The Tolkien society is mad that someone used an image they have a copyright on because they bought the physical copy and God fuck the Tolkien society so hard.
I found out what lesbian means today, Ella told me at recess. It’s unfair because girls are so much prettier than guys. It’s like comparing a flower to an old shoe. But I’m not a lesbian, almost 99% of my friends are guys.
Shakespeare could only aspire to this level of dramatic irony.
*casually draping my arm around your shoulder and gesturing with my other hand*
Now hear me out, pal, what if– what if I think ALL culture, art and writing are important and worth preserving, regardless of who wrote it and whether or not they’re deemed marketable by the capitalist institution?
I went to an exhibition of folk art once at a major national gallery. It was so vibrant and fascinating and culturally important - more so in a lot of ways than some of the art in the main galleries because this was art made by common people as something for pleasure or to express something in their lives. Sometimes it was made as a commission for someone but not for the aristocracy necessarily, it was made to be lived with and to be enjoyed.
The other notable thing about this exhibition was that it was so sparse.
Folk art, craft, it isn’t kept. It doesn’t last. A rich person hasn’t deemed it the cream of the crop and declared it to be worth a whole bunch of money so unless it is kept out of sheer love, it disappears when it’s owner is gone. It’s an ephemeral act of craft and creativity made by people that might be an expert in their specific field but one that isn’t currently deemed ‘high art’ or commercially popular or just plain fashionable enough to be kept after the owner or the artist is gone.
Sometimes this can be because the creators are marginalised groups and sometimes they don’t have the access to artistic and creative training. Sometimes they are just doing something they love and are good at but which no one else appreciates at that point in time.
Sometimes their motivations aren’t based in getting published or bought by collectors or whatever. Sometimes someone just wants to create.
The act of creating is what makes art art. It’s the intention. It’s not the result.
So yeah. Like. Fuck you dickweed. Not everything is about you and not everything is for you.
I’m an archivist and historian by profession, and a volunteer with AO3 since 2010. Often the most interesting and significant things in archives are things that were never “meant” to be preserved (notes in margins, candid photos, fliers and posters and ephemera). And AO3 absolutely serves as an archive, so saying that it doesn’t “really” archive or preserve things is actively stupid and false. For instance, AO3’s Open Doors project preserves and saves fanworks from sites that are defunct or no longer maintained, and is engaged in digitizing paper zines from the pre-internet period. That is 100% the definition of archiving and preserving material that would otherwise be lost.
But archives (I mean real, professional, official archives staffed by people with advanced degrees who get paid to be there) also have projects that look very much like AO3. For instance, many archives organized ways for people to submit materials about their experiences during COVID-19. This includes stuff like: poetry, diary entries, personal reflections, people’s feelings and thoughts. People self-submitting their own written material, unfiltered, honest, not highly polished or professionally published, was like gold to archives.
So, you might say, ok, that’s people reflecting about an important historical event, that tells future historians things they will want to know, that’s important. Not like AO3.
Now let’s imagine that we could discover a lost body of ordinary people’s writing from 100 or 300 or 500 years ago. A huge collection of the things everyday people, not just elite wealthy highly educated men, were thinking about, their fantasies and fears and hopes and things they loved, and how they felt about the books they read or the plays they saw or the music they listened to, from 1900 or 1700 or 1500. People’s writings, in their own words, without a filter. The graffiti at Pompeii, or Onfim’s writing lessons, or Ea-Nasir’s hate mail, but in 50k or 500k word installments instead of 5 or 10 or 50 word snippets. That would be, and I’m not exaggerating here, a literal gold mine for historians and literary scholars and linguists and anthropologists and all kinds of other fields. It would be the source material for countless research projects and dissertations and books.
Now, historical value isn’t particularly why I work on and contribute my writing to AO3. I work on AO3 because I think having a secure and reliable site, that isn’t vulnerable to whims and technical failures and changing policies, that is free to use and free of advertising, where people can safely post their fanworks is important. I think giving enjoyment and relaxation and comfort to people is worthwhile in and of itself, even if it wasn’t a contribution to the historical record.
But it fucking chaps my hide AS A HISTORIAN to have people say “ah, this collection of ordinary people’s writing, it’s pointless and meaningless, no one cares,” when that is an overt lie. Tell me you’ve never talked to a historian in your fucking life without telling me you’ve never talked to a historian in your fucking life. Historians eat this stuff up with a spoon.
And also I think that creating is an inseparable part of human existence. And having a place to share that with others is definitely better than writing and hiding it in the midsts of your computer. Places like AO3 allow people to enjoy their craft and not think about profits, finding publishers and so on.
When I write a fanfiction for AO3 it feels easier than writing a thing I’m going to try and publish. Why? Because my works on AO3 have to be valuable for me and the latter have to have monetary value at some point and my awareness that people will be judging and dismissing it. Places like AO3 allow writers to focus solely on the craft and pleasure.
Moreover there is something I saw today on Instagram that really annoyed me. I saw a post proposing a game that basically consisted of making fun of young writers. When I looked at the comment section hoping that people would deem that cruel and awful I found comments saying a) you can make a drinking game out of it b) they tried it and loved it c) they are definitely going to do it.
Mocking people’s writing IS NOT OKAY. If a young person who is only learning the craft decides to share their work they are brave and their effort should be respected, not mocked.
Why do we put ourselves in a position of judging others and their efforts? Why do we judge people for what they read? Few months ago I came across a post blaming Tik Tok for encouraging teenagers to read not the best literature and how it’s awful that it does that.
And I’m asking, are we really at the point of discouraging people from READING? Even if we don’t like the book, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value and that it won’t lead to other books. A person is not ‘worse’ at reading if they like romances or fantasy or fanfiction.
Every person that writes has something to say. About the world. About people. About their feelings and emotions. And mocking both the readers and the writers is the essence of this society’s downfall.
[image: Tumblr post by a redacted user: “I don’t know which white 30+ year old needs to hear this, but moderating ao3 isn’t nearly comparable to the burning of the library of Alexandria. It’s fanfiction. No one outside cares about this stuff. Fan fiction isn’t profound literature, it’s coffee shop aus and fix it fics about pre existing media. This is not important literature lol go outside #anti ao3 #fanfic #anti proship”]
You know, you could make some very fun fiction out of the concept of a future historian finding a long defunct server complex that, among other things, houses the entirety of AO3, perfectly preserved.
Like… In the ~~~~~ event of 2025, AO3 went down, and the servers never came back up, yet here they are, still miraculously intact.
First off, the fiction itself. The quantities of it that are present, the dates when it was posted, the things people found important to tag.
But also the usernames, the references that get slipped in, who leaves kudos on what, and the metacommentary; the authors’ notes, and the bookmark tags, and the comments?
The fucking comments? Analysis of a characters actions, and open screaming, and arguments over whether this is in character or not considering X Y and Z parts of canon, and whether canon matters, and whether it makes sense for a rotary phone to appear in a show set in the 1950s, and how long the author had to spend looking it up to find an answer (even though nobody else would care).
All of this, probably for works of media that the historians have never seen, and never read. Would you get historians getting hopelessly invested in characters they’d never even read the original fiction of? I have you imagine you would.
Also-also
PARADISE LOST IS BIBLE FANFICTION
SHAKESPEARE’S HISTORY PLAYS ARE RPF
DANTE’S INFERNO IS SELF-INSERT RPF BIBLE FANFICTION
LANCELOT FROM THE ARTHURIAN “CANON” IS A FRENCH OC FROM HUNDREDS OF YEARS AFTER THE ORIGINAL
“Nina that isn’t how fanfiction works—”
The reason most people don’t call these things fanfiction is 1) they were written by or for rich white men 2) copyright didn’t exist yet. That’s it, that’s the reason. Fanfiction is a modern form of folklore.
Actually—
Hey @neil-gaiman, if you happen to see this. Under the definition of transformative works given by the OTW and the AO3 (it’s here, if you need it), would you agree American Gods could be argued to be crossover fanfiction of several pantheons?
It’s an absolute banger of a book that changed my life (and provided the most amazing monologue I’ve ever used for theatre), and it’s fanfiction featuring a cast that predates copyright by several thousand years which means the usual don’t-publish-your-fanfiction rules don’t apply.
Y’all get out of here with your elitist “fanfiction isn’t real writing” bullshit.
The left never radicalized, the center has just been dragged further and further right until we became radical by not moving.
When I was 10 I asked my dad to explain politics to me and when he was done with his shockingly nuanced description of the American bipartisan system he asked me how I would structure the government if it was up to me. I described a world where everyone was paid what they needed, had a house, and enough food. He said, “Void-juice that’s great, but you should know most people call that communism”.
I’ve told this story on here before but @void–juice’s story made me think of it again…
My dad worked for NASA and he did a lot of work on the telescopes that went up in the late 90s/early 2000s. I was a curious kid and I knew his work really mattered to my dad so I was always asking about when things were getting launched. Often the answer was “we’re waiting on Congress for funding” or similar. And one time… I was probably about 10 years old, I said “well… I guess that makes sense. I’m sure going to space is one of the most expensive things we do.”
And my dad looks at me… I’ll never forget the look on his face. He goes “What do you think the most expensive thing we do as a country is?”
And I hemmed and I hawed because I was sure it wasn’t the space program even though I was sure that had to be in the top three. My first guess was education. Everyone had to go to school. Nope. Roads? Bridges? Cars were everywhere. Nope. What about… things like electricity? Phone lines? Cable? Nope.
“The military. By a factor of ten at least.”
I was gobsmacked. It was peacetime (at least by most reckoning… this was post-Gulf War and well before 9/11). What the hell was the military doing being so expensive if we weren’t doing anything with it?
So that was the moment I became a “radical.” Because that was absolutely stupid and continues to be.
Hey not for nothing but this is exactly why I have no trust in digital media “purchases” that aren’t physical and also why I am of the opinion that if a physical option isn’t made possible then it should be considered morally neutral for me to download a copy for my own digital collection to view when offline.
met a guy from saudi arabia last night at a bar, he came here with his sister so she could have surgery. he told me “i love your country for healing my sister. there are many wonderful things here, but there’s one thing you do not have. mercy” and then he asked if that was a boston thing or an overall american quality
Scottish Gaysian. In a constant state of gay panic with no consistency to my blog, other than the fact that I'm a major nerd for Power Rangers and gay shit. They/them or she/her, but any pronouns are fine.
