaving in "Author Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings." The reason we first decided to take it out (along with No Rating) was because of how it's often abused on AO3 (instead of properly tagging content they'll use that tag) but the responses to the form made us realize how not having it could also be abused.

% will be used to tag queerplatonic relationships

The currently-outlined rules are very unspecific as of right now. They will get more specific as time goes on. We're just trying to get a general idea for what we want the rules to be at the moment.

Anxiety over the project crashing and burning is absolutely fair. I can't fully assuage those worries until it gets off its feet, but I hope the transparency will help. This isn't a huge project, either- moderated fanfiction archives for specific fandoms used to be very popular, and most (from what I've seen) didn't experience much conflict, or the conflict that they did experience was resolved quickly. I can't see this archive being much different. The issues surrounding LiveJournal and FF.net was corporatization, which meant having to censor LGBTQ+ content in order to be more appealing to advertisers. Since this isn't a business model, we have no need to appeal to advertisers.

We aren't trying to replace AO3 in the slightest. All of us have a lot of appreciation for what AO3 does, and we're even using AO3's source code as a base. We're simply trying to provide a place for a niche that doesn't currently have one.

*Assuming you are writing NSFW of legal, consenting adults. "Poppytwt" and anyone writing NSFW of minors or people who aren't comfortable with it are not tolerated anywhere near our site.

#mcyt fic archive #<- thats the tag i'll be using to talk about this #also if ur wondering who 'we' is its a couple people from gay castle #mostly connor timedeo ris floralmania and i #hale latrorex and grian redlifes are helping fund <3 our beloveds #long post #he speaks

[letteredlettered]

How do you feel about Real Person Fiction? I'm conflicted about my thoughts on it. I understand why people may want to preserve it in Ao3/not ban the style of fanfic so as to not create a bad legal precedent that may allow for future bans based on content alone. So from a legal standpoint, I get it. But ethically speaking, it feels wrong to reduce people into concepts/commodities, and project them into scenarios for pleasure.

I feel great about real person fiction.

I agree about your legal standpoint.

As far as reducing people into concepts/commodities and projecting them into scenarios for pleasure, I'm not sure I can speak to the morality of this. I can speak to the precedent, however.

Look, I understand that Milton's Paradise Lost isn't the exact same thing as fanfic. I've made the argument that they are the same before, but I do understand the difference, so let's just be clear we're talking about similarities, not equivalence. I'm not going to say that RPF is the same as plenty of other stories about real people, but I am going to call attention to what is the same about them, why humans do this, and the impact it has on both audiences and society.

People have always told stories about real people. This is how people got famous before modern media. Other people told stories about them; the stories got passed around; some stories got written down. These stories are pretty different than RPF. For one thing, they were meant to be true.

However, I'm sure you're familiar with plenty of stories written in ancient times that use names of real people but are about things that absolutely cannot have happened, either because stories contradict each other or because the stories include the physically impossible. Reading them, you can tell the author wasn't particularly concerned with accuracy. Still, these accounts often call themselves "histories." Are they different because they're loosely based on real events? When you consider just how loose the base is, and just how unreal the events are, I'd say they're pretty close to fiction, and you could say the same for plenty of stories told today. The movie Amadeus definitely takes liberties with Mozart's life. The musical Hamilton moves events around and merges characters to make the show work. But these are also pretty different from RPF. For one thing, RPF is often about people who are alive today.

However, I'm sure you're familiar with The Social Network, which is about people who are very much alive. The Crown is about plenty of people who are still alive; it has a whole season about a mother whose sons are still living, who was killed by her paparazzi. The movie about Venus and Serena William is slated to come out next year. These movies all take liberties with real, living people's lives for entertainment value. But these are also pretty different from RPF, because they're still trying to tell you about some real events; they do not make up completely fictional scenarios about Mark Zuckerberg and Queen Elizabeth huddling for warmth.

I'd like to point out at this time that it's pretty human to tell stories about real people to try to convey some sense of who they were and what they did. If you want to tell Person You Know A what Person You Know B did last week, you tell Person A’s story. Now, this story is about someone you know, not a celebrity; it's based on something you actually believe happened, and it's not being posted to the internet. It's pretty different than RPF.

But there are people who do post stories about celebrities on the internet--or in print. People magazine still prints, and plenty of other of magazines like it. There are even more celebrity gossip publications and blogs on the internet. Now, some of the people who work for these publications occasionally get interviews with the celebrities, and their stories are based on the interviews, so though they don't "know" the celebrity personally, they're still trying to post a true account. Ostensibly.

Then there's celebrity gossip, which may not be a well respected industry, but it's certainly an industry, and frankly I don't hear nearly as much condemnation of it in fandom as I do of RPF. Celebrity gossip, like gossip about people we know, edges away from the truth and into fabrication for purposes of sensationalism or sabotage, and imo, it's far worse than RPF. If we're going to brand RPF as immoral I would definitely choose it over celebrity gossip.

I’m not trying to say RPF is okay because celebrity gossip is worse, but I am trying to make a point that it’s easier to fight against subcultures than mainstream, because things that are mainstream are backed by institutions that are wealthy and powerful and feel impossible to defeat. Turning our censure upon ourselves and our hobbies can sometimes only serve to waste energy and divide us instead of actually tackling the roots of larger problems.

But to get back to RPF and celebrity gossip, I do think some RPF is all right, and the difference has to do with the platform. Since you mention AO3 specifically, let's talk about AO3 as a platform. AO3 is an archive for transformative works, such as fanfiction. Nothing about it suggests that any of the works in it are truthful or fact. AO3 furthermore doesn't charge money for use and doesn't aggressively advertise. This means if you want AO3 RPF you have to go looking for it; the archive is not profiting off the exploitation of celebrity lives, and no one--no one--thinks the Mark Zuckerberg coffee shop AU is a real thing. Meanwhile, the platform for People is the checkout line at the grocery store; I have to see speculation on how happy Scarlett Johansson's marriage is because I need broccoli. Furthermore People makes money if I'm curious about these topics. To me, that feels far more invasive.

I'll take this moment to say that there are other platforms where you can publish your fanfiction that are for profit and far more aggressive in their advertising. Those places bother me on principle for many other reasons, but for RPF specifically, the platform makes all the difference. The reasons have to do with accessibility, credibility, and image.

To get back to morality, I don’t really believe in right and wrong. I believe in “who is it hurting”. The less hurt it causes the more moral it is. This can be difficult to measure, but let’s talk for a moment about why commodifying a person for your pleasure could be hurtful.

It can be painful to read stories about yourself that say things about you that aren't true or depict you doing things you wouldn't do; similarly, it can be painful to read such things about people you know. Therefore a private outlet is best for such stories--this is where accessibility comes in. I am by no means arguing that AO3 is private, but I am suggesting it's a little less ubiquitous than the gossip rags at the grocery store.

The question is--is it private enough? Currently, I believe that it is, based on where I see AO3 mentioned. Yes, the press and public know about it, but I still don’t see it linked and advertised very frequently on mainstream platforms, and when I do, the audience still seems fairly niche.  This is where my moral relativity comes in, because yes--I actually do believe that RPF is okay because it causes more comfort and less hurt than celebrity gossip. If AO3 somehow became so well known and so popular that celebrities and people who know celebrities can’t avoid seeing RPF about themselves on AO3 and have it consistently shoved in their faces, I don’t think I would condone it the way I do now.

(I haven’t mentioned folks who print their RPF and give it to celebrities, because again, the platform matters. However, some people do post their RPF on AO3 and then send celebrities the links. Arguably, those people could post their fic anywhere and send celebrities links. Also arguably, one could say that AO3 makes it easy to post and send links, and one could also say that because RPF is on AO3, it might give someone the idea to send links to celebrities. I just feel that is putting a lot on AO3, rather than the individual. Again, it’s a matter of relativity. If sending celebs links from AO3 became the norm for the culture of AO3, I would feel differently.)

Going back to how RPF could hurt people, untrue stories about real people can further damage those people if other people believe the stories. People believing untrue things about you--or even learning true things about you that you needed to keep private for your emotional/physical/mental well-being--can hurt cause a lot of pain. Therefore, credibility is a huge factor, and AO3 isn’t meant to have credibility. It’s meant to be for fiction. Therefore it seems like a great place for celebrity gossip and other untrue things about celebrities.

I had mentioned that RPF can bring comfort, rather than hurt. I can’t say that I know why such stories bring comfort, only that evidence strongly suggests that they do. I've read some RPF, but it really meant nothing that I knew what the actors looked like. I loved the stories themselves, but that had more to do with the fandom than the actors. RPF  fandom often establishes a set of traits that served as the personalities for the characters, and then, in typical fandom fashion, iterates those traits over and over again into wildly romantic tropey romps that--because they don't have any canon--are even more freeform and/or trope-reliant than even some of the best fanfic. But maybe this is what people like--there is an agreed upon "personality" based on what's available; there is very little that we actually "know", and we get to use what we know as a diving board into a fantastical life that's not ours. I cannot say, perhaps because I also have very little interest in celebrities. Even when I start to really like an actor or writer or creator, I want to know as little as possible about their real lives, because usually when I start to think of them as real people it ruins the character in my head. I don't even really care for biographies, though I try to read them sometimes.

But even though I'm not particularly keen on celebrities or stories about real people, other people are. People like telling stories about people they have heard of or seen; they like creating myth; they like imagining aspects of the myth are real. People have done it throughout history, and it's obviously important to us as a culture. If we're going to damn any aspect of it, I would much rather damn the corporate machine of for-profit celebrity gossip than damn a bunch of fans writing free porn about people they think are pretty.

The last thing I'll say is that I am aware that writing certain kinds of RPF about celebrities from particular countries can present a problem. I've read lots of discussions about the morality of writing celebrities as queer when those celebrities live in states where queerness is outlawed and penalized. I'm not being coy, here; I'm talking about China, especially writing Sean Xiao or Wang Yibo etc as gay. My only contribution to that discussion is that it is the homophobia and bigotry of the state that should be condemned, not a bunch of fans who want to imagine their faves as queer.

#real person fiction #rpf #celebrity gossip #celebrities #china

[just-antithings]

I don’t want to start an argument and I’m glad we’re on the same page that this kind of content involving real life minors should not exist, but you can’t just dismiss these concerns with “go make your own site”, if you love AO3 then wouldn’t you want to see it improve? wouldn’t you want to hold the people that not only write it but also allow this kind of stuff because “oh its legal” accountable? You see twitter users and tumblr users complain about bad decisions the websites make all the time, I don’t see how AO3 is exempt from criticism.

Except AO3 is made to be an archive, the whole point is that they don't arbitrarily delete fics like every other hosting site. So honestly go somewhere else or make your own are the only appropriate answers to give. You are asking them to police fics when the whole reason AO3 started was to not do that. So ultimately the reason it's been "free from criticism" is because they do what they say they will, a lot of the tumblr and Twitter criticism is them actively adding features people don't want while ignoring the ones they do. Your complaints are about what they host which they have been clear about from the beginning so what exactly is there to criticize on that front. We authors have been saying this forever but Don't like Don't read. Or make/use a different site.

You can't go to a bar and be mad about alcohol being there.

Honestly I don't care for underage rpf, but I am only in one rpf fandom and all the people are adults so 🤷 it's not really something I think about ever since I can simply ignore it. Also in my view I'm not shipping the real people I am shipping their personas, cause what you see and who they are in their private lives will be different. So I don't see the real problem with it, of course I don't think they shouldn't have an opinion. Rooster teeth thinks its hilarious that people ship them but it did make some uncomfortable, they solved that by making rules (ex. One said he was fine with people acknowledging his kid but said that he didn't want people using her real name it fics.) And honestly I think they made the right choice. People are more likely to listen to rules then bans.

However I can't stand cheating nothing will make me drop a story faster than cheating. Cheating is never right in real life, same as a lot of other issues antis are pressed about in fiction. But cheating is super common in fics, so I simply don't read the.

Honestly and personally, I don't think any minors should be streamers. They put out their faces names and ages everything adults used to warn you about. So over all these kids and teens need to understand that when you decide to put yourself out on the internet is that they need to be prepared for the consequences and dangers. Stop listing your personal info stop trying to turn yourself into a public figure, wait till your an adult to do that kinda thing.

Also removing it from AO3 doesn't solve anything lmao, they will simply post it elsewhere.

TDLR underage rpf has a lot of problems however AO3 isn't one of them.

#mod gatito #ask

[not-that-debonair]

for a long time ao3 ran their donation drive and people donated or didn't, but in the past 4 or so years the rise of a lot of different parts of fandom (ex. cancel culture, antis vs anti-antis, pearl-clutching 'save the children' couched in liberal ideology) has brought the drive into the limelight every time it comes around because of ao3's terms of service. ao3 is designed to be an archive, moderated but not necessarily actively managed in the same way a dynamic community website is, and from the beginning the point of the "lax" policies was to remove the ability of anyone to draw lines in the sand that might snowball into another purity crusade the original founders experienced in other online communities. if you say "no one can post [x]", even with the best intentions, the worry is that it sets a precedent for a group of people to decide what is acceptable and what isn't. so ao3 decided unless it's breaking the law, it stays. that isn't to say this policy doesn't have huge effects in terms of what does get posted onto ao3, ex. blatantly racist fic, fic involving minors in sexual settings, fic involving incest, etc, but the policy stands not so much to protect that fic, but to protect the idea that no one person or group of people get to play god, so to speak, and arbitrarily decide what fiction is acceptable and what isn't. a lot of people don't like that, and see ao3's refusal to take that fic down or ban that fic altogether as approving of or supporting those ideas. ao3 has also come under fire for not having a hard-block function within the website and in many people's eyes not doing more to allow users to remove contact with fic and authors that might be triggering or abusive, and for unfortunately recently announcing their work on a block function right around the time a tag-breaking fic was garnering attention, leading people to believe they were only implementing a block function due to complaints about the fic rather than the requests users of color had been making for years. there is also a sense that ao3 has ignored the requests and complaints of users of color to remove authors and fic that are blatantly racist, and instead given them non-answers or merely directed them to log a report if they believed the fic or author was violating the terms of service. but again, this stems from the "lax" policies that ao3 was designed to stand behind. and with the pandemic still going on as well as the racial unrest that's come to a head in the last year (i should specify this is in america), a website that's already controversial regarding many topics but including racism managing to garner so much money in a short amount of time put a sour taste in people's mouths when there are other places the money could have gone to, and in their minds deserved to go to more than ao3. even people who support ao3 voice complaints every donation drive that the excess money past their goal isn't redistributed to other charities (or to a charity to begin with. most people don't realize ao3 is a project of the organization for transformative works (otw), which is itself a charity, and that's who's actually running the donation drive). in my personal opinion the concerns and issues pointed out are valid, but lay too much blame at the feet of ao3 and ask it to do something it wasn't designed or created to do. racism in fandom is a major problem, but being able to remove racist fic doesn't solve the problem, it merely alleviates a symptom. same with the claimed "child pornography" aka fic involving minor in sexual settings (which, to my mind, conflates the real issue of sexualizing minors with legal child pornography). and as for the guilt trip of saying people are disgusting for donating to the drive, most of the donations to ao3 during the drive are about the price of a movie ticket; even if you average out the donation total to the number of donators it's $29. i don't see people calling for the genocide of a group for deciding to rent a movie or buy a piece of art, but donating to ao3 instead of a struggling marginalized

creator is apparently enough to warrant your death. i'd probably get dragged through the streets and called a privileged white racist cunt for supporting ao3, but i don't think it or the otw (which by the way, has won landmark cases regarding u.s. copyright law and fair use and allowed transformative media aka fanart, fanfic, fanvids, etc, to exist the way it currently does without constant threat of legal action, and retains a legal team who represent (for free!) creators that find themselves facing legal action over transformative media) is responsible to single-handedly fix the wrongs of a deeply corrupted society that allows these wrongs to exist. tl;dr - ao3 has a policy that doesn't judge fic, which makes people think they support things like racism and child porn, because it has that reputation people want the money to go to marginalized creators or charities, and with the pandemic making people hard up for money they really want that to happen and judge people who support ao3 as also supporting racism and child porn and cancelled as well

Well that’s certainly a lot to think about... I don’t think I’m going to share anymore of my opinions on the matter since evidently there is a lot more going on than I thought and I don’t want to risk making and ill informed statement.

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it to me, I really appreciate it, this helped a lot.

#ao3 #ask #technically #seriously thank you this cleared a load up and there is a lot here thanks

[olderthannetfic]

well, the subreddit romance books just announced how they will ban/blacklist romance books involving fictional minors per the reddit content policy and that policy is really painting wide brush strokes on fictional content.

every day i am clutching ao3 closer and closer to my heart.

and by the way, this isn't even the content i consume but seeing the internet become this puritanical nutjob while they allow the most violent shit (including children) go unchecked is just fucking stupid.

--

Yes. It's irritating how something can be legal but still impossible to discuss/host anywhere.

[bandomfandombeyond]

I’m going to start by apologizing because I can’t find a way to circumvent the character limit on desktop so I’m sorry for all the parts! Thanks for responding. You make a lot of good points I'm going to ponder. Censorship at all is a really slippery slope, and personal morals vary so greatly. Protecting our own well-being is definitely a priority. (And please tell me if this gets too squicky for you! That isn't my intention!) 1/5

(No worries about too many asks, I know tumblr is wonky af)

I realized like 10s after posting that I hadn't addressed the child star thing oop. IMHO childhood stardom is already so traumatic that like, realizing as an adult that weirdos on the internet sexualized you is probably not going to hit as heavily as being sexualized on an irl set or having to use your sexuality far younger than normal for scenes. I'm not a child star, I can't be certain of course, but like...

There's a difference between being exploited for actual CP and knowing it's floating around and having been through that explicit experience, and finding out when older that there are fictional stories about you in exploitative positions. Is it going to hit every child star the same? No. But here we come back to the parents: their parents thrust them into that spotlight and allow their children to be plastered on screens and hypersexualized with makeup and baby bikinis etc and that's going to be more impactful long term. Can finding that content about them later trigger trauma they already have? Yes. Can it be traumatic? Sure, depending on their mental state and relationship with their own sexual existence.

Are we as people just existing on the internet responsible for attacking people for writing fiction about child stars? No. Their parents and their legal teams could probably make a case for defamation or dilution of brand recognition or something if they wanted to tho. And don't forget how parents are legally allowed to do whatever they want with their kid's private info: they can invite the internet into their abuse and be praised for it. I saw a video of someone emptying everything out of their kid's room and filming them having a meltdown because they were literally being put in solitary confinement. Who's morality policing them?

I personally am a lot more worried about 'toddlers in tiaras', 'dance moms' and the beauty pageant racket for encouraging parents to exploit their actual babies and toddlers on the off chance they'll make money from it. You have to go looking for ao3, but abby lee miller is everywhere. The culture that keeps pushing girls from a younger and younger age to buy makeup, be ashamed of their body, and plaster it all over the internet for validation that they've performed adulthood properly as children is everywhere. The culture where the slimmest, most child like 18 year olds make the most money in adult industries rn is everywhere. The culture where women are told they look ill if they don't put on makeup is everywhere. The culture that has 25 year olds play 15 year olds so they can fuck on screen until we've forgotten what actual children look like? Pervasive and perverted imho.

I am a lot more concerned with how ALL of that contributes to normalizing pedophilia and the hypersexualization of girls than AO3 hosting fairly rare (comparatively) problematic content.

America is the only 'developed' nation not to have ratified the children's bill of rights -- because conservatives think it infringes on their rights as parents to abuse their kids. Think about that. There are much worse things in the world of children's rights than AO3 hosting fictional, derivative content about them where the most accurate portrayal of who they actually are is their name.

Having said all that, I personally would not cry to learn that RPF content with ppl who are below 18 was banned, but I am not the morality police and I'm not the AO3 Abuse Team. All I can control is myself and my space and what I create and consume and how I think about it. 💚

#ao3 discourse #anti anti #pro shipping #in defense of the archive #us culture #nonnymouse #i feel like i didnt express myself as clearly here #i need to eat something so my brain starts working again

[olderthannetfic]

Sorry (and feel free to ignore) if this isn't your purview, but do you have any thoughts on the racism angle of the Anti debate? Not gonna lie, the most convincing (*and* the angriest) anti-AO3 arguments I've seen on this site were from PoC disgusted with how it wouldn't take down stories fictionalizing and sensationalizing stuff like George Floyd's murder, or Atlantic Slave Trade/Holocaust AUs. I haven't yet seen anyone muster a decent counterargument to that.

--

Beware of censorship because you may not be the one deciding what the bad content is.

That is the argument. People just don't understand it or don't agree with it.

Here's the thing: AO3 was explicitly set up to protect art, regardless of horrificness. That is the point. There is no such thing as beyond the pale for AO3, just legal or illegal. This is right there in the ToS. There are specific historical reasons why this is AO3's stance and mission.

It's not a stance and mission everyone is down with, and I can respect that... but if they want a different kind of archive, they need to make or move to a different archive.

Most fic archives have some level of taste or morality-based content rules. FFN does. Wattpad does. Skyehawke did. All the single-fandom or single-topic ones do, if only in the sense that they ban off-topic fic. The big non-English archives like Ficbook and EFP do. Dear god, especially, EFP where you can't write derogatory things about religious figures, among many other rules. Archives that ban tons of shit have always been the norm. Having multiple archives has also always been the norm and continues to be.

If people see AO3 as all of fandom, that's on them.

What AO3 is is one of the few archives that won't delete m/m or f/f dark fic and kink. This fact is directly tied to its extremely hardline anti-censorship stance. A lot of the anti-AO3 crowd fundamentally does not get why this is the case or dislikes how popular m/m is and doesn't care.

AO3 protects reprehensible art for the same reason the ACLU defends Nazis.

If that's not the kind of free speech above all organization you're into, that's fine, but then AO3 is not for you.

On a more specific note, I don't trust people demanding deletion because the vast majority of wanks aren't about things I personally agree are disgusting (hot takes on George Floyd or whatever) and are instead about My NOTP Is Inherently Bad shipwars or top/bottom fights. Or even worse, they descend into "This fan of color is a traitor for liking the wrong kinks". (If you think people don't call each other inflammatory language like "race traitor" over shipping all the time, you're naive.)

People always think they know when an author is white or straight because they write things Wrong or their mind is too fucked up or whatever, but it's bullshit. There is no reliable way to tell why someone wrote something or how much is their intent and how much is poor writing skill. AO3 is a safe space for writers to post without threat of deletion. It is not and never was a safe recs list for readers. That's not its aim.

Anti-AO3 people try to portray this as brave POC striking back against white oppressors, but that isn't how it ends up. Deletion tools are going to be leveraged hardest against other POC who fail to live up to some impossible double standard.

--

Now, as for whether OTW/AO3 should try to be better and help marginalized groups of fans of all types use AO3 more easily, of course they should. The non-bullshit version of that looks like better blocking tools to hide whatever you personally find triggering or gross. Blocking tools, not deletion.

Many anti-AO3 types dislike this approach because their abusive rants about how your kink is bad or you should ship het instead of m/m would get blocked.

But as lierdumoa said in a cogent explanation of how AO3 actually needs to improve, are people looking for solutions that protect POC... or do they just want a chance to punish?