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eiirisworkshop · 4 years ago

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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….

Warning!

This is a guide for all authors on Ao3. As such, it mentions subject matter and kinds of fic that you personally might hate or find disgusting, but which are allowed under the Archive's terms of use. There are no graphic descriptions or harsh language in the guide itself, but it does acknowledge the existence of fic you may find distasteful and explains how to approach metatext for such fics.

Some sexual terminology is used in an academic context.

A note from the author:

This guide reflects the conventions of the English-language fanfiction community circa 2021. Conventions may differ in other language communities, and although many of our conventions have been in place for decades (praise be to our Star Trek loving foremothers) fanfiction now exists primarily in the realm of internet fandom where things tend to change rather quickly, so some conventions in this guide may die out while other new conventions, not covered in this guide, arise.

This is not official or in any way produced by the Archive of Our Own (Ao3), and though some actual site rules are mentioned, it is not a rulebook. Primarily, it is a descriptivist take on how the userbase uses metatext to communicate amongst ourselves, provided in the interest of making that communication easier and more transparent for everyone, especially newer users.

Contents

How To Use This Guide Ratings Archive Warnings Fandom Tags Category Relationship Tags Character Tags Additional Tags Titles Summaries Author's Notes Series and Chapters Parting Thoughts

How To Use This Guide

Well, read it. Or have it read to you.

This isn't a glossary, it's a handbook, and it's structured more like an academic paper or report, but there's lots and lots of examples in it!

Many of these examples are titles of real media and the names of characters from published media, or tags quoted directly from Ao3 complete with punctuation and formatting.

Some examples are more generic and use the names Alex, Max, Sam, Chris, Jamie, and Tori for demonstration purposes. In other generic examples, part of an example tag or phrase may be sectioned off with square brackets to show where in that tag or phrase you would put the appropriate information to complete it. This will look something like “Top [Character A]” where you would fill in a character's name.

This guide presumes that you know the basics of how to use Ao3, at least from the perspective of reading fic. If you don't, much of this guide may be difficult to understand and will be much less helpful to you, though not entirely useless.

Ratings

Most fanfic hosting sites provide ratings systems that work a lot like the ratings on movies and videogames.

Ao3's system has four ratings:

General

Teen

Mature

Explicit

These seem like they should be pretty self-explanatory, and the site's own official info pop-up (accessible by clicking the question mark next to the section prompt) gives brief, straightforward descriptions for each of them.

Even so, many writers have found ourselves staring at that dropdown list, thinking about what we've written, and wondering what's the right freaking rating for this? How do I know if it's appropriate for “general audiences” or if it needs to be teen and up? What's the difference between Mature and Explicit?

The best way to figure it out is often to think about your fic in comparison to mainstream media.

General is your average Disney or Dreamworks movie, Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon shows, video games like Mario, Kirby, and Pokemon.

There may be romance, but no sexual content or discussion. Scary things might happen and people might get hurt, but violence is non-graphic and usually mild. Adults may be shown drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco, and some degree of intoxication may be shown (usually played for laughs and not focused on), but hard drug use is generally not shown or discussed. There is little to no foul language written out and what language there may be is mild, though harsher swears may be implied by narration. There are no explicit F-bombs or slurs.

Teen is more like a Marvel movie, most network television shows (things like The Office, Supernatural, or Grey's Anatomy), video games like Final Fantasy, Five Nights at Freddie's, and The Sims.

There might be some sex and sexual discussion, but nothing explicit is shown—things usually fade to black or are leftimplied. More intense danger, more severe injuries described in greater detail, and a higher level of violence may be present. Substance use may be discussed and intoxication shown, but main characters are unlikely to be shown doing hard drugs. Some swearing and other harsh language may be present, possibly including an F-bomb or two. In longer works, that might mean an F-bomb every few chapters.

Mature is, in American terms, an R-rated movie* like Deadpool, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Exorcist, and Schindler's List; certain shows from premium cable networks or streaming services like Game of Thrones, Shameless, Breaking Bad, and Black Sails; videogames like Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto, and The Witcher.

Sex may be shown and it might be fairly explicit, but it's not as detailed or graphic or as much the focus of the work as it would be if it were porn. Violence, danger, and bodily harm may be significant and fairly graphic. Most drug use is fair game. Swearing and harsh language may be extensive.

Explicit is, well, extremely explicit. This is full on porn, the hardcore horror movies, and snuff films.

Sex is highly detailed and graphic. Violence and injury is highly detailed and graphic. Drug use and its effects may be highly detailed and graphic. Swearing and harsh language may be extreme, including extensive use of violent slurs.

Please note that both Mature and Explicit fics are intended for adult audiences only, but that does not mean a teenaged writer isn't going to produce fics that should be rated M or E. Ratings should reflect the content of the fic, not the age of the author.

Strictly speaking, you don't have to choose any of these ratings; Ao3 has a “Not Rated” option, but for purposes of search results and some other functions, Not Rated fics are treated by the site as Explicit, just in case, which means they end up hidden from a significant portion of potential readers. It really is in your best interest as a writer who presumably wants people to see their stories, to select a rating. It helps readers judge if yours is the kind of story they want right now, too.

Rating a fic is a subjective decision, there is some grey area in between each level. If you're not quite sure where your fic falls, best practice is to go with the more restrictive rating.

*(Equivalent to an Australian M15+ or R18+, Canadian 14A, 18A or 18+, UK 15 or 18, German FSK 16 or FSK 18.)

Warnings

Ao3 uses a set of standard site-wide Archive Warnings to indicate that a work contains subject matter that falls into one or more of a few categories that some readers are likely to want to avoid. Even when posting elsewhere, it's courteous to include warnings of this sort.

These warnings are:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Major Character Death

Rape/Non-Con

Underage

Just like with the ratings, the site provides an info-pop up that explains what each warning is for. They're really exactly what it says on the tin: detailed descriptions of violence, injury, and gore; the death of a character central to canon or tothe story being told; non-consensual sex i.e. rape; and depictions of underage sex, which the site defines as under the age of 18 for humans—Ao3 doesn't care if your local age of consent or majority is lower than that.

In addition to the four standard warnings above, the warnings section has two other choices:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

These do not mean the same thing and cannot be used interchangeably. “No Archive Warnings Apply” means that absolutely nothing in your fic falls into any of the four standard warning categories. “Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings” means that you the author are opting out of the warning system; your fic could potentially contain things that fall into any and all of the four standard warning categories.

There's nothing wrong with selecting Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings! It may mean that some readers will avoid your fic because they're not sure it's safe for them, and you might need to use more courtesy tags than you otherwise would (we'll talk about courtesy tags later), but that's okay! Opting out of the warning system can be a way to avoid spoilers,* and is also good for when you're just not sure if what you've written deserves one of the Archive warnings. In that case, the best practice is to select either the warning it might deserve or Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings, then provide additional information in other tags, the summary, or an initial author's note.

Unless you're opting out of using the warning system, select all the warnings that apply to your fic, if any of them do. So if a sixteen year old main character has consensual sex then gets killed in an accident that you've written out in excruciating detail, that fic gets three out of the four standard warnings: Underage, Major Character Death, and Graphic Depictions Of Violence.

*(Fandom etiquette generally favors thorough tagging and warning over avoiding spoilers. It doesn't ruin the experience of a story to have a general sense of what's going to happen. If it did, we wouldn't all keep reading so many “there was only one bed” fics.)

Fandom Tags

What fandom or fandoms is your fic for? You definitely know what you wrote it for, but that doesn't mean it's obvious what to tag it as.

Sometimes, it is obvious! You watched a movie that isn't based on anything, isn't part of a series, and doesn't have any spinoffs, tie-ins or anything else based on it. You wrote a fic set entirely within the world of this movie. You put this movie as the fandom for your fic. Or maybe you read a book and wrote a fic for it, and there is a movie based on the book, but the movie is really different and you definitely didn't use anything that's only in the movie. You put the book as the fandom for your fic.

All too often, though, it's not that clear.

What if you wrote a fic for something where there's a movie based on a book, but the movie's really different, and you've used both things that are only in the movie and things that are only in the book? In that case you either tag your fic as both the movie and the book, or see if the fandom has an “all media types” tag and use that instead of the separate tags. If the fandom doesn't have an “all media types” tag yet, you can make one! Just type it in.

“All media types” fandom tags are also useful for cases where there are lots of inter-related series, like Star Wars; there are several tellings of the story in different media but they're interchangeable or overlap significantly, like The Witcher; or the fandom has about a zillion different versions so it's very hard, even impossible, to say which ones your fic does and doesn't fit, like Batman. Use your best judgement as to whether you need to include a more specific fandom tag such as “Batman (Movies 1989-1997)” alongside the “all media types” fandom tag, but try to avoid including very many. The point of the “all media types” tag is to let you leave off the specific tags for every version.

In a situation where one piece of media has a spinoff, maybe several spinoffs, and you wrote a fic that includes things from more than one of them, you might want use the central work's “& related fandoms” tag. For example, the “Doctor Who & Related Fandoms” tag gets used for fics that include things from a combination of any era of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

And don't worry, from the reader-side of the site the broadest fandom tags are prioritized. The results page for an “all media types” or “& related fandoms” search includes works tagged with the more specific sub-tags for that fandom, the browse-by-fandom pages show the broadest tag for each fandom included, and putting a fandom into the search bar presumes the broadest tag for that fandom. A search for “Star Wars - All Media Types” will pull up work that only has a subtag for that fandom, like “The Mandalorian (TV).” You don't have to put every specific fandom subtag for people to find your fic.

If you wrote a fic for something that's an adaptation of an older work—especially an older work that's been adapted a lot, like Sherlock Holmes or The Three Musketeers—it can be hard to know how you should tag it. The best choice is to put the adaptation as the fandom, for instance “Sherlock (TV),” then, if you're also using aspects of the older source work that aren't in the adaptation, also put a broad fandom tag such as “Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms.” Do not tag it as being fic for the source work—in our Sherlock example that would be tagging it “Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle”—unless you are crossing over the source work and the adaptation. Otherwise, the specific fandom subtag for the source work ends up clogged with fic for the adaptation, which really is a different thing.

By the same token, fic for the source work shouldn't be tagged as being for the adaptation, or the adaptation's subtag will get clogged.

The same principle applies to fandoms that have been rebooted. Don't tag fic for the reboot as being for the original, or fic for the original as being for the reboot. Don't tag a fic as being for both unless the reboot and original are actually interacting. Use an “& related fandoms” tag for the original if your fic for the reboot includes some aspects of the original that weren't carried over but you haven't quite written a crossover between the two. Good examples of these situations can be seen with “Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)” vs. “Star Trek: The Original Series,” and “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)” vs. “She-Ra: Princess Of Power (1985).”

Usually, this kind of mistagging as a related fandom happens when someone writes a fic for something that is or has a reboot, spinoff, or adaptation, but they're only familiar with one of the related pieces of media, and they mistakenly presume the fandoms are the same or interchangeable because they just don't know the difference. It's an honest mistake and it doesn't make you a bad or fake fan to not know, but it can be frustrating for readers who want fic for one thing and find the fandom tag full of fic for something else.

In order to avoid those kinds of issues, best practice is to assume fandoms are not interchangeable no matter how closely related they are, and to default to using a tag pair of the most-specific-possible sub-fandom tag + the broadest possible fandom tag when posting a fic you're not entirely sure about, for instance “Star Trek” and “Star Trek: Enterprise.”

The Marvel megafandom has its own particular tagging hell going on. Really digging into and trying to make sense of that entire situation would require its own guide, but we can go through some general tips.

There is a general “Marvel” fandom tag and tags for both “The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom” and “The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types.” Most of us who write Marvel fic are working with a cherry picked combination of canons from the MCU, various comics runs, both timelines of X-Men movies, and possibly several decades worth of cartoons. That's what these tags are for.

If your cherry picked Marvel fic is more X-Men than Avengers, go for the “X-Men - All Media Types” tag.

If you are primarily working with MCU canon, use the MCU specific tags rather than “all media types” and add specific tags for individual comics runs—like Earth 616 or the Fraction Hawkeye comics—if you know you're lifting particular details from the comics. If you're just filling in gaps in MCU canon with things that are nebulously “from the comics” don't worry about tagging for that, it's accepted standard practice in the fandom at this point, use a broader tag along with your MCU-specific tag if you want to.

Same general idea for primarily movie-verse X-Men fics. Use the movie-specific tags.

If your fic mostly draws from the comics, use the comics tags. If you're focusing on an individual run, show, or movie series rather than an ensemble or large swath of the megafranchise, tag for that and leave off the broader fandom tags.

Try your best to minimize the number of fandom tags on your Marvel work. Ideally, you can get it down to two or three. Even paring it down as much as you can you might still end up with about five. If you're in the double digits, take another look to see if all the fandom tags you've included are really necessary, or if some of them are redundant or only there to represent characters who are in the fic but that the fic doesn't focus on. Many readers tend to search Marvel fics by character or pairing tags, it's more important that you're thorough there. For the fandom tags it's more important that you're clear.

If you write real person fiction, you need to tag it as an RPF fandom. Fic about actors who are in a show together does not belong on the fandom tag for that show. There are separate RPF fandom tags for most shows and film franchises. Much like the adaptation/source and reboot/original situations discussed earlier, a fic should really only be tagged with both a franchise's RPF tag and its main tag if something happens like the actors—or director or writer!—falling into the fictional world or meeting their characters.

Of course, not all RPF is about actors. Most sports have RPF tags, there are RPF tags for politics from around the world and for various historical settings, the fandom tags for bands are generally presumed to be RPF tags, and there is a general Real Person Fiction tag.

In order to simplify things for readers, it's best practice to use the general Real Person Fiction tag in addition to your fandom-specific tag. You may even want to put “RPF” as a courtesy tag in the Additional Tags section, too. This is because Ao3 isn't currently set up to recognize RPF as the special flavor of fic that it is in the same way that the site recognizes crossovers as special, so it can be very difficult to either seek out or avoid RPF since it's scattered across hundreds of different fandom tags.

On the subject of crossovers—they can make fandom tagging even more daunting. Even for a crossover with lots of fandoms involved, though, you just have to follow the same guidelines as to tag a single-fandom work for each fandom in the crossover. The tricky part is figuring out if what you wrote is really a crossover, or just an AU informed by another fandom—we'll talk about that later.

There are some cases where it's really hard to figure out what fandom something belongs to, like if you wrote a fanfic of someone else's fanfic, theirs is an AU and yours is about their OC, not any of the characters from canon. What do you do?! Well, you do not tag it as being a fanfic for the same thing theirs was. Put the title of their fic (or name of their series) as the fandom for your fic, attributed to their Ao3 handle just like any other fandom is attributed to its author. Explain the situation in either the summary or the initial author's note. Also, ask the author's permission before posting something like this.

What if you wrote a story about your totally original D&D character? The fandom is still D&D, you want the “Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)” tag.

What if there's not a fandom tag on the Archive yet for what you wrote? Not a problem! You can type in a new one if you're the first person to post something for a particular fandom. Do make sure, though, that the fandom isn't just listed by a different name than you expect. Many works that aren't originally in English—including anime—are listed by their original language title or a direct translation first, and sometimes a franchise or series's official name might not be what you personally call it, for instance many people think of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series as The Golden Compass series, so it's best to double check.

What if you wrote an entirely new original story that's not based on anything? Excellent job, that takes a lot of work, but that probably doesn't belong on Ao3! The Archive is primarily meant as a repository for fannish content, but in a few particular circumstances things we'd consider Original Work may be appropriate content for the Archive as well. Double check the Archive's Terms of Service FAQ and gauge if what you wrote falls under the scope of what is allowed. If what you wrote really doesn't fit here, post it somewhere else or try to get it published if you feel like giving it a shot.

Category

What Ao3 means by category is “does this fic focus on sex or romance, and if so what combination of genders are involved in that sex or romance?”

The category options are:

F/F

F/M

Gen

M/M

Multi

Other

The F/F, F/M, and M/M categories are for stories focused on pairings of two women, a woman and a man, and two men, respectively. These refer to sexual and/or romantic pairings.

The Other category is for stories focused on (sexual and/or romantic) pairings where one or both partners are not strictly male or female, such as nonbinary individuals, people from cultures with gender systems that don't match to the Western man-woman system, and nonhuman characters for whom biological sex works differently or is nonexistent, including aliens, robots, and inanimate objects or abstract concepts. There are some problems with treating nonbinary humans, eldritch tentacle monsters, sexless androids, and wayward container ships as all the same category, but it's the system we currently have to work with. Use Additional Tags to clarify the situation.

Multi is for stories in which several (sexual and/or romantic) relationships are focused on or which focus on relationships with multiple partners, including cases of polyamory, serial monogamy, strings of hookups with different people, and orgies. A fic will also show as “Multi” if you, the author, have selected more than one category for the fic, even if none of those are the Multi category. Realistically, the Archive needs separate “Multiple Categories” and “Poly” options, but for now we have to work with this system in which the two are combined. Use Additional Tags to clarify the situation.

Gen is for stories that do not contain or are not focused on sex or romance. Romance may be present in a gen fic but it's going to be in the background. While rare, there is such a thing as a sexually explicit gen fic—solo masturbation which does not feature fantasizing about another character is explicit gen fic; a doctor character seeing a series of patients with sex-related medical needs following an orgy may qualify if the orgy is not shown and the doctor is being strictly professional—but such fic needs to be rated, otherwise tagged, and explained carefully in the summary and/or author's note.

Much like the warnings section, category is a “select all that apply” situation. Use your best judgement. For a fic about a polyamorous relationship among a group of women, it's entirely appropriate to tag it as both F/F and Multi. A poly fic with a combination of men and women in the relationship could be shown as both M/M and F/M, Multi, or all three. A fic that focuses equally on one brother and his husband and the other brother and his wife should be tagged both M/M and F/M, and could be tagged as Multi but you might decided not to just to be clear that there's no polyamory going on. If you wrote a fic about two characters who are both men in canon, but you wrote one of them as nonbinary, you could tag it M/M, Other, or both depending on what you feel is representative and respectful.

When dealing with trans characters, whether they're trans in canon or you're writing them as such, the category selection should match the character's gender. If there's a character who is a cis woman in canon, but who you're writing as a trans man, you categorize the fic based on his being a man. If there's a character who is a cis man in canon, but whom you're writing as a trans man, he is still a man and the fic should be categorized accordingly. When dealing with nonbinary characters the fic should really be classed as Other though, by convention, fics about characters who are not nonbinary in canon may be classed based on the character's canon gender as well or instead. When dealing with gender swapped characters—i.e. a canonically cis male superhero who you're writing as a cis woman—class the fic using the gender you wrote her with, not the gender he is in canon.

Most of the time, gen fics should not be categorized jointly with anything else because a fic should only be categorized based on the ships it focuses on, and a gen fic should not be focusing on a ship in the first place.*

*(One of the few circumstances in which it might make sense to class a fic as both gen and something else is when writing about Queerplatonic Relationships, but that is a judgement call and depends on the fic.)

Relationship Tags

The thing about relationship tagging that people most frequently misunderstand or just don't know is the difference between “Character A/Character B” and “Character A & Character B.”

Use a “/” for romantic or sexual relationships, such as spouses, people who are dating, hookups, and friends with benefits. Use “&” for platonic or familial relationships, such as friends, siblings, parents with their kids, coworkers, and deeply connected mortal enemies who are not tragically in love.

This is where we get the phrase “slash fic.” Originally, that meant any fic focused on a romantic paring, but since so much of the romantic fic being produced was about pairs of men, “slash fic” came to mean same-sex pairings, especially male same-sex pairings. Back in earlier days of fandom, pre-Ao3 and even pre-internet, there was a convention that when writing out a different-sex pairing, you did so in man/woman order, while same-sex pairings were done top/bottom. Some authors, especially those who have been in the fic community a long time, may still do this, but the convention has not been in consistent, active use for many years, so you don't have to worry about putting the names in the “correct” order. Part of why that died out is we, as a community, have gotten less strict and more nuanced in our understandings of sex and relationships, we're writing non-penetrative sex more than we used to, and we're writing multi-partner relationships and sex more than we used to, so strictly delineating “tops” and “bottoms” has gotten less important and less useful.

The convention currently in use on Ao3 is that the names go in alphabetical order for both “/” and “&” relationships. In most cases, the Archive uses the character's full name instead of a nickname or just a given name, like James "Bucky" Barnes instead of just Bucky or James. We'll talk more about conventions for how to input character names in the Characters section. The Archive will give you suggestions as you type—if one of them fits what you mean but is slightly different from how you were typing it, for instance it's in a different order, please use the tag suggested! Consistency in tags across users helps the site work more smoothly for everybody.

This is really not the place for ship nicknames like Puckleberry, Wolfstar, or Ineffable Wives. Use the characters' names.

Now that you know how to format the relationship tag to say what you mean, you have to figure out what relationships in your fic to tag for.

The answer is you tag the relationships that are important to the story you're telling, the ones you spend time and attention following, building up, and maybe even breaking down. Tagging for a ship is not a promise of a happy ending for that pair; you don't have to limit yourself to tagging only the end-game ships if you're telling a story that's more complicated than “they get together and live happily ever after.” That said, you should generally list the main ship—the one you focus on the most—first on the list, and that will usually be the end-game ship. You should also use Additional Tags, the summary, and author's notes to make it clear to readers if your fic does not end happily for a ship you've tagged. Otherwise readers will assume that a fic tagged as being about a ship will end well for that ship, because that's what usually happens, and they'll end up disappointed and hurt, possibly feeling tricked or lied to, when your fic doesn't end well for that ship

You don't have to, and honestly shouldn't, tag for every single relationship that shows up in your fic at all. A character's brief side fling mentioned in passing, or a relationship between two background characters should not be listed under the Relationship tag section. You can list them in the format “minor Character A/Character C” or “Character C/Character D – mentions of” in the Additional Tags section if you want to, or just tag “Minor or Background Relationship(s)” under either the Relationship tag section or in the Additional Tags section.

There are two main reasons to not tag all those minor relationships. The first is to streamline your tags, which makes them clearer and more readable, and therefore more useful. The second reason is because certain ships are far more common as minor or background relationships than as the focus of a work, so tagging all your non-focus focus ships leads to the tags for these less popular ships getting clogged with stories they appear in, but that are not about them. That is, of course, very frustrating for readers who really want to read stories that focus on these ships.

If your fic contains a major relationship between a canon character and an OC, reader-insert, or self-insert, tag it as such. The archive already has /Original Character, /Reader, /You, and /Me tags for most characters in most fandoms. If such a relationship tag isn't already in use, type it in yourself. There are OC/OC tags, too, some of which specify gender, some of which do not. All the relationship tags that include OCs stack the gender-specific versions of the tags under the nongendered ones. Use these tags as appropriate.

For group relationships, both polycules and multi-person friendships, you “/” or “&” all the names involved in alphabetical order, so Alex/Max/Sam are dating while Chris & Jamie & Tori are best friends. For a poly situation where not everyone is dating each other you should tag it something like “Alex/Max, Alex/Sam” because Alex is dating both Max and Sam, but Max and Sam are not romantically or sexually involved with each other. Use your judgement as to whether you still want to include the Alex/Max/Sam trio tag, and whether you should also use a “Sam & Max” friendship tag.

Generally, romantic “/” type relationships are emphasized over “&” type relationships in fic. It is more important that you tag your “/”s thoroughly and accurately than that you tag your “&”s at all. This is because readers are far more likely to either be looking for or be squicked by particular “/” relationships than they are “&” relationships. You can tag the same pair of characters as both / and & if both their romance and their friendship is important to the story, but a lot of people see this as redundant. If you're writing incest fic, use the / tag for the pair not the & tag and put a courtesy tag for “incest” in the Additional Tags section; this is how readers who do not want to see incestuous relationships avoid that material.

Queerplatonic Relationships, Ambiguous Relationships, Pre-Slash, and “Slash If You Squint” are all frequently listed with both the “/” and “&” forms of the pairing; use your best judgement as to whether one or the other or both is most appropriate for what you've written and clarify the nature of the relationship in your Additional Tags.

Overall, list your “/” tags first, then your “&” tags.

Character Tags

Tagging your characters is a lot like tagging your relationships. Who is your fic about? That's who you put in your character tags.

You don't have to and really should not tag every single background character who shows up for just a moment in the story, for pretty much the same reasons you shouldn't tag background relationships. We don't want to clog less commonly focused on characters' tags with stories they don't feature prominently in.

You do need to tag the characters included in your Relationship tags.

A character study type of fic might only have one character you need to tag for. Romantic one shots frequently only have two. Longfics and fics with big ensemble casts can easily end up with a dozen characters or more who really do deserve to be tagged for.

Put them in order of importance. This doesn't have to be strict hierarchal ranking, you can just arrange them into groups of “main characters,” “major supporting characters,” and “minor supporting characters.” Nobody less than a minor supporting character should be tagged. Even minor supporting characters show up for more than one line.

If everyone in the fic is genuinely at the same level of importance (which does happen, especially with small cast fics), then order doesn't really matter. You can arrange them by order of appearance or alphabetically by name if you want to be particularly neat about it.

Do tag your OCs! Some people love reading about OCs and want to be able to find them; some people can't stand OCs and want to avoid them at all costs; most people are fine with OCs sometimes, but might have to be in the mood for an OC-centric story or only be comfortable with OCs in certain contexts. Regardless, though, Character tags are here to tell readers who the story is about, and that includes new faces. Original Characters are characters and if they're important to the story, they deserve to be tagged for just like canon characters do.

There are tags for “Original Character(s),” “Original Male Character(s),” and “Original Female Character(s).” Use these tags! If you have OCs you're going to be using frequently in different stories, type up a character tag in the form “[OC's Name] – Original Character” and use that in addition to the generic OC tags.

Also tag “Reader,” “You,” or “Me” as a character if you've written a reader- or self-insert.

You can use the “Minor Characters” tag to wrap up everybody, both OC and canon, who doesn't warrant their own character tag. Remember, though, that this tag is also used to refer to minor canon characters who may not have their own official names.

Just like when tagging for relationships, the convention when tagging for characters is to use their full name. The suggestions the Archive gives you as you type will help you use the established way of referring to a given character.

Characters who go by more than one name usually have their two most used names listed together as one tag with the two names separated by a vertical bar like “Andy | Andromache of Scythia.” This also gets used sometimes for characters who have different names in an adaptation than in the source text, or a different name in the English-language localization of a work than in the original language. For character names from both real-world and fictional languages and cultures that put family or surname before the given name—like the real Japanese name Takeuchi Naoko or the made up Bajoran name Kira Nerys—that order is used when tagging, even if you wrote your fic putting the given name first.

Some characters' tags include the fandom they're from in parentheses after their name like “Connor (Detroit: Become Human).” This is mostly characters with ordinary given names like Connor and no canon surname, characters who have the same full name as a character in another fandom, such as Billy Flynn the lawyer from the musical Chicago and Billy Flynn the serial killer played by Tim Curry in Criminal Minds, and characters based on mythological, religious, or historical figures or named for common concepts such as Lucifer, Loki, Amethyst, Death, and Zero that make appearances in multiple fandoms.

Additional Tags

Additional Tags is one of the most complicated, and often the longest, section of metatext we find ourselves providing when we post fic. It's also the one that gives our readers the greatest volume of information.

That, of course, is what makes it so hard for us to do well.

It can help to break down Additional Tags into three main functions of tag: courtesy tags, descriptive tags, and personal tags.

Courtesy tags serve as extensions of the rating and warning systems. They can help clarify the rating, provide more information about the Archive Warnings you've used or chosen not to use, and give additional warnings to tell readers there are things in this fic that may be distasteful, upsetting, or triggering but that the Archive doesn't have a standard warning for.

Descriptive tags give the reader information about who's in this fic, what kind of things happen, what tropes are in play, and what the vibe is, as well as practical information about things like format and tense.

Personal tags tell the readers things about us, the author, our process, our relationship to our fic, and our thoughts at the time of posting.

It doesn't really matter what order you put these tags in, but it is best practice to try to clump them: courtesy tags all together so it's harder for a reader to miss an important one, ship-related info tags together, character-related info tags together, etc.

There are tons and tons of established tags on Ao3, and while it's totally fine, fun, and often necessary to make up your own tags, it's also important to use established tags that fit your fic. For one thing, using established tags makes life easier for the tag wranglers behind the scenes. Using a new tag you just made up that means the same thing as an established tag makes more work for the tag wranglers. We like the tag wranglers, they're all volunteers, and they're largely responsible for the search and sorting features being functional. Be kind to the tag wranglers.

For basically the same reasons, using established tags makes it easier for readers to find your fic. If a reader either searches by a tag or uses filters on another search to “Include” that tag, and you didn't use that tag, your fic will not show up for them even if what you wrote is exactly what they're looking for. Established tags can be searched by exactly the same way as you search by fandom or pairing, your off the cuff tags cannot.

Let's talk about some well-known established tags and common tag types, divvied up by main function.

Courtesy

A lot of courtesy tags are specific warnings like “Dubious Consent,” “Incest,” “Drug Use,” “Extremely Underage,” “Toxic Relationship,” and “Abuse.” Many of these have even more specific versions such as “Recreational Drug Use” and “Nonconsensual Drug Use,” or “Mildly Dubious Consent” and “Extremely Dubious Consent.”

Giving details about what, if any, drugs are used or mentioned, specifying what kinds of violence or bodily harm are discussed or depicted, details about age differences or power-imbalanced relationships between characters who date or have sex, discussion or depictions of suicide, severe or terminal illness, or mental health struggles is useful. It helps give readers a clear sense of what they'll encounter in your fic and decide if they're up for it.

One the most useful courtesy warning tags is “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” which basically means “there are things in this fic which are really screwed up and may be disturbing, read at your own risk, steer clear if you're not sure.” This tag—like all courtesy warnings, really—is a show of good faith, by using it you are being a responsible, and thoughtful member of the fanfic community by giving readers the power and necessary information to make their own informed decisions about what they are and are not comfortable reading.

Saying to “Heed the tags” is quite self-explanatory and, if used, should be the last or second to last tag so it's easy to spot. Remember, though, that “Heed the tags” isn't useful if your tags aren't thorough and clear.

“Additional Warnings In Author's Note” is one of only things that should ever go after “Heed the tags.” If you use this, your additional warnings need to go in the author's note at the very beginning of the fic, not the one at the end of the first chapter. If your additional warnings write up is going to be very long because it's highly detailed, then it can go at the bottom of the chapter with a note at the beginning indicating that the warnings are at the bottom. Some authors give an abbreviated or vague set of warnings in the initial note, then longer, highly detailed, spoilery warnings in the end note. It's best to make it as simple and straightforward as possible for readers to access warnings.

Tagging with “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat,” “Heed the tags,” or “Additional Warnings In Author's Note” is not a substitute for thorough and appropriate courtesy tagging. These are extra reminders to readers to look closely at the other warnings you've given.

While most courtesy tags are warnings, some are assurances like “No Lesbians Die” or “It's Not As Bad As It Sounds.” A fic tagged for rape or dub-con may get a tag assuring that the consent issues are not between the characters in the main ship; or a fic with a premise that sounds likely to involve lack of consent but actually doesn't may get a tag that it's “NOT rape/non-con.” A tag like “Animal Death” may be immediately followed by a freeform tag assuring that the animal that dies is not the protagonist's beloved horse.

Descriptive

There are a few general kinds of descriptive tags including character-related, ship-related, temporal, relation-to-canon, trope-related, smut details, and technical specifications.

Many character- and ship-related tags simply expand on the Character and Relationship tags we've already talked about. This is usually the place to specify details about OCs and inserts, such as how a reader-insert is gendered.

When it comes to character-related tags, one of the most common types in use on Ao3 and in fandom at large is the bang-path. This is things like werewolf!Alex, trans!Max, top!Sam, kid!Jamie, and captain!Tori. Basically, a bang-path is a way of specifying a version of a character. We've been using this format for decades; it comes from the very first email systems used by universities in the earliest days of internet before the World Wide Web existed. It's especially useful for quickly and concisely explaining the roles of characters in an AU. Nowadays this is also one of the primary conventions for indicating who's top and who's bottom in a ship if that's information you feel the need to establish. The other current convention for indicating top/bottom is as non-bang-path character-related tags in the form “Top [Character A], Bottom [Character B].”

Other common sorts of character tags are things like “[Character A] Needs a Hug,” “Emotionally Constipated [Character B],” and “[Character C] is a Good Dad.”

Some character-related tags don't refer to a particular character by name, but tell readers something about what kinds of characters are in the fic. Usually, this indicates the minority status of characters and may indicate whether or not that minority status is canon, as in “Nonbinary Character,” “Canon Muslim Character,” “Deaf Character,” and “Canon Disabled Character.”

Down here in the tags is the place to put ship nicknames! This is also where to say things like “They're idiots your honor” or indicate that they're “Idiots in Love,” maybe both since “Idiots in Love” is an established searchable tag but “They're idiots your honor” isn't yet. If your fandom has catchphrases related to your ship, put that here if you want to.

If relevant, specify some things about the nature of relationships in your fic such as “Ambiguous Relationship,” “Queerplatonic Relationships,” “Polyamory,” “Friends With Benefits,” “Teacher-Student Relationship,” and so on. Not all fics need tags like these. Use your best judgement whether your current fic does.

Temporal tags indicate when your fic takes place. That can be things like “Pre-Canon” and “Post-Canon,” “Pre-War,” “Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “1996-1997 NHL season,” “Future Fic,” and so on. These tags may be in reference to temporal landmarks in canon, in the real world, or both depending on what's appropriate.

Some temporal tags do double duty by also being tags about the fic's relationship to canon. The Pre- and Post-Canon tags are like that.

Other relation-to-canon type tags are “Canon Compliant” for fics that fit completely inside the framework of canon without changing or contradicting anything, “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence” for fics that are compliant up to a certain point in canon, then veer off (maybe because you started writing the fic when the show was on season two but now it's at season four and you're not incorporating everything from the newer seasons, maybe a character died and you refuse to acknowledge that, maybe you just want to explore what might have happened if a particular scene had gone differently), and the various other Alternate Universe tags for everything from coffee shop AUs and updates to modern settings, to realities where everyone is a dragon or no one has their canon superpowers.

The established format for these tags is “Alternate Universe – [type],” but a few have irregular names as well, such as “Wingfic” for AUs in which characters who don't ordinarily have wings are written as having wings.

If you have written an AU, please tag clearly what it is! Make things easy on both the readers who are in the mood to read twenty royalty AUs in a row, the readers who are in the middle of finals week and the thought of their favorite characters suffering through exams in a college AU would destroy the last shred of their sanity but would enjoy watching those characters teach high school, and the readers who really just want to stick to the world of canon right now.

Admittedly, it can get a little confusing what AU tag or tags you need to describe what you've written since most of us have never had a fandom elder sit us down and explain what the AU tags mean. One common mix up is tagging things “Alternate Universe - Modern Setting” when what's meant is “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence.” The misunderstanding here is usually reading “Alternate Universe - Modern Setting” and thinking it means an alternate version of the canon universe that is set at the same time as the canon universe, but is different in some way. That's not how the tag is meant to be used, though.

The Modern Setting AU tag is specifically for fic set now (at approximately the same time period it was written), for media that's canonically set somewhere that is very much not the present of the real world. This can mean things set in the past (like Jane Austen), the future (like Star Trek), or a fantasy world entirely different from our own (like Lord of the Rings or Avatar: the Last Airbender). Fic for a canon that's set more or less “now” doesn't need the Modern Setting AU tag, even if the world of canon is different from our own. If you're removing those differences by putting fantasy or superhero characters in a world without magic or supersoldier serum, you might want the “Alternate Universe - No Powers” tag instead.

Some of the most fun descriptive tags are trope tags. This includes things like “Mutual Pining,” “Bed Sharing” for when your OTP gets to their hotel room to find There Was Only One Bed, “Fake Dating,” “Angst,” Fluff,” “Hurt/Comfort” and all its variants. Readers love tropes at least as much as we love writing them and want to be able to find their favorites. Everyone also has tropes they don't like and would rather avoid. Tagging them allows your fic to be filtered in and out by what major tropes you've used.

Explicit fics, and sometimes fics with less restrictive ratings, that contain sex usually have tags indicating details about the nature of the sexual encounter(s) portrayed and what sex acts are depicted. These are descriptive tags, but they also do double duty as courtesy tags. This is very much a situation in which tags are a consent mechanism; by thoroughly and clearly tagging your smut you are giving readers the chance to knowingly opt in or out of the experience you've written.

Most of the time, it's pretty easy to do basic tagging for sex acts—you know whether what you wrote shows Vaginal Sex, Anal Sex, or Non-penetrative Sex. You probably know the names for different kinds of Oral Sex you may have included. You might not know what to call Frottage or Intercrural Sex, though, even if you understand the concept and included the act in your fic. Sometimes there are tags with rectangle-square type relationships (all Blow Jobs are Oral Sex, but not all Oral Sex is a Blow Job) and you're not sure if you should tag for both—you probably should. Sometimes there are tags for overlapping, closely related, or very similar acts or kinks and you're not sure which to tag—that one's more of judgement call; do your best to use the tags that most closely describe what you wrote.

Tag for the kinks at play, if any, so readers can find what they're into and avoid what they're not. Tag for what genitalia characters have if it's nonobvious, including if there's Non-Human Genitalia involved. Tag your A/B/O, your Pon Farr, and your Tentacles, including whether it's Consentacles or Tentacle Rape.

Technical specification tags give information about aspects of the fic other than its narrative content. Most things on Ao3 are prose fiction so that's assumed to be the default, so anything else needs to be specified in tags. That includes Poetry, Podfics, things in Script Format, and Art. If it is a podfic, you should tag with the approximate length in minutes (or hours). If a fic is Illustrated (it has both words and visual art) tag for that.

Tag if your fic is a crossover or fusion. The difference, if you're not sure, is that in a crossover, two (or more) entire worlds from different media meet, whereas in a fusion, some aspects of one world, like the cast of characters, are combined with aspects of another, like the setting or magic system.

If the team of paranormal investigators from one show get in contact with the cast of aliens from another show, that's a crossover and you need to have all the media you're drawing from up in the Fandom tags. If you've given the cast of Hamlet physical manifestations of their souls in the form of animal companions like the daemons from His Dark Materials but nothing else from His Dark Materials shows up, that's a fusion, the Fandom tag should be “Hamlet - Shakespeare,” and you need the “Alternate Universe - Daemons” tag. If you've given the members of a boy band elemental magic powers like in Avatar: the Last Airbender, that can be more of a judgement call depending how much from Avatar you've incorporated into your story. If absolutely no characters or specific settings from Avatar show up, it's probably a fusion. Either way, if the boyband exists in real life, it needs to be tagged as RPF.

Tag if your fic is a Reader-Insert or Self-Insert.

You might want to tag for whether your fic is written with POV First, Second, or Third Person, and if it's Past Tense or Present Tense (or Future Tense, though that's extremely uncommon). For POV First Person fics that are not self-inserts, or POV Third Person fics that are written in third person limited, you may want to tag which character's POV is being shown. Almost all POV Second Person fics are reader-insert, so if you've written one that isn't, you should tag for who the “you” is.

A fic is “POV Outsider” if the character through whom the story is being conveyed is outside the situation or not familiar with the characters and context a reader would generally know from canon. The waitress who doesn't know the guy who just sat down in her diner is a monster hunter, and the guy stuck in spaceport because some hotshot captain accidentally locked down the entire space station, are both potential narrators for POV Outsider stories.

Other technical specifications can be tags for things like OCtober and Kinktober or fic bingo games. Tagging something as a Ficlet, One Shot, or Drabble is a technical specification (we're not going to argue right now over what counts as a drabble). Tagging for genre, like Horror or Fantasy, is too.

It's also good to tag accessibility considerations like “Sreenreader Friendly,” but make sure your fic definitely meets the needs of a given kind of accessibility before tagging it.

Personal

Even among personal tags there are established tags! Things like “I'm Sorry,” “The Author Regrets Nothing,” “The Author Regrets Everything,” and “I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping” are common ones. Tags about us and our relationship to the fic, such as “My First Work In This Fandom,” “Author is Not Religious,” and “Trans Porn By A Trans Author,” can help readers gauge what to expect from our fic. Of course, you are not at all obligated to disclose any personal information for any reason when posting your fic.

The “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag is common, but probably overused. Tagging is hard; very few of us have a natural feel for it even with lots of practice. It's not a completely useless tag because it can indicate to readers that you've probably missed some things you should have tagged for, so they should be extra careful; but it can also turn into a crutch, an excuse to not try, and therefore a sign to readers they can't trust your tagging job. Just do your best, and leave off the self depreciation. If you're really concerned about the quality of your tagging, consider putting in an author's note asking readers to let you know if there are any tags you should add.

You might want to let readers know your fic is “Not Beta Read” or, if you're feeling a little cheekier than that, say “No Beta We Die Like Men” or its many fandom-specific variants like the “No Beta We Die Like Robins” frequently found among Batman fics and “No beta we die like Sunset Curve” among Julie and The Phantoms fic. Don't worry, the Archive recognizes all of these as meaning “Not Beta Read.”

The Archive can be inconsistent about whether it stacks specific variants of Additional Tags under the broadest version of the tag like it does with Fandom tags, so best practice is usually to use both. You can double check by trying to search by a variant tag (or clicking on someone else's use of the variant); if the results page says the broader or more common form of the tag, those stack.

There's no such thing as the right number of tags. Some people prefer more tags and more detail, while other people prefer fewer more streamlined tags, and different fics have different things that need to be tagged for. There is, however, such a thing as too many tags. A tagblock that takes up the entire screen, or more, can be unreadable, at which point they are no longer useful. Focus on the main points and don't try to tag for absolutely everything. Use the “Additional Warnings In Author's Note” strategy if your courtesy tags are what's getting out of hand.

Tag for as much as you feel is necessary for readers to find your fic and understand what they're getting into if they decide to open it up.

A little bit of redundancy in tags is not a sin. In fact, slight redundancy is usually preferable to vagueness. Clear communication in tags is a cardinal virtue. Remember that tags serve a purpose, they're primarily a tool for sorting and filtering, and (unlike on some other sites like tumblr) they work, so it's best to keep them informative and try to limit rambling in the tags. Ramble at length in your author's notes instead!

Titles

Picking a title can be one of the most daunting and frustrating parts of posting a fic. Sometimes we just know what to call our fics and it's a beautiful moment. Other times we stare at that little input box for what feels like an eternity.

The good news is there's really no wrong way to select a title. Titles can be long or short, poetic or straight to the point. Song lyrics, idioms, quotes from literature or from the fic itself can be good ways to go.

Single words or phrases with meanings that are representative of the fic can be great. A lot of times these are well known terms or are easy enough to figure out like Midnight or Morning Glow, but if you find yourself using something that not a lot of people know what it means, like Chiaroscuro (an art style that uses heavy shadow and strong contrast between light and dark), Kintsukuroi (the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold), or Clusivity (the grammatical term for differences in who is or isn't included in a group pronoun), you should define the term in either a subtitle, i.e. “Chiaroscuro: A Study In Contrast,” or at the beginning of the summary.

As a courtesy to other writers, especially in small fandoms, you may want to check to make sure there's not already another fic with the same title in the same fandom, but this is not required. In large fandoms, there's no point in even trying. After all, there are only so many puns to be made about the full moon and only so many verses to Hallelujah.

It may be common practice on other platforms to include information such as fandom or ship in the title of a fic, but on Ao3 nothing that is specified by tags belongs in the title unless your title happens to be the same as a tag because, for instance, you've straightforwardly titled your character study of Dean Winchester “Dean Winchester Character Study” and also responsibly tagged it as such.

Summaries

Yes, you really do need to put something down for the summary. It might only need to be a single sentence, but give the readers something to go off of.

The summary is there to serve two purposes: one, to catch the interest of potential readers, give them a taste of what's inside, and make them want to know more; and two, to give you a space to provide information or make comments that don't really fit in the tags but that you want readers to see before they open the fic.

We've already talked some about that second function. When you put an explanation of the title or clarification about tags in the summary, that's the purpose it's serving. You can also put notes to “Heed the tags” or instruct readers that there are additional warnings in the author's note here in the summary, rather than doing so in the tags.

The first function, the actual summarizing, can be very hard for some of us. It's basically the movie trailer for your fic, butwhat are you even supposed to say?

There are two main strategies as to how to approach this: the blurb, and the excerpt. Blurbs are like the synopses you at least used to see on the backs of published books, or the “Storyline” section on an IMDb page. Writing one is a matter of telling your readers who does what, under what circumstances.

Depending on the fic, one sentence can capture the whole thing: “Sam and Alex have sex on a train.” “Tori tries to rob a bank.” “If anybody had mentioned Max's new house was haunted, Jamie wouldn't have agreed to help with the move.”

Sometimes a blurb can be a question! “What happens when you lock a nuclear engineer in a closet with a sewing kit, a tennis ball, and half a bottle of Sprite?”

Of course, plenty of blurbs are more than one sentence. Their length can vary pretty significantly depending on the type and length of fic you're working with and how much detail you're trying to convey, but it shouldn't get to be more than a few short paragraphs. You're not retelling the entire fic here.

An excerpt is a portion of the fic copied out to serve as the summary. This, too, can vary in length from a line or two to several paragraphs, but shouldn't get too long. It should not be an entire scene unless that scene happens to be uncommonly short. It's important to select a portion of the fic that both indicates the who, what, and under what circumstances of the fic and is representative of the overall tone. Excerpts that are nothing but dialogue with no indication of who's talking are almost never a good choice. Portions that are sexually explicit or extremely violent are never ever a good choice—if it deserves content warnings, it belongs inside the fic, not on the results page.

Counterintuitively, some of the best excerpts won't even look like an excerpt to the reader if they don't contain dialogue. They seem like particularly literary blurbs until the reader reaches that part in the fic and realizes they recognize a section of narration.

Some of us have very strong preferences as to whether we write blurbs or use excerpts for our summaries. Some readers have very strong preferences as to which they find useful. Ultimately, there's no accounting for taste, but there are things we can do to limit the frustration for readers who prefer summaries of the opposite kind than we prefer to write, without increasing our own frustration or work load very much. Part of that is understanding what readers dislike about each type so we know what to mitigate.

Blurbs can seem dry, academic, and overly simplified. They don't automatically give the reader a sense of your writing style the way an excerpt does. They can also seem redundant, like they're just rehashing information already given in the tags, so the reader feels like they're being denied any more information without opening the fic.

Excerpts can seem lazy, like you, the author, don't care enough to bother writing a blurb, or pushy like you're telling the reader “just read the fic; I'm not going to give you the information you need to decide if you want to read or not, I'm shoving it in front of you and you just have to read it.” That effect gets worse if your tags aren't very informative or clear about what the plot is, if the excerpt is obviously just the first few lines or paragraphs of the fic, if the except is particularly long, or, worst of all, if all three are true at once.

A lot of the potential problems with blurbs can be minimized by having fun writing them! Make it punchy, give it some character, treat it like part of the story, not just a book report. A fic for a serialized show or podcast, for instance, could have a blurb written in the style of the show's “previously on” or the podcast's intro. Make sure the blurb gives the reader something they can't just get from the tags—like the personality of your writing, important context or characterization, or a sense of the shape of the story—but don't try to skimp on the tags to do it!

Really, the only way to minimize the potential problems with excerpts is to be very mindful in selecting them. Make sure the portion you've chosen conveys the who, what, and under what circumstances and isn't too long. You know the story; what seems clear and obvious from the excerpt to you might not be apparent to someone who doesn't already know what happens, so you might need to ask a friend to double check you.

The absolute best way to provide a summary that works for everybody is to combine both methods. It really isn't that hard to stick a brief excerpt before your blurb, or tack a couple lines of blurb after your excerpt, but it can make a world of difference for how useful and inviting your summary is to a particular reader. The convention for summaries that use both is excerpt first, then blurb.

If you're struggling to figure out a summary, or have been in the habit of not providing one, try not to stress over it. Anything is better than nothing. As long as you've written something for a summary, you've given the reader a little more to help them make their decision. What really isn't helpful, though, is saying “I'm bad at summaries” in your summary. It's a lot like the “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag in that it's unnecessarily self depreciating, frequently comes across as an excuse not to try, and sometimes really is just an excuse. Unlike the “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag, which has the tiny saving grace of warning readers you've probably missed something, saying you're bad at summaries has no utility at all, and may drive away a reader who thought your summary was quite good, but is uncomfortable with the negative attitude reflected by that statement. Summaries are hard. It's okay if you don't like your summary, but it's important for it to be there, and it's important to be kind to yourself about it. You're trying, that's what matters.

Author's Notes

Author's notes are the one place where we, the writers, directly address and initiate contact with our readers. We may also talk to them in the comments section, but that's different because they initiate that interaction while we reply, and comments are mostly one-on-one while in author's notes we're addressing everyone who ever reads our fic.

The very first note on a fic should contain any information, such as warnings or explanations, that a reader needs to see before they get to the body of the story, as well as anything like thanks to your beta, birthday wishes to a character, or general hellos and announcements you want readers to see before they get to the body of the story. On multi-chapter fics, notes at the beginning of chapters serve the same function for that chapter as the initial note on the fic does for the whole story, so you can do things like warn for Self-Harm on the two chapters out of thirty where it comes up, let everyone know your update schedule will be changing, or wish your readers a merry Christmas, if they celebrate it, on the chapter you posted on December 23rd but is set in mid-March.

Notes at the end of a fic or chapter are for things that don't need to be said or are not useful to a reader until after they've read the preceding content, such as translations for that handful of dialogue that's in Vulcan or Portuguese, or any parting greetings or announcements you want to give, like a thanks for reading or a reminder school is starting back so you won't be able to write as much. End notes are the best place to plug your social media to readers if you're inclined to do so, but remember that cannot include payment platforms like Patreon or Ko-fi.

As previously mentioned, warnings can go in end notes but that really should only be done when the warnings are particularly long, such that the length might cause a problem for readers who are already confident in their comfort level and would just want to scroll past the warning description. In that case, the additional warnings need to go in the note at the end of the first chapter, rather than at the end of the fic, if it's a multi-chapter fic; and you need to include an initial note telling readers that warnings/explanations of tags are at the bottom so they know to follow where the Archive tells them to see the end of the chapter/work for “more notes.”

When posting a new work, where the Preface section gives you the option to add notes “at the beginning” or “at the end” or both, if you check both boxes, it means notes at the beginning and end of the entire fic, not the beginning and end of the first chapter. For single-chapter fics this difference doesn't really matter, but for multi-chapter fics it matters a lot. In order to add notes to the beginning or end of the first chapter of a multi-chapter fic you have to first go through the entire process to post the new fic, then go in to Edit, Edit Chapter, and add the notes there.

Series and Chapters

Dealing with Series and Chapters is actually two different issues, but they're closely related and cause some of us mixups, especially when we're new to the site and its systems, so we're going to cover them together.

Series on Ao3 are for collecting up different stories that you've written that are associated with each other in some way. Chapters are for dividing up one story into parts, usually for pacing and to give yourself and your readers a chance to take breaks and breathe, rather than trying to get through the entire thing in a single marathon sitting (not that we won't still do that voluntarily, but it's nice to have rest points built in if we need them).

If your story would be one book if it was officially published, then it should be posted as a single fic—with multiple chapters if it's long or has more than one distinct part, like separate vignettes that all go together. If you later write a sequel to that fic, post it as a new fic and put them together in a series. It's exactly like chapters in a book and books in a series. Another way to think of this structure is like a TV show: different fics in the series are like different seasons of the show, with individual chapters being like episodes.

If you have several fics that all take place in the same AU but really aren't the same story those should go together as a series. If you wrote a story about a superhero team re-cast as school teachers, then wrote another story about different characters in the same school, that's this situation.

Series are also the best way to handle things like prompt games, bingos, or Kinktober, or collect up one shots and drabbles especially if your various fills, entries, and drabbles are for more than one fandom. If you put everything for a prompt game or bingo, or all your drabbles, together as one fic with a different chapter for each story, what ends up happening is that fic gets recognized by the Archive as a crossover when it isn't, so it gets excluded from the results pages for everyone who told the filters to Exclude Crossovers even though one of the stories you wrote is exactly what they're looking for; and that fic ends up with tons and tons of wildly varying and self-contradictory tags because it's actually carrying the tags for several entirely different, possibly unrelated stories, which also means it ends up getting excluded from results pages because, for instance, one out of your thirty-one Kinktober entries is about someone's NoTP.

Dividing these kinds of things up into multiple fic in a series makes it so much easier for readers to find what of your work they actually want to read.

If you've previously posted such things as a single fic, don't worry, it's a really common misunderstanding and there is absolutely nothing stopping you from reposting them separately. You may see traffic on them go up if you do!

Parting Thoughts

Metatext is ultimately all about communication, and in this context effective communication is a matter of responsibility and balance.

Ao3 is our archive. It's designed for us, the writers, to have the freedom to write and share whatever stories we want without having to worry that we'll wake up one day and find our writing has been deleted overnight without warning. That has happened too many times to so many in our community as other fanfic sites have died, been shut down, or caved to threats of legal action. Ao3 is dedicated to defending our legal right to create and share our stories. Part of the deal is that, in exchange for that freedom and protection, we take up the responsibility to communicate to readers what we're writing and who it's appropriate for.

We are each other's readers, and readers who don't write are still part of our community. We have a responsibility as members of this community to be respectful of others in our shared spaces. Ao3 is a shared space. The best way we have to show each other respect is to give one another the information needed to decide if a given fic is something we want to engage with or not, and then, in turn, to not engage with fic that isn't our cup of tea. As long as our fellow writer has been clear about what their fic is, they've done their part of the job. If we decided to look at the fic despite the information given and didn't like what we found, then that's on us.

Because metatext is how we put that vital information about our fics out in the community, it's important that our metatext is clear and easy to parse. The key to that is balance. Striking the balance between putting enough tags to give a complete picture and not putting too many tags that become an unreadable wall; the balance between the urge to be thorough and tag every character and the need to be restrained so those looking for fics actually about a certain character can find them; the balance between using established tags for clarity and ease and making up our own tags for specificity and fun.

Do your best, act in good faith, remember you're communicating with other people behind those usernames and kudos, and, most importantly, have fun with your writing!

#THE GUIDE #metatext #fandom meta #fandom etiquette #Eiiri made this

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persepholline · 3 years ago

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I've read that article about the romanticization of the Darkling and while I absolutely understand people who are pissed off/sad and I agree that it's shitty, I find LB's attitude towards Darkles stans very funny in a "girl what are you doing" sort of way because it's so petty like I've never heard of a bestselling author writing a portion of their fans into their books as a crazy cult before, it clearly hit a nerve

I'm new to the fandom but the feeling I get is she wrote something problematic ten years ago and became very embarrassed about it afterwards so she turned on the fans that liked it as a way to absolve herself. Especially since fandoms in general have become a lot more focused on discussion of what constitutes healthy/acceptable relationships to write about. And in a way I get it I had a huge Twilight phase in high school and afterwards I was super embarassed about it because of how problematic and cringe it was. But now with distance and more maturity I'm able to both still see why it was problematic and also why I was drawn to it (mostly the very unhinged representation of female desire) and like...it's really not the end of the world and no it never made me believe that breaking into somebody's room at night to watch them sleep was actually ok in real life lmao. This feels so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be said.

(More under the break this is turning into an essay, I've been thinking of this a lot recently)

And of course it's good to have these discussions about how historically romance tropes have echoed social dynamics of men's shitty behavior being romanticized and excused. But these days they often are so simplistic and focused on chasing clout that they become this weird new puritanism and moral panic about oh now women are reading novels it's going to make them hysterical or something

So you have these weird assumptions that you can't like a character and also be critical of their actions, or enjoy certain parts of a character and not others, or wish they were written differently and like them more for their potential (which I'm sure stings a bit for an author lol) - it assumes that if you like a character it means you would approve of their actions in real life, or that people just stupidly reproduce whatever they see on TV. That tendency to treat fictional characters like real people is the thing that actually worries me, to be honest, because it indicates a lack of distance and critical capacities regarding how stories are used and received. But people - fans and authors - are so scared of being called out as problematic and harassed for it that they're going to shy away from any nuance.

And yeah I think that it's good that standards of what constitutes an ideal relationship are evolving and becoming more feminist and communicative and all that and we definitely need more of that. But not all fiction has to be aspirational! Sometimes you just want to read about fucked up shit, because it's cathartic or fascinating, even healing at times because with fiction you are absolutely in control and can choose when to close the book. Toxic relationships in fiction can have an appeal specifically because they go to extremes of feeling that we don't want to go to in reality, in exactly the same way as horror movies or very violent action movies - which I don't see a lot of people besides fundamentalist Christians argue that they turn you into violent psychopaths (and that feels very obviously sexist). And for women, who are often taught growing up that love is the purpose of life, the "saving someone with your ability to love" can be a power fantasy in the same way that being a buff superhero who saves the day with their capacity for incredible violence can be a power fantasy for men. Still doesn't mean those women are going to fall in love with actual murderers or that those men are going to start beating up people at night. And love is scary, and weird, and weirdly close to horror at times, with all the potential for loss of self and being vulnerable and overwhelming feelings and potential for being horribly hurt and it should be possible for stories to explore that without anybody screaming about how this is going to Corrupt the Youth or something

And I mean I get it LB wanted to write a cautionary tale for teenagers, but it just did not work for reasons a lot of people have already written about - the fact that the Darkling is the leader of an oppressed minority and is the only one with a real political agenda to end that oppression in the first trilogy, the fact that he helps Alina come into her own power while her endgame LI is someone she keeps herself small for, that she's shamed for wanting power after growing up without any, a generally very wonky conception of privilege, and a lot of other stuff with yucky regressive implications to the point where stanning the villain actually feels liberating and empowering which is a surefire sign that the narrative is broken (unless it's a villain focused story lmao). But of course that Fanside article makes almost no mention of the political dynamics, it's all about interpersonal stuff which is an annoying trend in YA, there are those massive events happening in the background but it's made all about the feelings of the hero(ine) ; war as a self-development quest (which is kind of gross). Helnik is kind of an example of this too - I like them, I think they're fun ! But Matthias spends a big part of the story wanting to brutally murder Nina and her kind, and he mostly changes his mind because he finds her hot. Like you don't feel there is some sort of big revelation that his entire moral system and political framework is completely rotten ; it's all better because of feelings now.

As a teenager that kind of sanctimonious bullshit would have annoyed the hell out of me ; I read those books in my early twenties and I found the ending so stupid I wouldn't have trusted any message or life lessons coming from them. And I liked reading/watching dark stuff as a teenager, as a way to deal with the very intense inner turmoil I was dealing with - and I turned out fine ! Meanwhile I've seen several times women in very shitty relationships being obsessed with positive energies and stories ; they were so terrified of their life not being perfectly wholesome they ended up being delusional about their own situations.

Like personally I think the Darkling is a compelling, interesting, alluring character and also a manipulative, murderous piece of shit and that Alina should get to punish him (like in a sexy way) - but he's also the end result of centuries of war, oppression and trauma and reducing that to "toxic wounded boy" feels kind of offensive ngl ESPECIALLY since the books don't offer any kind of systemic analysis or response to oppression beyond "the bad guy should die" and "now the king/queen is a good guy our problems are solved!!!!"

In Lives of the Saints, we see how Yuri is abused extremely badly and almost killed by his father, and so when his father dies when the Fold swallows Novokribirsk, he thinks the Starless Saint has saved him. Later in KoS/RoW he's turned into this fanatic who explains away all the Darkling's crimes. The other followers talk about how the Starless Saint will bring equality for all men. Then the Darkling comes back and actually thinks his followers are pathetic, which feels again like a very pointed message to his IRL stans. Which is absolutely hilarious to me. Like oh no, if he was real he would not like you and think you're pathetic ! Yeah ...but he's not. Real. Damn right he would not like the fics where Alina puts him on a leash. I'm still going to read them. What is he going to do about it, jump out of the page ? Jfjfjjdhfgfjfj

Anyway I think the intended message is "assholes will use noble political causes for their own gain and to manipulate people" and "being abused/oppressed is not an excuse to behave badly." Which. Sure. But that's kind of like...a tired take, honestly ? A big number of villains nowadays are like this ; either they've been bullied as kids, or they're part of an oppressed group, or they have "good ideals but too extreme". This is not surprising because a lot of mainstream heroic narratives present clinging to the status quo as Good and change as chaotic and dangerous. And like sure in real life people often do bad shit because they're wounded and in danger. But if you want to do a story like that, you have to do it with nuance, talk about cycles of violence, about how society creates vulnerable people to be exploited, about how privilege gives you more choices and the luxury of morals, etc. The Grishaverse does not have this level of nuance (maybe in SoC a little bit but definitely not in TGT). So it kind of comes off as "trauma makes you evil" and "egalitarianism is dangerous" and "if you're abused/oppressed you're not allowed to fight back". And ignores the fact that historically, evil generally comes from unchecked privilege.

I guess my point is that there are many things I like about LB's writing, she knows how to create these really exciting character dynamics, and the world she has created is fascinating. But these stories are not a great starting point for imparting moral lessons. And her best characters tend to be, at least in canon, the morally grey ones. I hope one day she'll be at peace with the fact that she wrote the Darkling the way she did and leave his fans alone but in the meantime I'm just not going to take this whole thing seriously I'm sorry

#darklina #the darkling #alina starkov #aleksander morozova

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thewhitefluffyhat · 3 years ago

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My Interests Weren’t Ryukishi’s

So okay. Higurashi Sotsu, the anime, ended up kind of a mess. But we still have Higurashi Jun, right?

…Well, I’m personally tempering my expectations.

Because here are the things I was most interested in for Sotsu:

An actual SatoRika romance, not more frustrating “just friends” nonsense like we see in the tons of other anime.

Exploration of the trauma of looping and its effects on Rika and Satoko.

A clear and satisfying emotional throughline to Umineko.

A reasonable expectation is that Jun will fix the repetition and pacing problems of Sotsu. If we’re really lucky, it might also fix the unsympathetic Satoko problem. (And I’ve heard that witch!Satoko’s characterization in Mei is already a little better than the anime, so this seems very possible…!)

But regardless, I don’t think it will actually give me any of these things I was so excited for.

Because, given Ryukishi’s comments in the post-finale interview and elsewhere, I have to conclude these were all things Ryukishi wasn’t actually interested in exploring.

On SatoRika

I already wrote at length about my feelings on Ryukishi’s “it’s not yuri” comments regarding Satokowashi when they were first translated. Thus, I wasn’t surprised when Sotsu’s finale went all-in on emphasizing Satoko and Rika’s “”friendship.”” There really was no other way to interpret the interview comments, so this anticlimax of a denial was inevitable. (At least it wasn’t the worst scenarios I imagined...)

But what makes the lack of romance in Sotsu especially disappointing is that it feels like the final nail in the coffin for any hope of canonically romantic SatoRika, or even any unambiguously romantic LambdaBern interactions - in the entire franchise. If an anime directly focused on Satoko and Rika’s relationship didn't go there, I can’t see Jun, or Mei, or any future work doing it either.

And it's hard to overstate how much that sours my interest in the series. After finishing Umineko, I saw WTC as one of those few works that didn't tiptoe around queerness. It's one of the major things that made me treasure it over things like Touhou and Madoka, for daring to have its lesbian characters in an actual relationship. But now? Well, nothing can erase the other queerness in Umineko. But SotsuGou sure destroyed my trust in the rest of WTC.

On the trauma of time loops

Oftentimes, in WTC and elsewhere, time loops are a metaphor for a character’s mental journey or issues. That’s one way to interpret Umineko, for example. And the loops might even be a metaphor in Sotsu too, a fantastical extrapolation of Satoko and Rika’s fistfight when they returned to Hinamizawa.

In Umineko, this conceit worked. Mostly because regardless of being a metaphor, the characters did treat the events of the loops as though they mattered (hello, Beatrice’s ultimate fate), and because Umineko is thematically a story about how and why we tell stories.

But in Higurashi, the time loops are simultaneously more tangible, yet less affecting. Rika’s character in particular is almost entirely shaped by her being a looper. Except when suddenly, it isn’t.

I’ve mentioned before that Rika never telling anyone about her experiences, never truly grappling with the effects of what she went through was one thing I found very unsatisfying about Higurashi’s original ending. Especially given Umineko, where the horror of looping is implied to be fundamental to why Bern (and possibly Lambda) are as broken as they are.

So I was very happy at the possibility that Sotsu might finally tackle this topic.

But, in the end, Ryukishi doubled down on the same things that bothered me about the original ending. When the witch/looper personality goes away, the trauma associated with it does too, for some reason.

How does that happen? Does the witch disappearing mean that the character completely forgets the loops? And why should I have cared about the events of those other worlds, if none of it mattered to any of the characters?

Who knows, because Ryukishi isn’t interested in that kind of hard magic worldbuilding! We’ve now had that ending with both Rika and Satoko, so I doubt this glossing over is a mistake.

But what’s especially frustrating here is that it feels like the story is trying to have its Fragment effects both ways. The finale in SotsuGou strangely involves Rika and Satoko leaving the world where they fought and going back in time so Satoko can avoid St Lucia and so she’s in a timeline with Nice Teppei. But in the same breath, it suggests that all the horror of the loops and any violence experienced within don’t affect Satoko or prevent her from enjoying her happy ending. So the positive consequences of the loops were required in order to get the happy ending, yet the negative consequences vanished with the witches.

Convenient, but extremely unsatisfying!

So… okay, does that mean that if we’re interested in the experiences of the loopers - that is, if we’re interested in the Rika and Satoko we’ve been following for 90% of the anime’s runtime - we should be caring about the witch characters rather than the humans in the final timeline? Well…

On the Cross-WTC Connections

Given the giant tangle SotsuGou made out of the meta timeline, it honestly it feels like we're now in even MORE need of a Bern/Lambda/Featherine origin story to clean up all of the horribly messy loose ends. Except given how much emphasis Ryukishi puts on his characters being more like representations of themes or actors playing roles, I don’t think we’ll ever get one.

It’s very weird, to me. Moments like Lambda talking about her and Bern’s past in Umineko, or lines like Eua being disappointed Satoko/Vier doesn’t remember her in SotsuGou heavily imply that these meta characters are more than just repeated collections of tropes, that there is some interesting continuity and personhood to get invested in between them. And yet, just like the SatoRika romance - if there was ever an opportunity in the series to go all-in on exploring these characters, this was it. But instead we got a handful of questionable scraps.

So perhaps the most disappointing part to me about SotsuGou - even over the lack of SatoRika - is how it suggests that it's meaningless to have that investment in the witches. That they don't actually have consistent motivations or personalities or even a coherent timeline to their existences. It might just be random winks and nods that don’t add up to anything.

If, like me, you were invested in the continuing development of the time looping lesbians that SotsuGou seemed to be about, well, you’re probably out of luck - on all three counts.

#when they cry #higurashi #higurashi sotsu #higurashi gou analysis #higurashi gou critical #sotsu analysis finale #houjou satoko #furude rika #satorika #lambdadelta #bernkastel #my ramblings #read more #I know it's my own fault #for getting so hype about these things #but it still sucks to be disappointed #you know?#my higurashi gou sotsu meguri thoughts

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aeondeug · 4 years ago

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So while I was reading GtN and HtN I occasionally stopped to be like “Wow, it’s great how these can be just so gay!” And like. That is really great. Super great. I love that about them. But I also remember at least once stopping and going “Wow, it’s great that there’s no homophobia here!” And like at the time I just kind of nodded along to myself. Around when I just finished GtN, I remember being very fond of the bit after the book with like the guy explaining like. The deal with necro/cav relationships in The Media and throughout history and how actually none of these things have ever been romance. This is just a pure relationship, unaffected by naughty things like ROMANCE. WHY DOES EVERYTHING NEED TO BE ROMANCE?! shouts the author of this paper. And I laughed at this. Because it reminded me a lot of people who do this shit with queer love. They do it with history and just go “Why does Sappho have to be gay, why can’t she just have passionate feelings for her BFFs”. Which is mindbogglingly stupid to me and anyone who has so much as LOOKED at some of the poem fragments. But like people do say that shit. And they do this a lot over like queer anything in fiction unless it like punches you in the face with rainbows immediately. “Why do Bubblegum and Marceline have to be gay? They’re just friends!” is a take that I legitimately saw on the day of the finale. And not just once. I saw it a few times. And I’ve seen that happen over so many ships in so many things, whether or not the ships end up canon. “Why does it have to be gay?” and the specific sort of outrage over it I’ve seen in essay length posts is just common, and that sort of outrage reads very similar to the argument that dude made about necro/cav relationships. It reads like that and close enough so that I made a joke about it even. I didn’t think too, too much on this at first though because I mean. We have Abigail and Magnus. They’re right there. A man and a woman, a husband and a wife. So like I was able to simultaneously go “omg it’s just like those why can’t they just be friends WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE GAY people” and also “wow it’s nice that there are spooky negative queer experiences of SADNESS here”. Which has got me thinking. Ok. So we have that essay. Now what else do we have in the books? I suppose could point at the entirety of Gideon and Harrow’s just furious refusal to admit that they might actually be in love with one another. Even though it appears to be obvious to literally everyone else in the galaxy. And is obvious to the readers. Hell, Gideon even has a moment of feeling like she needs to tell Harrow something the day before she dies. Something which is heavily romance coded, I don’t know the word for it. But like a “Wow I feel a need to tell them something and it’ll be my last shot” before a death just kind of always reads “It was an ‘I love you’. They needed to say it and didn’t get a chance”. So we’ve got that and, specifically, we’ve got their outrage at the suggestions. Gideon stresses that she’s JUST Harrow’s cav. And she’s very fucking insistent on that. Part of the why is that she knows Harrow is in love with a fucking dead girl in a casket but like. It just hits a certain way. There’s also Harrow’s just repeated disgust she expresses towards the concept of necro/cav relationships. She needs to explain away to herself that like, well, Abigail and Magnus were ALREADY married before he was named her cavalier primary so maybe that makes it fine. And even then she’s not like super duper comfy with the idea. A taboo has been broken, Harrow feels, and she needs to get really rules lawery to find any comfort with that. Other small things that feel of note to me here are the nature of the ways we know that these two are gay outside of like. Their weird thing for one another. With Gideon we’re introduced to it basically immediately with her joke about titty mags. Harrow specifically makes a comment at some point that some of the magazines Gideon gets are very gross, yes. Her interest in women is explicitly made sexual from the get go, and the idea that The Gays are just weird sex fiends and there is no love there is a frequent one. With Harrow meanwhile we know because she says she’s in love with the girl in the Locked Tomb. Who is very much dead. A thing that is fucky enough that like there is an entire song and dance about “GIDEON THE FIRST IS MAKING OUT WITH A CORPSE??????” and how Harrow is a hypocrite for being so offended by that all. Also the girl is behind the door. She is something that isn’t supposed to be seen or known about or, heaven forbid, woken up. That is all the ultimate taboo and Harrow not only fucking broke that but she looked at the girl and went “Wow I’m in love” on the spot. So we have this collection of things that could be read as some sort of metaphor for like...The taboo nature of queer love. “Why can’t they just be friends?” and issues of purity and the lack thereof. And we have characters who are very clearly in love but who can’t just admit that because they think there’s something fucking wrong with that. Gideon’s JUST her cav and Harrow is also in love with a dead chick. We also have Magnus and Abigail around who are just like. Happily married and fine with things regarding their whole necro/cav aesthetic. Ianthe doesn’t seem to give a shit that Gideon’s into Harrow at all. There’s a fondness for necro/cav relationships enough that there’s an entire romance genre centered on them and like characters in the cast are fond of those, some of them. Things appear to be Fine, at least as far as their friends are concerned. Maybe the asshole writing the essay that kicked this pondering off would have an issue and a stuffy old grandma would pitch a fit. But like their friends don’t have a problem with necro/cav shit. But we still very much have Gideon and Harrow being “Well no. We’re just a necromancer and their cavalier. GOD.” Now part of what got me thinking about this is that I recently decided to start watching Bly Manor. Because fuck it we haven’t yet. And specifically part of why is I remember seeing an analysis of it done by Rowan Ellis which had this bit where like the argument that “Bly Manor proves you can do queer stories without homophobia being a part of it!” is brought up and like...Ellis is like “Ok but we very much do just lock a queer woman in a literal closet while she screams to be let out”. And lo and behold in the first episode we very much do just lock a queer woman in a literal closet while she screams to be let out. In an episode showing that she’s like just unable to go back home for...some reason. And that she has some sort of difficulty with her relationship with her mother. No, the show is not having the character literally go “Wow I sure am in the closet and I kind of fucking hate that woe is me I am so gay”. But figuratively? It’s all over the place in that first episode. I’m not sure about the others because I haven’t watched them, but it is there in the very first one. And that’s something horror does very well. It takes things that are scary and uncomfortable and bundles them up in shades of metaphor. It hides them from you by showing you the thing cleverly disguised. Maybe you do not notice it the first time through perhaps. Maybe you felt that a certain thing like the closet scene resonated very hard with you and you’re not sure why. But you perhaps don’t consciously go “Aha! It is the horror of being closeted!” Upon looking back on it or back through it though you might notice it. And be like “Oh that was there. Holy fuck.” Now maybe you’re also someone who isn’t like. Comfortable. With straightforward depictions of specifically queer suffering. Maybe it’s just too scary. But with this show hiding it in a metaphor you got to sit through that. You got to be brave enough to sit through a very, very scary thing. And afterwords you go to think about it. This is the power of metaphor and it’s something horror has been very, very good at doing for ages. Maybe racism or homophobia or whatever else is too nerve wracking for you to look at face on in media, but maybe you can watch a movie or a show where the horror of those things are very much there but cloaked in metaphor. And so maybe we are getting that with Gideon and Harrow’s weird issues around how “taboo” their feelings are. Two people who are just unwilling to believe that it might be that thing, in part because that thing is “taboo”. Except instead of the taboo being literally “They’re lesbians, Harold,” it’s instead cloaked in a comforting metaphor of necro/cav relationships and some dude who is really fucking offended at people’s space ao3 fanfictions about his historical favs. Which is important because every fucking scrap of anything one gets is an argument. It can’t just be that they’re in love. It’s that you must PROVE it and some asshole with a degree or just a bone to pick is going to come by and be like “WHY CAN’T THEY JUST BE A NECRO AND A CAV” about it all. And like I’m someone who’s known they’re into other women for a long while now. At least half my life. We have conquered that hurdle. But we haven’t entirely unpacked all the weird little societal bullshit that is still in there. Hiding. Lurking. And that societal bullshit specifically frames that sort of love as something gross and taboo and “Why Can’t They Just Be Friends?”. With that last thing hurting a lot. I’ve constantly run across people going “Why can’t they just be friends?” or going “They just have a sisterly relationship!” about things I shipped. Even when those things involved shit like the characters kissing on screen or mentioning that they’ve been dating in a sequel series. I can’t simply like my ships. I can’t simply see myself in romance. Because my sort of love is so taboo that it is, in itself, a debate. Maybe being shown the thing cleverly disguised as another thing might help me unpack that. At the very least it helps me look at it. When it’s something that hurts a lot to this day.

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #spoilers #this is a bit painfully long #but i have FEELINGS about uncomfortable things being hidden in metaphor #and that metaphor being the thing that helps you be brave enough to look at it

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dangermousie · 3 years ago

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I would like to order a salty no. 3! (tropes, authors, actors)

Mmmm, our kitchen is at your command. Here is my salt shaker and it’s BIG!

Actors - I used to love Xu Kai but after the triple horror of Court Lady, Ancient Love Poetry and that esports mess with Miss Wooden Tree with Boobs, my eye starts twitching when he's mentioned for a role or even when I see a promo picture of him. He might go back on my good list at some point (I mean, I used to dislike Zhang Zhehan only to fall like a ton of bricks after WoH - great timing!) but right now any time I see his face twitch twitch twitch.

Hu Yitian is like a male Cheng Xiao - cannot act. His face doesn't do it for me either so I am just happy he mainly does moderns.

Cheng Xiao is the worst actress I've ever seen in a cdrama, which is saying something. She must have a hell of a sponsor but maybe they should stick her on a runway instead and not make me want to spork myself. She also keeps getting cast with fave after fave, as if she's on a mission to prove these men, who normally have great chemistry with anyone, cannot be defeated by her woodeness. When I think of the fact that she is about to be on my screen opposite Luo Yunxi, I begin to comprehend the cruelty of the universe.

The only good thing about the utter destruction of Zhang Zhehan (a topic I am not going to get into unless I rage stroke) is that there are two less Ju Jingyi dramas circulating out there. The only reason, she’s not the worst is because Cheng Xiao exists.

Dylan Wang and his handsome sheep face and his wooden lack of acting and the insane fact that they keep insisting on casting that man with the ultimate handsome miquetoast vibe as some violent, powerful, scary antiheroes, makes me long for...I don’t know what, but not a Dylan Wang drama. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, “whatever he is in, I’m against it.”

Wu Lei - he’s a decent enough actor but whoever thought he had the vibe for a powerful, wild, death on the battlefield barbarian general in The Long Ballad is the same person who keeps casting Dylan Wang as a badass. It burns my brain!

OK, switching to Korea. Kim Jung Hyun should make a comeback. He’s mega talented and his agency clearly leaked stuff to punish him for wanting to leave. Also, I don’t care how unprofessional he was - he was clearly having a mental heath crisis and was in an abusive relationship. Also, I don’t care if an actor is a bad person - his ex is a dumpster fire but she’s a good actress so she should act. I’d rather have a terrible person who can act (Lee Byung Hun), then a sweet person who can’t act (Taec.)

I am not sure if it’s an actors thing but whatever - people who ship actors in real life are insane and one of the reasons China had an excuse to crack down on fandom. (I don’t mean fun banter but people who genuinely believe X x Y are secretly banging. It’s called ACTING, people!)

Tropes: I love wrist-grab, noncon, amnesia, noble idiot, fakecest etc - all the tropes fandom hates either because they are overused or because they are problematic. I want my life to be original, wholesome and conflict free. I want my fiction to be the opposite.

Whoever makes period stories where the characters are modern characters in period garb should be set on fire.

Authors: Meatbun is one of the best authors and probably in Top 3 novelists I’ve ever read and people who do not appreciate 2ha (unless they cannot read it due to literally being triggered) have bad taste. And before anyone jumps down my throat for being an illiterate, I have been reading all sorts of things for decades, and was reading Euripides and Livy by third grade, took whole classes on scholastic writing and 16th century English poetry, can and do read books in three languages, and read an insane amount of both Russian and English 18th and 19th century novels.

Also, while I don’t want to compare average danmei and average het web novel since I don’t think I’ve read enough of either (I probably read over 100 web novels total but I think I’d have to read way more), a good/well-regarded danmei is way better than a good/well-regarded het web novel. I’ve never found the latter that made me really emotionally invested or one that had a wow plot.

On non-web novel front, Victorian novels and novelists were amazing. Also the whole worship of Hemingway spare style is stupid - Hemingway could get away with it because he was Hemingway. Your average author would vastly benefit from adding color to their writing.

People look down on romance novels because they are for women. Nobody looks down on those stupid spy thrillers which are equivalent for men.

If you haven’t read Jorge Amado, you wasted your entire life.

The end.

#asks

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my-bated-breath · 4 years ago

Note

Do you think Aang and Katara would still end up together if Katara killed her mother’s killer? How would that affect their relationship?

Hey anon! Sorry it took me a while to answer your question, but the truth is that there is no clear trajectory regarding Kata/ang in this situation, especially when we take into account that Kata/ang in the show canon was abrupt and significantly underdeveloped. More specifically on Kata/ang, both Katara and Aang’s arcs were twisted to accommodate for their endgame romance, but while Katara’s arc reaches its culmination by the end of the Final Agni Kai, Aang’s character had become inconsistent in its direction throughout all of season 3.

As such, two conflicting outcomes can result from this hypothetical scenario — one outcome which upholds Aang’s flaws and stagnated growth, or another outcome which forces Aang into growing, accepting, and understanding, as was the original intent behind his character.

From a broader context, Aang’s entire journey since he woke up in the iceberg has been about him reconciling his airbender and Avatar identity, and by the end of season 2 when he is with the guru, Aang is on the cusp of fully accepting his Avatar responsibilities, of letting go of his selfish attachments (or in other words, his blinding biases).

Except Aang cannot let go as he hoped he would be able to. Because his attachment to Katara is selfish, but beyond that his attachment to Katara is a replacement for his attachment to the Air Nomads — and it draws him away from his duties as the Avatar, causing him to embrace an ideal he does not comprehend. After all, the Air Nomads were not perfectly pacifistic either.

Still, just as Aang refuses to recognize the complexity in the Air Nomads’ legacies, dismissing what he may deem as an act of violence, Aang refuses to recognize the complexity to Katara’s rage and compassion, to her violent and protective nature. In my meta “On Ideals and Idealization,” I elaborate on Aang’s idealization of Katara:

Aang loves Katara, yes, but he is in love with an idealized version of her. In his mind, he holds close the idea of a gentle Katara, a smiling Katara, a compassionate and all-loving Katara. Even though he has seen her darkest moments when she bloodbends Hama - arms bent in disjointed angles, fingers curled as if manipulating puppet strings - it does not tarnish his image of her because, at this moment, she is not the persecutor, but the persecuted.

After her experience with Hama, Aang is there to comfort her and help her come to terms with the terrifying power she now possesses. With her face streaked with tears and eyes widened with horror, it is clear that this is a power that Katara does not want, that it has been thrust onto her against her own will.

The conclusion that Aang draws from this is that Katara’s inner darkness is a separate entity from her inner light, and he perceives this acquired part of her as a blemish on her inherent goodness. As such, in “the Southern Raiders,” when he witnesses how Katara’s anger and grief drive her to hunt down her mother’s killer, he equates Katara seeking closure to Katara succumbing to darkness, tainting her purity and compassion in the process.

Thus, given Aang’s reaction to Katara’s bloodbending, he may be inclined to love her in a piteous, nearly-obligatory manner. He’ll love her as the victim who lost sight and control and he’ll love her as a being of compassion and pacificity, but nothing more. Just like in the Southern Raiders, he may magnanimously grant Katara his forgiveness and his continued love even when she never asked for it. And in the end, Aang and Katara will kiss on the balcony of Iroh’s tea shop, only this time it’s not only “the hero winning the girl,” but “the bright and cheerful boy fixing the broken girl” as well.

This is the ending where Aang clings onto idealization even when it renders him a hypocrite, in the same way he is a hypocrite for shouting at his friends for pushing him to kill Ozai when it is implied he killed thousands at sea in the Siege at the North Pole.

This is the ending where he does not grow.

Note: Aang retreating into a ball of earth as a narrative parallel to the beginning of the series when he was encased in a ball of ice would have been much more powerful if only Aang entered the Avatar State through character growth rather than by the power of the Pointy Rock of Destiny (TM).

Now, let’s consider an ending where Aang’s perspective broadens rather than narrows and where Aang unroots himself from the past, pulling free from stagnance. Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario in which Aang finds out Katara killed Yon Rha. How may he react?

He may not be able to at first, too torn between his belief that Katara only uses violence as a last resort and the reality that Katara uses violence as a means of agency as well. Revenge corrupts; it is a stain that cannot be washed away. There is no reconciling Katara’s previous compassionate and loving nature with this dark path she has now chosen.

Except this is Katara he’s talking about, Katara who he loves and gave up the Avatar State for. Surely there’s a way to save her, right? Yes, just as Aang told Katara before she left, forgiveness is the answer. And while Katara may not have chosen forgiveness in the end, Aang can guide her by example.

The next day, he approaches her with the offer to exempt her from her wrongdoings.

Katara, tired and mournful, looks down at Aang.

“What was so wrong about what I did?”

Inside she is hurting. There is truth to what Aang said, that revenge is poisonous both to the victim and the perpetrator, but it is not poisonous for the reasons he thinks it is. As George Orwell writes in his essay, “revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also” (Revenge is Sour). There’s no doubt that Yon Rha was despicable, and there’s only a little doubt in saying that his punishment should fit his crime — the only regret Katara may have here is that killing Yon Rha is a meaningless act, for she has already gained power over him in every meaning of the word. Revenge is only a gateway to senseless violence and hatred; it is not a slope from which there is no recovery, and given Katara’s emotional intelligence, she likely has or will recognize this. Although she may feel regret, she needs no one’s forgiveness.

Aang is shocked. “But violence is never the answer,” he stands by, he pleads by. His voice grows quieter. “You know that… you knew that, didn’t you?”

Katara answers him, but it’s all a blur. She says something about agency, protection, and justice. He remembers something about that too, about the fury that burned in her eyes when she declared, “I will never, ever, turn my back on the people who need me!” Then there was the hostility simmering in her glare towards Zuko, the way she muttered that she didn’t trust him, not when he could still hurt them — hurt Aang — again.

Because Katara’s anger and compassion do not simply split themselves into two identities. Instead, they coexist and coalesce into one. They drive each other; they feed into each other; they are two sides of the same coin.

Excerpt from my meta Rage, Compassion, and the Bridge in Between

The beloved ideal of Katara — the one that he thought was on the verge of being tainted, the one that never existed — shatters. But just because it’s broken doesn’t mean Aang doesn’t want to fix it. So in the days leading up to Sozin’s Comet, he tries to pick up the fragments to the Katara-he-knew and piece them together again, all the while avoiding Katara’s mournful (yet resolved) stare. He ignores the way Zuko and Katara share glances with a heaviness as if they were the only two people in the world, full of some significance he cannot grasp. Still, it haunts him like the way Zuko’s touch lingers on Katara’s shoulder or Katara’s hand brushes Zuko’s briefly whenever they don’t think anyone’s looking, reflecting a togetherness escaping loneliness.

But there’s no answer that arrives quick enough to save Aang from his doubt and confusion. All too soon, Sozin’s Comet is upon them, and Aang wanders to another world on the lion turtle's back — but this time when he listens to the past Avatars’ advice, his perspective undergoes a paradigm shift.

They are right. The Air Nomads that he prioritized, that blinded him to his duties — they do not exist. Their love is still there, pure and human but not all-encompassing, tucked in the corner of his heart. And Katara was the same. She was and is not all-loving or all-compassionate or all-anything, really, because she is more human than that.

This time Katara’s image shatters again. But Aang does not follow the falling pieces to the ground, desperate to find them and force them together again. No, he sees past the remains and sees Katara for who she is. For who she wants to be. For who she can be (around someone else), when she’s not compelled to take on the caretaker role just for him.

(And he thought he was so generous, offering to forgive him. But it was never his forgiveness to give in the first place.)

Aang lets go of his last attachment.

The last airbender lives on, but so does the Avatar.

#atla #atla meta #anti kataang #anti kataang meta #zutara #aang #katara #anti aang #of sorts?#my bated breath's posts #my bated breath analyzes #i kind of rewrote aang's arc in the finale in my mind and a little bit of that slipped through #anon you asked a hard question so i gave you a 1.5k+ meta in response #i hope it's everything you ever hoped it could be #anonymous ask #ask #is tumblr hiding this post from the tags again?

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lady-literature · 4 years ago

Text

for us to collide (part 4)

anyway who actually expected me to end this thing in 4 chapters lol

rip me ig

After the not-so-impromptu interrogation courtesy of her friends (because there was no way they hadn’t planned that, it was too coordinated) Robin doesn’t stop by for two weeks.

Which is… fine. Marinette is plenty busy anyways. The extra time she has free now that she isn’t entertaining a bratty vigilante, goes to more productive uses of her time. Like watching bad horror movies with her friends and jeering at the horrible acting and special effects.

(Red Hood stops by in the middle of watching Grizzly Rage and proceeds to rant for twenty minutes about ‘shitty, unrealistic blood splatters’. Marinette has long since passed the point of being worried about it.)

So, yeah. She doesn’t see Robin.

But Damian, oddly enough, seeks her out.

It’s early, and there isn’t anyone else in the studio right now which means Marinette has her music blasting and she’s humming along as she hand paints silk for Clara’s dress. It’s loud and she’s in her zone, so it’s only by Tikki warning her that she realizes someone entered her sanctuary.

Her eyebrows raise when she sees who it is.

“Uh, bonjour Damian," she greets confusedly, reaching over to lower the volume on her speakers. "I hadn’t expected to see you here. Is there something you need?”

He stops before her workstation, only slightly bigger than the ones the rest of her staff use due to the sheer amount of open commissions she normally has. She has an actual office on this floor, but Chloé uses it more than she does. Marinette likes the open space and being around her designers more than she likes the privacy.

His eyes catch on the two bouquets of flowers she’s yet to take home, neither of which have even begun to wilt—and likely won’t. (She’ll have to take them home soon before people start asking questions.)

“I was called here by Father, but he’s currently indisposed. I’ve been told to wait.”

She waits a moment for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she asks, “So you came to visit me?”

“Yours is the only tolerable presence to be found.” His lips purse, and he crosses his arms. “And that includes that imbecile Drake who is no doubt still in his office like the pitiful insomniac he is.”

Her tongue is already halfway around a joke about excuses—she didn’t befriend Felix for nothing, okay? She knows how people like Damian work—when she realizes what he just said.

“Wait. Tim’s been here all night?”

Damian snorts. “He certainly didn’t return to the manor.”

She’s out of her seat in an instant, frowning and muttering up a storm as she rummages through the storage cubes pushed up against the far wall. She has a blanket, pillow and plain cotton shirt in her hands before Damian registers that she even moved.

“I’m going to kill your brother,” she says simply. “Would you like to come with?”

She’s gotten closer to Tim since working in Wayne Tower. He’s a notorious recluse and rarely leaves his office when he’s in the building, but Marinette makes it a point to visit him during lunch and before she leaves for the night.

He isn’t one of her Waynes, but he is a Wayne and her Waynes love and care for him so there’s not much of a difference really. She does like to think they might be something close to friends at this point though. And if the way Tim comes down to visit whenever he ventures out of his office means something, she might even be right.

Another thing that should be noted, is that Marinette is very much a ‘ride or die’ kind of person when it comes to the people she cares about. She will ruthlessly bully her loved ones into taking better care of themselves on threat of death because she is the semi-hypocritical mom friend and damn proud of it.

Damian looks her up and down, eyes lingering on the items in her hands and the determined set to her jaw and says, “Of course.” Then he’s plucking her things from her hands, offering her his arm and saying, “Shall we?”

Marinette laughs as she loops her arm with his. “We shall.”

***

She spends ten minutes scolding Tim before wrangling him onto the couch in his office and wrapping him up in the blanket so tightly he’d need to be an escape artist to get out of it. He tries to struggle anyway, but Marinette has too much practice at this and he doesn’t stand a chance in hell.

Damian stands at her shoulder and smirks the entire time, eyes dancing with amusement as she forces the CEO of Wayne Enterprises to take a fucking nap. Then, she’s treated to the sound of his surprised laughter as she begins switching out all of Tim’s regular coffee for magic-decaf—not that Damian knows it’s magic.

(By the devilish smirk playing at his lips, she’s starting to think that maybe Damian really is just as sadistic as Duke and Jason say he is.)

***

Damian starts dropping by more often after that (read: starts dropping by at all). Not that Marinette minds. She quite likes his company, actually.

He normally stops by first thing in the morning when Marinette is the only one in the workshop, walking in like he owns the place. For the first couple days, he asks about Ladybug and the rest of Paris’ Court, claiming that he’s curious about them.

She answers them, but only as far as she’d answer them for any reporter and is careful not to give away any sensitive information not known to the public. He gets a bit frustrated at one point, complaining that she must know more, but she stays stubbornly silent about it and, sometimes, steers the conversation deftly to the Great Bat and his Flock instead.

He eventually stops asking about the Parisian superheroes and instead their morning conversations turn to a thousand random things. Complaints and anecdotes and a silly back and forth between the two.

Marinette’s never been much of a morning person but having Damian there to keep her company is… nice.

She almost finds herself looking forward to mornings now.

***

When her Waynes learn that she’s started a food kitchen and makes a habit of spending her weekend there, they immediately insist on joining her, despite her protests.

“You guys really don’t have to do this,” she says even though the three of them are already in their aprons and Cass is eyeing the boucher, Vivian, and her collection of knives with glittering interest.

Duke grins at her, “We know, M. But we want to.”

Jason finally turns back to her from where he’s been staring at the kitchen with something just shy of awe on his face. “You’re downright incredible, you know that?” he waves a hand out at the seating area, and then at the people in the kitchen assembling the healthiest and cost-efficient meals she and Felix could find after days spent researching. “I would’ve killed for something like this when I was on the streets.”

“It’s not just me who’s got this up and running-” she tries protesting but then Fiona, the woman Marinette actually put in charge of this place, is at her side and all but shoving the four of them into stations.

Marinette ends up by the pastries, like always, and she can see Jason making sandwiches. Duke's been roped into making eggs and bean casseroles and Cass, by some grace, actually ended up by Vivian and is having a blast cutting up all the meats as fast as she can.

They don’t stop until lunch, all four of them helping prepare meals for the upcoming week in bulk. After, they all go out for ice cream by the pier and Jason smears chocolate on her nose and Duke carries her around on his back when she complains about being tired.

Cass takes pictures of it all and later, Marinette gets them all printed out.

It ends up being a really good day.

***

The buzz from the charity gala and all the press regarding her and Damian’s non-existent relationship had calmed down weeks ago. There was still the odd article about Marinette being seen with her odd assortment of Waynes and the newspapers still called her ridiculous names when they got a picture, but it was about as close to normal as she gets.

The quiet lulled her into a false sense of security.

Ice Prince and Sweetheart Finally Seen on Date: Fairy Tale Romance or Publicity Stunt?

The ‘date’ in question was a coffee and lunch run for her designers and also Tim (because kwami knew he'd work through lunch if allowed).

Damian normally didn’t stay past Lilliane arriving in the morning (the poor dear was chronically late and always the last to arrive) but he hadn’t shown up until after she came that day and overcompensated by hours—which she hadn't minded. He kept to the fringes of her workspace and didn't distract her, instead focusing on his own thing. She wasn’t quite sure what he was up to, but she knew he was switching between his computer and sketchpad every so often.

(She's pretty sure he was hiding from Dick for some reason. He’s the only Wayne brother who doesn’t visit her at work, seeing as they have their bi-weekly gymnastic sessions; recently, with the addition of Mar’i, who still calls her ‘twin’ and whom Marinette still adores.)

And then lunch had rolled around, and it was Marinette’s turn to go out so she brought Damian with since he was still there.

They were out together for forty-five minutes. Tops.

“Why me?” she whines into the surface of her desk.

Damian, the asshole, just laughs at her and she can’t even be mad about it because he’s only just started laughing around her and not hiding behind so many of his walls. He laughs and Marinette knows it's precious so instead of shooting him the glower he deserves, she finds herself having to hide the smile slowly creeping on her face.

***

They’re splashed across the papers again less than a week later, only this time she has her Waynes there too.

Marinette's wearing her bright red sundress and she's somehow convinced Damian to wear a jacket with elaborate crowns and snowflakes embroidered up the sides. Because, as Chloé says: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

They see the camera this time and the photo splashed across the page the next day is of Marinette laughing with Jason’s arm slung across her shoulders as both he and Damian flip off the camera. Meanwhile, Duke and Cass stand just far enough in frame to capture their expressions of pain and amusement respectively.

(Marinette makes a mental note to order apology gift baskets for the PR department.)

There are a lot of headlines the next day about Marinette’s ‘harem of Waynes’ and how she’s a ‘horrible influence on such bright children’. She spends about ten minutes trying to decide whether she should be horrified or laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it and eventually decides on both.

Adrien, the little shit, sees the headline and immediately prints it out to hang in her kitchen.

It reappears every time she tries to take it down.

***

Gotham does not smile upon daytime heroes.

Not to say that Gotham really smiles on anyone, but it’s especially vicious to those that think they’re owed anything. She’s heard the way Gothamites talk about Superman and The Flash—it’s not exactly what one would call adoring.

But Ladybug's been a daytime hero her entire career and it is not difficult to see that there's something distinctly different about the way daytime heroes and Gotham’s vigilantes operate.

Something more vicious, maybe; something more restrained.

Without the light of day and without the people’s eyes watching them at every moment, the Gotham Bats have become something else entirely.

Signal, their Daytime Protector, is especially strange.

A bat who's meta, straddling the line between day and night. The Day Patrol, trained by the night.

Sometimes, when she and Signal talk about heroing, there is such an odd type of disconnect that it throws her. Nothing horrible or major, but little things she’s sure she wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t so intimately familiar with it all herself.

They don’t always talk about heroing though. After two months, Ladybug is proud to say she seems to be worming her way past his outer shell nicely. He tried so hard to keep his distance from her, but Ladybug’s always liked a challenge, and it isn’t long before she has him relaxing around her.

Well, for a definition of relax anyway. He's still a bat after all.

But then, it’s pretty easy to get past Signal’s barriers when she’s already had practice breaking through the more stubborn bats like Robin and, to an extent, Hood. Not that Signal, or any of the bats, know that.

Which, speaking of the bats, isn’t it a bit weird she’s only met three spread across two of her alter egos? As Ladybug, she’d expect to be hounded by a few of them but the only one she’s met is Signal. She can’t decide if it’s because he’s the only one that operates in the daylight, or if they just don’t want to spook her into running or something.

Either way, they’re going to start giving her a complex. She’s heard so much about the rest of the Batfamily, and not one of them even wants to meet her? Either her?

(Maybe Marinette should ask Robin and Hood what’s up with that? The way they talk about how nosy Red Robin is, she’s surprised he didn’t drop by months ago and- is it weird that she’s offended by vigilantes not prying into her private life?

…Probably.)

***

Marinette blinks, stopping dead in her tracks.

Damian's on her fainting couch, sketchpad in his lap as he waits for her.

“Why are you wearing a beanie?” she blurts out instead of greeting him like a normal person. "You never wear beanies."

Luckily, Damian scowls at her question rather than at her. It’s a subtle but very important difference.

“Sorry,” she apologizes anyway, putting her bag down. “I haven't had coffee yet.”

He hums, then nods to her desk where she finds a steaming to-go mug. Her face lights up and she quickly snatches it, breathing deeply the lovely aroma. “You’re a godsend.”

That brings a quirk to his lips, closer to a smirk than a smile, but progress nonetheless.

After a moment, where she sips at her overly sugary monstrosity—just the way she likes it, when had Damian even noticed that?—and he continues sketching she asks again. “Okay but, I actually am kinda curious. What’s up with the hat?”

He sighs heavily, closing his pad. “It’s… better than the alternative.”

Marinette snorts. “Alternative to what? A top hat?” But instead of snapping back like she expects, he just continues to frown. Immediately, her lips turn down into a concerned frown. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes,” he grounds out and Marinette puts her coffee down. She’s just about to open her mouth and say something else when he reaches up and rips the beanie off his head.

For the second time in less than five minutes, she stops dead.

Marinette opens her mouth. Closes it. Blinks, but the scene doesn't change.

His hair is still blue.

Damian Wayne's hair is blue.

Damian Wayne’s hair is vibrantly electric blue.

Her hand shoots up to cover her mouth as she tries to stifle her giggles.

Damian’s scowl deepens. He moves to shove his ridiculous beanie back on his head but her hand snaps out before he can.

“No! No, I’m sorry I just-” she giggles again. “You looked so upset by it and you took me by surprise. I like it!”

He glares up at her, still sat on the fainting couch so it’s her who has the height advantage for once.

“Don’t patronize me.”

She rolls her eyes, the hand that wasn’t settled on his arm reaching up to touch the bright strands. It's slow enough that he can stop her, but he, surprisingly, makes no move to.

His hair is a lot softer than she expects it to be. But she supposes he didn’t use that gel stuff today, planning on keeping his hair under a hat the whole time.

“It looks good on you,” she says softly.

He snorts disbelievingly and she smacks his shoulder lightly. “It’s true! I swear you could look good in any color.” She clicks her tongue longingly. “I wish I had your skin tone. I’m too pale to wear pastels like I want.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Pastels?”

“Oh you hush,” she quips, finally pulling her hand from his hair. “Anyway, if you don’t like it, why’d you dye it blue in the first place?”

“I… lost a wager with Todd.”

She laughs, starting to move around and get ready for the day. She doesn’t have any meetings scheduled, which means she gets the whole day to create. She’s pretty excited about it.

“I should’ve guessed it was Jason’s doing.”

Damian shrugs, settling back into the cushions. He drapes himself across them in a way that’s effortlessly elegant and like he’s ready to be photographed for a magazine cover or something. Must all her friends be so pretty? It’s playing hell on her self-esteem.

“But blue is your favorite color, right? So there’s that at least.”

Damian hums. “Todd had threatened to dye it pink or some other equally garish color.”

“Hey!” she exclaims in mock outrage. “What’s wrong with pink? I’ve been wanting to dye my hair pink for ages.”

“Nothing. It’s just simply not a color I appreciate.” He makes a face. “Like orange.”

Marinette huffs, but there’s a smile on her lips. It's quiet for a moment, for long enough that she thinks the conversation's been dropped. But then-

“Why don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Why haven’t you dyed your hair?” he repeats. “Your friends—Couffaine and… Kubdel? They both have colored hair.”

Marinette shrugs. “I dunno. Never got around to it I guess. I suppose I could do it now. Dye mine in solidarity,” she jokes. “Oh! We could match even! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“I thought you wanted pink?”

“Well, yeah. But blue is nice too. Besides,” she smiles wryly over her shoulder, “you just said pink was ‘garish’.”

Damian frowns slightly, shaking his head, “On me, perhaps. But I think you’d look very fetching in pink.”

“Oh,” Marinette pauses, feeling her face grow warm at the sudden compliment. “Well- Uh, pink it is, then.”

***

(Damian watches the blush rise on her cheeks as she turns away to try and hide it. Yes, he can’t help but think, fetching in pink, indeed.)

***

Luka insists on being the one to dye her hair, citing that he’s the one who had dibs all these years, but Alix and Jason both all but demand to be there too.

Her bathroom is not big enough for all four of them to sit in.

Not a single one of them cares.

Cass and Duke ask for progress pics along with Uncle Jay, and all her Parisian friends cycle through standing at the bathroom door to see how it's going.

The constant stream of people looking at her makes her feel not unlike an animal at a zoo. (When she wryly tells this to Alix, all she gets is her friend cackling on the ground.)

But, after all the bleaching and conditioning and waiting, she stares into the mirror with soft pink hair the color of bubblegum and thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

She thinks it again when Damian walks in the next day and almost trips over his own feet.

(She’s also wearing her Robin themed sundress, complete with hood, matching boots and personal touches not found on the mass-produced version—but Marinette doesn’t know why that would be relevant.)

Her favorite reaction to her new hair color though is, by far, Mar’i’s.

Marinette doesn’t see the young Grayson until a week later when she’s invited to the monthly family dinner Alfred insists all the Waynes attend—which includes her now, apparently (she tries not to show how pleased she is by that).

She arrived with Damian, who was kind enough to pick Tim and her up from work, and Mar’i takes one look at Damian and her standing next to one another before she starts babbling excitedly about Lilo and Stitch and Angel. A character who is—apparently—Stitch’s girlfriend and the complimentary pink to his blue.

Marinette is momentarily surprised, but Mar’i’s enthusiasm is contagious and it isn’t long before the rest of the Waynes are teasingly calling them Angel and Stitch. Marinette thinks it’s all very funny and adorable.

Damian, on the other hand, most certainly does not and threatens everyone who calls him that ‘ridiculous nickname’ with graphic depictions of bodily harm.

‘Angel’, oddly enough, sticks for Marinette. She finds she kind of likes it.

***

Later, Damian asks her about nicknames.

Well, he calls them ‘asinine titles’ and doesn’t so much ask as demand she explain why she allows anyone to call her by them seeing as she has a ‘perfectly serviceable name,’ in his opinion.

Ignoring the fact that she’s heard Dick call him multiple nicknames he hadn’t protested to, she says, “Well, I guess it’s that everyone uses Marinette. A nickname is something… special. A little more personal, I guess. And, I dunno. My parents named me Marinette, but it’s nice to share something between other people. And it shows they care.”

Damian looks confused after she’s done, but also thoughtful. He doesn’t say anything to that and Marinette doesn’t really expect anything to come of it.

She's proven wrong when, a week later, Damian calls her Starling instead of Marinette.

(And the transition from Dupain-Cheng to Marinette had been enough to make her beam—this is just ridiculous.)

***

When Robin disappears a second time, Marinette doesn’t get the chance to notice his absence on her own. He’s only stopped showing up four days ago—which is longer than normal, but not unheard of—when she hears unfamiliar voices on her balcony.

Looking out, she finds three semi-familiar individuals clustered around the plate of treats she leaves out for Robin and Hood.

Nightwing and Red Robin are both stuffing their faces full of the fruit tarts she had made while Spoiler glares at them and seems to be cursing the fact that her mask covers her mouth the same way Hood always does when she makes those raspberry scones he likes.

The scene is… odd. For many reasons but most pressingly that their arrival has come out of nowhere.

“Well,” Nightwing explains when she asks, “We wanted to visit ages ago, but baby bird threatened to stab us all if we tried.”

“He’s very… particular about you,” Red Robin tacks on while Spoiler nods sagely like she hasn’t crafted some strange straw monstrosity just so she can drink tea while still wearing her mask. Red Robin has one too, but his for the aesthetic rather than out of necessity.

Marinette stares at the three of them. “That… does not explain why you are here now.”

“Robin can’t stop us now, obviously,” Red Robin says casually, like he hasn't just kicked her heart into high gear with a few words.

“What? Why?” she demands, trying very hard not to sound panicked. “Is he okay? Was he hurt?”

Red Robin blinks, going quiet in that way Hood and Robin do when they’re judging her just a bit. She hates this family.

“No, he’s… fine.”

“B’s just benched him for the time being,” Nightwing helpfully supplies, amusement flickering at the edges of his lips. “He’s a little too… conspicuous at the moment.”

Marinette’s shoulders relax even as her brows furrow. Conspicuous? What in the world is that supposed to mean?

“Does that mean he won’t be coming around for a while?” she asks before she can think better of it.

The three vigilantes in front of her share a look before Spoiler says, “Probably. But the gremlin’s never been one to sit still so who knows?” she smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners as she leans toward Marinette conspiratorially. “But don’t worry. We can keep you company in the meantime!”

“We’re much better company than the demon anyway. Certainly less insulting.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad. He’s an ass, for sure, but you can tell when he means it and when he’s just stumbling over himself.” Marinette smiles fondly, “For someone so dignified, he trips over his tongue quite often.”

Now the vigilantes are really staring at her. She’s starting to feel pretty uncomfortable about it all when Nightwing beams at her, jumping up from his seat to sweep her into a hug. It startles her, but she doesn’t push him away, instead laughing at the sudden affection.

“Oh you really are perfect!” he exclaims, setting her down and still grinning like an absolute lunatic.

She’s smiling, because Nightwing’s joy is infectious, but she's even more confused than before. And then, before she can ask what he means, Red Robin’s wrist computer lights up—and damn, isn’t that cool? Marinette wonders if Tikki could do something like that for the Ladybug suit—and the three are moving to swing back out into the night.

She waves them off and they all promise to visit again.

Marinette shakes her head before going back inside with the empty pastry plate and four empty mugs.

***

Damian knows of Marinette’s friends of course. It'd take more effort not to when she talks about them every chance she gets and tells him all the wild stories about their escapades and misadventures.

(They also all came up in the background check he ran on her when they first met.)

Most of her friends are exceedingly normal oddly enough. Well, they’re all mildly famous and the leaders of their various fields, but they’re just civilians.

The only exceptions being, Bourgeois, Agreste, and Graham de Vanily.

Bourgeois is a former hero like Marinette, only she doesn't seem to still be in contact with the Parisian Court. All the articles he could find spoke about how Queen Bee was deemed unfit for her mantle and later replaced by the new bee hero, Ambrosia. Agreste was caught up in the scandal of his father being Hawkmoth, but he was found innocent and ignorant of his father's crimes (something Damian made sure to confirm). He now works at and is being groomed to own the bakery Marinette's parents run, seeing as their daughter has little interest to do it herself.

And finally, Graham de Vanily, Agreste's cousin, has a history of causing trouble wherever he goes. Nothing villainous, and rarely even malicious, but there's something about him that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not everything is as it seems with the Graham de Vanily heir.

Besides those three outliers, Marinette's friends seem to be untouched by the vigilante life. Which means he thinks they must be utterly boring.

Only, when her friends start coming around to visit and drag her out for lunch or some other random outing, Damian keeps finding himself baffled by each of them.

They act strangely and with a dangerous air none of them should possess, except for Tsurugi. The questions they ask him are strange and the jokes they make have no sense. He's been warned about how he better treat Marinette so many times, he's started to lose count. (Which is ridiculous. He treats her just fine and would never intentionally harm her. What are they trying to insinuate?)

But, by far, his most memorable encounter is with Lahiffe. A veritable wolf in sheep's clothing.

Marinette is excitedly babbling about her newest idea for her summer collection, pressed up against him on the chaise and practically shoving her sketches in his face as she demands his critique and thoughts.

Her hands are waving every which way and, on more than one occasion, he has to quickly lean back so she doesn't hit him in the face.

He’s focusing on what she’s saying so much—because she has a habit of forgetting things if she doesn’t write them down and needs someone to remind her of the ideas she had at a later time—that he doesn’t even realize Lahiffe is there until he clears his throat.

Marinette jumps, almost elbowing him in the stomach. “Nino!” she shouts, springing up and flinging herself at the other man who catches her like this is something she does often.

“Heya, Nettie.”

“Wait- what are you doing here? You’re not-” she jolts back to look at Lahiffe’s amused expression. “Oh kwami, is it time already? Shit. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so sorry! I have to give this one thing to Publishing but then I promise we can go, okay? Like, just five minutes!”

She's already moving before she finishes speaking, sweeping up papers and rearranging files and putting things away with all the swiftness and agility of a speedster. Damian watches her go about her routine, occasionally handing her something she’s dropped or pointing out a thing she’s missed, weaving around her chaos with practiced ease.

Then she’s sweeping out of the office with a distracted “be right back!” and he’s alone with Lahiffe.

The second Marinette leaves, the man’s attention swings onto him with a strange weight. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything and Damian’s hackles raise with every passing second.

He doesn’t snap at him though, because he’s one of Marinette’s friends. Insulting him would only serve to make her upset and that’s something Damian's been trying to avoid causing as of late.

“Man,” Lahiffe says at last. “Alix wasn’t kidding about the whole besotted thing, huh?”

Damian rears back, straightening up to his full height. “I beg your pardon?”

Lahiffe laughs and waves his hand about like that’s supposed to mean something. “Ah, no need to be embarrassed about it, dude. You’re far from the first of us to fall for her charms.”

“What.”

“Yeah, we've all been there. I think over half of the Paris crew crushed on her at some point, including myself. None of us are into her like that anymore, so as long as you treat her right, you got nothing to worry about."

“I’m not- I'm not interested in Marinette,” Damian tries to protest but Lahiffe just calmly steamrolls over him.

“Nah. Everyone loves Nettie. It’s universal law or something. First, there was me and Adrien, then Luka—who she actually liked back for a while there but are now practically siblings. Chloé liked her in collége, but she hadn’t really come to terms with that at the time. Alix might’ve, but she’s pretty grey-ace and fluctuates on the romance points, so who knows.

“Oh! And Nath. He also snagged a date with her, but he was an Akuma at the time so I’m not technically sure that it counts. And he’s with Marc now anyway. Thinking of adopting a kid, last I heard. Anyway- my point was: everyone loves Nettie. And don’t bother trying to fight it, because it only makes her pull of gravity worse.”

Lahiffe then claps him on the shoulder like their talk amiable and not the most confusing speech Damian’s ever heard.

And then he doesn’t even get to say anything to that because Marinette is sprinting back through the door, grabbing her jacket and bag, telling him goodbye, and dragging Lahiffe out to who knows where.

Damian stands there longer than he cares to admit trying to make the world make sense again.

***

A week and a half after she learned Robin was benched, Damian catches her staring off into space as she doodles tiny robins in the margins of her sketchbook.

He gives her an odd look when she scrambles to hide them, blushing hotly and babbling about how she’s “Just fine! Nothing to worry about! I’m just, maybe, perhaps, a little worried for a friend even though I shouldn’t be, because his family says he’s just fine and-”

He looks contemplative when he leaves that day, but he didn’t ask about her outburst, so she extends the same courtesy to him.

***

That night, Robin returns.

“What,” she says around the laughter threatening to bubble out of her throat, “are you wearing?”

Robin scowls from behind the full cowl he has on that she’s pretty sure belongs to Red Robin. It makes him look a whole ten years older and she can’t get over how ridiculous he looks. If he keeps doing stupid things with his face while wearing that monstrosity, she is definitely going to laugh at him.

“What are you wearing?” he shoots back petulantly.

She blinks in confusion, then realizes she’s still wearing her Red Hood inspired jacket right now. Tan colored fake leather with fuzzy, red inner lining, done with all the same pockets, buttons, and zippers Red Hood has on his own jacket. It looks almost exactly like the jacket she fixed for him all that time ago, except she's also added a soft, crimson hood and his own personal bat symbol stitched across her shoulder blades.

As far as things she's designed goes, this is one of her simpler ones. It's nothing like the elaborate creations she makes for the Ambrosia or Ryuko themed items.

But Red Hood was a simple kind of person, and she likes that it’s reflected in her work.

Robin doesn't seem to agree if the poorly concealed disdain on his face means anything.

“What?” she asks teasingly, “You jealous?”

He scoffs and looks off to the side. “Of course not. I simply do not understand why you’d want anything to do with that simpleton. Especially not when I know you have clothing articles referencing far superior individuals.”

She snorts good-naturedly, "What 'individuals'? You mean you?"

The way he raises his nose self importantly is answer enough, and she can't stop herself from rolling his eyes. "Well, it's certainly a start. But I'm not the only one."

"Oh, yeah? And who else is marvelous enough to stand on the same level as you?"

"Multimouse."

Her mouth goes dry, and she can tell Robin is pointedly not looking at her.

“Come inside,” she blurts in lieu of all the things she really wants to say—which are mostly just embarrassing variations of I missed you. “I can, uh, make us tea. If you want.”

It's the first time she’s ever invited him inside and she can see the small bit of shock on his face—well, what she can see of it anyway—before he schools it.

“Yes,” he says in a tone of voice that implies it was his idea in the first place. “That sounds… good.”

She steps aside, allowing him to pass her by into the flat. Only instead of just walking past her, he stops halfway through the doorway and stares at her. She’s about to ask what’s wrong when he reaches out with his hand to gently grab a lock of her hair.

“Pink suits you, by the way.”

She quirks her lips, “Yeah? You don’t think it’s… too much?”

The corners of his mouth turn down, “Absolutely not. You look…” he trails off, mouth flattening into a line and dropping his hand.

She blinks at the odd behavior. “Nice?” she offers tentatively.

He nods, but it’s a little jerky and strange. But before she can ask about it, he’s already turning to enter her flat like he owns the place, remarking about her choices of tea and if she’s finally acquired an ‘adequate teapot’.

She shakes off the moment and goes in to follow him before he wrecks her kitchen in his careless search for tea supplies.

***

MinnieMouse: COME GET YALL JUICE

and by juice i mean me

I still do not have an american license

JaneAustenStanAccount: what do we get out of it?

MinnieMouse: ???

the pleasure of my company??

also youre literally the one that invited me to watch megamind

JaneAustenStanAccount: and??

daisyduke: shut up jay

we all know youre soft for M stop tryin to play tough

MinnieMouse: this is why duke is my favorite

he’s a living callout post

swanlake: :(

MinnieMouse: second favorite

im so sorry cass ily

swanlake: :)

daisyduke: i aint even mad

JaneAustenStanAccount: I AM

guys wtf

MinnieMouse: you brought this on yourself

maybe you should be nicer to me

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

daisyduke: ‘get fucked jason’ -marinette 2k20

btw im omw for you now

MinnieMouse: thnx ur the best

also im bringing scones as movie snack

daisyduke: noice

swanlake: !!!

JaneAustenStanAccount: FUCK YEAH!!!

MinnieMouse: you dont get any Jay

JaneAustenStanAccount: >:(

i hate it here

***

Marinette doesn’t know a lot about Robin’s past, which she assumes is by design. Secret identities don’t lead well to handing out details and concrete information about one’s personal life.

But, she thinks, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see that whatever facsimile of a childhood Robin had was about eight different levels of fucked up.

It’s in the vague allusions to ‘training’ and the scorn filled way he says the word ‘mother’. It’s in the not-quite-confusion—because whatever family he has is better now, at least—of Marinette telling him about her own parents. About the happy memories she’s shared with them, of learning to bake bread and croissants and macaroons under the loving guidance of her father and practicing delicate designs and frosting techniques with her mother.

So, yeah. She knows he’s kind of messed up and definitely checks off the childhood trauma box that’s apparently one of the requirements for being her friend.

So when Robin suddenly decides to go against everything she’s learned about him up until this point and actually share something about himself—and when that thing he shares just so happens to be a story from his childhood—well… Marinette wouldn’t say she’s prepared, but she’s not- prepared.

He’s in her kitchen, because Marinette has learned her lesson about bleeding vigilantes on her couch, and she’s pretty sure he could’ve gone back to the Cave for this, but he came here for whatever reason. (Was closer, he said. Marinette doesn’t know if she believes him.)

She’s cleaning the knife wound on his arm, and she has his cape laid out across her island. There’s a hole in it she plans on sewing back up after she finishes sewing the hole in her reckless vigilante back up.

“You need to be more careful,” she scolds. “You’re lucky this didn’t nick something important.”

“It's hardly the worst wound I’ve ever acquired,” he tells her in a tone of voice that he probably thinks is reasonable. “At seven years old I had to dig a bullet out of my side in the middle of a Himilayan snowstorm while still making it back to base with time to spare after having successfully assassinated a Russian ambassador.”

Marinette pauses where she’s smoothing the gauze onto his bicep. Her eyes flick up to his, and she sees the exact moment he seems to realize what he just told her. He’s gone utterly still beneath her hands, with terror or worry or the effort it takes not to bolt out the window immediately, she doesn’t know.

“That’s horrifying,” she tells him as she finishes securing the obnoxiously bright bandage, “Never tell me that story again.”

She then drops a kiss onto his bicep, subtly imbuing it with enough luck that it will keep off any infection—the wound was filthy when he came in, seriously, was he in a sewer?—and pats his cheek warmly before moving to clean up all her supplies.

She feels his eyes on her the rest of the night, but every time she turns to him, she can’t tell what he’s thinking. All she knows is that he seems… softer, in a way.

***

Three days after Marinette’s unexpected look into Robin’s past, she finds a box on her desk. It’s a jewelry box, and the only reason she doesn’t immediately freak out is the fact that it lacks any of the miracle box markings.

Still, she opens it hesitantly, and inside, she finds a necklace. A completely normal, non-magical necklace that’s simple and pretty and very much shaped like a tiny toy mouse.

There is no note.

***

(Lahiffe was right.

The Earth spins around the sun. The sky is blue.

Everyone loves Marinette.)

***

The necklace is obviously supposed to be a reference to her Multimouse days, but that doesn’t exactly narrow down who could have left it for her.

Or well, it does, but all the people it narrows down to don’t make any sense.

Multimouse is a badly kept secret, but it’s still a secret. Most people outside Paris don’t know about her and the people in Paris didn’t exactly recognize her off the street either.

Her Court knows, obviously, and so do the Waynes and the bats. But her Court wouldn’t leave her mouse themed gifts, they tend toward ladybugs or their own animal motif as a gift (the amount of cat and bee themed items she owns is ludicrous).

Which leaves the Waynes and the bats.

But her Waynes wouldn’t leave the gift on her desk, and they certainly wouldn’t forget to put a note, so Duke, Jason, and Cass are out.

She must stand there thinking about it too long, because then Jeremy's walking in, just as bright and early as ever.

He sees her holding the box and his face turns a strange mix of curious and outraged. “Is it your birthday? I swear, Boss if you didn't tell us it was your birthday-”

“No, Jeremy,” she says, amused despite her confusion. “That’s not for a while yet. I found this when I walked in,” she shakes the box slightly for emphasis, “but there wasn’t a note.”

“Oh.” A smile slowly spreads across Jeremy’s face. “Oh?” he purrs, waggling his eyebrows at her. “Does the boss have a secret admirer?”

Marinette blinks and- what?

“What? No. I can’t- That doesn’t-” she splutters but Jeremy just laughs and walks over to his station to start setting up for the day, leaving Marinette to her breakdown.

Because this can’t have been left by a secret admirer. That’s just crazy.

There are exactly two people who could’ve left this for her and neither of them would be an admirer of any kind. And she wouldn’t want them to be anyway because that would be stupid and ridiculous and weird.

She doesn’t like Robin or Damian like that…

Right?

***

(It’s impossible not to love her, he realizes, mostly by accident.

She loves, wholeheartedly and unafraid and so much more than Damian had ever thought one person could. She loves with a ferocity and passion no person deserves or can match.

And Damian, foolishly, loves and wishes to be loved by her anyway.)

***

There are roses on her desk the next day, potted and still healthy.

The day after that, there’s a box of expensive chocolates. Like, the kind only Adrien, Felix, and Chloé buy without a second thought. The gossip has spread far enough that all of her designers know about the gifts and probably-admirer.

On the fourth day, there is a box full of high-quality pencils and a new sketchbook, one with nice thick drafting paper, but small enough to fit in her favored bag. Her name is embossed across the front, along with her personal motif of delicate apple blossoms.

On the fifth day, she shows up to find there is only a drawing, which should point to it being Damian, but drawing-her is holding a robin in her cupped palms which cannot be a coincidence. Drawing-her also looks serene and beautiful with her mouth curved slightly and her eyes gentle and soft and Marinette is as touched by the image as she is frustrated by it.

There are hair sticks on the sixth, and delicate pins shaped like flowers on the seventh. Another stunning drawing of her on the eighth, a bottle of wine older than Master Fu on the ninth, the softest cashmere blanket on the tenth, a basket of sweet floral lotions, a glass statue of a bird in flight—she gets so many gifts, Marinette has to stop keeping count.

It’s somewhere around day six that her designers must’ve ratted on her to either Felix or Chloé because it’s not long after that, that all of her friends learn about the gifts and start being terrifically unhelpful about the whole situation.

They each try to give her advice, which would be sweet if it wasn’t all equally terrible and conflicting.

They’re also placing bets on who they think her admirer is, Damian or Robin. They’re trying to be discreet about it—which means they’re failing miserably.

Marinette, admittedly, never expected any different from them.

***

Marinette begins watching Damian in the mornings with a newfound interest.

The gifts are always there before she arrives, which means they're also there before Damian arrives, so she’s in a prime position to catch his reaction.

Or, she would be, if he ever reacted. He barely glances at them and never says anything unless the gift is particularly obnoxious, like the giant stuffed mouse she found sitting in her chair last week. (It was almost as big as she was. Adrien, Nino, and Alix had ended up on the floor from laughing so hard when they’d seen it.)

Damian almost never comments on the gift she received that day, but whenever she uses or wears something that her mysterious admirer had gotten for her, he makes sure to compliment her. Which would be very suspicious except that Robin does the same thing.

It’s just- they’re both so frustratingly silent about it all! Marinette is this close to just grabbing one or both of them by the shoulders and just shaking until they tell the truth.

It’s driving her insane! Before the necklace appeared on her desk, she didn’t even know that she liked Robin and Damian.

And now she’s overanalyzing their nonreactions. She hates it.

It feels too much like she’s back in collège, trying to sort out her feelings for Adrien and Chat. (Who ended up being the same person—which was just very inconsiderate of him, really. The least he could do is let her angst have meaning dammit!)

And- ugh. What if she doesn't even like either of them? What if her mind is just making her think she does because the idea of them liking her was presented? What then? Or what about the fact that the two boys are also ridiculously similar when she thinks about it. What if she only likes one and is just projecting her feelings onto the other because her mind associates the two?

Oh, she doesn’t like that thought. That thought makes her feel upset and like she wants to cry into a tub of ice cream.

Nino happily indulges her and doesn't even complain when she eats her way through his stash of mint chip as she dramatically complains about stupidly confusing boys.

Honestly, she may as well be back in lycée.

***

(What Marinette does not realize in the midst of all her careful analysis of his reactions, is that it’s not the gifts he’s focused on.

When she wears the necklace and hair sticks, she misses the way his eyes linger on the slope of her neck. As she cares for her roses, she doesn’t notice the way he follows the easy nimbleness of her fingers. She uses her sketchbook and eats the expensive chocolates and doesn’t pay attention to the way he steals glances at her lips. She doesn't see the way his hands twitch when she ventures just near enough to touch.

(She exists next to him, in any form or light, and he is captivated by her very presence.)

Marinette looks, but it is in all the wrong places.)

***

Strangely enough, it’s Signal who helps her with her internal crisis—completely unintentionally and in a very roundabout way—but he helps all the same.

He’s taken an… interest, she supposes, in her magic. One that is entirely his own and has very little to do with that Bat from what she can tell.

His abilities and hers stem from different origins, but she would be lying if she said his weren’t oddly complementary to her own. His precognition abilities stemming from his photokinesis has been useful on more than one occasion regarding the experimental spell matrices she, Tikki, and Nooroo have been testing out.

The magic is normally invisible to people without a Miraculous, but Signal seems to have little trouble seeing what she’s doing, even if he can’t interact with it the way she can.

(There is also the fact that she seems… more when he is around. Days that he spends watching her do her work go by faster and smoother than when he is away. Her magic is easier, and her mind spins with ideas and creations faster.

It’s an odd phenomenon and Ladybug is looking into it.)

There has been more than one occasion where Signal had warned her of the matrix’s imminent collapse with enough time for her to prepare herself for its blowback.

The version she’s working on today is their fifth iteration. It’s supposed to pull the miasma out of the building, filter it through her and Tikki’s own magical energy, before flowing back into the brickwork. Marinette had thought of the idea while talking with Nooroo.

If she can get it to work, it will shift the misfortune into good luck and order and release it back into the environment. Then she’ll only need to cleanse strategic portions of the city in a lattice network, and the creative and destructive energies will mix from there, balancing themselves without much input from her at all.

Of course, that’s only if she can actually get it to work. It’s been almost a month and this is the fifth version and it’s already collapsed on her three times in the last hour. Signal must see the frustration on her face and has taken to trying to distract her with small talk.

She’s very thankful for it, actually. If he wasn’t doing that, she would probably start screaming right here and now, on this random rooftop in the residential district. Which would just be very startling and embarrassing for everyone involved, so. You know. Glad she doesn’t have to do that.

Eventually, she asks him, apropos of nothing, “You’re a detective right?”

He pauses, and blinks at her, likely trying to follow the train of thought that led her to that question. She assumes he did not find it because when he speaks, he still sounds confused.

“Yes? I guess that’s technically what I am.”

“So you’re good at figuring out who’s behind a crime?”

Signal only looks more confused. “Yeah? But Ladybug, what-”

“Great, so. Hypothetically, if you had two suspects for a—well it’s not a crime. A… thing? Situation. How would you figure out which one of them is actually behind the… situation?”

Signal’s lips quirk, just a bit despite his confusion. “I think I’m gonna need a little more to go on than just ‘a situation,’ LB.”

Ladybug purses her lips and stares down at the light weaving intricate patterns in the space between her palms. Slowly, carefully, she tells him, “There are items being left where a person can find them. But the identity of the person leaving them and their intentions are unknown.”

“Are the items dangerous?” he asks worriedly.

Ladybug shakes her head. “No. They're more like gifts.”

“Are the gifts unwanted or creepy? Unsettling? Threatening?”

Another head shake. “Just confusing and… thoughtful.”

“Someone is leaving you thoughtful gifts and you're worried about that… why?” Signal asks, slowly and disbelievingly.

“It’s because I- wait! I’m not the person!” she panics, causing the magic to spark dangerously in her hands but she barely notices. “The person doesn’t even exist. It was a hypothetical question!”

Signal stares at her. She can’t see his eyes or the top half of his face, but she just knows he’s raising his eyebrow judgingly at her.

“Stop that!” she snaps. “Stop being perceptive! I have enough perceptive people in my life so knock it off!”

Signal laughs like the horrible person he is. “But don’t you need me to be perceptive? That’s like, a requirement to be a detective.”

“Stop it,” she says again, mulishly and very childish.

And isn’t that an odd thought to have? Ladybug being childish.

How novel. Ladybug has never once been childish. She can’t afford to be, because when she is behind the mask, she is all the most important parts of herself. She is the Grand Guardian, is the one who must be in control at all times because she has an entire team to keep safe and alive.

Behind the mask, she’s all of her greatest responsibilities.

But here, in Gotham and with Signal, she is none of those things to him. She is simply another hero, that is his age and very much like him in ways so few are. Ladybug, in the moments she spends with Signal, is probably the closest she has ever been to carefree while in the mask.

It’s as comforting a thought as it is terrifying.

Signal raises his hands in surrender, but his lips are still quirked in amusement.

Ladybug regrets starting this conversation.

She regrets it even more when, five minutes later, Signal manages to pull the rest of the story from her… along with a name.

She realizes her mistake a second too late to stop herself, and then all she can do is watch.

She watches, with ever-growing horror, as Signal slowly puts the pieces together. She watches, as her whole secret identity starts unraveling around her for the first time ever. She watches, stricken, as Signal opens his mouth to speak.

And then she grabs both sides of his head and Orders him to sleep.

***

The second Marinette bespells him, she regrets it.

She was panicking, okay? And Marinette panicking is very different from Ladybug panicking and truly, she creates messes just by existing.

Nooroo flies out of his hiding place to make distressed noises at the now unconscious Signal with her, which is… actually kinda soothing, if not exactly helpful.

At least she knows she’s not the only one upset right now.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Nooroo frets, flitting around her head with agitated wings. Hers aren’t much better, if she’s being honest. “What are we going to do, Guardian? He knows who you are! This is bad.”

Marinette worries her thumb between her teeth, shifting her weight from foot to foot. With a thought, she's back in her civvies and Tikki is perched on her shoulder, blinking at the scene she’s suddenly a part of.

“Well,” Tikki says, sounding far too calm for the situation. “This isn’t ideal.”

The laugh that escapes Marinette is on the edge of hysterical. “You think?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tikki repeats firmly, “But neither is it a disaster.”

Nooroo lands on her other shoulder as she kneels down beside Signal to rearrange his limbs to not be so uncomfortable. “But he's unpredictable!” he argues, curling into the side of her neck like she will hide him from the world. “We don’t know what he’ll do with this information!”

Tikki hums thoughtfully. “Then we will have to ask. There are far worse people we could have been revealed to. We're lucky it was a friend rather than foe.”

“You think so?” Marinette asks softly, voice barely louder than a whisper.

She knows the Bat’s flock are good people. Many of them are her friends, or people she hopes to call friends soon.

But she doesn't know if these people Marinette calls friends could be Ladybug’s allies.

The bats hoard secrets like black holes, and perhaps they would keep hers just as well, but they could just as easily use it against her. Batman barely tolerates her presence, she can tell by the way Signal talks sometimes, and it is no small stretch of the imagination that he would use this to try and kick her out of Gotham.

Marinette cannot, as a Guardian, leave Gotham.

But more importantly, she doesn’t want to leave Gotham. It’s… her home now. Her friends are here. Her family is here. Robin and Hood and the other bats are here. Damian and all her Waynes are here.

Leaving Gotham would not only make her sick and jittery at the imbalance, but it would break her heart.

If, when Signal tells Batman, he reacts poorly, there is so much that Marinette is set up to lose. And that terrifies her.

Some of that thought process must show on her face—or perhaps Nooroo has just picked up on the turmoil in her chest—because the two Kwami are pressed on either side of her face, nuzzling and hugging as much of her as they can reach.

“We’ll make it through this, Marinette,” Tikki says firmly, no room for argument. “Don’t worry so much. Both of you. Everything will turn out just fine, you’ll see.”

***

@bluesimani @how-to-fuction-properly @chocolatecatstheron @mystery-5-5 @nickristus-dreamer @mochegato @thenillabean @animegirlweeb @novaloptr @darkdaysandfakesmiles @optimistically-pessimistic0524 @clumsy-owl-4178 @g-arya @undecisioned @smolplantmum @blackmagicforever @i-wanna-be-a-ninja @wannajointhecrabcult @paintedhope7 @redscarlet95 @roselynfey @ira-sairain @lozzybowe @tumbling-down-hills-and-stuff @2confused-2doanything @pepelachanel @too0bsessedformyowngood @miraculouspenta @itsmeevie01 @corabeth11 @jalaluvsu

#maribat #daminette #ml x dc #my typewriter #for us to collide

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myaekingheart · 3 years ago

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20 [Fanfic Writer] Questions Game

Thank you so much for tagging me, @lemony-snickers! This is tons of fun, I love answering these kinds of big questionnaires 😂💕 Also putting mine under a cut because there’s a lot of questions and I like to ramble.

Also gonna go ahead and just tag whoever wants to do this! 😅💕

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

As of August 27, 2021, I have a total of 77 works on my AO3!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

Funny enough, I was just looking at this, specifically, earlier today and kind of laughing about it. Right now, my total word count across all my works is 1,148,941 😬

3. How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

Apparently 12, but some of them I don’t really consider “big” in my fandom repertoire. Naruto is my greatest fandom with a total of 60 fics so far, followed by The Chronicles of Narnia and Rise of the Guardians. The rest are ones I either did crossover fics with or just did one-off little pieces with--The Incredibles, Tangled, Brave, How to Train Your Dragon, Arthurian Mythology, Disney Princesses, Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Back to the Future, and Frozen.

4. What are your Top Five fics by kudos?

The Scarecrow and The Bell (Naruto) - 470 kudos The Day Kakashi’s Mask Slipped (Naruto) - 139 kudos Sunflowers (Naruto) - 92 kudos Sakumo the House Husband (Naruto) - 81 kudos Someone to Lean On (Naruto) - 67 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I always try to respond to comments, because I like to acknowledge when people respond to my work. I cherish comments like nobody’s business, especially when they’re kind and reactionary. I just really love seeing/hearing what people think of the way a story is progressing, or what they thought of a one-shot. Comments keep me going especially when it comes to longfic so I want to be able to let readers know that I do in fact see their comments, that I’m acknowledging what they’re saying, and that I appreciate them. Plus, it can be kind of fun to tease upcoming events in a fic through responses to people’s comments, too. Because I’m mean.

6. What fic have you written with the angstiest ending?

Definitely Hothouse (Rise of the Guardians/The Incredibles; Jack Frost x Violet Parr; American Horror Story AU). This was the first multi-chaptered fic I ever wrote to completion and I honestly cringe when I remember it exists both because it’s so poorly organized (and full of nasty plot holes) and because I just went ham on the gore factor. It definitely has a really bittersweet and heartbreaking ending to it, too.

7. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I think I’ll definitely have to say Temptation. The story itself was kind of a ride, and it’s only the first installment in a series, but it follows the plot of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe but remixed due to the presence of an original character, but the ending is still roughly the same as the original: they defeat the evil, the Pevensies are all crowned kings and queens, happy days. Reading the last few paragraphs of the last chapter honestly still gets me all up in my feelings.

8. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I used to be more of a crossover writer due to one of my main ships being a crossover ship. They weren’t super crazy, though, because they were both CGI-animated films. The craziest crossover I’ve ever written is an in-progress/unfinished multichapter piece, Kakashi, Enchanted, that sees our favorite Copy Ninja get kamui’d into the Disney princess dimension and has to help the likes of Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel on his journey to find a way back to his own world. It’s a super weird premise but definitely one of my more lighthearted works and fun to revisit when I need to decompress.

9. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don’t think I’ve ever received hate so much as I’ve received criticism. The closest I ever got to hate on a fic, I think, was someone left an overly personal and mentally disturbed comment on a chapter of my main fic that made me convinced they needed to seek therapy and deal with their own personal issues rather than take it out on a fanfic about animated ninjas.

10. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Maybe 👀 I’m super vanilla when it comes to smut, though. I think the wildest thing I’ve ever written in smut is breeding kink.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of, and I hope I never will.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet! I had someone ask to translate a one-shot of mine in Russian but I never got a response back when I laid out my terms and conditions.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have not! I used to do paragraph-style roleplay which was kind of like cowriting fanfiction but writing is so personal and sacred to me that I don’t know if I could ever actually cowrite a fic with someone. I like brainstorming with other people, but writing for me is more of a deeply personal and independent endeavour.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Oh god, this is a tricky question because it depends on fandom. I absolutely love New Dream (Rapunzel x Eugene, Tangled) and have for the past ten years, and my love for them as only grown since watching Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. I don’t write or even really read a ton of fanfiction for them, though. I’m also still highly dedicated to my favorite crossover crackship, Frostfield (Jack Frost x Violet Parr, Rise of the Guardians/The Incredibles) and to this day, if you search for that ship on AO3, I am the sole provider of every single fic about them so far. I’m not as active with them as I used to be, but they got me through some really rough times back in the day and still mean so much to me. A lot of my favorite ships across fandoms, though, are honestly canon x OC ships of mine because I am a self-indulgent bitch who needs to project. So Peter Pevensie x Eilonwy (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Kakashi Hatake x Rei Natsuki (Naruto) are really important to me and I’ve poured so much of myself specifically into their stories. I think it’s safe to say Kakashi and Rei is my all-time favorite ship across all fandoms, though, just because of how much their story means to me. The Scarecrow and The Bell is my magnum opus, my pride and joy, and I’m sure it will be my biggest fandom footprint of my entire life. I’ve dedicated the past three years to this story and these characters and I intend to continue doing it until it no longer brings me joy (which I hope it always will). There’s just so much I could say about this story and Kakashi and Rei’s relationship but I don’t think we have enough time or space in this post for that 😅 Just know that they mean the world to me and I will always hold them in the highest regard as a beautifully messy, flawed, passionate, soulmate-y ship that I love with all of my heart 🥺

EDIT: I also feel obligated to tack on some of my absolute favorite Naruto ships because I may not have written for all of them (yet) but they still make me unbelievably happy or I find them really compelling and enjoy the idea of exploring them:

Naruhina is precious happy sunshine and The Last honestly felt like a wonderful Disney princess movie to me, it was so cute and the romance was so on-point, Naruhina just makes me so incredibly happy and I love them with all my heart.

MinaKushi also gets me all up in my feels and I adore them with every fiber of my being. Their romance also gave me Disney princess movie vibes which I love, their story is just so damn sweet as is their character dynamic and I am still so heartbroken that they never got to be a happy family with Naruto because you know what? It’s what they deserved!

SasuSaku is so compelling to me and I really feel like we were cheated out of seeing their relationship develop and evolve postwar in the same way The Last did for Naruhina. They’re my favorite angst ship and while I don’t think they were written that well in canon, I love the possibility and potential of them together and am excited to explore them more in-depth in my own writing.

NejiTen is just too cute, I really love the way Neji and Tenten’s personalities compliment each other? I don’t have much else to say about them except that I really love them together and think they have so much untapped potential that I also can’t wait to explore in more depth in my own writing.

15. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Paper Hearts and Impromptu Bookmarks, probably. I love the premise of this story a lot and I have so many interesting ideas for it but at the same time, it also feels kind of cheap and cringey to me, in a way? It takes all of these ideas I probably would have had if I had been into Naruto when I was a kid and kind of compiles them all into one big story. Kakashi and Aiko’s relationship and story is still really important to me and I want to continue it someday but for right now, I just haven’t had the motivation or desire to write any more of it. I think I’m just so overwhelmingly preoccupied with writing Kakashi and Rei’s story that I can’t imagine writing any other Kakashi x OC fics right now.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I want to say that I’m really good at capturing complex emotion? I don’t know, I write a lot of angst and mental upheaval in my fics which can be really difficult to try and capture, but I think I do a decent enough job of it? And just writing difficult subjects in general. I think it’s really important to address difficult topics such as mental illness and relationship difficulties and everything but I also want to try and write those topics in a way that is both authentic to the experience while also still tasteful. I don’t want to drive readers away with heavy subject matter but rather present a situation that feels real and authentic while also still being digestible. I may not be doing a very good job of that during the current arc of my fic that I’m working on, but I’m trying haha

EDIT 2: I also want to add onto this to say that I’m really proud of my organizational techniques for writing longfic. It’s not necessarily a strength in terms of the prose itself but it’s something that’s taken me years to really get a grasp on and find a method that works perfectly for me and so far, it’s been extremely helpful and beneficial to me. I don’t know where I would be now as a writer without these essential tools in my pocket.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I feel like I do a really bad job of the “show, don’t tell” thing. It can be really hard to balance descriptive prose with straightforward writing that moves things along. I don’t want to dwell on mental dialogue to the point where you lose track of what’s going on, but I also don’t want my stuff to read like “Character A did xyz. Character B said abc. They went to 123″, whatever. Another thing I struggle with is sentence variation. I always fall into the same patterns when I’m writing prose and I get really self-conscious about it because I don’t want to sound repetitive or disrupt the flow of the writing. One of my favorite things about prose is focusing on the cadence of the words, I think it’s one of the most beautiful things about writing in general, but it can just be really difficult to get a good grip on that. I’ve been told in the past that I apparently have a really good grasp/control of the language or whatever but sometimes I just find that really hard to believe when I look at my work with such scrutiny. I think one of my biggest pet peeves with my own writing, too, is feeling like I start all of my sentences the same five different ways. I’ll read other people’s works and they’ll write sentences like “Glass-blue water lapped against the shores of a deserted beach as a lonely woman gazed off into the distance” and I can just never figure out how to realistically write sentences that start like that in the context of my prose and it drives me fucking crazy, like I’m definitely jealous 😅

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’ve never really thought much about it before, but I think there are pros and cons! For bilingual/multilingual readers, I think it can be a really enriching reading experience because they know what’s being said in both languages. For people who only know one language, however, unless a translation is provided, I feel like it can be really alienating. I think the best use of that for both worlds is using it as a means for miscommunication humor. Other than that, I think it can be a slippery slope that depends on what kind of reader you are and how it’s written.

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The Chronicles of Narnia! My very first fanfiction was a Narnia fanfic that I barely remember except that it laid the basis for Temptation and my Narnia fanfic series as a whole. I never posted this first iteration anyway, but I remember it was 2008/2009 and I wrote a solid 80 pages (which was wild for me at the time) and had gotten halfway through remixing the events of Prince Caspian when my computer crashed and I lost absolutely everything. I’m still heartbroken that it’s gone forever, not because I’d want to go back and read it necessarily (since I’m sure it was actually hot garbage) but at least for nostalgia’s sake. Either way, like I said, this long-lost fic laid the basis for the very first fanfiction I ever posted, the first published (and never finished) iteration of Temptation back in 2011 on deviantART and the since-defunct Figment. I fell out of the fandom around 2012/2013 and left the story alone for a while before ultimately deciding to completely redux and rewrite the story when the fixation swung back around again between 2016 and 2018.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Despite the fact that it’s still in-progress, definitely The Scarecrow and The Bell. This fic just genuinely means so damn much to me and I will cherish it for the rest of my life because of how much it’s given me, how much love and passion and time and even parts of myself that I have poured into this, and also just how expansive of a story this is. Not only does it touch on some very dark and heavy topics, but I’ve also created so much of my own characters and meta for this story that it’s almost an entire universe in and of itself. I’ve just contributed so much additional world-building and created so many new OCs to fill important roles in this story and in Rei’s life, and they’ve all become so deeply important to me as they’ve developed further over the years. I’ve come up with so many interesting ideas for everyone and their lives, which are all slowly becoming so rich and varied. Not to mention that it’s my most popular fic to date as well as my longest fic at 632k and counting. I’ve really just genuinely poured so much of my heart and soul into this story, it’s my absolute favorite thing I’ve ever done and I really mean it when I say that I will cherish it for the rest of my life.

#tag games #ramblings

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terramythos · 3 years ago

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TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 16 of 26

Title: Tales From Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle #5) (2001)

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Short Story Collection, Novella, Third-Person, Female Protagonist

Rating: 8/10 (note: this is an average)

Date Began: 7/2/2021

Date Finished: 7/6/2021

Tales From Earthsea is a collection of five short stories and novellas which take place in the Earthsea universe. In addition, there’s a supplementary timeline of Earthsea’s history, tradition, and cultural details of note. The last story in the collection, Dragonfly, serves as a bridge between Tehanu (#4) and The Other Wind (#6), the final book in the series.

Of the five stories, my favorites (both 10/10s) were The Finder and On The High Marsh.

The way one does research into nonexistent history is to tell the story and find out what happened. I believe this isn’t very different from what historians of the so-called real world do. Even if we are present at some historic event, do we comprehend it— can we even remember it— until we can tell it in a story?

Content warnings, individual ratings/commentary, and spoilers below the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Death and violence, child abuse (including implied sexual abuse), police brutality, slavery, reference to torture and execution, brief reference to inc*st, misogyny, animal cruelty, mild body horror, very brief implied mind control via a "love charm" (it doesn't work).

#1 - The Finder (10/10)

In The Dark Time, magic is widely mistrusted. Petty tyrants use the once noble art in pursuit of power and glory. Medra, the son of a shipwright in Havnor, has magical talents honed in secret. One day, he curses a ship built for a warlord’s fleet. Unfortunately, he gets caught and sent to a prison camp. There he is forced to use finding magic to locate veins of cinnabar.

The prison exists to refine quicksilver, a substance the most powerful mage on the island believes will turn him into a god. While in the refinery, Medra feels a spiritual connection to a dying slave, a young woman named Anieb. The two of them devise a plan to kill the mage and escape. Medra’s journey eventually takes him to the island of Roke and the founding of its prestigious wizard school.

‘The dead are dead. The great and mighty go their way unchecked. All the hope left in the world is in the people of no account.’

I really enjoyed this novella. The Dark Time is largely unexplored in the stories of Earthsea, so it was interesting to read about it here. I get the feeling that we’re approaching or in the middle of one such time in the real world, so seeing a version of it on the page is depressing yet hopeful. The story is dark; mass feudal warfare, a literal concentration camp in the opening half, widespread enslavement, and abuse of power. But it also offers hope and the promise of change. The story also explores the integral role of women in not only the preservation of magic in a bleak age of humanity, but the very foundation of Roke.

Medra’s story spoke to me; how he resists the despotic powers-that-be, his connection with Anieb even after her tragic death, and how despite his disillusionment with humanity, he ultimately fights to create a better world. I also thought Gelluk was a horrifying villain. He’s characterized as a soft-spoken, almost kindly man who loves children and animals— yet his narrative thoughts involve burning hundreds of slaves alive in order to better fuel the quicksilver refinery. “Nice doesn’t mean good” taken to an extreme, and a mirror of many villains in the real world.

Le Guin was anti-capitalist, but that way of thinking seems peripheral in the Earthsea series. The Finder, however, definitely has a Marxist reading in it. A recurring theme is the disenfranchised rising up against the powerful. Indeed both antagonists, who are despotic wizards of great power, are soundly defeated by groups of people they consider powerless. Magic is only considered relevant for the value and power it produces, an idea antithetical to the rest of the series. The quicksilver refinery also embraces anti-capitalist rhetoric; this section focuses on how mass enslavement and death is used to manufacture a meaningless commodity only one person “benefits” from. That’s not even getting into the prison-industrial complex.

I dunno. This story slaps. It’s not at all what I expected from a Roke origin story.

#2 - Diamond and Darkrose (5/10)

Diamond, the son of a prosperous lumber merchant, struggles to find his true calling in life. His father disapproves of almost everything he does, including his close friendship with the local witch’s daughter Rose. While he loves music, his father derides his talents and forces him to abandon the pursuit. When Diamond shows some promise in magic, he travels to a neighboring town to serve as the local wizard’s apprentice. But when this path estranges him from Rose, he grows disillusioned.

Rose had looked after herself from an early age; and this was one of the reasons Diamond loved her. With her, he knew what freedom was. Without her, he could attain it only when he was hearing and singing and playing music.

I did not like this story very much. I gave Diamond and Darkrose a 5/10 because it’s competently written (duh), and the protagonist has a character arc not entirely dependent on the central romance. But that’s about all I can say for it.

None of the characters are especially appealing. Diamond’s mentor figures are all extremely narrow-minded. Rose, supposedly his true love since childhood, drops him the moment things become difficult. And Diamond himself is a pushover who only grows a spine and pursues his dreams at the end of the story. I understand that’s his character flaw and his arc is about overcoming that. But due to all these factors, I was annoyed by every major character. The only person I didn’t dislike was Diamond’s mother, who only shows up for a couple of scenes.

Someone please tell me there are love stories out there where the romantic tension is NOT based on a fucking MISUNDERSTANDING. That shit drives me up a wall! It’s so overdone and painful to read.

#3 - The Bones of the Earth (8/10)

Dulse is an aging wizard on the island of Gont, reflecting on his life and relationship with his former apprentice, a young man he calls Silence. But he senses something amiss on the island; a massive earthquake poised to destroy a nearby port town and its inhabitants. To avert disaster, Dulse realizes he must turn to an ancient form of magic taught to him long ago— and he needs Silence’s help to save the town.

In there he knew he should hurry, that the bones of the earth ached to move, and that he must become them to guide them, but he could not hurry. There was on him the bewilderment of any transformation. He had in his day been fox, and bull, and dragonfly, and knew what it was to change being. But this was different, this slow enlargement. I am vastening, he thought.

So I’ve always liked Ogion in the main series; I love the idea of an immensely powerful wizard who lives an unassuming life of silence, contemplation, and appreciation of the natural world. In The Bones of the Earth, we get a glimpse of Ogion through his mentor’s eyes. Ogion’s heroism and how he stopped the earthquake is mentioned several times in the main series, but this is our first look at what actually happened.

Dulse is an unexpected and fascinating perspective character. It would be so easy to tell this story wholly from Ogion’s perspective, but I think making Dulse the protagonist was the right call. In particular, Dulse’s mind is starting to go. Le Guin presents this by utilizing flashbacks and connecting them to the present. This technique conveys Dulse’s disorientation and confusion so the reader experiences it alongside him... it’s hard to describe without actually reading the story. I also loved the little twist at the end regarding where Dulse learned the ancient magic that saves the island. There’s also a strong thematic connection to The Farthest Shore; death and becoming one with the rest of the world.

#4 - On The High Marsh (10/10)

A half-mad wanderer named Irioth comes upon a small settlement on the volcanic, marshy island of Semel. A murrain has been devastating the local cattle population, and Irioth offers his powers as a curer to heal the animals. He settles into a calm rural life with Gift, a widow working a small dairy. Though Gift likes Irioth, and the animals instinctively trust him, she senses something amiss with the man. Soon, Irioth’s dark past threatens to return and disturb the peace.

“Oh, yes,” Irioth said. “It was my fault.” But she forgave, and the grey cat was pressed up against his thigh, dreaming. The cat’s dreams came into his mind, in the low fields where he spoke with the animals, the dusky places. The cat leapt there, and then there was milk, and the deep soft thrilling. There was no fault, only the great innocence. No need for words. They would not find him here. He was not here to find. There was no need to speak any name. There was nobody but her, and the cat dreaming, and the fire flickering. He had come over the dead mountain on black roads, but here the streams ran slow among the pastures.

This story is a banger. It has a Western vibe— a stranger coming into a cattle town haunted by a mysterious past. Also cowboys. It’s an atmospheric story, and I think hits on the “small rural town” vibe better than Tehanu did. But there were several writing choices I especially liked.

We don’t learn Irioth’s name until a little while into the story; his physical description, temperament, and ability to immediately identify Gift’s true name just by looking at her makes one assume he’s Ged. He’s also got an interesting redemption arc, because it’s presented in a reverse order. We see Irioth’s genuine desire to do good, and his gentle and patient manner with animals and other people. He doesn’t even consider asking for payment for curing the murrain until Gift tells him he should. But there’s a sense that something is off; he’s paranoid, clearly running from something. The use-name he picks is Otak, a fictional ferret-like creature— which Gift asserts looks nice, but has sharp teeth.

Near the end, Ged actually does show up and explain what happened to Irioth. They have pretty similar backstories; both were powerful, arrogant young mages who messed with forces they shouldn’t have, then went through great personal sacrifice to right the wrong (oh god the initial deception was intentional they’re narrative foils oh god). Ged embraced the darkest aspects of himself to avert calamity. Irioth came to Semel to escape Roke and atone by helping others. One detail I especially liked was that Irioth once considered healing beneath him, but now he takes a deep joy in using it to help.

#5 - Dragonfly (8/10)

Irian lives a solitary life-- her father is a drunkard living in the ruins of their family’s once prosperous estate. Her closest relationship is with the local village witch, who named her in secret in the dead of night. When a disgraced young wizard named Ivory comes to town, he sees Irian as a potential conquest. To gain power over her, he hatches a scheme; disguise Irian as a man, travel to Roke, and sneak her into the male-only wizard school— humiliating the great Masters.

But Irian is restless. She knows she has power, but her true nature is a mystery even to her. Irian sees Ivory’s plan as an opportunity to find answers from the most powerful wizards in the world. When the Doorkeeper actually lets her into the school, she finds herself in a magical and political conflict over the future of Roke— and discovers what exactly she is.

“Dark is bad,” said the Patterner. “Eh?”

Irian drew a deep breath and looked at him eye to eye as they sat there. “Only in dark the light,” she said.

This is one of those stories that has a rocky start, but a great second half. The first part of the novella felt dry to me; I’ve read plenty of tales about social outcasts with weird, unexplainable powers. On top of this, a chunk of the early narration is from Ivory’s POV, and he’s a complete tool. That can be a fun perspective to take, and I like the fact that he thinks he’s manipulating Irian when she’s the one pulling the strings. But since he’s an irrelevant character who disappears from the story halfway through, it feels like a waste to devote a huge chunk of the story to him.

However, once Irian arrives at Roke, the story gets much more interesting. Her presence at Roke causes a huge scandal that divides the Masters. Women being forbidden from Roke is a Series Thing at this point, but Earthsea is in an era of change (although I DO question that she’s the first woman to try it). The Finder demonstrated that women were pivotal in the foundation of Roke, something largely erased from history. Barring women stems from a power hungry bigot codifying it into tradition.

Irian finds some unexpected allies--minor characters in the previous books. The Doorkeeper continues to be the coolest motherfucker there. The Patterner is a major character in this story; he was in just one scene in The Farthest Shore, so I liked learning more about him. The Namer is the kind of guy you’d expect to be a stodgy traditionalist, so him siding with Irian is surprising. The Summoner, a heroic figure in previous books and stories, is a sinister villain here. As for the ending, well… if you didn’t see it coming, I’d wonder if you even read Tehanu. The same hints are there.

There were little particulars I liked, such as Irian moving into a decrepit hut that’s definitely Medra’s old home. My favorite detail is that this story has a parallel scene with The Finder. In The Finder, there’s a scene where an antagonist, Early, invades Roke in the form of a dragon. He lands on Roke Knoll, a site of power that reveals one’s true form. It turns him back into a human, leaving him defenseless when the residents of Roke attack him and repel his invasion. The reversal happens in Dragonfly. Irian gets attacked by one of the Masters while at Roke Knoll — and its magic turns her into her true form, a dragon. Props to whoever picked the cover design, since it references both scenes.

#6 - A Description of Earthsea

I’m not rating this since it’s basically a lore dump. It’s a deep dive into Earthsea’s history, languages, cultures, and other relevant world details. It’s the kind of bonus info a lot of fantasy series tack on as reference material. According to Le Guin, she wrote this to get some idea of the timeline on each of these stories.

As a series, Earthsea has relatively little worldbuilding exposition. Sometimes characters reference legends or historical events, but usually the reader lacks the context to fully understand them. The focus is more on the lives of the characters and their personal experience of the world. I think something like A Description of Earthsea has benefits and drawbacks for the reader. On one hand it's nice to have some definitive information to tie things together. On the other, this does represent a loss of some of the mystery in the story.

I think this is the first thing in the series that even mentions homosexuality, so props for that I guess?

Closing Thoughts

A short story collection is always going to have high and low points. I tend to look at each story individually and score that way, but an average is always misleading. Diamond and Darkrose dragged the score down since there were only five stories total. But I enjoyed the majority of them. I am interested to see where the human/dragon subplot goes in the final installment; I assume Irian will show up at some point? We’ll see.

#taylor reads #8/10 #2021 reading challenge #almost done with this series!

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