Psst, Dex is trans*

- don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.

- archive everything on your blog you want to keep

- tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.

- tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.

- go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.

jack has already reached his full form as successful bitty’s trophy husband. the most interesting question he gets asked (besides like, workout questions) at fancy events with bitty is ‘who are you wearing?’

so, bc he wants to have an answer, he learns who he’s wearing every time. and then, because it’s good to have varied conversation topics and all of his conversation starters generally fall into the category of ‘bitty’, he starts paying more attention to the clothes. when someone hands a suit to him and rattles off a list of reasons why it’ll be flattering, he listens

and he’s jack zimmermann, and when he listens, he learns. he learns about fashion. he learns about how clothes are made, and cut, and fitted. he learns a metric fuck ton of stuff

cue jack becoming known in bitty’s circles as The Guy Who You Talk To About Clothes. (he is, to a lesser extent, known in nhl circles as the same person, but they also want to talk to him about hockey)

needless to say his mom’s model friends are delighted

and then the next time he commissions a suit, the designer is like ‘yo, you seem to know what you’re talking about, why don’t we collaborate on this so u have more input?’ and jack is like oh hell yes i love having input and an ability to impact what i wear so he agrees

and he l o v e s it

he gets sO INTO IT. he and this designer collaborate on the suit and then he’s like ‘well fuck that was awesome and it’s offseason, want to do that again?’ and the designer is like sure bc jack is famous and wealthy and competent so ofc

accidental fashion designer jack zimmermann

when he retires from hockey everyone at bitty’s events is like ‘u played hockey??? i thought u were a fashion designer’

and then he’s like ‘hm that idea has merit’ and he’s retired but he works harder than god so he needs something to do. so he does a line of black tie menswear. and then business wear. and works his way down to casual and when he gets to athletic clothing he is SO PUMPED

and the thing is that the clothes are popular!! he designs suits for women. after some consultation with various people, he also designs suits that are intended to emphasize a masculine figure, and a feminine one, sells those too, jack is rlly becoming known for two things: classy and well-made suits, and UGLY ASS SHOES (it’s an in-joke, but he always makes sure that with every season he releases a new pair of shoes that are just. fucking hideous. and he WEARS THEM)

alicia wears his suits to every event she goes to. so does bob. shitty is the best-dressed lawyer on the planet. u get the picture

“I’m gonna kill him,”Bitty groaned into the phone as he fought against the urge to kneel down infront of the coffee maker and beg it to drip faster.

“Little bro, you knowRansom and I are down to help you hide the body,” Holster assured him.

“Are you sure youcan’t come over and, like, strategically loom over him? As he’s leaving to dowhatever it is he does at this godforsaken hour?”

“I feel used, Bitty.Used for my height.”

“Well, it’s gotta begood for something,” Bitty said waspishly. He might have apologized for it ifHolster hadn’t called him “little bro” before he’d even had caffeine. Uselessgiant anyway. “It isn’t fair,” he added, and yes, he could admit that he waswhining now, but the situation called for it. “When I decided not to actuallywork at a bakery, not being woken at the ass-crack of dawn was supposed to beone of the major plusses. Why is he doing this to me?”

“Have you even methim?” Ransom asked. Bitty wasn’t even sure when Holster had passed him thephone. “Are you even sure it is a him?”

“No, I haven’t met him, but I did see himleaving the building one morning. It was definitely a him. But all I saw washis stupid Falconers’ cap.”

“At least you knowhe’s a hockey fan!”

“That is not nearlyenough to make up for an alarm at 5am everymorning. Even on the weekends, Ransom. There is nothing that can balancethat out. He’d have to be… I dunno, a saint. Sculpted by Michelangelo himself.With the personality of a Golden Retriever.”

“Mm-hmm. Good luckwith that.”

“Oh, whatever. Go towork, the two of you.”

The coffee maker wasfinally done. It was his only real friend.

@myrinthinks requested that i write something based on this post and i just… i have no regrets

“What the fuck is that.”

No one knows how Chowder found it. Or why. No one really wants to know. They’re too afraid of the answer.

All anyone knows is that Chowder marches into the Haus one Tuesday afternoon, face lit up like a birthday cake, and releases a metal lobster into the kitchen. The thing passes Ransom and Holster, scuttles around Bitty rolling out pastry, and comes to rest at Nursey’s feet, who had calmly been eating a sandwich.

“Isn’t he cool?” Chowder says giddily, hands tight around a remote controller that is beeping and flashing.

“Woaah!” yells Ransom, crouching to get a closer look at the robot, which is sleek and white, about two feet long. It has curved shiny claws which reach out and snap when Chowder presses a button on his controller. Holster squats next to Ransom.

“Where’d you get it, C?” he asks, looking up at the grinning boy.

Chowder’s eyes glint. “I know a guy.” No one asks any further.

“Bro, does this thing want my sandwich?” Nursey says as the lobster headbutts his feet repeatedly. “I spent time and effort on this beauty. I’m gonna eat it.”

“Aw, he likes you!” Chowder crows, and Nursey smirks.

“This is the coolest thing, man.” Says Ransom, prodding the lobster. It whirrs and shudders slightly.

“Dude, we can scare the bajeebies out of the Lax bros with this thing.”

“Bro!”

“Well, it’s mighty precious!” Bitty says, joining the other boys, “What should we name the lil’ fella?”

Chowder, who seems to revel in the attention his lobster is getting, all but bounces on the balls of his feet. “Ooh! What about Melvin?”

“Really, C? Melvin?” Nursey raises an eyebrow at him.

“It was my tortoise’s name when I was seven.” Chowder says. Everyone laughs.

“What about Supreme Lobster of the Samwell Haus; Protector of Pies, Destroyer of Lax Bros.” says Holster dramatically, swiping a hand through the air for emphasis.

“Hols,” Ransom places a hand on his friends arm, “Bro. No one could remember that.”

Holster pouts. “I could remember that.”

As they’re arguing, no one notices Dex come into the kitchen.

“Hey, Chowder, can I borrow your- oh my god what the fuck is that.”

Everyone turns to stare at him.

“Hey Dex,” Nursey says slowly, “We got a lobster.”

Dex stares for a long time. His eye twitches. Then-

“Nope.” He says shortly, “No. I’m not. I’m done. No more lobsters.” The robot scurries towards him, at Chowder’s instruction.

“C’mon Dex, he’s so cool!”

Dex backs away with a hateful look aimed at the lobster.

“Argh! I’ve had enough of their scuttling and claws and those beady eyes, following me around! They stare into your soul.” His eyes have taken on a wild, mad look. “Nope. I’m not doing it. I’m out.”

He turns and storms back out of the kitchen, and the boys can hear him muttering and cursing to himself all the way out to the garden.

“Damn.” Ransom says after a moments silence, “Did he like, get chased up a tree by a lobster when he was a kid or something?”

“Dex works on a lobster boat over the summer.” Says Nursey, “Bro gets way too up close and personal with those things.”

Chowder’s smile is beautifully malevolent. “Nurse, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Nursey matches his grin. “We have a name for the lobster.”

The writeblr directory of editors and betas is now up and running!

What is it? A place where creators can ask for critiques, beta readers, editors or any other kind of feedback services. Or, alternatively, a place where people can offer or advertise those services!

Who can join in? Anyone who meets the following criteria. So if you are…

A) a writer who needs some sort of feedback service for some kind of writing.

B) someone who enjoys giving feedback and will offer your services for free

C)  a freelance editor in need of business

…this will be the Tumblr blog for you. Please note that this is a space for indie creators and small service-providers; not for businesses or larger groups/corporations.

Why is this blog a Thing now? Because just today I have witnessed three different blogs turn down requests for editing help because they don’t have the time. Hopefully, the directory will cut down on that stress for everyone involved and make editing services more accessible, as well as giving writeblrs somewhere to send people if they get such requests. 

If you want to submit a request or an advert, here are the guidelines for both forms.

Ask and you shall receive. I think this is actually longer than the original post.

“Bits, what are my parents doing here?”

Jack looked down at the screen of his phone, after ending the call with the doorman.

“We didn’t make plans with them, did we?”

“Um, yes, actually,” Bitty said, still peeling potatoes. “Didn’t I tell you? I talked to your dad when you were in Winnipeg, and mentioned that we were doing Thanksgiving, and he said he and your mom would like to come. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, I don’t mind but – wait, you talked to my dad? Did he call you or –”

“Hello, and happy Thanksgiving!” Alicia was stepping through the door, arms already extended to embrace Jack. Bob was following with a cooler bag with wine. There was also a bottle of champagne, but Jack wasn’t to see that. Yet.

“How’re you boys doing?” Alicia said, deftly stepping into the living room and bringing Jack’s attention with her so Bob could stow the wine (and champagne) in the kitchen.  “Jack, did I tell you about the work the foundation is doing to bring hockey to underserved communities in the greater New York area? We’re starting with street hockey there, but …”

In the kitchen, Bitty put the last of the potatoes in the colander to rinse before putting them on to boil.

“Everything under control?” Bob said. “It’s a go?”

Bitty nodded. “The turkey’s cooking already, and I have a pan of stuffing to slide in for the last 45 minutes,” he said. “Once I get these on the stove, I have to roll out the dough for the tourtière – can you grab it from the fridge? Bottom shelf on the right – and fill it and put it in. to bake. Rolls are rising, pies are done, green beans and salad and gravy get done once the the turkey comes out. This is really so easy with a double oven.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Bob said. “We all have confidence in your ability to get a stunning dinner on the table. Are you going to pop the question?”

Bitty wiped his hands on his apron before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a blue velvet ring box. “When I serve dessert,” he said.

“Want to try it out?”

“Sure,” Bitty said. “Ve–”

“Bits –” Jack was coming around the corner. “Try what?”

“Your dad saw a recipe for pumpkin squares,” Bitty said. “But not today, because dessert is done. Maybe next time.”

Bob, now behind Jack, was mouthing at Bitty, “Pumpkin squares?”

“Papa doesn’t like pumpkin,” Jack said, an adorable furrow in his brow. Lord, Bitty was gone on him, “Do you, Papa?”

“If anyone could make me like it, it would be Eric,” Bob said with a shrug.

“Oh,” Jack said. “Maman wanted a glass of wine.”

Bob reached into the fridge and brought out a bottle of sauvignon blanc. He poured a glass and handed it to Jack. “One for you, too?”

“No, thanks,” Jack said. “I’ll have one with dinner. Bits might want one, though.”

“Eric?”

“Sure, Bob. Thanks. Jack, honey, after you take that to your mother, could you see if you can find the rust colored napkins in the linen closet? They weren’t in the drawer in here.”

“But we have napkins on the table already.”

“I know, but those are just placeholders until I find the rust ones. Please?” Bitty said.

“Only to make you happy,” Jack said with a faux grumble before leaving to deliver his mother’s wine.

“Okay, we’ve got a minute or two before he finds the napkins,” Bob said.

“Longer than that,” Bitty said. “They don’t exist. We always use white. Now here goes. Veux-tu m’épouser?”

He almost had a heart attack when he realized there was someone in the doorway, but it was Alicia, holding her wine.

“Did you just ask my husband to marry you?” she said, laughing. “I thought it was my son you wanted. You can’t have Bob. He’s mine.”

“Hush, you,” Bitty said. “Of course it’s your son I want. How did I do?”

“Great,” Bob said. “I promise he won’t laugh.”

“You mean that?”

“I mean that, yes, I can still hear your accent, but it’s better than most Americans do, so stop worrying.”

Once dinner was over and Bob and Jack had cleared the table and Alicia made coffee – regular and decaf – they gathered in the living room with the pies – a tarte au sucre and an apple – on the coffee table.

“We never said what we were thankful for,” Jack said. “Let’s do it before dessert.”

“Good idea,” Bitty said. “Let me start. Since this is Thanksgiving in Canada, let me say how thankful I am for the custom of having Thanksgiving on a Monday, with two whole days to prepare. I’m also thankful that y’all introduced me to a new cuisine, and a new culture, even if I didn’t do so well learning French. I’ve been working hard and I did learn one thing.”

He turned to face Jack fully and pulled the ring box out of his pocket.

“Jack, veux-tu m’épouser?”

Jack stared, mouth open, then started to giggle. His giggle turned into a laugh, until he saw the way Bitty’s face had fallen.

“Non, lapinou,” he said. “I wasn’t laughing at you. Of course I’ll marry you.”

Bitty started to look up at that.

“Was it that bad?” he said.

“Bad? Was what bad?” Jack asked. “I really wasn’t laughing at you.”

He pulled a ring box from his pocket.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” Eric is sure he has the date and location right, but the venue is empty when he arrives with his clients’ wedding cake. According to the schedule he’d been given, the reception is scheduled to begin in an hour, but nothing about this place indicates a party is about to take place. In fact, based on the folded table cloths and half-taken down decorations, it looks like the party’s over. He looks around for a place to set the cake so he can call his assistant to make sure he’s at the right place.

“Let me help you with that.” An impossibly handsome man in faded jeans and a Providence Falconers T-shirt, whom Eric hadn’t noticed when he walked in, is walking toward him.

“I’m supposed to be delivering this wedding cake,” Eric tells the stranger. “The Knight-Duan wedding?” 

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” the man says with a grimace. Eric must look stricken — they were such a nice couple — because the man rushes to explain. “I mean, the wedding is happening, just not here, today. They decided to elope about three hours ago and asked me to head over here to tell any of their guests who planned to come to just the reception. I’ve just been cleaning up.”

“Oh.” Eric feels a little relief at the man’s explanation, because the couple really had seemed happy every time he met with them. 

“I’m the best man. Was the best man? I’m Jack.” When Jack smiles, the corners of his blue eyes crinkle. 

“Eric,” Eric says. “From Cake Haus.” Eric would shake Jack’s hand, but he’s still holding the cake.

Jack’s whole face lights up at that. “You did the cake when the Falconers won the Cup two years ago! Best cake I’ve ever had.”

“Best job I’ve ever had,” Eric says. “It’s not every day I get asked to make a cake for the Stanley Cup champions. Are you with the organization?” Eric only follows hockey a little bit, but now that he’s mentioned it, Jack does seem familiar.

“Ah, yeah. I play, actually.” Jack seems to blush a little. “Jack Zimmermann.”

“Oh.” And now Eric is the one to blush, because he really should have recognized the man whose face graces the billboard he drives by every morning on the way to work.

“It looks like they forgot to call you,” Jack says, pointing out the obvious. “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here.”

“Well, they’d have had to call me a lot more than three hours ago to if they wanted to cancel their order,” Eric says lightly.

“Sorry about that. My friends are idiots.”

“They really just … canceled their wedding?”

The man shrugs. “Lots of family drama. Anyway, I think Shitty secretly liked the idea of planning a huge wedding and sticking his father with the bill. His father is kind of an asshole.”

Eric nods, a little confused but not entirely surprised. He does a lot of weddings; he’s seen worse.

“I really hope it wasn’t too much trouble for you to come out here,” Jack apologizes again.

“No. Not at all. As long as they’re still paying me,” Eric jokes. “I’ll just … take this back to the bakery.”

“They’ll pay you when they get back into town. Or I can pay you right now, if you want. Do you take credit cards?” Jack reaches for his pocket, a little uncertainly. 

Eric can’t believe how impossibly sweet and awkward he is. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, waving him off. “They paid the deposit months ago; I’ll bill them for the rest.”

Jack nods. “Can I get you anything for your trouble? I was just packing up the champagne. You could stay for a drink?”

And hell, why not? It’s not like he had anything better planned for tonight. Might as well sit with a cute boy — who likes his cake — and drink somebody else’s canceled-wedding champagne. Eric sets the wedding cake down on one of the tables and watches Jack rummage through a box at his feet, from which he extracts two red Solo cups. “Pretty sure this was for beer pong at the after party,” he says.

“You know,” Eric says, and if he’s flirting a little it’s only because Jack started it when he asked him to stay for a drink, “drinking on an empty stomach is only asking for trouble. We could have some cake?”

“Yeah,” Jack says as he pops the cork. “I’d love that.”

although it’s true AO3 does allow all fannish content provided it’s properly warned for, there’s a long history there - of spaces being used by fans until the host decided whatever we were doing was too weird and distasteful and either kicking us off, banning certain content, or changing the nature of the site until it was no longer viable as a host.

you’re referring to the LJ Strikethrough of 2007, which, being an ancient crone, I lived through, and since I was hanging out in the last vestiges of SGA and in bandom, I saw some of the fallout. this was before LJ was sold to the Russians (which is a whole ‘nother story), when it was still owned by Six Apart; in an effort to clean up LJ’s act, Six Apart decided to delete all accounts using tags like underage, incest, rape, etc.

this was supposed to get rid of actual child porn on the site, and I hope it did, but it also targeted fan communities. this was a problem for a couple reasons; for one thing, not every story tagged with these words is in favor of them; for another, these things happen to real people and these personal posts were also potentially in danger of being attacked; for the last one, look, I ain’t into this kind of fic but people write about what people write about, and if it’s fictional and not explicitly banned in the TOS (correct me if I’m wrong; I don’t think written content about this stuff was banned?) then it’s not cool for a content host to just start deleting communities without warning.

but that’s what happened! these deletions were also primarily targeting slash communities, which smacked of some serious homophobia since things were deleted that had nothing to do with any of this kind of content.

eventually someone found out it was this super conservative religious group who’d sent a list of journal names to Six Apart, and who if I remember correctly targeted slash fic on purpose, even after it became clear that the fic was, well, totally fictional. after a while, Six Apart admitted they’d made a mistake and started to reinstate journals, but all of fandom was pretty shaken up.

THEN Boldthrough happened, which was essentially the same debacle several months later, at which point fandom began its long slow migration from LJ to GJ, IJ, and eventually AO3, Twitter, and tumblr.

AO3 was opened in 2008 in response to several incidents, of which Strikethrough was a really intense one. remember, also, that back in 2008 the stigma surrounding fandom was significantly greater and more shameful than it is today, so finding hosts willing to archive fic was difficult unless someone had the dough to pay for server space - often not an option. this was also back when fanfic.net’s HTML restrictions were so great that users couldn’t use any special characters or bold or italicize anything, and it didn’t allow R-rated content, so it was clearly not ideal. in addition, although cease & desist letters were much less common than they were in the early 2000s and before, DMCA takedowns were still a phantom on the horizon.

LONG STORY SHORT, even though pedophilia is reprehensible and I personally cannot stomach fanfic that involves that kind of content, AO3 was founded specially as a safe space for fandom communities that could not find homes elsewhere. it requires warnings precisely for that reason, and if you find a story that is not properly warned, you can alert the admins and get the story labeled appropriately.

In the same way, writing about underage teens getting it on–sometimes with each other, sometimes with adults, sometimes consensually, sometimes not–is not the same as child pornography, nor does reading a fic about Hermione and Snape getting it on while she was his student mean someone thinks that would be a good and/or healthy thing in real life.

Fiction affects reality, but fiction is not reality.  And writing about something does not mean you want to do it in real life, or believe that anyone should.

Let’s take a closer look at that “Ao3 supports pedophilia!” shall we?

1) The only fics I have ever come across that had actual pedophilia (i.e. someone having sex with a child), it was clearly and explicitly abuse.  It was not meant to titillate or arouse.  It was meant to horrify.  It was seldom explicit.

2) There’s a lot more incest, but it is usually portrayed either as explicitly mutually consensual (i.e. Sam/Dean) or as abusive.

3) I’ve been in fandom for a decade and a half.  When people start getting upset at “omg pedophilia, think of the children!” the fics they are usually objecting to aren’t actually pedophilia.  Usually, it is teenagers having sex, especially queer sex.  And people don’t like that, and use pedophilia as an excuse to shame people for writing/reading sex they don’t like.

Let’s look closer at Strikethrough, shall we?  I hope that, if there were any communities of actual pedophiles on LJ, they got taken down, too.  But here are some of the communities that got taken down that were not in any way supporting pedophilia and/or rape and/or incest that got taken down:

1) at least one support community for survivors of sexual abuse.

2) a literary book discussion group that was reading Lolita.

3) lots of slash fanfic communities, for things like Draco/Harry fic set in their fourth year (when both boys would have been 15).

Basically, this very conservative “family values” group hated porn, and they hated queer stuff even more, and used “but think of the children, it’s pedophilia!” to pressure LJ to get rid of huge swathes of things they didn’t like.  And one time taking down the worst of it wasn’t good enough for them.  No, this was step one on a moral crusade.  If you acceded to their demands, all that did was whet their appetite, and soon they would be back with a new list of demands.  This is why the 2007 strikethrough was not an isolated event, but rather one of a series of events, nor was LJ the only website thus targeted.  It starts with anything that can get labelled “pedophilia” or “incest” because that’s low-hanging fruit.  But they use that to go after anything relating to queer teen sexuality.  Then anything with teen sexuality.  Then once the community is already divided and diminished, they go after anything with non-con.  Then whatever is next on their list.  It doesn’t stop until they’ve won the point and nothing but suitably “family-friendly” fics that match their purity test are allowed.

Which is why AO3 has no morality content in their terms of service.  You can’t break copyright beyond fair use (and AO3 has an expansive view of “fair use” and a team of lawyers on call).  You can’t use AO3 for commercial advertising.  And you can’t post ACTUAL child pornography, i.e. the things that are legally prohibited, i.e. actual photographs or videos of actual children (not teens) in sexually explicit positions–you know, the stuff that actually hurts kids.  Other than that?  It’s fair game.  You can post anything you want, and the archive will not judge.  There is no handle for the Moral Majority Family-Friendly Thought Police to latch onto, no cracks they can exploit to divide and conquer.

During this period, Dreamwidth was also targeted by attacking its payment processor. They had to get a new one. These “Warriors” (literally called themselves that!) were totally on board with destroying fandom as a side effect of destroying the parts of fandom they didn’t like.

AO3 and OTW are HUGE, because now we have an organization, with very smart women and a lot of lawyers, that have our back. Fannish history is important, people! It has not always been this way.

LJ was, for many people, central.  

It was a fundamental part of the infrastructure of fandom at the time.  

Having it attacked, having parts of your fandom’s territory just deleted like that, was very very scary.  People didn’t know who was next.  Every day, the list of stricken journals grew.  And not all of them came back, not all of them recovered their content.  Some people even voluntarily deleted their content as a form of protest.  It was a bad time.

You do not have to interact with fic that grosses you out or makes you uncomfortable.  Tagging is a thing.  And even outside of tags, you are responsible for curating your own fandom experience.  It is not right to expect it to be curated for you.  And it is not right to lash out when someone refuses to do so and expects you to walk away from things that do not concern you.

I was gonna say “things that don’t harm anyone” but I realize you can argue that.  If you get triggered, that’s upsetting.  That could be considered harm.  And I have sympathy for that.  I do.

I have run across fic that triggered me.  I have pretty specific triggers, and people don’t always think to warn for them because they aren’t that big a deal for a lot of people.  Or it’s sort of bundled into kink and is presumed, that if you’re okay with certain kinds of kink, you’re okay with this.  So I’ve been blindsided by it before.  And it sucks for a couple of days while I get over it.

That was not the fault of the authors! You could argue that tagging should have been used, and maybe it should, but ultimately that’s not an ironclad obligation.  It’s a tool people provide out of courtesy.

That was not the fault of the site!  The site is there to give authors a way to make fiction available, not to judge each work and interrogate its validity and make sure everything is tagged so that nobody has to see anything bad, ever.

That was not even my fault!  It was my responsibility to try to curate my experience, and I tried, but it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t deliberately set out to trigger myself.

When I get triggered, unless it is by a deliberate act, it is actually the fault of the people who hurt me in the first place! And I refuse to let them off the hook and blame perfectly innocent people who just wanna write their fanfiction! I may hate that fanfiction, but that is irrelevant to the question of whether or not people should be allowed to post whatever they want.

Also, some people cope by writing about fucked-up shit.  My best friend in the whole wide world has shared her fic with me, and HOO BOY it is messed up. She wrote it during a time in her life when she was in and just coming out of a horrifically abusive relationship.  I mean, it was exactly the kind of relationship all of us here on Tumblr love to hate.  She was married to a shitty, abusive man who preyed on someone younger than he was and used his influence over her to treat her in a way that would be right at home in that Lundy Bancroft book Why Does He Do That?  He was a real rapist, a verified grade-A bad fuckin’ guy.  (She was lucky to escape.  I have immense respect for her.)  And she wrote some fucked up fic to deal with it, and she shared it, and people were invested in it.  And because this was early 2000′s, she had to host it on a foreign server and cover her tracks, because at that time no-place was safe to post it.

“Yeah, but if she’s writing it for therapy, she doesn’t have to post it where other people might have to see it!” I hear you say.

But like … what the hell??? “Shut up, don’t talk about it, it’s bad to talk about these things, because these things are bad!” is something used against folks with trauma.

“This isn’t good for me, I can’t talk about this, I can’t be your audience for this,” that’s fine, those are boundaries that people with trauma use to defend themselves.  You should learn to say those things!  It will help you!

But expecting other people to never create and share art about trauma is just so thunderously oppressive I lack the ability to fully articulate it.

And nobody should have to disclose their history of trauma to prove their motives are pure or virtuous enough for their speech to be protected.  I’ve only really been able to openly say “I was assaulted, it was traumatic, I am a little fucked up from it” for the past couple of years, tops.  I couldn’t talk about it before that.  Couldn’t!  And it was over 20 years ago!

I also believe, very firmly, that you don’t need a history of abuse to find writing really messed-up shit satisfying, or to find reading it cathartic.  I believe 100% in the freedom of creative expression, and the freedom to read whatever fucked up shit you want to read.

All y’all fandom youngsters can spit nails all you want over gross rape fic, incest fic, whatever.

Fine, I don’t like it either!

But that fucked up shit?  That fucked up shit helped carve out the spaces we have today.  You don’t have to like it, but campaigning to get it deleted, harassing content creators, calling people rapists and pedophiles who have never done and would never ever do such a thing, that is not the way to improve the world, it doesn’t keep actual kids or teens or assault/rape victims safe.  It wouldn’t have made me feel safe when I was 16 and did’t want what was going on.  It doesn’t make me feel safe now.  I can say with the perspective of someone 24 years away from that event, it doesn’t make the world safer for people like I was.  It actually makes it worse.

Learn to steer clear of the messed-up stuff you don’t like.  It’s a skill, you get better with practice.  Have someone else vet stuff for you if you need help doing it now.

Everything that is sketchy and gross is not criminal, and writing about a thing is not morally the same as doing it.  Please stop acting like writing about an adult and a teenager having really questionable, gross sex is as bad as the actual registered sex offender they caught hanging around an actual elementary school two neighborhoods over from mine, just trying to talk to the kids.  The former is, at most, in poor taste, and potentially triggering to abuse victims.  The second makes me want to vomit because even though he was just talking, that guy was gearing up to try something and create another abuse victim.  A g a i n.  

The first can be avoided because it is imaginary and you, an adult, have power over your back button so that you don’t have to witness harm to imaginary people.  The second, those very real kids had to rely on real adults and real law enforcement to keep them safe from very real assault.   (It worked!  The neighborhood rallied!  He was arrested for violating parole!)

Pretty sure Sleazebag McDongface didn’t read some gross NC-17 Draco/Lucius fic before deciding to harm an actual human being.  Pretty sure not having read it didn’t keep him from doing it. ‘Cause he fuckin’ did it.  And he would have done worse. But actual people stopped him.

I get wanting to protect victims when so many of us are victims ourselves, but man, going after fiction is not the way to do it.

If you have a website with TOS that includes any kind of “objectionable content” rules, there will be parties who will use those rules to try to silence other people whom they want silenced.

Let’s look at the alt-right and MRA movements today, or GamerGate a few years ago. What is one of their primary weapons? They report black or feminist or really any leftist YouTube channels (or Twitter accounts, or whatever) whose message they don’t like and claim those channels are are violating TOS by posting hate speech or incitations to violence or whatever bullshit they can come up with, in an attempt to silence those channels.

When Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequence came under fire for starting a crowdfunding endeavor to fund the production of her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series of videos, male gamers tried to get her KickStarter and various social media accounts shut down by reporting her for for hate speech and promoting terrorism.

Luckily, that became a big enough story that the dudes failed and their efforts backfired. But a lot of times, these tactics work.

How do I know this? Because it happened to me. Not over major shit like the examples above, but over something completely petty.

Back in the mid-to-late 90s, before LiveJournal really became the place for fandom, before FF.net was really a thing, you had to create your own personal website on whatever free webhost you could find (GeoCities was popular, but there were others) if you wanted to host your fic somewhere.

And back then, TV studios and book authors were still sending their lawyers after people who wrote fanfic, issuing cease and desist letters to not only the authors, but also to their webhosts.

At the time, I was writing perfectly het Mulder/Scully fanfic. No rape, no pedophilia, no slash. Maybe a little BDSM. But largely it was unobjectionable.

Then the 8th season of X-Files started, David Duchovny decided he only wanted to be involved part-time, and the show decided to bring in another male character. The fandom lost their shit–as fandoms do–over the idea of “replacing” Mulder blah blah blah.

One of the most popular fanfic mailing lists–one that had previously had no restrictions on what characters or pairings could be posted–decided that if you wrote fanfic involving this character, you were no longer welcome. Well, this was the mailing list with all the readers. Sure, authors could go to other mailing lists, but they wouldn’t have exposure to the sort of readership this other list boasted.

I spoke out, saying that this change was unfair to fic authors and that the moderator of this list was behaving in a pretty vile way. The moderator and her friends took aim at me and began a campaign of harassment, and a few days later, suddenly my website with my XF fanfic was TOSed because someone had reported it. So was the next site I tried to create to host my fic, and the one after that.

Thanks to the way AO3s TOS are constructed, that sort of shit doesn’t happen now. I can speak up if I need to, and while I may receive harassment on my various social media accounts, there’s no chance they can have my fic taken down just because they have an agenda and don’t like me for reasons not relating to my fic.

When I helped write the ToS for AO3, I wasn’t primarily thinking about strikethrough. I was primarily thinking of FFN, where so many people post things that are technically against the ToS but that the community tolerates. Any time someone gets pissed off, they can go on a grudge-reporting spree and target their enemy’s work. Often, that means guys targeting slash or Twilight fic because it’s “for girls” and thus sucks. Sometimes, it’s one ship vs. another. I was also thinking of Miss Scribe and all of that other Harry Potter fandom drama. (And if you think fans are above destroying an entire archive just to strike at one enemy, think again!)

We can’t force people to like each other. We can’t force people to be nice to each other. But we could take away fandom bullies’ favorite tools.

It galls me to think that those of us who went through all this shit might have to go through it again because people who were still in primary school at the time don’t see anything wrong with harassing us over

Like, I hate to pull this argument, but we are your fandom elders, we did what we did to preserve fandom for y'all, so y'all would have space to safely explore the sane things we did and still do. And in doing so we rightly realized that if we wanted to protect the comfortable, cuddly parts, we also needed to protect the dark parts.

You can hate non-con fic all you want, and I will always advocate for adequate tagging/warning (especially with franchises that are aimed at younger audiences, e.g. MLP:FIM and SU) so that you don’t have to see it because I sympathize, but I will never support people who want to make sure that it isn’t even there to be seen. I’ve been through that once. It didn’t help anyone. It didn’t fix anything.

Hey anon!

So Jack and Bitty come home from their honeymoon (a week in Colorado) and the plan is they’re going to spend a few days at home, then go to Madison to pick up Marcus from his earlier than normal week with Grandpa and Grandma Bittle*. Then they’re going to spend another week, as a family, in California (”Disneyland!” Marcus had exclaimed excitedly when he found out, which was the exact reaction Jack and Bitty had been hoping for).

Six hours in transit later, it’s barely morning and Jack found himself suddenly awake, curled around Bitty in their hotel bed. There’s a creak at the door and Marcus waves frantically at him. He’s wearing Buzz Lightyear pyjamas. Jack, mystified, waves back. Marcus frowns and waves again until Jack realises, that it isn’t a wave but a gesture to get out of bed and come out of the room so Bitty doesn’t wake up.

“What’s up bud?” Jack asked, thinking maybe Marcus was hungry or thirsty.

“This is my proposal for a younger sister or brother.” Marcus says holding out a slim, leather folder, “I got Uncle Shitty to bind it and ship it to Madison so I’d have it in time for today.”

“Uh,” Jack says, “Maybe this is a conversation we should have with your dad as well -”

“No, we need to strategise.” Marcus says seriously, “Do you know how long I’ve been asking for a puppy? Daddy’s been saying no for five years.  Do you know how much more work a baby is? A lot more work! And they don’t know how to go to the toilet by themselves for years longer than a dog.” he looked at Jack seriously, “Do you want a baby? If you want a baby then we have to work together.  Daddy’s very stubborn.”

Jack couldn’t help the reflexive grin and he dropped down to crouch in front of Marcus, “Bud, I would love a baby. And I’m so glad I got one when I married your dad.” he reached out and scuffed Marcus’s head, “You, bud. You’re my baby. Just like you’re your daddy’s baby.”

Marcus huffed, “I’m not a baby,” he said, but he settled into Jack’s hug.

“Then your dad and me better get in all our hugs now before you’re too old to want to give any,”  Jack said easily.

“I know what you’re doing,”  Marcus said, somewhat muffled into Jack’s shoulder, “You’re distracting me as a tactic to make me drop this subject.”  he wiggled out of Jack’s hold and stared up at him, disconcertingly serious, “Uncle Shitty gave me a lesson about strategy and manipulation when I was six.”

“Uh,”  Jack said, caught out.

“But that’s okay because deciding to have children is something that should take careful thought and planning.”  Marcus added with that turn of phrase that said he was quoting somebody, “I put that in the proposal too.”  he added, pressing the folder into Jack’s chest, “Read this, think about it carefully and then come talk to me and we can start planning how to convince Daddy.”  he said with a nod before turning and wandering back to his room on the other side of the hotel suite.

“Marcus okay -?”  Bitty mumbled into the pillow as Jack climbed back into bed; only the very top of his cowlick was poking out of the blanket.

Jack leaned back against the headboard, opening the folder and flipping through the pages.  Right at the back was a post-it note:

Sorry dudes. I thought it probably better I got it printed then have Coach and Suzanne find out cause Marcus was putting it together in the home office.

FWIW, he’s done some excellent research here, I think Holster’s lessons on how to correctly footnote and reference really stuck too.

FWIWx2: dibs on being non-denominational godfather.

<3 Shitty

“What are you -”  Bitty asked, leaning up and then blinking, “Is that -?”

“A pro/con list for when to have a child based on eventual estimated cost of education?”  Jack asked, “I’m not sure I’d trust the forward projections past 2035 though, he says in a footnote that the economic projection isn’t particularly solid that far out.”

“What the fuck,”  Bitty said, wide awake and sitting up, white blankets sliding down his shoulders o reveal acres of golden tinged skin which yes, completely distracted Jack that he missed anything else Bitty said for a good thirty seconds, “Jack.  Jack!”

“Um.”  Jack blinked, mouth on Bitty’s shoulder and not quite sure how he got there, “Mmf?”

“Where did you get this?”  Bitty asked waving the folder, “And why is it called ‘Operation Stork Drop?”

Jack smiled into Bitty’s shoulder, “I think Marcus is going to be happy when I ask him if it’s okay if I adopt him today,”  he said.

“Well of course he’s going to be! He loves you,”  Bitty said firmly.

“But I don’t think that’s going to distract him for long from convincing you that he should get a baby sister or brother,”  Jack said, tapping the folder.

“Oh no,”  Bitty said, rubbing his face with a hand, “He didn’t.”

“He did,”  Jack said with a soft laugh, “There’s also a graph on page 12 breaking down how many babies in how short a span of time would be economical, good for childhood development and socialising and handy in supporting us in our old age.”

“Wait,”  Bitty blinked, “How come he’s only trying to convince me?”

Jack leaned over and kissed Bitty and then happily continued to distract his new husband until  Marcus woke up again and started making noises about food and Disneyland.

“Uncle Kent, this one is trying to eat your hat!”

He looked down, there was a tiny, ginger kitten nibbling on the brim of the hat he’d left sitting on the floor next to him. Jessie giggled and scooped up the cat to deposit it gently somewhere else.

“How many kittens did Dottie have again?” Kent asked.

“Five. No, wait, six, I think,” Jessie said. She shrugged, completely unconcerned. “I forget.”

“That’s a lot of cats,” Kent said as he dislodged one of them from digging its tiny claws into his shirt and attempting to climb him. He set it on the floor beside him, but the kitten wasn’t dissuaded as it now attempted to scale Kent’s leg.

“Daddy says that’s too many. We have to get rid of them,” Jessie said sadly.

“And what do you think of that?”

She broke out in a wide grin. “They’re all going to sleep in my room and I’ll take care of them!”

Somehow, he didn’t think her dad was going to allow that, but then again, Jessie was very persuasive for a six-year-old. She’d already convinced Kent to let her stay up past her bed time time by distracting him with kittens.

“Speaking of sleep, it’s time to get you to bed.”

“Aw, not yet,” she whined. “Five more minutes! What about the kitties?”

“The kitties will be here when you wake up. Also, if parents find out I let you stay up, they’re going to be really, really mad at me, and then Uncle Kent won’t be able to babysit anymore.”

Jessie pouted. “I don’t wanna.”

“Come on, kiddo. Your parents are going to be home soon, and you should have been beddy-bye–” he checked his watch, “–half an hour ago.”

“Too late. Her parents are already home,” a new voice said, causing Kent to jump. He’d clutched his armful of cats too tight, and they meowed in protest. He quickly put them down, and they were fine.

“Charlie, you scared the shi–uh, you scared me.”

“I know,” Charlie said, looking amused as he took in the picture of Kent, sitting barefoot in his living room with kittens crawling around him. “And, you,” he said gently to Jessie. “It’s time for bed.”

Jessie kissed her dad goodnight and let herself be led upstairs with her mother to brush her teeth while Kent straightened himself out and brushed off the cat hair. “You’re home early,” he said.

“The actor got off the stage to fight someone in the crowd before we even got to first intermission.”

“And you didn’t stay to watch that?”

“It was over pretty quick, and then the actor left, so his understudy had to step in, but he was clearly not prepared, so then, we left.”

“Wow,” Kent breathed out.

“It was a night,” Charlie admitted. “Thanks for watching Jessie, though. I know how she gets when she doesn’t want to do something. I just didn’t think you were so easily bribed with cats.”

“I had no idea your cat had kittens. They took me by surprise,” Kent defended as he grabbed the jacket he’d brought with him.

“You should take one,” Charlie suggested. “When they’re a bit older. You can come back.”

“Uh, I can’t even take care of the plants I have right now. I don’t think adding another living creature into the mix is a good idea.”

“Think about,” Charlie said as he opened the front door for Kent.  “See you at practice.”

Kent waved goodnight before getting into his car. He paused before starting the engine, trying to imagine himself with a cat.

tater is the only one who calls jack “zimmboni” on the regular, the rest of the guys make up random nicknames for him and change these like every day

the team favorite is definitely “zach jimmermann” which eventually gets shortened to “jimmy” and the media is just ?? ??? ??? ?

snowy’s list of weird goalie things is endless but the main one is he just. sings under his breath? even during games? according to him it helps him focus, and it does, but he also gets a sick satisfaction out of it when his quiet rendition of “the wheels on the bus” confuses and terrifies the other team’s forward so bad he misses the shot

calling marty jack’s dad bc they look Really Similar and they’re both from quebec… poots accidentally called marty jack’s dad in an interview bc they use that joke all the time in practice and he was hella embarrassed he got chirped about it for weeks

this devolves very quickly and marty absolutely loves it (jack thinks it’s funny but also he is so awkward please do not involve him in your wicked games you heathens)

marty: i’m gonna give that boyfriend of yours the shovel talk jack: hey, marty? this is the nightmare scenario

rookie: marty’s a dilf marty: what does that mean? rookie, panicked: UH,, DAD I’D LIKE TO,, FRIEND,

other, more cursed rookie, under his breath: daddy

i mentioned snowy and poots living in the same apt in this post but i still love the idea of that and them being pretty close friends and it literally takes one (1) look from snowy for poots to dissolve into laughter they can’t sit together in practice they’re banned

thirdy and marty are Hot Dads and they know this and they love it; they both have twitters bc the pr people forced them to and all they post is hockey stuff, family stuff and dad memes. and retweeting each other; they have entire conversations in quote tweets and all their fans are just like “tEXT EACH OTHER JFC”

tater is? weirdly good at rubix cubes and other puzzles like that? he likes having something in his hands so he always has a puzzle thing with him but he’ll finish it in like less than 20 minutes so he just huffs and puts it back to its original position and starts again

he just generally loves puzzles and riddles he always has one in his head to ask people when he meets them for the first time and everyone is rly put off by it bc they’re like “hi nice to meet you-” and he just goes “WHAT IS HARDER TO CATCH THE FASTER YOU RUN??” & they’re like “um.. ok”

his metric for how cool people are is if they actually take time to think about the riddle. he thinks jack is really cool bc jack scrunched his face for like 2 minutes when asked & then shouted really loud and excited in the middle of a falcs pr function “YOUR BREATH!!!” and him and tater fist bumped. the beginning of a beautiful friendship

guy said he’d never read marty & thirdy’s retirement poems bc he’s secretly a p successful poet & has a couple books of poetry published under a pseudonym.. he’s a poetry snob

Hi guys, two things.

Firstly, Tumblr mobile bullets are finally readable but have lost all nesting. So this won’t really make as much sense if you’re on Tumblr mobile.

Secondly, when you use a read more all your quotation marks and apostrophes get screwed up. It sucks. But if you hit the read more link, it should fix itself and make everything readable without requiring the use of a decoder ring.

Anyway here is the fall out to the Marcus Bittle Special Edition Interviews of March.

“You know, I work hard. I work really hard. I slave away all day to make a healthy, delicious meal for my children, and guess what? It doesn’t matter. Because all they want to eat is–” At this part, Bitty drops his passive-aggressive expression to one of absolute vile disgust as he spits out, “–Chicken tenders!”

In the background, a child’s voice calls, “Daddy, can I have ketchup?”

Bitty turns to look off-screen, and cheerfully says, “Just a moment, sweetie!”

He turns back to the screen. “Anyways, this is a call out post for you-know-who. Now, I know what you’ve been feeding them when I’m not home.”