Christian Fanfiction Writers Fight Porn, Exalt ‘Salt and Light’ With New Tag on AO3
JAN. 16, 2023—Users of popular fanfiction platform Archive of Our Own, or AO3, have found a new way to season and shine their witness into an often ugly world.12
They’re using the new AO3 tag “salt and light,” or #saltandlight on other platforms, to help Christian fans and sympathizers find stories that reflect biblical virtues. This label will be “a cross-fandom tag, like an early-Church fish drawn in the sand,” said one organizer, writer hollers-and-holmes on the social media site Tumblr.
“@brievel just hit me with an idea about Christian presence in fandom,” hollers-and-holmes wrote on Jan. 11. “We had a conversation about how frustrating it can be to try and find material that is interested in the Good, the True and the Beautiful.”3
Both users began brainstorming the label and inviting other creators to help.
Now their movement is gaining support. As of today, the AO3 tag includes over 800 fanfiction tales and other stories, and seventeen stories curated by organizers.
What are AO3 and fanfiction?
AO3’s digital platform offers writers complete anonymity and creative freedom. Fans can create fanfiction set in existing fantasy universes, or their own worlds. Many fans enjoy writing crossovers, such as King Edmund (from The Chronicles of Narnia books) meeting Elizabeth Swann (from the Pirates of the Caribbean films).
Extensive tags help readers find their favorite genres and tropes. For example, the “E” tag stands for “explicit,” including pornographic character relationships.
How do the organizers define ‘salt and light’?
On the official collection page, organizers wrote:
Christians are bidden to be the salt of the earth, to not hide our light beneath bushels. Our worldview shines through our sub-creations – art, fanfiction, original stories, videos, comics, podcasts, anything we can imagine and make, on any host, server, or site – whether it is explicitly Christian or not.4
This view harmonizes with our general take at Lorehaven. We hold that a Christian story is not made Christian only by including spiritual-sounding content. Rather, we describe a Christian story mainly by referencing the author’s biblical faith in Jesus.
For more about how Christian fans can define “Christian stories,” see our podcast episode 2, What Do We Mean By Saying ‘It’s A Christian Story’?
Or see episode 88, Can We Positively Engage Culture in a Negative World? | with Bethel McGrew, aka Esther O’Reilly
What do you think of the “salt and light” fan movement?
Do you read or make fanfiction that would match the tag’s purpose?
How does this label differ from older labels like “clean” or “family-friendly”?
- Photo by Jane Gonzalez on Unsplash. I’m thankful to my wife Lacy Burnett for relaying this story and providing research assistance. ↩
- This story has been edited to remove some quotes under review. ↩
- hollers-and-holmes, “I think salt and light is a go,” Tumblr, Jan. 11, 2023. ↩
- ArchiveofOurOwn.org, “The Salt and Light Collection (profile),” undated post, as of Jan. 15, 2023. ↩
As a Christian and a fanfiction writer, I’m so glad other Christians are doing this. Yes, it’s going to incur some wrath from other groups, but Salt & Light isn’t trying to force others to agree with them. They’re just making a place where those who already do can congregate and share stories.
I’m adding this tag to my works right now.
Dude, I am so joining this. I’m always wishing I had an easier way to find Christian fic writers, and for them to find me.
Kessie!
“Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”
Hi, I’m a Christian fanfic writer and I personally know some of the people involved in this. One of the people you quoted said they were quoted without their consent. This violates one of the ethical rules of journalism in which you ask permission to quote people and use just a pseudonym if they decline. Using people’s usernames and linking to them can open them up to online harassment and put them in harm’s way.
If you could reach out to them for permission and remove the links/use pseudonyms until they’ve replied please? I don’t believe it’s the heart of God to put people in harm’s way. I know this wasn’t intentional, but I hope that you will take the appropriate steps now that you do.
Hi, thanks for stopping by. We’ll reach out directly to the folks involved. Our intention is to share about a good development, not contribute to any of these ills you mentioned.
We don’t know the real names of anyone involved, nor would we seek these out, certainly not without permission. Here we’ve only quoted the Tumblr user account names (which are already pseudonyms) and quotes from websites. This is all publicly available information. If anyone does not want to be quoted, even under the existing pseudonyms, we’ll remove that quote. I would also encourage anyone to make profiles private (if this is an option on Tumblr!), because right now it’s all publicly available.
I heard about this on Tumblr and already started tagging my works with it. That said, to call my feelings on it optimism, even heavily tempered, sounds too strong. Its public presence on the Internet moves it pretty far away from the alluded-to historical fish symbol as a private code.
That said, i don’t think it’s useless. I think its primary value is less as a collection of works to browse, and more as an indicator when you’re browsing a new or old fandom for something to read. Undoubtedly there will continue to be people looking to “own the homophobes” by posting garbage in the tag, but they’re unlikely to want to put much effort into it, so it will hopefully remain a sign that you can read a story without getting hit with (insert content here).
And since you asked, i’d say it differs from “clean” and “family-friendly” in the same way that a wolf differs from a lap dog: there’s some connection there, and i can see how you might be a bit confused about the differences, but one is much more likely to bite your hand off if you aren’t careful.
As the author of one of the several fics in the tag flagged for “graphic violence”, I just wanted to say that although the fics perhaps adhere to some definition of “clean”, they’re most certainly not all “family friendly”. The idea is to write something Christians can read without sin… not something that’s necessarily suitable for all audiences. So, if browsing the tag, be sure to keep a look at the warning labels.
Arguably, Scripture itself includes graphic violence. You can’t even understand the gospel without graphic violence—that is, the death of bulls and rams and other creatures, the shedding of blood for remission of sins, and Christ’s final sacrifice.
“Salt and light” can certainly include some violence. To honor Jesus, in fact, it must.
I write under this tag on Tumblr (and now ao3) and I desperately hope that it doesn’t get flooded. The point is for Christians to have a space to write, and now a bunch of crazys are booty-hurt over it being ‘exclusionary’. I’ve seen threats to flood the tag with explicit content and I seriously hope that doesn’t happen! Hollers and Brieviel make a good thing here.
Hi there! Holmes here (one of the aforementioned Instigators)—your wife very kindly brought your article to my attention, and we were delighted to read your fair handling of the situation here. It’s been fun to see the tag so well-received by creators and readers alike who find themselves craving Christian fellowship in this specific area. Over 1,300 tagged fics on AO3 this morning.
It’s also provided some good opportunities to sharpen up our Scriptural rhetoric in answering people’s concerns and objections. Your affirmations that direction in this article were very encouraging, thank you.
-H
I don’t know, most of my fanfictions don’t mention Christianity directly. For example, many of the stories are about Danny Phantom who is a teen who fights ghosts. Even though my stories are family-friendly, I am not sure that a story about ghosts, however cartoonish the source material is, qualifies. I have put direct references to Christianity in my Spider-Man stories, but Marvel canon has done this in the past as well. Even so, I’d hesitate to call those Christian stories as it is more of that the story has inherited my Christian viewpoint, rather than it being written as a witnessing tool. But then, I’m also a Christian who doesn’t put a Christian bumper sticker on my car because I don’t speed and this makes people mad. So I worry if I used this tag Christianity might be blamed for my “average” writing skills.
I’ll admit that I am not a Christian, so this forum is likely not my place, but I wanted to express some genuine concern I have with the Salt and Light tag as it was brought to my attention.
1: The question of what a “Christian Story” even is. Especially in the context of Fanfiction. Previous examples of Christians taking non-christian media and trying to re-shape it to their whims tended to come out… Poorly. (Such as the unauthorized re-telling of Hamilton by the Door McAllen Church; which flattened its characters significantly, butchered many of the show’s great songs in their attempts to “Sanitize” it, were FLAGRANTLY homophobic, and flattened many of its characters in very uncomfortable ways. Or something like Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles, which is more just corny than openly offensive.
2: I fear that this will lead more to communities being further isolated rather than intermingling. Christian Authors and Readers will search exclusively for works in the Salt and Light tag, quietly assuming that literally everything else on the site is mindless pornography, and Non-Christian readers in fandom will either avoid or simply not be exposed to any story written by christian authors BECAUSE all of them are held in an insulated community. This will likely lead to a degree of hostility on both sides, Christians looking at Non-Christians as “Sinners” and Non-Christians looking at Christians as “invaders” in their usually inclusive space.
3: The very title of this article, and its statement “Christian Fanfiction Writers Fight Porn” really, REALLY gives me a unpleasant sense for the kind of thing that Salt and Light will turn into. A Conservative Self-Parody preaching on Christian topics and doing very little else, and really, truly serving as that “Invader” that many people fear it would become. Since Fanfiction is a place where Race, Creed, Color, Sexual Orientation, or Gender Identity DOES NOT MATTER so long as you can write good fanfiction.
I do hope that more Christian writers are able to come into fandom, exposing others to new ideas, and being exposed to new ideas, but I fear that Salt and Light does quite the opposite of this.