swamp ophelia

Back from a small fanfic hiatus, and I am absolutely flabbergasted by all of the fic authors now practically begging their readers to READ THE TAGS.

I’ve been seeing this warning written in summaries, in author’s notes, highlighted in all caps in the actual tags. I’ve read so many apologies written by authors in the comments in response to people chastising the author for writing what they wanted to write, for what they tagged correctly — for what essentially comes down to nothing more than having had other people actively ignore their tags or read despite them.

And there seems to be this bizarre, somehow largely accepted idea that it is the creators job and responsibility to beseech their readers to ‘use caution’ and to ‘stay safe’, to ‘be mindful of their health’…

I am beyond confused here.

Since when??? did exercising the most basic form of common sense and acknowledging one’s personal yeas and nays, likes and limitations, become some other random stranger’s burden rather than one’s own? And especially a random person who tagged their work correctly??? Does no one remember how to harness their own powers of discernment and self-regulation???

This little jaunt back onto ao3 has been unlike any that I’ve ever experienced before. What. Happened?????? Who is this new, apparently severely emotionally unstable and obstinately tags-reading resistant audience everyone has come to focus on?

It all feels so out of touch. The basic concept of ao3 is for the reader to seek out what they want, not what they don’t want. And to actually read. But there seems to have been an extremely strong shift away from reading. On ao3. A site built specifically for reading and writing. (And other fandom artistic pursuits, but not my focus, atm; though I’m sure whatever this is has crept steadily into all spaces there.)

Plummeting reading comprehension must be somewhat to blame; the popularity of fanfic amongst younger and wider audiences, as well. But… young people have always been there, as far as my own experiences go, and it was never like this. It’s as if too many readers don’t know how to make good or even practical decisions for themselves anymore, that they’ve lost the skill of choosing, and now believe that they must consume everything that passes before them; — that they have, for some reason, adopted the belief that any turmoil or dislike or discomfort felt within themselves is harm purposely being done to them by the author.

Idk. Idk, idk, idk. It’s just such a bummer to see how much nervousness and distress has entered the community. Authors notes and comments used to be hilarious fun, or a peek into someone else’s real-life world, used to be casual and full of personality, whereas nowadays, there seems to be an underlying hesitancy and distrust, a sort of growing divide between writers and readers, groups which, until recently, very much were not mutually exclusive.

--

in web 1.0, there was an understanding that the internet was full of different nooks and crannies, and that each community had its own culture, norms, and expectations. the extent to which there was no centralization at all is something that i don't think it's possible to convey to people who weren't there. the internet was truly a web of hundreds of thousands of different distinct communities and sites, ranging from people's personal sites (angelfire! geocities!) to forums with thousands and thousands of users.

most people understood this and this was why being told to lurk moar was such a stinging thing--it meant you had ignored this reality and hadn't invested the time to get to know the community's norms before you started to interact with that community. you were being entitled and that wasn't okay. (sometimes communities took this too far and became genuinely cruel to outsiders. not excusing that.)

of the many, many things that changed with web 2.0, one of the most important is consolidation. social media was designed from the outset to appeal to as many people as possible, to create standardized experiences for everyone, to kind of flatten out the beautiful varied landscape of the internet into a perfectly flat plain/plane (both!). first facebook, then twitter, then instagram, then tiktok (and the smaller platforms scattered throughout) wanted to be all things to all people so as to maximize eyeballs so as to maximize ad revenue. it is impossible to overstate how this changed the internet.

ao3 was never supposed to be part of the great internet consolidation. it was truly "our" own--the project of a small group of dedicated fans who wanted to build a place to post fic that wouldn't be at the mercy of a corporation, all of us having learned the hard way that we could not trust those who were trying to make money off of us. having been around back then, getting my own account in 2009, and watching as friends-of-friends started the whole project, i think it is safe to say that NO ONE involved in ao3 in the beginning thought that it would take off the way that it did. the scale it's on now was unfathomable then.

but due to several factors--a fan-run fanfic depository was a genuinely great idea, the timing of it being created when the whole internet was shifting towards the consolidation model, probably some other things that aren't immediately coming to mind for me--it started to attract people who didn't understand its context at all.

throughout the 2010s and especially during/after (for certain definitions of "after") covid, many new people who had no experience with web 1.0 were coming into fandom. their understanding of what the internet is was shaped by social media and its all-things-to-all-people, designed-and-run-by-giant-companies culture, a culture that is in direct conflict with the diy, esoteric, gift economy, hobbyist, we-built-this-ourselves-for-us ethos of fandom.

these people brought their expectations of what the internet is with them, and it's caused so many problems, y'all. they view fanfiction not as a joyful, playful, collaborative exchange of creativity and mutual passion but as...content.

and content is, at the end of the day, just a capitalist product. it should appeal to the consumers (and to as many consumers as possible), not be seen as individual self-expression or community sharing/exchange. if the consumer doesn't like it, it's failed in its objective. content exists to be consumed and requires nothing of the the consumer except to experience it. "attention economy." if you want to comment or like or subscribe, that's great, but it's not necessary. it's always a bonus, never an expectation, as is clear from the way that "content creators" have always had to beg people to comment/like/subscribe.

the influx of new people view fanfiction and all fannish creation/activities/communities the same way they view "content." this creates an entitlement (if it doesn't appeal to me specifically, it's not doing it job, because content is supposed to appeal to EVERYONE) that is creating friction in fannish communities. it's why people don't comment anymore. it's why people go to discord to talk to their friends about that fic they read instead of TELLING THE PERSON WHO WROTE THE FIC how much they liked it.

and the "don't like it, don't read it" attitude we've all always had simply does not jibe with a web 2.0 approach. the expectation that the internet is a place with infinite variety in infinite combinations and that it is your job as an individual to search out the things that work for you and ignore the rest...has dried up. instead, people are wanting to consume fannish creations instead of engage with them. and when something isn't for them, instead of moving on, they feel entitled enough to complain about it and sometimes even harass the creator.

so you've got the old fans, begging these people to just heed the tags and move on when they don't like something. but these new people have never had to do that before, and so they're lashing out at people who create things they don't like.

it's a culture clash.

so here's where i go from talking to all the people who are like "wtf why are people acting like this?" to the people who are acting like this.

the number one thing to keep in mind when entering fandom (beyond "be kind" which should be the number one thing to keep in mind in any community ever) is: ymmv. your mileage may vary.

different people have different experiences/preferences/likes. different people engage with different things in different ways. your job as a person old enough to be free-range on the internet is to find what works for you and ignore the rest. that's it.

there are a few exceptions to this. if you see something that is genuinely racist or homophobic or misogynist or whatever, it can be a very good thing to try to engage people in conversation about that in hopes of pushing back against it. i'm not telling you never to do that.

but 98% of the time, if it's not for you...it's not for you. and it's your duty to just move on. hit the back button. close the tab. if it really irks you, privately message a friend to kvetch about it. but stop expecting everything to cater to you. let go of that entitlement. remember that fandom is about sharing and community-building and joy. if it's not bringing you joy, go find something else that does. or create it yourself.

fanfiction, fannish works, and fandom in general do not exist to provide you with content. they're not trying to appeal to as many people as possible but to specific people who happen to share a love for something or a common criticism of something they care about or an interest in a thing or a common perspective. people work hard to create things for which they will never, ever, ever be financially compensated. you are not "paying" for content via your eyeballs/attention. you are not at a restaurant ordering off a menu and exchanging money for the food you receive.

you're at a potluck. and if you're at a potluck, it's an asshole move to criticize the dishes people have brought. you pick what looks good to you, you bypass the rest. you are in charge of your own plate.

maybe you try something that looked good and find that it wasn't. so you...don't eat it. you eat something else instead.

if you find yourself in a situation in which, say, you've got celiac's and there are no gluten free offerings, it's legit to be like, "hey, wtf is up with the lack of gluten-free offerings?" but even then, you're commenting on the whole spread, not on individual dishes. you don't get to turn to someone who mixed and kneaded and rose their beautiful bread and get angry at them for not catering to you. commenting on trends is generally an okay thing to do (as poor gen and femslash fans have been doing since pre-internet days). criticizing individual fanworks is not.

it's pretty clear she was talking about the lorazepam, no? she couldn't open the cap, langdon said she was doing it wrong. she noted the unusual dose and that they should (if as much lorazepam had been given as langdon said) move to anti-seizure meds, he said it was normal and she was wrong, she is an intern who needs to learn to trust him, her superior. altering or denying someone's objective reality to the point that they question whether they're perceiving reality is... gaslighting.

like, we can talk about her fascinating and self-defeating trauma responses without pretending that langdon only crossed a line with santos by yelling at her re samira's patient, you know?

i am of two minds about calling that gaslighting! the op made it very clear (maybe it was in the comments and not in the text of the post itself?) that they subscribe to the definition of gaslighting that requires long-term planning and action, as in the original play/film where the word comes from. something shorter-term is not gaslighting. and i tend to agree and think that the word is used WAY too casually these days (as are almost all words that derive from therapeutic contexts).

that said: it's still lying, and it's still manipulative, and i totally agree it wasn't okay and she has a right to be upset about that. i think the two things that he actually did wrong with regards to trinity were the yelling and the lying. up until then, his, "woah, dude, it is NOT okay for you to be taking action before running your plan by a senior resident or attending!" reactions were 1000% legitimate.

what i think is interesting about trinity's narrativizing is that she can't just say, "wow, this guy was a manipulative asshole to me. i don't like him, i'll never like him, and i hate that he's back." which would be an okay thing to think, even after he apologized! (i'm jewish, so i don't think forgiveness is an obligation.)

instead, she has to push it much, much further than that.

it starts with a perspective that i strongly disagree with but that reflects a pretty common worldview: he's just not an asshole, he's a criminal. it doesn't only suck that he's back, he should be in jail. maybe she's a carceral kind of person who buys into retributive justice frameworks and thinks it's fine to lock people up to punish them. despite what tumblr would have you think, that is still the predominate opinion at least in the u.s. (i won't speak to the rest of the world) and given her clearly-demonstrated anger at the men who violate her sense of morality, that well may be what she believes. (her sense of proportion is off, though. what frank did is nowhere near on the same level as what she thought that dad in season 1 was doing to his daughter. i wonder if she would admit that? or if any violation made by a man against a woman, especially a younger woman or a girl, is the same in her eyes? we don't know that yet! we may never know!)

but from there, as the original post said, she creates this elaborate narrative wherein her decision to do the right thing (which was indeed the right thing!) explains every negative thing she perceives as going on in the e.d. it's so convenient! she doesn't have to look at her own behavior, how she treats people! instead, she can say, "oh, people are holding me at a distance because i did the right thing." she gets to be a martyr instead of a person with agency.

and i also find it so incredibly interesting that she perceives people as disliking her in the e.d. which we don't even see demonstrated beyond mel? mel clearly has (totally justifiable) Issues with her, but i don't remember seeing anyone else demonstrate negative feelings towards trinity. the question of why she perceives that is so interesting!!! and clearly a trauma response!!!

and we see this tendency towards martyrdom with baran, too, where baran's (completely legitimate and indeed required from an attending) commands to catch up with charting. now, i kind of feel like baran shouldn't have gone straight to "repeat your r2 year" threat, but this is another case where the person criticizing trinity is completely correct and would say the exact same thing to anyone else in the e.d. who was behaving like trinity was, but to trinity, they just have it out for her.

what it makes me wonder is: is trinity capable of taking any kind of criticism/correction at all? we saw her reaction to samira being harsh in season one, her expression belying her stated possession of "rhino" skin. she doesn't seem to hold that against samira in the same way she does frank and baran, though maybe it's just because we haven't seen them interact as much, or maybe samira never did it again, so over ten months trinity kind of got over it.

trinity is clearly a person who was so deeply and profoundly hurt in her childhood/adolescence that she's incapable of seeing herself as anything but a victim. she truly was a victim for so long and in such unthinkable ways that it's come to dominate her understanding of herself and is central to her identity. she believes herself to be incredibly tough, and in one sense, she is: no one could have lived through what the text alludes to her living through without being tough. but in another sense, she is as much of a "petunia" as mel. she also can't see herself as being in the wrong (which is a common reaction to being a victim for a formative amount of time). she's mentally still stuck in the horrifying experience(s) she had when she was a kid. she's shown incredible resilience in getting as far with her education/career as she has. but she's emotionally stunted and has not moved on at all.

i desperately want her to go to therapy and heal!!! i strongly believe she can become a better person!!! the show, for all its flaws, also believes that people can heal and become better people, as we see with frank himself. but the writers wasted a lot of potential with her this season--she has no arc at all, her issues never come to a climax/tipping point, her story goes nowhere.

i really hope this is just a sophomore slump and next season we'll see her actually have to face her own weaknesses. the writers seems to care about her more than they do about, like, samira, so i think there's a chance she'll get a better arc next season. it would be super interesting to me if that arc is facilitated by interactions with frank since i think they're interesting mirror characters, even though he's so much further along the path towards healing than she is. i kind of doubt the writers will go there, but it would be so fun!

yeah, this too! how is the way frank treated trinity in the yelling scene any different than the way robby treats samira? (the only differences are that robby is the actual boss, not just someone higher-ranking, and that robby does this all the time, whereas this is a one-day thing for frank and trinity). samira was also really harsh with trinity in the "rhino" scene. this is an incredibly intense environment full of people with big personalities who are constantly overworked and stressed out. people are going to be assholes to each other, and while that is inappropriate and they should try not to do that, it's clearly part of the culture.

frank went too far with the yelling. and the lying/manipulating about the lorazepam was flat-out wrong. but he does genuinely apologize for it and learn from his mistake (and there was the mitigating factor of addiction) and seem to try not to behave that way anymore. whereas some other people in the e.d. are continuing to be every bit as big of assholes without trinity caring at all.

we're all bringing our own perspectives to the show, and our willingness to forgive a character's bad choices pretty much boil down to "do i like/relate to this character or not?" and not so much to objective facts about the character. i'm very open about the fact that i have a huge grudge against robby because he's mean to my faves and because he's angry-dad coded in a way that triggers my own trauma.

and i'm fine with the people who are always going to hate frank because they love/relate to trinity or because they just hate privileged white dudes or whatever. legit reaction to have! just as it's legit that some of my mutuals hate trinity because of how she treats their faves!

— Midnight Margaritas!

You know, we got every single one of your records. I don't like that electric shit as much as the real. Yeah. I miss the real. How 'bout it, Sammie? You still got the real in you?

VIVIEN LEIGH as LADY HAMILTON and LAURENCE OLIVIER as HORATIO NELSON