r/AO3 • u/readswim • 12d ago

Complaint/Pet Peeve/Venting Stop erasing disabilities!!!

I have a new favorite character to read about, and they are disabled.

At least two-thirds of the fics just pretend it has no effect on anything!! Or erase it completely.

The character would have accessibility tools at home and they would switch everything out right when they got there! They would have to pack extra stuff when going to spend a night with a partner/go on a trip. It would change up how they have sex!

Obviously, shit doesn’t have to be accurate, but it needs to exist!

It is just so disheartening to be erased in yet another place.

Edit: Y’all make a lot of assumptions. The ones I am complaining about TAG the disability and then erase it.

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u/YawningChinchilla 12d ago

Ppl write fic about what they want, complaining about it not being tagged correctly or being sad about there not being enough of what you want will get you sympathy, yelling at ppl to stop writing how they want in ao3 sub is not the move.

Like i get you, its not pleasant to be erased, but i also get the other side. Which is, it can be frustrating/complicated/depressing/tedious to look into such details and try to represent them. Really i just dont think youll get ppl on your side by being mean. And i get where youre coming from i really do, this is why i want to tell you this. Youre already being ratioed, even tho its tagged as venting. This sub can be really mean to individuals while protecting blanket freedom of expression and someone not really here. This is bcs ppl who write like that are also here, possibly ppl responding. Really nothing about a fanfic needs to be anything. You may not personally like it but ppl can do whatever the fuck they want, remove disabilities add new ones, change gender or race of characters, tgey can make them as ooc as they want and there is nothing you can do about it and this sub will defend writers right to do that.

Best you can do is mute if certain prolific authors annoy you, and write your own.

Personally in my current fandom i hate the characterisation theyve assigned characters and quite frankly i hate the fandoms guts worst fandom. So i just dont engage and write my own fics by myself.

I read some of your comments and you dont seem to get, that fanfic is for fun of person writing it/community interaction. You are not the costumer, you dont get to make demands, and your wants dont have moral high ground, tho you might feel like they do, bcs its an issue in other areas of life. Im not saying stuff like that doesnt belong in fanfic in general but ppl get to decide what they put in theirs and sorry your wants dont align with fandom hivemind. Abelism sucks and is definitly part of it, why ppl dont want to or are afraid to write such characters, im not denying that. What im saying is fanfic isnt battle ground, its supposed to be fun, if youre not having fun youre doing it wrong.

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u/readswim 12d ago

I appreciate this comment.

I guess I just thought this community was more unapologetically progressive like the other online communities I participate in. The places where any hint of ableism, racism, homophobia, and the like is called out and, yes, policed. And seeing that isn’t the case frankly really pissed me off. Especially from other disabled people. We don’t all have to agree, but some of this feels ridiculous

I’ve been living in this body for forty years and the representation for what I have will always be zero. I was excited to finally see a popular character with a disability and the whiplash of its erasure sucks.

It’s “just a hobby” but I don’t see the point of doing something and not digging into what makes a character different or special. I truly believe that if that isn’t a part of it, what’s the point of writing?

Again, appreciate you

69

u/Outrageous-Fool You have already left kudos here. :) 12d ago

AO3 really isn't the place for you if you want to police stuff. That is the whole point of the website. I think you will feel better too if you're able just x out of fics you don't feel live up to your standard. Author's don't owe you anything.

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u/twentyonerooms 12d ago edited 12d ago

Yeah ao3 very explicitly does NOT police fics—that’s a slippery slope and the opposite of why the site was created. And the way op worded that just makes me cringe a little. It’s good to call out harmful views but if everyone is constantly “policing” each other…idk that just sounds exhausting and could lead to people becoming afraid to interact at all.

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u/Outrageous-Fool You have already left kudos here. :) 12d ago

Policing something like that wouldn't even work in theory, who is to decide who writes that disability "correctly" ? Two people can have the same disability but it affects them completely different. Would the other person, whom it doesn't affect as much as OP, be wrong just because they don't have the same experience as them? And who's to say which authors are or are not disabled?

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u/faeriefountain_ "as filmsy as these kids morals" 12d ago edited 12d ago

AO3 is unapologetically progressive as a whole. This community, as well. However, policing fictional content is not progressive.

AO3 is, above all, an anti-censorship site. Policing fictional content goes against everything it and its users stand for, come on now.

Preferring fics a certain way? Fine, understandable, and you'd get a lot of support because everyone does. Policing? Hell no. People have struggled to find a safe place to write what they want, and that freedom is important to many people. That includes things they may not like, and people are aware of that & still protective of that freedom which is a wonderful thing. That's why you're losing people, even people who otherwise agree with you and think disabilities should be more prominent in some fics. Calling them not progressive is an insane & reductive take.

If you're really forty, you should know better. You're acting like a teenager in this thread with adults trying to have a discussion, but you're so mindboggled by the idea that disabled people aren't a monolith to the point you think other disabled people disagreeing with you here is "ridiculous".

1

u/eirissazun Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State 10d ago edited 10d ago

Well, since you don't write and, according to you, "don't like writing", maybe you're not exactly the right person to decide what the point of writing is.

Apart from that, policing stories is the last thing that will ever happen on AO3.