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kadoodles-on-ao3 · 1 year

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It seems like you have a vendetta against Shulk/Fiora. Like, not just disliking it and preferring Shulkelia but straight up hate the canon ship of the game. Why?

Thank you for asking this! It's an interesting question and I have a quite a bit to say about it (as usual with me aha). So I'll put the details under the cut, but yes, I personally do not like any aspect of the canon relationship/writing of it at all (although I don't go into that here since I talked about much more than I expected lol, if you're curious specifically about what my opinions are on the dialogue/choices in the game regarding Shiora feel free to send me another ask!). Also if you've read my fanfics (genuinely not trying to plug my work haha I swear) and see how I write Fiora and her friendship with Shulk, and especially the fic where I write from her pov for the whole thing, you can see I don't hate her and try to be respectful to her creators and fans! Anyway, for a TL;DR:

Aside from my personal history (which also is part of why I like Shulkelia as much as I do) causing the way Fiora's attraction to Shulk is written to not come off very well to me, and even ignoring what I've seen on the Internet about how people react to these ships and those who like or dislike them, it's just A Thing About Life that there will be parts of media you really like and parts of the same media you really don't, and that's what makes art engaging and impactful and personal and fun to talk about! I'm just someone who always has a lot to say about anything, so don't take my diatribes as anything more than me being passionate about analyzing stuff haha. I still love Xenoblade 1 with all my heart, and me not liking parts of the series such as Xenoblade 2 (very much) or Shiora (at all) doesn't affect how much I enjoy what I do like! It's just another fun facet to delve into for me, whether it's a thing I like or a thing I dislike.

And when all you see and know of me is from a blog that's specifically just for talking about a small facet of one piece of media, I can come off as more melodramatic about my liking of Shulkelia and disliking of Shiora since I don't talk too much about the rest of Xenoblade as a whole, nor anything else for that matter, on here. I promise I don't truly care that much about this fictional love triangle in my day-to-day life, and I'm sorry if I came off as rude about it! If you like their relationship then... I do want to say more power to you, and count this as me having said so, but also I don't feel like I need to because, as you said, it is canon so the Xenoblade devs have been (and probably will be!) providing plenty of enjoyment for you, and so no one should care what a silly singular stranger like me thinks at the end of the day haha.

But if you do, then here's what I have to say:

First off, I just enjoy really thoroughly dissecting everything I like, as well as dislike (as you will soon see!). I like delving into details and analyzing stuff, and sometimes that passion can be a little too obsessive, which can come off as me being passionate in my hatred of The Thing rather than passionate about analyzing why I hate The Thing (which is what's really going on). So it's important to me to say that when I talk about anything I dislike in depth like this, it's not ever meant to be hating on or attacking people who do like it! I just really find it fun to put things under a microscope, both when I really like them and really dislike them, because I enjoy discovering what, specifically, about them makes me feel that way.

I also think it's important to repeat that point about how this blog is both 1) meant to be near-exclusively about Shulkelia and 2) the posts I make here are pretty much my entire online footprint (outside of my fanfic account which is p much about the same topic aha), and as such these are the only things that strangers have to form an opinion about me (much like the common criticism brought up about parasocial relationships). When I log on to this blog I'm here to talk about my Xenoblade OTP or things related to it, and so that's all you see of/know about me. And even though the reason I made this blog is because of how much I like it (I'm kind of obsessive about the things I'm really passionate about, I've been that way my whole life, so that certainly doesn't help either haha), there are things I may like equally or even more, but because they aren't what this blog is for I don't mention them, and so anyone who doesn't know me won't know about them unless I talk about them. When you only see the fraction of me that I'm willing to share, then of course it'll seem like that fraction is the whole me if you never get to see the other 99%.

So much in the same way that I can seem super obsessed about Shulkelia (which, to be fair, I do get that way some days haha) it can seem like I really really hate Shiora too, since the only time I'm going to talk about it is on a blog that's dedicated to a different ship, and since I'm not really a multishipper nor do I enjoy the writing of it in canon, I won't ever have much nice to say about it. And because it's a canon ship that most people seem to enjoy, it's going to come up from time to time on art that either has Fiora/the love triangle involved or in the comments I see on it, and since I have something to say about it I do. Although I do genuinely not like it at all, I try to do it in a way where it's clear I'm not hating on people who enjoy it, either by trying to hammer home that it's just my personal opinion about it, or being super hyperbolic about disliking it in an attempt at humor. But tone and meaning can get lost from brain to text and I'm surely not the best at wording things sometimes, so I don't blame anyone for getting the wrong impression, and if that's happened I do apologize!

For example, if this blog was instead about my love of Mexican food (which is true!) and was meant for being a catalogue of recipes I come across, I'd probably talk in the tags pretty often about how I lament that so many recipes have cilantro in them because I have the weird cilantro-tastes-like-soap gene and so it tastes awful to me (which is also true!). When this happens over and over again on so many recipes that have cilantro, and when this repetition is all you ever get to see about me, it would probably seem like I have a burning hatred for cilantro, when in reality I barely think about it at all, and if something I want to eat has it I'll just politely ask for no cilantro or silently pick it off. I do think the weird gene is interesting, and I have a fun story about how I found out I have it which I enjoy telling, but I'm also just fine eating my food if no one wants to talk about it.

But that comparison isn't perfect, because there's a lot more going on in interpersonal relationships (fictional or not) and why people enjoy them or not. So let's get into that!

I did mention there were personal reasons why I feel the way I do, and to the extent I do, about these pairings, so it's only fair to explain what that's about. All throughout my life up until college I never had anyone show any romantic interest in me, even in high school, while in contrast all my friends as well as my sister had been in multiple relationships, so I felt rather lonely and figured there was something wrong with me if no one would want to date me haha. But I did of course have crushes of my own (that because of the aforementioned thought I had that I was unlikable I never acted on) and one of them was on a mutual friend that my best friend at the time also knew, as well as knew that I liked him. And all of a sudden one day they were going out and being affectionate all the time, including right in front of me even though my friend knew I liked him. That plus my loneliness from before obviously hurt really bad and made me pretty upset for a while haha.

Then on top of that later that year I would connect with someone like I never had before in my life and he "felt the same way", the very first person to ever tell me they liked me and I believed it. I honestly do still think he did like me... yet he would go on to get into a relationship with someone else and all the while repeatedly promise me that I was special to him and that she didn't get him like I did and he'd leave her for me but of course we can still have our deep talks about his personal problems and blah blah blah. There's a lot more to it than that but I'll cut it short and just say this happened for literally every single day for an entire year of my life, and it really deeply affected me for a long time, though I'm fine now of course. Well, it did change me as a human being, but you know what I mean haha. I don't say this to elicit pity (really, don't, I promise I'm fine) but to give you some puzzle pieces to help figure out the mystery of why I dislike Shiora.

So I'm sure you can see the parallels from my life to what Melia goes through, and that's precisely the mechanism that everyone uses to relate to and love fictional characters: they deal with horrible stuff that we can connect back to horrible stuff we've been through, and we empathize with them. That's one reason why so many people love Shulk (including me!), and Melia, and countless other characters. That's kind of what they're here for: to relate to. He just like me for real and all that. So, in the same way my life experiences make me relate so much to Melia, I can also relate those who I liked but never could be with to Shulk and relate their girlfriends to Fiora. And knowing how those real-life relationships ended up and why they didn't work out, I can really see parallels to how Fiora and Shulk's relationship is written, at least with the vibe I got from it on first and second impression. Therefore I both dislike it for personal reasons and the information those reasons gave me about good and bad relationships.

On a lighter note though, there's another aspect to the whole we-like-characters-we-identify-with thing with regards to shipping: I really do think the ships we like (if any) are based on and a reflection of ourselves and what we want in a partner (should we want to have one). Or in simpler terms, our OTPs are often made up of a character we can self-insert as and a character we would marry if they were real haha. And I don't mean that in a bad way at all! It's fun to make up fake scenarios with fake characters that you want to kiss, even when you're not writing direct-self-insert or xReader stuff (which I also don't bash)! I'm certainly guilty of this myself, even as much as I try to write them true to their character, relating so much to Melia and finding a lot about Shulk attractive for reasons that Melia also does means I'm just like everyone else haha. But on the other side of the coin, the fact that I cannot relate to Fiora in so many ways as well as do not vibe with how she treats her attraction to Shulk means I can't really enjoy the thought of them as a couple.

But outside of talking about the canon for just a second more, I think there's an interesting phenomenon(? idk what to call it lol) here that is in this ask as well as many other people's vocalized opinions regarding this game's love triangle: said canon. As in, the concept that someone could like Xenoblade 1 overall but dislike the canon relationship either confuses and/or upsets some people. Which is strange to me on its own, like do these people also get confused and/or mad when someone says they love hamburgers but hate when they have pickles on them? Everyone has their own tastes, and what you like or how much of it you do is just part of being an individual. (Plus I must say it's extra odd with regards to Shulkelia, as I've never seen the same comments/reactions to ships like Meliora, Shulk/Reyn, Shalvis, Dunban/Melia, etc, despite the fact that they're all equally as non-canon as Shulkelia. Maybe it's because the game firmly shoots down Shulk liking Melia so hard? But it also shows how much Fiora likes Shulk, so wouldn't Meliora [which is pretty darn popular as far as Xenoblade 1 ships go, at least from my browsing] be just as "anti-canon"?).

For extra context too, there are. SO. many friendzoned/"haha Shulk doesn't like Melia" memes and jokes out there (and if these people are so concerned with canon, it's weird how often they make Shulk and/or Melia act out of character super hard to push the joke!) which don't really exist to be pro-Shiora and more just anti-Shulkelia. I even came across a guy on reddit who would post Melia fanart every day, and so many of his posts were stalked by this one dude who would write a little rant about how Melia sucks and Fiora is the best, and would really go off if the fanart showed Melia's crush on Shulk in any way. Now he was super downvoted every time but... I've never seen anyone do that for Shulkelia. And yet I have seen quite a few posts of people complaining about Shulk/Melia fans shoving their ship in their faces and how much it sucks as a ship and I'm like i have been trying for MONTHS to find a single scrap of shulkelia content yet find barely anything and what i do find has SO many comments saying they still like shiora or that they hate the art since it's not shiora literally WHO are you talking about??? Like maybe I just am unlucky and have seen literally all 20 or whatever number of instances of Shiora fans being rude that ever existed but... they still do exist. I'm not making this up, in fact I encourage you to go out and search for Xenoblade fan content regarding this love triangle and see how people react to it! That's what I did and that's how I came across all of this!

Anyway, like was there a huge ship war in the early fandom days or something??? If so why can I find no mention of it anywhere except from salty Shiora shippers/Fiora fanboys, like barely any Shulkelia art even exists and I see zero talk from the supposed pushy Shulkelia fans? They have like 30 freaking fics in existence and half of them are Melia sulking about how Fiora is being lovey dovey with Shulk and showing they actually got together after all so don't even really count as Shulkelia fics!! In my searching for Shulkelia content I come across so many comments from people who like the ship trying to downplay their enjoyment of it and placate any potential Shiora fans reading their comments with "oh but Shulk/Fiora is cute too! i still like them together! i only like Shulk/Melia in a close friends kind of way, or just to make Melia happy idc about the ship i just like seeing her smile!" so like... What reality do these other guys live in where they got bombarded with Shulkelia over and over because I wish I lived in it!!! Something's up with some Fiora fans idk. Maybe I just had back luck in my searching, but try it yourself and see. I'm not crazy or making this up, I could just have been seeing all 20 or whatever number of Shiora's rude fans but... they do exist, and I have yet to see similar behavior from Shulkelia fans.

And this isn't all just me being a lurker looking at rando's comments as well. I even have a bit of a secondhand-experience story to tell about it! (The specific timeline of the initial details might be jumbled a bit, but I do remember the gist of it and still have the DMs to confirm some of the facts!)

I used to be active on Twitter, and I followed a lot of different Xenoblade fan artists on there. One day a certain artist posted a WIP of Melia and Shulk laying next to each other on a hill where Shulk was smiling at her, and although the artist deleted it (for reasons you will soon learn about) I think they wrote the Japanese ship name of the two on the tweet for it. Either way, I do recall before the WIP was posted they tweeted about liking Shulkelia, or rather ShuMeri as the Japanese ship name is called, (although in much the same "i like Melia so i like the thought of her being happy. Shulk belongs with Fiora though! i still ship them!" please-don't-be-mad-at-me way that I have never seen a Fiora/Shiora fan do) and wanting to draw something for it. Even though this particular artist posted in Japanese, a language I don't know 99% of, I was able to get the gist of their tweets through the translation feature and my knowledge of what the characters' names are in Japanese. And despite how hard this artist tried to be nice, tried to show how much they weren't trying to be mean to Shiora fans (they even had drawn Shiora art months earlier!), they got a wave of hate directed at them from Japanese fans which I saw in real time.

And if you doubt this because the tweets are now deleted, and because even when they were up I only read them through an A.I. translation, I felt so bad for this poor artist that I DM-ed them (regrettably in English, since I didn't trust my knowledge of Japanese to not end up making me say something I didn't intend or in a rude/informal tone) to show there was at least one other person out there that enjoyed ShuMeri and was excited to see their art. And they fortunately understood my message and knew English to message me back and told me direct quotes of what was thrown at them, which I still have in my DMs and will quote:

"'You are denying the original story. It's too unsatisfying and ugly' 'It's not right to make Shulk and Melia lovers.' someone said. At other times, people have replied to my art, complaining about Melia's behavior in the story, as I tweeted the other day. I've had a lot of negative comments about ShuMeri and Melia." (With regards to the whole "complaining about Melia's behavior in the story" thing, if I recall that was from people saying she had no right to have a crush on Shulk in the first place, which... I thought you guys said canon is sacrosanct? It is canon that Melia had a crush on Shulk, and if you don't like that then you don't respect the canon/story and aren't a real fan. Do you see how silly this sounds???)

So. Tell me if you have ever seen any Melia fans or Shulkelia fans ever behave like this. Because I sure haven't. (Like even this ask [which I am not upset about nor trying to be rude to the anon at all, on the contrary I'm super enjoying talking about this topic! it's just the dichotomy here is interesting to me!) is proof to me: how many times can you say you've seen comments on Shiora art or asks sent to Xenoblade fanblogs asking why someone doesn't like Shulkelia, do you hate Shulkelia, what's wrong with Shulkelia? Like I get one is canon and the other isn't, but like... have you seen shipping culture? Literally all of the most popular ships for any given media are non-canon, that's half the fun of shipping!!!

"Don't let mean fans sour the original work" (and again, just to make sure I'm clear, I do not consider the anon who sent this ask to be mean or rude in any way! I'm referring to other randos here!) and all that, but it's kind of hard for me to like a ship when it has fans that act like this... going around projecting by accusing fans of a different ship of their own behavior, or saying things that contradict their own points about how important canon is to them. Thinking back on how we like characters we can relate to, isn't it interesting how fans of a brash, headstrong, do-what-I-want-and-fuck-the-consequences character who gets everything she wants in canon act in a pushy or even rude way to fans of a reserved, self-reproaching, I-will-do-what-is-best-for-others-first character who has so much taken away from her, and the latter fans always defer to the former and feel guilty when they talk about liking their character even as they do so much to be nice to them? It's pretty interesting I think, it's like when dogs look like their owners or something haha.

To end this off, since even though I have more to say (which if you would like to hear please let me know!) I've talked for far too long now haha, I really want to post the rest of the DM that the artist I talked to (who to this day hasn't made another Shulkelia/Shulkelia-esque fanart again, and interestingly never gets hate on their Shalvis art which is again a non-canon "story-denying" ship, too. Maybe they just blocked the rude people and if so good for them, but it's interesting still that they haven't draw Shulkelia since):

"I think it's useless to argue about who is better, Fiora or Melia, and I don't want them to get me involved in that fight. However, I received words of encouragement from many kind followers like you. I now understand important things; 'Don't worry about mean people' and 'Draw what I like.' Fan art should be free, shouldn't it? If I draw ShuMeri, some mean people might appear again. But there are many more kind people like you. When I think of that, I'm not afraid anymore. I will try to draw ShuMeri one day. Maybe I'll get depressed again because of mean people, but then you can tell me, 'You draw fanart freely, right!'... Please tell me that. You made me feel better and made me cry with happiness. Thank you so much. :)"

-Mirim, who can be found here currently, and their old account where the drama happened is here. This is the piece of artwork they got so much hate for. Shulk and Melia aren't even touching in it and Mirim didn't even mention their ship name.

#ask #please support mirim they're a very skilled and underrated artist!!#anyway every time i get an ask i get so excited haha i really like talking to people about things i/we like #(well if i got a mean/''kys'' ask i wouldn't be excited but you get what i mean haha)#and to be clear i do not think this ask was hostile at all! and even if it was meant to be... so what?#i enjoyed answering it and i hope what i had to say was interesting and satisfied the anon's curiosity #also i *do* want to talk about other things in xenoblade i like because there's **so** much i have to say #like if you could see the size of my notes section in my voice line doc you would know. you would KNOW how much i like basically #every single thing about this game haha. probably too much. it's over 700 lines of text long #i just don't feel like there's an audience most of the time for me and it feels a little sad talking into the void haha #hence my enjoyment of getting asks of any kind!#so if anyone has any questions for me about literally anything at all please send me an ask!#in return i will write you a thesis paper about your question free of charge as you can see here lol #i really hope i didn't come off as mean or bitter here it's just there's a huge dichotomy going on with shulkelia from what i've seen #as i mentioned if it's about canonicity why don't shalvis and meliora get hate? i've literally never seen a single mean comment about them #unprompted on a random one-off comment or directly on fanworks of it #maybe it's more about melia than shulkelia since there's also a lot of hate towards her that i've seen too #in a ''ew melia fans are so conceited thinking she's the best-written character and fiora is shallow'' and it's like #congratulations! you have just encountered a ''different opinion''! perhaps they like melia because they think she is well-written and #not to spite you in particular! maybe they think fiora is shallow bc a lot of her character objectively revolves around her crush on shulk!#and it's okay to not like it! it's also okay to like it! this is what art is about: having your own thoughts on it!#it is fun to share these thoughts and i enjoy it! but i do not enjoy when people are mean to others because they like #Fake Person/Relationship A but other people like Fake Person/Relationship B! it's silly to get super mad about it and it's rude to be mean!

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monsterhugger · 2 years

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if ur trying to avoid ygo spoilers (specifically for dm/gx/5ds) I’m not saying stop trying and I’m not going to intentionally ruin it for you but like. it’s a 10+ yr old show. statute of limitations on that is kinda up dude

#tbh having gone relatively spoiler free (w the exception of things shown in duel links) for all of ygo so far???#it’s also not that hard to just. not engage w fan content until you finish something. just don’t.#I’ve done it for more recent things as well by just waiting until I’ve finished the game/show/whatever #to go into the tag here or on ao3 or anywhere #but apparently a lot of ppl don’t do this? like I’ve spoken to ppl who have gone into fan content for shows they haven’t finished #or even STARTED #like all due respect but that’s insane to me #but yeah I also wasn’t too worried abt avoiding ygo spoilers bc. i didn’t expect anyone to avoid spoiling a show that’s been out that long #i just don’t look at fanworks until I’m done w smthn it’s not a spoiler thing it’s just how I do it #but ig this is the time that I say. no my blog is not spoiler-free but you would be hard pressed to find a ygo blog that is in 2022

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rui-drawsbox · 3 months

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remembering the most memorable mc's (with canon appearences) from the otomes i played

all of them are phone games btw. and looong rambling about the games after the cut!

Mystic messenger has been in my radar since i was in elementary school but i played it for the first time after the spanish traslation came out (2017 i think?) Seven shaped my type in such a specific way that im not really sure why loved him so much (it was the whole "he loves you in every route" stuff). I like a lot the default mc, most of the fandom did and that was enough to won me over

Rosa is top tier protagonist tbh, Tears of Themis has really good story and characters (as far i played, not a lot but i enjoyed it) The reason i'm not that much of a fan is bc the game is expensive asf and not very free to play friendly. You're either lucky or have a big wallet with the gacha

i miss my wife man(Marius)

Ephemeral has to be one of the best free to play otomes i've played tbh (if my memories aren't tricking me, it's been years) Good artwork, good storyline, good characters and as far i remember you can unlock one chapter of the character route per day (mabye two days, idk) and the mc's background has an important role in every route (she's a zombie! she's pretty now but eventually will fall apart, aaaaand her story gets expanded in one of the routes!) ((shes also adorable)) There's also a sequel, if you wanted more of the boys! never finished it but i'd recommend it

Honorable mentions! Huellitas Mágicas is a great game! has a really good cast with well fleshed arcs for all the characters, even the scondary ones! The game shines more for the development of *all* the characters rather than just the protagonist/ml. The main theme is overcoming insecurities! Each love interest has a different way of helping our (very insecure) protagonist and helping different characters with their own struggles :DD

10/10 i recommend this game if you want something cute and can be finished in a few hours, if i remember right. It also has a sequel! with like- 12 new love interests, also never finished it bc i didnt found a guide that worked for me but ñek

A3! is my canon event as a gacha player. Discovered the english/global server, tried it and got bored, left it for a few months, tried it again and fell in love, noticed the game was going to shut down bc low sales -HAHA :(-. This is not a otome btw, this is here bc Izumi has to be one of my favorite protagonists in gacha games ever

last but not least! Obey me! Shall we date? oh dear, what have they done to you :(. The original had intense powercreep to force you to pull cards -multiple times bc that makes them stronger- and even now, the company showed a lot of favoritism to some characters, leaving others to dust bc they don't make the same money. Not to say, they released a new game with the same cast and new main story (ignoring all what happend before). And let me say: THEY LITERALLY WANTED TO KILL THE ORIGINAL GAME.

Nightbringer might be a decent game but i don't trust the devs anymore, i still remember what happend with Asmo's birthday right after the release, and honestly i don't want to sit there watching how they disrespect my favorite characters again and again and again. Loved the characters hated the devs. 5/10 you can play it if you want but i don't recommend spending money on it, it's not worth it, just search #obey me here in tumblr and enjoy the amazing fanworks that i can assure you have a lot more love than the game itself

i miss my wife man (mammon and levi)

#got sting by the nostalgia mosquito #thinking about it i kinda want to play huellitas magicas again #mystic messenger #mysme #tears of themis #rosa tears of themis #ephemeral #its that the right tag?#huellitas magicas #a3 #a3! act! addict! actors!#izumi tachibana #obey me #obey me shall we date #otome game #tot

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sweetmage · 6 months

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Did not expect those posts about Theo's snubbing at MCM London (this has sense been clarified and is no longer entirely relevant but the rest still is) and BG3 fandom racism to breach containment so hard and I'm kind of regretting not including something more actionable in the posts, so I'll do that here. You are encouraged to reblog this, repost these links on your own, or add your own suggestions.

If you are bothered by Wyll's lack of content in the game compared to other characters you can submit feedback to Larian. While this carries no guarantee, our odds of them revisiting him and doing him justice are a lot better if we show them that there's interest.

This is the link to their feedback page. Select "feedback" in the drop down menu that says "report type". For your convenience, this is the current version number of the game as of October 30th (patch #3):

v4.1.1.3767641

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There is also a Wyllvember event taking place on twitter and tumblr during November 1 - November 7th to show some love for him via fanworks. You can find the prompt lists here:

Twitter

Tumblr

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Here is Theo's Cameo if you'd like a personal message from him, would like him to read or respond to something as Wyll, etc.

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For writers and/or people wanting to examine their biases in general in relation to black characters, I would also recommend perusing some of the black focused tags on this blog (Writing With Color) as they have a lot of great resources when it comes to tropes, stereotypes, and biases in media.

This is also a great resource in general and I recommend all writers bookmark it!

#wyll ravengard #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 fandom racism #lemme know if i made a typo or mislinked something. i am sleepy lol #bg3 #antiblackness #jun rambles

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zarla-s · 8 months

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"My friends keep talking about TF2 and I don't know what it is or how to get into it or where to start, help" well I'm here to tell you that it's super easy and won't take you more than maybe thirty minutes.

Watch the Meet the Team videos. They are nine of them and they're each only a minute or two long. Medic's is the longest at four minutes. They'll tell you basically everything you need to know about that character.

Watch Expiration Date. It's fifteen minutes and will basically tell you how they all interact with each other.

That's it. Now you know everything you need to know to understand the vast majority of TF2 fanworks. That's all it really takes. For extra credit though...

Read the comics. There are six issues (quiet sobbing) and you can read them on the site for free. There are also comics for certain updates which are fun and great! All the comics are great and tell you a lot about the characters.

Play the game. It's free! This is probably the hardest step though if you're not good at this kind of thing. You don't have to play it though to understand most of what goes on in TF2 stuff, but it does help.

Watch the other movies they made for updates, like End of the Line (technically this is a community made movie) or Jungle Inferno.

Watch Emesis Blue if you want to understand all the weird creepy fanart with a BLU Medic floating around. It's a fanmade full-length horror/surrealist movie and it's kind of its own thing compared to the rest of this. It's good though.

You can also read each class's Voice Responses on the tf2wiki to get more of a sense of what they're like! A lot of little details about them are in in-game dialogue.

#team fortress 2 #i must keep luring people into my tf2 web #we all gmod float down here #we're never getting issue 7 #go to bed zar

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kasarasun · 2 months

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what if I made a thing or it already was that while Airplane wrote the world, Peerless Cucumber illustrated it (only the animals. And Binghe, fighting the animals.) And then then then

He'd totally do it on an alt account, right?? Peerless Cucumber can't be seen making fanart!! (And he's good at it. Like, wiki is using his art in the monsters and beasts pages (that Peerless Cucumber volleyed for. He also separated it from the plant section.) Because 1 its good 2 the artstyle is consistent 3 there isn't a lot of monster official art, other than that one with the black moon rhinoceros python and those other ones and 4 it's really that good)

Haha incomprehensible parenthesis nesting aside, Airplane is watching the forums, right? Not sure about other stuff in canon but he looks at the forums and the fanart and the fiction and most of it is probably corn and binghe and just a little bit of mobei-jun and also the wives tm but!! There's also that guy!!! The monsters guy!! (People would probably suspect 'Drawing the Beast's Ire'- or some other sex euphemism I'm not good at making those- of being Peerless Cucumber because 1 the writing style is the same 2 Peerless Cucumber is the number 1 contributor to the PIDW wiki and a lot of it is the monsters and beasts section and it makes sense, yes??) Anyway, Airplane shooting towards the sky suspects but not too seriously suspects Mr ire of being cucumber's fanart alt but uh uh that ends pre-transmigration section

So, Shen Yuan starts running about, right? Things seem really... familiar, maybe thats the word?- for some reason. This is because every animal and plant he's ever drawn, sketched- maybe even thought about but that's a stretch?- is his design. The firefly parallels hold their forelimbs like butterflies. That is how far down it goes. Maybe it doesn't come up until later, but beasts and monsters from fanfiction get involved, oc species, too... anyway,

Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky transmigrates 30 years (iirc) before Peerless Cucumber. He was an avid enough follower of Drawing the Beast's Ire to recognize that these are their designs! Here's where it gets really crazy. Xiao-Mobei comes along, and while he's still pretty young, Airplane can tell that this is Drawing Ire's design! Some aspect, maybe his ears or teeth, (this isn't a well built theoretical tangent) of Mobei isnt canon. Its Drawing Ire's. From that one Northern Kingdom collection. Whatever stretched his world building into coherence, completion, didn't just pull from fanwork, official art, whatever it could find, it went for Drawing the Beast's Ire's designs specifically. Damn that's crazy Airplane ahahaha moving on,

This is getting really long so I'll be a bit more concise, (want to know more? Talk to me. Please talk to me. I want to interact with the fandom. Ask me questions. Poke your fingers into my cage.) This all comes to head at the Immortal alliance conference. The monsters and beasts really start pouring in! And Shen Qingqiu/Yuan remembers his creations. However, he assumes that this is because like 1 other person maybe was Drawing ghost head spiders.

Hey, Peerless Cucumber really liked the monsters, right? The deadlier, crazier, more intricate, the design the better! So maybe, when he was drawing, he... added some things, really believable, logical additions, really just small creative decisions...

Anyway, the monsters that Drawing the Beast's Ire made were where it came to a head.

Lets have another Canon divergence. Maybe, during or after Binghe gets pushed in, out of the rifts comes a species that Drawing Ire created. It's beautiful, poisonous, beloved, and really quite deadly. Shen Yuan/Qingqiu, Peerless Cucumber, Drawing the Beast's Ire... realizes, quite like airplane before him, that he's illustrated, practically sculpted with his own hands, monsters from the Endless Abyss with claws and teeth and poisons as deadly as Peerless Cucumber thought that the really cool monsters could deserve. It feels like he's the one cutting, biting, poisoning his sweet little sheep. It feels like he's digging out the marrow from his little white lotus disciple's bones.

Ok it is shut up time 👍

#svsss #shen yuan #shang qinghua #idea vomiting #mobei jun #my writing #long post #text post

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sofiadragon · 11 months

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Hey fanfiction loving friend!

AO3 has the ability to turn off comments, moderate comments, restrict comments to logged in users only, or let anyone comment on your story. Most other fanfiction hosting websites do not allow comments to be turned off and in the case of some (wattpad) highly encourage comments even on individual paragraphs.

Over on reddit, someone said it is an unwritten rule of fanfiction that you should never leave a negative or critical comment on a story. This was countered most strongly by many arguments. Despite many people asserting that their stance was the one truth and that there was no debate on the topic - there was a lot of debate about what criticism even is and where the line should be for if giving concrit is alright.

So give this some thought:

If you have tea to spill, examples or an argument you want to make, please do. I have some that go both ways, but I'm going to wait for a few responses so I don't pre-empt the results. I'm not going to vote myself for a while, either, so I won't know which way the poll is leaning when I do pour my tea. I tried to cover all the flavors of debate I've seen in the many "definitive" posts I have read here and on reddit. Please reblog for a wider sample!

#fanfiction discourse #fan fiction #fanfiction #fan work #fan etiquette #commentary #fanfiction.net #ao3 author #ao3 reader #ao3feed #ao3 #wattpad comments #comments on fanfic #looking for constructive criticism #constructive criticism #concrit welcome #concrit not welcome #concrit

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copperbadge · 1 year

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Hi Sam! Because I just saw the post on ao3 and donations, and a different post about ao3s updated statement regarding chatgpt/ai generated fiction, and you generally have a good read on things like this - what's your opinion on it, and how its meant to be interpreted?

(I want to good faith believe, and its a complicated/ongoing topic, but wanted to hear your thoughts)

I don't know which post about the update you mean, Anon, but I assume the update referenced is the one the OTW posted on 5/13 about AI scraping and ChatGPT. I do have some thoughts but I want to go through the post a little because I don't think I'm actually needed to interpret this one -- I think with some critical thought anyone can, but a lot of people don't get critical thinking training in school, so I want to do a little demo of it.

Pre-emptively, this is a list of things I'm not an expert on: copyright law, data scraping, AI, website design, and the legality of certain forms of freedom of expression. But honestly for this you don't need to be.

First and foremost, we really have no reason to disbelieve OTW when they speak on this subject. While there's debate and discussion about AO3 and certainly it's imperfect in a number of directions, they are pretty transparent, generally speaking. I don't believe there is a reason to approach AO3 with an assumption of disingenuity in a general sense. However, the organization is run by humans, who are imperfect and can sometimes be deceitful, so it's good to always approach public statements with a critical eye.

So the post is talking about two separate but related issues: preventing AIs from scraping AO3, and policy on AI-generated works being posted. What we are looking for, from both, is a combination of things: we want what they're saying to make sense both in the world, and within the statement -- no contradictions, nothing that seems illogical, nothing that seems like baseless assumption or generalization. We want simple prose, and we want a look at the reasoning behind the actions they're taking.

When talking about AI scraping, they start with what they've done to counteract scraping, speaking in relatively simple terms but with enough specificity that if you wanted you could look up anything you didn't understand. They list what they've done to prevent scraping, and they also discuss the issues with the kinds of measures that would need to be implemented to fully prevent it. They mention specific examples that people were concerned about, and they talk about what they'll be doing going forward.

In terms of the text, this all makes sense to me -- here's what we've done, here's the problem with doing more, here's what we plan to do next. Internally, no matter what the topic is, this section is logical, there are no contradictions and no particular evasions. Critically it passes muster. Additionally, with the knowledge I do have of website design and data management, I can tell that they're doing all they reasonably can. From a standpoint of ignorance, the statement makes internal sense; from a standpoint of knowledge, they're doing what I would do in their place.

When talking about AI-generated works, likewise, they're pretty open about their process and reasoning. They say look, this isn't against TOS as it stands, and here's a reminder of why, followed by a mission statement. The bolded text of that statement is very clear, and correlates with what I said in an earlier post: their policy is maximum inclusivity of fanworks. This statement is consistent with policy AO3 has held for years, which is well-known to the community.

They go on to discuss how AI-generated work could violate spam policies, but those spam policies apply to everyone everywhere, and they remind us that we can always have the Policy & Abuse team examine a work we're skeptical of. (Inside baseball, I know some people who have beef with Policy & Abuse for being unresponsive, particularly in certain cases where harassment is involved. However, within this document, they are saying both "here's why we do this" and "if you have a problem, here's the first step.")

Again, after saying what's happening and what's being done about it, they move on to say that these are only current policies, and may change depending on future developments, and that those changes will be made available for public discussion. This is once more internally logical, and with the benefit of outside knowledge, perfectly rational.

Because I agree with them -- when I saw there was an "updated" statement from OTW on AI-generated prose I was frankly alarmed because I think banning AI-generated prose from AO3 causes way more problems than it solves. It's pretty restrained of them not to bring up the issue in more detail, but it's not difficult for those of us familiar with the community to project outwards as to why banning AI prose might be a bad thing.

So, think about what happens if an AI prose ban goes into effect and you read a fic you think was AI generated. How can you tell? Have you read some of the human-generated prose on AO3? Some of it's not great. So really in that case, what you're banning is someone saying they AI-generated the fic, which means AI-generated fic would still show up, it just couldn't be tagged as such. It's like Prohibition -- they banned alcohol and people still drank. They poisoned the alcohol and people drank the poisoned alcohol (check out paragraph five for specifics). If you ban something off the archive it'll still show up there, it just won't be tagged, so instead of a bag labeled "dead dove, do not eat" you just step on a land mine in your kitchen. AI prose is not content in the way that say incest or underage sex is; I'm against banning those as well, but at least with those you can pretty clearly say "yes this is" or "no this isn't" based on objective criteria. You can't do that with "was this made by a human or a machine" when it comes to prose.

Which leads to the second issue: if a text is reported as AI-generated and the author says "No, I wrote that," how do you prove otherwise? If you report an author for uploading AI-generated prose, all that will happen is either they just say "No, I wrote that" or someone on AO3's abuse team unilaterally decides that yes, this is AI prose, and punts someone off the website who might just be kind of a crap writer, which is not a sin or a crime. Either way it's a waste of time. So introducing a ban on AI prose is really just introducing either a useless show-law that will still cause AI prose to be posted there, just without proper tagging, or a tool to harass people with. Harassment is already an issue on the archive.

And we can reason all this out for ourselves simply by asking "What is the good-faith reason for not banning AI prose?" Assuming good faith isn't just for blindly trusting, after all; it's also for reasoning out other peoples' motivations for things.

And frankly fandom gets a little weird about assuming bad faith when it comes to anyone who has the least bit of power within the community. It's something I've encountered personally, as someone with some clout in fandom who is occasionally assumed to have weirdly malevolent intent. I'm not malicious. I'm just an awkward dumbass. But this is just something fandom does, so it's also good to check oneself and go, "Hey, is this person being genuinely malevolent or am I just assuming wickedness because it's easier to be mad at a villain than to explore the complexities of these acts?"

It's why I deliberately didn't speculate about the person who uploaded an AI fanfic and didn't respond to others doing so in comments. That person is right there. You don't have to assume any intent at all, you can just ask them. And it's so much more educational to do so!

So yeah, actually real props to whoever wrote that post by the OTW -- it's internally logical, reasonably transparent, simply written, and avoids a lot of prose pitfalls that I would absolutely fall into (did fall into, in this very post). I think within this area, they are doing what they can to prevent scraping and making the correct decisions, for now, regarding AI content on the archive.

#ao3 #otw #ai prose #censorship #archive

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sonicenvy · 11 months

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Let's have a chat about AO3

Hiya friends and loyal followers! My last post about AO3 blew up yesterday so I figured now would be a good time to continue the conversation about AO3.

As I mentioned in my previous post (and probably in multiple other previous posts):

AO3 is NOT a social media site. AO3 is an ARCHIVE.

So let's delve into that a bit more since people don't seem to be getting that. Fanfiction predates the internet, and was transmitted via the internet way before sites like AO3 and FF dot net. Relatively speaking, I am a fanfiction newcomer, as I first started reading fanfiction in ... 2011? or thereabouts. I say this to say that I obviously don't have as personal of a memory of a time before fanfiction archive sites (my bitty fan experiences were on teaspoon and lcfanfic), but I certainly know plenty of people via fandom online that absolutely do.

For the newest children to fanfiction please check out the following pieces of reading to get started on your fandom history education:

“Fanfiction.” Fanlore Wiki. Accessed June 15, 2023. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanfiction. Archived [https://archive.is/yJpOq].

“So I’m on AO3 and I See a Lot of People Who Put ‘I Do Not Own [Insert Fandom Here]’ before Their Story.” sonicenvy.tumblr.com, July 2, 2016. https://sonicenvy.tumblr.com/post/146818589611/mikkeneko-thepioden. Archived [https://archive.is/FRNCy]

ofhouseadama, Emily. “A Brief History of Fandom, for Those on Here Who Somehow Think Tumblr Invented Fandom.” sonicenvy.tumblr.com, May 21, 2014. https://sonicenvy.tumblr.com/post/131935827010/ofhouseadama-a-brief-history-of-fandom-for. Archived [http://archive.today/j2Rfq]

mizstorge, fantastic-nonsense, and fanculturesfancreativity. “The Places Fandom Dwells: A Cautionary Tale.” fantastic-nonsense.tumblr.com, June 29, 2017. https://fantastic-nonsense.tumblr.com/post/162395547190/the-places-fandom-dwells-a-cautionary-tale. Archived [https://archive.ph/QK2wI]

As you read through this stuff, three things should become apparent to you:

Fanworks have always existed in tenuous space -- that is, they have always been under threat of removal, or threat of loss, whether this loss was through events like the livejournal strikethrough, the loss of a fandom specific website, destruction of physical copies of the work, or C&D/legal action from original creators of the work.

Fandom has a long and colored history with many of the most defining events of early fandom history being related to threats to the community.

A need was ripe for a place to save and ARCHIVE fanworks and protect them from deletion, legal action, corporate sanitization efforts, site deaths due to the deaths of admins, etc etc.

Out of all of this, comes The Organization For Transformative Works (2007), and their brand new site Archive of Our Own (2008). The stated intention of Archive of Our Own (AO3) (bolding mine):

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization, established by fans in 2007, to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. We believe that fanworks are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate. We are proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. We preserve our fannish economy, values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans. The Archive of Our Own offers a noncommercial and nonprofit central hosting place for fanworks using open-source archiving software.

Source: Works, Organization for Transformative. “Archive of Our Own Beta.” Archive of Our Own. Accessed June 15, 2023. https://archiveofourown.org/about. Archived [http://archive.today/QYtbM]

You may also want to check out the original LiveJournal Brainstorming sessions for AO3 by astolat as archived here [https://web.archive.org/web/20220627134339/https://astolat.livejournal.com/150556.html] if you need further clarity on this point.

Some neat stuff from astolat's original posts that I find are relevant:

making it easy for people to download stories or even the entire archive for offline reading (thus widely preserving the work in case some disaster does take it down)

code-wise able to support a huge archive of possibly millions of stories.

allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult ...

As we can see both from the mission statement of OTW/AO3 and from astolat herself in the brainstorming sessions, AO3 is an ARCHIVE. It is a project that is meant to preserve and provide access to fanworks. Run for fans, by fans and meant to host any and all kind of content with none of the commercialization or censorship that fans found elsewhere. Before AO3 there were certainly numerous, disconnected, fandom specific archives for fanfiction or other fanworks. Many of these old sites have been archived (see we're getting that word again) via the opendoors project. Some, like teaspoon or lcfanfic still exists and are semi-active.

A common thread is that writers and readers weren't just using the archive site to connect. They were doing more connection through other sites like dreamwidth, livejournal, facebook, their emails and later tumblr or twitter. Archive sites were meant as a supplement to other fan spaces like message boards, blogs and journals.

So, dear friends, you might ask, what is an archive?

An archive is a place where documents, artifacts and records are kept and preserved for future reference, use and access. Archives help us maintain a better understanding of the past and protect objects, writings, documents, records and more in longevity. In the context of fanwork archiving, this means preserving fanworks in longevity/perpetuity so that fans can continue to access them for enjoyment and for historical purposes. Archiving fanwork is vital to preserving and, indeed creating fan culture and identity.

To read more about archives in general, check out this article from the American History Museum of the Smithsonian (https://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/about/what-are-archives) or this one from the US National Archives (https://www.archives.gov/about/info/whats-an-archives.html).

So AO3 is an archive. Why does this matter?

Oh, boy, I am about to get LIS nerdy on y'all. At this point in the post we can all agree that AO3 is and always has been an archive (it's in the name...). When we view and understand the site starting from this premise, a lot of, frankly stupid as fuck arguments that people have about AO3 look even dumber. Understanding AO3 primarily as an archive helps us understand:

The tagging system. Given AO3 is an archive, the tags for content on the site function exactly the same as headings in a library archive. They are designed to store information about the fic (that is, they are intended as metadata) which is then used to find the record of the fic in the archive. This is why it is important to tag what is in your fic, and to use tags properly, using the agreed meanings of particular tags.

The kinds of content that are permitted and excluded under TOS IV. The archive permits fanworks, which include: fanfiction, fanart, podfic, and fan videos. The archive thus excludes things that are not fanwork (records with no content (aka "placeholder fics"), posts asking for writing prompts or submissions, posts looking for fic, commerical promotions of ANY kind, original fiction with no relation to fan content, spam etc). Every library and archive has their own collections policies, and AO3 is not an exception. Collections Policies are generally guided by the mission statement(s) of the archiving party/library. As we saw above in both the official about page and the original brainstorming posts from astolat, AO3 is a library for fanworks, meant to preserve fanworks and is in opposition to advertising and commercialization. Therefore, if the thing you want to add to the library of AO3 is not a fanwork or contains commercialization, it does not qualify to be an object of the archive. Re: the "placeholder fic" post that I didn't know was going to blow up so much: imagine you go to the library to get a book and open it to find that it is empty or you get a DVD and play it only to find that it is the movie theater trailer for the movie. Doesn't that make no sense?

Why there is NO censoring of "adult" or other quote on quote "objectionable content". The archive does not chose to preserve works based on subjective quality or "moral purity" type standards. This is true in libraries and museums as well. We keep and save materials that people find objectionable as archiving and librarianship are and have always been diametrically opposed to censorship. As an archive AO3 follows this. Moreover, you can see in astolat's original post "allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult" as a founding idea.

Why there is no advertising, and why this includes you adding your Ko-fi or paypal or whatever the fuck. Outside of the fact that doing this violates TOS and invalidates OTW lawyer arguments for the legal existence of fanworks under US Fair Use, AO3 as an archive is meant to be a keeper of fan records, not a space for promotions. Archives do keep records (and indeed some archives keep records of advertising) but they, themselves are not using their platform to advertise for anything else.

Why there is no "AO3 algorithm". The kinds of algorithmic feed generators that sites like the t*kt*ok or whatever use are antithetical to the mission of archiving stuff and providing access to it. In an archive you search for content based on terms and headings and self-select. I'm not on the t*kt*k or whatever and I actively block and disable all "suggestion" type things so I don't entirely understand what y'all are looking with this.

Ok, that's great, why are you telling us all of this?

There is a concerning trend of newcomers both young and older to fandom and fanfiction that have not taken off the social media brain filter before coming on board. Some excellent tags I've seen on The Post™ that spawned this one include:

#guys quit bringing the worst elements of capitalism to AO3 (via @watchtowersystem)

#algorithms have rotted people's brains i swear (via @pearly--rose)

#omg stop trying to social mediaify ao3 (via @greyduckgreygoose)

There were also some bangers on my reddit post on this topic as well, but the reddit I posted it on is (rightfully) on blackout at the moment.

I think the sociamediafying of fanfiction that a lot of these people are bringing has a few major negatives:

social mediafied fandom views fanwork soley as consumable content, creating more passive, entitled participants in fandom. For fanwork=content social media brain folks, the fact that fanwork is meant to be an active and engaging thing is lost. Fanwork is a gift from one fan to other fans, it is a point for discussion, a result of people's passion and creativity. It is transformative, out of the box and part of building a niche community. When you start to see it as "content" like a random object on a feed you stop valuing it, analyzing it, and interacting with it in the same way, and are more likely to passively consume what you see as content. Social media has made "content" out of everything, and everything becomes something to scroll past in a few seconds, always looking for more stuff, the newest stuff, etc etc. It's obviously very tied to the experience of social media being used to sell you shit, but that's another conversation I think.

fanwork=content social media brain also allows some of these people to post incredibly demanding comments for "more content" on fancreators works or makes them think it's ok (and indeed creates the same result as what the writer is creating) to feed someone's incomplete fic into an ai to get a "completion".

fanwork=content social media brain also means that when these folks start creating content they feel entitled to views, hits, kudos, etc etc, and feel like it is ok to do things that they see as "gaming" the system to get their fics to be at the top of the pack. They begin to care too much about posting to get their "content" the most views because that's how things work on social media.

fanwork=content social media brain also makes some of these people think that "fic" that is "written" by an ai is acceptable fanwork, because they do not view fanwork as artwork/writing with merit, as much as an entertainment property to be consumed. How the meat gets made becomes irrelevant, because the end result is the only thing that is important.

social mediafying of fandom is something that has helped a lot of advertising and commercialization sneak its way into our spaces, which actively hurts our chances of building good communities.

social mediafying of fandom turns fanwork creation and fandom into popularity contests, which is bad for all fan spaces. The point is that we're being weird together. I've seen new, young authors post on reddit about how they feel so bad about their fic because it doesn't have 1000s of hits or because they feel incapable of writing things (even things they might want to explore) because "no one will read it, and it will not become popular". This makes me very sad.

social mediafying of fanwork also turns right around into .... wait ... you guessed it .... censorship! people are now practising self-censorship that is utterly unnecessary and completely sad to me because they are afraid of getting deleted from anywhere for "objectionable content". This carries over into new users on AO3 doing things like using leet speech for curse words, sexual content and more in the TAGS or the body of their AO3 fics. Stop Don't. You can say fuck, dead, kill, murder, cunt, cock, and whatever the fucking hell you want on AO3. That was the whole goddamn point.

These people are trying to bring fanwork=content social media brain to places like AO3. I'm not entirely sure why.

tldr; AO3 isn't a social media site for talking with your following or posting about ideas that you've had. It isn't a popularity contest. It isn't a place where there will be no inappropriate content. It isn't a place for advertising or commerical promotion. It is an ARCHIVE OF FANWORKS meant to be "allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult."

Anyone of you fans older, wiser, more well versed in fan history, and more articulate than me, please feel free to add to this. Ditto on any of you other funky LIS friends out here on tumblr dot hell.

#AO3 #archive of our own #fanfiction #fandom #fandumb #fan history #fandom history #long post for ts

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beatrice-otter · 1 year

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Why AO3 needs to be accountable for reducing fandom racism in its internal culture and the archive

You've probably seen end-otw-racism in the last few days, trying to get people to support their efforts to get the AO3 to actually DO something about the racism problem that AO3 has admitted that it has. Here's their call to action post, with a brief summary of the problems and what they want people to do about it. Basically, there have been problems with racism at AO3 since the beginning, and they did acknowledge the problems in 2020 and promise to fix them, and haven't actually ... done most of the things they said they would. They have started to implement blocking and muting, which is good, because those are vital tools for fans of color to protect themselves from racist harassment, but they haven't updated their TOS or changed their Abuse policies or hired the diversity consultant they said they were going to. And that's a big problem. Among other things the original head of the Abuse team--the one who set it up and developed the policies and procedures still in use today!--was a noted racist who has since been banned from at least one convention and at least one fanwork exchange for making a lot of fans of color uncomfortable. This is not the only problem with a white supremacist culture in the organization, but it is emblematic of the larger issues with the organization's culture that have not been addressed. (That link is from 2020, but nothing substantial has changed since then, alas.) If you think that the AO3 is fine, and people are overstating things, I really encourage you to go read that post and the links in it. And then go read these tweet threads about what the state of things at AO3 is now. Maybe also go read Stitch's excellent essays on racism in fandom (and remember that people have tried to destroy her life--get her fired and get her on terrorist watch lists--for writing them). What sorts of things does end-otw-racism want? Basic stuff that AO3 should already be doing. For example, people should not be allowed to harass people through AO3 using trolling fanworks, harassing tags, and comments. Yet when people use these parts of AO3 infrastructure to harass people of color and create a hostile environment for them, AO3 Abuse says there's nothing they can do and it doesn't count as harassment under the site's TOS. end-otw-racism is not calling for censorship. They are calling for the OTW to realize that AO3 currently has a Nazi Bar Problem. You cannot have a safe that is safe for both nazis and people of color. If you try, the nazis will harass and drive out the people of color. Tolerance is not a moral principle, it is a peace treaty; if one side does not abide by it, asking the other side to abide by it is asking them to lay down and accept their abuse. And free speech is incredibly important, but it has limits; and those limits are where you are using speech to harass people and incite violence, which some people are using AO3 to do! I hope that you will all support end-otw-racism in calling for the AO3 to fulfill its promises and address the issues in question, and I hope the AO3 will listen. comments Comment? https://ift.tt/4BR98XN

#dreamwidth #original post

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blocksgame · 9 months

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Tips on character voices when writing fic

This is written in mind for people writing fic in MCYT/QSMP/DSMP/Life series/etc kind of fandoms. But if anyone finds it useful for anything else, well then, hell yeah.

Character voice is big in all, uh, fiction, and mimicking it in any fanwork is big. But I think it’s especially big in these fandoms where the voices are so distinct – it’s usually how a Real Person Somewhere (the streamer) talks, versus something very scripted that you’d see in a TV show or novel. And it can be a big difference in your character sounding generic versus really feeling true to the original.

Listen to a bunch of your subject talking. If you want to write a character well, watch vods from their point of view, or episodes where they show up a bunch. Take note of what they say and how.

2. If you don’t know how to start doing that: try literally writing down what they say. Transcribe an actual exchange in fic-format. You probably won’t want to publish a literal exchange from canon, but it will give you a sense of how to physically write what they say.

3. If you do this (or just pay attention to how they talk), you will get a lot of: Stumbling, pauses, repeating words, filler words, weird sentence constructions, fragments, etc. I love em! Here’s something that comes through in improv much more than in novels or movies: Most people, even very charismatic people, are not very eloquent when they speak. Writing out conversations or sentences will give you a sense of the unique and delightful way in which your subject is not eloquent. vvvvv way more under cut vvvvv

(People use a LOT of filler/etc when they speak. It’s reasonable to cut back on this if it’s interfering with a nice-looking or readable result. I believe this is the eternal struggle of people who write transcripts – you want the transcript to be accurate, but there are also a lot of things you can obviously simplify and not lose the meaning. So you’ll end up falling somewhere on this spectrum either way. But I do think a lot of mediocre/generic fic dialogue is very stylized – it doesn’t sound like your guy because your guy literally wouldn’t say that. They would say it worse and more confusingly.)

(I’m serious, if you’ve never sat down with a short non-completely-scripted clip or real conversation or whatever and just written out exactly what was said, do it. It will make you better at writing.)

4. Wonda-cat made a really incredible list [link] of characterizing speech patterns for the Dream SMP members. But you can also do your own reconnaissance and come up with your own patterns, common phrases, etc.

5. You do not have to get EVERYTHING right. You’re not going to, like, get so deep into the speaker’s brain that you can produce “exactly what they would have said if they were somehow in your fic.” That is impossible. You’re just trying to evoke a character, and if you get a few turns of phrase to ring true, you’re doing great.

6. A lot of these people are popular because they are hilarious. Include jokes. Yes, even if your thing is angsty or serious. A lot of the most serious lore I can think of from, e.g., the Dream SMP or 3rd Life or the QSMP - the really story-defining, life-and-death moments - were absolutely hysterical. If you’re writing characters who are usually funny, then add some humor. It can heighten angst via contrast and a sense of realism. Ask yourself what a funny streamer would make jokes about if they were possessing a character in this situation.

7. Some people have the mystical ability to “hear” character voices in their head, and read things in their voice. If you can, do this with all of your dialogue during the editing process. This won’t always get you there, but sometimes it can catch things that sound wrong by invoking "that's really hard to imagine them saying". If you don’t have this power, try recruiting a friend who does.

8. So there’s dialogue and then there’s narration that’s still from a character’s point of view. I’ve mostly given you tips about dialogue, but a lot of this is also true for narration. IMO, narration is less about phrasing things the way the subject would, and more about recreating the way they think. I don’t have concrete rules on how to do this, but here is my wisdom:

You can get eloquent again - narration is more of an abstract and artistic process than dialogue.

Spend time with your subject’s source material.

Pay attention to what they notice and care about. How do you think they think?

Don’t be afraid to get weird with it.

That last one also applies to all art ever.

9. MCYT tends to give you a great boon you don’t see in other media: what the speaker says to their chat/audience when nobody else is listening. This can be incredibly characterizing even if you’re writing a story where people don’t have chats. It’s your person talking about their thought processes and feelings! Mine that shit.

10. Some questions that might help guide both characterizing narration and dialogue (that you’d get from dialogue):

How open are they about their feelings?

How often do they lie? What do they lie about?

What kind of metaphors do they use, if any?

How quickly does their mood change?

How can you tell when they’re in different moods?

What kind of things do they pay attention to?

How formal is their speech?

11. Finally, this is a little odd, but I find it’s much, much easier to write a character that sounds good if I, the author, like them and am rooting for them at least a little bit. If a character needs to be there who you don’t love, try to love them. Or at least get a sense of what other people love about them. It just makes everything else easier. I swear to god.

Happy writing out there!

#mcyt fic #fanfiction #writing advice #writing tips #fanfiction tips #qsmp fic #dsmp fic #works for whatever too I'm just not gonna try to tag everything #fanfiction advice

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