starkerficlibrary

[starkerficlibrary]

The Fanfic Author’s Guide to Metatext

(As Used on Ao3) by Eiiri

Also available as a PDF here. This thing is 13,000 words.  The PDF is recommended.

Intro: What is Metatext?

Metatext is everything we fanfic authors post along with our story that is not the story itself: title, tags, summary, author’s notes, even the rating.

It is how we communicate to potential readers what they’re signing themselves up for if they choose to read our story, how we let them make informed decisions regarding which fics they want to read, how we get their interest and, frequently, how they find our story in the first place. A lot of metatext acts as a consent mechanism for readers, it’s the informed part of informed consent.

Since most of us who write fanfic also read it, we understand how important this is! But, for the most part, no one ever teaches us how to use metatext; we have to pick it up by osmosis. That makes it hard to learn how to use it well, we all suck at it when we first start out, and some of us may go years without learning particular conventions that seem obvious to others in our community. This creates frustration for everybody.

Enter this guide!

This is meant to be a sort of handbook for fic writers, particularly those of us who post on Archive of Our Own, laying out and explaining the established metatext conventions already in use in our community so we (and our readers!) are all on the same page. It will also provide some best-practices tips.

The point is to give all of us the tools to communicate with our audience as clearly and effectively as possible, so the people who want to read a story like ours can find it and recognize it as what they’re looking for, those who don’t want to read a story like ours can easily tell it’s not their cup of tea and avoid it, nobody gets hurt, and everybody has fun—including us!

Now that we know what we’re talking about, let’s get on with the guide! The following content sections appear in the order one is expected to provide each kind of metatext when posting a fic on Ao3, but first….

Keep reading

[starkerficlibrary]

PSA regarding tumblr’s latest Censorship Nightmare

For those of you who haven’t seen this announcement, tumblr recently made some changes to the iOS version of the app, purportedly to comply with Apple’s content guidelines. These changes took effect on Dec 21, starting in version 22.5.1 of the iOS app. As some of you may recall, Apple’s strict guidelines were the driving force for the infamous Great Purge of 2018, which coincidentally also happened around this time of year, but it seems banning all of the female-presenting nipples wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Below is a summary of the important changes. Note that these changes technically ONLY affect those using the iOS app. If you’re accessing tumblr through a different app or operating system (Google Chrome, Android app, etc) it won’t affect you directly but it will affect your followers who use iOS so you should definitely be aware of it.

The list of banned tags has been expanded. As before, there’s no way to know which words or phrases have been banned until you try searching for them, in which case you’ll either get no search results or the following message: “This content has been hidden because of potentially suggestive or explicit content.” You may think this doesn’t concern you if you don’t post explicit material, but do not make the mistake of expecting the banned tags to be logical or reasonable. I’ve already encountered multiple completely innocuous posts (random fandom gifsets) that seem to be hidden on iOS for no discernible reason.

Blogs that have been flagged as explicit can no longer be viewed. Previously, flagged blogs just had their posts hidden from searches, but if you knew the username you could still visit it after clicking through a warning about sensitive content. Now you can’t access it at all.

Likes and reblogs from blogs that have been flagged will no longer show up in your notes. This one won’t affect most people’s user experience as much as the others, but it does mean you may be missing notes. It’s unclear if likes and reblogs from flagged blogs will still count towards the overall note total (and only be missing from the activity feed and note viewer) but I suspect that’s the case.

THE BIG ONE: ANY POST TAGGED WITH A BANNED TAG WILL NO LONGER SHOW UP ON YOUR DASHBOARD. Previously, if you tagged a post with a banned word or phrase (even if the words were used inside another tag), that post would not show up in searches, but your followers would still be able to see it on their dashboard. Now those posts are hidden from your own followers as well. This includes both original posts and reblogs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the real kicker: even if you don’t tag something with one of the banned words, if the OP used a banned tag, any reblogs of that post will not show up on anyone’s dashboard (on the iOS app). The only saving grace here, and I hate to even call it that, is that the blocked posts are still visible if you visit a blog directly or if you have post notifications turned on.

As usual, tumblr was extremely unclear and evasive about all of this in their official announcement. Not surprising, of course, since if more people were aware of these new draconian tactics I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be more of an uproar about it. Tumblr claims that these changes are somewhat temporary and that they are currently working on something that will allow for a less restricted iOS experience, but they refuse to say what that something is and when it will be implemented. And let’s just say, considering their track record, I’m not hopeful.

All of this is horrible and infuriating for many reasons, but the worst part is how insanely counterproductive it is to creating the “safe” environment tumblr (or more specifically Apple) supposedly wants.

Tags have always been used for both blog organization and filtering purposes. Tagging posts with triggers and content warnings is a common practice that gives users the ability to filter out content they may find upsetting or just don’t don’t want to see for whatever reason. By choosing to ban a bunch of unlisted “sensitive content” tags, all they’re doing is encouraging people who want to share that kind of content to come up with alternative less well-known tags or simply not tag that content at all anymore if they want it to show up on their follower’s dashboards, thereby making it more likely for someone to encounter it when they didn’t want to.

So really, with all of the alleged concern for safety and “protecting the children,” all they’ve done is make tumblr less safe for everyone. Typical.

[starkerficlibrary]

[starkerficlibrary]

I understand feeling like the Wattpad thing isn’t a big deal if all you posted there was work you feel is silly and ridiculous now. But you did the work regardless and no one else should profit off of that. You may not ever want to see the work you posted on Wattpad again, but no one else deserves to profit from it just because Wattpad decided to cash in. Remove your stuff from the website, do a search for your content in case someone else posted it for you, and send them a goddamn takedown notice. This is a shitty thing to do to young writers, and if it’s not pushed back against, it will only get worse.

[starkerficlibrary]

For anyone who hasn't heard yet, Wattpad has signed a contract to allow ViacomCBS (Paramount+) to mine story concepts, characters, universes, original content and events to be turned into 'original adaptions' for major streaming sites such as Netflix and Hulu.

The Verge article. FMT article. Variety article.

Quotes of note: "Massive global IP and data catalogue." "Data-backed storytelling." "A new era of data-backed entertainment."

Wattpad TOS regarding copyright and content ownership.

[starkerficlibrary]

Struggling to envision how a reference will look as stylised art? Struggling to find shading references or color palettes?

I personally find it helpful to enter my image as a PicsArt project, use the Oil Painting FX and apply anywhere from 5-7.

This can be a helpful base, especially if you're just learning.

[starkerficlibrary]

Hello!

The library is run by @starkeristheendgame (Jensen.)

Are you that blog that can find fics? Or is that someone else?

are you talking about @starkerhelpline or @starkerficlibrary? i don’t run either one of those (or any fic finding accounts) !!

[starkerficlibrary]

Different Ways to Appreciate Fanfiction

I'd like to prefix this by saying that none of these are obligatory, and that I'm making this solely because I've seen multiple people discuss wanting to be able to show more appreciation for creators/fanfiction but not knowing how. So, here are a few suggestions on things you could do;

Kudos This is the one-click button that lets the creator know you enjoyed their content. When you hit the kudos button, the creator gets notified and your kudos gets added to the numerical statistics of the work. Its a super easy way of saying; 'Hey, I enjoyed this, thank you!'

Comment Comments can be anything from a single emoji to a detailed account of your thoughts and experience reading the work. There's no minimum word count, there's no obligation to include specifics when commenting. You can even just mash the keyboard and leave it at that.

Recommend/Share This is the absolute best thing you can do for a piece of content, in my opinion. Especially here on Tumblr, where circulation and the lifespan of content relies heavily on it being shared. You can reblog the upload, or you could review the fanfic, or you could simply say; 'I really enjoyed this work, here's the link so you can check it out.' You don't even have to do it publicly. You can just message your friends.

Moodboards Making a moodboard is easier than you think! Most smartphones have a 'collage' option in the camera gallery, and there are multiple free sites online or on the app stores that let you create moodboards. Honestly; the hardest thing about moodboards is finding the perfect images or deciding where in the moodboard to put them.

Edits The term 'edit' encompasses a wide variety of media. It could be a still edit, where you've photoshopped a 'base' image to look like the characters. It could be a fan video, where you've curated clips and audio to make it resemble the fanfic content, it could be gif edits too. The options are near limitless. You could also make 'cover posters' or 'banners' for the work, which can be as simple as putting text over a base image.

Fanart There's a common misconception that only detailed, multi-layered digital art is 'worth it,' especially in terms of fanart for someone's fanfiction. That's a bold-ass lie. You could draw stick figures on paper and any creator worth their salt would adore your efforts. All art has value. It doesn't have to be extravagant or perfect.

Aesthetic Boards If you have a Pinterest account or an account on a similar platform, you can curate images inspired by the fanfic or images that represent/fit the aesthetic, plot or events of the fanfic. This might even be especially helpful to someone looking to make a moodboard of the work.

Playlists You can create shareable playlists for the work as a whole, specific chapters or specific events/scenes. Who knows, maybe you'll even be the reason the creator or another viewer discovers their new favorite song!

Podfic This is one of the more complicated options, but alongside showing appreciation for a work podfics also help people who can't or who struggle to visually consume fanfiction. Podfic-ing can be pretty time consuming, but you can start with as little equipment as the voice recorder on your phone and a quiet room.

[starkerficlibrary]

Channel Mixer for Recolouring Gifs

For @the-mother-of-lions​​ and anyone else that may find this useful here is a tutorial on how to use channel mixer on photoshop or photopea to adjust colours. Channel mixer allows you to change colours within existing colours using the principles of red/green/blue light rather than the colour wheel, which lets you add colours that don’t exist to a gif, or change the distribution of colours.  

This tutorial refers to hue/saturation and selective colour adjustment layers, which you don’t need to to understand this tutorial. However, they’re extremely useful to use together with channel mixer, or to try if you can do what you want to do without channel mixer, which is frankly a little bit fiddly and complex. 

I’m going to turn this:

Into this: 

I can’t use hue/saturation or selective colour because the lake has no existing colours to pick up on, and even the sword barely has any. I can fix the sword with saturation or vibrancy, but that won’t change the lake. I’m going to use channel mixer to add colours instead. Let’s get going beneath the cut. It’s long, sorry, because it’s a slightly complicated concept and depends on a good understanding of colours and light. 

Keep reading

[starkerficlibrary]

This is an amazing idea that would help a lot of people, including library blogs like this one. It takes less than twenty seconds to enter your work into the Wayback Machine and it means there's an archive of your work of its ever deleted, accidentally or for whatever reason.

Hi! I wanted to share a thought with you. I’m editing my ao3 bookmarks and while I’m at it, I’m dropping the link for the entire fic into the Wayback Machine. If we all did this, we could save a lot of fics that will otherwise be lost.

That is a very good idea, thank you for sharing and for being an internet archivist!

[starkerficlibrary]

Hi! I’m looking for a fic I read on AO3 about retired tony who lived in Italy working a coffe shop and college student Peter doing a semester abroad in Italy. I believe it has daddy kink in it if that helps! Thank you so much

Please, it took me so long to find this I nearly started crying, I was going through lists of tags and it turns out it was right on the past page of ‘Italian Tony Stark’ I’m so mad. 10/10 this work it extremely worth it, though!

La Luce Dei Miei Occhi | @starkerchemistryy Tony's retired and in Italy, and it's there he meets adorable Peter Parker Rating: Explicit | Wordcount: 14,551

[starkerficlibrary]

hi! i’m looking for a fic i read on tumblr semi recently (still a work in progress). basically, tony gave peter a list of sexual acts he had to fulfill before he would date him (here’s the list: (1) lose the v-card, (2) have your throat fucked so hard that you can't speak, (3) get gangbanged by more than two people (4) public sex somewhere risky and (5) painful bdsm). i remember the guy who fucked his throat was thor, and that it sort of ended on a cliffhanger. i know it’s NOT “the list of things i’d do for you is never ending” on ao3, but i can’t seem to find anything else like it. please let me know if you find anything, and i so appreciate the work that you do for this community!! 💕💕

Hiii, I absolutely know that one. You’re looking the wonderful;

The List | @tonystarkisaslut Tony doesn’t do first times, not anymore. Which is why he turns Peter down. Little does he know, his spider will do anything to be with his mentor. Rating: Explicit | Wordcount: 7921

You can also find individual chapters on Tumblr.

[starkerficlibrary]

i’m looking for a fic where peter ends up getting trafficked and tony saves him..? i cant really remember then he adopts peter and starts taking care of him. then one night peter sneaks into tony’s room and sucks him off because he wants tony happy and that’s the only way he know how.

Hey, bae!

You’re looking for; In Loco Parentis | ru17 Tony took in an orphaned boy in need of a home and got a lot more than he bargained for, and the whole thing was Steve's fault. Rating: Explicit | Wordcount: 22,250

[starkerficlibrary]

Hi there! I read a fic a while back and I can't remember if it was here or on AO3 but I cannot find it for the life of me... but it was A/B/O with dad Tony and son Peter and their dog in heat. And like, Tony showing Peter how to fuck and then following and knotting the dog... I'm really hoping I didn't fever dream it because I haven't been able to find it on any of the blogs that I follow or on AO3. 🙈

What’s up, buttercup?

You’re looking for;

My Boy | RutiliantDarkness It was a delicate art, the manipulation of this child. He raised a smart, deep-thinking boy and he knew he needed to be careful and respect that of his son. “Daddy, please no. She’s a dog, she’s not a human,” Peter whimpered, fat tears already pooling in his eyes. Rating: Explicit | Wordcount: 1765

[starkerficlibrary]

I don't wanna squick you out, (incest cw) but theres a fic I'm looking for where Tony and Peter are father and son and Peter creates a fake dating profile. Peter finds Tony's profile on there and basically catfishes his own dad. Can you help me please?

Hello, honey-o!

You’re looking for;

A Familiar Stranger | @starker1975 Peter's tired of being single, but online dating scares him, so he creates a fake profile to scope out the playing field before fully committing. He isn't sure what to think when he sees his dad's profile on the app. Rating: Explicit | Wordcount:  107622

[starkerficlibrary]

I’m looking for this fic i read on ao3 a while back. It was the ride home after Germany, and after Tony told Peter to turn off the camera, he called peter a tease and blamed him for his own erection. Tony ended up manipulating him into feeling guilty and giving him a handjob which then turned into a blowjob. Any help would be really appreciated!

Hiii, sugarpie!

You’re looking for;

You Did The Right Thing | @starker1975 Tony is riding with Peter in the backseat on the way home from Germany. He asks Peter do some things once the camera is off.

[starkerficlibrary]

Might I take the liberty of recommending;

Teenage Kicks | Narryfavoritejiall Peter never expected to spend summer like this and he never expected to be this heartbroken and love him at the same time. But, Tony's right, they need to forget this ever happened and what they did together. Or the one where Tony's 20 and Peter's 18 and they fall in love in a wrong lifetime where they're relatives. Rating: Explicit | Wordcount: 14,666

i just realized out of all of the starkercest content out there, i have never seen a cousin/cousin pairing 👀 and I so badly want it 🥺 pleasee ????

peter meeting tony in a family gathering and finding him so hot/cute & cool and instantly wants to stick by his side as much as he has the chance to 👀

or maybe it could be peter having his cousin as his idol figure of some sort and when they've grown up, it turns into a crush then falling in love 🥺❤

or for spicy: tony realizes his cute lil cousin that he's been close to for so long (who's now in his bedroom, sitting in his bed and playing a game from his laptop) has grown to be an adorable twink he wants to pin down in his bed and rail 😩❤

idk i just think tony hiding his boner (in multiple ways) from his cousin is neat 🤷‍♀️❤

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