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8. The Up-And-Coming: go to a Fandom or pairing you like. Edit Your Search, enter >100 in the Kudos box, sort by update date descending.

Upside: newer fics of generally decent quality (if it's a popular fandom, you may need to change the Kudos minimum to 200, 300, etc).

Downside: lots of in-progress fics, so if you want closure, you're SOL.

1. Newbie  Find fandom on AO3. Skim down the most recent fics in the fandom. Downside: Overwhelming, much chaff.

2. Old School Go to specific fandom. Sort by kudos. Start at the top. Downside: Oldest fics tend to have the most kudos, also things that update a lot or crossover with more popular fandoms. Newer stuff gets lost.

3. Rebel Go to specific fandom. Sort by kudos. Start at the end. (Note: some actual gems can be found this way, but it requires much patience.)

4. Ravenous Go to specific fandom. Read everything. Not recommended for Very Large Fandoms. Can be done with newer, smaller fandoms.  Downside: lots of mediocre fic in many fandoms.

5. Specialist Go to specific fandom. Search for a specific pairing. Exclude every pairing you don’t like. Exclude keywords that you dislike. Exclude all crossovers in general or specific crossovers if your fandom has a natural crossover (i.e. Doctor Who/Torchwood, Stargate SG1/Atlantis). Sort by bookmarks.  Downsides: you miss some newer good stuff, but starting from the top the first chunk of fics are likely to be very good and exactly what you want.

6. Goblin Click on a tag you like in a fic you just read. Go to the exclude section and start eliminating fandoms you’re not interested in, saying in a squeaky goblin voice, “Not you! Not you! Not you!”. Filter. Repeat until the top fandoms are all things you like and there are no more than a handful of fics in other fandoms represented. Back up when AO3 balks. It takes a while, so if you’re in Very Large Fandoms, this is a great method, and if you like obscure fandoms, not so much. Exclude pairings and tags you don’t like. Eliminate all unfinished fic. Sort by bookmarks. Start reading. Downside: Periodically get thrown by a random fandom you’re not in showing up anyway. Get jarred by switching fandoms constantly.  Upside: Variety of really good fics that people liked enough to bookmark. What’s your method?

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My nickname in Japanese is almost exactly the word for "bike", so you can imagine my confusion when my classmates when I studied abroad had conversations about their daily commutes each morning.

When I studied abroad, I thought my host family just had difficulty pronouncing my name. They didn’t try very hard before deciding that they’d just call me Brahim and be done with it.

This kept happening no matter where I went in Morocco. Even fluent English speakers decided to give me alternative names, and I just shrugged it off as the consequence of one of the syllables being very unusual in Arabic.

That is, until one day I was talking to a shopkeeper in the souk and he asked me my name. I gave him my English one, and explained that I also answer to Brahim (and Daud, and… more than I can remember). He laughed hysterically and looked shocked, calling his friend over from the back of the shop.

“Tell him your name,” he said excitedly. I did so.

The other man’s face cycled through several expressions very quickly—surprise, anger, suspicion, and then exasperation when he realized his friend had set me up.

They very kindly explained to me that my name spoken with a Moroccan accent sounds very much like an Arabic profanity, and that I should definitely introduce myself as Brahim or give an alternative English name when meeting new people, because shaking hands with strangers and saying “Hello, I’m Fuck Your Mother’s Religion” is not a greeting that will win me many friends.

So. Brahim it was.

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This is how I cry lately

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does anyone else automatically fill in "demand satisfaction" when ted allen introduces chopped with "the challenge"

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Relocating: http://pillowfort.io/ChaoticStupid

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The trick is to walk on tiptoes/put all the weight on the ball of your foot.

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Heralds of Valdemar grew out of the love young girls have for horsies

I love how you can tell what a fantasy book grew out of.

Middle-Earth is built on words. It’s built on grammar and linguistics and poems.

The Song of Ice and Fire is built on history books and politics.

Discworld is built on stories and on tropes turned inside out and a whole lot of righteous fury.

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I went to high school with Kelly Marie Tran. We didn't share any classes, but our friend circles overlapped a lot.

let’s talk about our random links to celebrities!

serena william’s husband once bought me & my classmates a round of whisky

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I had to have two rounds of wisdom teeth surgery because my mouth is hella fucked up. But on at least one of these occasions, I INSISTED that my mom take me to In-N-Out for a double-double and a strawberry shake, because I was starving. Mom had to stop me from drinking the shake through the straw on the way home, so I wouldn't suction the stitches out or whatever reason it is you can't use a straw after mouth surgery.

How did I eat the burger, you ask? Two words:

Ketchup

Blender

Man okay when I got my wisdom teeth out it was a fucking experience. Before the surgery wasn’t too interesting but as soon as I woke up I saw the nurse next to me and was all like “hey… i think… i died… and now I’m in a parallel universe… and i gotta go back to my house and kill the me from this universe” and he was just kinda like “alright, you do that”. And then the other nurse kept going in and out of the room to get things and I thought there was like 5 of her that kept coming out of the room, and then so when she was wheeling me out in a wheelchair I was like “damn… why are there so many of you… there’s like 5 many of you” and she was just kinda like “alright, you do that”.

Anyway I got to the car and my dad was there and he was like “how ya feeling son” in the dadliest way possible and I was like “MAN I AM PUMPED LETS GET SOME JUICE I’M STARVED” so we drove about 3 blocks to a jamba juice, whereupon I say “I’m good I can do this” and run/drunkstumble 30 feet to the door. I burst in the door like a viking returning from some fucking battle and holler “WHATS UP FUCKS” to everyone in the store, which was thankfully just the 2 people behind the counter, who looked probably as scared/confused as a jamba juice employee could look.

So anyway, as my dad explained the situation I looked up at the jamba juice menu and was utterly fucking lost in it. Like I swear I was looking at this menu board for a year, deciphering this Rosetta stone of fruits. I distinctly remember that I was looking at each item in a smoothie, thinking of how it tasted, then moving on to the next thing and thinking of how that tasted, and how they would taste together. Since most smoothies had 3 or 4 items, this took some thinking. So my dad sees me in this extreme brain blast state of mind and says “hey are you going to order or what”. Keep in mind I’m on the first fucking smoothie on the list here. So I just say “shush man I’m trying to do fruit science”, and then when I realized that this process could take literal years, I just said “yeah give me a smooth regular” which for the uninitiated, isn’t actually a real thing on any menu. Oh, also I asked them if the “boosted” smoothies would give me super powers and then pointed my fingers at them and made “lightning noises”.

So my dad just orders me the first thing on the menu and I go to sit down and stare out the window or some shit and my thoroughly amused dad just looks at me and says “how ya feelin?”. Now at this time I was feeling a lot of things, but most noticeable to me was the gauze in my mouth, so I just look at him and say “there’s these fuckin… tiny sheep in my head” which at the time was the best way I had to convey this feeling. Anyway about that time, the jamba juice guy brings us our drinks and he gives me a small thing of mario kart stickers and I swear I almost cried from the tsunami of emotion that gift made me feel (I still have them).

Anyway the rest of the story is we drove home and I explained this programming project I was working on to my dad in perfect detail somehow and then I came home and went on facebook and posted a comment on my friends status (because I couldn’t find the status update bar) that read: “i just took a lort of painkillers and yelled at everyone in a jambo juice”

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reblog and make a wish! this was removed from tumbrl due to “violating one or more of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines”, but since my wish came true the first time, I’m putting it back. :)

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I read A Child Called It at maybe 12 years old? And I got that at the library. It was traumatizing but I read it anyway, because itwas fascinating. When I was maybe 13, I picked up my mom's romance novel from the kitchen counter and read the entire thing in a few hours, not quite understanding why the love interest made the protagonist "wet" between her legs, but knowing that it was Forbidden Sex Stories I was reading, it was thrilling to read it without mom knowing. When I was 15, I discovered Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage series in my school library. In the last book (iirc), the MALE MAIN CHARACTER is BRUTALLY GANG RAPED.

When I was 17, my mom caught me reading a VERY nc-17 Harry Potter fic on RestrictedSection. Did she get up in arms with the website and blame them for having explicit material where a child could access it? Of course not. She was upset with me, because I LIED ABOUT MY AGE to access material that I was not supposed to. (I still haven't told her that I had been reading smut fics since I was like 13.)

Honestly the argument of comparing ao3 to real books with that content fails b/c those books aren't about children or marketed towards them. Like you had to be 18+ to see 50 Shades in theaters, elementary books don't have erotica, I doubt my 13 yr old sister could go to library and rent something nsfw. But sites like ao3 don't have age markers not to mention are about literally children. There's no similarities.

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When I was 15, I had a crush on a friend-of-a-friend in the year above me at school

He was a class clown, played the flute, and had similar interests.

I guess I was pretty obvious about it, as 15-year-old girls are... wistful AIM away messages and whatnot.

He IMed me once.

"You have a crush on someone, don't you?"

"LOL, am I that obvious?"

"Yes, it's kind of annoying."

He never acknowledged if he knew it was him. He never really spoke to me again. A year later, he did a promposal for a girl who was also my friend, and I was in the classroom at the time.

I'm almost 30, now. And I am still holding back tears as I type this. I still think it's the worst thing in the world for someone to find out I am romantically interested in them. I still think I am annoying and not worthy of love.

I'm still friends with that guy on facebook.

Be careful what you say to someone, especially at that age.

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Ugh I really want to dye my hair lilac

But I asked my manager and she said no because it's against dress code

And the dress code is stupidly vague, like "anything that stands out" is forbidden which is ridiculous

Like that one girl's fire engine red streaks are ok, but I can't dye my hair lavender for two weeks?

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May all your friends’ schedules sync up when you want to play D&D

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"Everyone's starter anime is death note" like come on. I was full-blown weeaboo by the time death note came out. Sailor moon was definitely my first anime. I spent all my limited time on our dial-up internet looking at sailor moon fan pages. I read my first fanfic (a sailor moon OC) at probably age 9?

And I remember most of the trivia I learned back then. In 2012, I was an intern for a cultural exchange program for Japanese university students, and one of the students had been in a sailor moon musical as a kid.

Her: just a minor role, though. one of chibi moon's sailor guardians. the blue one

Me: oh, you mean pallapalla.

Her: ...how do you know this.

Everyone’s starter anime is death note.

I don’t count sailor moon or dbz cuz you watched those as a kid and assumed they were cartoons.

I mean when you got “into” anime fully aware of what it was and actually became immmmmmersed in this bizarre weeb culture.

It’s usually death note.