"Why Can't The Freaks On AO3 Just Go And Make A Site For All The Gross Stuff And Leave AO3 Alone."

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

I hate you shipping discourse I hate you unnecessarily aggressive DNI banners I hate you dehumanization of those you disagree with I hate you harassment over ships or favorite characters I hate you purposeful lack of nuance I hate you false equivalencies I hate you policing how people engage in fandom I hate you actively trying to make fandom spaces hostile I hate you refusal to filter your feed I hate you making it everyone else’s problem

my wife: you're the only person who uses the computer correctly

me: what do you mean

my desktop:

You want more minority representation in media but if they have flaws its problematic and if theyre perfect theyre a patronizing mary sue. If they crack under the pressure of the conflict the author thinks that minority is weak and if they overcome the adversity they must be a neoliberal bootlicker who thinks real world bigotry is a matter of personal attitude. You want minority characters but if theyre a villain its violently problematic and if theyre the protagonist then we circle back to the very first sentence. If theyre a side character theyre being sidelined and the author is once again bigoted, and don't you know that every single minority character death is unilaterally bigoted, without exception? You want more minority characters but if their identity is a big part of their personality or struggles then they're problematic and if their identity has nothing to do with their personality or struggles then the author is tokenizing that identity for clout. You want more minority characters but every time theres a minority character who doesnt have every single experience that you have then you tell the author to kill themselves on twitter. You wonder why not even minority authors will write minority characters.

I would ask you to read Catch-22, but you'd just call the military base problematic.

This list includes doctors in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Europe!

Even if you're not the target demographic, please share for any of your friends who may be.

And if you or someone you know would like to be added to the list, there's a place for that!

Periodic reminder that Archive of Our Own was created to be a repository for all written fanworks without regard to inherent worth, morality, ethicality, artistic merit, or intelligibility. As long as the posting of the work does not violate US law, falls within fair use standards, and does not directly harass individuals, it can be posted on Archive of Our Own.

Efforts to further limit the scope of what can be posted and stored on Archive of Our Own will fail, because Archive of Our Own is a repository much like the internet or the Library of Congress pre-21st century (back when it kept a copy of every publication printed in the United States). As long as you are able to find objectionable material on the internet or in a library, you will be able to find objectionable material in Archive of Our Own.

People get upset with the lack of moderation on Archive of Our Own because they view it as "the place to go to read fanfic." But when it was created, there was no goal for Archive of Our Own to be a destination fanfic reading website. Most people who first used it would publish on other sites (LiveJournal, fanfic.net, message boards, and various fandom-specific sites) to be read and commented on, and add a backup copy to Archive of Our Own so that it would be preserved in case it was ever removed from the original website/the original website went down. In other words, it was used as an archive, just like in the name.

AO3 can still be used this way! You can do your primary fanfic reading and writing on other sites, then back up your own works to AO3 for safekeeping.

Even better, if you object to the content that you find on AO3 and don't want to use it to find fanfic, or don't want to post there because you feel that posting there would be tantamount to endorsing AO3's mission, Archive of Our Own will hand you the tools you need to create your own site with more restrictive guidelines!

How? The software Archive of Our Own runs on is open source and the entire code is posted on github, along with advice for implementation.

Not everyone is comfortable searching for fanfic on Archive of Our Own for fear of encountering triggering or objectionable content. By creating more fanfic sites and repositories with their own focuses and guidelines, we can create the safe spaces in fandom that people are looking for without endangering the archival mission of Archive of Our Own.

Writing porn just for the sake of porn is super valid actually.

Smut and PWPs aren’t a fandom problem that needs to be solved. They belong here. They’re basically the backbone of fandom. Stop with your scarily casual purification talk.

Fooooooooood!!

My good people, I give you: Amatonormativity.