People keep asking “How can anyone have a problem with AO3 doing fundraising!”
And I’m just like…. Have people not noticed all the virulent anti-AO3 hate on tumblr propagated by the anti shipping community? Antis have a problem with AO3 raising money because they hate the fact that AO3 won’t allow them to censor content they don’t like and doesn’t tolerate bullying. That’s who is putting out these posts like, “how can this nasty site raise so much money?” Read between the lines.
And for all the people who are just like, “If they don’t want AO3 to to raise money why don’t they just not donate?”
Because antis are incapable of saying “this isn’t for me so I won’t support it but I don’t care if other people support it. They have to actively discourage other people from supporting the thing. At the same time, they also won’t stop using AO3 because 1) they’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites who want readership and that’s where the readers are and 2) they’re too lazy to put together their own archive using AO3′s open source code because that would require doing coding and buying servers and doing all the moderating they want, which is hard, and they just want to engage in empty virtue signalling, which is easy
Anyway, my point is, people need to be aware that these people are out there and they hate AO3 and they want it to go away even though they’re actively using the platform. They’ve even said they want AO3 to fail so something “better” (re, something they control) can take its place. Some of them are blatant about it, calling AO3 a cesspit of pedophilia, and some of them are subtle about it, saying more innocuous things like ‘Does AO3 really need 130K a year?” “Shouldn’t you give your money to individual needy people doing gofundmes for stuff that’s more more important?”
But all of these people have the same end goal, which is the destruction of the archive, and the way they’re going about it right now is to try to discourage people from donating.
So instead of asking, “Why do people object to AO3 raising money?” start telling people “Hey there are people out there who hate AO3 and want to destroy it and we have to protect the archive from them.” And donate, if you can, and signal boost, if you can’t.
The year is 1852. You are “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and you have just been banned because you have started conversations about slavery. You have challenged the widely accepted idea of slavery in the south and have caused people to rethink their assumptions. You have caused debates. Equally as important, you were written by a woman. Who used her real name. People are angry with you. So you become the first book to experience a ban on a nationwide scale.
You are a banned book.
The year is 1922. You are “Ulysses” and you have just been banned because you contain sexual content. Sexual content is not to be spoken, not to be thought. It is to be hidden as a secret part of life. But this ban is not like the bans of the 21st century. This ban is not in one library or one school. It is a federal ban. No one in the land of the free can read a copy of your pages. In a country with the freedom of speech, you are illegal.
You are a banned book.
The year is 1957. You were mailed to a friend by Samuel Wroth, and you are considered scandalous. Wroth should have the right to privately mail what he likes, right? But you, you dangerous little collection of pages, have placed him on trail in Roth vs. The United States. He asks the court to redefine their standard for “obscene” but they will not hear it. You are confiscated, and you are the reason Roth is placed behind bars until 1961.
You are a banned book.
The year is 1957. There is good news for you. While Roth was in prison, the court decided to take his suggestion and redefine what they consider obscene. Now you, a banned book, can only actually be banned if you are found “utterly without redeeming social importance.” However, this is still very subjective. Who is to judge what qualifies as social importance? What qualifies as social importance? You are a banned book, and you are still subject every day to the legal standards of a judge’s opinion. That is why it is so important to create a culture that is dedicated to keeping you safe.
Defamation, which is making false statements about a person in order to damage their character or reputation, is a thing you can be sued for in the United States.
Just sayin’.
Jason: Handcuffs fucking hurt
Roy: Use silk rope next time
Jason: I don’t think I can convince a police officer to use silk rope
How can you tell the difference between a story with deeply troubling opinions, themes, and character actions and a story where the writer is inserting his or her own views, opinions, and preferences?
Warning signs in a story:
Those with a certain point of view are written as strong, wise, reasonable, sensible, or normal.
Those with different or opposite views are written as weak, foolish, strange, wishy-washy, aggressive, or dysfunctional.
Limited ways of thinking. The “right” way and the “wrong” way.
No moderating voice of reason. Even those who should know better fail to be unbiased.
Unrealistic characters, character interactions, and authority figures.
World-building is not only unrealistic but also feeds into the “reasonable” character’s understanding of reality. Reality itself is warped to support a point of view.
NOT warning signs:
One or more character is dismissive, contemptuous, aggressive, or unhealthy in his/her point of view. (See:unreliable narrator)
Good characters all think the same way and badguys are clearly evil. (Good guys are good, bad guys are bad is very common and not typically cause for alarm.)
Characters taking sides. (This is normal human behavior. Even when the sides are unbalanced in someone’s favor, that is realistic. A 50/50 split is too contrived.)
World-building that creates a problematic world or a world where most people fall into a certain way of thinking. (Dystopian worlds and dysfunctional characters.)
Examples:
Yes, writers can make a point through story. Classic dystopian fiction like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and The Giver all make commentary on human nature and serve as warnings for how far society can fall if we let it. Unreliable narrator stories like The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye have less social commentary and more to do with tragic human nature on a limited and personal scale.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have simple stories of good versus evil where characters aren’t very well fleshed-out. Sometimes the good point of view is obviously the author’s idea of what good means, and the evil is evil for no reason, but that’s just failure to think through character motivations and create nuance.
It’s only when the fabric of reality in a story (the setting, the facts, the characters themselves) warps into something unrecognizable that you can be sure that the story you are reading is biased. This is most obvious in situations like “Pretty in Pink” where a character is a stereotype or farce of a people or culture. I recently read a story (not fanfiction) where modern culture was written as oppressive to straight men in a premise that was meant to be light-hearted but made any sane reader deeply uncomfortable. In that story, the LGBTQ+ community was sexually aggressive, wishy-washy, and foolish, as were any “progressive” thinkers, and the main character and his friends were the only “reasonable” people who saw problematic behavior as problematic. The establishment (such as police) supported the warped version of reality by treating straight men as guilty until proven innocent while they treated everyone else with kid gloves. That was a perfect example of a story which pushed its social views on the reader. (I would give you a link and a detailed analysis, but I have no wish to give that mess any web traffic.)
Conclusion:
Darkness in fiction is normal because darkness in human nature is normal. Racism, sexism, homophobia, violence, these are real things in our world, and so they make it into our fiction on a regular basis. Sometimes a writer condemns them through their story by making them part of the bad guy’s point of view or something for the main character to change in someone else to make that person “good,” but sometimes they are simply there to create setting, world, mood, and characterization. Because they are real things. And in realistic stories, no plucky heroine is going to undo a lifetime of negative social grooming by pointing out that that mindset is bad.
Every writer has different motivations for their writing. To entertain, to reveal, to find catharsis, to condemn, or to simply write. Reasons for writing are as widely varied as writers themselves.
Therefore, if you ever think a writer him- or herself thinks the way a character does, I require more than an accusation to believe it. Give clear and obvious proof through detailed literary analysis, or give the writer’s own unambiguous words, speaking as themselves.
We are so excited to be able to start off with a shout-out to the multi-talented @persimonne who we would like to thank so much for working on our banner. The finished banner will comprise three images and here is the first one. It’s of Finn Ben and Rey on the Falcon sharing a drink.
We think it’s a little bit cheeky… 😉
Thank you @persimonne! We adore this artwork!
We will keep tabs on the #finnreylo and #finnreylopositive tags. If you have posts you would like us to reblog please don’t hesitate to tag us or send us messages! We’d love to hear from you.
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