the question of fic comments is very straightforward actually. readers do not owe writers comments. writers do not owe readers fic. there is no bargain, no transaction, no debt.
fic is a gift. comments are a gift. gifts are exchanged between friends, out of love, not out of obligation.
I write for myself. I post it for others, as a gift, because their joy brings me joy. I read for myself. I comment for the author, as a gift, because their joy brings me joy. perhaps we were not friends before, but we are now, however fleetingly, because we have given each other gifts out of love.
Texas’ HB 3399 bill will kill people if it passes. It will make hormone therapy illegal. For all ages. Period. This was never about women’s sports. It was never about bathrooms. It was never about “protecting the children”. They want us dead. If you’re a fellow trans person and you live in Texas, I strongly urge you to be ready to move somewhere safer.
Not just hormone therapy, but also
surgeries that sterilize individuals, administering certain prescription drugs that induce infertility, or removing healthy body parts
This potentially includes
They really, really do want trans people - or anyone who potentially could be trans - dead.
(Tumblr won’t let me link the source, but the bill is on Texas Legislature Online .gov)
I forgot to add this: you can use Resistbot to find and write to your state or federal officials, so this is a great tool if you don’t know how to go about doing that. If you’re a Texas resident, a quick message to your state reps asking them to vote against HB 3399 would be very helpful right now.
the weird radfem insistence that women do not have fetishes and kinks is kind of hilarious when you examine it. it has the same absurdity as “women do not poop” but the undercurrent of old school extremely scary misogyny seen in rhetoric like “women are inherently sexless creatures and do not enjoy or need it”
“You’re both oblivious idiots” <- if one more fic writer makes a woman say that about two adult men I’m going to make them break up and have sex with a faceless blurrywife. like for real I will inkspell them into sentient beings and then keep them from ever experiencing the epic high of yaoi. all because you made a woman utter the tragic low of infantilizing men in the most annoying and overly done way possible
ALT
I say this with all the love in my heart. but I am very much including the venerable fujoshi in my calculus. in fact this post is about twisting women into a fujoshi when she had no business being one in the first place. not every human soul was put on this great big blue marble to be one. no adult woman should put the words “you” “oblivious” “idiots” in that order in respect of two adult men if you don’t want me to howl and rend my clothing and start immediately working on my taxes to calm down and remember that I’m gorgeous and over 30 and have self respect. and then I will fuck your precious ken dolls. I will buy incredibly life like body pillows and cast a wicked spell to turn them human. and then I will fuck them. I don’t care. I have nothing to lose. when the personality-less lesbians did this on camera in good omens s2 I was an edible deep and called my brother to yell at him about how bad it was. you think I want to replicate that experience when reading about the ugly old men on person of interest fuck? be real with me for a moment. there’s so much pain in this world. let’s not do this to our gay, precious ken dolls
Gotten some interesting comments lately and thought I would lay out some thoughts on reading, especially reading fanfic.
Sometimes you need to skip a fic if you see the summary and tags and think, “this is not for me.”
Sometimes you need to put a fic down if you’re not enjoying it.
Sometimes we might read something we only partly like because we’re just really into one aspect of it—one rare ship, one interesting plotline—and not into the rest. (I do this all the time!)
In all of those cases, think before leaving critical comments on the fic. You weren’t the intended audience, and that’s okay! Not everything is going to be for you. Plenty of things will be.
And recognizing what you like and what you don’t is part of learning who you are! That’s a beautiful thing.
Fanfic is like eating walnut cookies. If you don’t like walnuts and choose to eat around the walnuts, that’s up to you! I hope you enjoy it. But don’t complain to the baker that they’re walnut cookies.
They were always walnut cookies.
“You could’ve—” okay, you do it then! and I hope you have a wonderful time!
There are so many stories I’ve read that had some interesting idea or premise that wasn’t explored in the way I thought it would be, and that’s where you can have so much fun as a writer, playing with different scenarios and ideas about where you could’ve gone.
Frustration is inspiring. Just remember to be kind.
Exactly! And fanfic in particular is this space where we see something missing and dream it into existence.
It’s okay if it’s not for you. It doesn’t need to be for you. It probably made the author really happy.
I get (and mostly agree with) the posts on here talking about the importance of physical media vs digital but sometimes the tone of like ‘if it’s physical media you’ll always have it unlike digital media’ you get in these posts is deeply silly like this is in fact something that’s notably famously not true of physical media actually. you can quite literally lose everything by only having physical media. both is good etc etc.
every time I see a post or comment on here that’s like “i could lose all my digital files if my computer crashed or something happened to the cloud storage, which is why I always prefer paper books/cds/notebooks/etc!” it’s like some of you guys have never seriously considered a house fire or flood or having to leave a place suddenly or similar & it really shows if you think either of these are inherently more safe than the other
can I be so honest. can I be so real. is this a safe space.
I don’t actually think that a 21 year old hooking up with a 30 year old is that bad. I don’t think it’s a problem the way people make it out to be. that’s two legal adults having sex, chief.
but then they’d have to mind their own businesses and not labeling every little thing good or evil. how else could they justify atrempts at social control without the moral superiority!?
I don’t know Jess have you considered that 21 year olds are pretty much still in middle school and 30 years olds are basically 70? seems bad
you know that not every 21 year old is in college and not every 30 year old has any particular financial stability right
The 21 year old and the 30 year old both work for minimum wage at Walmart. Sometimes they have threesomes with their 70 year old coworker on nights when her grandchildren are away.
ALT
