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[alchemistdoctor]

 Taking a break from polymers studying for a comment on something completely different.

Something I recently learned was that Ao3 has manual tag wrangler volunteers. Which is something I did not know, I thought the tags were an automatic sort of system, so this was... fascinating. I also immediately felt guilty because I'm used to tumblr's tagging method in which tags are generally used for quiet comments, like footnotes on whatever you're saying. As such my fics are tagged monstrously from a librarian's perspective.

Now, I'm not changing any of my old fic, because those tags have already been wrangled, but I am making more of an effort to be librarian in tagging and more up-front with my communication online. But that's terrifying, because (as I've mentioned on lockedinjohnlock's post here) I've seen fandom implode in some scary ways, and putting my opinions out there sometimes feels like painting a target on my face and doing a dance on a shooting range. 

However, it has already made an impact in the way I think about fandom. I've found myself feeling less shame, which is odd, because I hadn't realised I was feeling shame in the first place. All the same it's nice to just step forward and say "I like this thing. I am aware it has issues, and I consume my media responsibly and with critical thinking, but the issues with it haven't stopped me from just enjoying the thing regardless."

There are still aspects of fandom that bother me, and still issues I feel we can't address well with our current abilities (I am, for example, wholly against CP of any kind, written, drawn, fictional, AU, I don't care, if it has a minor with an adult, I am fully anti: but there's no way of censoring this in fan spaces that doesn't turn into a slippery slope for censorship of fan media in other ways that eventually turn into a power play between the powers that be and queer/minority groups.) But in the end, I think I'm more comfortable stepping into fandom space and asserting myself, and that's a good thing. 

Comments

[shepherd_blaine]

Yes. AO3 free form tags are great, but the downside is that it's not as easy to maintain, so people correctly tagging and maybe not writing stuff like 'I wrote this fic on my train ride to work' would be better. Otoh, that was a deliberate decision by people behind AO3, so don't feel too guilty about it.

I never got being ashamed for enjoying fictional things. As long as I know it is fictional and I don't endorse or imitate any of that in real life why should I feel ashamed? It's one of those things I never understood and it actually angers me that people are feeling ashamed for enjoying their harmless hobby because some asshole on tumblr said so.
if I myself know the line between wrong and right and fiction and reality then what should I even feel ashamed for? If antis can't differentiate between fiction and reality, then it's on them and not on me.

And it's good to have an opinion. Some people will agree some disagree. Some parts of fandom (especially on tumblr) made it seem like there is only one opinion theirs, and everyone else is wrong and should go away, but it is actually very much possible to coexist in one space with people who have different opinion on some things and same opinions on others.
At least this is how real life works and we do it all the time in real life, so it is possible in fandom.
(Made me always wonder if antis ever stepped outside of their rooms and away from computers to interact with other people who weren't in their part of fandom or not.)

TL;DR opinions are good, as is enjoying things and you shouldn't feel ashamed for enjoying things and expressing your opinions. (There are enough problems and difficulties in life without adding pointless shame.)

[alchemistdoctor]

I agree with most of this!

I do think the fictional can change how people think about things - obviously, otherwise representation wouldn't matter, and nobody would be offended by, say, old portrayals of blackface minstrels. We know that fictional media has an effect.

It's just that there's, as I said, no good way to censor media. There isn't. Censorship automatically leads to putting shame on people who shouldn't be shamed and letting terrible people continue doing terrible things. The only way to really stop encouraging terrible people is to make dramatic social change in favour of those being hurt. Which is a far bigger issue than deleting paedophilia fic.

Since there's no good way of censoring, people tend to lash out at each other when they see media that provokes their personal scars, and it can lead to a lot of pain in online spaces, fandom included. Gatekeeping, doxxing, verbal/written intimidation, it's all there, it's all happened, and it all will happen again when people get invested and angry. I guess the best I can do is protect my actual IRL privacy because the good apples are far more numerous than the rotten ones.

[shepherd_blaine]

I don't think that the impact of fiction is that big on how I think about things and my opinion on them. I don't trust fictional works to be right and that well researched, so I always fact check and always think about the content, which is what I also expect everyone else to do.
If they don't do it, then the problem are not the fictional works, but that society stopped teaching critical thinking.

Representation is real, imo, not fictional. It's about giving real people a voice. It's not just lines of text or images. It's real people fighting every day for their voices to be heard and with this making more representation on screen happen. There is an impact, but there is also a strong push in reality by real people and that impact is much bigger.

This is why it seems to me that saying representation on screen has a lot of impact diminishes efforts made by real people out there to make the lives of those underrepresented groups better in a tangible physical way, more so than a fictional character on their screen ever could.

I think fandom has a good alternative for censoring - content warnings. I don't think that lack of censoring, if warnings were used, is an excuse for anyone getting angry and doxxing or attacking people for fictional works. Anger and hurt is not an excuse for bad behavior. People do a lot of terrible things in anger and they should not get away with them, just because there was a reason for their anger. This also applies for fandom.

Nobody forces anyone to consume any kind of fictional works. It's on each of us to know what media provokes pain or is triggering or angering and to avoid it. If there was a warning and someone chooses to avoid it and gets hurt, then it is on them and not the creator who did everything in their power to prevent that. I think inability to see beyond anger and personal hurt is way more of a problem in fandom than lack of censorship.

[fjbryan]

Yup. Manual tag wrangling has been in place since the beginning, in part because of too many characters with the same name (John? Tony?) meaning that figuring out which fandom's John or Tony was being tagged required a human person to sort it out. But also because some folks treated tagging at AO3 like tagging at Tumblr, as a way to have fun with their readers before a story even began, and occasionally forgot to include what the pairing was! So yeah.

And YAY for fandom love. Fandom is my happy space. Glad it is yours too.

[alchemistdoctor]

I’m considering volunteering for tag wrangling next summer cause I’d have the time. On one hand it sounds like a massive job, but on the other hand I think I’d find a lot of fun fics.

[krazyrabbit]

So many comments to read, and so little time. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the wonderfulness of DW as a vast reservoir of fannish discussions. I am also a librarian by trade so certainly empathize with your tagging issues and the shocking discovery that AO3 has manual tag wrangler volunteers - good grief! I realized that the tag "Supernatural" must be a bitch because it's a fandom and a genre as well.

there's no way of censoring this in fan spaces that doesn't turn into a slippery slope for censorship of fan media in other ways that eventually turn into a power play between the powers that be and queer/minority groups.

Amen to this. I got into a bit of a heated discussion with another Sherlock fan about the slippery slope concept regarding censorship/Tumblr - I actually used that phrase. She just about accused me of supporting CP, which I certainly do not - in any way. I just stated that the individuals/organizations/companies use this abhorrent part of NSFW/porn to start an inroad to censoring every explicit material that they object to - mostly targeting feminist agenda (female presenting nipples) and queer groups. Which is exactly what happened at Tumblr. The fact that fandoms, especially those who are predominately made up of female and LGBTQIA members, are continually harassed and have been forced from several social media platforms makes me furious.

I've found myself feeling less shame, which is odd, because I hadn't realised I was feeling shame in the first place.

I've been in fandom since the mid 90's and have become much more confident and open with who I am - bi, a huge nerd and enjoy reading queer fan-fiction. At first I was a bit confused about why I wanted Starsky and Hutch to sleep together, and did feel ashamed - not for myself but for what others would think about me. After I got old my attitude became, "Fuck it," there's a lot worse things in the world than enjoying well written fiction by authors who understand how I feel, and damn it, a lot of what I read is not even explicit! The writers and artists involved in fandom are equal to, and even better than, many bestselling writers. So, my family and friends know about my fannish activities (probably too much) but I work at a public library and spend a large part of my time dealing with children, so I need to careful with my co-workers. It seems that most real world people still believe that fans are either crazy or porn addicts.

[alchemistdoctor]

The fact that fandoms, especially those who are predominately made up of female and LGBTQIA members, are continually harassed and have been forced from several social media platforms makes me furious.

This is a lot of it. I think my anger is equally and righteously split between the makers of CP/shota work and those who use it as an inroad to censorship. On one hand, I wish it never existed in the first place, and I'm furious that it does exist. On the other hand, I'm equally pissed off that its existence is used to justify silencing people who have important stories to be told.

It seems that most real world people still believe that fans are either crazy or porn addicts.

This is one of the reasons only around two people IRL know about my fandoms: I'm already in a male-dominated, high-pressure field, and adding "crazy fangirl" to my list of qualifications is an easy way to be dismissed by anyone I want to take me seriously. Even though I know fandom produces quality work and media, the rest of the world hasn't caught up to that in mainstream culture yet....