i need a nap

You? Me? A committee of my friends? Of yours? Of those who have the most kudos? Of those who have no interest in fandom, but want to protect other people from dangerous content, whatever it may be? Who gets that power, and how long will they have it?

Who are you comfortable with giving the power of regulating all the content? What happens in grey areas? What happens when something you like isn’t liked by the Decider? Is there an appeal? Who gets to make the arguments for and against something?

Certain people are screaming that AO3 is bad because it’s not a “safe space.” The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space - for writers. And it does a pretty good job of that. It was designed to be a place where writers are safe from arbitrary content rule changes, random and unwarned deletions, and abuse-report abuse (which is common on ff.net). The Four Big Warnings + CNTW system is beautiful in its fairness and simplicity.

I’m a member of the LJ generation, and when I first came to Tumblr (grudgingly and out of desperation, I might add, since it tragically seems to be the only place to really connect with other fandom peeps) I was horrified at how people here had established this sort of fucked up bully culture, where nobody is responsible for monitoring their own consumption, and rather they expect everyone else to custom tailor content to the whims and desires of the Shrieking Banshee Masses. And woe be to the person who doesn’t bend and break! “I’m going to bully you while accusing you and your Big Mean Poopie Content of being the actual bully, so I can hopefully distract you and others from realizing I’m being a royal intrusive asshat who failed Astronomy 101 b/c I clearly believe the world revolves around me.”

The irony here is that this in itself is an abuse tactic - victim blaming with a side of gaslighting. Pot, meet kettle.

And it’s the exact same mentality that drives right-wing lunatics to kick up a fuss about the existence of icky cootie gay people in media because we need to “protect family values”, or who take to screeching at Starbucks because their particular religious symbolism isn’t portrayed on the winter holiday cups and OMG WAR ON CHRISTMAS, STARBUCKS STOP OPPRESSING ME BY NOT CATERING TO MY PERSONAL TASTE.

The mentality is one and the same - “Cater to ME ME ME or FACE MY DIVINE WRATH even if it means taking away other people’s freedom!” while hiding behind a flimsy-ass shield of faux righteous anger.  

Up to the late 1990s, fan communities were often small and decentralized because there was a huge fear that fans would be targeted by content creators if they drew too much attention. Since several authors (Anne Rice, Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffery) actually DID issue cease&desists to fan creators, it’s kind of understandable where the fear came from. It’s also why you still see fanfic floating around with disclaimers, something young!tumblr loves to mock.

Harry Potter changed *everything*. Like, I really can’t emphasize how much. Fanfiction was always there, being shared on email lists or privately hosted or literally mailed cross country. But Harry Potter hit BIG in 1997. It had a massive crossover appeal that hadn’t been seen since probably the original Star Trek, and the baby Internet was all. over. it. If you weren’t there, imagine Twilight. But bigger. And J.K. Rowling stood out from other creators by condoning fanfiction in her very early interviews. Not to mention there was a lot of down time between books and, as you might know, the fans do not do well unpoliced. 

This led to, I’m not kidding, an explosion of sites like FF.N. I don’t think a lot of younger users get how revolutionary AO3 is: not just because it created a safe space, but because of how much it’s done to centralize fanfiction on the internet. We used to get our fix through webrings and e-serves, so in the late 90s/early 00s we thought nothing of having dozens of scattered fanfic sites.

At the same time, the Digital Millennium Copywrite Act was coming down. The legality of fanworks was getting more and more complex. And no one knew how to handle these questions, because they had literally never come up before. When it was just authors going after individual fans, things usually went quick and brutal. Fans had neither the money nor the legal teams to stand up to creators, even if (as we were slowly beginning to realize) we had a strong case to create and share fanworks. So, if you got hit with a takedown notice, you took your fic down and laid low, hoping to avoid any further interest.  But now the legal burden was shifting from individuals to well-funded corporations. Fanfic.net and LJ didn’t want to shut down their fan-contributors, who were creating a huge stream of free content and bringing in advertising revenue. At the same time, they didn’t want to get shut down by a lawsuit if Lucasfilm found Han/Chewie smut and decided to go after the real money. The next 10 years were basically all of us – authors, fan creators, website executives – stumbling through brand new legal territory and figuring it out by trial and error. FF.N erred on the side of caution by becoming more and more restrictive. They shut down the entire Anne McCaffrey and Anne Rice sections, and eventually banned “pornographic” fanfiction from the site in an attempt to cover their legal rears. (It backfired, unsurprisingly, because say what you will about fandom: we like our smut. Also, FF.N had other issues that we won’t get into here will discuss shortly.) A bunch of other sites folded or waned in popularity as fandom wars divided the fan population. Authors scattered to the winds, and a lot of them ended up on LJ.  LJ started out very user friendly. We’re talking an open source code, an almost entirely volunteer staff. Even after it was sold to 6Apart in 2005, LJ was pretty permissive. A lot of that had to do with the aforementioned DMCA, which protected ISPs and hosting corporations. Like I mentioned above, a lot of the migration from FF.N to LJ (as a place for fanfiction SPECIFICALLY) came when FF.N started banning explicit fanworks. Why? Because FF.N targeted these fanworks based entirely on user reports. “Tell us if you find porn,” FF.N said, “And we’ll take care of it.” Backup real quick. LJ, in many ways, set the standard for online privacy in a way that was far ahead of its time. Friendslocked journals were the norm rather than the exception and many, many communities disallowed anonymous commenting. (I’m not saying LJ wasn’t toxic as fuck, by the way. It is 2017 and let’s all have a moment of acknowledgement for how terrible LJ culture actually could be.) But LJ, on the whole, was much, much better at self-policing than FF.N. On FF.N, all of your stuff was out in the open. It was just there. Anyone could read it, anyone could report it. And these two sites coexisted. All BNFs had a private journal and a public FF.N page. So if I hated someone and I wanted to harass them off the internet, on LJ, I’d have to make multiple sock puppets and concoct elaborate multi-journal ruses to do it on LJ (haha, who would do THAT?). What am I to do? Simple: Head off to FF.N and anonymously flame them there! FF.N became synonymous with anonymous hate long before the anti-smut censorship came down. But once those rules were in place, the system was rife for abuse by the Purity Police or grudgewankers. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay before it was cool to dm “kill urself” to someone on tumblr, it was happening on FF.N. All you, the early internet user, had to do was post a report link for your rival’s FF.N account on your LJ. Hate a pairing? A kink? Why not post a scathing rant, link included, to this captive audience of ALL YOUR FRIENDS. Yeah, this system had no room for abuse. So. FF.N opened the door and fandom came rushing through like the raging assholes we are. Certain Fandoms Alluded To Previously got so deeply divided that they split and formed their own fanfiction archives that occasionally rained hate on each other. Everyone else slowly withdrew to LJ, where locked communities offered some level of protection. Then, irony of ironies, fandom as a whole got targeted by the purity wankers. And of course, of course, it came back to Harry Potter.  It’s 2007. Things have quieted down since 2001, when certain unnamed people’s fics were targeted for plagiarism and deleted from FF.N even though, just to be clear, they actually were plagiarized and, while there was an element of mob persecution, the actual fact remains that the work in question was legitimately in violation of FF.N’s TOS. Ahem. It’s 2007. And everyone’s fairly chill. Creators are far more comfortable with fanfiction and fan creators are confident in posting their work so long as they aren’t profiting directly from it. Hosting sites, meanwhile, are profiting from fanworks, but they’ve got the legal shield of the DMCA to hide behind, so they’re feeling A-OKAY. And then Warriors for Innocence appears. WfI existed before strikethrough, and they existed after, but they made their mark on fandom when they reported upwards of 500 journals, most of them fan journals and communities, to LJ. The theory runs as follows: 6A, the company who’d bought LJ 2 years prior, realizes that the DMCA didn’t protect them if the fan works in question are “indecent”. Compounding this, 6A is already trying to clean up the famdomier aspects of LJ. Either they’re looking for a sale, or sites like ONTD are bringing in massive amounts of hits. WfI brings 6A a perfect hit list, and 6A goes to work. So one morning we all wake up and find that hundreds of journals, including the pornish_pixies community and several BNF’s personal journals, have been deleted. Literally gone: a lot of the media stored on these communities has been purged forever. Hope you had backups. Also gone: large swaths of the Pretty Gothic Lolita community, Lolita book discussion groups, and rape survivor communities. 

Gene Demby explains the Overton Window

“[Trevor] Noah isn’t wrong that compromise and good-faith are necessary for functional politics. But. There’s this idea in media studies called the Overton Window. Basically, the MSM defines the universe of legitimacy in public discourse. The news media covers/gives voice to lay inside the realm of legitimacy; the stuff it downlplays/ignores is on the fringes/unacceptable.

People of all ideological stripes try to expand and move the Overton window; the Civil Rights Movement did this exceptionally well. Illegitimate ideas–and noxious/dangerous ones–creep into the universe of legit via the language of controversy and debate. This is how a lot of the mainstreaming of the so-called “alt-right” is already happening: 

“Let’s put these noxious ideas up for discussion!”

“Let’s debate them and smack down those janky ideas with superior facts and logic!”

Instead of using that creepy ass quote Professor Sneep says about his obsession with his dead ex-friend as The Harry Potter Quote why don’t we use the one James Potter says to his son, whom he gave his life for, to comfort him as he walks to his death

“‘You’ll stay with me?’ ‘Until the very end,’ said James.”

Imagine a grown-ass man looking at Neville Longbottom, knowing his history, and thinking, this, this is a child I need to be cruel to.

Any sound of Dumbledore Apparating had been drowned by the sound of the wind in the branches. He stood before Snape with his robes whipping around him, and his face was illuminated from below in the light cast by his wand.

"Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?"

"No - no message - I'm here on my own account!"

Snape was wringing his hands. He looked a little mad, with his straggling black hair flying around him.

"I - I come with a warning - no, a request - please - "

Dumbledore flicked his wand. Though leaves and branches still flew through the night air around them, silence fell on the spot where he and Snape faced each other.

"What request could a Death Eater make of me?"

"The - the prophecy...the prediction...Trelawney..."

"Ah, yes," said Dumbledore. "How much did you relay to Lord Voldemort?"

"Everything - everything I heard!" said Snape. "That is why - it is for that reason - he thinks it means Lily Evans!"

"The prophecy did not refer to a woman," said Dumbledore. "It spoke of a boy born at the end of July - "

"You know what I mean! He thinks it means her son, he is going to hunt her down - kill them all - "

"If she means so much to you," said Dumbledore, "surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?"

"I have - I have asked him - "

"You disgust me," said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard so much contempt in his voice. Snape seemed to shrink a little, "You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?"

Snape said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore.

"Hide them all, then," he croaked. "Keep her - them - safe. Please."

"And what will you give me in return, Severus?"

"In - in return?" Snape gaped at Dumbledore, and Harry expected him to protest, but after a long moment he said, "Anything."

what a brave hero

also, what the heck, while i’m transcribing large sections of harry potter to win internet aguments, here’s the scene immediately preceding that one, where lily rejects him for being a death eater and a racist:

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not interested."

"I'm sorry!"

"Save your breath"

It was nighttime. Lily, who was wearing a dressing gown, stood with her arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.

"I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here."

"I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just - "

"Slipped out?" There was no pity in Lily's voice. "It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"

He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.

"I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."

"No - listen, I didn't mean - "

" - to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"

He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole...

i have literally never once in my life understood why this scene is supposed to make snape sympathetic. Note that even though he OMG LOVES HER SO MUCH, he still defaults to weaponizing her marginalized identity when he’s angry. because just like real-life racists who “only said the n-word because they were drunk!” or whatever, under the surface, that’s what he really believes. that’s the side he’s chosen to join in the war. maybe i’ve just known too many white people who loudly proclaim how anti-racist they are while engaging in racism in private, but i have no patience for snape’s fake-repentance, not when he continued to treat muggleborn kids at hogwarts like crap a decade after his alleged change of heart. also also, as a teacher, that thing harriet_spy said above re: neville makes me see red.

(also also also, what, all the muggleborns and muggles snape participated in the murder and torture of before lily was targeted, we’re just supposed to pretend they didn’t matter or...?)

An American Gods/Hannibal mashup for Fuller Fest. (Eventually going to post on ao3)

“The next one we’re going to is out in the sticks,” Wednesday said. “This time of year, they’ll be at their summer home in Montana. When it gets colder, they head for the warmer climes. The Florida Keys. Too bad its not winter.”

Shadow said nothing. They were going there for business, not a vacation.

“This man we are going to see…It could go either way,” Wednesday continued. “He’s a mixture of old and new; born out of brimstone, but suckled at the teat of Media. He could be an important ally.”

“If you can get him,” Shadow said.

Wednesday raised an eyebrow.

“I mean if he suckled at Media’s…teat..or whatever, will he want to turn against her? Isn’t she like his mother?”

Wednesday chuckled. “Relationships between parents and children can be fraught with conflict. I hope to agitate those feelings.”

“Stirring the shit as usual?”

“Stirring the shit,” Wednesday agreed. “Seeing what floats to the top.”

The last stretch of road was little more than a footpath through the trees. Shadow thought they would have to get out and walk at any moment, but somehow the large car kept finding a way between the trees until they finally came to a small cabin sitting in a clearing. Half a dozen dogs came from around the back, barking and rushing the car.

“Shit!” said Shadow and barely pulled his door closed in time as a husky mix jumped up and braced his front paws against the driver’s side window.

A sharp whistle from the cabin called the dogs away from the car. A dark-haired man stood on the porch, hands in pockets, watching sternly as the pack ran up the stairs to join him. However, for all his serious expression and scarred face, he didn’t look like a child of brimstone.

“You can come out,” the man on the porch said. Shadow opened his door slowly, waiting for the dogs to rush them once more, but they stayed seated at the man’s feet.

“Thanks for calling off the hounds,” Wednesday said as they mounted the porch.

The man eyed the wooden box Shadow was carrying and, still unsmiling, said. “He’s waiting for you inside.”

The cabin was small and the front door opened directly into the main room. There was a fireplace on the far wall, and although it was a warm day there was a fire roaring in it. A man sat in front of the fire, but slightly to the side, so he was half in shadow and half illuminated by the flames. The firelight played over the severe planes of the figure’s face and the knife-sharp pleat in his trousers.

“Come in,” the man said, his voice resonant with a strange accent Shadow couldn’t place. He leaned over and turned on a lamp and Shadow could see him better. The severe bone structure was still there, but with the full light on him, he was softened somewhat and  looked like a normal, if fastidious man. He was wearing navy blue slacks, dress shoes, and a smoothly-ironed electric blue shirt that lost none of its formality by having the top button left undone.

“I brought a gift for the host.” Wednesday motioned for Shadow to hand over the tributes: a single white truffle, sealed tight in a glass jar with a cork and red wax seal, and a bottle of wine still in the wooden crate they transported it in. On the way here, they had swaddled it like a baby so the ride wouldn’t shake up the sediment.

Their host stood to receive it.

“It’s a good vintage,” he said, using his thumb to wipe dust from the label. “Just barely. Its teetering on the edge of being overblown. We should drink this soon. Maybe tonight.”

“It needs to settle,” Wednesday said. “From the trip.”

“Would you at least stay for dinner? Will and I don’t often have guests.”

“Absolutely not,” Wednesday said with a smile. Curiously, the other man did not seem to take offense to that. “Unfortunately, we are in a bit of a time crunch.”

“I heard,” their host sat and indicated a chair next to his for Wednesday to sit in. “I don’t have another chair. How rude of me. Should I have my consort bring you one?”

“I like to stand,” Shadow said.

Their host nodded deferentially then turned to Wednesday. “Are you here to ask for my help? I’ve heard you’ve been supplicating all over the country and finally you find your way to me. I don’t know why I should consider helping you. Would you even want my help? I’m so far down on your list.”

“That’s more a function of geography than lack of respect,” Wednesday said. “Of course I respect you. You are the newest old deity I know. An old soul in a glossy new package. You could play an integral part in the war that is coming, the fight for the hearts and minds of this land. Let’s face it, you could only exist here, in this country, with a 24-hour news cycle and tabloid journalists scrabbling for profundity. But they have the depth of a wading pool and the attention span of a mayfly.” Wednesdays voice got low. “They are already forgetting about you. Last week there was a man in Florida who bit his girlfriend’s tongue off while they were fucking because he wanted to know what it would taste like.”

“Chewy, I would guess.” the man looked up at Shadow with a ghost of a smile on his lips. “At least they usually are, in my experience.”  Shadow felt a chill in the overheated room.

“They are already forgetting about The Ripper,” Wednesday said.

“They will never fully forget about me,” he said. “I will be feared in nightmares and taught in classrooms–”

“In a few years you will be on internet listicles with names like ‘Ten Shocking Killers You’ve Never Heard Of.’”

Shadow saw the anger flare up in the man’s eyes, although he remained perfectly still and otherwise expressionless.

“Such meager offerings,” Wednesday said. “Not what you deserve.”

“I have all the worshipers I need,” the man said. “I have my consort who is totally devoted to me.”

“One person? I think you are losing sight of the big picture here.”

“I have a foot in both camps, Wednesday,” he said. “So I have carved out a space for Will and myself that is in neither camp.”

“You make running from the cops sound like a utopia of your choosing.”

“I don’t believe discretion and prudence are the same as cowardice.”

Wednesday leaned forward. “What about the blood sacrifice? What about the meat that is passed through the fire?”

“I told you, my consort is very devoted,” he said. “When I want meat, I have it. Do I want a million people to have a vague idea of who they think i am or one person who knows me totally and would do anything, sacrifice anything to me and for me, up to and including his very life?” Again, the man, this Ripper, looked up at Shadow. Shadow couldn’t understand how brown eyes could look so heat-fired and yet so cold. “I took Will’s child and still he loves me. I spilled his blood and still he loves me. I stripped everything from him, and he is still with me.” 

The Ripper turned back to Wednesday. “ You cannot offer me that sort of devotion if I help you, but I may lose it if you fail. So, no, I will not help you. The outcome of this war does not affect me.”

“Even if it means you become yesterday’s news?”

“Even so,” The Ripper said. “I have created an entire universe for my consort and I to rule.”

“Rule? Rule what? You only have one worshiper.”

“And one is all I need.”

With that, the Ripper stood and showed them to the door.

 Will was still out on the porch when they left, seated now in a rocking chair, with the dogs clustered around him.

“He’s not going to help you, is he?” he said.

Shadow paused, but Wednesday kept walking to the car.

“No,” Shadow said. “He..uh..declined that opportunity.”

Some of the dogs raised their heads, but Will made a sound through his teeth and they settled back down.

“I’m a lot like you, you know. Or I was,” Will said. “I was just a person, not even a particularly religious person at that. I didn’t know what I was getting into. When I finally figured it out, it was too late.” Will leaned down to scratch the ear of the nearest dog. “Tell me, Shadow, have you ever looked the devil in the face?”

Remembering The Ripper’s eyes, Shadow said, “I may have.”

“What if you liked what you saw?”

Shadow didn’t answer. He couldn’t imagine what Will must have gone through to get to this point, if he really was “just a person” to start with.

“You can still go back,” Shadow said. 

“Here’s where myth and reality divide,” Will said. His eyes were the same blue as a cloudless summer sky. “No on wants me back.”

“That can’t be true.”

“Everyone is either dead or glad to see me gone,” he said. “Besides, I keep him away.” He nodded toward the cabin. “I keep the beast sated.”

“Can’t someone else do it?”

“No,” he said. He smiled, looking happy about that. “They tried and they’ve died. And here is where myth and reality converge again: I wouldn’t want to go back even if I could. I’m not bound to his underworld because I ate his food. I eat his food and live in his world because I am bound to him. Nothing else matters.”

“Are you trying to warn me or something?” Shadow asked.  He didn’t want to talk to this man any more. He could feel the fanatical devotion coming off of him in waves.

Yes, definitely.

amy santiago is so well written. she’s the first female nerdy character ive ever seen that isn’t simultaneously a killjoy, and you’d think that dating a slightly immature, wild & reckless guy would make her like that, but she joins in the fun with him (i.e halloween heist!!!) instead of perpetuating the whole “girls dont know how to have fun” thing and she really does have two sides to her, her whole binder and numbers enthusiast face and then she turns around and takes absolutely NO shit from anyone. and even though i dont have much in common with her she’s easily one of my favorite characters ever

and rosa diaz. it is so hard to find a badass woman that is just badass because she wants to be, not cause she went through some tragedy that made her that way (unlike male characters) and it’s just such a joy to see a woman celebrated as this fearless, leather jacket wearing, motorcycle-riding, mysterious, property-destroying character that is also so protective of their friends and would most likely kill for them. women aren’t often celebrated for their ability to destruct and their recklessness and the fire inside of them, and rosa diaz is a perfect encapsulation of that.

and god, last but not least, gina freakin linetti. i have NEVER seen a female character be allowed to be unapologetically cocky and self absorbed without any sort of demonization or consequence. instead, you LOVE gina linetti. you aspire to BE gina linetti and have her state of mind. and the fact that she’s the only non-cop civilian in the squad, but she’s arguably the bravest and/or smartest out of all of them (i.e “gina are you scared?” “scared that you won’t let me use a flamethrower. and use it to throw flame.”) and while it seems on the surface that she doesn’t care about anyone, her bond with every one of the characters is so strong you know she would do anything for them. let more female characters be snarky assholes.