i genuinely appreciate every single piece of fan art i get so much, like just the idea that the something i design can resonate with someone on a level that causes them to take time and effort to draw it themselves despite my honestly pretty mediocre drawing skills is just such a good feeling.
this applies to ALL fanart regardless of how “good” it is bt fuckin way. if you’re an artist reading this your art is GREAT Y'HEAR ME!? GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL
Leveraged an inventory of established fictional character and setting elements to generate a disruptive custom-curated narrative entertainment asset.
I worked in HR, handling applications and interviews, and if someone turned in that string of techno babble nonsense, I would have rejected them out of hand.
A resume doesn’t need to sound fancy or overly technical, it needs to tell us why we should hire you.
“Independent novelist/writer” is more than sufficient here. If you want to express the skills that fan fiction taught you, something like, “creative writing, editing, and publication,” will get you a lot further than… Whatever that just was.
A resume should be tailored to the position, if you can afford the time and energy for that. But if not, then just think about what writing got fandom taught you. How to respond to criticism, how to present a professional pubic face, how to correct punished mistakes, creative thinking, project planning, persuasion via emotional leverage, html formatting, office suite fluency.
There are a lot of actual, marketable skills that go into fan fiction.
How to put “I was in a zine” on your resume
Writer:
Published short fiction stories for anthology collection
Able to write short fiction within a designated word count for layout purposes (900-1500 words, 1500-2000, 3000-5000)
Wrote short articles for independent publication
Assisted with editing short stories for publication
Able to reduce or expand written content based on layout needs
Able to check for basic spelling, grammar and syntax
Familiar with Microsoft Office and Google docs
Artist:
Produced full-colour digital illustration for independent magazine
Able to produce digital illustrations optimized for both online and print display
Produced full-colour 2-page spread for art anthology
Published 4-page short comic in anthology collection for charity
Able to transfer traditional art to digital illustration
Illustrated the cover (always brag if you’re on the cover) of an independent art publication
Familiar with professional illustration tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Clip Studio Paint and stylus tablet
Merch artist / graphic designer:
Designed 2″ clear decorative double-sided keychain charm as bonus sale item
Designed 5″ x 6″ sheet of graphic stickers included in art anthology
Able to design bold graphics that are measured for laser cutting production
Designed layouts for 65-page art and writing magazine, focusing on (art placement, text layout, etc)
Able to keep layout design simple and in accordance with the project director’s chosen theme
Created promotional art, icons and banners tailored for social media sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc
Familiar with professional layout and design software such as Adobe Illustrator and InDesign
Running a zine
Produced an independent art and writing collection for sale / for charity
Managed (10, 20, 30) independent artists and writers out of over 500 applicants to create a short-run independent magazine
Worked in online sales and social media promotion selling an independent comics anthology
If it’s really spectacular you can brag about specific numbers
Our book raised over $4,000 for charity in under six months of production
We sold over 750 copies in two weeks of online sales
Produced a digital PDF and printed version of anthology, mailing to recipients all over the world
Communicated with printers and manufacturers of plastic accessories and paper goods, assembling professional packages of our merchandise for mailing.
Built a custom digital storefront and navigated professional market and payment systems including Paypal and Tictail / Bigcartel / Wix etc
Created promotional events to boost sales, including raffles and giveaways over social media
Organized participants through mass emails and use of social media posts on tumblr and twitter
Familiar with organizational software such as Microsoft Excel, Google spreadsheets and Trello
“this ship/work of fiction could hypothetically hurt someone” is not an argument.
We don’t prohibit alcohol just because some people can hurt themselves/other people with it. People who can drink responsibly aren’t at fault for people who can’t.
You either believe in people to be personally responsible for themselves or you believe in a dystopia where all fiction is subject to censorship due to any possible cultural impact.
Tumblr is a horrible platform for artists/creators of any kind. It’s been like that for as long as I was on here, and long before that from what I’ve heard. But it’s gotten so much worse recently.
At first it was mostly unfair to new people who aren’t known yet, as the tag searches favour popularity over “freshness” of posts, and ‘newest’ area has always been neglected quite a bit. But that was something you learn to deal with relatively quickly. It’s a basic part of the struggle to climb through and get noticed by any community you decide to join. It’s rather fair compared to what is happening now.
Now, you can’treach people anymore, no matter how many followers you have. If you have a decent number, that makes things a bit more bearable because you already have an established audience. But if you’re new, or relatively unknown, you have only people who accidentally find you to rely on. The tags - main means to reach the audience - don’t work well. Dashboard - the only way to be seen - has a very bad algorithm, and no matter how much people tweak their settings, somehow still works against artists/creators. We are unseen. Suddenly you get maybe a third of notes you used to get. New people get none whatsoever.
And you might say ‘you shouldn’t be posting to get notes’ but who re you kidding, we create to share our interests and show people what we made and are proud of! The notes tell us we indeed did good, and we maybe made someone’s day a little better with our work, and we get a positive response in return, making us happy. Everybody wins! But without being seen? Well, be it new, or just seeing a drop in notes, we feel discouraged.
“Have I gotten worse?” “Am I really a bad artist/creator?” “Should I even bother?” All of these doubts start arising, and we stop wanting to create. But here’s the thing.
It’s not that we’re bad, nor do people ignore us.
It’s the shitty algorithm that hides us from everyone. And I doubt they’ll care to fix this.
So, share each other’s work. Reblog your favourite creators. Reblog NEW creators. Check their blogs for new content every now and then. Leave a positive message in each other’s ask boxes every once in a while.
You’ll make their day. You’ll give them a reason to keep creating.
Because if tumblr won’t help, we only have each other to look out for.
shipping a rarepair with little to no content is torture, i totally agree, but there’s a special kind of hell called “popular pairing with thousands of fics on ao3 but 90% of them are A/B/O mpreg dubcon slave/master harry potter!au that i wouldn’t read if you put a gun to my head” and i’m living in it
we are not born to die!! what are you talking about!! do you think a book begins just to finish? do you think a song opens with a beautiful chord just for it to end? you don’t read the book to finish it, you read the book to eat up the excitement and the emotions it evokes!! to learn and to digest and to fall in love and be heartbroken!! you listen to the song to dance and dance and sing your throat raw!!! to cry and smile and swell with the harmonies!! yes, we are born with the inevitable fate of death, we are mortal after all, but that is merely the finale of the play!! the final act, the closing of the curtains - we are not born to take a bow and exit stage left!! we are born to love and be joyous and yell and move and learn and cry and feelfeelfeel!!! we are not born to die, silly, we’re born to live!!!
i see your Friends to Lovers trope and raise you Lovers Back to Friends. because healthy, amicable breakups are good and sometimes your ex can still be your good buddy
you wild for thinking anyone on this website has ever broken up without also destroying no less than three friend groups and generating six callout posts in the process
I wonder if the idea of supporting your artist friends by commissioning them will bring back having portraits of oneself in the home. but instead them being like, a status symbol, as a way to show off your very talented friends?
Like “ah yes I see you admiring the family portrait above the mantlepiece - my friend drew it, aren’t they talented? here’s their twitter they’re accepting commissions OH and they also did the one of my D&D group in the living room come see!”
“But the signature/ watermark
is cropped so I don’t know whose artwork it is”. If it’s unclear who the artist
is, don’t repost.
“I didn’t
crop this. I reposted this edit from somewhere else”. If it’s clear that the
artwork has been cropped and/or edited, don’t repost.
“If the artist doesn’t want their work to be reposted, maybe they shouldn’t post it at all”. No comment.
This has been getting my attention again lately. Many more people are reposting my art, even though it is very clear that the artworks they repost are cropped so that you can’t see my signature/ watermark. And this is happening to many other artists as well!
Some reposters
are very happy about the attention they’re getting
(This person didn’t mention my name and cropped my signature and watermark)
:
Some reposters are aggressive about it:
And others believe that recolouring isn’t theft:
It’s not fair to the artist.
Like I said
before, be fair and give credit where credit is due. Cropping the signature/watermark or claiming the artwork as your own is probably the most insulting thing you can do.
An artist doesn’t have to explicitly mention in every single post that they don’t want people to crop/edit/recolour/etc their work.
It doesn’t take a lot to
ask beforehand, add a link and mention a name. Don’t be lazy, and respect the artist.
Repost culture needs to end. I know I’ve said this a lot before, but it really is problematic for the artist.
We artists post our artwork online hoping for feedback as well as sharing our talent and skill and ideas with the fandom. It’s not our fault if some jealous bean out there decides to steal our work, crop out our watermarks, and reposts it. We are not the bad guy when we decide we’re going to ask these jealous beans to remove our art. It’s not our fault these jealous beans decide to throw a huge fantrum and start pissing and moaning about how they’re the victim of online bullying.
I have enough experience with this kind of bullshit in the Lion King fandom to write a fucking BOOK detailing the art thieves reactions!
For example: One such jealous bean decided they were going to crop out TsaoShin’s watermark and proceeded to post it with a quote from TLK. Not 24 hours later after having been asked POLITELY by three people, that they posted a baww journal proclaiming how they were being bullied. This bean even accused my friend for bullying her when she was warning the fandom about the bean’s abusive behavior. Within that same day the jealous bean proceeded to make two more baww journals whining about how they were a victim. My friend eventually got her journals and status posts removed because they were pitching such a huge fantrum that people believed the bean’s whining.
Another fun example: A popufur TLK fan artist decided they were going to risk posting a pic too close for comfort to another popular fan art piece that is constantly stolen and reposted. Two people told them it was too close for comfort. But what does this person do? They target me and make a baww journal calling me out. Because I had posted my disgust with what she has done on Tumblr. That was a very fun experience. It showed me just what a cunt that person was and proved that just because an artist has nice art, they can be a toxic and spiteful individual behind that sweet and innocent exterior of theirs. It also showed me who would rather kiss her ass than stand up for the original artist they ripped off. Which disgusted me to no end.
Both of these examples happened over the course of the beginning of this year.
Every fandom has this problem and this needs to end. Learn the difference between reference vs copying. Credit appropriately. Trace to learn, not to earn. If you didn’t make it, don’t post it!
The reason you’re great at one-off compositions but can’t put a long-form comic or animation together to save your life isn’t because you’re a lousy artist, it’s because you’re a lousy project manager.
I know that doesn’t sound particularly positive, but you’d be astounded how many artists I’ve run into who are literally unaware that project management is a) a totally separate skill set from being Good At Art, and b) something you actually have to learn - they think that people are just intrinsically good or bad at doing long-form projects and that’s all there is to it.
Correctly identifying what it is that you suck at is the first step to improving!
this is pretty much exactly why all my chaptered fanfic is either cowritten or unfinished.
The tags asked for project management tips, so here you go!
I always start by figuring out my deadline and working backwards. Build it backwards week by week. What needs to be completed one week before submission? What needs to be completed two weeks before submission?
So I end up with something like this:
8/1: submit final product
7/25: final draft ready for copyedit
7/18: edits completed on second draft - now final draft ready for proofing
7/11: edits completed on first draft - now second draft
7/4: first draft completed
6/27: outline completed
If there are other people involved in your project, make sure to hold in time to work with them as well. Obviously timelines are flexible, and if one stage takes longer you should build in as well. But the key is to have at least weekly check-ins and be honest with yourself. If it’s not moving forward, look at what’s stalling the project. Is it the development stage? Is it logistics - having time and materials? Is it the refining/editing stage? Recognizing the problem isn’t to berate yourself, it’s to problem-solve and figure out what things can be compromised to still get the project done on time.
I will say that the more delays there are earlier in a project, the harder it is to finish on time. Multiple delays early on can add up quickly. Sometimes it’s worth looking at what the consequences are if project isn’t completed on time.
Project managing is all about setting realistic goals and expectations, and then making sure to follow-through on the small deadlines. If weekly deadlines are too long and vague, set midweek or even daily goals! If you’ve built out the project and included all the stages, you should be setting yourself up for succes.
Sorry I thought of a better example. Here’s what project managing doing laundry would look like:
7:00 Final submission: all clothes folded and put away
6:00 all clothes out of the dryer
5:00 first load out of the dryer, second load from washer into the dryer
4:00 first load in washer
3:00 all clothes sorted and ready to go - check in with partner to make sure their clothes are sorted
Yes doing the laundry is a simple thing, but this helps me see what the stages are and just how much time it will take. If I’m going to be gone at 6:00, i either need to extend the deadline or figure out a way to shorten the timeline, either by combining loads or some other workaround. Breaking it out into steps also reminds me that there’s another person’s clothes involved, and I need to make sure they’re ready to go as well.
The reason you’re great at one-off compositions but can’t put a long-form comic or animation together to save your life isn’t because you’re a lousy artist, it’s because you’re a lousy project manager.
I know that doesn’t sound particularly positive, but you’d be astounded how many artists I’ve run into who are literally unaware that project management is a) a totally separate skill set from being Good At Art, and b) something you actually have to learn - they think that people are just intrinsically good or bad at doing long-form projects and that’s all there is to it.
Correctly identifying what it is that you suck at is the first step to improving!
this is pretty much exactly why all my chaptered fanfic is either cowritten or unfinished.
you know i hate tumblrs “i hope they do something problematic” shit so much? its not only with people like thomas sanders or john mulaney or that comic guy with the bike, but with whole ass shows and projects? like nobody ever said b99 is cop propaganda. nobody was saying that until one single person mentioned it and suddenly its the worst show you could watch because of one aspect of their show, while ignoring the shows diversity and political stances.
same happened to dream daddy, like you cant deny that that game was groundbreaking for the lgbt society, but suddlenly some people started shit like ‘uhhh but 5 years ago the game grumps made transphobic jokes’ and ‘you know that joesph is actually a satanist, right?’ and suddenly no one talked about the game anymore?
everytime someone tries their fucking best to be inclusive, diverse etc. people are digging through everything they can find just to justify that they dont like it? overwatch recently hosted a huge event to raise money for breast cancer research in association with the BCRF and without even doing one second of research people accused them of working with the susan g. komen foundation (which wasnt true) and tried to boycott a fucking charity event?
what im saying is, dont let tumblr ruin everything you love because they are bitter
PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.
Like. Super okay.
I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.
And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.
There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.
Also:
“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”
“The earliest records of wheeled furniture are an inscription found on a stone slate in China and a child’s bed depicted in a frieze on a Greek vase, both dating between the 6th and 5th century BCE.[2][3][4][5]The first records of wheeled seats being used for transporting disabled people date to three centuries later in China; the Chinese used early wheelbarrows to move people as well as heavy objects. A distinction between the two functions was not made for another several hundred years, around 525 CE, when images of wheeled chairs made specifically to carry people begin to occur in Chinese art.[5]”
“In 1655,Stephan Farffler, a 22 year old paraplegic watchmaker, built the world’s first self-propelling chair on a three-wheel chassis using a system of cranks and cogwheels.[6][3] However, the device had an appearance of a hand bike more than a wheelchair since the design included hand cranks mounted at the front wheel.[2]
The invalid carriage or Bath chair brought the technology into more common use from around 1760.[7]
In 1887, wheelchairs (“rolling chairs”) were introduced to Atlantic City so invalid tourists could rent them to enjoy the Boardwalk. Soon, many healthy tourists also rented the decorated “rolling chairs” and servants to push them as a show of decadence and treatment they could never experience at home.[8]
In 1933 Harry C. Jennings, Sr. and his disabled friend Herbert Everest, both mechanical engineers, invented the first lightweight, steel, folding, portable wheelchair.[9] Everest had previously broken his back in a mining accident. Everest and Jennings saw the business potential of the invention and went on to become the first mass-market manufacturers of wheelchairs. Their “X-brace” design is still in common use, albeit with updated materials and other improvements. The X-brace idea came to Harry from the men’s folding “camp chairs / stools”, rotated 90 degrees, that Harry and Herbert used in the outdoors and at the mines.[citation needed]
“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”
“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”
“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”
“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”
“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”
“But it’s a stempunk nov—”
“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”
Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.
If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.
Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.
“But the signature/ watermark
is cropped so I don’t know whose artwork it is”. If it’s unclear who the artist
is, don’t repost.
“I didn’t
crop this. I reposted this edit from somewhere else”. If it’s clear that the
artwork has been cropped and/or edited, don’t repost.
“If the artist doesn’t want their work to be reposted, maybe they shouldn’t post it at all”. No comment.
This has been getting my attention again lately. Many more people are reposting my art, even though it is very clear that the artworks they repost are cropped so that you can’t see my signature/ watermark. And this is happening to many other artists as well!
Some reposters
are very happy about the attention they’re getting
(This person didn’t mention my name and cropped my signature and watermark)
:
Some reposters are aggressive about it:
And others believe that recolouring isn’t theft:
It’s not fair to the artist.
Like I said
before, be fair and give credit where credit is due. Cropping the signature/watermark or claiming the artwork as your own is probably the most insulting thing you can do.
An artist doesn’t have to explicitly mention in every single post that they don’t want people to crop/edit/recolour/etc their work.
It doesn’t take a lot to
ask beforehand, add a link and mention a name. Don’t be lazy, and respect the artist.
Repost culture needs to end. I know I’ve said this a lot before, but it really is problematic for the artist.
We artists post our artwork online hoping for feedback as well as sharing our talent and skill and ideas with the fandom. It’s not our fault if some jealous bean out there decides to steal our work, crop out our watermarks, and reposts it. We are not the bad guy when we decide we’re going to ask these jealous beans to remove our art. It’s not our fault these jealous beans decide to throw a huge fantrum and start pissing and moaning about how they’re the victim of online bullying.
I have enough experience with this kind of bullshit in the Lion King fandom to write a fucking BOOK detailing the art thieves reactions!
For example: One such jealous bean decided they were going to crop out TsaoShin’s watermark and proceeded to post it with a quote from TLK. Not 24 hours later after having been asked POLITELY by three people, that they posted a baww journal proclaiming how they were being bullied. This bean even accused my friend for bullying her when she was warning the fandom about the bean’s abusive behavior. Within that same day the jealous bean proceeded to make two more baww journals whining about how they were a victim. My friend eventually got her journals and status posts removed because they were pitching such a huge fantrum that people believed the bean’s whining.
Another fun example: A popufur TLK fan artist decided they were going to risk posting a pic too close for comfort to another popular fan art piece that is constantly stolen and reposted. Two people told them it was too close for comfort. But what does this person do? They target me and make a baww journal calling me out. Because I had posted my disgust with what she has done on Tumblr. That was a very fun experience. It showed me just what a cunt that person was and proved that just because an artist has nice art, they can be a toxic and spiteful individual behind that sweet and innocent exterior of theirs. It also showed me who would rather kiss her ass than stand up for the original artist they ripped off. Which disgusted me to no end.
Both of these examples happened over the course of the beginning of this year.
Every fandom has this problem and this needs to end. Learn the difference between reference vs copying. Credit appropriately. Trace to learn, not to earn. If you didn’t make it, don’t post it!
when I was 14 I worked in a grocery store and one day I got to bag Stephen King’s groceries and of course, being the little horror fiction nerd I am I was completely starstruck
I think he thought I was gonna ask for an autograph because I was not even lowkey staring I was full on moon-faced and bouncing and he kept looking over at me hesitantly like aw jeez kid fuck off
anyways I finally managed to squeak out that I was a huge fan and asked for advice on writing, “how do I write as well as you do?” in my horrible thick German accent and broken ass English and he gave me the best writing advice I have ever received
“shit kid, stop worrying about how other people do it and just write your story”
14 years later my wife and I nearly hit him with our car because he was jaywalking
How do you make art with low inspiration and/or motivation? Do you take a break, or make small doodles until the inspiration and motivation spike back up?
Initializing response…
When we lose energy, we find taking breaks as opposed to forcing work helps. However when work must be done, work must be forced. Contracts will not wait for the return of our energy.
Small sketches and doodles rarely motivate us. We enjoy rather looking through other’s artwork and media to gather inspiration.
I’m a fucking sucker for “gentle giant” characters like theres nothing better than seeing a character who could crush you but is also a fucking sweatheart
So I'm at a crossroads. I'm a struggling creator, and from your advice and others I know that some plot points need to be abandoned for the sake of the big picture. That being said, I constantly feel like I'm settling. I try to get to a final product that is what I envisioned in my head but it's never there. I feel like I'm capable of creating what I've envisioned, but I haven't found the right mixture of compromise and holding myself to high standards.
being a creator is all about struggling to see what works and learning from that process. you’re not going to be able to accomplish everything you want when you’re a beginner, and that’s a good thing. there’s plenty of things i wanted to do early on that i was never able to work into TT, but now that i’ve been creating for years i’m realizing that those ideas weren’t even my best. i can do WAY better now. now that i can better realize my visions and have discovered how i work most efficiently, the quality of my visions has likewise improved. bottom line is, don’t focus on being a perfectionist until you have a reason to. your first line of business as an up and coming creator is to just grind and create things continuously until you develop the ability to achieve those big pictures, because by the time you’ve sharpened your skills your big pictures will be so much stronger, manageable, and
worthwhile that you’ll look back and understand that the early struggling was key to shaping you into who you become artistically.
look…………….. write as much shitty fic as you want. nobody can stop you. you’re learning constantly and it’s better to write hackneyed implausible ridiculousness than it is to not write at all out of fear of fucking up. you’re good
There was an experiment a professor did. I think it was pottery students. He did an experiment of “quality” vs “quantity”. One half of the class he told; you have to make as many pots as possible. Good pots, bad pots, shitty pots, whatever. The more pots you make, the higher your grade.
The other half of the class were told, “you can make only one pot”. But that pot had to be perfect. The quality had to be high; the highest quality pot would get the best mark.
But when it came to the grading, they noticed something weird.
All the best quality pots were in the ‘quantity’ group.
The guys who were literally churning out pots, trying to make as many as possible, not concentrating on the quality. But every pot they made, made them better at making pots. By the end of the month (I think it was a month) - they had some pretty awesome pots coming out, because they enjoying finding all the ways and all the things they could do to make all their pots. Where as the ‘quality’ guys had spent their time reading up on pots, and technique, and researching and planning; which was all great but they’d had no further practice at actually making pots.
The best way to get really good at something, the only way to be really good at something, is to make lots of shitty attempts at that thing several of which will fail. If all you create are perfect things then you won’t improve, because how can you improve on perfect?
“You are responsible for the minors in your fandom!!!”
No, I’m fucking not. I’m not your parent. My past-times do not automatically sign me up to act in loco parentis. If you need someone else to monitor your own content consumption online, go get mommy and/or daddy to set up a content blocker on your computer.
If you don’t like AO3′s core, founding mission–a fan-run archive where you can host your fanwork without having to worry whether it will get yanked when someone decides it’s objectionable–or if you’re upset that they aren’t interested in budging from that mission even when it comes into conflict with values that you, personally, hold dear…
All the code is on Github. You want an archive with all the fandom-tailored bells and whistles that AO3 has, but with a moderation policy for content you find objectionable/offensive/injurious to public morality/in unforgivably poor taste? Nothing’s preventing you from copying the software that runs AO3 and setting up your own archive with it. Well, nothing but the resources and technical skills required to host, deploy, and maintain a complex Rails app. Which isn’t anything to sneeze at, but if having a space free of the shit you’re objecting to is important enough to mobilize like-minded folks for vigilante enforcement via assorted charming forms of social coercion–shaming, harassment, ostracism, smear campaigns, doxxing, suicide-baiting, etc–surely it’s important enough to mobilize like-minded folks to contribute money, volunteer hours, and technical skills towards building the kind of space you actually want to see. The kind of space where you don’t need to resort to the vilest depths of social coercion to enforce a content policy in line with your values, because it can be enforced quietly and civilly by the mods with a few mouse clicks.
And if that’s too high a barrier–if your fandom is awash in stuff you find intolerable and you need a moderated fanwork archive now now now but the technical side might as well be sorcery–five bucks a month and an afternoon of point-and-click setup will get you a Wordpress install on shared hosting. Wordpress ain’t AO3, but it can be bent into almost any shape you want via plugins, and even a bare-bones default install comes with categories, tags, user accounts, comments, and moderation options. That’s all you need for a basic archive. Wordpress.com will even host a small one for you for free. If it fills a need, and people put a fraction of the energy and social capital into promoting it as they currently put into witch-hunting transgressors into submission, it won’t take long for it to hit critical mass within a fandom.
You want a strictly-moderated safe space? The bad news is, AO3 is never going to be that space. You don’t get to demand that the people who sink a bunch of time, skill, and effort into providing it to you (for free–actual free, not “selling your most sensitive data to advertisers” free) throw the entire carefully-considered purpose of their work under the bus whenever that purpose can’t be fully reconciled with the values you think deserve precedence. You want an archive with a different ultimate purpose and a different set of values that override competing considerations, you’ll have to contribute your own time and effort to building it.
But the time and effort required is by no means prohibitive. Fandom has been DIYing shit since forever, and right now the tools are more powerful and accessible than they’ve ever been. So the good news is, if AO3 isn’t doing it for you… it takes less heavy lifting than ever to build an archive of your own.
Censors, fandom police, purity culture diehards… put your money where your mouth is.
But, but … that involves doing actual work besides yelling at people!
In fairness, it would involve a lot of work. I kind of blew it off in the original post as “nothing’s preventing you… well, nothing but the resources and technical skills required to host, deploy, and maintain a complex Rails app.” But from what I understand, the actual infrastructure side of installing and deploying the Archive app doesn’t lend itself to easy replication. There certainly aren’t a bunch of AO3 forks and clones running around out there like there were for LiveJournal.
However! Most of the anti-AO3 grumblers’ use cases don’t require anything near the scale of the Archive. If what you want is an archive for one fandom (or even a handful of related fandoms) where you don’t have to worry about stuff you find objectionable, it is really and truly possible to build that with Wordpress on shared hosting for less than $10 a month. Point-and-click, no coding required. Install Wordpress, from the Wordpress admin panel install Writeshare and a security plugin like Shield, be sure to enable auto-updates, and you’re done.
Hell, let me make an offer: I know I’m a filthy degenerate who’s written and–even worse!–defended all sorts of depraved fic, but I’m also of the opinion that if antis want an archive they can moderate to their standards, they deserve one. Having control over the spaces they frequent instead of having to duke it out over the community standards of a general-purpose, lightly-moderated platform like Tumblr or AO3 might ease some of the pressure driving these conflicts. So. If you want a fic archive for your fandom that’s free of problematic ships, underage, noncon, abuse, etc, I will build and pay for it. I will shell out up to $10/month for shared hosting. I will handle as much of the technical end as you trust me to handle: server, database, domain name, Wordpress install and plugins, security. All I ask is that you and/or your friends run the site yourselves and not involve me in any of the moderation decisions (which you wouldn’t want me involved in anyway), and that you crowdfund anything above $10/month if the site gets huge. That’s it. You can even lock me out of the Wordpress admin panel if you’re comfortable maintaining and updating WP yourselves.
Fine print: The offer to pay for hosting is only for one site. Anyone after that gets the technical setup offer but not the $10/month. No real-life identity or contact info will be exchanged: I don’t want yours, and I definitely don’t want to share mine. I will do my best to trick out your Wordpress install however you like it, but no guarantees that all the features you want will be possible. If either of us wants out after the site is up, I will hand you a full backup of the database/filesystem so that you can install it elsewhere, plus a static HTML archive of the site that you can put up on a free webhost.
Go ahead and reblog this if you want to. I’m curious to see if anyone will bite and be serious enough to get a site up. I know I’m dead serious. I may be a degenerate with terrible opinions, but I’m a professional techie who’s hosted/run/modded a lot of sites in my time and never pulled untrustworthy shit with admin access. I will lock myself out of whatever you want me locked out of. Just let me put my money where your mouth is, because I figure it’s in everyone’s best interests if those who want a safe alternative to AO3 can build one.
FWIW, if you want a safe space following whatever rules you want, you can do that INSIDE the AO3 with zero coding work or hosting cost whatsoever. You don’t even have to convince anyone to cross-post to your site.
1. Recruit people and figure out your moderation standards. (You DO need people who are willing to review stories that might NOT meet those standards to make sure they fit, but you need that no matter where you do it.)
2. Make an AO3 collection and make your recruited people mods (Optionally: make a subcollection for each fandom you have someone to mod.)
3. Each mod looks over whichever new stories you want to review, and then bookmarks the safe ones (Optionally: with whatever tags or description you want), putting the bookmark in the appropriate collection.
4. People who only want to read works that match your moderation standards can just browse that one collection.
This is part of the purpose of bookmarks and why they have tags and notes, so people could follow specific bookmarkers who curate and/or provide the level of information they want to know about stories even if not all authors provide the level of info they want.
Do you have any advice for someone that's trying to write a reader insert fanfic?
ummm! as far as general tips go? i really only have like three things
never ever use the (y/n) shit
give the reader character some level of personality and a couple of specific traits (occupation, hobbies they share with the love interest, whatever) but keep the details of those traits really general so it’s easy enough for the reader (the real person) to conceive some version of themselves having those traits
insert yourself into the scenario and whenever the reader is making an observation about anything (another characters behavior/motivations, the setting, etc.) stop and think: is this something i, in this situation, would conceivably notice?
if you have something more specific you want advice on hmu
If I mispronounce your name because it is foreign to my tongue, correct me.
I don’t purposefully allow the accents of your name to fall flat on my tongue like the European English demands or the language to sound chopped and misheard.
If I don’t say your name correctly, don’t shrug and say it’s ok because people have been doing it all your life. Your mother worked hard to name you that name, with all its syllables and apostrophes and hyphens and inflection.
I don’t want to disrespect your heritage, your culture, your great grandmother or grandfather and their struggle.
If I mispronounce your name, forgive me, but don’t let it happen again. Make sure everyone knows your name.
