Okay but why couldn’t they still have played Quidditch during Goblet of Fire?
I understand that the champions probably wouldn’t want to deal with that while also competing in the tournament but it’s not really fair to everyone else to just cancel Quidditch for the full year.
What about the 7th years who wanted one last shot at winning the Quidditch Cup?
What about the 2nd years who were excited because they could FINALLY try out for the team?
But more so the 7th years, I mean no one even told them “btw we probs aren’t gonna have Quidditch next year so make this year count” like that’s actually really shitty.
And I understand that they needed the Quidditch field for the third task but there’s only like 5 games a year, you could’ve done them a little earlier and still had time to use this thing you teach called magic to grow the damn maze!
OR EVEN BETTER, instead of having the House Quidditch tournament, have the schools play against each other. I mean 3of the 4 champions are kick ass Seekers so why not?
OR BETTER YET have each of the champions form a team using anyone they want
Harry just asks the Gryffindor team to play with him and they use Ron to replace Oliver like in OOTP and at first he’s really nervous but then he gets his nerves on track because there’s NO WAY he’s losing to Krum after he took Hermione to the Yule Ball.
Cedric decides to try to get the best he can from all of the Houses, though the majority of his team is still Hufflepuff because he knows how they play and likes how they work together. He does find a Beauxbatons boy that makes a great Chaser though.
Karkaroff insists that Viktor only use the boys from Durmstrang (because he’s probably a misogynistic little shit) and he doesn’t really care because he’s the best Seeker in the world. Even if he just lost the Quidditch World Cup to Ireland, it’s IMPOSSIBLE that he wouldn’t be able to catch the Snitch before the other team got too far ahead.
And then there’s Fleur, who has never played Quidditch before but suddenly there’s a 13 year old red-haired Hogwarts girl asking her if she can be on her team because “I’ve been practicing with my brothers’ brooms for years and I’m actually quite good but I won’t be able to make the Gryffindor team for a few years” and Fleur agrees as long as Ginny helps her find some other teammates and gives Fleur flying lessons. Ginny accepts the offer and, in Holyhead Harpies fashion, sets out to put together an all female team because females are very unrepresented on the other teams. Ginny and Fleur ask two Bulgarian girls to be a Beater and Chaser. One of Fleur’s Beauxbatons friends is the other Beater, and Ginny asks a fifth year from the Hufflepuff team (who Cedric didn’t choose) to be the third Chaser, as well as Cho to be their Seeker. She insists that Fleur be the Keeper so that she doesn’t have to worry as much about not being steady on a broom.
Instead of all of the teams playing each other, they do it tournament style. Harry and Cedric’s teams go first. Ron is a nervous new Keeper and let’s quite a few balls in before he makes his first save and suddenly he’s on a roll. Cedric’s team has gained a substantial lead by now, but Harry spots the Snitch and just barely grabs it before Cedric (Fred and George are pleased since they’re still not over the Hufflepuff victory the year before when Harry was attacked by the dementors).
Fleur and Viktor’s teams play next. The girls have 3 superb Chasers that are scoring constantly. Every time Viktor’s Chasers make it to Fleur’s end of the pitch, they get distracted by her flowing silver hair and tend to miss without her having to do too much (which is good cause even though she’s better she’s still not QUITE comfortable on a broom). Viktor frantically searches for the Snitch because if he can get it soon they’ll still be able to pull ahead but then the Beauxbatons Beater hits a Bludger right at him and in the moment it took him to dodge it, Cho had spotted the Snitch and already had her hand stretched out to grab it. Before he could even reach her elbow she had the tiny ball held tight in her fist.
The losers of the first round face off for 3rd and 4th place. Viktor, with a sore ego about getting beaten to the Snitch in the last game, catches it within 20 minutes. Cedric laughs the whole thing off and gives Viktor his congratulations, but he now has a harder drive to win the Triwizard Tournament.
Everyone is anxious for the Potter/Delacour game. Fleur knows that Angelina, Katie, and Alicia won’t be effected by her the way the Durmstrang boys were, so she trains even harder to keep up with the rest of her team. The game is underway and it’s neck and neck. Both teams have three excellent Chasers, causing the Quaffle to change sides constantly. Ron and Fleur are both highly nervous, but still manage to block most goals. Fred and George know that Ginny is the other team’s best Chaser, but can’t find it in themselves to try and knock their 13 year old sister off her broom. The Durmstrang Beater doesn’t have any such obligations, and aims a Bludger at Alicia as she’s speeding down the pitch towards Fleur. It hits her in the ribs and she is escorted down to Madame Pomfrey. Now that Fleur’s team has the upper hand, they start pulling ahead. Harry and Cho are playing rough searching for the Snitch, trying to psyche the other out by flying in their path. Harry notices Cho following him and decides to dive as though he’s seen the Snitch somewhere near the bottom of the field. He’s surprised when he doesn’t see her dive after him and looks up just in time to see her catch the Snitch 50 yards away. Everyone heads back towards the ground, the girls have a group hug because never in a million years did they think they were ACTUALLY going to win! Harry breaks through to shake Fleur’s hand and tells her “good game”. Fred and George are staring in astonishment at their little sister because “What the hell, Gin? Where did you learn to fly like that?” while Angelina is nearby cursing the fact that they can’t have 4 Chasers on the Gryffindor team.
In the end, Dumbledore allows the teams to throw a party in the Great Hall. Some Hufflepuffs make flower crowns for Fleur’s team to wear as the winners. A hush falls over the Hall when the doors open and McGonagall comes in. They expect her to yell at them for being too loud, but instead she walks over to Fleur and hands her the Quidditch Cup because she “won it fair and square” but explicitly states that if she does not return it to her by the end of the year “I will go to France and take it from you myself”. The Hall bursts into laughter and applause.
That thing you wrote that isn’t “good enough” to put up on the AO3. You can put it up there! The AO3 isn’t meant to be The World’s Classiest Showcase. It’s an archive. It exists because most other forms of hosting fannish work eventually degrade or disappear. Accounts get deleted. Websites shut down. The AO3 preserves those things. Ten years from now you’ll be like, “Shit, there was this really great tag essay, but the person changed their Tumblr URL and then Tumblr closed up shop…” (look, even Tumblr will die eventually) and your only hope of finding it will be if the page was cached, or if somebody uploaded it to the AO3.
The AO3 exists to preserve ephemera as much as substantial works. You know how valuable it is for archaeologists to be able to read the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii? The little things, the notes, the headcanons, the notfics, the meta, the back-and-forths, are all important too.
YES YES YES THIS.
Tumblr’s likely to die sooner than you expect, and suddenly – it’s owned by Yahoo. (Anyone remember
del.icio.us, later delicious.com?) Yahoo’s trying really really hard to squeeze money out of tumblr and it’s not working, for all the reasons discussed in synec’s post and because a huge portion of its userbase is 13-18 years old and HAVE NO DIGITAL MONEY so can’t buy things online even if they wanted to.
There is no “worthy to be on AO3.” None. The early fics were often really well-written; it was a high-standards archive – not because “it strove for high standards” but because the only people who knew it existed, who cared about a new multifandom archive, were the ones who’d been around watching archives disappear for years; they were veteran fic writers who wanted a permanent place to share their stories. It took a long time for AO3 to have enough server capacity to allow open invites; in the early days, it was friend-of-a-friend for invite codes. (They wanted more people; they couldn’t handle a flood. So they handed out a few codes at a time)
We even talked about it while setting up the original terms of service – knowing that by saying, our standards are less restrictive than ff.net, less restrictive than LJ, we were going to eventually have HUGE amounts of really bad fic. FF.net got the nickname “pit of voles,” and AO3 was going to outdo that… eventually.
And. We wanted it ALL. All the reader-insert Mary Sue “date with hot dude” fic; all the “quiz to find out which power ranger you would be” fic; all the “band came to my home town and their bus broke down in front of my house and they needed a coffee and…” fic. And later, all the meta: the thinky character analyses; the “who’d be best on a first date” discussions; the “why the new movie sucked rocks and should never have been made because they ruined my favorite sidekick” rants.
ALL. WE WANT IT ALL.
AO3 is not about “the best of fandom;” it’s about “the truth of fandom.” And the truth is, fandom is not comprised of 90% well-written tightly-plotted carefully proofread fic. Fandom is comprised of people who love their favorite shows and books and characters and want to share that love with others.
AO3 are not the fanfic standards police. We’re the ones cheering for the “GLOWING BLUE SKELETON DICKS” tags.
Reminder for all fic writers! We’ve already got a ton of fics out there lost to the void due to url changes alone, so please think about uploading all of your fantastic work to AO3!
I still think it’s hilarious that the reason nobody ever figures out Superman’s secret identity or where he lives or what he does when he’s not saving the planet, is because he already told them all the Kryptonian stuff that can’t be tied to any of his human friends or family. I guarantee you the in-universe wikipedia article on Superman lists his name as Kal-El and the “personal life” section says that he lives full-time at his private fortress of solitude at the north pole. Nobody in the world looks at Clark Kent and thinks “oh my god, maybe he’s superman!” for the same reason nobody ever starts to suspect that their coworker who looks KINDA like Barack Obama is actually secretly Barack Obama – They know who Barack Obama is and know what he does and they know their coworker Greg is Greg and not Barack Obama. They have no reason to assume Barack Obama secretly moonlights as Greg The IT Guy at their workplace even though they’ve never seen Greg and Obama in the same place. At best, “Greg is secretly Obama” would be a running joke at the office, and the same is true at the Daily Planet. “Kal-El of Krypton, who lives in a CRYSTAL PALACE at the NORTH POLE and whose dayjob is SUPERMAN, sometimes puts on a suit and pretends to be a clumsy reporter and lives in a one-bedroom walkup in Metropolis” is a ridiculous concept to anyone who doesn’t already know it’s true
“Hey, that— that guy, in the corner, is that— is that Superman?”
Clark looks up from his computer at the new intern. “Oh, no,” he says. “You caught me.”
“Clark, you pull this shit every time, man,” his desk neighbor Steve says. “Shut the fuck up.”
“No, the kid’s right, I’m Superman,” Clark says. He gets out of his seat and cracks his back out. “I guess we’re gonna have a superhero fight.”
“Clark, sit back down.”
“Nope. Superhero fight.”
“Clark if you don’t sit the hell back down and finish your article by lunch I am going to tell Perry on you.”
Clark points at the intern. “You get off easy this time, buddy,” he says, and sits back down.
“So…” the intern says, very lost. “Uh…”
“That’s Clark,” a slightly older and more experienced intern says. “He’s Superman’s asshole twin.”
The funniest part is when Clark does this in front of Jimmy Olsen, who is just staring in disbelief as Clark talks about using his superpowers to help Ma Kent on the farm in a sarcastic tone of voice, when Jimmy knows for a fact it’s 100% true, that is what Clark did last weekend.
Intern: “Ahahahah Superman in Kansas tilling the fields at superspeed, that’s a good one. What, if the tractor breaks down, do you just pick it up and take it back to the barn?”
Clark: “Nah, between my ex-ray vision and my heat vision I can generally find whatever the problem is and do a spotweld if necessary so long as I know where to get the parts – once had to nip over to South Korea because I didn’t want to wait 6 weeks for the ship to get there.”
Intern: “Bahahaha classic, Clark you are so funny! Superman fixing tractors with his heat vision, oh that’s a good one.”
senator: okay how do we fuck over as many people as possible but make it sound good
other senator: okay okay hear me out, we fuck over people by destroying net neutrality which is something they’ve shown to care about but we call it something that sounds like they’d agree with
Sen. Cornyn, John [R-TX]
Sen. Cotton, Tom [R-AR]
Sen. Cruz, Ted [R-TX]
Sen. Lee, Mike [R-UT]
Sen. Paul, Rand [R-KY]
Sen. McConnell, Mitch [R-KY]
Sen. Rubio, Marco [R-FL]
Sen. Sasse, Ben [R-NE]
Sen. Tillis, Thom [R-NC]
