OTW elections are coming up and if you’ve donated $10 in the last year, you’ll be receiving a ballot in August. Audrey Richards is a GOP candidate who’s been involved in efforts to “save children” from queer media, so for the love of all that’s holy DO NOT VOTE FOR HER.
Unionize every workplace, take breaks, do the bare minimum, commit time theft, and stop breaking yourself for a job that would replace you within an hour of you dropping dead. If they want you to do a proper job, they can give you proper pay and benefits.
Oh, cool! I love the behind-the-scenes stuff. If you’ve never seen the original (this version is narrower so you miss a lot that was going on) it’s here:
some people really be out there typing fanfics longer than war and peace in their free time and then going on about their life like it’s no big deal. how fucking incredible. like no offense to tolstoy but that was like. his whole job
not reading wips feels anti-fanfiction to me. and i don’t mean that in a “so you’re a bad person if you don’t read them” kinda way. do what you want. but i also feel, that you are completely missing the point. with fanfiction you’re supposed to come along for the ride. the epic highs and lows of highschool football. the comment sections. the conversations. the theories. the “sorry i didn’t update last week i was abducted by aliens and then my cat got stuck in a tree.” LIKE. if you just want a story that’s fully finished and polished go to a bookstore. fanfic is an EXPERIENCE. and ALSO. participating in the process is part of the way you make fanfic writing worth while. it’s part of how you thank authors. like why would anyone write fanfiction if no one was going to interact with them until it was done? it again feels like a way that fanfiction is being eaten by consumer culture. you’re waiting for your product. but this is supposed to be a club. you don’t turn up to drama club like “where’s my play bitch?” NO ma'am. we’re supposed to paint these cardboard trees together. ok. i may have lost control of this metaphor. BUT YOU GET IT.
Lol. I always wanted to say something like this, but was always like, but what if people think it’s self-serving? Finally, I’m old enough to say, people will think what they want anyway, so whatever, who cares.
I’m a chronic maxi stories writer, we’re talking 100k+, 200k+, and on it goes. I post them as WIPs because it’s a huge amount of work, and I need the food – the reaction, the interaction, too. Isn’t that why we write fanfiction and not originals? To share the process of creation? To not be left alone to the solitary torture that is writing?
And when people say ‘I’ll wait for her to finish before I read’ and ‘I’ll wait for her to finish to rec,’ tbh, I feel… devalued. Like my work is worthless in its incomplete form. Like I’m not worthy of their time unless I can provide them with a full meal in one go. Like I’m being judged and found wanting.
I know, I know. People do that for their own reasons that have nothing to do with me. But that’s what it feels like anyway.
And then they come to consume the completed product, and they be like, ‘Good job!’ And I be like, ’… … thanks?’ When what I’m really thinking is this:
'I’m happy you enjoyed it, it’s just that this was a JOURNEY, that you opted out of. You weren’t there with me, with US, you weren’t sitting in the same boat, fighting off monsters and threatening to lock THE couple in a cave somewhere until they sorted their shit out, you didn’t get drunk with us around a campfire, didn’t scare yourself to bits with your own ghost pranks. You just stopped by my living room to look at the rocks and pics that we brought back. You’re welcome to. I’m happy to have you. Enjoy. It’s just – we could have used an extra pair of hands or an extra set of eyes, and you could have come with and chose not to. No biggie, we’ve all made it. Just, yeah.’
I’m not talking obviously about the people who only find the story after it’s done. That’s fair. I myself frequently stumble onto the evidence of such journeys by the time they become cave paintings. Such is life.
As a reader, I understand why people don’t want to read WIPs. I do. But on a human level, I… don’t. I mean I do, but I don’t. Was that self-serving? Well, who cares anyway.
we need to bring back anon kink memes in a big way. no one is horny enough anymore. the other night i found a fic on an old kink meme from 2009 that was so well-written and also so raunchy and foul (affectionate) it could have stripped paint off my car. there is something about truly unapologetic filth that can be transcendent and tender and marrow deep and maybe if we all leaned into being anonymous depraved little weirdos again we’d learn how to have more fun.
Some of you might remember a couple of years ago when Scarlett Johansson sued Disney because she was making significantly less money for Black Widow than was guaranteed in her contract because so many more people watched it on streaming than in theaters, how there was a massive misinformation campaign from Disney that a ton of people on this website (and Twitter and other social media) bought into: That she was a greedy bitch who didn’t respect people who needed to stay at home during the pandemic (I believe the word “ableist” was thrown around with aplomb) as opposed to someone who just wanted to be paid what she was owed. What was literally in her contract!!! And where everyone who took more than a couple minutes to actually look into and think about the situation could figure out that her issue wasn’t with streaming itself, but with how little streaming was allowed to get away with paying her and other actors. But of course, a lot of people just saw the chance to dunk on a rich woman, and didn’t think about it beyond readying some snarky tags and hit reblog. And in doing so, threw their support behind a much wealthier, greedier studio head who is already using similar language to describe the current strike.
Anyway we’re going to see a lot of that from studios now, especially now that actors have joined with the WGA and it’s easier to sell them as rich and greedy than writers, because of this cultural stereotype we have of all Hollywood actors as celebrities. Don’t fall for it. SAG-AFTRA represents people like Tom Cruise and ScarJo but it also represents the kind of people who played a Borg in two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager in 1997 or who had one line in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an enthusiastic audience member. Most actors are not crazy wealthy, and in fact, if you’re a big TV fan (especially older TV and genre TV) that likely includes some actor names that you know, who played supporting roles in your fav shows, or who were even a star in something decades ago but haven’t done anything major since. The AFTRA side also represents people like radio broadcasters. But even beside that, all workers deserve to be fairly compensated for the work they do, and the threat of replacing them with AI, or real actors being required to sign contracts to allow their likenesses to be used by AI forever without paying them, is an existential threat to acting as a profession in general. The actors are in the right. The writers are in the right. The studios are in the wrong. The studios have exploited new technology to get away with horrifying labor practices for years and their feet need to be put to the fire. Circulate the articles about how poorly the Orange is the New Black cast was compensated for making one of the defining shows of the early streaming boom, and of the studios saying they want to force writers to starve and lose their homes. Don’t get distracted by propaganda aping progressive-sounding language about wealthy celebrities. Focus on the real enemy, the truly greedy fat cats who care more about money than people and art: the studios.
the thing about mr darcy. is that everything he does he does because of his eldest sibling syndrome. it’s so important that he has a younger sister and it’s so important that she’s 16 and it’s so important that their parents are dead. it’s so important that georgina is friendly and cheerful and that he hates everyone. it’s so important that he loathes wickham for what he did to her and gets involved to stop him from destroying lizzy’s younger sister’s life. it’s so important that he moves bingley away because he thinks he’s about to get his heart broken. it’s so important that bingley is a lot like georgina. like seriously darcy is an asshole because he’s an eldest sibling and he’s so so sweet because he’s an eldest sibling that’s the whole point
