August 2022 Voting

We open the first month of the second half of this year’s contests with 15 Cosmic-themed August submissions. This time around we had one mandatory restriction (no use of the word ‘beauty’ and its derivatives) and three extra restrictions (include a stargazing scene; include a recurring motif; do not mention spaceships) for up to 3 bonus points.

You will have until Thursday the 15th at midnight (Baker Island time, GMT-12) to vote for your favorite of the 15 stories. Keep reading for the voting link and story list!

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Four days left

To vote for your favorites of the April stories.

Click here to go to the original voting post with the voting link and story list!

April 2022 Voting

There’s something in the air in April - last year we managed to hit an all time record of 30 submitted stories, and while we did not break it this year, we came very close with a runner-up for the record. We open the voting period with 27 Home-themed April submissions. 

For this month we had one mandatory restriction (no mention of non-/dub-con) and three extra restrictions (include a quote; include in-universe writing; mention something bath-related) for up to 3 bonus points.

You will have until Saturday the 21st at midnight (Baker Island time, GMT-12) to vote for your two favorites of the 27 stories. Keep reading for the voting link and story list!

Keep reading

Anna 🍂🍁

V.A.T.S.

i cannot remain silent about this anymore.

all my friends are so skilled and creative and intelligent and incredible and they deserve so much recognition for their work and all the happiness in the world

You ever just realized how lucky you are that you did that weird thing that led to you being friends with the people you are friends with?

i love tragedy i love circular narratives i love ppl who cannot escape their fate & characters that have been dead since the beginning

there are three kinds of fanfic:

4. completely original novel with original characters that just happen to look like and have the same names as the characters in this piece of popular media, but otherwise have completely different personalities and backstories.

This is much more interesting than the entirety of Frozen

A New History of Fandom Purges

On November 24th, 2018, I posted a list of major deletions of sites or of content on sites that stripped fandom of its history. A bunch of pro-shipper blogs had just been deleted, and people were nervous. I suppose I was thinking “All this has happened before…”

On December 3rd, 2018, Tumblr’s Department of Irony announced the NSFW ban. Thanks for providing this salutary lesson to The Youth and a billion reblogs to me, I guess.

Today, we have AO3 for writing. Audio, images, and video are in as much danger as ever, yet fans attack AO3 every donation drive. For those of you who forget our past…

HERE IS WHAT HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US!

This is only a small taste of the many times that:

It’s not always malicious. It’s not always about us. But we lose every time.

Some of these purges hit everyone. Many of them hit m/m content specifically or female gaze-y material in general. This is why antis are dead wrong. This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-m/m policies. This is why we need clear labeling, not content restrictions.

This is why we need AO3.

And it’s why we need a solution for audio, visuals, and video too.

For anyone who is new to my tumblr, here is the root of most of my views on fandom.

(No, this is not a complete list. Please stop suggesting that. It’s merely an illustrative sample of the exponentially larger problem.)

Oh, don’t worry, just the other week in 2022 a fic archive was deleted with 4 days notice.

There are always more where these came from.

WHAT? 4 DAYS AGO????

Well, no, in late March. But the point is that they put up a banner on the site saying “Hey, I’m deleting this in 4 days. Save what you want.” It was only 4 days notice.

It wasn’t one of the porn purges or anything. It was just an old archive that wasn’t so active anymore, and the owner was tired of running it.

We lose things every day.

Barbie in the newest movie looks like if Elsa from Frozen was in Mass Effect

Don’t ask me why I know this.

i thought this was a constable frozen edit

Apparently the plot for this movie is that all the stars are dying and barbie needs to find a way to stop the universe succumbing to a cold dark end which is honestly more terrifying than a lot of actual scifi

Barbie and the heat death of the universe

are you telling me that barbie STOPS the heat death of the universe?

i see that the barbie people have finally picked up on what stories little girls actually play out with their toys

fanfiction was such a good idea. like put those guys in situations

Ah yes, if it isn't my copying meachanism ship *proceeds to look at two people that have so much angst going on*

Writing advice from my uni teachers: