Fic writers often talk about how nice it is when someone goes through your whole AO3 catalog and gives kudos to everything or likes/reblogs all of your stuff on Tumblr. And don’t get me wrong – that’s a wonderful experience and we are blessed when it happens. I just wanted to give a shout out to the “one off” like/rebloggers. Those new-to-me blogs who pop up in my notifications because of some random thing I wrote. It’s like a little wave from a friendly stranger that makes your day. So – *waves back* Thank you!
me: this whole concept of ~soulmates~ is so damaging, you can be happy with so many people throughout your life and sometimes the best you can do in a failed relationship is to let it go, that person isn’t THE ONE, no one is, everything in the media about romance is so fucked up on so many levels–
The experience of fandom, especially in the age of the internet, is one of binge reading: most new fans, upon discovering fanfic, gobble it down. The first story you read is usually an eyebrow raiser; shocking, maybe a bit embarrassing. “What is this craziness? Do people really do this? I don’t think I like it. Are they all like this? Let me just look at one more …” And then the next thing you know, it’s four in the morning, it’s three days later, it’s ten years on. You are at your friend’s house, and the floor around you is covered with zines. You are on the internet, and you haven’t showered in days. Your browser history is a dreadful embarrassment. You’ve read roughly forty-five thousand stories, some of them amazing, many of them terrible, and you now have all sorts of opinions about tropes and genres. You have developed a particular taste in fanworks. You really like femslash, or hurt/comfort, or cavefic, or long, plotty gen. But I guarantee you this: no matter what you like, and no matter how much there is of it–there isn’t enough of it.
And so some readers (and some of you) will start to write. You’ll write the thing you want to read, because how hard can it be? You can do better than that story you read last night. And that other story you read was okay–except, you know what would have been really good? You know what would have been great? This. This is gonna be great.
– Francesca Coppa, The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age (ix-x)
I think we, as a general community, need to start taking this little moment more seriously.
This, right here? This is asking for consent. It’s a legal necessity, yes, but it is also you, the reader, actively consenting to see adult content; and in doing so, saying that you are of an age to see it, and that you’re emotionally capable of handling it.
You find the content you find behind this warning disgusting, horrifying, upsetting, triggering? You consented. You said you could handle it, and you were able to back out at any time. You take responsibility for yourself when you click through this, and so long as the creator used warnings and tags correctly, you bear full responsibility for its impact on you.
“Children are going to lie about their age” is probably true, but that’s the problem of them and the people who are responsible for them, not the people that they lie to.
If you’re not prepared to see adult content, created by and for adults, don’t fucking click through this. And if you do, for all that’s holy, don’t blame anyone else for it.
Canon: There was tension and pining, but they never even kissed.
Fanfic: Actually,
Canon: Torture the cinnamon roll.
Fanfic: Torture the cinnamon roll.
Question to put to the world:
Do you prefer finished fics being published instead of WIPs? And if the author thought they might not ever finish the story would you even want to read it?
Reader goals: Your fav fan writer and your fav fan artist going back and forth in a delicious cycle of fic and art, until you’re printing out Tumblr pages so you can roll around in a pile of them
Mostly reblogs and random words 