a blog for gay anime ships

BORN IN A GRAVEYARD RAISED BY A WITCH

HALF MOTHERFUCKER HALF SON OF A BITCH

They were talking about how fanfic is becoming more and more mainstream while still remaining largely transgressive. It’s such an interesting dichotomy to think about!

On the one hand, you have sites like AO3 and realities like widespread high speed internet access being more and more accessible to larger and larger groups of people. This makes it incredibly easy for anyone at all to find and read fanfic.

On the other hand, you have the roots of fanfic. It was born out of marginalized groups such as women, people of colour, and members of the queer community deciding to take the stories that had been aimed at a largely male, white, heterosexual audience and inverting them into something they could enjoy and relate to. To this day, fanfic is a place where people write the kinds of stories that don’t get made into movies and TV shows. The kinds of stories that don’t get published or end up on the New York Times bestseller list.

Fanfic used to be written and shared in secret. People used to hide it. People still do hide the fact that they read or write it. But it’s becoming something that more and more people are becoming more and more aware of.

So now there’s a spotlight starting to shine on fanfic. People who aren’t looking for transgressive works are finding them where they always were. People who think the status quo is fine are getting upset when they enter a place where the status quo is constantly being upended.

The tags on that post that I can’t find made the point that popular media is curated and sanitized and stripped of most of its controversy in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. But that also makes that audience expect all media to be curated and sanitized in the same way. When they encounter the messy, controversial, ugly, radical, difficult things that people write in fanfic, they’re unprepared.

Fanfic isn’t big media. Fanfic authors aren’t being edited and filtered and polished - and nor are their works. The clash between the expectations of people new to fanfic and accustomed to popular media and the realities of what fanfic is and what it’s being written for - that’s part of this struggle that fandom is going through right now. It’s been going on since the beginning of course, but it’s getting louder every year.

I’m still thinking my way through this, but it really does make a lot of sense to me. If those were your tags, please let me know so I can credit you with the ideas at the core of this post.

Fandom has historically been dominated by the weird. Weird people, weird stories. That isn’t a bad thing. A lot of folks in fandom wear weird as a badge of honour, something we reclaimed from bullies and other abusers who slung the word and related ones at us. We are not normal and do not seek to be normal. If that idea bothers you, you are still welcome, but know that you are a guest. A lot of folks in fandom have been burned by aggressive normalcy, and start baring teeth when it intrudes into our spaces.

The author is dead. All this means is that the original canon author or authors can tell you their interpretation of the story, but they cannot control your own interpretations or imagination: their interpretation is no more or less important than anyone else’s. Something being noncompliant with canon does not make it badly-written.

Alternate universes exist. If someone wants to write characters from a serious crime drama in a sitcom, they are allowed to do that. If someone wants to explore what would happen if that horrific mass murderer was redeemed or never evil, they are allowed to do that. If someone just really likes dragons and wants to write about everyone being a dragon, they are allowed to do that.

If you write fanfic, you are also an author, so you are also dead. Once you release your ideas into the wild, other people can and will do weird things with them. The sooner you accept that, the better.

You will find porn of it if you go looking. If you don’t, some folks will take that as a challenge and go make some. As long as good-faith efforts are made to keep out people who shouldn’t or don’t want to see it, there is nothing wrong with this.

A canon being made for kids and teens does not mean that all sections of the fandom are for kids and teens. Adults can be into works for the younger set, and as long as there are clear boundaries between work that’s appropriate for kids and work that isn’t, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and absolutely nothing wrong with adult or dark works based on those stories.

Some people will really hate your favourite characters. Some people will think your favourite pairing is gross, or boring, or that the characters would be better off with someone else. Some people will think that show or game or book that got you through the roughest moments of your life is absolute trash. And that’s okay. Not everyone has to like your favourite things.

Someone writing dark stories about terrible things happening to your favourite characters, even dark stories that may mirror some trauma you’ve been through, are not writing about you. They’re not. It is none of your business why they’re writing it. Their only duty to you is to make sure you can avoid their work if you want to. Again, the sooner you accept this, the better off you’ll be.

It’s okay if you want to write something dark and depraved. Lots of people do, and if it’s weird, well, fandom has historically been dominated by the weird.

It’s okay if you want to write nothing but fluff.

It’s okay, no matter what you want to write.

Just be courteous and tag your work. Even if all you want to tag it with is “this may contain dark topics.”

Most fanfic is straight.

These are the best hard numbers I have (with multi/other including all fics labeled as more than one of m/m, f/m, and f/f along with ones labeled as multi/other):

AO3 is the gay porn bookstore, so AO3 is the site that cares about:

Being free from corporate overlords

Not monetizing your data in creepy ways

Minute and detailed kink labeling

Protecting the freaky content

If you hate Bad Kinks, that’s fine. Just know that you will never get the kind of labeling AO3 has from the people who pander to the mainstream. If you want to get rid of The Bad Stuff, the kind of websites you’ll end up with are a sea of nigh unsearchable het, like Wattpad. And the same kinks will be there. They just won’t be labeled clearly.

People imagine that fandom is mostly queer because their own bubble is, because queer stuff sticks in their mind more as anomalous, making it seem more frequent than it really is, and because the only places that label clearly are the queer ones.

No, literally no one missed that. For you, the big thing is underage. For someone else, it’s RPF existing at all. For someone else, it’s rape-as-kink.

I reiterate: If you hate Bad Kinks, that’s fine. But AO3 looks how it does because it’s opposed to censorship. A site less opposed to censorship would also be less into this type of metadata and would have less clear labeling.

Listen up kiddos, a lack of self control on your part does not constituent a crisis of morality on mine.

This is just like any other current-day social or political debate:

People aren’t misunderstanding that the pixels that make up words on a fic post cannot constitute an illegal sexual act–it’s convenient for them to deny this.

People aren’t misunderstanding that “chose not to use warnings” is a warning tag in and of itself–it’s convenient for them to be victimized by something they chose to click on.

People are not misunderstanding censorship issues and fandom history–it is convenient for them to insist that these have no bearing on their arguments.

When you see conservatives and pro-censorship people railing against AO3, block them. They have no place in fandom spaces.

side deck is the fic that got me into puppyshipping and it's the first LONG puppyshipping fic I'd read. that being said, the last chapter was just.. okay! that being SAID, it's not a deal breaker for the whole thing and I think I'd cry if you deleted it entirely.

side deck is actually the first LONG fic I've finished reading in years, period. I'm quick to drop fics and things if I've lost interest or it's offended me in some way. I'm PICKY. when I first started side deck I misread the word count as 14k and I was like of this'll be quick! it wasn't until chapter 10 that I realized it was 140k. OOPS! ..... but that's how quickly I zoomed thru that thing. didn't even realize it wasn't 14k because i was too busy enjoying it. I finished side deck and then I immediately read the other oneshots from the universe.

even if chapter 12 wasn't my favorite chapter. your work is worth reading!! you are a talented writer and I have faith in your writing. I am begging you to keep trying!! I am very interested in reading other things that you post!

I hope this doesn't come off as rude or pushy, but I think it'd be more rude to sugar coat it and LIE to you when you already know something's not quite right. maybe I'm not as articulate as red-eyes-blue-eyes, but I hope you read this as encouragement and not slander!!!

go through your bookmarks and add the title of the fic to the comments section - that way if it’s ever deleted, you’ll know which fic it was

go through your bookmarks and add commentary or tags - keep in mind that bookmarks default to public, so make sure you tick off the private checkbox if you don’t want the author or anyone else to potentially see it

look up your fandom/ship/fave character on Fanlore. Get an account and add examples of fanart or fanfic to their page

create a page for a fandom or a ship or a character that doesn’t exist on Fanlore yet. You don’t have to build it out all by yourself, but if you start it then others might add on!

if you have the money to spare, consider commissioning a fan artist or fic writer

share fic recs on your blog

reblog fanart

use a free tool like Canva to create a moodboard or a banner

find a fanvid on youtube and give it a thumbs up and a comment

fill out your AO3 profile

build out your personal page on Fanlore

do a follow forever post or a follower appreciation post

send people ask memes or post them yourself

ask an author for permission to record one of their stories as a podfic - and if you can’t contact them directly, check their profile for a permission statement or look them up on the Fanworks Permission Statements List

Create and share a playlist for your fave episode/ship/fic/character

cook a meal inspired by your fave canon

And of course, if the items on this list are too much for you right now, then give yourself a hug and know that that’s okay. It’s a stressful time, and doing anything extra can be a daunting idea. Don’t pressure yourself into keeping busy because you think you need to be productive. Don’t feel guilty if you can’t manage to do anything extra. 

From @lightveils on Twitter (free to use wherever!). I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. I definitely have enough fics to fill it lol~