Having your brain stubbornly seize upon the first interpretation that happens to pop into your head as the Only Possible Interpretation, regardless of whether it’s literal or figurative  

Easily identifying several possible interpretations of a statement, but having absolutely no ability to parse for context and identify which of those interpretations is most plausible  

Being confronted with a statement that has Implications, then getting thrown for a loop when it turns out that the speaker wasn’t considering any of that and really did just mean it literally  

Scarlet Feast, Malzeno

Master Thief, Phantom

And then he left

And I went into my room

And I saw what he saw

You can write all sorts of things, and you can have it be taggable and organizable on this neat website.

It runs donations every now and again so that they can keep the site's servers (and therefore the stories) up. It also keeps a team of lawyers so that any person who takes issue will have to deal with actual law know how.

Thats great, and I love the site for the neat, organizable system it is. It sucks that people write shitty stuff, but fiction can help you run through situations you never want happening irl, and if you dont like it, don't read it!

I am not bitching at you, here.  I am kind of laughing at you, though.  In a gentle and non-aggressive way.

I, uh, I have some news for you... about the people who, y’know, founded AO3:

That's why it's called Archive of Our Own. It's a fan-created, fan-run, fan-moderated archive of fan fiction that is well protected by lawyers so that the authors who just want to have fun and be creative don't have formal legal action taken against them again.

Yes, that happened. It was terrifying.

In case you ever run across a fic with a disclaimer on it that says something to the effect of: "don't own, not making money, please don't come after me" that's why. I remember putting those on my cringey af fics myself on ff.net, or fanfiction.net.

That site is another large reason why AO3 is what it is, too. FF.net decided one day that adult/mature content was no longer allowed, and they promptly removed all of it. Didn't inform the authors, nothing. Just... Whoosh. Gone. Mind you, they had a rating system, so if you didn't want to find explicit fics, it was easy not to. AFF.net, or adultfanfiction.net, was put in place rather quickly and it was alright for awhile, but ultimately a bandaid.

Then, AO3 came along, and the game changed. Things could be tagged, collated, and organised like never before, and part of that was because AO3 decided not to censor content. They decided not to because of the damage that had been done to the fanfiction community due to all the recent bans and purges. All of the tropes you mentioned have been around for way, waaaaay longer than AO3.

The site wasn't created to cater to ships, tropes, or kinky stuff; it was created to house fan fiction, no matter the type, and to keep the fans who wrote it from being legally attacked by angry authors. Anne Rice was one of the big names in this, btw. AO3 is a virtual library, essentially; they expect the reader to have responsibility about the media they consume.

AO3 was created for a lot of reasons; protection from authors who got upset at fanfic involving their characters was one of them.

Mainly - it was created for fic that was at risk of being thrown off other platforms. It was created after Strikethrough and Fanlib, with several of the founders still coping with the sudden closing of Detention.

“Fics that might be challenged by authors” was a large category AO3 was built to welcome. AO3′s founders looked into the legalities of Rice’s claims, and the history of things like Yarbro’s legal action against a fanzine, and decided: No more. We’re done with fanworks being squished by the mere threat of lawyers, without fans having any idea how copyright law actually works.

Extreme kink was another big category: Fic and art with content that regularly got thrown off of hosting sites, regardless of the legality, because it squicked someone who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the “don’t like? don’t click” warnings.The definition of “extreme kink” shifted around a lot; in some places, any slash pairing was considered “adult rated” and “too kinky.” In others, slash was fine; explicit sex was not. In others, sex was fine, but any hint of BDSM would get a work removed. And so on. Lots of shifting goalposts. 

AO3 wasn’t specifically focused around “extreme kinky smut,” but it was made with that content specifically in mind; the terms of service and acceptable content policies were shaped by “how do we allow for stuff that’s going to disturb or offend a lot of people?” Content that would bother fans was just as important as allowing content that would bother outsiders, authors and media companies and moralistic crusaders trying to purge the world of whatever fictional tropes were most hated this year.

"It sucks that people write shitty stuff, but fiction can help you run through situations you never want happening irl, and if you dont like it, don't read it!"

"But. Uh. Enough about ao3, the twitter post is made by a Thorki shipper."

The conclusion this incredibly dedicated group of fans with legal knowledge and years of fandom experience came to after great deliberation was that obviously, censoring illegal content is necessary for the protection of fanworks and the archive. But the second you try to start censoring works beyond what's actually illegal, the TOS is open to abuse and the archive is no longer protected. Because no matter how specific or careful you think you're being, it will never be specific or careful enough not to open the door to third parties who want to exploit the TOS to censor content they don't personally like.

Want an example? Fics containing sexual content involving underage characters. Seems straightforward, right? Should be super easy to ban that at least!

Underage according to which state or country? And what counts as sexual content? Does this change if the characters are queer? Can you guarantee any possible person interpreting the TOS will have all the same answers to those questions as you?

“Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling”

Here’s the rest of the quote. It’s from De Profundis:

As you know, art and artists make Tumblr what it is. We want everyone on Tumblr to be able to fully express themselves while also having control over what they encounter on their dashboards. That’s why we’re introducing Community Labels, an extension to your “Content you see” settings. Our ultimate goal is to create a more open Tumblr, and this is our first step in that direction. 

As a poster and reblogger, Community Labels are your way to help your followers avoid anything they’d rather not come across on their dashboards.

As a follower, setting your content preferences is a way to adjust your feed to your own comfort levels. 

How does it work?

When creating new posts (or editing old posts), you’ll see controls allowing you to label your post as unsuitable for those filtering certain content types it contains. 

When content is labeled, it will either be hidden, blurred, or displayed normally, based on each user’s preferences.

In your “Content you see” settings, you can now choose to show, blur, or hide content that depicts the following topics:

Drug and alcohol addiction: Contains discussions of substance abuse or addiction experience.

Violence: Contains violent or graphic content similar to what you might see in an age-restricted movie.

Sexual themes: Contains sexually suggestive subject matter, such as erotic writing or imagery.

Some examples of content that would require a community label:

Fanart of your favorite ship engaging with each other in…a very private moment 

Euphoria GIFs showing Rue’s substance abuse 

A movie trailer depicting graphic war scenes 

A graphic 50 Shades of Grey edit

This doesn’t change our content policies: spam, hate content, and porn bots are still not welcome in the community. It’s also still important that we abide by app store rules, which means we need to make sure that mature content is only accessible to people who are old enough and have opted in to view that type of content. More information about Community Labels is available in the Help Center.

UH OH