Just. Because.

*cackling*

AO3 was built by a bunch of us with our free donated labor for the purpose of being a space free from commercial spam.

It’s not a public service. It was built by us to house the type of fandom culture we liked.

AO3 forbids commercial links because they are making a very specific claim about the legality of fanworks, and that claim is about noncommercial fanworks.

They’re not saying that commercialized fanworks are against the law. They’re just not prepared to host them–nor defend them in court.

In case people missed it: The OTW will not honor DMCA takedown orders that are basically, “I own X work and that’s a fanfic of it, and that’s copyright infringement so make it go away.”

The OTW says, lolnope, we don’t think that’s copyright infringement. If you disagree, sue us.

The OTW says: Disney - we will not remove explicit Mandalorian fanfic. Rowling, Warner Bros - we will not remove trans Harry Potter fanfic. Gabaldon - we are not removing Outlander fanfic no matter how much you think it’s illegal or a personal violation. Yarbro, if someone puts “The Adventure of the Gentleman in Black” on AO3, you will need to actually take it to trial to (try to) get it removed; none of this C&D order followed by fans caving because they can’t afford a lawyer.

…So far, nobody has sued them. (This is, in my mind, the strongest proof we have that fanfic is not copyright infringement. In 13 years, not a single person or company has scrounged up a lawyer and filed a lawsuit against AO3/the OTW for hosting fanworks.)

But they’re not willing to put themselves on the line for commercial works. Those get considered differently in copyright law. They’re not always infringing - there’s a whole history of parody books & songs to prove that - but the OTW is not dealing with them.

The OTW does not care if fans are making money. The OTW cares if fans making money interfere with its legal defense of its archive.

Events like Strikethrough and Boldthrough happened in the early to mid-2000s. It felt like you’d wake up every day in 2007 and find another fandom group on LJ gone. (And not just fandom groups either, important community groups for education and trauma survival were also wiped out in those purges as well.)

And while not exactly the same, Yahoo Groups–and yes Yahoo Groups was a major online fandom hub at one point–were deleted as late as 2019 with very little warning, leaving a lot of older fandom groups scrambling to back up decades worth of content.

I might be projecting, but Fanfic.net seems to be wobbling too. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out they go under in the next few years despite performing similar purges of adult content in 2012 and allowing for obnoxious ads, which made the site unusable on mobile unless you wanted to see an ad what felt like every couple of paragraphs. (It might be better now, I haven’t checked in a while.)

It has only been in very recent memory that fandom has gained any sort of foothold that isn’t poised directly over a precarious faultline that could at any moment open up and swallow entire communities whole, and a huge part of that is the volunteers at Ao3 who decided to play chicken with the likes of Anne Rice and won.

1. Employee expenses. Someone has to renew the page license, update firewalls, improve the webpage, and add beneficial features that the users are explicitly asking for. They also keep good copyright lawyers on retainer, who stay up-to-date on potential law suits and draw up legal responses to those Cease and Desist letter. That is not a nothing-expense. People deserve to be properly compensated for their labor.

2. This is the big one: Servers. I don’t know if y’all know this, but internet web pages do not have endless and infinite storage capacity. Since AO3 is ad free, it needs to come up with the money to buy and maintain servers from elsewhere, aka DONATIONS, which are willingly given.

they aren’t even requiring that anyone pay to use the site. it’s optional. you don’t want to donate, don’t donate, it’s fine. you’re probably capable of ignoring the donation request banner on other sites (wiki??) just fine.

it’s true that running and maintaining servers and also holding a fund for legal expenses costs actual money– you can request their actual budget and expenses explanation iirc but i’m not going to leave tumblr mobile to hunt for it.

but also? do you realize how incredible no ads is? like, really? almost every single other non-commercial website (and even some of those now) depend on ads to survive. that means they’re selling your data to pitch their target demographics and traffic to advertisers. so not only is ao3 letting you read fic without annoying banner ads, but they aren’t selling your info to justify the advertising expense to potential advertisers/investors. imagine how horribly THAT info could be used if it was being sold or leaked as a commodity.

like bruh i’m sorry if it sucks that you think you should get to make money off someone else’s IP– depending on the IP in question you might be entirely justified in wanting to! but you’re welcome to go use patreon or ko-fi. you could take commissions somewhere. i could go off and write original fiction. yeah, it’s unfair that fanart is a loophole left alone more than writing, or that people feel like they shouldn’t have to pay as much for words. that all sucks. and none of that is ao3’s problem or a problem ao3 was created (by us, by fandom) to solve.

not only have we watched FFN go down the advertising and yielding to legal pressure drain, but if you’ve always had ao3, you don’t know what it was like to have fanworks hosted on little private hubs or groups on sites not entirely intended for it. one of my fandoms was a privately managed server and when the host moved on, they waited a few years, and then stopped paying to maintain it. it’s all just gone– any work i didn’t back up from when i was a teen, any stories i didn’t think to save for when i wanted to revisit them two decades later. i posted my first ao3 story seven years ago and even THAT is a wild amount of time to still be like “oh yeah i’m not at all worried about the site vanishing” to me.

they aren’t making money off us, nobody is vacationing on ao3 donations, but even if someone was for a site that doesn’t sell my data to advertisers, doesn’t require a fee to use, and lets me register pretty much anonymously, i would probably think an optional occasional donation was worth it. maybe i’d have criticisms but that’s still a whole fucking lot that thousands of fandoms are being offered for FREE.

Ohana is hard. Ohana is a pain in my ass. Oh I’m not going to pretend that it’s not worth it, because it IS. Every moment, every memory, every smile makes all the bullshit worth while. It’s still a pain in the ass. YOU are a pain in the ass…

So here’s the thing… I’m 31 years old and feel like I have a pretty good handle on my life. Sure, things aren’t perfect all the time, but honestly I wouldn’t want them to be. Life would be pretty boring if I had everything figured out. It’s like a wave, ya know? Life is full of ups and downs, and it’s the tough times that make the good times so welcome. Or so I’ve always liked to think. Sometimes though…I’m not so sure. I know deep down there is some truth behind my way of thinking and yet I also know that there are some things that no one should ever have to experience. One of these things is the loss of a child. I always say that not having children is a personal choice for me, and to an extent it is. I have my nieces and nephews and they are enough for me. I love them with every bit of maternal pride and instinct that I possess. Still, there has always been a part of me, the tiny voice in the back of my head, that tells me I’m lying. In addition to that choice, there is the fear. The fear and the knowledge that I could not, would not, be able to cope if I lost a child. I fall to pieces just thinking about it. Then I hear this story about a family that has recently suffered a great tragedy. Their little boy was born 4 months early, and after two precious days with them, he passed away. I think about it and my heart breaks, and I can’t even imagine the pain they must feel… Except that…this is MY family. Not some stranger that I’ve never heard of. It isn’t some sob story from another state shared so many times that a secret part of me callously questions it’s validity. This is REAL to me. I grew up with that baby’s daddy… and I weep with him for the loss of something so precious.

And then there’s you. You who I wish I could say this to. You who I wish I could shake until you understood where I am coming from. You who has given up. You who thinks you’ve lost. You who I know will never say thank you and who instead hurls accusations. I never wanted this. I don’t regret it, but it wasn’t my first choice. I didn’t want to fill this role for an angsty teen, a clingy toddler, and a middle little who just can’t quite come to terms with what is going on. I didn’t want to become more to them than what I already was, but I did it because someone had to. I wanted you to become who they needed you to be. I wanted you to accept the help that was being offered. You didn’t have to ask for it, I know that would have been too hard, but it was and still is there for you to take hold of. All you have to do is try. The most frustrating thing about it is that you haven’t lost them yet. You’re not going to lose them. I won’t let it happen. Despite how much that nagging voice in my head whispers that it would be for the best, I can’t allow you to give up. I won’t.

Then there's you. You're pregnant again and now I have to figure out how to tell MY KIDS that their mom is having another baby. What the actual fuck? You haven't tried, not even a little bit. Not for them... not even for you. Did you even want to become what they needed? Weren't you supposed to be that from the start? You didn't. I DID.

And ya know what?

Wiping down my dash at the end of an evening, I see your read-more, over-hear your rant in the tags, so I pour you a drink.

She says tumblr I’m feeling like shit today can you send me some posts for a smile can we talk about slash, can you fill up my dash so I won’t have to think for a while

Laa dahdah didee dah La dahdah didee dah dadum

And sometimes we blog with a beer

And when I proudly boast that I’m older than most, 

“Gay” is used as an insult. It is used to be demeaning. Its used to discriminate. And yet its used as the all mighty umbrella - gay rights, gay marriage, gay community - when discussing the entire community.

Gay gets used as a slur. Queer gets used as a slur. But I don’t walk up to gay people and say “your identity is a slur, you know that right” or get pissed when they say “the gay community” when they mean the whole community.

Personal identity and preference in terms, even harmful words that get used as slurs, are not questioned; except for the word Queer.

Queer gets shut down. Queer people get others in their faces saying “your identity is a slur!” Queer people don’t have the freedom to identify in a community, but are forced under other terms against their will due to hypocrisy and double standards.

It was meant to denote sexually perverse people, most frequently sex workers and those who hired them. Anyone who participated in anything but married, vanilla, straight sex might have been referred to as “gay,” including any suspected LGBT person.

The word (already being one frequently used on the community,) was reclaimed as a community identifier when the community wanted to disconnect from the clinical and diagnostic implications of “homosexual.”

There is record of queer being reclaimed and used as a personal identifier literally before the popularization of gay. Both words are reclaimed slurs with negative histories, and BOTH are used as slurs against the community still to this day.

Also, queer is reclaimed in a particularly empowering way. It doesn’t just mean “same-sex attraction” but encompasses a whole spectrum of attractions and gender orientations. It’s a word that says to asexuals, pansexuals, bisexuals, trans folks, genderfluid and genderqueer and genderless folks and people who are still figuring themselves out, “hey, you’ve got a home here. We don’t need to categorize you to love you.” 

This is important because there are a lot of divisions within the LGBTQ+ world, and in particular cis gay men and cis lesbians often overlook or exclude trans, bi and asexual people. Queer is the only word that not only demands equal acceptance for everyone, but leaves the door open for words and descriptors that haven’t even been invented yet. 

Lmao yeah! the pushback against this idea is overt and disgusting and I don’t trust anybody who perpetuates it. 

Queer is full of the types of people who don’t make good poster children for the middle class assimilationist cis gay couple just looking to get married and have some kids. Queer forces us to realize the fight didn’t end with gay marriage, and cis gays are gonna have to step out of the spotlight sometimes, and realize cis gays have privilege, and fight for someone with less. Trans people, nonbinary people, people in nontraditional relationship structures, aromantics, asexuals, sex workers. Heck more and more bisexual people these days are switching over to queer because the amount of biphobia in the so-called lgBt community is so alienating, and also because so many of us feel the term bisexual reinforces a false gender dichotomy and we’re too tired of jokes about kitchenware to use pansexual.

Text of a manifesto originally passed out by people marching with the ACT UP contingent in the New York Gay Pride Day parade, 1990. -

An Army of Lovers Cannot Lose Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are. It means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred. (We have been carefully taught to hate ourselves.) And now of course it means fighting a virus as well, and all those homo-haters who are using AIDS to wipe us off the face of the earth. Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It’s not about the mainstream, profit-margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It’s not about executive directors, privilege and elitism. It’s about being on the margins, defining ourselves; it’s about gender-f— and secrets, what’s beneath the belt and deep inside the heart; it’s about the night. Being queer is “grass roots” because we know that everyone of us, every body, every c—, every heart and a– and d— is a world of pleasure waiting to be explored. Everyone of us is a world of infinite possibility. We are an army because we have to be. We are an army because we are so powerful. (We have so much to fight for; we are the most precious of endangered species.) And we are an army of lovers because it is we who know what love is. Desire and lust, too. We invented them. We come out of the closet, face the rejection of society, face firing squads, just to love each other! Every time we f—, we win. We must fight for ourselves (no else is going to do it) and if in that process we bring greater freedom to the world at large then great. (We’ve given so much to that world: democracy, all the arts, the concepts of love, philosophy and the soul, to name just a few of the gifts from our ancient Greek Dykes, Fags.) Let’s make every space a Lesbian and Gay space. Every street a part of our sexual geography. A city of yearning and then total satisfaction. A city and a country where we can be safe and free and more. We must look at our lives and see what’s best in them, see what is queer and what is straight and let that straight chaff fall away! Remember there is so, so little time. And I want to be a lover of each and every one of you. Next year, we march naked.

I came of age after they discovered HIV and before they discovered how to treat it.   THAT is how old I am.

I worked and marched with friends and loved ones and the banner that brought everyone together was “Queer.”   The word doesn’t need to be reclaimed.  It has been reclaimed.  Before a lot of y’all were ever born. 

The word “queer” was used against me growing up.

I’m marginalized within LGBT identity circles for being nonbinary, demisexual, autistic, homebound, and poor.

~Later, accepting yet another award for finding the cure~

BAM!

I’m out of ideas! XD

LOOOK ATT THIIIIS!!!!

LOOOOK ATTT THIIIISS!!!!

80

*O*

OH MY GOOD!!!!!

ThAT’S IT!!!!

Hitting my knee

Traditional style (Sorry the picture quality is really bad) but here is my (super short) update!!

my favourite thing, artists of tumblr untiting to create a comic about high school notes gay love story

MORE PLEASE!

no.

Please oh PLEEEEEEEASE

Need

More

(sorrythatImnotasgoodlololololol)

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

About a week ago I posted this.

I’ve been getting horrible messages like this in my ask for months, including:

and my personal favorite

After getting the message saying “Just go kill yourself” I was completely done dealing with this person’s horrible messages and replied with just an “Okay.” and logged off tumblr.

About a week later I logged back on with 17 messages in my ask, most of them from the anon. I scrolled down and at first when I logged off, the anon messaged me things like

I scrolled up more and all of a sudden they started sending me more and more messages like

This was extremely surprising to me. I thought “After all those horrible messages you sent to me for MONTHS about hating me and wanting me dead, you say ‘sorry’ and that you ‘cant be responsible for someone’s suicide’?”

But I guess the lesson goes like this:

Some people seem to forget that people are depressed and do consider suicide. Now, people think its a funny insult. Well guess what:

It’s not

Something like this should not have to be said. We should already know that it’s not cool to say that and yet, here we are.

drarry social media au (that no one asked for) part 12/ ?

(click for better photo quality)

part [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6.1] [6.2] [7] [8] [9] [10.1] [10.2] [10.3] [11]

Louis: Does he ask our pity? He can walk in the sunlight, whereas we, foul creatures of darkness as we are, are forever barred from God’s kindly li –

BAM!

I’m out of ideas! XD

LOOOK ATT THIIIIS!!!!

LOOOOK ATTT THIIIISS!!!!

80

*O*

OH MY GOOD!!!!!

ThAT’S IT!!!!

Hitting my knee

Traditional style (Sorry the picture quality is really bad) but here is my (super short) update!!