See, historically there have always been people who saw an extra layer of gayness on certain pairs of fictional people (you just thought of several), and people Back Then even wrote their own fanfic (or as they were called at the time, “pastiches”), but the first widespread queer fanwork to really define the fanfiction genre was KIRK AND SPOCK. Kirk/Spock. K/S. The very first slashfics.
Why this work was vastly, overwhelmingly written by straight women is a discussion for another time, but it was, so that’s the main perspective I’m gonna consider here.
How do you - a statistically middle-class, 30+, stay-at-home wife and mother - how do you write slashfic ao3-style in the 1960’s before the internet?
Carefully.
Through letters with friends, phone calls, pen pals, and sometimes - sometimes - clandestine meetings of small groups. Whole novels were written communally, round-robin style, by sending typed or handwritten additions chapter by chapter to each other. These were all underground, some deep underground; even the early Trekkie fanzines of the time wouldn’t touch them.
And keep in mind, few of these stories were explicitly even sexual! But they were all about a very, very close relationship between two men. In the 1960’s.
Guess how cool everyone else was about this.
Actually, for their part, Gene Rodenberry and the other writers were fine with it, saying that they had deliberately written the characters to be two halves of a whole, and if you wanna read it that way, yeah sure, go right ahead. Shatner and Nimoy took it all in good humor, and seemingly still do, each guy basically gesturing to the other and chuckling “I mean, who wouldn’t?”
But elsewhere there was vicious backlash against The Premise, and not just within the fandom. This was still at a time in the US and UK when various “sodomy” and “decency” laws made no distinction between homosexual sex acts and just, like, directly lighting another man’s cigarette with your cigarette in public. (That, sadly, is not a fucking joke.)
It was probably the closest some suburban cishet women came to understanding the pain of being in the closet. They had to protect this secret from their friends and family at all cost. There were cases of divorces where women lost custody of their children because their writing had come to light.
Can you imagine having such a burning desire to write for your OTP that you were willing to lose everything over it? Even if you were never caught, you still had to be willing to wait weeks, months, to receive a letter in the mail that you had to carefully intercept, read in secret, and then add your own chapter t, also in secret, and then send off, perhaps never to be seen again.
These people were goddamn heroes, and they laid the foundation for the world we live in today. A world where we can read, write, comment on, or share - in a matter of seconds! - literature about two background characters from two different franchises enjoying a really specific kink involving vacuums or something. And that’s objectively amazing.
Raise a toast to our fanfiction elders, who simped in the darkness so we could simp in the light of day.
here at the sandwich shop, we’ve started to notice some people who are new to sandwiches aren’t used to meat and cheese between two slices of bread. they find this practice strange and confusing. that’s why we’ve decided to cut the bread out all together. from now on, we’ll just serve slices of meat and cheese on a plate.
we know that many of our loyal sandwich shop customers have been coming here for years to buy our delicious sandwiches. but some people don’t “get” sandwiches, and we need to try and appeal to them with an easier-to-understand meal format. we will no longer be serving sandwiches. all of our food will just be cold cuts on a paper plate. we love our customers and appreciate your understanding <3
I’m pretty sure the people bitching about not giving money to tumblr are the same ones who complain when AO3 or wikipedia ask for donations, so I’m just gonna clarify something
Running a website is not free
Even if they made no changes and did only maintenance, they still need to pay for server costs, expert programmers for when something goes wrong, storage (although frankly storage is cheap as chips these days which is nice)
They need to keep up with the capabilities of new tech like improvements to web browsers, never mind their own apps keeping pace with old and new tech developments
Backwards compatibility (being able to run the updated app on old tech) is a massive problem for apps on a regular basis, because there are people out here using an iPod and refusing to update software
There’s a reason every few years apps like Animal Crossing will issue an update that breaks backwards compatibility and you can only play if your phone is running more recent software
This shit costs money even before you look into the costs of human moderation, which I’m not exactly convinced is a big part of their current budget but fucking should be if we want an actual fix for their issues with unscreened ads and reporting bigots
Ignoring that it’s apparently illegal for companies not to actively chase profits, running Tumblr is expensive
And advertisers know we fucking hate them here
They’re still running ads, which we know because they’re all over the damn place, but half the ads are for Tumblr and its store
Other ad companies know we are not a good market, so they’re not willing to put the money in
Tumblr runs at a $30 million deficit, every year, because hosting a site is expensive
They are trying to take money making ideas from other social medias because they’re not a charity; they need to make enough money to keep the site going
If you want tumblr to keep existing, never mind fixing its many issues that require human people to be paid to do jobs like moderation, they will need money
Crabs cost $3
One crab day a year can fix the deficit and hammer home for Tumblr that:
A) we do want to be here and want the site to keep going
And B) they do not need to do the normal social media money making strategies we all hate
They need a way to make money if you want the hellsite to exist, because we live in a capitalist hellscape and cannot all be AO3
If they think they can make enough to keep running without pulling all the tricks we hate, they have no reason to pull said tricks
But they need money
And a way to make money
And if we can show them we can do that, there is a significantly higher chance they will listen to us, the user base they need money from, than if we don’t
Tumblr isn’t perfect, or anywhere close. They need someone to actually screen the paid ads they put through, they need to take the transphobia, antisemitism, and bigotry seriously
These Are Jobs That Will Cost Money
People Need To Be Fucking Paid For Their Work
Tumblr Is Not Run By Volunteers For Free And Nor Should It Be
Paying People Is Good Actually
So if you wanna get all high and mighty over $3/year, by all means, go spend that hard earned cash elsewhere
Good luck finding a perfect and morally pure business to give it to though
Being a whiny negative asshole isn’t more appealing just because you’ve put yourself on a moral soapbox, it just means the asshole is a little higher up
For all the whining about “all the new updates are terrible this site is unusable”…. It’s one fuck of a lot more usable than it was in 2017, 2018, 2020
And yeah, it’s going back down and most of the newer ones have been fucking annoying and I would also like them to stop
But it got up somehow and that means it could do that again
Hope is more fun than edgy nihilism
I have my beefs with Tumblr. But I’d rather not lose it and I’d rather lose it fighting for it than not.
Ian Stone, Doubting Thomas, oil on linen, 12x16 in, 2023
“If you know the painting by Caravaggio, Doubting Thomas, it was my direct inspiration for this piece.
A doubting Thomas is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience. 50-60 years ago, it was not uncommon for people to think or believe that being gay was a phase or a mental illness or deviance in some shape or form. It’s embarrassing that the same things are being said about trans people today.”
STOP SCROLLING!!! THIS IS NOT A PHOTO IT’S OIL ON LINEN!!!!!!!!!
It’s amazing to me just how good the Mormon church has been at hiding just how bad they really are from public view. Even the shit that gets spread around is the relatively harmless bullshit. They had a crazy prophet with magic glasses. They believe in god-mandated polygyny. They think everyone who is good enough will get their very own planet after the world ends. They wear magic underpants. Mormon men are all paladins.
Here’s one of the ones you hear less often:
See, like many other Christian sects, the Mormons really do believe that the existence of Christ obviates the existence of Judaism. Judaism was just a placeholder until the “real” church could be established by Jesus.
And the Mormons in particular believe, dead ass, that the entire inheritance of Israel has been given to them, because the Jews failed to recognize the Messiah when he was on Earth. They really do. They have this whole system where people are given a “divine revelation” about which of the Tribes of Israel they’re a member of (don’t worry, they decided that most people belong to the two tribes that are willing to “adopt” people. Only the most specialest boys and girls are members of the original ten).
Let’s sum up so far. The Mormons believe that they are the people of Israel, chosen and protected by God. If Jews want to get back in on that party, they can always repent and convert to Mormonism, the one true church to which God gave all the rights and blessings that were originally bestowed on Abraham’s house.
But it doesn’t stop there!
The Mormons also believe, in all seriousness, that all Indigenous peoples of the Americas are descended from a small group of Jewish people who left just before the fall of Jerusalem (~600 bc iirc). Their entire weird-ass extra bible is a chronicle of those people’s history in [unspecific part of America]. At the very beginning of the book, two brothers in the original family turn away from god, so they and all their descendants are cursed with dark skin, so that the good Nephites (who remain “white and delightsome”) will always be able to tell themselves apart from the wicked Lamanites.
So, you’ve got supposedly Jewish people running around the Americas. And the “good” ones are white, and the “bad” ones are brown. Then, ofc, Jesus comes to visit them (I guess supposedly that’s part of what he was doing during his dirt nap? Or possibly after he left again, it’s not clear), and they all convert to Christianity, which they think is clearly the natural evolution of Judaism. Well, at the end of the book, all of them become wicked, in a kind of weird pseudo-apocalyptic series of events. They are all cursed with dark skin, until such time as they repent for their ancestors sins and return to the gospel.
But of course, Mormons being the good and kind people they are, they want everyone to receive the blessings of God and be brought into the houses of Israel etc etc. And it isn’t the fault of those poor little Indigenous children that their distant ancestors turned away from God and became wicked.
So what’s the natural answer? Well, Mormons are real big on missionary work, as we all know. But apparently that wasn’t enough in this case.
Because the Mormon church has been one of the big players in abducting as many Indigenous children as possible, in order to indoctrinate them into being good Mormons, so that they can turn white again and be blessed. My mother remembers hearing talks about this in the 70s and 80s. The church literally had a “Lamanite Adoption Program,” where families in the church were encouraged to get as many Indigenous children as possible away from their families and not let them be reunited until they were fully assimilated and ready to go back and proselytize about how wonderful the church is.
The church leadership literally talked about how wonderful it was to see these children becoming whiter. Actually whiter. Like, saying that when they finally saw them with their families again, it was beautiful how much paler they were.
I’m pretty sure this program has been officially ended, but it doesn’t take a genius to speculate about who might be behind the curtains on the movement in the western US to gut the ICWA….
So yeah. Next time someone tries to tell you that the Mormons are just harmless weirdos, please remember that they’re an antisemitic cult that advocates for the forced assimilation of Indigenous children to help them escape the cursed brown skin of their ancestors.
To be clear there was no explosive; “hill bomb” is just what the event is called.
Holy SHIT. I just finished reading a related article, and y’all, this was so corrupt OTHER SFPD COPS ARE STANDING WITH THE KIDS.
Like basically their take is “yeah, some kids were being unruly. Y’all handled it ENTIRELY the wrong way and there is zero reason this should have happened.” There was an official meeting (I think like a monthly town hall kind of thing? I forgot to take note when I read it) and the cop who’s in charge of internal conduct investigation was there and he. Was. PISSED. And inviting parents and teens involved to give their testimony on the specifics of the rights violations they experienced so he could follow up and make full reports.
Like you KNOW shit’s fucked when even other police are looking at the police chief and saying “what the fuck is wrong with you?”
can i talk my shit again. yall love fat people when theyre like 200 lbs and “somft” but can we get some positivity posts for people who are like 400 and having trouble getting off the floor. who have tried everything and cant drop more than 20 pounds. yes fat people are beautiful and awesome but can we talk about 4/5x more instead of just xxl. for the love of god. can we talk about those of us who cant get merch of our favorite creators bc it only goes up to 3x.
CAN WE TALK ABOUT STILL FINDING YOURSELF PRETTY AS A FAT PERSON. CAN WE TALK ABOUT BEING 375 AND CUTE AS SHIT BUT EVERYONES FUCKING PUT OFF BY YOU. CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT. IM FUCKING. THIS IS PERSONAL TO ME
Yes. Exactly fucking this. We live in a society. Larger fat people are treated like toxic sludge despite being cute and wonderful and funny and (not even needing to be all these things I’m just saying, yanno, larger fat people are WORTHY FUCKING HUMAN BEINGS THE SAME AS THE THINS OR LESSER FATS)
The above examples have been provided with the authors’ permission to demonstrate what these look like.
Basic rundown:
They are all 3 sentences long
Perfect grammar, capitalization, and punctuation
Like absolutely flawless English teacher-style writing with only a single exclamation mark, ever
No mentions whatsoever of character names, settings, situations, or anything that could be tied to the story
The usernames may be identical to people who exist on ao3, but the name is not clickable, and no profile is associated with it EXCEPT when you directly search for that name. What this means: the comments come from an unregistered (not logged in) reader, bots scrape the site for real usernames, attach that to the comment, and post
Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly
There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate
One year on from Dobbs, please remember the victims of abortion bans in America. These are just the ones that made it to the news:
Marlena Stell
Amanda Zurawski
Mylissa Farmer
The 10-year-old from Ohio
The 16-year-old from Florida
The 15-year-old from Florida
Nancy Davis
Elizabeth Weller
Anya Cook
Kelly Shannon
Jessica Bernardo
Kierstan Hogan
Taylor Edwards
Kylie Beaton
Gabriella Gonzalez
Samantha Casiano
Lauren Van Vleet
Austin Dennard
Lauren Miller
Jaci Statton
Kristina Cruickshank
Tara George
Kailee DeSpain
Deborah Dorbert
Mayron Hollis
Kristen Anya
Heather Maberry
Melissa Novak
Kayla Smith
Lauren Christensen
Beth Long
Anabely Lopes
Christina Zielke
Kaitlyn Joshua
Lauren Hall
Carmen Broesder
Jill Hartle
Brittany Vidrine
Jane Doe from Massachusetts, who had an ectopic pregnancy rupture because a pregnancy crisis center told her it was viable
The Jane Doe had an ectopic pregnancy rupture after an anti-abortion pregnancy center told her she had a normal pregnancy
Emily Doe, whose fetus had lungs that wouldn’t develop and had no kidneys. The pregnancy had the potential to endanger her health…but it wasn’t endangering it yet. So she had to flee Missouri for an abortion.
Victoria Doe from Louisiana, who had to go to Oregon
When we do win back our right to bodily autonomy, forced birthers will forget these people. Some have absolutely no idea who these people are. But when you tell them you hope what they force on others gets forced on them, they gasp and say you’re evil. Because they recognize that what they force on others is wrong, and they think they deserve better than their victims.
If you think the “abortion debate” is merely a difference of opinion, you haven’t been payinh attention.
