Literally never in my life have I ever related to something so strongly
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it
Evelyn Beatrice Hall in “The Friends of Voltaire,” summing up both Voltaire’s attitude about the author of a book that was attacked, publicly burned, and resulted in the author’s exile, and my feelings about the current “fandom purity” wank. (via shinykari)
Thoughts thrown at the wall in semi-coherent order:
There are degrees of involvement in fandom. Everyone does it differently. BUT it’s literally social interactions via screens. After a certain point of involvement there’s very little “I sit back, keep my mouth open and food fall in with me having nothing to do for it” if you’ll allow the baby bird metaphor
you take and you give and you make contacts and you talk and DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE and it’s a lot of work! and it doesn’t happen overnight!
The category for relationships (Gen, F/F, M/F, M/M, a combination, something else)
The right category for ratings (is it for General Audiences, Teenagers, Mature, Explicit, R-Rated, Nc-17?)
The relevant warnings (violence, rape, underage sex, anything else you deem relevant)
The relevant tags on it (what relationships are covered in the fic? What characters? Is it light and fluffy fic? Funny? Sad? Dark? Does it have sex, and if so, what kind? Is there violence? Tags are used by readers to find fic and to avoid fic)
A summary that informs the reader of what kind of fic they’re gonna read.
Author’s notes for everything else. You can use the summary or author notes to explain certain tags, or add caveats, or thank your beta’s.
Things that are not a fanfic writer’s responsibility:
Kids stumbling across your fic and reading your fic and assuming that whatever is written about in the fic is 100% cool and normal.
The mental health of people who don’t like the subject matter of your fic.
This for AO3, Tumblr and LJ/DW. The posting format for ffnet is a little different and doesn’t allow tagging, for instance. But the general idea is the same!
Yeah, AO3 asks you to fill in certain things, on Tumblr/LJ/DW you have to remember everything yourself. But that also gives you more freedom to explain things!
FF.net doesn’t use tags like AO3 does, but I guess people on FF.net are more used to using summaries and the top part of each chapter for that.
Abled people complain about disabled people needing accommodations, because “in the real world there are no accommodations”.
But abled people receive accommodations all the time. Cars are an accommodation for those who can’t run a steady speed of 60 mph. Stairs are an accommodation for those who can’t jump from one story to the next. Phones are an accommodation for those who can’t communicate telepathically. Calculators are an accommodation for those who can’t do large math problems in their head. Lights are an accommodation for those who can’t see in the dark. Stoves are an accommodation for those who can’t heat things with their eyes. Clocks are an accommodation for those who can’t tell what time it is just by the position of the sun. Jackets are an accommodation for those who are susceptible to frostbite when it’s cold.
Abled people receive accommodations all the time, but since it’s considered socially acceptable to need those accommodations, they’re not considered accommodations. But imagine if you lived in a world where you needed those accommodations but most people didn’t. That’s what it feels like to be disabled.
This is an incredibly important post. As one of my favourite professors said, “Technology is not innocent.“ As in, all technology had to be designed by a human being. And chances are, if that human being had any biases or assumptions that could be translated into the technology they created, they probably wound up in there. Practically everything is designedspecifically for abled people. Think about cars, for example. Could you drive a car one-handed? Well, yeah, very likely, but since most people have two hands, they designed the cars to use both hands. Two hands to grip the steering wheel, buttons and levers on both sides of said wheel, etc. There is nothing that says cars are better when you design them for one specific degree of physical wellness, but yet that is exactly how they’re designed. This extends to virtually everything human-made you see. I do mean everything.
So for the love of heaven, please don’t whine and complain when you see disabled people of any variety getting “special accommodations.” All technological design is purposeful. Every piece of technology you see was designed to accommodate someone. If you’re lucky enough to be accommodated by something’s most common design, don’t be an ass to people who would be better served by an alternate version.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that anyone who throws around the phrase “the real world” is very likely some privileged douche who’s had everyone accommodate them their whole lives and never noticed it.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 