Lady @Lady@cat.family

nobody cares about this but i extremely care about this as it is blocking both my XSD library and my requirements for unique identifier generation

⁺almost⁺ to a Piscēs 0.3.0 release i’m trying to make it happen this week

@Satsuma maybe chapter 3 will be “you shouldn't be in charge of a community if you don’t know why rape is bad” idk

@Satsuma i’ve been thinking about a chapter 2 where zelda goes off about racism in fanfiction

reader, it didn’t make any sense because it was wrong

it turns out my base64 code has been wrong this entire time and i just haven’t realized because my tests were broken

@phoenix OTW uses the word “archive” the way a professional might use “repository”. they don’t perform any of the work cited here by the Society of American Archivists under the heading “The Work of Archivists”: <https://www2.archivists.org/about-archives>.

• they do not « select records, a process that requires an understanding of the historical context in which the records were created, the uses for which they were intended, and their relationships to other sources ».

• they do not « arrange and describe the collection of records, in accordance with national and international standards of practice. »

• they do not « ensur[e] that digital records, which may quickly grow obsolete, will be available when needed in the future » (in the sense of maintaining the ORIGINALS of any of the fanworks they import).

• they do not « plan and direct exhibitions, publications, and other outreach programs to broaden the use of collections, helping people find and understand the information they need ».

so the idea that #EndOTWRacism might be in tension with some “archivist’s mission” is laughable to me. i know you think they should address racism regardless, but i really think you give them way too much credit in terms of what their platform is or what it stands for—being a “true archive” isn’t even an option on the table

@phoenix « OTW needs to decide if AO3 is going to function as an archive whose mission is maximum inclusivity of content » i want to push back on the idea that this is a goal—or even a possibility—in the academic sense of “archive” which you seem to be evoking. when you look at projects like Open Doors, which destroy enormous amounts of fannish context in the form of comments, styling, original encoding, etc in the process of “preserving” the works on AO3—instead of providing funding, maintenance, or infrastructure to keep the original sites open, or doing a web archive which preserves the works as they were originally published, things an actual archivist might consider doing—i think it becomes increasingly hard to believe that archival work is truly OTW’s goal, or to use that as a justification for anything. they're not into fannish preservation, they just want lots of works on THEIR platform. because that is how they raise funding. they generally don't invest in any kind of fan preservation (certainly not digipres) which doesn't serve their own platforms and bottom line.

is eating strawberries a kind of sex?

@pastelsinmysky nobody is good at every part of art, which is hard because sometimes the things you like and notice aren’t the things you are good at yourself. nobody criticizes picasso for not being good at photorealism you know?? but maybe picasso himself secretly wished he was better at it, we’ll never know. but if you get to know yourself better and discover your strengths you can make stuff that's good enough that it doesn't matter. or stuff that wouldn't even be possible any other way

characterization is difficult in fandom because everyone is sooooo character-focused all the time but. there are other ways of writing and other kinds of emphases a story could have. and i bet some of them you have a gift for too

idk. i think being good at writing is less actually developing skills and more just learning about who you are and how you express yourself and embracing it. and sometimes it sucks because you really wish you were different and could do these different cool things other people are doing but. changing who you are is a very slow process and you have to be kind to yourself in the meantime. and no type of person is bad

love that Ao3 has a very clear and obvious reminder of anti‐lesbian sentiment on every single search page

well, fewer of them write het, but lesbianism is still in fourth place

for real though i’m just going to be reading from the #EndOTWRacism collection (<https://archiveofourown.org/collections/EndOTWRacism>) for the rest of this month

i’ll share the good ones and pretend the bad ones i haven’t read yet

guess that decides which one i’m reading

@Satsuma @Forestofglory oh see i think fandom-at-large has ALWAYS been the kind of structureless freeman is critiquing in her article

AT BEST it grew out of exactly those same feminist consciousness-raising groups and book clubs freeman is saying aren't enough, and at worst it was a boys club where status was defined primarily by proximity to celebrity

@Satsuma @Forestofglory do you think monopoly leads to internal destructuralization? it definitely has disrupted other kinds of fan organizing but i'm not sure you can blame Ao3’s own disorganization on that

like i see the problem with Ao3 is that it basically scaled up the informal networks which were being used to run things like Yuletide to a level where it stopped being effective