I...I have no words. This is horrible.
I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.
(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)
The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.
So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.
I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.
First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?
And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:
Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.
Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.
I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!
Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.
Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).
Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.
So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.
They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.
I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.
Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.
Nunca te rindas
I don't get how you can ship Lumity and be biphobic at the same time...
Some of you guys like to pretend Luz is a lesbian and leave the most biphobic and braindead comments on Lunter posts. This might be a really hard concept for you idiots to grasp, but a bisexuals sexuality doesn't change depending on who we're dating.
It's also very weird of you to assume Hunter is straight. You assholes like to complain about Lunter shippers (and the ship itself) being "heteronormative", but then label the kid with an unspecified sexuality as straight by default. Very, very strange.
Luz likes boys, this is something that will never change no matter how many deranged comments you leave on Lunter posts. And Luz isn't a lesbian just because she's dating one.
Cry about it, but most importantly leave people who like harmless pairings alone. Especially us bisexual fans who have different tastes for pairings than you.
;)
Just once, I would like to see a child's movie in which it's main character has an allergy to pets and the plot doesn't revolve about crazy shenanigans to convince the about-to-get/already divorced/widowed parent to adopt a puppy which magically solves everything. I want to see a story in which the next facts are not shamed or portrayed as negative:
•Yes, I cannot have a pet for my health/economic situation
•Yes, I am jealous of my classmates that can have a dog or cat
•Along the way I realize that MY HAPPINESS doesn't depends on taking care of some animal
•Parents can get even more struggles on their lives with a pet & child on board
•People have a right to be angry when a pet destroys things
•The dog pound employees are not evil, they're just doing their job
As someone with fur allergy who grew up watching tons of films with the message "you need a dog to be happy" I'd really like if the future generations got cut some slack about something they have no control over.
ao3 just dropped it's Christmas gift. I've been constantly searching a kghn fic that I completely loved but read once, never downloaded and got lost. After two years of filtering and despair without knowing if it had been deleted, I finally found it again. I'm ecstatic.
Guess I should pay it back with finally updating my own fic. Time to defeat writer's block.
Every. Single. Night. 🤦
Being (fanfiction) writer be like:
Honestly, this is SO cathartic.
I won't pretend I'm happy with the recent maga leaks, nor will I pretend wishing death on a child it's ok despite how many messed up shit he has pulled, but this essay right here, still perfectly valid and applicable to Bakugo despite being written back in 2020, it translates why I'd prefer if he had stayed six feet under and far, far away from Izuku, who, mind you, still uses useless as his hero name. Yes, Uraraka changed the meaning and we love her for that, and yet it doesn't take away the fact that he's traumatized enough to, just like everyone else, overlook the direct effect his abuser has over his life.
I absolutely despise Bakugo Katsuki, and I hope he'll face consequences.
Also, the apology was shit.
oh and also, while I’m here? I hate the way this fandom treats Bakugou and his bullying. Bakugou is one of the most popular characters in the fandom and people will fall over him, gushing about how good his character development is. Meanwhile he has never been punished by the narrative for his bullying, and his growth has never been tied to learning to respect quirkless people and those deemed ‘worthless’ by society, which is what he should be learning. There is a massive, glaring flaw in his character development, and people will just ignore it.
And then they proceed to ship him with Izuku, whom he viciously bullied for 10 years, because uwu their dynamic is so ~interesting~, or Uraraka, one of Izuku’s best friends, as if it doesn’t fucking suck to see someone who’s hurt you for a decade date your friend (and as someone who’s actually been in the situation where my best friend had a crush on my bully, let me tell you, it isn’t fun).
And then they’ll write about Bakugou’s mental health issues and trauma and the way he was failed by adults, jumping at the slightest chance to absolve him of his responsibilities. Oh, sure, Bakugou was failed by the adults around him, that much is true; they should’ve taught him to regulate his arrogance, that he isn’t special, etc. But you know who else was failed, and much, much worse than Bakugou? Izuku. Somehow, I feel infinitely less sympathy for the guy who bullied someone for 10 years than the guy who was bullied.
And obviously Bakugou has mental health issues stemming from the way he was treated as stronger, better than everyone else for his life, including his superiority/inferiority complex, and yes, adults have overlooked those mental health issues out of the assumption that Bakugou is strong bc of his quirk, but like? None of that absolves him of the crime of bullying someone for a decade? None of that makes it better? Am I supposed to give a shit? Maybe have him face actual consequences for his actions and I’ll start caring about how sad he feels.
And then people will absolutely insist that the reason he bullied Izuku was because he was abused by his mom, and? It fucking wasn’t? The reason he bullied Izuku was because he was convinced he was better than him. Not because he had normalized violence in his head or whatever. Mitsuki isn’t even canonically abusive; while that’s a perfectly valid read of canon, considering the fact that hitting your damn kid is definitely abusive, we know how Horikoshi frames abuse, and this isn’t it. Mitsuki is aggressive and mean because Bakugou is aggressive and mean. It’s a joke. It’s a bad fucking joke, because it’s not funny to see a child get beaten and berated by his parent, but it’s not canon abuse, and it’s not the canon reason he bullied Izuku.
And the reason I care about people acknowledging that ‘Bakugou Mitsuki is abusive’ is an interpretation of canon rather than actual stone cold canon is because the ‘abused bully’ is a massive trope. From the top of my head, I can think of the bully from Bridge to Terabithia, the bully in the first The Magic Thief book series, arguably Clarisse La Rue from PJO, and the bully from Trollhunters who all fit this stereotype, and there are many, many more. The easiest way to make a bully sympathetic is to make them abused. It neatly sidesteps having to figure out why they are bullies, because obviously, they are just externalizing the violence they learned at home. It also makes them very easy to redeem, because it’s pretty goddamn hard to stay mad at a kid when they are being abused. It’s a cheap tactic to gather sympathy for a bully, and it fundamentally misunderstands why bullying happens. Bullies don’t exist because they’re all secretly abused at home. They exist because society tells them it’s ok to hurt people that are weird, worthless, or otherwise bad. And those people also often just so happen to be minorities, whoops.
This is the one thing that BNHA got right about bullying. Bakugou bullied Izuku because he believed himself to be superior, because that’s what the adults around him kept telling him. This is why people bully others in real life, too; it’s ok to hurt them, they’re weird, they’re annoying, they don’t matter. It’s the one thing that BNHA got right, and you motherfuckers want to throw it out of the window because it’s easier to woobify Bakugou if he’s just another abused bully. Interpreting Mitsuki is abusive is obviously fine, again hitting your damn kid is definitely abusive, but then ignoring the actual, canon reason why Bakugou bullied Izuku to substitute it with something that’s easier for you to excuse is fucking horrifying and I hate every single person that does it. Fuck you. Bakugou being abused has no bearing on why he bullied Izuku, none, whatsoever.
And don’t even get me fucking STARTED on the many ‘oh no what if Izuku jumped, wouldn’t Bakugou feel sad :(’ posts/fics/aus or the fact that what you guys think would be a good consequence for 10 fucking years of viciously bullying someone (including physically assulting them, destroying their property, and suicide baiting them) is like, a scolding from Aizawa and maybe being transferred to a different class (rather than, you know, being fucking expelled from hero school). I hate all of you.
Bakugou’s canon arc and his treatment by the fandom is so indicative of the way people view bullying as something kinda mean but ultimately minor, rather than, you know, something that can severely traumatize you. People are so eager to jump on any chance to ignore or smooth over Bakugou’s actions, fail to examine his character development critically, and will ship him with his victim or think it’s a good thing that they’re being made ‘friends’ in canon.
This is normally the part where I’d say it’s ok to like Bakugou as long as you do xyz, but you know what? I don’t need to soothe people’s fucking feelings. I hate Bakugou, and I hate that he’s so popular in the fandom, and I hate how he’s treated by the fandom. Obviously I’m not saying you cannot like him, I’m not the arbiter of what characters you are or are not allowed to like, but I’m not here to soothe your fucking feelings if this rant made you feel bad. Block me if it bothers you that much. Also don’t bother debating me or sending me asks or whatever, I don’t care, my hatred for Bakugou is based in personal feelings and no amount of ‘but what about this thing in canon -’ or ‘what if this happens in the future -’ or ‘but i like bakugou for xyz reasons’ is gonna make me change my mind lmao. Bakugou Katsuki is a terrible person with terrible character development and that’s that on that.
In conclusion:
Never forget that Steven Universe’s queerness was intrinsically linked in its narrative and themes. It told a story of oppression, mental health, triumph, and loving yourself using characters both metaphorically and literally queer (along with neurodivergent, PoC…there’s a lot of layers to this). Anyone downplaying its LGBT+ rep is talking out of their ass. I’m so tired of this show being the animation community’s punching bag. The discourse around this show hasn’t changed since 2018. Who fucking cares that it isn’t perfect, we’ve heard it all, most agree. But the fact a cartoon for children aimed to be this nuanced, complex, and mature, whilst still being a whimsical cartoon is amazing and exactly what kids need. I know they’ll grow up thankful that they watched it and all the other cartoons following in its footsteps.
Listen, Movie! Adrien is a ctrl c + ctrl v of Scarlet Lady! Adrien but they added 5mg of depression
bye bye petit papillon
Bienvenidos/Welcome. I'm a young man who enjoys reading and watching animated stuff of any source. TW: More often than not I'll use explicit language This account is usually not that active(it's main purpose is for liking and reblogging posts). However, make yourself at home. I may write short stories and publish them here in the future.
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