this is a classy establishment

anatsuno:

roachpatrol:

jumpingjacktrash:

perfecttrash:

my finger is on the button: tengwarsenna: my finger is on the button: grrwaitwhoasaywhat:…

tengwarsenna:

my finger is on the button: grr

waitwhoasaywhat:

jumpingjacktrash:

the “i didn’t bother proofreading but omggg read and comment you guys!!!” crowd is trickling into AO3. they haven’t taken over yet, but it doesn’t take much soap to kill an aquarium.

i tried…

God, I sort of wish you had to pass some kind of test before you are allowed to post any fanfiction. OR at least fucking proofread it ONCE.

Ok, I admit, I don’t always proofread before I post something. But that’s because I usually do a pretty good job editing while writing. It’s at least readable.

does goggles work on ao3? maybe i should just go through and red-pencil a few things. not meanly, just, you know, helpfully, like a 6th grade english teacher. i could give them a grade and an encouraging little remark at the end.

maybe i could draw one of those unfunny motivational stickers they used to give you in middle school, you know what i’m talking about, the ones that kind of made no sense and left you feeling a bit off kilter all day? like a penguin in sunglasses with ‘great effort!!’ written underneath in balloon font?

i think everyone who doesn’t proofread before posting to AO3 should have to look at Great Effort!! Penguin at the bottom of their fic.

Yeah, shit, this. I’m really pretty sad to watch AO3 corrode into the same kind of chaotic soup FFN was. I mean, everyone has to start SOMEWHERE but the initial premise of AO3 was that it was kind of an invite-only archive with some vague promise of quality control. A few years ago every fic you clicked on would at least be decently proofread because the kids that were posting were familiar with the basic concept of putting effort into a thing and had also been kind of peer-approved to not be in their very first plush of applying paw to keyboard. Now I guess they let anyone show up and post just like FFN and so of course it now increasingly reads like FFN: every other fic is a wordsoup with SORRY TIHS IS MY FIRST HOMOGAY TEE HEE PLEASE LOVE ME.  And, sure, everyone has to start somewhere: but I really liked it when the Archive was not that particular arena.

Once again my options are a) play russian roulette with unproofed yaoi clusterfuck or b) retreat into a cliquish incrowd and only read what my trusted friends suggest for me? I’m well into B and I really don’t like it. 

“the initial premise of AO3 was that it was kind of an invite-only archive with some vague promise of quality control.” ????

You rag on people who play in the fanfic sandbox without beta-readers but apparently you don’t know how to read. The AO3 was NEVER supposed to have ANY quality control (find me a proof of what you claim, please. I’ll be here any time you want to dump it in my ask).

It was and is invite-only to control its growth so that the computer infrastructure that makes it go doesn’t suddenly collapse painfully under a sudden surge of users or an onslaught of posts, which is a well-known techno-social measure that has worked and continues to work as it should, for the AO3 as for many other sites in their starting phase.

It was never supposed to have any quality control, and THANK FUCK FOR THAT. If you can’t find it in yourself to appreciate the variety of fannish experience, desires, expectations and expressions, you haven’t understood what the AO3 is and is supposed to be at all.

Being annoyed that you have to search/filter through fic you don’t like, whatever the reasons for which you don’t like it, is one thing. Claiming untruths to support your snobbish position is quite another.

Please to go back to your magical glittering elitist fancave, sad snowflake.

Pretty much everything anatsuno said multiplied by 1,000. I feel like an ass doing it, but I will back up what she says with my former Tag Wrangling Chair hat on, considering the number of times over my two-year history in the role I saw this falsehood about quality control put forth as fact, the number of times I was asked to give people the power to quality control tagging, because we were set up with the promise that people would tag “properly” and “logically”. I have no clue where this idea came from, why it latched on to the fandom consciousness surrounding AO3, but I’ve seen it since 2009 and it never gets any less awful. There was never a promise to quality control The Archive of Our Own. Ever. It never happened. Invites were always for size-control and never anything else.

Everyone has a fan experience and every fan experience is valid, even ones that are brand new. New fans can make mistakes and write badly and say inappropriate things, they can fail to spellcheck and have terrible grammar and write horrible porn. But then they gain the time, log the hours — they get better. Whatever, ten years ago I was writing unproofed yaoi clusterfucks and surprise surprise, the Internet didn’t crumble when I shared my work and the worst that happened to people who hated it is that they hit the back button. The AO3 will not crumble under the weight of work some people think is terrible. That’s not how it works.

Judging and wishing for the erasure or banning of any experience, be it new, different than the majority, or experienced and polished is pretty low and cruel. It suggests there’s not room on the AO3 for everyone, it suggests that one fan experience is more valuable than another, and it draws lines that have no place in the community we’re attempting to build on the AO3. Everyone is welcome regardless of experience. Everyone will always be welcome regardless of experience.

That’s how it should be.

justira:

Cast pictures for Ender’s Game

endersgame:

lifeofkj:

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to care that the Ender’s Game movie is going forward, but… holy crap, there’s going to be a movie of Ender’s Game!

Abigail Breslin as Val Wiggin: Approve. I don’t recognize any of the other child actors, but it looks like a nicely diverse cast. I confess it, I am a little bit excited.

I’m sure there’s someone who hasn’t seen this yet. And remember you can always check out Ender News for Ender’s Game… news.  ;)

Aside from any issues about Orson Scott Card, as opposed to his work: I can’t comment on any of the child actors really; Harrison Ford is some hilarious casting (in a good way); I like Sir Ben Kingsley.

And I love that they made Anderson a woman.

… But also, as far as I can tell, less of a hardass. That, I’m not loving so far.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t suspect this becausethey case a woman — in fact, I would love nothing more than a female Anderson who behaves exactly as the major did in the book.

But — and I admit I only have the EW description to go on here — I’m afraid that somehow they think that’s not very ladylike [emphasis mine]:

Viola Davis (Major Anderson)

The Help’s stunning lead actress will play Major Anderson (a male in Card’s novel), a psychologist who oversees the emotional welfare of the young trainees at the Battle School. In the book, Anderson is portrayed as a much harsher figure: His job is to set up the Battle Room scenarios in order to train the young students, and he is responsible for stacking the odds against Ender during these simulated fights.

Because a lady can’t be a hardass designing brutal battle room scenarios, I guess? No, I guess ladies are responsible for emotional welfare and other typical lady stuff.

Maybe I’m wrong — I really hope I am. But given that description, and how psychology is a feminized profession, I’m really afraid that they’re going to soften Anderson and tie it, unfortunately — intentionally or not — to the character’s gender.

This was my first reaction to reading that blurb, put into excellent words.

fishingboatproceeds:

Thank you for making fan art and fanfiction and all the amazing things that extend and deepen the thing I made.

Put this in the category of “Stuff Most Authors Renay Likes Hardly Ever Say”. Thank YOU, John Green.