No Kill I

the hours I spend with you (368 words) by Laura JV
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Good Omens (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens)
Additional Tags: soft bois

THE BEDROOM DOOR, being a Treatise by MISS ROSAMUND WATSON on the Importance of Knocking in Preserving Familial Harmony and Protecting the Innocence of Young Girls (979 words) by Laura JV
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Characters: Rosamund Mary "Rosie" Watson, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes
Additional Tags: LEARN ABOUT KNOCKING
Summary:

Apparently, you cannot die of embarrassment, but not for lack of trying.

 (Originally posted to my Tumblr.)

The discussion about Choose Not To Warn has me thinking about a lot of aspects of CNtW. 

I want to talk about....a lot of those aspects, but right now, this instant, I want to talk about boundaries. 

In the context of fandom, we understand that fanwork creators are permitted to have boundaries. Some creators do not want to be exposed to criticism of their work (and so readers who want to engage in that criticism will have crit-friendly spaces, or will refrain from tagging the author in discussions). Some do not want their work to be remixed -- at all, or without explicit permission -- so people who want to do that should ask; others issue blanket permissions. Creators draw boundaries about putting their work on Goodreads; they place it on certain websites or do not; they lock it to Archive readers or leave it public; they orphan the work; they take it down from places they no longer want it.

We understand all these boundaries and generally acknowledge that creators are allowed to have them and that disrespecting them is a jerk move.

And yet, when a creator draws the very particular boundary of “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings”, this is suddenly “rude” and “vaguewarning” and “asshole behavior”? 

No. 

This is not different from any other boundary a creator places on their work.

Fan creators are human beings who are allowed to have boundaries on their work. You might think their boundaries are dumb, but you aren’t allowed to violate them. There’s a fan creator I ran into back in the 1990s who had, I thought, incredibly annoying and dumb boundaries. You had to email her with proof of age to get a password to her stories on her own personal website. You were not allowed to link to her work, or pass on the links, or share the password, or anything. It’s been 20+ years and I still think this was a stupid as fuck boundary. I still respected it: I never read her work from her website, only when she posted it to mailing lists. I never asked anyone to link me to it or share the password with me. She was allowed to have these boundaries, even though I thought they were dumb and made my eyes roll right out of my head. I had no right to violate her boundaries, and I had no right to access to her work.

When I put work on the Archive, I need to be comfortable doing so. Anything other than “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” is uncomfortable and upsetting for me, and I won’t do it. I never liked archiving anywhere that required warnings, although I did it because I believed that the existence of comprehensive archives was more important than my personal comfort. I shouldn’t’ve had to do it then, and I’m relieved I no longer have to do it. It made sharing my work with others more difficult and less joyful. 

Readers are allowed to have a boundary of not reading work without warnings. What they do not get to do is alter my boundaries because they don’t like that they can’t read my work with my boundaries in place. 

 *  *  * 
edit: a followup post: Compromise is not always workable.
edit: another followup: Sometimes people make art for an audience that isn't you.

Originally posted on my tumblr.
 
I haven’t done one of these in ages. All right.

Number of works posted: 14. Two of these were worldbuilding appendices, and another was a podfic of one of my stories, read by people not-me. So let’s call it 11.

Fandoms: Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes-Star Trek AOS fusion, Lord of the Rings, Thor: Ragnarok, Harry Potter.

Words: 68681, again not counting the appendices. Of the 11 stories, 5 of them are over 8k words. That’s a little weird for me, because I used to write almost exclusively short fiction (sub-2k, usually sub-1k). 

Most comments: Numberless the ways, and imperceptible. Lord of the Rings, Legolas/Gimli. 

Most kudos: same as above! Next-most is on From Sweet Fellowship Comes Nectar, also Legolas/Gimli. It’s a pairing without a ton of writers but with a lot of delightful readers.

Most hits: The two above. Third-place was an infinite series of accidents, the first story in a post-S4 Sherlock series that by itself was nearly 40% of my word-output for the year. 

New territory: Almost everything I wrote this year dealt with gender issues or the asexual/aromantic spectrum, explicitly. Aside from The Silent Man (Thor: Ragnarok, Dec 2017), I’m not sure I ever dealt with these explicitly until 2018, although a queerplatonic relationship is central to all the stories in A Non-Linear Gothic Drama Hypercycle (Sherlock), the first story of which dates to 2010.

List of stories & my fav tags from them: 

(if there are no tags listed it’s because the story has boring tags!)

Ship's-night, residential deck, third corridor (Thor: Ragnarok, gen, 25 Jan 2018)

• author plays fast and loose with Norse mythology
• author plays fast and loose with Marvel canon
• i'm not interested in being polite or heterosexual
• Loki's A+ Parenting

Flaming Aground (I've Said Too Much) (Harry Potter, Harry/Ginny, 25 Jan 2018)

• Sexual Roleplay

Numberless the ways, and imperceptible. (Lord of the Rings, Legolas/Gimli, 14 Feb 2018)

• reverse pining

From Sweet Fellowship Comes Nectar (Lord of the Rings, Legolas/Gimli, 09 May 2018) 

• nonstandard pronouns
• elladan and elrohir think they're funny
• non-human reproductive biology

Where are we now? (Sherlock, gen, 29 Jul 2018)

• moral particularism
• get out of my house you reptile
• you should have stayed away from sherlock holmes

an infinite series of accidents (Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, 26 Sep 2018) 

• sherlock has the emotional range of a teaspoon
• emotional context
• john needs therapy
• Asexual Sherlock Holmes/Heterosexual John Watson

With Careful Hands (Sherlock Holmes-Star Trek AOS fusion, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, 20 Oct 2018)

the other side of an invisible wall (14-15 October, 2025) (Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, 17 Nov 2018)

saturday morning, playground, coffee (22 June, 2024) (Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, 20 Nov 2018)

we're not free (2015) (Sherlock, Mary Morstan/John Watson, 24 Nov 2018)

that cell collided with this one (Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, 07 Dec 2018)

• John Goes To Therapy

I've been posting a series of stories, only the first of which I've mentioned here. Since I updated tonight, I thought I'd throw the whole list up: 

every choice you make creates a universe by Laura JV

an infinite series of accidents
Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Tags: Parentlock, Asexual Character, Post-Season/Series 04, sherlock has the emotional range of a teaspoon, Pining, except sherlock doesn't know it's pining, emotional context, john needs therapy, Everyone Needs A Hug, Sexuality is a spectrum, Asexual Sherlock Holmes/Heterosexual John Watson
Summary: In the universes where we are happy, we claim the accidents we love best, hold them tight, and know them for miracles.

the other side of an invisible wall (14-15 October, 2025)
Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Summary: They've been married for a while, but sometimes things still need to change.

saturday morning, playground, coffee (22 June, 2024)
Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Summary: Rosie & Freya are best friends.

Rosie’s dad & Freya’s mum are...not.

we're not free (2015)
Mary Morstan/John Watson
Summary: John is a black box. So is she.

In two days, everything goes to hell, but for just this instant they have each other.

that cell collided with this one
Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Tags: John Goes To Therapy, john is not good with words sometimes, sherlock has the emotional range of a teaspoon, Relationship Negotiation, Asexual Sherlock Holmes/Heterosexual John Watson, Established Relationship, Post-Season/Series 04, Non-Linear Narrative, Parentlock
Summary: It’s easier for John to talk about Sherlock in therapy.
It’s easier for Sherlock to talk to John in bed.

 


This vid is one of my fav constructed reality vids. Heed the tags.

From Sweet Fellowship Comes Nectar, by Laura JV

Summary: Gimli and Legolas negotiate the borders of their bodies and their hearts, aided by affection, impeded by their own understanding.
Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Relationship: Gimli (Son of Glóin)/Legolas Greenleaf
Words: 11194

Would anyone be up for a quick britpick on a completely filthy Harry/Ginny?

Grab the nearest book, flip to page 117, the second sentence is your life in 2017.

“Thus racism and cultural genocide produce further environmental decline.”

Norgaard, Kari Marie, Ron Reed, and Carolina Van Horn. 2011. "A Continuing Legacy: Institutional Racism, Hunger, and Nutritional Justice on the Klamath." In Cultivating Food Justice, edited by Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman, 70-123. iBooks version. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://itun.es/us/estPH.l

(I decided "nearest book" was "whatever book is on top when I click over to iBooks".)