hydratrashmeme | Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Holy shitballs, look at us go. Welcome to Captain America fandom's resident wretched hive of scum and villainy: ROUND THREE. AKA Bad Guys Do Dirtybadwrong Things To Your Faves, AKA the Hydra Trash Party kinkmeme. As usual, BLANKET NON-CON AND NSFW WARNINGS apply: just assume going in that everything in this landfill is unfit for human consumption.

Rules in brief: don't be a jerk except to fictional characters, warnings for particularly fucked-up garbage are nice but not required, thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor's kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two, off-topic comments may be chucked out of the dumpster at management's discretion, management's discretion decrees that omegaverse, soulbond AUs, D/s-verse, non-superpowered AUs, and dark!good guys AUs are off-topic.

[Round 1] [Round 2] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained by

greenkirtle)] [Round 3 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]

Round 3 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 4.

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I have to say, I'm... Really quite unimpressed with how this has been handled, Trashmod. Not because I disagree with the message, but because I disagree with the execution. This is clearly a post that's caused a lot of worry and confusion I'm the community. It's not fair to us to make an announcement like this and then give us radio silence instead of sticking around to clear up the concerns people clearly have.

Yeah, I think a lot of the frustration and worry is just because this is so confusing and the mod hasn't been clear at all.

Is the problem with ALL post-CATWS prompts that don't have rape scenes, or just the ones where trash is barely a factor?

Does the 2:1 ratio mentioned refer to ratio of recovery to non-recovery prompts, or on-topic recovery to off-topic recovery?

Are we supposed to dial it back by making sure aftermath prompts are trashy enough, therefore cutting down on barely-on-topic stuff, or by posting fewer of those prompts no matter how on-topic they are?

Because I'm hoping trashmod meant that too many recovery prompts are barely on-topic and we need to be more careful about that, but their comments are vague enough it could also be interpreted to mean that all aftermath trash is now a problem for the meme and we need to limit even our trashiest, most relevant recovery ideas. There are obviously a lot of people on both sides of the argument who don't know for sure which way to read it. This uncertainty is fueling the wank.

Trashmod, we really need you to come back and clarify.

(sa) That ratio sentence was supposed to be the other way around: is the 2:1 ratio about off-topic recovery to on-topic recovery. I'm so good at sentence structure.

I would personally interpret what they said as being about being careful about borderline/tangentially trashy recovery fic, but it definitely wasn't a clear statement. And when an author anon writing fuckpotato!bucky recovery fic is concerned about whether their fic is trash-appropriate? We definitely have an issue.

I'm one of the people who's been upset about this, and it's literally because I interpreted this proclamation is saying that because too many questionably topical recovery prompts have been posted lately, now all aftermath prompts are discouraged, and we have to curtail posting no matter how trash-relevant they are. I thought the nudge was about nudging the meme away from discussion and prompting of all aftermath material. If I'm wrong, and the mod actually meant to nudge recovery prompts back into higher trash relevance, then... I think that's totally fair, and... I support it 100%...

I absolutely agree, if the point is to nudge prompts back into the dumpster, I think that's totally fair. There's another anon in this thread who's put it well, I think -- if the prompt would be easy to sanitize for someone outside the dumpster because the focus is solely on the recovery and not the trash, then yeah, it's probably not super relevant for this meme. And I think generally, we're a fairly low-maintenance community -- we're pretty good at discouraging minimally-trashy prompts, most of the time, and I definitely agree with doing that. It's the vague accouncement with no clarification that I object to, because it's stressing out promoters and fillers of perfectly trashy fic.

I think the sticking point is the line about "put[ting] the brakes on the flood of capital-r Recovery prompts." I've interpreted that to mean generic Recovery vs. Trash Recovery. As in: Trash Recovery is totally fine, Generic Recovery is discouraged. In terms of textual evidence, I'd refer to the trashmod's contrasting use of "mental heath porn" vs. "trash" and "optimum caretaking" vs. "sexual violence."

And I'm in favor of proceeding under such assumptions until told otherwise. Especially since it feels like everyone else feels roughly the same about Trash Recovery vs. Generic Recovery.

I'm happy to proceed under these assumptions, but as we're currently applying literary analysis to trashmod's post in an attempt to figure out what she meant, I think the problem isn't going to go away until the mod comes back and confirms.

Fuckpotato!author here. I'm not even kidding, either. I know that the statement didn't go for fills, but...a considerable part of that fic will be - spoiler - sort of sappy. And have vanilla sex. So yeah, I now feel like I'm contributing to the "problem'.

See, I would struggle to see how anything involving fuckpotatoes could possibly not be trashy enough for this meme, but that's what I'm frustrated with Trashmod about --you really shouldn't be feeling nervous about the trash content of your fic.

((PS I love you fuckpotatoes!author))

Aw thank you <3

OK but as you state yourself, the mod's statement clearly and explicitly said it does not apply to fills, so maybe the feeling that "you're contributing the to problem" is not actually an accurate reflection of reality.

Look, I get that some people want really precise instructions, but remember that this is an anonymous kinkmeme and not a graded college assignment. Write whatever you feel like and if it's way off-base for the theme of this particular meme, the worst thing that will happen is that the thread gets frozen and the mod asks you to move it to another audience.

The mod had a serious motorcycle accident just a few weeks ago, this is an anonymous kinkmeme, I think the expectations here are way too high and this pretty gentle redirect is getting blown way out of proportion.

...and here we run into a drawback of trashmod being known only as trashmod, but... I'm pretty sure that's not who trashmod is, friend. Unless there have been more motorcycle accidents around the dumpster than I'd heard of. (Which is not to say that trashmod may not have very pressing real life things keeping them from coming in and dealing with this thread, although having tossed in this particular grenade it would have been nice of them to stick around for the cleanup. Modly power, modly responsibility.)

AYRT

Maybe I'm wrong, I'm often out of the loop! Trashmod remains very very very anon, then

(da) I hope trashmod is feeling alright now. And I imagine this situation doesn't feel great to them either, especially if there's already stress, so I'm sorry about that.

At the same time, people aren't intentionally blowing this out of proportion. There's a communication gap that's causing worry and uncertainty. If the mod is feeling well enough, I hope they can come back to clarify some of the questions posed here.

THIS

THIS. 1000 percent. It is an ANONYMOUS KINKMEME. There is no rubric, and it drives me up the wall that so many people are running around chasing their tails waiting for further instructions. If you, a thinking human using discretion, think it's trashy enough, bearing mod's gentle suggestion in mind, then do it. The worst thing that happens is it gets frozen.

new anon weighing in.

yes, I agree, the worst that can happen is that a prompt gets frozen. that being said: this may be an anonmeme but it's not fucking 4chan. I'm going to make the wild assumption that people posting here don't do so with the intention of aggravating others, and they don't want to do it by accident either. no one is 'rules lawyering' or 'being intentionally clueless', they are trying to figure out how to keep doing the thing they like without pissing people off - and yes, it is quite obvious that many anons who DON'T like the abundant recovery prompts are, in fact, pissed off. I personally believe that the worried anons are panicking more than the situation warrants, but keep in mind that what they were asking for was clarification so they could keep the rest of us happy. I'm pretty sure they have that clarification now, and I appreciate their level of courtesy throughout this conversation. the rest of us are now obliged to chill the fuck out and start actually shifting that ratio with the creation of prompts that meet our garbage-y requirements.

I love everyone in this bar, and I really try to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially when I don't know who they are. we're all pretty invested in keeping this dumpster an enjoyable and productive place. with that goal in common, I think we'll be OK.

+100

Re: "Recovery" prompts - TRASHMOD

(Anonymous) - 2015-10-31 18:30 (UTC) - Expand

Re: "Recovery" prompts - TRASHMOD

(Anonymous) - 2015-10-31 21:46 (UTC) - Expand

Re: "Recovery" prompts - TRASHMOD

(Anonymous) - 2015-11-01 12:39 (UTC) - Expand

Apologies for the radio silence; without going into detail, it's been a hell of a week IRL, and I've had neither the time to give this thread the consideration it needs nor the patience for a measured, thought-out response. This is just a very quick placeholder comment to say: not dead, not abandoning the thread, more detailed response hopefully coming later tonight.

Sorry about your week trashmod :(

Okay, more detail.

First: solidly trash-centric aftermath prompts are still perfectly welcome. Breathe, guys. If HTP is the topic and everything else derived from it is only as on-topic as its proximity to the original premise, that puts pretty much all of the classic aftermath trash squarely on-topic.

Second: the increasingly off-topic drift of the recovery prompts, the months-long escalation to a wildly disproportionate volume of the trashmeme activity, and the omnipresence of woobified-Bucky tropes in non-HTP fandom all seem like manifestations of the same underlying thing. I'd hoped that waving my arms in the general direction of the thing and going "guys, not our actual destination, can we get this trashfleet straggling back on course in the general direction of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?" would be enough of a heads-up without unduly constraining anyone's wanderings, but whoops, translating community norms into rules and policies is hard. So here's an attempt to address them separately.

- "Would this prompt still work if you took the trash out of Bucky's trash past?"/"How hard would it be to adapt this into regular non-HTP-flavor recovery fic?" is a good rule of thumb, and yes, mod intends to take a stricter approach to edge cases in the future. Keep the garbage nice and pungent, folks.

- Nothing is going to get frozen or mod-warned over the proportion thing. Being considerate is encouraged, though, and "if well over half the most recent page consists of minor riffs on the same theme as your prompt, maybe ask yourself how much it adds, or how bad you need to post it right this second" is a good thing to keep in mind--across the board, for all tropes. There's always room for the answer to be "yes, I DO want it that badly," after all.

- The reason woobie recovery fic gets a mod nudge where other tropes that temporarily took over the meme didn't (infantilization, lactation, gaping assholes, etc.) is because the mod is worried about its potential to permanently disrupt the dumpster ecosystem, which is otherwise pretty self-regulating. Not because the mod has it in for aftermath/recovery as a genre. You're free to think that worry is off-base, but going by the months-long escalation on the trashmeme and woobiefication tropes' track records in other fan spaces, there's ample reason to doubt it would get any less out-of-control on its own.

Lastly: Believe it or not, much of the ambiguity in this thread has been a desperate effort to avoid anything that could turn moderately-trashy aftermath/recovery--a staple of the trashmeme--into a bystander casualty of the attempt to rein in the influx of dubiously-trashy woobie recovery porn. Unfortunately, drawing a big bright "this is unequivocally okay" line through a gray area also creates massive temptation for any dissatisfied (or just contrarian) parties to see how far it can be pushed. The benefit of reassuring nervous anons has to be balanced against the risk of setting off a war of attrition right on those anons' home turf, and predictably, the results have been a mess.

So, in short: "Do as you were doing, but make sure your recovery prompts are trashy enough to be good dumpster fare"?

Mod, that's reasonable. Thanks for coming back to explain. I know my own worries about aftermath trash's standing in the dumpster would have been nonexistent if this had been plainly stated from the start.

Thank you for the clarification, Trashmod!

Thank you for clarifying everything!

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