That thing you wrote that isn’t “good enough” to put up on the AO3. You can put it up there! The AO3 isn’t meant to be The World’s Classiest Showcase. It’s an archive. It exists because most other forms of hosting fannish work eventually degrade or disappear. Accounts get deleted. Websites shut down. The AO3 preserves those things. Ten years from now you’ll be like, “Shit, there was this really great tag essay, but the person changed their Tumblr URL and then Tumblr closed up shop…” (look, even Tumblr will die eventually) and your only hope of finding it will be if the page was cached, or if somebody uploaded it to the AO3.
The AO3 exists to preserve ephemera as much as substantial works. You know how valuable it is for archaeologists to be able to read the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii? The little things, the notes, the headcanons, the notfics, the meta, the back-and-forths, are all important too.
YES YES YES THIS.
Tumblr’s likely to die sooner than you expect, and suddenly – it’s owned by Yahoo. (Anyone remember
del.icio.us, later delicious.com?) Yahoo’s trying really really hard to squeeze money out of tumblr and it’s not working, for all the reasons discussed in synec’s post and because a huge portion of its userbase is 13-18 years old and HAVE NO DIGITAL MONEY so can’t buy things online even if they wanted to.
There is no “worthy to be on AO3.” None. The early fics were often really well-written; it was a high-standards archive – not because “it strove for high standards” but because the only people who knew it existed, who cared about a new multifandom archive, were the ones who’d been around watching archives disappear for years; they were veteran fic writers who wanted a permanent place to share their stories. It took a long time for AO3 to have enough server capacity to allow open invites; in the early days, it was friend-of-a-friend for invite codes. (They wanted more people; they couldn’t handle a flood. So they handed out a few codes at a time)
We even talked about it while setting up the original terms of service – knowing that by saying, our standards are less restrictive than ff.net, less restrictive than LJ, we were going to eventually have HUGE amounts of really bad fic. FF.net got the nickname “pit of voles,” and AO3 was going to outdo that… eventually.
And. We wanted it ALL. All the reader-insert Mary Sue “date with hot dude” fic; all the “quiz to find out which power ranger you would be” fic; all the “band came to my home town and their bus broke down in front of my house and they needed a coffee and…” fic. And later, all the meta: the thinky character analyses; the “who’d be best on a first date” discussions; the “why the new movie sucked rocks and should never have been made because they ruined my favorite sidekick” rants.
ALL. WE WANT IT ALL.
AO3 is not about “the best of fandom;” it’s about “the truth of fandom.” And the truth is, fandom is not comprised of 90% well-written tightly-plotted carefully proofread fic. Fandom is comprised of people who love their favorite shows and books and characters and want to share that love with others.
AO3 are not the fanfic standards police. We’re the ones cheering for the “GLOWING BLUE SKELETON DICKS” tags.
Someday, some fandom archaeologist (and yes, there will be fandom archaeologists, isn’t that awesome?) will sift through the badfic, the quick drabbles, the Mary Sues, and write articles for peer-reviewed journals chronicling the complete collected works of some of the 21st century’s greatest authors and how you can see in THIS self-indulgent Protagonist/OC clusterfuck the origin of those characterization tactics and flow of prose that make your subsequent masterworks truly shine as beloved classics, and THIS short character drabble gives THAT story arc in your well-known later story an exceptional poignancy and depth if one considers it backstory.
Also that fandom archaeologist’s teenage daughter will think the self-indulgent Protagonist/OC clusterfuck is the best thing she’s ever read.
GUYS IT’S HAPPENING!
PLEASE POST ALL OF YOUR PROMPT FILL FICS, YOUR METAS, YOUR HEADCANONS, ETC, TO AO3 SO THEY’RE NOT LOST FOREVER! (If you don’t want to spam people, just do it as one big multichapter “Tumblr export” fic!)
THERE IS SO MUCH GOOD CONTENT ON THIS SITE, PLEASE SAVE YOUR STUFF!
Hi anon! I am looking into this and I’ll post about it as soon as I figure it out, sorry! I know a way to do this exists somewhere.
Okay guys, turns out I was wrong about this, sorry! I have contacted the support team at the Archive and I’ll let you know as soon as I have a solution for this. Hang tight!
A/N: If you let me choose, I’m always going to pick the Danvers sisters, so here we go with Kara and Alex.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“I made it for you!” a small girl, probably around four years old, says with a toothy grin as she holds out a colorful piece of paper to Supergirl, who is mingling with the crowd.
From inside the cordoned off area, Alex smiles at the sight. She always loves seeing the positive influence that Supergirl has on people, especially children. She’s so proud of the hero Kara’s become.
“I can tell,” Supergirl says, crouching down to match the girl’s height and mirroring her smile with one of her own. “It looks just like me. Thank you!”
She hugs the girl, who sways back and forth in her arms, unable to stay still with her energy and excitement.
Alex is about to return her attention to the containment scene happening around her when the girl runs under the barricade tape.
“I made one for you too!” the girl exclaims.
“Becca, get back here!”
Becca’s mother shouts.
Alex is several feet behind the barricade tape and waves off the closer DEO agents that move to intercept
Becca. She takes a few steps towards Becca and takes her hand. “Let’s get back to your mom.”
“Sorry about that,” Becca’s mom says.
“That’s okay,” Alex says lightly, not wanting to upset the little girl. “We have to stay on this side of the tape, okay, Becca?”
But Becca is focused on one thing only.
“This is for you!” she says, this time handing Alex a colorful drawing.
“Becca is a big Supergirl fan,” Becca’s mom explains. “She watches a lot of Supergirl footage, and she noticed you’re there by Supergirl’s side a lot, so she’s become a fan of you too.”
Alex did not expect that. “Oh, wow, that’s–uh–”
“Amazing,” Supergirl finishes for her, her grin even wider than it was before.
“Yes, thank you!” Alex says, giving Becca a hug.
“Wanna know a secret?” Supergirl says to Becca in a faux whisper.
Becca leans in, face bright with curiosity and excitement at being trusted with one of Supergirl’s secrets.
“I’m a big fan of her too,” Supergirl says.
“Supergirl,” Alex groans, feeling her face heat up with embarrassment.
Supergirl smiles at her. “It’s true.”
Eager to move on, Alex looks down at the drawing. It’s pretty typical for a child, broad crayon stokes depicting her clad in all black with red hair. Next to her is Supergirl, who is much more colorful. Alex has seen a lot of the fanart that Kara’s gotten from fans. She never thought she’d get some of her own.
“Thank you,” Alex tells Becca again. “I am going to keep this forever.”
Becca squeals with delight, and it’s all her mother can do to pull her away in the end.
When Alex glances at Kara, the giant grin is still there.
“Please stop,” Alex says as she turns back towards the containment scene.
Kara follows her. “I can’t help it. I’ll always be really happy when people recognize you as the amazing person that you are.”
“I’m a secret agent,” Alex says, putting on a pretend stern face. “I’m not supposed to be getting recognition.”
“Well I don’t care,” Kara retorts. “I think you’re amazing.”
“She was also the rare female character leading her own cartoon, “She-Ra: Princess of Power.” But as groundbreaking as she was, the original She-Ra was shaped predominantly by men.
Co-created by two male writers as a spinoff of “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” in an effort to reach young female audiences, She-Ra was He-Man’s twin sister and her story and identity was always connected with his.
A reimagined Adora made her debut on DreamWorks and Netflix’s new animated series “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,” and this time women are leading the charge.
“I think that there are stories on this show that are specifically very feminine, so I definitely wanted women to have a large presence in the room,” said showrunner Noelle Stevenson.
“It’s not to say anyone of any gender couldn’t have been an integral part of that room,” she added. “Ultimately for everyone in our crew of any gender [the question was]: Do you love, respect and are interested in the stories of women?”
Making your angst hurt:the power of lighthearted scenes.
I’m incredibly disappointed with the trend in stories (especially ‘edgy’ YA novels) to bombard the reader with traumatic situations, angry characters, and relationship drama without ever first giving them a reason to root for a better future. As a reader…
I might care that the main siblings are fighting if they had first been shown to have at least one happy, healthy conversation.
I might cry and rage with the protagonist if I knew they actually had the capacity to laugh and smile and be happy.
I might be hit by heavy and dark situations if there was some notion that it was possible for this world to have light and hope and joy to begin with.
Writers seem to forget that their reader’s eyes adjust to the dark. If you want to give your reader a truly bleak situation in a continually dim setting, you have to put them in pitch blackness. But if you just shine a light first, the sudden change makes the contrast appear substantial.
Show your readers what light means to your character before taking it away. Let the reader bond with the characters in their happy moments before (and in between) tearing them apart. Give readers a future to root for by putting sparks of that future into the past and the present. Make your character’s tears and anger mean something.
Not only will this give your dark and emotional scenes more impact, but it says something that we as humans desperately, desperately need to hear.
Books with light amidst the darkness tell us that while things are hard and hurt, that we’re still allowed to breathe and hope and live and even laugh within the darkness.
We as humans need to hear this more often, because acting it out is the only way we stop from suffocating long enough to make a difference.
So write angst, and darkness, and gritty, painful stories, full of treacherous morally grey characters if you want to. But don’t forget to turn the light on occasionally.
not knowing how to respond to messages and forgetting about them for so long that it becomes impossible to respond to them without it being weird is the bane of my socially awkward existence
Question of Smoke 