Very clear that a good portion of people have never once read ao3’s Terms of Service. They think writing something they personally find gross is a reportable offense, and that harassment in any way is okay, especially if you’re harassing the author of said “gross” fics. Ao3 is an archive that prioritizes real people over fictional characters. Reporting fics based on what they’re about is not okay, but guess what? You can be rightfully reported for harassment, because harassment hurts real people, and real people take precedence over fictional characters and your personal discomfort.

Read the ToS and stop checking the “I agree” button for it if you actually don’t. Y’all are hitting “I agree” without bothering to read what you’re agreeing to, and then trying to enact your own rules that go against the actual ToS.

Your discomfort doesn’t matter here. There are filters for that. Being upset with a fic does not give you the right to falsely report it and harass the author. If you can’t handle that, then get off the fucking website. Ao3 is not a place for you.

so let me get this straight

wattpad essentially banned smut, triggering a lot of users to flood AO3 seeking a new place to enjoy free and uncensored fanfictions

only for some of them to report fics they deem "unethical" and "inappropriate"

am I

am I getting this right??

pouring one out for the AO3 Abuse Team people who will be flooded with false reports from Wattpad refugees about "disgusting" tags

If people are leaving Wattpad because of the censorship, then coming to AO3 only to beg for censorship what's the point? It’s called Archive of Our Own for a reason, it is ours. For us and by us.

Because apparently it needs to be spelled out, I’m writing out some of the unwritten rules of AO3:

Basically just respect fandom spaces, keep them separate from reality, and mind your own business. It’s so easy.

It’s a very under-appreciated thing to have an archive where people can put their work out for the world to see and make art that can be appreciated and easily accessed by other people on a wide scale, and it needs to be protected.

Every day I love AO3 more and more

A friendly PSA for everyone migrating from Wattpad to AO3!

Commenting Etiquette

Tagging & Relationships

Site Rules & Features

AND DON´T USE AI.

Edit: if you do use ai... tag it

Reblog if you will never. Ever. Use AI in your writing.

Pro-censorship wattpad refugees drama is so funny to me because when I started using ao3 as a kid I was a devout mormon and I thought that reading anything even remotely pornagraphic was a sin and would ruin my life. So when I was 13 and found ao3 I went "oh awesome I found a fanfic website with a filtering system so I won't ever randomly stumble into porn. This is great! I was really worried about seeing something I didn't want to see on the other platforms." I didn't read any smut online until like three years later. If a mormon 13 year old can figure out 'don't like don't read' wattpad users can too cmon you guys i believe in you.

the watpadd kids crying about seeing stuff they don't like on ao3 are already killing me. if you refuse to use the very easy filtering system, and refuse to choose to hide content you don't want to see, you have zero right to be mad about seeing it. take some fucking agency over your own online experience. I have zero interest in your deliberate incompetence and childish temper tantrums. you're not special. learn to filter what you don't like- that's your responsibility, not anyone else's.

"Is it a sin to feel superior to an imbecile?" is one of those things I need framed on my wall.

fandom etiquette as a whole died when people who didn’t grow up on fandoms became stans during lockdown, yes, but why am i seeing people openly mocking fics on twitter. why am i seeing screenshots of fics with captions like “bro what is this 😭.” why am i seeing people mock fic writers for not knowing how sports or theater or college or any other organization operates in the real world.

“college is absolutely nothing like this” “why are we writing four people on the team scoring a hat trick in one game” “so tech work is nothing like this, hope that helps!”

if you don’t like a fic, and if you can’t suspend your belief enough to enjoy a fic that exaggerates or ignores real-world orgs, you don’t have to read it. you don’t have to screenshot it and put it on blast for twitter. you don’t have to post a link to it in the replies. the back button is literally there on your phone. it’s not giving baby’s first fandom anymore, it’s giving entitled asshole and it isn’t as cute as you think it is.

thank u for being a cooler blog than me and not unfollowing me yet

i know most leftists agree that everybody should have a right to food, water, shelter, and healthcare but i think a vitally important fifth pillar is privacy. people should not be compelled to be tracked, monitored, or to share personal space with others to access their other essential rights

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is and always has been fascist rhetoric everyone.

It’s weird to think that some people aren’t daydreaming 24/7 and creating all kinds of stories and worlds in their heads. Do you mean that when you’re listening to music or walking somewhere your mind is just blank? Sounds weird.

Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them. 

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.” 

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just. 

50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job. 

i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok

One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.

I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.

Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”

Omg the ancient child proofing add on tho lol

I remember years ago on a forum (email list, that’s how old) a woman talking about going to a museum, and seeing among the women’s household objects a number of fired clay items referred to as “prayer objects”.  (Apparently this sort of labeling is not uncommon when you have something that every house has and appears to be important, but no-one knows what it is.)  She found a docent and said, “Excuse me, but I think those are drop spindles.”  “Why would you think that, ma’am?”  “Because they look just like the ones my husband makes for me.  See?”  They got all excited, took tons of pictures and video of her spinning with her spindle.  When she was back in the area a few years later, they were still on display, but labeled as drop spindles.

So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldn’t figure them out. They didn’t have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpson’s beehive.

Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.

A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”

“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”

So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.

She now works as a hair archaeologist and I believe she has a YouTube channel now where she recreates forgotten hairstyles, using only what they had available at the time.

Always question anything labelled as for a ritual or religious purpose without explanation because it’s very often shorthand for ‘we don’t know’ as if humans have not been the same since forever and have either made things for specific purposes or simply because they like making them (aka ART. Some things are simply art yet heaps of old research refuses to recognize this possibility.)

This is changing, but change is slow!

Everyone on AO3 better brace for an absolute deluge of people who have no clue how to fucking behave