And other fanworks, for that matter, but let’s talk about fic: When AO3 was proposed, it was in response to Strikethrough and other similar events. Livejournal deleted a lot of accounts without bothering to distinguish between actual pedophiles, survivor support groups, and 100% consensual fantasy fandom activities being done by adults with other adults (most of which involved RP accounts for 16-year-old Harry Potter characters anyway).
I helped write the first AO3 Terms of Service and set up the Abuse committee. AO3 was always intended to be welcoming to all kinds of fic, no matter how dirty, sick, socially unacceptable, bizarre, or out of fashion. During those initial TOS talks, we specifically discussed grotesque RPF snuff porn as the test case for something all of us on the committee found distasteful but would nonetheless defend because, by defending it, we created a space where all of our own favorite things were protected too.
Policing fic content is a slippery slope. Even if you only police the “worst” stuff, you create an environment where the more sensitive authors and no few of the ones “shipping to cope” are no longer comfortable posting at all. Attacking people for posting fic about rape/abuse/etc. is demanding that all survivors disclose. No amount of whining and backtracking will change this fact. It is a disgusting behavior that drives people from your fandoms and creates needless misery while adding nothing of value to the community.
If you want to kick certain kinds of content off of AO3, you do not belong on AO3 in the first place.
What she really means: I don’t mind people disliking a ship for their own reason but the anti-shipping movement is driven by hate and bandwagon bullying to police what people are “allowed” to enjoy. They use fundamentally abusive and manipulative tactics on real people in the name of protecting survivors from speculative things in fiction. Antis want to act morally superior over ship wars and claim that to ship something problematic you must be a survivor. By doing this antis force survivors who may be uncomfortable with coming out with their status to out themselves and then hold them to impossible standards. Except when it does come to survivors who ship anti-deemed problematic things we are attacked, harassed, and then pushed under the bus anyway. Antis trivialize terms such as abuse, rape, and pedophilia by using them so often and out of place against a group made up of many survivors and minors– the people they claim to be protecting. They have bullied and suicide baited artists and other content creators they dislike in the name of “policing the bad ships uwu.” All antis are at fault for this, even if an anti claims not to send hate themselves they are still influencing this bad behavior because they are part of this hate group. The entire anti-shipper movement is a toxic cesspool that makes me feel sick.
uses of the terms “lemon” and “lime” (apparently there was a difference. lemons were porn but i’m STILL not sure what a lime is. i also have NO idea how “lemon” came to mean “porn”. not sure i want to, tbh.)
soooo many “i do not own please don’t sue me” disclaimers
fics where the whole premise that the whole cast was trapped someplace together and the reviewers would leave questions in their comments and then the characters would answer them in-story. like “ask that guy with the glasses” except shitty and usually self-indulgent towards the author’s preferred ships. (i may have written one of these when i was 12.)
authors who legit updated on a schedule (and stuck to it). some every fucking day. (you still see this on ao3, but not NEARLY as much.)
fanfic authors who basically had a following and fandom of their own. (again, this still happens, but not as much. not sure if that’s a good thing or not.) not bad considering most of them were 13.
“yaoi!!! that means boy kisses!!! don’t like don’t read!!!”
putting “————-” or “xxxxxxx” bc ff.net wouldn’t let you insert a horizontal line to show the end of a section
very long, very rambley author’s notes
some of which had the authors interacting with/talking to the characters in the fic.
fics that weren’t so much stories as they were a chapter-by-chapter detailing of all the cliche plots and tropes used in that fandom’s shitty fanfics. (i actually sorta miss these, tbh)
songfics. no, not fics inspired by songs. fics where the lyrics were put in between every paragraph, with some lyrics altered to fit the characters. it was horrific.
fics that were up-front about the oc being a stand-in for the reader so they can read about themselves getting with their fave character. as in, it was written in second person and the summary outright said the pov character was meant to be the reader.
the forums being used for roleplay before tumblr rp was a “thing”
long, LONG author profiles, filled with things like “copy/paste if you’re a [whatever] shipper!” or obviously fake sickly sweet anecdotes (think chain email levels of bad), or worst of all (in my opinion), a pro-life anti-abortion story from the point of view of a fetus. it was as bad as it sounds, if not worse.
listing all your ships on your author profile page
seeing a title that was all lowercase letters and thinking “lazy” rather than “aesthetic”
“101 one ways to annoy [insert character here]” (voldemort was popular for these things)
it being fucking impossible to find f/f fic that wasn’t porn
writing ships as “characterxcharacter” instead of “character/character”
author’s notes in the middle of the story. literally you would be reading a fanfic and all of a sudden, in between paragraphs… “A/N: awwww isn’t it cute how they’re thinking the same thing!!! XD”
for that matter, author’s notes using the XD emoticon
people FLIPPING THEIR SHIT whenever their fave author (or just a well-established author in the fandom) changed their username. ESPECIALLY if they changed it from something fandom-specific to something more neutral.
“character x/character y. NO CHARACTER X/CHARACTER Z.” bc apparently you think i’d think your fic clearly marked character x/character y would be nothing but character x and character z making out.
trollfics trying to capitalize on my immortal’s infamy. there are still trollfics, of course, but they tend to be more subtle.
for that matter, trying to pass a trollfic off as a legitimate fic rather than just admitting it’s a parody
specifically reading fics for your notp just to bash it in the reviews
people putting replies to reviews for the previous chapter in the author’s notes (this died down a LITTLE once ff.net finally added a reply function, but not much)
the great fanfiction.net purge (ahh yes. history lesson time. basically, back in the olden days of fanfiction, when everyone actually used ff.net, one fateful day, back in biblical times – 2011 – ff.net decided to make MA rated stuff – basically porn – not be allowed on the site anymore. ofc people kept posting it anyway, but then ff.net started deleting stories from the website with no notice to the authors. just poof! gone. the aftermath was HORRIFIC. people were FURIOUS, as a lot of people had no backup and just lost their stories. so ff.net stopped enforcing the rule, but the damage was done. this was when people began to officially leave for ao3, i think.)
lots of harry potter fanfics about the my immortal versions of the characters interacting with the canon characters. some of these were actually quite funny – i think they’re still around, but i don’t see them as much. (i actually wrote one of these stories. it is still, to this day, the most popular story i ever wrote.)
drabbles that were ACTUALLY 100 words long.
fictionpress (a sister site for original fiction. it was like wattpad before wattpad was wattpad. it never really took off. come to think of it, i may still have some stuff on there from when i was 12 i need to take down)
“crackfics” that consisted mainly of “lulz iM SO RanDOm!!!111!!!!!oneone XD cheeeeeeeese!!!!!!” humor
“i suck at summaries”
“this is my first story so please be nice”
“i’ll only update if i get 10 good reviews”
AUs before “AU” was a really widely used term, so the author’s note would have a length explanation for why they had to change things for the story and apologizing over and over instead of just noting the AU in the summary
AUs out of laziness rather than for creative/plot reasons (ie, “luna’s a gryffindor in this fic because i couldn’t find another reason for her to be here”)
authors notes apologizing for late updates
being genuinely shocked when you found a GOOD fanfic
the following are concepts that i quickly learned my way around when growing up in fandom, but that seem to have fallen out of use recently. i’d like to propose a revival of…
NOTP: a pairing that, for whatever reason, you simply cannot stand. it can be because the ship repulses you morally, or because you hate one of the characters, or love them both but despise their dynamic – or just because looking at it makes you uncomfortable, for whatever reason.
different from labeling something a “bad ship” in that it implies an entirely personal preference.
calling a ship your NOTP informs others that you really, really, REALLY dislike it, while also acknowledging that you don’t know what other people’s reasons are for shipping it, or what interpretations they may have that makes it work for them.
a cool way of avoiding stuff you hate while also not morally condemning thousands of complete strangers for liking it.
squick: similar to notp, but goes for anything, not just romantic pairings. something you just don’t like, either for specific reasons or just because it irrationally repulses you.
not as severe as a trigger in the sense that it doesn’t cause any extreme and potentially harmful reactions – it’s just something you’d rather not see, because it grosses you the fuck out. and that’s okay.
decent people respect other people’s squicks, while also remembering it’s cool for other people to like things they personally are squicked by.
this works as long as everyone agrees not to be dicks and shove stuff in people’s faces in unwarranted ways.
crackship: a ship that just doesn’t make any sense. there’s absolutely no chance that these characters would ever end up together.
perhaps they’ve never interacted. perhaps they are on opposite sides of a war. perhaps one of them died a thousand years ago. for whatever reason, there’s zero possibility of this becoming canon.
still, you’d like to see how they’d romantically mesh, to explore their dynamic or a what-if scenario – or maybe they’re just two characters you really like to imagine smooching one another.
the fact that it isn’t and never will be canon doesn’t matter, and can even be part of the appeal. it certainly does not invalidate the ship’s existence. the ultimate form of doing something just for fun.
these words all help describe the cool concept of doing stuff you enjoy, while also realizing others may be doing things you hate, but not in order to victimize you personally. live and let live! give people the benefit of the doubt! it’s a good time. we should all try it.
You can ship characters for happily ever afters, sure, you can ship them for tragically-then-happily, you can ship two or three or four or more, you can ship endless combinations of personality types and relationship dynamics
but you can also ship characters under very specific circumstances, or for a certain period of their life but not for all of it, or only in a certain universe. You might say “I ship these characters” and what you mean is you think they are fascinating together and could have a story together. That story could be any kind of story.
Sometimes it means you want them together for the rest of their lives. Sometimes it means something different than that.
I don’t know about you, but for me, “I ship it” means “There is a story in this ship and I am interested in that story.”
for me, “I ship it” means “There is a story in this ship and I am interested in that story.”
one of my favorite things about fandom is that the exchange of intellectual and creative property is a legitimate form of gift giving. like ‘i’m so enchanted by you, i love you, let me tell you a story’
I-want-my-IWTV 