grumpyoldsnake

[grumpyoldsnake]

Refiguring some things, which means this scene is probably gonna get cut, which means I'm sharing it with yall

[grumpyoldsnake]

Day 3: The Weaver

Showing off her work!

(Check out my ko-fi! I have a shop and exclusive perks for supporters! https://ko-fi.com/bethdehart )

[grumpyoldsnake]

remove brain

[grumpyoldsnake]

First 10 Attacks (first two are revenges for last year)

Sea-rumble • toxinlem • TheSirPentious • Ifas • @jazzyjordo14 • Dornenschweif • NukeFur • Jream • R-ätzz • EvergreenDreams

[grumpyoldsnake]

Bart | AF 2025 - 08

A very quick attack on @entitybear’s character Bart!

[grumpyoldsnake]

Are you still recommending older sci-fi books? What can you recommend that is like The Murderbot Diaries? Thanks!

I'm always down to do so!

For a book about the emotional angst of rogue runaway slave-robots, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is genuinely really good, and quite different in several ways from the movie Blade Runner so even if you've seen Blade Runner there's a lot of value here. Kind of ponderous and has a touch of weird 60s new-agey-ness to it, but vivid and creative.

For a book that fits the VIBES really well, The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold is one I keep recommending, starting with The Warrior's Apprentice (or the Young Miles omnibus collection). There's not a lot of topic overlap besides a human-only spacefuture covering lots of different planets and governments, but the spirit feels very similar in its really fun characters, fast-paced plots, and wildly varying and deeply fascinating spacefuture societies. Miles Vorkosigan is like... the opposite end of the same spectrum Murderbot is on: Miles is physically disabled (which is a huge, continuous plot point) but a child of nobility, and highly charismatic, and solves his problems by talking his way into even bigger problems. There's a similar feeling of a protagonist desperate to prove themselves against their perceived untrustworthiness by society around them, and getting into Adventures while trying to establish what their role is in their worlds.

And I haven't read The Culture Series by Iain M Banks but I know it follows a galaxy-spanning human civilization with superintelligent AI ship-minds who love their humans, post-scarcity anarcho-communism, and genderfluidity.

[grumpyoldsnake]

first day as a small-town sherif and you discover that some of the convicts you're transporting managed to escape in the night and since the penalty for letting prisoners escape is death, and the penalty for being late because you were looking for escaped prisoners is also death, you decide to free ALL of them and go hide out in the wilderness for a bit, except the convicts are super grateful so they make you their leader and it turns out they're decent guys who were exploited by a tyrannical government, so long story short you're crowd-sourcing for a peasant uprising and would anyone like to chip in?

3650th day and due to a series of unforeseen events you are now the emperor and founder of the han dynasty.

[grumpyoldsnake]

[grumpyoldsnake]

I know tag wranglers do a lot of work connecting tags etc. Is there anything authors can do to make their jobs easier for them like trying to mostly use canonical tags or not making tag comments?

Thanks!

This is a great question, and I'll do my best to answer it but I do hope that some wranglers add on in the notes! I'm also just going to preface this with the fact that you should still tag however you like to tag. This list isn't meant to be a checklist or anything. It's just info I've picked up over the years and you can take or leave each piece as you see fit.

Okay, so the first thing that most non-wranglers should know is that wranglers see tags separately from the fic. They get a big bin full of tags to sort through and match up in the system, but they'll only see your fic and the other tags you've added to it if they decide to go look.

That's important to know because sometimes a user will tag something like [character] is so sexy and then also tag by which I mean they're a huge dork. The wranlger won't see that second tag and won't know that they're connected so your sarcastic tag will end up synned (matched up to) sexy!Character or whatever the canonical is, as if that was the meaning you were going for.

Another good thing to know is that tags can only be synned if they only have 1 idea in them. So if you tag, say, [character] is gay and autistic then the wrangler can't actually syn that to either [character] is gay or character is autistic because it only half-fits either tag. To have them synned in the database, you would need to tag those two ideas separately.

You might have already seen the post I made referencing the fact that you don't have to tag multiple versions of the same idea (unless you want to for the aesthetic) because the synning that wranglers do makes sure that tagging one idea allows users to filter for all versions of that idea. But in case you didn't know that, now you do!

Wranglers are often members of the fandoms they wrangle, but they aren't always. Sometimes they'll take on a fandom that doesn't otherwise have a wrangler because they like to do research or because they like small fandoms or for many other reasons. But that means that if you're tagging your OCs by name, you should add (OC) to the end so that they know it's not a canon character that they aren't familiar with. This is double true in huge fandoms like Star Wars where there are millions of canon characters and just as many OCs.

Wranglers don't "seed" tags in fandoms. For a tag to exist, users need to create it. The rule of thumb is at least 3 fics from 3 separate authors, but that's very much the minimum and in fast-moving or huge fandoms the bar is probably higher. Also, for brand new fandoms, it's entirely possible that they won't know you exist until you tell them. Back in January I was the first person to write in a brand new fandom so I knew I had to start the tags, and I waited until there were 25 or so works by 15 or so creators before I emailed Support because I know I have to be patient - but I'm still impatient by nature lol.

Another thing to know is that tags are kind of like proton packs - they can't cross the streams. If you put a tag in the Character field by mistake, wranglers can't move it to the Additionals. This can also work in your favour, though, because if you have a minor character or minor relationship that you want to tag because there's some kind of fandom drama happening and people want to be able to avoid them, you can tag them in the Additional Tags so that people can know they're in there, but the people who like that character or ship can still filter the Character and Relationship tags without seeing a bunch of works that don't really focus on them.

This got super long, so I'll end with your question about tag comments. I know people worry that it makes extra work for tag wranglers if you get all chatty in your fic tags but I've been reassured by more than one wrangler over the course of several years now that it's no extra work. They just shovel those tags into the gaping maw of the Unfilterable Beast - which is the same thing they do with those tags that have multiple concepts in them. If it can't be synned, then that's where they go.

(keep tagging that way, though, if you like to because that's how new concepts get created and eventually canonized)

Alright, I that's all I can think of off the top of my head, and the list was actually longer than I thought! Wranglers: please do add on with other things you wish users knew, and please correct me if anything has changed since the last time I delved into this topic!

[grumpyoldsnake]

Oh good grief.

Just realized that one issue with having an apostrophe in a main organizational tag is that apostrophe types separate to different tags.

So:

Other people’s art

Other people's art

Are two different tags.

Thank goodness tumblr has integrated a mass tag editor now, but oof. When a computer defaults to one and the phone to the other, keeping that tag unified moving forward will be a pain. >_>

[grumpyoldsnake]

a valkyrie’s resting spot

[grumpyoldsnake]

art club: 23/02/25 Exteriors with added figures! It's a pain when your boss doesn't tell you how big the job really is.

[grumpyoldsnake]

FOR PARENTS OF YOUNG KIDS IN THE US!

Someone over on bluesky posted this and I figured I'd better repost it here. It's the pre-RFK 2025 vaccination schedule for babies and young children, ya know, just in case it mysteriously disappears. Save this and give it to your child's pediatrician; tell them this is the schedule you want your child on.

[grumpyoldsnake]

Alter | AF 2025 - 07

An attack on @passimtemere's character Alter! As OwlKat puts it: "He's coming to say "Hi! I heard you had snacks! No? Oh well you'll just have to do.""

OwlKat revenged with a drawing of Lumen!

[grumpyoldsnake]

Summer Rain, 2025 Art Fight attack on @DourbleDoodles

[grumpyoldsnake]

Rain by N Kayurova

[grumpyoldsnake]

Avian August 2025 - Day 3 - Hawaii 'akepa