So, the other day, when I was discussing AO3’s policy on solicitation, a tumblr user came at me saying that AO3’s “no monetization/solicitation” rules were “bullshit” because nexus mods allows fan created mods to get paid.
Look at me.
Look at me right now.
AO3 protects you.
AO3 protects you and your works.
It protects your works from copyright strikes and DCMA takedowns.
It protects your work from advertisers.
It protects your work from overzealous legal challenges.
It protects your right to post adult content.
AO3 is non-profit and AO3 will never try to use you or your work to make a profit for themselves and AO3 will go to bat for you if someone tries to legally challenge you or your works.
Please respect AO3 and its mission.
AO3 protects fandom from payment processors.
Mastercard has no reason to mess with AO3. Visa doesn’t. PayPal doesn’t. Stripe doesn’t. There’s no compensation-for-porn exchange happening. By design. BY DESIGN.
AO3’s founders knew that AO3 needed to be set up to protect us from any and all avenues of attack on fanworks. They’ve managed it quite successfully.
All y'all who thought they didn’t need to? Sit the fuck down and SHUT THE FUCK UP.
how terrifying metamorphosis must be for the caterpillar has no concept of what it is doing, or what a butterfly is, or what will happen to it as it spins itself the cocoon. we r more alike than different
reminder that “allies welcome” was once secret code for “those not out yet can still participate without putting themselves at risk”, and for those who aren’t out yet to comfortably exist in these spaces you have to let allies exist in those spaces too.
this is also important for queer people who don’t know anyone else there. let them bring their friend, even if the friend is cishet. many would rather not go at all, rather than go somewhere alone.
It is always better to let respectful cishets into our spaces than to try and police who is queer enough to be allowed.
When I was in high school (2004 - 2008, not that long ago), we had exactly one out person. One.
We also didn’t have a Gay Straight Alliance chapter yet. Virtually every support group you could find, even in navy blue states, was a local chapter of the GSA. You were much more likely to find that acronym than LGBTQ+.
Our school decided we wanted one, but we wanted to be inclusive, because we knew there were other letters. We called our group “Spectrum”, because it would cover everyone, including allies.
It took three meetings in front of the school’s board of directors to get permission for the club to exist. Again, this was a private school, in a mid-Atlantic state that has been navy blue and “progressive” for decades (even at that point).
Other than the one (1) kid who was out? Every single other member said we were Allies.
Nearly 20 years later, almost every single one of us is out as some flavor of queer.
A lot of us knew we were huge supporters of queer rights, we just didn’t quite know all the reasons why yet. Asexuality wasn’t discussed the way it is now, neither was any type of gender nonconformity. Hell, bisexuality was barely acknowledged, and even then it was mostly only given a nod as “girls who turn guys on by kissing girls” (biphobia was strong, and unfortunately still is).
Making sure allies have a space at our table ensures that people have the space to explore their own identity, to question if one of our labels might work for them too.
It also allows people who may have some baked-in prejudices realize that those prejudices are wrong. That we’re not evil and hateful, that we are actually pretty nice and friendly.
One time, some friends and I were at a pretty famous local gay bar, and this guy walked in looking like he was ripped out of the pages of Redneck Magazine. He looked super uncomfortable, but he was polite to the hostess and she sat him alone, near us. A lot of people were tense, and watching him out of the corner of our eyes, because we all knew what happened at Pulse.
But one of my friends is the person who knows absolutely everyone and goes out of their way to make new friends. He’s also a cis straight guy. He leans over, compliments the guy’s Carhartt jacket, and asks if he’s ever been to the place before.
The guy, who is still kind of tense, says his name is Johnny and no, he’s never been to no queer bar before, but his sister just came out to the family. Their parents were awful about it, and while he “didn’t understand it”, he didn’t think his sister should be disowned and hated the thought of seeing her cry, so he wanted to try and understand.
I remembered the story that’s made the rounds here- about the guy named Earl who went to a drag show and everyone made him feel welcome because they knew he needed to have a good time to prove we queer folks were safe.
So I invited Johnny to sit with us. “It’s more fun than sitting alone. Here, have some of my fries, I’m probably not going to finish them anyway.”
He sat at our table, and when he found out that my friend was also a cis straight guy, he visibly relaxed. So did a lot of other patrons, once they realized he wasn’t there to cause violence.
Over the next few hours, he ate great food, had a couple beers, clapped and smiled at the drag shows, and asked a LOT of questions. At first, he was using language we might call “un-PC” (the kind that would get you cancelled on this webbed site). But he realized we were using different words, and asked. He asked why the old words were wrong, why the newer ones were right, and how not to be offensive.
The staff found out what was going on, and eventually a card got passed around the whole joint and everyone wrote supportive messages for Johnny’s sister Lila. This big tough man felt safe enough to cry a little in front of us queer strangers, because we instantly accepted his sister as one of our own, as family, even though we’d never met her.
I’d later found out from the staff that Johnny had returned, more than once. A couple times with Lila herself, and a couple times with his friends… who were gruff and suspicious at first, but won over by the end of the night.
We need to be a safe space for allies. For people who may not use all the Correct And Accepted Special Words but genuinely want to understand and accept us. As someone who is both asexual and nonbinary, I felt way safer with Johnny (despite him using outdated terminology for a while) than I do with a lot of people on THIS QUEER ASS WEBSITE.
Allies are sometimes members of the family that don’t even know they’re in the closet yet, because they don’t know the closer includes people like them.
Allies are sometimes people who don’t know the right words or behaviors, but still want to support someone they love.
Scooting over and making a safe, welcoming space for allies will always be important. And it will help us get closer to that world of acceptance we want to see.
My husband’s job primarily employs adult men but there is one (1) teenage girl and my husband said originally he worried she might be a bit of an outcast but instead every man on the crew was like “huh guess I am a dad/older brother now.”
She was in a car crash on the way to work one morning and called my husband to let him know she’d be late and he was like wtf guess I’m gonna be late too because I’m coming to pick you up and then he told his team and they were like I think you mean WE are coming.
Imagine you are a teenage girl probably rushing to get to work and you crash your probably new car and feel absolutely miserable and now you’ll be late to work but then suddenly in the distance a car full of all the adult men you work with just pulls up and is like “we came all the way here to pick you up” the mental image right now is fr.
Apparently she tried to call her dad but it was 3am and he was obviously sleeping so she called my husband and he not only came to find her but fished her glasses out of the hood of the car (she’d dropped them while looking inside), drove her to the hospital, and told her to take the day off. She insisted on coming back to work so he used his lunch break to watch TV with her to make sure she didn’t doze off (concussion risk).
You’ve heard of the Mom friend but my husband is very much the Dad friend. He said when he answered the phone she said “hey please don’t be mad” and he’s never felt such powerful Fatherhood energy in his life.
Girl: *calls for aid*
Every single dad packed into the car:
This is possibly my favorite response to this post
This girls father: Thanks for helping my daughter out guys
