selenay | Entries tagged with ao3

Yup, the Hugo finalists are out and the Archive of Our Own is on the list for Best Related work: http://www.thehugoawards.org/2019/04/2019-hugo-award-1944-retro-hugo-award-finalists/

I'm actually delighted about a large chunk of this year's ballot. There are works on there that I nominated (yes, including AO3) and works on there that I've heard a lot about and I'm looking forward to digging into. The Best Novel list is an incredibly strong field this year - no novel stands out as a run-away winner because they're all excellent. Or I assume they all are, because the ones I haven't read are either books I've been saving for a rainy day because I loved their other books (Record of a Spaceborn Few) or books friends have raved about (Trail of Lightning).

The commentary about the list has reinforced my belief that this is a really strong Hugo year.

Except for AO3, which is understandably controversial and it's annoying to see so many people already declaring it doesn't deserve to be there so they will be No Award-ing it.

Ugh.

Firstly, we know it's not on there purely for the content. I know a lot of us were having fun with being "Hugo nominated fic writers" after the announcement, but we are aware that the nominations weren't about the fic.

Hypable has a great article about AO3, the Hugos, and why it deserves to be there. It discusses the importance of transformative works in the larger fandom discourse, the fact that a lot of (Hugo finalist) writers started out in fanfic and have works on AO3, and why it's great to have the public acknowledgement out there.

I'm not pretending that AO3 is perfect. It's not (yet). It's code infrastructure is still a mess despite a lot of work last year to clean it up. That work led to the big changes in search that fans had been asking for (which, IMO, is a good argument for why it's on the ballot this year in particular) but there's still a lot more work to do. There are issues with racism and other -isms in corners of the site, and those problems are hard to tackle. It relies on unpaid labour, then again, so does much of fandom's infrastructure (including many of our biggest conventions), so I can't take issue with that part.

But.

AO3 is an incredible feat of community and engineering. It's weathering a storm of anti and purity policing that we've never seen before in fandom.

It's a resource, a community, a place for serious work and silly fun, and we built it. So I'm pretty happy to see it - and transformative works - hitting the ballot of a major award this year.

This quote for ULTRAGOTHA on File770 delighted me:

You know what? Let’s be joyful alongside everyone associated with AO3. I was joyful when File 770 was nominated and I’ve got a heck of a lot less invested here that many in the Transformative Works community have in AO3.

No, everyone involved doesn’t get 1/2,000,000 of a Hugo nomination, any more than I had a fraction of Mike’s nominations.

But that reaction is joyful! Let there be Joy! It’s a community that gets a lot of disrespect and the Organization of Transformative Works and Archive of Our Own has done titanic work in not only bringing respect to that community but ALSO creating a space that nurtures a pool of damned good SF/F/H writers.

AO3 is a vital part of Fandom and the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror community. They did stellar work last year and we should not disrespect them, their work, and the space that they’ve provided for this community, by voting them below no award. They don’t deserve that from us.

Let's celebrate and be proud of what we've achieved. Let's explain to people why AO3 deserves to be on the ballot. AO3 isn't perfect, we can critique it and work for further changes and developments, but it's still an incredible piece of work built and maintained by fandom.

Current Mood: bouncy

I've been seeing bits and bobs floating past on Twitter over the last few days about a wankery situation happening on Tumblr around AO3 (and the existence of "olds" in fandom, heh). It's...a little rage inducing.

If you want to get some good discussion and a bit of background, this post by

cereta has some fantastic discussion in the comments about all the issues. From what I can gather we have:

1) Horror at olds in fandom. ie. those of us over thirty. Just...yeah.

2) Fury that AO3 won't let people report fics and get them deleted for abuse/homophobia/whatever. I.e. AO3 will not let them censor content of fics. And by abuse, they mean anything with non con/rape. Fics where canonically gay characters are in mixed-gender pairings. Fics with underage content, which they often define in...interesting ways. They'd be horrified by the Buffy/Giles fic of my youth, that's all I'll say.

3) Some of those young fans apparently thinking Strikethrough was a good thing, because it got the ball rolling on kicking out abusive fic.

I'll wait for you to all stop face palming and hitting your heads on desks.

*muzac plays*

*ticky clock appears*

*refreshments are distributed*

So.

AO3 was built in response to Strikethrough, as a place where fic couldn't be censored in that way. It was built as a place where fandom could own the servers and we weren't beholden to the whims of advertisers and private site owners. Where fics couldn't be deleted at the behest of one person, or one company, because something in it wasn't to their taste. Where the rule "don't like, don't read" would reign supreme.

(One of the specific things I've seen on some of the Tumblr posts is a complaint that "don't like, don't read" might be great for the olds, but waarghbl it's not good enough for me! It exists! It hurts my soul! I might read it despite the warnings and tags and that's not fair! *sigh*)

As long as appropriate warnings (or "choose not to warn") are used--and violating that can get a fic reported and the abuse team will take action--then AO3 won't censor. They won't censor for bad grammar and spelling, no matter how much we wish they would, and they definitely won't make anyone take down their Derek/Stiles fic, or their Ianto/Gwen fic, or their sex pollen non-con Doctor/Missy fic. It was set up that way, because today's "icky non-con, ban it!" fic is tomorrow's "omg teh gays, make it go away!" fic.

Us olds remember the old days. The days when you had to label all slash--even when it was just hand-holding--as NC17 and plaster it with warnings. The days when only certain archives accepted slash at all, and you could get your FFN account or LJ suspended if someone objected to your boy kissing fics, so everything was locked down under f-lock or posted to the adult slash-friendly archives with a thousand warning pop-ups. The days when RPF was never to be spoken of because almost no archive accepted it. The days when we all danced around carefully because at any moment, our favourite fics could be deleted and never seen again if a site advertiser threatened to withdraw funding.

Trust me, that was not a good time. Everyone freaked out about Strikethrough because it was the start of a slippery slope. Nothing deleted was illegal, even though it wasn't to many people's taste, and it was only matter of time before they came after the less problematic stuff.

I may not like what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it (or read/write/art it) to the death.

I think there's a multi-layered problem. Fandom has splintered since the Strikethrough days, and we've all wandered off to different places. Back when I entered fandom, we all lived on the same mailing lists and LJs. Us babies (I was a mere twenty...which wasn't that young, actually) and the "olds" together. We all inhabited the same spaces and the newbies to fandom learned about the old ways, the old history, from the more experienced fandom people. And the newbies opened the eyes of the older fans to some things, too, which caused ructions but enabled us all to learn and change.

Current fandom has splintered and seems to have broken into generational buckets. The youngest part of fandom is on Tumblr and Snapchat. The older part of fandom is on Tumblr a bit, but not much, and many of us have stepped a long way back from it because we're made so unwelcome. We're still here on LJ, DW, Twitter, and Imzy, where the youngs aren't so much. Due to those divides, there isn't that interaction and mutual learning, so the younger fanfolk don't know the history. They don't know why AO3 exists and why we're so passionate about not censoring it. They've never had to creep around on the edges of fandom because they were slashers, or RPF-ers, or wrote explicit fics after FFN banned them.

The divide is also contributing to the feeling that anyone over thirty shouldn't be fannish anymore, and I suspect that's part of the AO3 wankery. There aren't many people from that very young end of the fandom involved with the OTW or AO3, so it feels like the olds run it. We created it, we fundraised for it, we continue to work on it and we're old, by their standards. We should have shuffled off to our graveyards or our adult lives or something.

Except we haven't, because when we were the fandom babies, there were all these fans older than us who were still active and we learned we'll never be too old for fandom. With the divide getting so sharp between the youngest and everyone else, they're not getting that part of the fannish experience, either. They can't imagine being thirty (or forty, or fifty), never mind being that age and still being in fandom.

You've also got the problem that Tumblr-style activism is very different from what we were doing five or ten years ago. It's all about protecting young eyes not just from the content, but from knowing the content is even there. About removing it so it doesn't need to be thought of. For them, "don't like, don't read" isn't enough. They don't want anyone to read it or see it or write it.

When AO3 was first being set up, there were huge arguments over whether warnings should be mandatory. A lot of people are still annoyed that major warnings are mandatory and that their only option, if they don't like warnings and have warnable content in the work, is to use a tag that's basically a buyer beware notice. The kids screaming about AO3's refusal to remove works because they don't like the content would hate a version of AO3 without those warnings.

Hint: it's what fanfic was like for most of us and it's why we still hold to the "don't like, don't read" principle. Hell, AO3 makes that one doable now! I haven't read surprise!rape in years because I don't read anything with "choose not to warn" on. The existence of fic that contains stuff I don't like does not harm me because I don't have to read it. The existence of stuff that's triggery for some people doesn't harm them as long as warnings are used, because they don't have to read it. Having warnings and tags enables people to avoid those fics and even filter them out of searches so they don't have to see them. It's the beauty of AO3.

In the end, the people screaming on Tumblr about AO3 unfairly refusing to censor its content aren't going to get anywhere (hopefully). The worst they can do is refuse to donate to the OTW and boycott the archive. I doubt they donate anyway, and boycotting seems like a "cutting off their noses to spite their faces" move, although I imagine a few will. I doubt that a few dozen people boycotting will change AO3s policy, though. AO3 isn't in danger, but the shouting on Tumblr is alternately rage-inducing, face-palm worthy, and ridiculous, because it's so unnecessary.

If they get really mad, though, they could go away and set up an archive of their own. One where they own the servers and get like-minded fans to help them run and fund the project. Hmm, I wonder what they could call it...

I'm reluctantly conceding that I may have to talk to someone about my migraines after losing most of Saturday and part of Sunday to one :-( Blergh. At least I'd done all the important stuff (like buying comics, cleaning the house and baking brownies) on Friday.

In more cheerful thoughts...

I am up for auction! Well, my writing is :-D I'm taking part in an auction to help with the AO3 fundraising. Win the bidding on me and I'll write a bespoke story to whatever prompt your heart might desire. Although, as I'm still on my Avengers kick, that does mean it needs to be an Avengers story :-D

The auction has been open for less than 24 hours and runs until April 25th and some authors are already waaaaay outside my price range. Wow. The bidding war is going to get intense for some people.

The incredible thing is how many people signed up as authors - over three hundred of us in dozens of fandoms. This is going to put a nice chunk of change into the AO3 coffers so we can continue to Have Nice Things and watch the archive grow. It's been so cool watching the AO3 grow from a seed of an idea into one of the main fanfic sources for so many fandoms. The idea that we own the servers, as a massive fandom group, so there's a real chance for preserving our history and being a major resource for years to come is amazing.

So yes, go and bid. Not necessarily on me (because there are some fantastic authors on the list), but if you've got something you've been itching for me to write then go and put your money down :-D

I said in my notes that I'd be writing a minimum 2k fic. I'd like to point out that there's an excellent chance that you'll get a much longer fic than that. Just take a look at my track record: the circus AU was supposed to be around 5k, the mechanic AU was supposed to be around 2k. If the prompt is fun and interesting enough, I turn out a novella instead of a short fic :-D I made the smaller commitment because I know that I'm currently writing the space pirate AU and I'll be signing up to the

marvel_bang next month and I didn't want to overcommit and fail.

But last year during Marvel Big Bang, I wrote a 20k AU and multiple shorter fics (er, plus a 10k 5 Things fic) as 'fun breaks' from Big Banging. When I'm writing something big and intense, I tend to go off and write fun stuff to keep myself from going insane and sometimes they end up as long as the big intense fic I was distracting myself from.

My writing process, it is odd and highly productive.

Current Mood: hopeful

So, AO3's latest release contains about a dozen things that we've all been waiting for and what excites me the most?

Using the Reply, Edit, or Delete buttons on comments would jump the page to the top of the comments section; this has been fixed

Yup, this bug has been driving me absolutely nuts for months and it's now fixed.

I mean, having filters back is obviously awesome. And I now need to go and re-tag lots of my bookmarks because I can now filter personal bookmarks by tag and that makes the entire bookmarking facility 1,000 times more useful. Being able to order fics by kudos or comments will be wonderful when I'm hitting a new fandom/pairing and want to track down good stuff quickly.

But really, it's the comment fix that has me absolutely thrilled. It's going to make my weekly "reply to all the comments" evening so much easier. The number of times I've put it off just because of the jumping...

Let's just give the AO3 team a big round of applause for not just fixing filters, but going above and beyond to add a ton of extra filter-related functionality at the same time.

And for fixing the comment thing. Because obviously that's the really important bit.

I have a bunch of fics that I really need to get up over there, most of them really old things. I also have a number of people subscribing to me (that's terrifying in itself) and I don't want to randomly hammer people with emails about ancient fics.

If I put things up and backdate to approximately when the fic was originally published, will it send an email notification? Is there any way to prevent the notifications so that I don't spam people?