Is So Meta, Even This Acronym

Not that there's anything wrong with constantly downloading. My favorite line of my favorite book in the series.

the thought of mb sitting down and then making sure all its drones are in place and then closing its eyes and conking out(while running queries). Serenity perhaps...

I was definitely inspired by people (or perhaps one person?) drawing the risk/threat assessment modules as different abstract shapes. If you know...please let me know so I can shake their hand lol it's a good idea edit: it's definitely @kittygameratx down to the yellow lines threat and the round red risk. Thank you for your vision

welcome! here are what you need to know about ao3 and how it’s the complete opposite of wattpad

trigger warning for the mention of contents that are allowed on ao3 that can be triggering to some.

ao3 is a non-profit organization. it’s run by fans (people like you and me), for fans.

fans donate to the site on their own free will to keep the site up and running smoothly.

ao3 is not a social media. it is an archive.

ao3 doesn’t have ads. it doesn’t have algorithms. it doesn’t have “going viral.”

everything is endlessly free on ao3. there is no “ao3 premium.” you will never see a single ad on ao3, and you can download as many fics as you want to read offline for free.

ao3 doesn’t have an app. and ao3 doesn’t need an app. any “ao3 apps” you see are third-party apps and are not affiliated with ao3, so be careful giving these shady apps your login infos or other personal information.

ao3 was built with the main purpose to 1.) be completely against censorship and 2.) host fics that are banned on other platforms like wattpad.

the reason ao3 doesn’t have an app is because for it to have its own app, appstore and google play store will have to approve it first. and due to the contents ao3 allow, chances are that it won’t get approved. which is actually a good thing. it doesn’t need an app. it works more than fine without an app.

on ao3, every single thing is allowed as long as it is fanfic or fan work (original works, fan art and video edits count as fan works, but if you want to post a video edits on ao3, you will have to post it elsewhere and then link it back to ao3 — ao3 cannot host video edits on its platform due to copyright issues)

by every single thing that is fanfic, I mean every single thing:

the filthiest smut without plot that is written purely for sexual pleasure is allowed. it has its own canonical tag called “plot what plot, porn without plot.”

fics that focus on non-consensual sexual intercourse are allowed, doesn’t matter if the fics glorify or romanticize the act, doesn’t matter if they’re written as kinks. they have their own canonical tag called “rape/non-con.”

fics about characters who are minors are allowed, even if they’re portrayed in a sexual manner, even if they’re non-consensual sexual intercourse. even if the minor characters are romantically and/or sexually involved with characters who are adults. even if they fics are written in ways that glorify and/or romanticize the thing. they have their own canonical tag called “underage sex.”

fics about incest are allowed. doesn’t matter if they glorify or romanticize the relationship. they have their own canonically tag called “incest.” fun fact: the first ever fic that was posted on ao3 was a fic about an incest ship from supernatural.

fics about self-harm and suicide are allowed. doesn’t matter if they glorify or romanticize the act. they have their own canonical tags called “self-harm” and “suicide” also “suicidal ideation”, “suicide attempt”, “implied/referenced suicide”, etc.

fics about violence and gore are allowed, even if they were written for the sake of shock value. they have their own canonical tag called “violence”, “blood and gore”, “blood and injuries”, etc.

rpf is also allowed. doesn’t matter if the content of the fics are dark and taboo. they’re treated the same way as any other fics.

every single dark and taboo fic you can think of is allowed. and it has its own canonical tag. because it is the main reason why ao3 was created in the first place.

“but what do I do if I don’t wanna see fics about xyz?” you can filter out any specific tag, character and/or pairing you want.

“what do I do if I wanna find fics about xyz?” you can search for any specific tag, character and/or pairing you want.

a lot of ao3 users rely on tags to search for specific tags, pairings, characters they want. they also rely on tags to filter out and exclude specific tags, pairings, and characters that they don’t want to see.

ao3’s tagging system is by far the most efficient one I’ve ever seen.

on ao3, our main principles are “don’t like don’t read” — which means YOU have a responsibility to curate your own internet experience. yes, ao3 allows all kind of messed up fics, but they also allow you the ability to NOT see anything you don’t want to see, by filtering out specific fics, pairings and/or characters.

no. you cannot harass authors who write about things that disgust you. you can and will be reported for harassment, and ao3 takes harassment very seriously. they will not take your side. because fucked up fics are allowed on ao3—fucked up fics are the main reason ao3 was created—whereas harassment is a direct violation of their terms of service.

ao3 is a house of the freaks and the perverts (affectionate). you ARE in the house of the freaks and the perverts. so don’t think about harassing or being rude to the freaks and the perverts who built this anti-censorship house and are kind enough to let you in.

ao3 is proship, profic, and anti-censorship.

any writer can write whatever they want, however they want. the only etiquette is that you tag your stuff properly and accurately

mistagging for visibility is heavily frowned upon here, and it won’t get your works more views. people will either block or report you if you deliberately mistag things with the purpose of getting your fic more views. as I’ve said before, ao3 is an archive. it’s not a social media. it doesn’t have algorithms or going viral.

if you come across a fic that has the tag “creator chose not to use archive warnings” it means the fic may or may not contain topics that can be triggering, but the author won’t tell you what these topics are, or if there are any at all. so proceed at your own risk.

that said, because ao3 is a non-profit site that hosts millions of works about others’ copyrighted characters, you CANNOT link a monetization platform anywhere on ao3, you CANNOT mention any donation, commission—or anything that involves money—anywhere on ao3. no, you cannot imply donation, commission, or anything that involves money either. that is against their terms of service.

and because ao3 is a place for fanworks, the “work section” of your post has to actually be fanwork (fanfic, original work, fan art, link to a video edit count as fanwork). anything that isn’t fanwork is not allowed.

you cannot post something on ao3 that is not fanwork. so no political statement, no call-out post, no “I’m looking for fics about xyz”.

ao3 is anti censorship as long as what your post is actually fanwork and as long as you don’t violate their terms of service that I’ve mentioned above.

ao3 has their own team of lawyers to protect them, their users, and every fanwork that is posted on their platform.

last but not least, don’t write directly onto ao3. write and store your works elsewhere before copy and paste them onto ao3 once they’re ready to post!! because ao3 does NOT autosave drafts for you, you risk losing everything you’ve typed if there’s a glitch, if the site crashes or if your device unexpectedly shuts down for whatever reason.

With the recent rumblings about censorship and work deletions on Wattpad, many users are considering posting to AO3 for the first time. If that describes you, you may have questions.

This post is a collection of resources you can use to start finding the answers to these questions. If you don’t find what you’re looking for at the links below or you have something more specific to ask, please feel welcome to post questions in the reblogs and comments here.

If you’re an AO3 pro answering questions in these notes, be kind. We were all new once, and other fans helped us then. It’s time to pay it forward.

Resources (under the cut)

At least AO3 makes it easy to find things, no matter how old or obscure.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

That's it. That's my answer. Endor.

plus hoodie kid gave him the opportunity to back down and apologize for being a dick, but instead ICE kid relied on the implied threat of legalistic tools as a shield against the consequences of violent rhetoric, further bringing on his FAFO moment

the legal concept of "fighting words" is why punching nazis is typically safe to do in a free democratic society

these are mostly fics that discuss the governor module, whether in action or as a retrospective on its effects, ex. shaping a construct's later behaviour.

please see the tags/warnings on each fic.

Regulations and Standards by @jottingprosaist

Bring Down Rain by @abeautifulblog/gremble

SecUnits and Special Agents by FlatApple

Protocol Error by @jottingprosaist

Procedural Learning series by Sunruner

MurderWars (x Star Wars) by @katachresiswriting/katachresis

The White Road by @greenjudy

All Systems Governed by @vulcan-highblood/vulcanhighblood

Emotional Context by Clare_Hope

IV series by @ii-thiscat-ii/ThisCat

Useful Facts About Grief by @lyricwritesprose

Neither Family Nor Property by PeniG

Structure Unstable by Killbothtwins

Our DiscomfortUnit by Sledgehammer_Girl

Missed Connection by @flipspring

Fauna One by Avonya

Closing Distance by torpidgilliver

Mutually Assured Discretion by torpidgilliver

Boiled Off Your Hate by torpidgilliver

Improper Use of Company Equipment by ArtemisTheHuntress

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Not really, in my opinion, and I want to try and explain why.

Definitions

The term unreliable narrator has become somewhat watered down here on tumblr and in pop cultural discussions in general but I am working with what I learned at uni here. (Disclaimer: In academia too there are different definitions and approaches to unreliability but I'm going with the basics here)

For Wayne Booth, who first coined the term, "an unreliable narrator is one who tells lies, omits or misrepresents important information, or presents inaccurate interpretations of events as objective truth." Peter J. Rabinowitz says "An unreliable narrator however, is not simply a narrator who 'does not tell the truth' – what fictional narrator ever tells the literal truth? Rather an unreliable narrator is one who tells lies, conceals information, misjudges with respect to the narrative audience." (emphasis mine)

In other words, an unreliable narrator deceives the narrative audience (that is the implied in-universe audience), knowingly or unknowingly, in a way that significantly changes their interpretation of the narrative.

According to Greta Olson, there is "a differentiation between fallible and untrustworthy narrators" and "all fictional texts that employ the device of unreliability can best be considered along a spectrum of fallibility that begins with trustworthiness and ends with unreliability."

That means: It is not a binary of reliable vs. unreliable narrator. It is a sliding scale, a spectrum, and I would argue that on that spectrum, Murderbot falls closer to the trustworthy side than the unreliable.

General Thoughts

By and large, Murderbot presents the facts of the story to us truthfully. It does not withhold information from us that impacts our understanding of the events (see below for exceptions).

Are there moments where Murderbot's narration is fallible? Sure. It makes mistakes, particularly with judging people's intentions and their opinion of it. It consistently assumes people (especially "its" humans) think worse of it and trust it less than they actually do. It considers itself not important, and therefore assumes it is also not important to others. It also often rates it competence as much lower than it actually is.

But, and this is crucial: It does also tell us when it makes mistakes and often tells us the objective events in addition to its subjective assumptions or interpretations. By that I mean: It tells us its assumptions about the humans not thinking much of it and considering it expendable. But it also tells us the humans' words and actions that prove the opposite is true. It tells us about how incompetent and useless it is (especially in System Collapse) and then also tells us the sequence of events showing it actually is still capable of doing its job. It learns alongside us that its negative thoughts about itself aren't always true.

That's not unreliable narration.

Now, Murderbot's refusal to admit/discuss its emotions is the most common argument I've seen for MB being unreliable, and that is the one that probably bothers me the most.

Because a) A narrator isn't obligated to discuss everything equally with the audience. MB refusing to discuss its feelings is a characterisation choice, but it's not keeping any vital information from us that we need to understand the story. There's gonna be narrators that focus more on outside descriptions and some that focus more on internal thoughts and perceptions and neither is inherently more unreliable than the other.

b) that being said imo MB's narration actually focuses A Lot on internal perceptions and feeling, in spite of it being so reluctant to talk about them. I think MB gives us a lot more emotion than we give it credit for. I would argue it doesn't actually hide all that much. It may often not be able to state its feelings outright, but that doesn't mean it doesn't tell us about them

As an example, let's look at the moment when Gurathin reveals its name to the PresAux group because that's always one that sticks in my mind with regard to MB and how it communicates its feelings

I opened my eyes and looked at him; I couldn’t stop myself. From their expressions I knew everything I felt was showing on my face, and I hate that. I grated out, “That was private.”

Murderbot doesn't actually tell us anything about what it's feeling here. It only tells us it's feeling something intense, and that it shows in its face, that the others can perceive it and react to it, and that it hates it. We can extrapolate what it's feeling of course: it's feeling betrayed and exposed and embarrassed and vulnerable (and angry but that's a given for MB). But I would argue it's not hiding that from us. It's given us the context we need to extrapolate what it's feeling because a) it doesn't want to talk about it directly so it does it indirectly and/or b) it wouldn't even know how to name the emotions it's feeling in that moment.

So I would say that MB does the best it can given its limitations (in experience and willingness to talk about feelings) to give us the most accurate view of its emotional state without having to talk about it. After all, we almost always know how it feels, or can at the very least guess at it. If it really was trying to hide its feelings from us (not from the other characters, it probably is actually pretty opaque to them most of the time) the narration would be reading very differently.

Looking at it from a Doylist perspective for a second: This is also stylistic choice on the part of Martha Wells, it's basic "show, don't tell": She doesn't simply tell us what Murderbot is feeling, she is showing us through its thoughts, actions and reactions and the reactions of other characters. That doesn't make Murderbot untrustworthy.

Now, I want to look at a few other passages and examples that are often brought up in this debate.