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.
also seriously if a character isn’t white, i promise your only descriptive options aren’t food words and varying degrees of tan. it’s okay to say brown. pale brown! light brown! golden brown! medium brown! dark brown! deep brown! so many kinds of brown!
instead of assuring everyone that it “isn’t a phase”, why don’t we just assure everyone that if it is a phase it’s fine? it’s healthy to figure yourself out? because if we tell everyone it’s not a phase and it ends up being a phase, those people are going to feel guilty, like they stole resources or wasted time. It’s not bad to ‘go through a phase’. It’s a healthy way of finding out who you are. And if it isn’t a phase, that’s fine too. But if it is, there’s no reason to feel bad.
I’ve been trawling my way through the kindle unlimited mines, and there is a thing I am seeing that is uncomfortably common that I do not want to be common, and that thing is extremely poor and shallow handling of the aftermath of rape.
Here are some disclaimers: I am someone who has been raped. I do not speak for all people who have been raped, and some of them may disagree with me, and that is OK ™ because different viewpoints are valuable things. Mostly I just want people to think for more than, like, five seconds when they decide to invoke rape in a story. Here is one viewpoint in service of that.
Once
a boy looked very sadly at me after a little bit of conversation.
‘you’re so smart’ he said, ‘I feel like I couldn’t keep up’. And then he
did that sad boy face where you’re supposed to agree to tone yourself
down. So I said ‘probably’ and fucked his mate.
some top advice from a slut, here, 90% of the time when some boy looks sad and tells you you’re too ‘x’ to keep up with it’s a ploy to get you to cut bits off yourself so you can come down to his mediocre level; instead, agree with him and fuck his mate
I am a slut Wen on a dayte With Boye who would Manipulate I’m not sway’d by His saddened state- I say okay I fuck his mayte
So. Discord, the wildly popular chat program isn’t accessible for
visually impaired persons. Not even the phone app is accessible.
People
have put up requests for accessibility, but the devs call it a “quality
of life"feature, and actually had the balls to suggest to a totally
blind Mac user that he should just use Zoom instead of Voiceover. For
those of you who don’t know, Zoom is a program that greatly increases
the size of text. So, it’s the equivalent of telling a deaf person to
just turn their computer volume up.
But, they say that if they
can get enough upvotes, then they’ll consider the feature. So, I’m going
to share their idea, because I’ve been fighting with Discord all day
because literally nothing is accessible beyond creating an account and
changing a few user settings and all of us are frustrated.
So, if
people would be so kind as to upvote this feature request or leave
comments that say you think that an app which has a focus on community
shouldn’t segregate part of that community, we’d be mighty grateful.
please, if you use discord at all, just hop over, log in, and upvote that link. it’s unbelievable that a text-and-voice chat client is inaccessible to the visually impared because the developers can’t be bothered to add in the extra code. and they don’t even consider it a priority to add features to increase their own userbase. please upvote, even if you don’t leave a comment!
i hope youre all lying and hyping your cv/resume’s up
i have never gotten an interview and not been offered a job position after it
I mean lets be honest if everyone else is gassing theirs up like no tomorrow and you’re being as honest as you can who th are the recruitment team going to be more interested in
There’s people working in my banks head office with me WITH MUCH MORE EXPERIENCE than me BUT ARE GETTING PAID LESS
we’re doing the exact same job role
the point I’m trying to make here is if you’ve handled finances for a company you’re now what i would call a treasurer my g, if you’ve done admin work you are now a secretary (or as I’ve put Management secretary)
you help some kid with his homework? you’re a private tutor.
keep your bullets points for the job role as concise and important sounding as possible AND ALWAYS EMPHASIS THAT YOURE A TEAM PLAYER IF YOURE GOING TO WORK IN A TEAM.
go into that interview room and get your story straight the night before and remember that interviews are two way conversatons yes they might be grilling you but at the end of it make sure to grill them BACK. do you have any hesitations about my qualifications? my suitability for the job? any feedback on my cv? how long have you been working at this company? do you like it here? whats the work environment like?
I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS GET THE SAME FEEDBACK WHEN THEY GET BACK IN TOUCH WITH ME
“ive never been asked those questions before” / “you were one of the strongest candidates”
throughout the interview emphasise that youre about progression, that you want more responsibilities than you did at your previous job, tell them the hours here are more suitable for me than my last ones were, AND WHEN IT COMES TO SALARY NEGOTIATION its all about continuity. tell them again that it boils down to progression. make up a reasonable figure for how much you were paid in your last role (do your research for how much the industry youre applying to or the role youre applying for pays, base it on that) tell them you expect more than you were previously paid. do not give them a figure. progression is your primary focus, tell them if youre progressing youre happy. leave it at that.
LIE THROUGH YOUR TEETH AND GET THAT MONEY
I had an interview yesterday, at the place I’ve been temping, where I busted out the “is there anything about my skills or background that makes you concerned about my fit for this job” question for the first time.
Neither of my supervisors had never gotten it before either. They had to think for a while, and then it turned into them telling me how great I am and what they love about me.
This stuff is real. I would also say: none of it is lying. This is taking experience that you normally downplay and write off, and putting it in accurate words they’ll understand.
It’s hacking the capitalist system. Why ISN’T helping a kid with homework “tutoring”, when the only thing missing is a paycheck?
It’s especially important for anyone who isn’t a cis white man, because many of us are so thoroughly trained to feel like we are not good enough.
Privilege tells people they can fake it, and that they’re good enough just as people and can learn the skills on the job. Abuse and oppression tell people they aren’t good enough as people and that even their high skills are probably below average, and that unless they had the specific job title or were using certain skills officially, nobody will think it counts.
The goal is to at least fake the confidence of a privileged person, to give the employer a chance at seeing the skills that you’ve been trained to undervalue.
I would also say to answer any query of “Have you done [X small task] before?” with “I have, but it’s been a while.” Or, “I have, but it was a slightly different program.”
100% THEY WILL GLADLY WALK YOU THROUGH EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, and I stress ‘gladly’ because claiming prior knowledge boosts their confidence in your abilities and any slips you make are already covered by your caveat.
blackstoic may have deactivated their account but this advice is fucking gold and all y’all looking for jobs or who think you might one day need to look for a new job PRINT THIS SHIT OUT AND STAPLE IT TO THE WALL.
just moving along like everyone else 