#(which is my default assumption)

[idontmindifuforgetme]

i’m literally so bad at telling stories bc midway through i’m always like “no one really gives a fuck about this” and i want to shut the fuck up. how do people do it

[sangfielle]

i dont associate w the type of trans dude that says shit like that purposefully but it doesnt even matter cuz every time im like "yea im not a misogynist so i dont have this problem" i get dudes in my inbox telling me that im a female and im defined by my sex like thats supposed to get me on their side. brother i think youre the one thats weird about trans men

[transmaverique]

"TME privilege" and "AFAB privilege" do not exist in a meaningful capacity. non-transfems are fully capable of and often do leverage transmisogyny against transfems in queer spaces. that is a real dynamic that exists. but i think it's a huge mistake to treat lateral bigotry as another privileged/oppressed axis

... in my experience, these phrases serve only one purpose

"TME privilege" and "AFAB privilege" equate you with cisfemininity. a trans man uses his assigned sex to gain sympathy from cis women to hurt trans women. an ftx enby has more privilege than a trans woman, bc they are interchangeable with cis women

they flatten our experiences with transphobia and ignore the massive span of gender expression we have. a trans man is not usually capable of "utilizing his ASAB", he is more likely to be isolated and mistreated bc of his transmasculinity. an ftx enby can look like fucking anything, not every nonbinary person looks like or are treated like women - and when they ARE it certainly isn't a privilege.

what is really meant when someone says you have "TME privilege" or "AFAB privilege" is that they think you have cis privilege. whether its the privilege of being perceived as a cis man or a cis woman, that is what they mean. to me, this is like saying a closeted trans woman is benefited by the patriarchy bc she is treated as a cis man. maybe that is true in some very very limited capacity but her transness will ALWAYS be present and her transness will ALWAYS come before her supposed "male privilege". MY transness will always come before my supposed "TME privilege".

[missmagooglie]

You know, call me a bitter old spinster or a hairy-pitted loud mouth feminist or whatever, but truely and genuinely I do wish that as a society we hadn't moved on quite so quickly from the idea of a woman keeping her own last name when she married a man.

Like, not even in a way where I'm advocating for or against it, but in a way where I wish it were seen as more of an active choice rather than a default assumption.

There's a lot of instances in my real world life that make me feel this way, but it's in media, too. Like. I'm not UPSET that Maddie Buckley changed her name to Maddie Han when she and Chim got married, but they're a pretty non-traditional couple (they're a little older, they already have a kid together, she has a lot of baggage from her first marriage, they spent several years committed-but-not-planning-to-marry until the tax accountant intervened, etc) and it feels like something that could at least have been a conversation, you know? Even a single line to show it's something she thought about and actively wanted, or an off-hand mention from Chim that maybe both of them should take "Buckley Han" to match Jee Yun, and Maddie assuring him that Buckley is technically Jee's middle name so they'll all have the same surname if Maddie sticks to just "Han". Or hell, even as a little treat to all us Buckley Parents Hate Club members, a line about Maddie thinking it's more important for the world to see her as Jee's mom and Chim's wife than as Philip and Margaret's daughter.

Just, some demonstration that no matter what you ultimately decide to do, it's normal to think about, it's normal to talk about, and it's normal to treat taking your spouse's name as a choice rather than a foregone conclusion.

[sancta-seraphina]

actually fairly down tonight but it's whatever i guess

[akkivee]

AHHHHH I'm up for reasons, just realized I went past midnight, and took a listen to the new BAT songs. HNNNGG!! FIRE. BUT it actually hit me just now, I didn't make the connection before, but Kuko's delivery in Terminus straight up sounds like its a Sutra. It makes me think of those videos of monks doing the Heart Sutra with a backing beat, hype shit. The flow is more or less consistent, though it does like to flow back and forth between Sutra and Rap which is REALLY neat, and oh man, symbolism started to hit as well, just like in the progression of the genres of Kuko's solos. 1) Gay Bam: VERY CHAOTIC. Its scat, its 80s dance aerobics, its Peter Pan crowing, its flirty. Its like something you'd see at Eurovision or whatever. 2) YGOTS: Punk Rock!! YG is more cohesive in tone throughout, but since its a rock song there is still that rebellious energy there. And then 3) Terminus: Rap and Preaching have become one. The energy is completely different and it just hits different flat out and it feels like something important has happened within him.

here were my wins from the drama track btw like it’s hilarious how hard i won with this drama track but one teeeeeeeeny tiiiiiiiny little detail fueled that much upset LMAO

like it rounded off so much: the reason why shakku and kuukou butt heads so much, what kuukou is willing to do to protect his family, jyushi and hitoya stating how much they see each other as family and them fighting to keep that bond together when it’s kuukou who pushed them away, jyushi’s truest self and the change being himself brings, hitoya resolving to ‘hate the sin not the sinner’ when choosing to fight for justice, and bat outright saying they want to guide the people LIKE ITS ALL OUT THERE NOW 😭😭😭😭😭

and i think there’s still room to show more with kuukou as well with the holes presented in the track!!!! and yeah, kuukou and jyushi’s pink isn’t necessarily in relation to women in their lives but both of them sharing the power to change minds with the power of words, as we esp saw jyushi do in this track WE ARE JUST GETTING STARTED FR WITH BAT NOW 💜💜💜💜💜

[shoutsindwarvish]

what if i brought my magen david rainbow flag into work but also buy a desk-sized palestinian flag to put next to it so that people know to stop wishing me merry christmas but also don’t make any other assumptions

i’m almost definitely not going to because it’ll be striking a hornet’s nest but getting so fucking tired of how much my team is openly assuming everyone is christian (complete with multiple explicit mentions of the church and jesus himself in our last meeting of things/people that coworkers were grateful for)

like yeah it would be inappropriate for me to bring politics to work and will probably make people uncomfortable but THEY STARTED IT

[pichupurin]

My assumption:

You are a sweet mom that will watch and be invasted watching cartoons togheter with kids xD

Yes? No? XD

Absolutely, yes xD

Maybe even a bit too much, pfff, I've watched Puss in Boots the Last Wish like 5 times by now, and only 2 of those times I actually watched it with my kid

[haarute]

i know that this is like a thing for everyone on some level, but i feel so genuinely distressed and paranoid thinking about what image of me people have in their minds and i can't move on past that

[prokopetz]

So what about FATE? How is it not universal as an RPG?

The biggest non-universal dimension of FATE – at least in its modern incarnations – is that it has a very strong set of baked-in assumptions about the relationship between players and player characters.

This is something I've talked about in the past; to somewhat oversimplify, there are roughly four ways for a player in a tabletop RPG to relate to their character:

The Isekai Stance: I am my character, and my character is me. I'll have my character do whatever I myself would do if I happened to be, for example, an elf wizard.

The Actor Stance: I'm an actor, and my character is my role. I'll have my character do what I feel it would be psychologically realistic for them to do under the circumstances.

The Storyteller Stance: I'm a narrator telling a story, and my character is the co-protagonist of that story. I'll have my character do whatever I feel would make for the most interesting story.

The Gamer Stance: I'm a person playing a game, and my character is my playing-piece. I'll do whatever it takes to win.

This generally isn't a useful way to classify either players or games; games typically have weak baked-in assumptions about which stance their players will adopt, and to the extent that these assumptions are present, a game may make different default assumptions for different parts of play. A common set of assumptions is actor mode outside of combat and gamer mode in combat, for example.

FATE is, of course, an exception to the rule, in that it has very strong baked-in assumptions about what stance players will adopt toward their characters, and further assumes that play will occur at least mostly in this mode. The Fate Point economy that forms the core of the gameplay loop 100% assumes that you're going to be playing in storyteller nearly all of the time – the types of decisions it's asking players to make on a moment-by-moment basis are frequently straight up unintelligible from any other perspective.

This is a big part of why suggesting FATE because it can "do anything" can go over like a lead balloon: the folks making this suggestion aren't taking into account the possibility that a given group's players may not vibe with the system's assumptions about how players relate to their characters. Storyteller-mode-all-the-time is actually a fairly uncommon group play style, and it often seems that FATE fans don't realise this!

[ceilidhtransing]

I've cropped out the username because I have absolutely no desire to start drama or make a personal “callout” or have people go harass someone or anything like that (and if you take this kind of thing as an opportunity to go and be horrible to another Tumblr user then that is terrible and you should stop), but wow, I have never seen such a clanging example of amatonormativity. I don't think OP necessarily meant it this way, I don't think they meant any harm, I don't think they're consciously arophobic or something - it's far more likely that they're simply unfamiliar with aspec issues, and I always prefer to assume good faith - but I want to talk about this post anyway because it provides a really good and explicit example of the way society just sort of... asserts the centrality of romantic attraction and entirely forgets aromantic people exist.

I do want to first say that I actually agree with the initial point this post is making. Romance as a genre is unfairly derided as some kind of “lesser” form of art, and this derision very frequently comes with generous helpings of misogyny. I totally agree that romance is not at all an unintellectual or superficial thing to write about, and it's bad that it gets treated that way and that readers and writers of romance get so often mocked and condemned. Romance is a totally valid genre and enjoying it doesn't make you vain or stupid or superficial.

HOWEVER. As an aromantic person I find the rest of the post just... I don't know, it's just so perfect as a probably unwitting expression of baked-in cultural amatonormativity. It's brilliant. It's so funny to me. I can almost do a line-by-line breakdown of the way it so completely forgets the existence of aromantic people. In fact, let's do that.

It is so fundamental to us. The issue here should be pretty obvious. The assumption that romance is some integral part of The Human Experience and that it's fundamental to All People is pretty much amatonormativity 101. It reinforces the idea that people who don't experience romantic attraction are “lacking”, forever sitting apart from The Human Experience, and possibly in some way not quite fully human, since we don't experience the thing that is apparently so fundamental to humans.

To want to love and be loved. The post seems to be incorrectly equating “romance” with “loving and being loved”, when in fact there are many people who don't experience romantic attraction yet absolutely love and want to be loved. (And of course loveless aros, aplatonic people, various folks who don't “want to love and be loved” also exist, and it's important to emphasise that this desire, just like romantic attraction, is also not necessarily integral to all people.) “Love” is not automatically “romantic love”, but this post seems to imply that romance is the only, or default, form in which love can exist.

If you don't think every great work of literature. philosophy. metaphysics. was ultimately about romance. I don't think you were paying enough attention. OK this is the line that elevated this post from “sigh, more casual amatonormativity to scroll past” to “I just have to respond to this”. Where to even begin with this assertion. This is a level of “assuming romance is central to everything humans ever do and ever create” that I've almost never encountered before. It feels like a manifestation of the tendency for alloromantic people to declare that, because romance is very central for them, it is thus central to Everything. And I'm homing in on “romance” because the post doesn't say “ultimately about love” - which would still be a reach, but less of a reach - it specifically says “ultimately about romance”. As an aromantic person who is an academic at heart and highly educated in the humanities and social sciences, the idea that my ability to understand literature and philosophy and metaphysics is somehow greatly hampered by the fact that I don't experience or relate to romantic attraction is just... what??? This idea is really very funny to me but also genuinely pretty insulting, even though I'm sure it wasn't meant that way. Not only does it feel like the summation of every patronising “oh, you couldn't possibly understand” directed to aromantic adults who are, in fact, entirely capable of understanding, but it also flattens the incredible breadth of human intellectual experience into “being about romance”. I sometimes find myself wishing that alloromantic people would peak outside the bubble of amatonormativity and realise that actually, there is an enormous swathe of human experience and intellect and creativity and expression that has nothing at all to do with romantic attraction and romantic relationships. And no, stating that, I don't know, the Book of Job is not actually about romance has nothing to do with our society's misogynistic denigration of romance as a genre; it has everything to do with the fact that the Book of Job is not actually about romance. (And if you aren't familiar with Job or for some reason don't consider it a “great work of literature”, replace with whatever other example you can think of; there are many.) It's insulting to imply that aro-spec and/or ace-spec people are somehow less able to participate in art and literature and philosophy etc because we might bring a perspective that doesn't include romance or sex at all and we're just not capable of understanding that Actually Romance And/Or Sex Is Central To Everything. It's genuinely absurd to argue that all the pinnacles of human intellectual achievement really, at their core, come back to romance, and it speaks to our very blinkered society's tendency to declare things like “everything is really about sex” or “everything is really about romance” or “everything is really about breakups” or whatever and then look at aro-spec and ace-spec people like we're aliens and go “but like... how do you even live?” Newsflash, there is so much more to life than romance and love and sex. You can live an entire, very fulfilling, very meaningful, very thoughtful life without these things being at all relevant to you. That's not to dismiss those things as minor or unimportant - they are indeed very central to a lot of people's lives, and they're not “dumb” or “shallow” or whatever - but they're not central to everyone's lives, and they're hardly The Only Things In The World.

And if your response is something along the lines of “well OK there's a tiny minority of people who don't engage with romance and/or sex, or relate to it in the same way most people do, but that doesn't mean that romance isn't still at the core of humanity, or that all the most important things don't still have romance at their heart”, imagine telling a woman that “well, you can focus on a career if you want, but what's really fundamental to being a woman is being a wife and mother - in fact, motherhood is the most important thing in the world, it's fundamental to women, it's what all women's literature is about”. Or, hell, telling a person of any gender that “parenthood” is the central pillar of all of humanity and that every great work of art ever produced is ultimately about parenthood and obviously parenthood is fundamental to everyone's being - forgetting that actually some people will never be parents, and implying that their childlessness makes them less able to understand The Human Experience. That might give you some small idea of what it's like to be an aspec person and be repeatedly told that feelings you don't experience and relationships you don't have and attractions you don't relate to and acts you don't engage in are somehow Fundamental To Humanity and are what lie at The Core Of Everything: how excluding that is, how alienating that is, how oppressively stifling that is.

Feeling that love and/or romance and/or sex are very important to your own life is totally valid, but I wish alloromantics and allosexuals could be more capable of opening their minds and imagining and empathising with an existence for which these things aren't central. Our lives aren't lesser, or emptier, or sadder, or shallower for lack of romance or sex. Our experiences are part of The Human Experience. Our perspectives on art and life and relationships and philosophy and humanity and everything else are just as valid. We are just as capable of profundity, of creativity, of insight - because romance and sex aren't “at the core” of any of these things. We are here, and we're tired of being forgotten, ignored, sidelined, dismissed, erased, talked over, talked past. It would be great if society at large actually remembered we exist once in a while, and that our lives are just as beautiful and important as anyone else's.

[inkskinned]

okay if you're really cool about things, i can be honest with you. before you read further, decide if you're a girl's girl. if you're cool and actually cool or like not cool.

men don't talk in my book because i was fuckken tired of the way they're the center of every fucking story. i was tired of how every story takes a moment to let them talk. men can shut up for literally one fucking book.

unfortunately not everyone is cool. professionally what i usually say is i didn't want to add violence to the world. the only men in my book are abusers, so they don't get to talk. they don't get to take up space. they ruined my life, they don't get to have their words echo anymore.

because like, yeah! you find practically any story about a person surviving trauma and... there's a man at the center. men are often rescuing us from these things. a "good man" is always standing around, being a good man, proving to the victim that good men are the real men. that her experience was unique rather than universal.

the redacted text has not been taken well by all of my early readers. there is this weird, crouching growl that keeps occurring with men-of-a-certain-age. why don't we hear his side of the story?

when i sat down to write everything that happened to me, i couldn't look at the frank brutality of my abuser's words on a page and think to myself: i actually let him speak like that. i had to redact his words from the manuscript. i then left it redacted. no victim is going to read this book and hear the person who hurt them. it is a book for the victims to speak. abusers shut up challenge, forever. for eternity.

my father once told me, chuckling, i should just have a page of redaction where i let the man just finally talk. it is funny to joke about how we should make a whole page in my book about a man that hurt me. this was not the only time someone commented - it feels like you're hiding things. how do i know you're actually a victim if he doesn't get to speak?

there are books where women aren't even present. i even genuinely like some of those books. like, who doesn't like the hobbit?

i keep running into people defending this imaginary man. the default narrative is so true to some people that they will defend any man, just by virtue of the assumption - "if he's acting like that, you had to push him." certain people need definitive proof that you didn't accidentally make your partner into an abuser. they need to decide if you deserved it, because they want to be able to judge you.

which makes sense, i guess, from a hind brain perspective. if you can figure out "why" someone was cruel, you can protect yourself against it. if you defend the bully, the bully might side with you. i don't really know their explanation for feeling this about a character in a book. trust me, i wrote the guy. he is not going to protect you.

i guess i just - there was a time in my life where i desperately wanted anyone to defend me. where i could have really used someone saying holy shit are you okay instead of what did you say to make him act like that to you.

instead, over dinner, a friend-of-a-friend i just met is pouring herself wine. i heard you wrote a book, she says. she gives me the kind of chilly smile i associate with knives. i heard it's unfair to men.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I was raised by a single dad and sometimes he wouldn’t ask for help or admit he was overwhelmed with us because people just assumed by default that he was incompetent or something.

I’ve also noticed that people seem to just assume by default that I didn’t get enough love or something growing up because I was raised by my dad. Which is just? Absurd? My dad loves me so much and makes sure I know it.

Yeah he made some mistakes but every parent does. I don’t like this assumption that single parents and single dads in particular are incompetent by default.

And I’ve noticed that people seem to assume single mothers don’t need help. Like they’re expected to do everything alone. It’s like embarrassment stops single parents from getting the help they need no matter what gender they are but for different reasons. The outcome is the same. The little family gets isolated from people who could help. And that’s not a good thing.

[cripplecharacters]

Does Your Scarred Character Have to Hate Themself?

[large text: Does Your Scarred Character Have to Hate Themself?]

(TLDR: No.)

A frequent topic that shows up around facial differences is the self-hatred, self-disgust, self-insert-negative-emotion that we must surely experience. I want to ask* writers without FDs - why? Why do you feel about us in such a way that that's the most common way of depicting us?

*- rhetorical question. I promise I know the answer, but I'm not sure if writers do.

It's frankly worrying to me. Is it really that common to assume that disabled people have this internal, never-ending hatred for themselves? The overwhelming majority of us don't. We hate inaccessibility, when people stare, or some symptoms when they get in the way, or how expensive being disabled is, but I find the concept of us being so completely disturbed by our own disabilities extremely strange. It’s “tragedy porn” intersecting “most basic ableism”.

“But trauma!”

[large text: “But trauma!”]

Trauma of what! People with facial differences don't have some sort of default trauma that we come with like it’s a factory setting. We are a group of people with tens of thousands of stories and experiences.

“Trauma of experiencing ableism/disfiguremisia” - that's better, at least this means something. If you're writing a story about this, please get a sensitivity reader with a facial difference. You can assume how we feel all you want, but in my experience these assumptions are often bizarre and unrealistic. Or just end up writing the same “disability so sad” sob story that everyone has seen a billion times. If you want to write about disfiguremisia, you need to understand the nuance and have more than just the basic level knowledge (which 99% of people don’t have either). If you can’t do that, don’t write about it. Simple as that.

“Trauma of the accident” - thankfully, the accident is an event and a facial difference is a disability. If you want to connect these two like they're one and the same, you're almost surely going to demonize disability. People with traumatic spinal cord injuries, acquired amputees, people with TBI, people with acquired facial differences - we participate in our communities, we have hobbies, we date, we play with our dogs. Disability isn't a death sentence. Media who make it feel like it is certainly don't help people who do suddenly become disabled, don't you think?

Here's a post by @blindbeta about blind characters becoming blind through trauma that’s better made than anything I could hope to write here. I heavily recommend giving it a read.

And, I can't stress this enough - most of us didn't have “the accident”, most of us are born like this. "Traumatic scars" isn't the only facial difference that exists, far from it, it's only one of thousands. It's 99% of our representation and "representation". If you want to make a character with FD - please consider that we aren't a monolith. Just like not all physical disabilities are "wheelchair user with paralysis and somehow no other symptoms", not all facial differences are "traumatic scar with somehow no nerve damage".

The overrepresentation of it is incredibly telling, and sometimes - or very frequently - feels like the writer doesn’t actually even want to deal with us. They want to use our disability as a way to cheap drama, moral metaphors, tragic backstories. Not to represent us as living people who are much more similar to you than you apparently think.

Now, I do have enough awareness to know that that's a big part of the appeal. “Horrific Thing #2456 happens” and boom, instant drama. Of course, it's a reasonable response that they would hide their disability for years, avoid talking about it in any way, and magically change their personality to be mean and reclusive, or at least be constantly soooo sad about how much it sucks to be disabled, right?

Do I really need to say that having your character becoming disabled be the worst thing ever is ableism 101? We have been talking about this for so long at this point. Writing about the process of adapting to a specific disability is better left to people who have actual experience in it.

To give an example that will hopefully resonate more with Tumblr users, I will use the fact that I'm also gay. It's not perfect by any means but probably much more familiar territory.

Imagine, let's say, a character. He's gay. The story he's in is supposedly progressive, certainly not trying to be homophobic. The character has experienced an incident, maybe an act of aggression or a hate crime, that happened because he’s gay, which was traumatic. Happens IRL, sure. So of course the character starts hating being gay. He talks about how gross and disgusting it is, he never lets anyone know that he could be “one of them”, certainly not take a stance against homophobia. You can't mention him without mentioning the accident, they're seemingly fused together. No gay love, joy, even basic happiness, he would actually choose to be straight in a heartbeat if given the option to and complains that he can't. This is shown as a neutral, obvious thing that a gay man would do, no one comments on it. He stays like this the whole time, unless there’s a plot twist in the last 10 pages where the world is now magically perfect ("we fixed discrimination, yay!"). This is the only LGBT character in the story.

Keep in mind that there are people similar to this in real life, living with extreme internalized homophobia.

Reading comprehension quiz time: Is this, in your opinion, realistic and thoughtful representation? How does it feel when written by a cishet writer, versus a gay writer who is recalling his experiences? Do you think that it's reasonable for the majority of media representation to be like this, or very close to it? How would it affect younger gay people who might already be uncomfortable with being queer? Are gay men the target audience, or are they not even considered as a group of people who read books? Is this helping or damaging the general public's idea of how it is to be gay? Why or why not?

The Masterpiece

[large text: The Masterpiece]

From 13 to 19 of May, we are celebrating Face Equality week (what a coincidence!). It’s important to me in general - and I wish it was more important to abled people, but I digress - especially its theme for this year.

“My Face is a Masterpiece”

Great statement, it represents the community well, I do enjoy how bold it is. Very cool stuff, I love the work our advocates are doing.

But why do I bring this up?

Well, to very non-subtly show that we aren’t a self-hating group of people. We are a community, a community saying “our faces are beautiful, look!”, we are saying “treat us equally, and do it now!”. Our activism isn’t about self-disgust. It’s about fighting your-disgust. 

Why can’t writers keep up? Why are you still stuck decades behind?

Is this the only reason I bring it up?

The Call to Celebration

[large text: The Call to Celebration]

FEI, the org behind organizing it, asks a very simple question (emphasis mine):

“Why do we so often see stories about facial difference as a ‘tragedy’, when they should be about triumph?” “Calling all artists, allies, creatives, galleries.  You can rewrite the story to bring about #FaceEquality and celebrate the unique artistry found in every face. Your participation this #FaceEqualityWeek will help to tell the real story, that there is a masterpiece in every face.”

Here. We are calling for you to stop. Directly from the biggest international advocacy alliance group that's out there. If you create, this is for you.

The last argument to not have your character with a facial difference hate themselves? Because we don’t want this. We are tired and frustrated. For me personally, I’m also offended by this kind of assumption. We aren’t tragedies or cheap entertainment for abled people to pity or be horrified by. We are people, and if you can’t internalize that, you have no reason to write about us.

For once, celebrate us. Happy Face Equality Week!

mod Sasza

[aurorasulphur]

Disclaimer: none of these answers are official, and may not work for your particular use case. If there is a specific feature that an unofficial app had that you don't know how to replicate on the AO3, let me know in the notes and we might can crowdsource a solution.

A lot of people used the Archive Reader app to access stories on Archive of Our Own, and have been upset that the app is now charging to read longer than an hour a day. AO3 (and its parent organization, the OTW) has made it extremely clear in recent days that this app is unofficial and that there *is* no official app. They encourage people to use the website.

However, there are MANY reasons you might want an app, and in a bunch of those cases, there are ways to do those things without having to provide your login information to a random person running an app. Here is a round-up of solutions to the most common reasons I've seen people give for wanting an app instead of the plain AO3 website.

These solutions are based on the following assumptions:

You know what Archive of Our Own is

You often or primarily access it through a mobile device running iOS or Android

You understand what a browser is

You understand what a browser bookmark is

You understand what a site skin is

Edits:

Edited to clarify that you must be logged in to use custom site skins

Edited to add more tips and tricks from the reblogs

Edited to add new entry about notifications/emails

Edited to add new entry about reading statistics and the tracking thereof

I need a widget on my phone's homescreen, not just a browser bookmark.

You can do this with any website, not just AO3! Instructions here: https://www.howtogeek.com/196087/how-to-add-websites-to-the-home-screen-on-any-smartphone-or-tablet/

I need Dark Mode.

AO3 has a default site skin for Dark Mode, it's just called Reversi. Find it here, or at the bottom of any page on the website. https://archiveofourown.org/skins/929/

If you'd like Dark Mode on your whole browser (and you're on Android), sorrelchestnut has advice here: https://www.tumblr.com/sorrelchestnut/737869282153775104/if-you-want-dark-mode-and-dont-want-to-mess

I need to be able to read stories when I don't have internet.

Every work on the AO3 has a download button, so you can click on that and download the story for offline reading in the ereader app of your choice. More info on how to do that is in the AO3 FAQs: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/downloading-fanworks?language_id=en#accesslater

I need to be able to change the text size of the website itself.

If you have an AO3 account (and you should!!) you can do this with a personalized site skin! There is a simple tutorial here: https://www.tumblr.com/ao3skin/667284237718798336/i-have-a-request-if-you-dont-mind-could-you

I need to be able to change the text size in downloaded stories.

My personal recommendation: Don't download in PDF format. All the other formats you can download in can scale the text size up and down, assuming you open the work in the correct app. For me, I download works in EPUB format and read them on the built-in Books app on my iPhone. I hear good things about Moon Reader on Android as well.

I need to be able to replace Y/N in fics with an actual name.

ElectricAlice has a bookmarklet for that here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34796935

I need to be able to save specific tags and not have to search them up every time.

If you have an AO3 account (which you definitely should) then you can favorite up to 20 tags which will appear on the landing page. The AO3 FAQ explains how that works: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#favtag

I need to be able to save specific filters and be able to apply them to any tag.

Reisling's beautiful bookmarklet has you covered: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33825019

I need to be able to permanently hide certain tags.

The best option is adding this to your site skin. (Must be logged in.) Instructions here: https://www.tumblr.com/ao3css/719667033634160640/how-to-permanently-filter-out-certain-tags-on-ao3

I also hear things about the AO3 Enhancements extension (just for Android/desktop, sorry iOS folks): https://www.tumblr.com/emotionalsupportrats/686787582579851265/browser-extension-everyone-on-ao3-should-know

I need it to save my place on the page and not reload.

This is really mostly a browser error--Firefox on iOS does this to me A LOT. Your best bet is to download the work and read it in an ereader app. A lot of people also will make an ao3 bookmark and write in the notes section which part they were at, but that assumes you aren't falling asleep while reading. (Which is the main reason I have this issue, lol.) For more info on bookmarks, see the FAQ: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/bookmarks?language_id=en#whatisbookmark

I need it to keep track of which stories I've already read/opened/kudos'd.

If you have an account (which you should) then the "My History" page keeps track of every fic you've ever clicked on. No, it isn't searchable or sortable, but it does exist. For fics you've kudos'd, I have yet to find a solution for iOS. For desktop or Android, you can use this excellent userscript: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/5835-ao3-kudosed-and-seen-history

@the-sleepy-archivist and @inkandarsenic have a solution for iOS here to use userscripts: https://www.tumblr.com/the-sleepy-archivist/737895174683885568/this-is-a-great-guide-one-thing-i-can-help-with and https://www.tumblr.com/inkandarsenic/737827438571192320/the-user-scripts-will-also-work-on-ios-there-are

I need an app because the website's search is terrible.

(I genuinely don't understand this one but I have seen it multiple times so on the list it goes!!) The search bar at the top of the screen is a keyword search. If you'd rather search within a specific field (like title or tag) then you'll want to click on the word "search" at the top of the screen and select Work Search or Tag Search. To search users, use People Search. To search Bookmarks, use Bookmark Search. (If this is you, please tell me what the heck you mean by "search is bad" and how an app helped with this.)

I need to be able to sort stories by date posted/number of bookmarks/alphabetical/etc.

You can do this using the filters sidebar. Pick a tag you want to filter on (like a fandom, character, or relationship) and then click on the "Filters" button. The sidebar will pop out and you can sort and filter on a boggling array of specifics. A good filtering guide: https://www.tumblr.com/saurons-pr-department/718665516093472768/if-there-is-something-you-dont-want-to-see-in

I need to be able to mark stories to read later.

AO3 has this feature built in! If you have an account (which you should) there is a "Mark for Later" option on every work.

Edit: Thispersonishuman reminded me that History and Mark For Later can be disabled, so if you're not seeing the Mark for Later option, check your settings.

I need to be able to listen to stories using text-to-speech.

Microsoft Edge web browser has a built in text to speech function. Supposedly it works on both iOS and Android, but I have not personally tested that. iOS also has a native accessibility feature in settings for text to speech that will work on the Books app, so I assume Android has a similar functionality. A bunch of people in the reblogs have more in-depth Android recommendations here: https://www.tumblr.com/protect-namine/737957194510794752/seconding-voice-aloud-on-android-for-tts-my, https://www.tumblr.com/smallercommand/737884523093704704/i-use-voice-for-tts-on-android-its-got-some, and https://www.tumblr.com/doitninetimes/737869463749263360/for-text-to-speech-on-android-you-can-also-check

I need to have in-app notifications for updates/I can't ever find story updates in among the rest of my emails/checking my email stresses me out.

Set up a separate email address using a free service like gmail, and use that email address JUST for AO3. Then the only emails in that inbox will be your story updates. I use Apple's Mail application for all my inboxes, but it's very easy to use the Gmail app instead, and you could log in to JUST the ao3 email and set it to notify for every email.

(Also as a general PSA: don't use your work, school, or military email as your AO3 email. Just don't.)

I want statistics like how many hours I spent reading, how many words I read, what my most read tags were, stuff like that.

So we've finally hit something that isn't easy and that requires a hell of a lot of manual work. Short version: AO3 does not track this data because they don't want to. (Mostly due to privacy concerns.) The lack of this tracking is a feature, not a bug. You can crunch these numbers yourself, but it will take a hell of a lot more effort, and it's something I personally found is not worth the effort the couple of times I have tried to crunch those numbers. If you are willing to download your history to an actual computer (not a tablet or chromebook) using Calibre, you can get a rough idea of your most popular tags via their tag browser, but it won't play nice with typos synned to a Common Tag (Canonical Tag/filterable tag) like ao3 does. (If anyone has used an app that gave you stats on this, please let me know in reblogs/replies/via ask how that worked because I am very curious.)

I need an app because <other reason>.

The AO3 Unofficial Browser Tools FAQ might cover your use case: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/unofficial-browser-tools?language_id=en If not, give a shout and we'll see what other tumblr users suggest!

[utilitycaster]

Others have noted this but there really is something so elegant about how Campaign 2 walked through undoing a lot of D&D players' assumptions about certain types of humanoid creatures that had often been declared evil by default (and, at the time, still were in D&D books), and running into a drow in the sewers is a good time to talk about this:

Fjord, Nott, and to an extent even Molly and Jester deal with this, though Jester's upbringing and the comparative attitudes of the Menagerie Coast make her less affected. Fjord is explicitly an exploration of someone who grew up with such intense racial prejudice he is engaging in self harm regarding his tusks well into adulthood. Throughout, we see multiple positive examples of orcs and half-orcs, and while Fjord himself entirely bucks the stereotypes as written in D&D lore, as a lawful good person who is considerably better talking through problems than through raw strength, the orcs we see in the Empire and Dynasty run the gamut, just as humans or elves do. Nott is of course complicated, as someone who was attacked by goblins, and it is understandable that she doesn't want to remain in a body that isn't hers, but her own prejudices are challenged by Wensforth and the various goblins and goblinoids in the Dynasty. Even the Dynasty, in which Drow are in no way seen as bad or evil and are indeed the "default", has struggled with how they see goblins as perhaps second class, and Skysibyl Mirrim has been said to have been fighting against that prejudice, having been consecuted and reborn as a goblin in this life. Prejudice isn't simply ignored or swept beneath the rug, but the idea that there are inherently evil races is directly challenged and disproven by the text and in-world.

And then of course there's the drow. The Mighty Nein go from the casual cultural references to them as "Cricks" and learning a book in which a romance between a soldier of the empire and one of the dynasty is illegal, even though the romance ends tragically, to learning that the beacons are important culturally and choosing to let a Dynasty soldier go, to eventually reaching Asarius and later Rosohna, and learning that there is an entire other country that is as flawed and complex as the Empire, and full of regular people living their lives, and even becoming people entrusted by both countries to end a war between them.

I think Critical Role has mostly done a decent job of avoiding the worst of the "orcs and goblins are MONSTERS" attitudes. It's not infallible: the curse of Strife remains, in my mind, a somewhat clumsy attempt to justify it, and Vox Machina's campaign had heroic half-orc guest PCs but little else - they did not for the most part have to kill hordes of goblins (I think the cast has even said that for the most part, they fought bandits early on) or kobolds, but the lore contained goblin raids and kobold servants of Thordak. Campaign 2 not only deepened this complexity but overturned a lot of D&D norms, and did so with aplomb.