Latest Posts by satsuki-tsuki - Page 8
Remember that if you want to do more of something, you have to do less of something else. It's that time of year where people set goals for the new year and they have plans and hopes and it's always focusing on what they want to do more of. More studying, more exercise, more crafting, more socialising, more making things from scratch. Okay, great. What are you going to do less of in order to have the time and energy to do more of those things you really want to do?
I don’t like wading into Ao3 debates, but I want to give my professional opinion on Ao3 with regard to archives vs. libraries.
I am a professional librarian (MSLS) and I have worked in both archives and public libraries and a lot of the confusion and concern I see surrounding Ao3 is a fundamental misunderstanding of How Archives Work.
An archive is a collection related to a subject. That subject often a person but sometimes a field or concept or project. And the purpose of an archive is to keep everything. And I mean everything. I was going to say “short of biohazards” but since I know there’s a sealed R. Crumb Devil Gal chocolate bar in the UNC Chapel Hill archives, we really do mean everything.
When a collection of materials–which are usually unique and original and can be photos, manuscripts, letters, recordings (audio and/or visual), notes and notebooks, objects, published books, whatever–on and/or from the subject arrive at the archive, they are examined, preserved for longevity, accessioned and cataloged (added to the archive’s records), and added to the archive. You measure collections in linear feet. As in, once it’s all preserved and boxed and secure, you note how many feet of shelf space it takes up. And some of y'all on Ao3 have a lot of linear feet to your name (and I’m proud of you).
This is an archive: it is designed to preserve the original materials related to a subject. That is its purpose. Archives are how we have the original scroll manuscript of On the Road, for example, or the Lomax recordings of American folksongs, or Tijuana Bibles, or James Joyce’s loveletters to Nora.
Now you, a member of the public, can access some archives. Some are easier to access than others. The one I worked in was open to the public; good luck getting into the British Archives without a good reason.
So now apply this to Ao3–which is an archive both in name and in purpose. It is intended to preserve fan-created content long term. And this means everything, whether you personally like the materials or not. It is a repository for as much as possible.
And the “whether you personally like the materials or not” is important, hence why I mentioned Jim’s loveletters and Tijuana Bibles in particular. (RIP Jim, you would have loved pegging.)
If it’s made by fans and it exists, we should keep it to document the history and progression of fandom. That is the point. We have lost enough materials related to the subject of fans of media and we don’t need to lose any more.
The fact of the matter is that Ao3 is only one facet of the OTW, which preserves other fan-related materials (convention booklets and zines, for example). Somehow Ao3, an archive on the subject of fanfiction, has been divorced from the rest of the project, mostly by way of “purity culture” and panic over “dangerous” fiction.
The fact that you can go through an archive and find interesting information is the other side of archives. No, they shouldn’t be like the banker’s box of old letters stuffed in my closet. Yes, they should be organized and as accessible as is appropriate for the state of the materials.
It’s really, really cool to find stuff in an archive, I’m not even going to lie. I have done it before and I will do it again. And yet there are other items in an archive that I might not want or need or be interested in at all–but they’re still there. That’s the cataloging and accessioning: to keep up with what’s there, to stay “on topic” with collecting, and to be able to find things in that archive. Bless the tag wranglers who are doing the cataloging at Ao3.
The pearl clutching seems to come from 1. the creation of “dangerous” fanworks and 2. public access to those “dangerous” fanworks. These are issues of “purity culture” and opinions on censorship and should not involve Ao3.
Ao3, under the umbrella of the OTW, is a documentation and preservation project first and foremost.
Some of my personal favorite underrated Kaz moments from the books.
I pray the next book you pick up & begin reading, engulfs you in the best way possible
having a freeze response to stress is so funny in the context of normal adult stressors. millions of years of evolution are trying to tell me that the email will not find me if i stay very still and do nothing
🌸🌞 It's summer time here! A redraw of my 2015 piece Ko-Fi
Tadanobu Asano for Shōgun 82nd Golden Globes, Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television
Reblog if you're a writer who re-reads their own work for funsies.
there are places you haven't been where you already belong
Me: *agonizing over whether a semicolon goes here, what the proper dialogue should be there, other assorted rules and semantics*
Terry Pratchett: "!" said the stranger.
THAT'S ALLOWED?
Encouragment for writers that I know seems discouraging at first but I promise it’s motivational-
• Those emotional scenes you’ve planned will never be as good on page as they are in your head. To YOU. Your audience, however, is eating it up. Just because you can’t articulate the emotion of a scene to your satisfaction doesn’t mean it’s not impacting the reader.
• Sometimes a sentence, a paragraph, or even a whole scene will not be salvagable. Either it wasn’t necessary to the story to begin with, or you can put it to the side and re-write it later, but for now it’s gotta go. It doesn’t make you a bad writer to have to trim, it makes you a good writer to know to trim.
• There are several stories just like yours. And that’s okay, there’s no story in existence of completely original concepts. What makes your story “original” is that it’s yours. No one else can write your story the way you can.
• You have writing weaknesses. Everyone does. But don’t accept your writing weaknesses as unchanging facts about yourself. Don’t be content with being crap at description, dialogue, world building, etc. Writers that are comfortable being crap at things won’t improve, and that’s not you. It’s going to burn, but work that muscle. I promise you’ll like the outcome.
Levi & Hange💚💜
I hate how the booktokification of the “unhinged woman” genre has completely reduced the concept of female rage to just “girlboss” without taking seriously how important it is to unequivocally portray female rage.
Throughout the history of literature, we’ve been given countless instances of women in despair and in sadness but save for a few writers (take Euripides, for example), we’ve rarely ever been given angry women who aren’t the villains or the foil for the perfect poised passive princess. Female rage has constantly been subdued and erased or warped into “she’s just batshit crazy” in pretty much every society.
And now that publishing and media marketing has reduced women showing rage in books to the “white hypersexual girlboss with a knife”, instead of uplifting the way women are allowed to have more dimension and sympathy in their visible anger than ever in literature, the media still isn’t taking this subgenre seriously.
Turn me on.
Granny panties Hanji appreciation art.
If anyone can make ‘em sexy, its her. Let’s be real.
few things more humbling than the realization that you really do write the same fic(s) over and over again
The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth they can accept about themselves without running away.
— Leland Val Van De Wall
I love, love, LOVE it when I can tell a fic author has integrated their specialized knowledge in a fic. I was reading a fic that at some point included the character going to visit an art therapist, and it's so clear that the author is an art therapist themself, and the details included are just immaculate and I love it. I've previously read about a character doing fencing for no other reason than the author clearly wanting to write a sport they understood. A character being given a hyperfixation on bugs just so the author can infodump themselves.
I eat it up every time, it brings such a smile to my face
armin arlert in weezer shirt
L. V., i found this poem everywhere the moon touched
Well Shakespeare invented some words and phrases didn't he? So why can't I have a go at it too? 😌🙂↕️ ✨
nothing humbles you faster than realizing the sentence you’re most proud of is grammatically incomprehensible.
"If I were orpheus I wouldn't look back"
But we look back everyday- rechecking emails, making sure a friend is still behind you, checking to see if you remebered to pick up your keys. It's second nature, a habit of care.
It was second nature for him too. He looked back, not out of weakness, but love. For what is love, if not to look back?
