Real Life Steve Rogers

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

idk, i thought it was fan + kingdom, or fanatic + domain??

The OED also rejects your portmanteau hypothesis, though I suppose sportswriters from the 1900s might’ve been trying to be quirky and different when they coined fandom from the productive derivational suffix -dom, which the OED also gives copies examples of throughout the 1800s (including BA-dom, old fogey-dom, blizzard-dom and theater-dom.

Voss spent 25 years as a hostage negotiator, meaning that his job was to talk to guys on the phone who had literal guns to innocent people's heads. He KNOWS how to compassionately de-escalate a conflict and have productive, constructive conversations with people who are highly activated and reactive.

<details open> <summary> text you want the button to have </summary> <img src="linktotheimageofthead.jpg"> </details>

Specifying that the details section is open makes it so that the "ad" is visible when the page loads. The reader then click/taps on the triangle button next to the text to close it.

I also put everything inside a center tag so they'd be in the middle of the page.

i’m so tired of authors not tagging correctly because they don’t want to “spoil the fic”

correctly tagging your fic allows readers who DON’T want to read things like major character death, gore, mpreg or whatever may be their squick to filter your fic out from the main ship/fandom tag. not including the correct tags on your fic is harmful to readers and i’m tired of pretending it’s not.

(If OP had just been talking about failing to follow Ao3's rules around the major warnings that would be one thing, but they also threw in 'mpreg or whatever may be their squick' so now it's rant time.)

I do think warning your readers about major common squicks outside the archive warnings is a great impulse! I do it myself! And yet it's also true that literally anything can be a squick or trigger. A potential trigger may seem obvious to you while being totally unnoticeable to the author, and vice versa. Maybe you remembered to tag mpreg, but did you tag for needles? Vomiting? Menstruation? Blood? Doctor's offices? Drug use (because the character takes tylenol one time)? Car crashes? Underage drinking (that isn't considered underage in your country of residence or the time period in which your story is set)? Fatphobia? Character skipping meals? Racial slurs (against Vulcans)? Child endangerment? These are all things that might be reasonably expected to squick or trigger readers because they bring to mind real-world awfulness. I see all of these used as content tags sometimes, but waaaaay less than they 'should' be if authors were truly obligated to protect us from being squicked. And that's not even getting into common narrative or sexual squicks that might be a huge deal to some (unprotected sex, unlubed anal sex, rimming, ass to mouth, breeding kink, daddy kink, undernegotiated D/S, etc) but are so entirely within the realm of normal for others it would never occur to them to tag.

I certainly encourage authors to use tags to help readers find what they're looking for and avoid what they don't want, but enthusiasm for Ao3's tagging system can go too far, wherein readers with specific squicks or triggers begin to hold authors more accountable than they hold themselves. Tagging literally everything is impossible, and there is no fandom consensus on what has to be tagged other than the standard archive warnings.

Creating a new fandom consensus on what MUST be tagged beyond the existing consensus of rape, under-18 sex, graphic violence, and major character death would be incredibly fraught. Standardizing a warning is a powerful normative act, one that can easily inflate existing personal feelings into harsher moral judgments. "We all agree this topic is so upsetting it MUST be warned for" is one step down from declaring a topic entirely taboo. And that has consequences. Victims of rape and child abuse talk about how psychologically damaging it can be to have to cordon off a major part of your own life experiences lest they discomfort others; it can easily feel like you yourself are being declared a blight rather than the harm that was done to you.

Awareness of this impact is why I confess I do find it concerning that the untagged sqicks people get most vocal about tend to involve deviation from sex and gender norms. I understand that pregnancy is a horrifying threat to many fanfic readers and that a lot of us have deep discomfort with our sexual traits, which can naturally lead to us only being able to enjoy a narrower slice of available fictional content, but I never see anybody up in arms about undeniably negative shit like untagged car crashes the way I see some people up in arms about having to occasionally encounter neutral things like untagged mpreg or omegaverse or gender-atypical genitalia.

This is always especially unnerving to me when the offending topic is something that is both inherently morally neutral and entirely possible to encounter among real-life strangers in a positive context. Sure, getting hit with a wave of gender dysphoria when you're trying to read erotica is a bad time, and it's entirely logical to want to select your erotica according to your own genital preferences, but the level of moral outrage people occasionally exhibit when they encounter unexpected genital configurations in erotic fanfic tends to be, uh, pretty unmistakably hostile towards trans bodies, even when it's coming from trans people. Like, okay, say mpreg is a trigger for you because you associate it with threats of corrective rape and you don't want to read about it in your escapist fanfic—fair enough. Do you also ask real pregnant trans men in real life to put content warnings on their happy selfies of themselves just existing? Do you get why that would be fucked up? Do you get how it would be extra fucked up to make that request mandatory at an institutional level? Especially if cis pregnancy didn't require any warnings?

Then there's the structural question.

Ao3 content tags were designed to be used positively—the 'exclude' feature did not exist at launch—and as such there was an implied expectation that if you tagged your story as x, you were putting the tag there for people who might want to filter FOR stories with x. That meant a very brief mention of x occurring offscreen wouldn't merit an x tag; nobody came to a fic tagged Arranged Marriage expecting to hear about the main character's cousin having an arranged marriage.

The recent push to use content tags as warnings has led to aggressive overtagging of minor mentions of x, making the x tag less and less useful as a positive filter. This is somewhat mitigated by people using 'minor x' or 'x mention' instead of clogging the 'x' tag (shoutout to people putting background ships in the content tags instead of the ship tags!) which I appreciate. However, this points to a fundamental tension in the practical use of Ao3 tags now that we do have the 'exclude' feature.

If the point is to help readers avoid things, authors will tag very differently than if the point is to help readers find things they might like. And the original structural design of content tags was to help readers find things they might like. Ao3 is firstly for authors to archive their fics and secondarily to help readers find those fics. Only thirdly is it optimized to help readers NOT find fics.

Talking like the 'correct' use of Ao3 tags is to optimize exclusion means you've got your understanding of Ao3 tags backwards.

tl;dr:

there is no standardized list of minor archive warnings; squicks/triggers are so varied it would be impossible to mandate warning for all of them

mandating warnings for x inherently imposes a structural & cultural penalty against x content

ao3 is structured to favor positive content tags (help readers find) over warning tags (help readers avoid)

Authors can be expected to tag the stuff they personally find most relevant about their fic, in much the same way a book in the library has a few major keywords attached. More granular content warnings are a bonus. If you as a reader are highly sensitive to encountering a type of content that falls outside of the major archive warnings, you have to take responsibility for that yourself; it will never be reasonable to 100% conclude that a given fic lacks your squick just because your squick isn't tagged. Unless somebody is blatantly lying about archive warnings or actively mis-tagging, they are not tagging their fic 'incorrectly.'

Doctor Who (Steven Moffat specifically)

Sherlock (Steven Moffat specifically)

Actually Steven Moffat is basically just this sentiment given human form.

A version of this happened with The Magicians, tbh. Though instead of expectation: men, reality: women it was expectation: smug nihilists, reality: mentally ill queer folks.

Arguably Game of Thrones.

If we broaden it outside of television…I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can’t help but think of every band that’s ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.

In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want–and think they deserve–the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.

They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don’t want us. And they don’t really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience’s demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.

Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn’t perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn’t a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.

And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn’t necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.

Young Justice

Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don’t want largely female audiences

#WhereIsRey (initial)

#WhereIsRey (ongoing)

Simply, they’re trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. It’s not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. It’s that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.

I’d also love to hear your thoughts, as I literally wrote it for communities like ours to read, so, thanks.

(a realization about dialogue formatting, from a comic artist turned novelist.)

One of the first things a novice writer learns about speech tags is that they’re part of the “scaffolding” of prose. They should be largely invisible to the reader: use them when necessary, omit them when not, and be sparing in the application of verbs other than “said”. They serve only the function of clarifying who is speaking when it is necessary to do so.

Except:

Sometimes you might want to use a speech tag in spite of the redundancy. The fact that the reader’s eyes slide right over them is an exploitable property. By slicing a line of dialogue in half with a speech tag, you can force the reader to perceive a meaningful pause between two utterances—and the effect is much stronger than you might get out of an ellipsis or an em dash. Developing an intuition for when and how to do this is a huge part of learning to write dialogue, I think.

House of Leaves makes a nest in your mind. It lives there. Remains there. It then demands to be shared. You are just doing the bidding of the book. As Navidson dragged in the documentary crew. As the documentary drew in Zampano. As Zampano's essay drew in Johnny. As Johnny's analysis drew in The Editors.

You were compelled to enter the labyrinth.

You are now compelled to spread it to others. Through your art. Your analysis. Your Tumblr posts¹.

"I'm pretty sure that fella ain't here legally."

"Well, that ain't your business Chip, it's his."

They hate being preached to. If you pull out words like 'gender wage gap' they'll tell you you're brainwashed by the far left media.

"He's one of them transgenders."

Shut down the conversation without reacting.

"His dick, not mine" will get you much further to shutting that guy down than "well it's really inappropriate to call someone a slur while I'm the job site".

is wanting to be a wife and mother a requirement for being a woman?

why might OP be annoyed with replies assuming that this post is about being aroace or transmasc if a woman doesn’t want to be a wife or mother?

are there reasons unrelated to sexuality and romantic interest that might make a woman not want to be a wife or mother?

are there reasons unrelated to gender identity and expression that might make a woman not want to be a wife and mother?

core concept: what is gender essentialism?

is it gender essentialism to imply that all women inherently want to be wives and mothers? could this be what OP is critiquing?

look at the notes OP responds to. is it gender essentialism to imply that being a wife and mother is so affixed to womanhood that to not want to be those things means you’re incapable of sexual/romantic feelings, or not a woman?

nature is healing