#and doing it manually because i have some like. actual notes on some fics

[crehador]

was going through some ao3 notes for reasons and saw this

which was at the end of the 2nd clone!verse fic, then went to look at clone!verse series listing and

so i was. not correct

[highquality-not]

some sapphic deadclaws/poolverine headcanons (several of which feature in my fics) for people who enjoy women:

winnie is lactose intolerant and just pretends she isn't 89% of the time, which works out well because logan doesn't trust alternative milks

logan does not tolerate polyester well since she grew up when it didn't exist. she only wants natural fibers and will steal the nicer clothes from winnie's closet (and won't talk about it)

also logan really enjoys classical music, which winnie despises with a burning passion

logan doesn't know the word for bisexual and that's okay because she finds most men abhorrent. she's attracted to them yes but wouldn't date like 75% of them because they piss her off

winnie has played cbat while getting out the strap before

winnie has a whole selection of cute clothes but almost unilaterally wears the cursed & goofy ones around the house. logan gets whiplash every time winnie actually wears her nice clothes, especially on their first date

as canadians they are both contractually bound to not fully understand fahrenheit, and thus neither are ever prepared for the weather outside

also logan watches hockey

winnie grew up doing ballet and never shuts up about it

the developing queer community in the 20th century thrilled logan because she got to play around with different styles and gender presentations and find something that suited her amongst groups of people like her

the two of them are incorrigibly horny and have to move out of blind al's apartment together very quickly because they’re too fucking loud for like four hours at a time (they switch)

logan finds asmr really creepy and makes winnie turn it off, mostly because winnie only listens to boyfriend asmr

when the tva gives logan some id documents she uses them to immediately go get the most boring manual labour job. none of her coworkers know she's wolverine either, they just see that her girlfriend puts cute notes in her lunch

winnie had a mastectomy (or a top surgery or a reduction, i leave this up to interpretation in my fics) before her mutation started & still has the scars

they match each other's freak perfectly because they're two sides of the same coin :,)

[5ummit]

Permanent Blacklists for AO3

Would you like to permanently remove fics with your squicks, triggers, and dislikes from all AO3 searches by default so that you never have to think about or encounter them again? Well now you can!

The ability to do this has actually been around for a little while but it relies on some new CSS functionality that wasn't supported on all major browsers until fairly recently (though you may still have to enable it manually on some). I'm not going to explain how this method works or how to code AO3 skins in general, as I've only dabbled in it a little and there are already some very good tutorials out there. If you want all of the details, check out these guides:

Skins and Archive Interface FAQ – The official skins guide created by AO3. Lots of good information but might be overwhelming and confusing for a beginner.

A Non-Extensive Guide on How to Start Creating a Skin for AO3 by ao3skin – Some good, fairly easy to understand, beginner info on CSS and specifically how it applies to AO3 skins.

Permablocking Specific Tags - Site Skin by Eli0t – Everything you need to know to create permablock lists. If your blacklist doesn't seem to be working as expected, check this for troubleshooting tips.

What I can offer though are some handy pre-made blacklists that you can use as-is or as a starting point to create your own so that you don't have to go to the trouble of figuring out how any of this works or hunting down relevant tags. Just copy the code, open AO3, go to My Preferences > Skins > Create Site Skin, paste it in the box, title it, and click Submit!

Note: The following lists are very specific to me and my own personal tastes. Absolutely no judgement if you love any of the things that I choose to blacklist. You do you. I just happen to like my fics fucked up and relatively canonical.

★ No Reader Fic – Hides all self-insert and reader fic.

★ No Alternate Universes – Hides anything tagged with the most common AU tags. There are so many incredibly specific AUs there's no way to list all of them and AU tagging is also extremely inconsistent from fic to fic so this blacklist may only catch 80% of AUs, but that's better than nothing. You could always exclude the entire alternate universe tag, rather than trying to list specific ones, but unfortunately canon divergence and other less extreme AUs would get caught in the crossfire, which is not worth it for me.

★ No Fluff – Hides anything tagged with the most common fluff and romance tags. I specifically left out "fluff and angst" though because sometimes that's used for things that are mostly angst with only a bit of fluff and I do love angst.

★ Bonus: No Dead Dove – This list is not mine (for obvious reasons) but I know some people may find it useful. Hides anything with the main archive warnings and many common problematic, taboo, or controversial tags. Some of these I wouldn't even classify as dead dove, they're literally just kinks, so I'd suggest reviewing the list carefully and removing any that don't apply to you.

Additional Notes:

This system doesn't work exactly the same as AO3's exclusion filters because you can't use top-level wrangled tags to block all subtags. It only blocks exact matches.

Once the blacklist is implemented you'll see no indication that anything was blocked (except for fewer fics listed on each search page); the entire blurb will be hidden. The tags and fic counts listed in the filter bar will remain unchanged. If you want more advanced features like whitelisting or adding something to indicate when a fic was removed, check out the permablocking guide by Eli0t.

Here's a link with info on which browsers currently support the new "has()" element, which this blacklist system relies on. As of right now Firefox for desktop still has to be manually enabled (for instructions see the section on flag enabling in the permablocking guide). Firefox for iOS isn't listed on this website but it seems to work fine for me.

There are other browser-specific extensions that let you permablock tags, such as this one and this one, that may be more a little more user friendly, but I've never tried them so I can't vouch for them and they may not work consistently between different devices. The good thing about doing blacklists via skins is that, after setting it up once, it should work automatically on pretty much any device (as long as you're logged in to your AO3 account).

[wingwaver]

A few tips for new Tumblr users wanting to write here

Yo if you're here from Reddit or Twitter or some other site and just wanted to give this a shot you may have seen some blogs that are dedicated to writing headcanons or short fics or even original works for their own OCs and you may be thinking "hey I wanna give that a shot! I like to write!" then I have some tips to make it easier on you and people who see your content.

1. First off, if you're writing a pretty long piece the you should probably put it under a read more, it'll look like this on mobile

and this on desktop

or you can write :readmore: on a line by itself and press enter.

2. Now if you're gonna write for a whole bunch of different fandoms and you wanna make a master list then I suggest making an actual list with the fandoms you write for and then making more lists with the actual content as a you go along because you can only have 100 links in one post (I know that sounds like a lot but as someone who has around 300 Transformers things written trust me you fill up a post quicker than you expect, especially if you take requests from other people). The way I typically do it is like this

The first pic is the MASTER master list that lists everything I write for and when they're underlined like that it means they're links. The second pic is after clicking the G1 link, it's a separate post that has the actual fics and headcanon links. Note the 6/100 in the tags, this is how I keep up with how many things I've added. You can of course just use the numbers options from here

or just number them manually from your keyboard like I'm doing with this post. Adding links has no barring on what else you add to the post so you can add yourself some fancy header or divider pics if you want.

3. Adding links! Links can look like this https://www.tumblr.com/wingwaver/721887224846778368/test-post-for-reasons?source=share or like this https://wingwaver.tumblr.com/post/721887224846778368/test-post-for-reasons depending on whether you're linking from mobile or desktop/browser Just highlight the text you wanna add a link to and a the little chain will move to the end, click it and paste your url you want to link to and press add link, then press post/save draft/save (whatever the blue button says)

Now you've successfully linked a post to another post!

4. Tagging! To get your fics and headcanons seen to build an audience you usually wanna tag the stuff correctly. If you're posting a fic about Miles Edgeworth and Phoenix Wright from Ace Attorney then you'll tag it with #Ace Attorney, #Miles Edgeworth, and #Phoenix Wright in the tags area. But it's also a good idea to mention if it's a ship or general fic in the tags too. If so then putting ship names and #Miles Edgeworth x Phoenix Wright and #Miles Edgeworth/Phoenix Wright in the tags will help everyone know this is a ship fic. Tagging with characters or fandoms that aren't apart of the fic just clogs the tags for people looking for content of said characters and fandoms so it's very looked down on here and will likely get some of your stuff reported for spam so only use the relevant tags. Also tagging for triggers can be tricky here because of how fucky tumblr is but please don't tag censor tags. Tagging things like #a**** or #a*use or even #abu$e doesn't work here because people who have #abuse blacklisted will be able to see this content because it wasn't tagged properly. Also if you're writing for OCs or reader inserts it's common courtesy to tag those appropriately too. Someone looking for a reader insert may not want to read an OC and vice versa. Also many people filter those out so try to add tags like #x reader, #*fandom name* x reader, and #*character name* x reader for easier filtering. Also people cruise those tags too so it'll help people who fo want to read that content find your stuff!

[toxicroyjamie]

Hiya!! I absolutely ADORE your blog, and ESPECIALLY your RoyJamie meta, it's literally foundational fandom stuff to me 💕✨💕✨💕

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what careers you think Roy/Jamie would have had if they weren't footballers. I only ask because there's actually not a lot of au fics that deal with RoyJamie in different careers, probably because their profession is so foundational to their characters and their relationship to one another.

On that note: how do you think these career changes would affect their personalities/dynamic? What do you think would have to happen for Roy/Jamie to choose a path that's not football (if you're still dealing with a universe where they both excel at it)?

This is actually something that I haven't given a lot of thought, especially with Roy, so this is a super interesting question!!

I could totally see Roy being a complete legend in some kind of trade. He's obviously very physical and kinesthetically intelligent, and I think he'd enjoy + excel in anything where he was working with his hands. I heavily hc Roy as autistic, and I think part of what he likes about football is that he doesn't have to mask while he's playing, so imo he'd enjoy manual labor for the same reason - he can just silently lock in and fix the AC without having to talk to anyone

I think Jamie (on the entire other hand) would want to do something where he got to work closely with people, but I could see this manifesting in a lot of different ways.

One is that I think he'd be a really good daycare/preschool teacher. He's great with kids and obviously has a LOT of energy, so I think he'd really excel with young children, especially since they'd be on more of a play-based curriculum than older kids. I don't think he'd necessarily enjoy teaching a set of lessons in a classroom all day, but running around outside with 3 year olds for hours on end? He could DEFINITELY do that. And be the best at it

Another is that I could see him in some kind of social work. I think helping DV victims especially would be really fulfilling to him after what he and Georgie went through

I'm glad you enjoy my blog!! Thank you for following 🩷🩷

[electrosquash]

This may sound stupid but how do I turn off blazeable on my blogs?

And how is this bad? Again, I don't wanna sound stupid or rude. Thank you for the heads up :]

Hi! No worries, you're not the only one with these questions.

On how to turn off the option to get blazed:

On desktop you can turn it off at this link: https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/#blaze It looks something like this

On mobile it's in the account settings menu, there's a lof of screenshots in the additions to my other post like here (i haven't updated since i got a funny little bug that lets me add polls in reblogs of other people's posts so i can't screenshot anything).

Alternatively you can also log into Tumblr in your phone's browser and use the link above there. Don't forget to do it on sideblogs that you don't want to get blazed as well! You can also change the settings per-post in the post menu. I've actually enabled it for my complaint post that's circulating because it would be really funny :D

On how it is bad:

With the way it is set up, people can blaze your posts without active consent. This can be used to bully people, by digging out old or not-adapted posts that were not meant for a wider audience and putting them on blast. This can include vent posts, opinions you might have changed since then, selfies, niche things many people might think are cringe (like 2014 self-insert omegaverse fanfics and the likes ... idk if you've seen the drama that resulted from someone blazing their fic, it wasn't pretty), posts that were only meant to circulate in your carefully curated audience, and more.

Since Blaze's are registered in many minds as advertisement many people will react negatively to them so this opens up a way to bully a lot of people. As usual, people of colour, trans people, and other vulnerable groups will get the worst of it, many are already getting deactivated regularly because of coordinated reporting harassment and since people donate hate organizations all the time they will definitely use the option to make the life of a person they're targeting living hell for 10$.

Staff thought of some safeguards but there are several fallacies:

The option to cancel a blaze before it goes live: Not everyone has access to the internet every day, and staff might accept the blaze while you're asleep / at work / on a trip / in the hospital / on hiatus. Then when you're coming back to tumblr your notes will have turned into a nightmare.

The guarantee that staff will check every Blaze manually to prevent harassment: Let's take the case in which someone's old fic get blazed against their will. How can staff know whether it was blazed with friendly intent (to promote a friend's work) or ill intent (to get people to point and laugh)? They can't as long as it's not against the Terms of Service. In general there will be many false positives (Blazes that get rejected by staff despite being innocent) and false negatives (Blazes that get accepted by staff despite being malicious). After all, the people working at tumblr are only human too. But in this case, false negatives will have devastating consequences - and extinguishing a blaze after it's live will be too late.

Many people don't follow @staff, so many people don't know about this change. In fact many people on that other post commented that they didn't know what Blazes are at all! I think i've read that they will add a login banner to tell you and check your settings, but iirc they had banners like that for the original Blaze function announcement so i don't have faith this will prevent anything.

I should clarify that i don't think the feature itself is bad at all, but it should be opt-in so only people who want to participate get blazed (e.g. art blogs). Or add an active mandatory confirmation by OP instead of a veto option, this would prevent the issues above as well, i think that would be the best option - that way people could leave the option on. I know staff are currently getting bombarded with support requests / flames (please be civil to them guys!) (also sorry. but not sorry. i didn't expect my post to blow up but also i think these are legitimately troubling concerns and i won't make the other post unrebloggable). They're aware of these issues so i hope they will change to one of these options - if they add active mandatory confirmation by OP i would enable to option globally as well (Hint hint this means more money for you, @tumblr, because otherwise many people have and will turn this feature off completely) A bit more time between announcement and go-live (4/20 iirc) would have been helpful as well.

Here's the original announcement by the way:

And since i'm gonna pin the post as long as the other post is circulating: Listen to goatbed guys!

[atthebell-moved]

QSMP Language Stats on AO3 (as of June 6th 2023)

Hey hi hello. I just spent 3-4 hours working on this and I'm a little bleary-eyed so forgive the text of this if it makes little sense.

So, I decided to look into the statistics and percentages for QSMP works on AO3 and what languages they're tagged with, to see how multilingual the fandom on that platform is, as AO3 is far easier to do stats on than elsewhere.

Some fun tidbits from the start/tldr;:

QSMP has 1433 works as of today (well, as of checking this while writing it, it's actually jumped up to 1438, but for the data I collected earlier, let's stick with 1433).

English is the most commonly tagged language, at 80.04%, which is a smaller percentage than the percentage of all English works to all works on AO3 (more details for all of this below).

Though the top three languages are spoken on the server, French has no works on AO3 currently.

There's a decent amount of works that are translated into several languages, which is very rad! Doing stats on that would be an entirely different post, with a bit more work involved, but I want to give a big kudos on this as translation is very difficult and is often a passion project in fandom that goes underappreciated.

I got a lot of these numbers just by going through the QSMP tag and filtering by language and then checking manually, but for the larger AO3 numbers I got those on the Languages page, which shoes all languages supported by the Archive.

Now onto the numbers! Everything is below a cut because trust me, this post is long. Viewers beware, you're in for a stats dump.

Numbers, Stats, Percentages, all that fun stuff

QSMP works

[Image Description: A table with three columns; the first lists languages, the second the number of works, and the third the percentage of total works. For the languages column, each language is listed first in that language and then in English in parentheses, and English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and French are all color-coded to indicate that they are spoken on the server. End ID.]

The most commonly tagged language, like I said above, is English, with 1147 works or 80.04% of total works in the QSMP fandom tag.

The second most commonly tagged language is Spanish, with 254 works and 17.73% of the fandom.

Next is Brazilian Portuguese at 27 works and 1.88%.

And the next four are all much lower: Mandarin at 2 works and 0.14%, Russian at 1 work and 0.07%, Latin with 1 work at 0.07%, Esperanto at 1 work with 0.07%, and French with 0 works and 0%.

I included French because it is the only spoken language on the server without any works, which I find interesting and will talk about further in my notes/analysis later on.

Some interesting trends to note! First thing: English, as one would expect, is the most used language, with 80.04%. I am also unsurprised that English and Spanish are at the top, as I know there's sizable MCYT fandoms for both languages. I think there's a few reasons why these numbers shake out the way that they do, which I'll get into later, but for now I think most would agree that these are what one would expect, aside from perhaps the languages that do have works but are not spoken on the server.

With these, I'm actually not surprised either. After English, Mandarin and Russian are the next two top languages in terms of works on AO3 (numbers below), and for Latin and Esperanto, creating works in those is something that happens often enough in fandom that I don't find it surprising, although with how small QSMP is (in terms of works on AO3 at the moment) it is interesting regardless. I talk a bit more about Esperanto in my notes at the end, but for Latin, as a language people often take in school but rarely use and a language with a lot of cultural hype surrounding it, people who took Latin in high school or even studied it in college with sometimes write or translate fic into it.

Across All Fandoms

Okay, with those numbers at the ready, let's compare to total numbers across all fandoms on AO3. I did this comparison using the same languages as above, but I will also add another table showing the percentages for the top 15 languages on the site, as I find that kind of stuff interesting and I think it's somewhat relevant.

I don't have a confirmed number on the total number of works on AO3 as of when I did these numbers, but according to the AO3 welcome page, they're at approximately 11,220,000 works right now. I'm going with this number, as I know its an updated one probably at least as of June 1, and complete accuracy is not necessarily possible in this instance.

[Image Description: The same table as above, this time with numbers for all fandoms across AO3. End ID.]

The most commonly tagged language is English at 10,021,982 works and 89.32% of all works on AO3.

Spanish has 130,024 works and 1.16%

Brazilian Portuguese has 30,549 works and 0.27%

Mandarin has 621,505 works and 5.54%

Russian has 238,699 works and 2.13%

Latin has 149 works and 0.0013%

Esperanto has 99 works and 0.00088%

French has 52,904 works and 0.47%

Okay! Lots of numbers this time, and some similarities and differences. First thing I want to note is that the total number of works on AO3 being over 10 million means these stats are far more meaningful and show more significant trends than those for QSMP. QSMP also only has 1433 fics, which is MINUSCULE compared to the total number of works across fandoms on AO3. You also have to consider that the number of people who write fic for a fandom versus the number of people who speak it is very different, and you also have to consider platform differences between different fandoms. There are other fanfiction websites in various languages, and that might impact these numbers to some extent.

Going to get into analysis now, as I think discussing how the data compares will get into that pretty quickly anyway.

Analysis:

Disclaimer! Much of this is just my personal opinion, or stuff I've noticed but don't really have numbers on or too much info on myself. I would love to hear from folks in the Spanish, Brazilian, and French communities (as well as any others!) about what they're like, especially as regards MCYT. I am lightly familiar with Spanish fandom because of Karmaland and now QSMP, but it's still not wildly familiar to me, and otherwise my fandom experiences are pretty English-centric.

The biggest thing to note here, in comparing the data between QSMP specifically and AO3 broadly, is that the percentage of Spanish fics is far smaller-- it's gone from the near-20% in QSMP to around 1% for all works. This makes sense, considering how many QSMP members speak Spanish, how much Spanish MCYT fandom has grown in the last several years, and the fact that the server is themed around multilingualism and cross-cultural expression, meaning fans who speak multiple languages are more likely to write in not just English and also generally incorporate more of the various languages into their writing.

The difference here is also in terms of audience, like I said. This fandom is far more likely to attract Spanish speakers than Mandarin or Russian Speakers, at least at the moment, so it makes sense that Spanish would have far more works. In comparison to French, also, Spanish has more than double the amount of speakers than French and from my knowledge Spanish MCYT fandom is far bigger.

For Portuguese, I'm not familiar with the fandom, but there does seem to be a decent MCYT fandom going on and I'm impressed with the number of works in Portuguese. I know it seems small, but again, the total number of works really is not that many.

The biggest reason so far that I think English, Spanish, and Portuguese are at the top, aside from just that the first two were on for much longer and the latter for at least a month longer than the French (and aside from the fact that English is so present on AO3) is that those streamers have made themselves much more central to the narrative and to lore than any of the French speakers have, at least so far. The Brazilians showed up and immediately became so involved and so beloved, and while fans obviously like the French speakers, they're not doing quite as much RP nor are they as involved in the Federation lore that much.

I also think one thing I haven't really seen people acknowledge is that Cellbit is very attractive, which of course begets fan attention. His lore is incredible and I think he's a very talented RPer, obviously, but he is also really hot, which means people are more likely to create fanworks about him. For Spanish and English speakers, obviously there are also creators who people are very into (I'm not even going to name any because it's quite a long list and you're all well aware). For the French, not so much. This is not me calling any of them ugly, I'm just saying that I have not seen really any thirsting over any of them aside from a few people talking about Baghera. I'm not going to get into the logistics of fan attention and attractiveness of creators, I just wanted to acknowledge that that is definitely doing Cellbit some favors and is likely making interest in Portuguese and Portuguese fanworks more popular.

Okay I've reached the point of writing this post where I think I've been working on all of this for at least 3-4 hours and I need to stop thinking about it so. That's everything I have for the moment, but I would be happy to hear what other folks think about this. If i said i would talk about something but forgot please just shoot me an ask or something and i'll add on.

Here's some extra notes:

There are a few (not many, but enough to acknowledge) fics that are written in Spanish but are tagged as being in English. I'm not sure if the same is true of Brazilian Portuguese.

Due to the nature of the server, there is also a huge number of works that contain elements of multiple languages, ranging from a few works to a decent chunk of the dialogue swapping between languages. This is not completely unheard of in fandoms, of course, as there are many fandoms which provide the opportunity for multilingualism, but this is fun to note because it's so present in the canon itself. I would argue there's a decent number of fics that are themselves bilingual/trilingual/multilingual, and I wish AO3 had a way of tagging as such. I'm not sure if there are any freeforms along those lines, but I have seen some folks noting in their tags that there's some amount of Spanish/Portuguese in them as well as English, and the same goes for the Spanish fics I've looked at.

Similarly, there's a decent amount of translations! Which is super cool! Translations are usually only done as passion projects by really dedicated fans, so it's really cool to see a (relatively) small fandom (for AO3) with a decent amount of them. I want to stress that translation is very tough work so major kudos to folks doing translations, either of their own work or other's.

The one Esperanto fic is a translation of an English work! Also, if you're unfamiliar, Esperanto is a conlang (constructed language) created in 1887 as an international language meant for anyone from any background to be able to learn. It never picked up much global steam, as lingua francas are far more common and it's still fairly Euro-centric in the language systems it pulled from, but it is likely the most spoken international auxiliary constructed language, and translating into it is often done as a nod to the importance of translation and cross-cultural communication. I think it's very fun that someone translated a work into it for QSMP :]

Also!!! here are the top 15 languages used on ao3 and their number of works. They're not in a spreadsheet bc i got really really tired sorry

english: 10,022,162 mandarin: 621,520 russian: 238,700 spanish: 130,692 french: 52,904 italian: 33,962 brazilian portuguese: 30,549 indonesian: 29,030 german: 22,755 polish: 17,215 ukrainian: 11,041 cantonese: 8,878 filipino: 8,664 vietnamese: 6,565 czech: 5,168

[cinderella-ish]

Fruits Basket Ao3 Media Tags Poll Results, and Some Thoughts on Ao3 Fandom Tag Wrangling

Over the past few weeks, I've put out a few polls to find out how other Ao3 users are using the different Fruits Basket media tags. Here are the results!

(Obligatory disclaimer that a tumblr poll by one user with fewer than 50 followers is hardly scientific data)

For writers, it looks like most of us (52.6%, or 10 out of 19 respondents) are tagging more than one media type every time, and an additional 10.5% are sometimes tagging multiple media types (total of 63.1%, or 12 out of 19). 31.6%, or 6 out of 19, are only tagging one media type. I believe the person who selected "other" hasn't posted Fruits Basket work yet, but indicated they'd be likely to tag all three.

Of note: even though far more works are tagged with the manga tag than either anime, including when I excluded crossovers, the 2019 anime had the most works updated since January 1 of this year excluding crossovers at 25 (vs 4 for the 2001 anime, and 12 for the manga).

For readers, it looks like most of us (46.4%, or 13 out of 28) are filtering by relationship or character. (Sometimes I think I must be the only person who will read fics for any relationship or character if the premise is interesting!) For those who search using media tags, the manga tag is by far the most used at 17.9%, or 5 out of 28.

Then, 50%, or 14 out of 28 readers don't expect anything different between the three media tags. And that number raises to 78.6%, or 22 out of 28, if you include people who only expect minor differences between content found at each of the three tags.

So, why did I do these polls (and what are my thoughts on how these tags should be wrangled)? More info below the cut!

At some point between when I joined Ao3 and now, the tag "Fruits Basket" went from being a metatag that contained all 3 Fruits Basket media to being made a synonym of the manga.

In practical terms, what this meant for me was that I could no longer sort or filter all Fruits Basket works at once. I would instead have to go to all three media tags separately, and would have to repeat searches for all three media tags if I was looking for a specific trope. Additionally, I didn't actually realize this change until a couple of months after it occurred. I almost missed one of my now-favorite fics because of this change!

Worse still, it means that when I filter out crossovers, any works that are tagged with more than one Fruits Basket media are considered as "crossovers." If I want to filter out actual crossovers, it needs to be done by manually clicking all other fandoms under the "exclude" option.

So, I sent a support ticket to Ao3 asking them to either reverse this change, or add a similar "All Media Types" sort of tag.

They responded after about 12 days, letting me know that the Archive is no longer creating "All Media Types" tags, and is actually dismantling them where possible. The goal is for users to be able to find what they're looking for, and to avoid confusion, which apparently "All Media Types" tags can cause, both for creators and browsing users. They pointed out that searching by relationship or character would allow me to see all works across media tags with those characters (although this doesn't solve my problem).

(Note: no shade to this Ao3 volunteer - I'm not upset at this answer, and they were only communicating Archive policy and were very professional and gave me good and important info!)

Anyway, this confused me, so I sat with it for a bit. I did some searches of the Ao3 blog, the Reddit and Tumblr, and some tag wrangler's Tumblrs where they talk about tag wrangling, but couldn't find anything about dismantling "All Media Types" metatags. So, I decided to get some data. Hence, the polls.

Other than my continued surprise at how many people search by relationship (multishipper problems...), the polls basically aligned with what I expected. So, if I'm using the tags in a similar way to most other users, this can't be the best way for these tags to exist.

I sent a followup request outlining some of what I shared here, then decided to browse Ao3 fandoms outside of Fruits Basket to see how other fandom tags, especially anime/manga fandom tags, were generally canonized.

On the Fandoms page, several "All Media Types" tags are present (Star Wars, Les Mis, Newsies, Batman, and Captain America, to name a few). Additionally, several "& Related Fandoms" tags are also present.

But this might not be a fair comparison. Star Wars has had movies, TV shows, comics, novels, video games, audio novels, radio adaptations, theme park rides, and more. A broad metatag makes sense for that fandom.

Or maybe the Archive just hasn't dismantled those "All Media Types" tags yet?

So, what about other anime and manga? Well, several (including the extremely popular BNHA and Naruto, as well as the shoujo that's always being compared to Furuba, OHSHC) are canonized as (Anime & Manga). Some (like Haikyuu!! and AoT) are canonized so both the manga and the anime are synonyms to the overarching fandom name.

And what about a manga that had two adaptations? Well, Fullmetal Alchemist has an "All Media Types" tag, which acts as a catchall for the 2003 anime, the live action, Bluebird's Illusion (which is apparently a fan-made game?), and a single tag combining the manga and Brotherhood.

So then, I did another search for information on how the Archive is handling "All Media Types" tags.

That search led me to a Tumblr post on tag wrangling guidelines from way back in 2013. Obviously, that post was out of date, but it led me to a handful of other posts, and eventually to the tag wrangling guidelines on the Ao3 website.

I actually didn't know the wrangling guidelines were publicly available before this, so this was exciting! After some brief searching, I was able to find some relevant policies:

Wrangling Guidelines - Metatags still mentioned "All Media Types" metatags in their guidelines, so perhaps those guidelines are out of date? Or instead, they're for those exceptions where "All Media Types" tags make sense?

That page led me to Wrangling Guidelines - Fandoms, which was MUCH more informative.

Under "Base Rules" > "Shared & Similar Names/Multiple Media" > "General Disambiguation Suffixes" it says:

General Disambiguation Suffixes are a legacy disambiguation format and last-resort disambiguation options for fandom tags that could not be easily separated into specific media. Fandoms disambiguated in these ways are no longer being created and are being removed where possible.

General Disambiguation Suffixes includes "All Media Types," "& Related Fandoms," and "Ambiguous Fandom."

Under "Fandoms With Multiple Media" it says:

Existing "All Media Types" tags may have new subtags added beneath them, but should no longer be created. The different existing media tags can be made into subtags under this metatag, as they are added to the Archive. There is no need to make an "All Media Types" metatag just to connect fandoms. Such fandoms can simply sit separately.

Bleh. I guess my hopes have been dashed.

...

But wait!

Under "Anime and Manga" > "Disambiguation Between Manga, Manhwa, Manhua, & Anime" it says:

Anime and manga fandoms should be canonised separately as much as possible. For fandoms where the completed manga and anime canons overlap enough to be considered one unified canon, or the user-made works do not specify whether they are for the anime or the manga, the disambig may be (Anime & Manga), with the terms in alphabetical order.

If canons do not overlap and users make tags for the separate canons, disambiguate with (Anime), (Manga), (Manhwa), or (Manhua).

For this second quote, IT USES FRUITS BASKET AS THE EXAMPLE.

So, I guess the tag wrangler(s) for Fruits Basket consider the manga and the (unspecified which) anime to... not overlap? Or not overlap enough? Again, this confuses me. The 2019 anime covered all of canon and only had extremely minor changes, and those were mostly done just to make it work better in animation instead of print. The 2001 anime only covered the first third or so of the story and had some bigger changes, but nothing outside the realm of what a fan might change in a fanwork for the manga.

So, what do I think would be the best outcome for the Fruits Basket media tags on Ao3?

When I think about it, I could see people who had only seen the 2001 anime benefiting from being able to search only for works relating to the 2001 anime. And I could see people who have read the manga/seen the 2019 anime being annoyed if the major changes of the 2001 anime were referenced on works tagged to the manga/2019 anime. But I can't really see that happening between the manga and the 2019 anime. Those changes were so minute, I doubt they'd be relevant most of the time.

So, with the caveat that I'm only one user, and I don't know for sure if my opinion is the one held by most users in the Fruits Basket fandom, here are some potential solutions that would work for me & (I believe) for most users in the Fruits Basket fandom:

bring back "Fruits Basket" as a metatag for all 3 media types, or

make the manga tag synonymous with the 2019 anime, with the new canonical reading [Fruits Basket (Anime 2019 & Manga)], and make the 2001 anime a subtag of that new combined tag, or

make both anime tags subtags of the manga tag

Anyway, if you wanted to know what I've been doing instead of writing over the past few weeks, this is it. 😅 I'd really love to hear what you think of my proposed solutions, and if the change caused problems for you as it did for me, or if it actually made things easier.

Info about another tag wrangling issue for Fruits Basket coming soon in a separate (much shorter!) post!

[feedthefandomfest]

Hiya!

I love this blog and just wanted to ask- do you know any advice on formatting and tagging for AO3?

Or just general etiquette!!

I'm not new to AO3 (reading or writing) but I haven't interacted with the actual community much and would love to know more :)

oof, I still feel like a newbie posting stuff on ao3, and tagging is something i've always struggled with. and actually formatting is also on ongoing issue 😅 so with that in mind, here's what i try to consider:

TAGGING

relationships -> tagging the main is obvious, but i'm sometimes torn about tagging side relationships that feature in the fic, especially since it's annoying to be searching for that pairing and get a bunch of results where they're not the main focus; unless the other pairing is a prominent feature, i leave it out of the relationship tags and at most add it to the additional tags

characters -> i remember updating the character tags on my early fics every time another character popped up in the story, but now i'm of the same mind as the side pairing issue; unless the character is prominently featured, i leave them out of the tags

content warning/advertising -> if i know the fic features an element that some people might wish to avoid, i always tag it and also always fret that i've forgotten to tag something in that regard. when it's more about advertising what's in the fic, especially sexual content, i sometimes feel silly listing every flavor of physical encounter unless the fic is pwp/smut (in which case i gleefully list all the depravity); i sometimes worry that over-emphasizing the sexual content in the tags is misleading? like of this 100k fic, if 15k is spent fucking, how do i get the tags to reflect that while also tag cw appropriately? is there an established tag for that?

sometimes i see fics with TONS of tags, like an exhausting amount, and sometimes i see fics with very minimal tags... sometimes frustratingly few. i also know some writers add chapter-specific warnings in the author's notes. in the end, so long as you're making it possible for people to find or avoid your fic as needed, then you're good. Here are some good posts that dive into it more!

(i remember when people on tumblr would scold writers for monologuing in the tags on ao3 like we do on here, claiming it was a strain on the system, but i believe that's been debunked?)

FORMATTING

i've noticed some MEGA annoying quirks with copy & pasting over from Google Docs and Word, and I know there are some tricks to get around them, but i tend to just slog through the Rich Text window fixing everything manually 🙃 OKAY I FOUND SOLUTIONS LINKED BELOW.

spacing problem #1 -> pet peeve of mine, but i dislike it when the paragraphs have massive spaces between them (ditto for indented paragraphs). idk why, but it's tiring for my eyes to constantly leap the chasm between paragraphs. so whenever i copy and paste from Word, which for some reason ALWAYS appears with double spacing between line breaks, i go in and manually fix it. SOLUTION

spacing problem #2 -> when copying over from Google Doc, whenever there's a punctuation mark following an italicized word, a random space appears between them. and yep, i have to go in and fix every one because typos make me twitch. (this might not be an issue for everyone; i overuse italics and dashes like it's my job) SOLUTION

spacing problem #3 -> again probably a me issue, but i tend to include song lyrics a lot, and it's always a headache to format because when pasting from the doc, ao3 embeds these spaces between the lines that i can't remove by backspacing. only fix i've found is to copy and paste lyrics directly from a website, and then it formats fine. random and annoying and weird. (no solution 😔)

since this section has just been me whining about finding SOLUTIONS for formatting issues, i'll offer one tip that's more about general editing: i try to proofread best i can in Word/GDocs, but it's always easier to spot errors when i'm reading the draft on my phone. the typos always jump out at me from a phone screen. it's now my favorite way to edit!

every writer has their own preferences on formatting, and every reader has their own level of tolerance for formatting quirks. in the end, so long as the formatting doesn't interfere with the reading experience, you're all good.

[todoroki-waifu]

I was wondering if I could get a fluffy Draken x Fem Reader x Mikey where all three are married and the reader finds out that she’s pregnant but doesn’t know how to tell them with them being busy with the bike shop they both own and the constant visits with the other gang members so she decides to surprise them all at once when they come to visit.

Note: Thank you for the request! My first Mikey x Reader x Draken fic. :) Definitely feel like I need more practice writing Draken, but I hope you enjoy!

Draken x Reader x Mikey

Warning: Female reader and mentions of pregnancy.

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 1,403

-----------

"Breakfast is ready!" You called your husbands from the kitchen, setting up the table.

"Coming!" Mikey attempts to get up from the table, but Draken stops him. 

"Stay still! I'm not done with your hair." He scolds, combing his blonde locks before gathering the section that falls over his eyes. Draken then secures the chunk of hair with an elastic.  "Hurry! I'm hungry, Ken-chin."  "Shut up. If you only knew how to do your own hair, we'd be in the kitchen by now."  "I don't wanna." Mikey liked having Draken do his hair.  "No bickering this early in the morning." You said as you placed their respective drinks on the table. Your partners both mumbled before giving you a kiss each on the cheek.  "You're not eating?" Draken raises a brow at a lack of plate on the table. "Uhh..nah, I'm okay, actually. I'm just gonna have some tea." You walk over to the boiling water, checking to see if the electric kettle was finished.  "You sure? You okay?" Draken frowns at you skipping breakfast. It was the most important meal of the day. "Yes, baby. I'm fine. I'm just not ready to eat yet." The truth is you were a bit nauseous, but you couldn't let them know. Not yet. You had to figure out a way to tell them that they were going to be fathers.  "Do you want Ken-chin to make you something?" Mikey offers Draken to cook you breakfast which the taller blonde doesn't mind, but he does shoot a small glare at his partner. Mikey had hands, too... "No, really. I'm good with my tea for now. Besides, I'm off today so I have all day to eat." You did sit between them when your tea was done, conversing about your plans for today.  Once they were finished, you gave them the lunches you packed for them, both men kissing you before heading to work. You had the day off because of a doctor's visit, but you didn't tell them what kind of appointment.  You were pregnant, about 8 weeks now and today was going to be your first ultrasound. You wanted your husbands to be present, but at the same time, you wanted to surprise them. Also, you wanted to make certain that you were actually pregnant. You were paranoid, hearing stories of false positives and you knew that an ultrasound would help determine the truth. And it did! You walked out of the appointment with a picture of your tiny baby. You smiled, overwhelmed with so many emotions. Happy, because you’re growing the family you, Mikey, and Draken had been talking about. Nervous, because there’s no manual on how to take care of a child.

You desperately wanted to talk to someone so you went straight to Mikey’s and Draken’s bike shop. However, their store was full of customers. Clients were picking up their motorcycles, bringing in their impaired ones, or purchasing new parts. You realized that now that winter was ending, spring was beginning which meant bike lovers were going to be out more. 

“Ah, my sun and star!” Mikey stops his conversation with a customer and leaves the task to Draken. Draken yells at him briefly before going back to their client. Mikey hugs you tightly, lifting you up slightly from the ground before peppering your face with his lips. 

He hated being apart from you too long. Didn’t matter if he had Draken. He wasn’t you. 

“My love, you can’t just abandon work like that.” 

“But you’re more important.” He pouts. 

“I understand, but paying our bills and not living on the streets is also just as important. If we don’t have money, then we can’t get any dorayaki.” And that seemed to motivate your invincible husband. 

You waited for them in the back, not minding if it took them a while. It gave you some time to think about how you were going to tell them the good news. You figured you could just show them the ultrasound pictures and take it from there. However, you hear a group of familiar voices enter through the front. You immediately stuff the pictures of your sonogram into your bag, peeking your head out from the break room. It was some of the Toman group. A few of them needed repairs on their bikes while the rest conversed with you and Mikey. The Toman gang stayed until the shop closed, but invited the three of you for dinner.

And it had been like that for almost two weeks. Your partners have been extra busy at the shop, finding that more people were discovering their small business. Not only that, but it seemed as if all of Toman wanted to catch up with their previous captain and vice captain. You didn't mind, but you were focused on how you wanted to announce your pregnancy to your husbands. 

You preferred them to be the first ones and eventually tell the rest of your friends, but seeing how busy their schedules were, you decided to do it at tonight's dinner. It was at a restaurant where one of the Toman members knew the owner so the place was reserved just for you and the gang. Since you didn't know how you were going to reveal the news, you decided to seek help from Hina.

"Oh my gosh, you're preg-" Hina nearly screams out your secret, but you quickly had to hush her.

"Shh..! Yes, I am, but I need help telling everyone." You whispered low enough to where only she could hear. 

"Hmmm....okay, okay. I got it. I'll take care of it." She winks as you both walk from your little corner and merge with the rest of your friends. A few minutes later, Hina is calling everyone to take a picture. You all gather around the coral haired girl, attempting to squeeze into the little phone screen. She holds her arm out, adjusting it as needed. Draken and Mikey take up both your sides, making sure to stand where you all could be seen.

"Okay, ready? 1...2...congrats to Papa Mikey and Papa Draken!" Hina says gleefully, recording everyone's initial reaction. Everyone made various noises, all eyes turned to you.

"Wait...what? Papa?" Mikey raises a brow then glances up at Draken.

"Hold on...you're..pregnant?!"  

"Mhm!" You're trying not to laugh at everyone's faces, especially the ones who were still trying to process it. You pull out your phone, showing them a picture of the little life that was growing in you. Everyone cheered loudly for the three of you, wishing you good fortune and offering any help that you may need. 

Dinner was fantastic and also relieving. You're finally free of your secret's burden. You're currently nestled between Mikey and Draken, the three of you looking over the sonogram pictures from your previous appointment. 

"So you've been going to these appointments by yourself?" Draken realizes how long you've known about your pregnancy. 

"Well, yeah. At first, I wasn't sure and wanted to confirm with my doctor, then after that, I was trying to find a way to tell you."

"I'm sorry. We've been so busy with the shop." He starts to feel guilty for not noticing sooner. 

"I'm gonna stop going to work and take care of you from now on. Ken-chin can handle the shop." Mikey snuggles into you and Draken reaches over to bop him on the head. He was so attached to you. Not that Draken wasn't either, but he was more realistic when it came to wanting to be around you and earning a stable income. 

"Manjiro, you know you can't do that. And Ken, no need to be sorry. I chose to not say anything." You grabbed both their hands, giving a kiss each to the back of them.

"Well, expect us to be coming with you to those appointments from now on." Mikey smiles, his heart beating with happiness and excitement. Draken nods in agreement then goes back to stare at the ultrasound photos, his cheeks hurting from the smile that was plastered on his face for a while. 

You let out a happy sigh, snuggling into Draken while Mikey is hugging you from behind. You're excited and nervous about this new chapter in your lives, but you feel less anxious knowing that your two loving husbands are going to be with you all the way. 

[something-pithy]

Notes and an Update: The Alignment Issue

pictured above: just a regular Tuesday night at Ancunín Palace

“So with Astarion, his evil ending is actually him...much of what he does is out of fear. And as a player, you can say to him, ‘You're right to be afraid.’ And that sends him to a really horrible place, and that I think is really powerful.” -- Adam Smith, Lead Writer of BG3

I’ve been talking about my notes about alignment in D&D and BG3 and my interpretation of them in the context of an echo, a stain since before I even started with these “Notes and an Update” posts. But every week, something else has come up that I wanted to post more than my alignment notes. 

I think this might be a chronology thing. These notes seem old to me because they predate the vast majority of the story. I don’t remember the specific date I decided to write out my thoughts about the nature of “good” and “evil” as DnD 5e describes them / how they manifest in BG3, specifically in Astarion, but I know that I was scribbling notes – or whatever the keyboard version of scribbling notes is – about it since a palmful of stars / an echo a stain was just “the desired constellation.” 

This is because DnD has Things to Say about vampires and their morality, who Astarion is as a character in this series is deeply informed by what he’s willing to do to get what he wants. 

My decision to finally post these notes now is informed by a couple of main things:

The IGN interview posted this past Friday, December 15th titled “Baldur’s Gate 3 Developers Explain Its Controversial Endings, Beloved Characters, and Making the Best RPG of 2023,” wherein Adam Smith makes the statement I quote at the top of this post and

The description AO3 user fanciful included in their bookmark of the story*: 

“There's several things in here I haven't seen in other Astarion/Tav fics, so do read this if you're looking for something unique.” 

*(yeah, I’m not gonna pretend I’m so cool and unaffected that I don’t peek at who’s bookmarked the story to see what they might have said about it lol).  

When I found fanciful’s blurb, I almost immediately went to bother my phenomenal beta, Komo, (whom I’ve mentioned before and will again, and who is probably a better beta than I deserve but very much the beta this story could not exist as it does without). The gist of my question to her was OMG WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, to which her response, in part, was that she was curious as well, but that she had her own thoughts:

“I think your take on a vampire lord/ascendant's "evilness" is unique.  Like, it's not how ascendant fans who explain away his bad behavior, but also not [how] a traditional spawn fan would write him either, recognizing [there’s] nuance to the evilness.”

Which was like, SUCH a great compliment specifically because I’ve thought a lot (I mean a fuckin’ LOT) about how evil works, and how it works in this story. So here are my (abridged and ever-evolving) notes about all this, which are a very important part of the basis of my approach to Astarion’s characterization in aeas.

So first of all, the Adam Smith quote above indicates that Ascendant!Astarion’s alignment is not due to some mystical, transformative, vampire or diabolical force. It’s not the result of Mephistopheles taking his soul as part of the bargain. Any evil behavior / attitudes Ascendant!Astarion demonstrates are purely a result of his own choices, made of sound mind, body, and soul. 

The DnD 5e Monster Manual labels vampire lords specifically as lawful evil. 

Now I’m going to say here that I think the “good” and “evil” alignment binary is flawed. Yeah, there’s neutral, but that still operates as kind of a middle ground for this axis. I think something more accurate would be something referring to the good of the majority vs. self-interest, but I’m not here to get into all that. 

For expediency, I’m going to roll with the definition of evil that seems to fit what DnD 5e is going for. And according to past DnD sourcebooks (this isn’t in 5e, but 5e offers much less detail about alignment than previous editions), evil “implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others.”

So for the purposes of these notes, my interpretation of “evil” in general and specifically in terms of an echo, a stain is that a character with an “evil” alignment is willing to hurt, oppress, or kill others without compunction in order to achieve their goals. 

In my mind this doesn’t mean that they necessarily want to do those things, or enjoy them (though there’s evidence that Astarion does both at different points in-game), just that if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes. And they’ll do what it takes. 

Now, it’s my inclination to view RPG sourcebooks as somewhat flexible depending on what best serves to the story, but also, in-game, there’s plenty of evidence to indicate Astarion was created and written as a character whose baseline can be read, at best, as chaotic neutral, but more likely as neutral evil if we’re going by the above definition. 

So what? 

OK well, in an interview with some folks at Collider, Neil Newbon said that the “Ascendant Ending” was the one he’d kind of pictured for Astarion. 

“Actually I saw Astarion always going that route [Ascension], whereas other characters might want to [...]  help him not only survive, and thrive in a positive way.”*

From a character arc standpoint, I agree with Neil: there’s no doubt in my mind that without a good-aligned Tav, Astarion would be on Ascension like white on rice as a default. I think it’s the baseline trajectory of who he is at the start of the game. 

I also believe that it is *possible*, not a guarantee, but *possible,* that being in an environment where he’s surrounded by people who do genuinely care about him and his well-being, and yeah, with the support of a good-aligned Tav with whom he experiences deep mutual caring and connection (whether platonic or romantic), who treats him with respect, love, compassion, and care, who sees the best in him and encourages it in him / demands it of him until he can see it himself, he would not choose to go Murdertown, aka the Ascension route.

I also don’t think a high-approval, good-aligned Tav in his life, whether as a lover as a friend, precludes the possibility of Astarion choosing the Ascension route (clearly). BUT ALSO. 

I don’t believe in binaries. 

Does Astarion choosing ascension mean that suddenly all the ways in which he may have changed his perspective during the course of his adventures with a good-aligned Tav are nullified? 

I don’t think so. 

I’m willing to entertain DnD’s canonical assertion that a vampire lord’s emotions are altered by their transformation; however, I also think it’s feasible enough that Astarion’s tendencies toward obsession, paranoia, and possessiveness already existed within him prior to ascension, if to much less pronounced degrees. I think it’s entirely plausible that ascension amplified these qualities in him. but also Astarion’s decision to ascend is indicative of him embracing a worldview that is, as Smith says, deeply rooted in fear. 

This fear impacts another important element of Astarion’s character in aeas, which is the way he perceives himself. Astarion as he exists in aeas is an Astarion who as a spawn, believed he was worth nothing. Astarion as he exists in aeas also has put Tav on a very high pedestal. This is not to say he doesn’t know or love Tav for who she is – I think this Astarion knows this Tav very well. But his perceptions about her are also skewed by his perceptions about himself, and a whole bunch of other things -- including fear. 

SO when Tav leaves him, a couple of things happen in terms of his character, two of which are: 

one of his absolute worst fears is realized (that Tav will leave him, specifically because he is innately a piece of shit and she finally figured it out), and there’s nothing he can do about it. 

the realization of this fear prompts the understanding that he is not, in fact, all-powerful, therefore his power and control must be increased at any and all costs. 

the monumental scope of his power and, frankly, terrifying disposition ensure that, without Tav in his life, there is literally no one offering a different perspective as a counterweight to this fear-based thinking. 

Do I think Tav’s reemergence in Baldur’s Gate and Astarion’s life will change things for him? 

Ehhhhh, that’s a complicated question with a variety of complicated answers that all boil down to, “Well, that depends.” loooool

I don’t know if I’ve said everything I could say here, but I’m running out of steam and if I’m getting tired of writing, you must be getting tired of reading, so I’ll leave it here:

tl;dr: aeas has been and will continue to be informed from start to finish by the ideas that

Ascended Astarion is absolutely and 100% Astarion

whether or not alignment is mutable, people/characters can and do still change based on their experiences and environment.

Make of that what you will. LOOOOOL

[naranjapetrificada]

As the "dealing with grief and other big feelings dredged up by the 🌟Gay Pirate Show🌟" thing appears to be sticking around I thought it was time for a master post about my new favorite thing:

Healing thru fanfic!

I should say up top that a) I usually prefer fic that's canon-compliant or only slightly canon-divergent, especially for healing purposes because I think it helps with immersion and b) the list is short right now but it's definitely gonna grow as time moves on. Anyway, recs beyond the cut:

Fallow Land & Bigger Sky: I've already mentioned before how reading (and sitting with and processing) Fallow Land & Bigger Sky was so incredibly healing but here I am, doing it again! And even if the emotional appeal doesn't get you to read it, you should try it for the beautiful imagery, poetic writing, and carefully and lovingly crafted (and canon-compliant) character study of one Edward Teach.

It's the kind of writing that makes contemplative manual labor, stunning vistas, a mischievous nun, a cute little black lamb, and gallons of homebrewed wine all feel as essential to the fandom experience as any other way we spend time with our blorbos. I literally cannot believe how beautiful and well-executed this story is sometimes.

Brace Yourself and Nestle into Me: I literally just read this one this morning, and it's actually what inspired me to make this post. The premise is that Ed and Stede figure out that they're into each other around episode 7, and they're deliriously happy to know that they feel the same way about each other. But Stede has some (understandable) sexual dysfunction around being queer thanks to the horrible society that he grew up in. Ed is a darling trying to help him through it all, and along the way he realizes he also has some of his own hangups he needs to work through together.

I appreciate that this one doesn't treat healing like a straight line because it never is, and emphasizes that trust can't just be implicit, you really have to talk it through as a crew, even if it's just a crew of two broken middle-aged men who are desperately in love with each other. It also gets into some of the stuff I've been talking about on here about grieving your former selves and the selves you never got to be, which was validating as hell. That sounds heavy and there are concepts that are literally part of modern therapy modalities woven into the story, but there are also warm and loving and hilarious moments too, including this gem:

“Also can you just imagine how proud little horny baby gay Stede would be know you would be to know that whatever he went through, today you’ve got your own ship and are getting completely railed by Blackbeard? I mean, just absolutely dicked down by the most famous pirate in history? He would lose his mind.”

To paraphrase the author notes, the "Healing Power of Gay Sex"  won't fix everything, but I put it to you as a reader that reading and thinking about it also helps. And sometimes it can shake something loose you didn't know you were holding onto! Which is great!

Adrift Between the Dreaming Seas: Based on my usual filtering on ao3 I probably never, ever would have come across this fic if it weren't for a recommendation someone posted on this hellsite. It's got fantasy elements, allegory, metaphors stacked on metaphors, talking animals, and so many other things that would have kept me from ever discovering it on my own. My life would be poorer for it.

Basically Stede is cursed to be a lighthouse keeper on an island that seems to move around the world. Animals show up and the ones who talk to him are members of the crew, and Ed is an actual kraken. It's all this symbolism about monstrosity and trauma and maladaptive coping and the messiness that is Stede's kindness scraping against his self loathing. I shed tears of many kinds along the way, and it made me think hard about community and recovery and the things we do to and for ourselves and others.

It's just a lovely little gem of a story that made me feel so much so deeply while also making me laugh much more than I was anticipating. I'm so glad I gave it a chance.

[that's it for now, more as I keep up my deep dive into the ao3 archives]

[jackleg-penwright]

Universal Translator head-canon

In case you’re actually coming to this post because you like my Tumblr, instead of coming from the AO3 link in my fic, I should probably mention that I’m kind of hijacking my account here in order to break down some of the quite frankly ridiculous amounts of worldbuilding that goes into the stuff I’m starting to write. I’m autistic, which in my case means that I was the kid who sorted her legos for hours (by color, by width, by length etc) and never did get around to building anything. For me, the worldbuilding is the fun part, while writing the story is the work (though I do hope I’m pretty decent at it too, or at least getting better). 

I don’t want to put the worldbuilding itself into the fics, that would just distract from the story (my acting teachers would always say, never act your homework. When you’re on stage/camera, you have to be in the moment) - but just in case you’re curious, or if you want to use my aliens in your fics, or if you’re just a nerd like me who loves sorting details for their own sake, here it is.

This one is my head-canon for how the Universal Translator works. 

Well, actually I don’t have any idea how it works - do you hear a real-time voice in your head translating, does a text-based translation pop up in your field of vision, does your brain just know what they mean? Not a clue.

But what I do figure is that you can choose how it’s translated - both for words, and for numbers and systems.

There are a number of levels that are preset for you to choose.

There’s translate everything, where everything you hear is turned into the closest approximation that you would understand. If someone said “para mi es chino,” you would hear “it’s all Greek to me,” even though the Spanish version actually references Chinese. Idioms are converted to the closest with a similar meaning.

Then there’s the level where you get the meanings at the level of phrases and expressions, but idioms are left intact. So if someone said “me gusta pasta,” you would hear “I like pasta," but if they said "para mi es chino," you'd hear "for me, it's Chinese" instead of the closest English idiom.

At the next level down, you would instead hear “pasta is pleasing to me.” The literal meaning of the words is preserved, although the word order is rearranged to make the most sense grammatically.

That’s probably as minimalist a translation as anyone who’s interested in the unique beauty of a language would choose to go, and that’s the most minimalist of the pre-sets available.  

If you actually want to LEARN the other language, then you’ll switch to manual settings. Ok, there’s one more pre-set, which is the “vocabulary only” setting. Every word is translated literally, and left in the exact order of the other language. So if someone said “me gusta pasta,” you would hear “to me, pleases pasta.” 

From the vocabulary-only setting, you can manually adjust all sorts of things - you can set specific words or phrases to be entirely untranslated whenever you hear them, you can have a literal translation but use the native-speaker’s original prefixes or suffixes. You can have the parts-of-speech information that’s embedded in the grammar be added to the translation (so “me gusta pasta” might include information like reflexive verb first person singular etc). The sky’s kind of the limit with the manual settings - you can even take a preset level and modify it so that you hear the native suffixes to your own words (which I suspect is where fan-terms like “federaji” come from). 

My headcanon is that when they recorded the episodes, there is a universal translator embedded in the recording equipment, and which settings it is on is chosen by the director for the purposes of his or her artistic vision for the episode. That’s why we hear Klingons speaking English - except when we don’t. 

There’s a whole other set of settings when it comes to numbers and units of measurement etc, which I may or may not get to in another note. For now, suffice it to say that the settings that both Garak and Julian use translate numbers automatically, but leave the units untranslated. So if I had those settings, and I were to travel from the US to the UK and hear people talking about a heat wave of 39 degrees, my translator would not automatically translate the centigrade to the 102.2 degrees fahrenheit I’d be able to picture - I’d hear 39 degrees and have to learn just how hot that actually is. 

I think, as xenophiles, both Julian and Garak would find that appealing.

[hazy-hazel-fics]

My fanfic writing process!!! yippee!!!

Step 1: getting my idea. First off, I need the very basic idea of what I want to write. Sometimes it's just a vibe. What fandom am I writing for? What characters are involved? Is it a crackfic or angsty as hell? Is romance involved? Are they in a different setting than canon?

Step 2: planning. I don't like this one a whole lot, mostly because I never know if I'm doing it right. However, the way I do it is I basically come up with a few basic plot points and decide the order that they should happen in. I also try to keep it appropriate to the setting and especially the characters. Sometimes I kinda skip this part, which in hindsight, never turns out good. The part I like most about this is that it's usually where I design my characters! I like drawing, so getting to sketch out how my characters look so that I can describe them or draw them better is nice.

(there's 4 more steps and explanations below the cut! it's just there so that it's shorter if anyone's scrolling)

Step 3: writing. I try to split my base writing into chunks. First, I start everything on paper! I write down a chapter 1, and try to extend it to part of the second chapter as my first section. I then make my next section finishing the second chapter and starting the third, and so on. As my first draft, it usually has a lot of placeholders where I just say [thing that he grabs the hairbrush out of] or something along those lines, and I don't care too much about my writing seeming bland.

Step 4: editing. As I just mentioned, I tend to section things out, albeit loosely. This part is where I grab a red pen and start to fill in the placeholders and fix any grammatical errors. I also tend to replace words and sentences and make them better, at least in my eyes. I do this by section about twice, meaning that I finish writing my first section, and then later on I do the first corrections, and then the next day or after a nap I do the second corrections. Once I'm done, I start writing the next section, and then I edit that, and the cycle repeats!

Step 5: importing. The next step is to import it somewhere that I can check my word count, edit it, and format it right. I usually use Google Docs because it's easiest. First, to avoid that weird double spacing with AO3 when copy pasting, I make it so that it's single and has a space after each paragraph, which shows me how it'd look in AO3 (image below).

I import it from paper by just manually typing everything out besides the fact that things were corrected. The next day or just a few hours later, I go into suggesting mode (another image below) which basically means that any edits I make will not be permanent, and I can come back later and decide whether or not I want to use the edits. I do this and re-read until I think that my story is silly enough.

Final/6th step: PUBLISHING!!!! Yep, this is the last step, and probably the most nerve-wracking for me. I open up AO3, make a new work, and then I have to decide the tags (probably the hardest part for me; feels like there's too many to chose from or there isn't something as oddly specific as I need it to be), decide the ratings, write notes for the first chapter... and write a summary. I don't like writing summaries, but I try to keep it short and sweet, and I try not to spoil too much. Maybe 1-3 sentences, and then an author's note that's usually the same length or shorter. I re-read everything I've written, make minor changes, add or remove tags that don't seem necessary, usually mention that tags will be removed and added as necessary... Then, my cursor hovers over the button to publish it... and I haven't gotten past that yet! At some point, though, I'll actually publish a fic rather than letting it sit in google docs and in the drafts until deletion.

So sorry for the very long tutorial! I hope you have a nice day :)

[ironwoman359]

Soooo I was looking through my drafts because there's posts in there years old, and I found this old fanfiction question list that my dear friend @thuriweaver tagged me in two years ago and I thought what the heck, I'll fill that out tonight because I've been trying to work on writing more lately. So, without further ado...

1.How many works do you have on AO3?

95!

Though I've written more, there are things on @ironwhumper359 and @ironwoman359-writes that aren't fandom related and are only on tumblr, and there's probably some other things on my masterlist that aren't on AO3 either, maybe I ought to comb through it at some point and upload more!

2. What is your total AO3 word count?

333,493! And fun fact, I just counted that up manually from all 95 fics because I thought AO3 didn't display that stat, but it turns out I just wasn't logged in. The stat page says I actually has 335,438 words, so either I missed a fic or it includes the author's notes or summaries in that count.

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

 If you look at the fandom list it has 10, but I think 5 is a more accurate count, which I'll explain in a sec. These are the fandoms on AO3:

Sanders Sides (Web Series) (87)

Super Mario & Related Fandoms (3)

Marvel Cinematic Universe (3)

Undertale (Video Game) (3)

Leverage (2)

Video Blogging RPF (2)

Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series) (1)

In Space With Markiplier (Web Series) (1)

Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo (1)

Markiplier TV (Web Series) (1)

The thing is, the two fics in the "video blogging" fandom are markiplier ego fics and I'd lump those, Who Killed Markiplier, In Space With Markiplier, and Markiplier TV all as one fandom, and also, all the Super Mario fics and MCU fics are actually both Sanders Sides AUs, so those aren't really separate fandoms either.

A better list would be:

Sanders Sides

Markiplier

Undertale

Leverage

Six of Crows

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

So this was fascinating to look at! I'm going to list them in reverse order, for the Drama.

5: How to Catch a Fairy, posted on June 16th, 2020 with 2,918 hits and 515 kudos. This is a very short little oneshot, filling a prompt from a Bad Things Happen Bingo card, "Used as Bait." I really enjoyed writing this one, but I'm surprised it's beat out so many of my other, older fics. It has almost 100 more kudos than Our Own Villain, the (admittedly incomplete) fic that is my 6th biggest in kudos and kind of put me on the map in the TSS fandom. I guess people really like fae, feral protective love interests, and analogical.

4: Phase One, originally posted on September 11th, 2020, with 3,575 hits and 532 kudos. Now this is far less surprising, the Marvel AU is one of my most popular stories, with an entire sideblog dedicated to developing it, and it is by far the story I am most asked about continuing. The story is told partly through in universe S.H.I.E.L.D. documents and internal communications, questions on @ask-agent-sanders, and traditionally posted stories. Phase One is the AO3 name for the traditional story portion of the universe, each chapter being an entry in the story. The plan was, eventually, to create a fic called Phase Two for stories taking place post-Avengers (2012) content, but I haven't updated the fic in nearly 2 years.

3: A Part of the FamILY, originally posted on May 9th, 2018, with 5,326 hits and 696 kudos. According to the author's notes, I originally wrote the fic in February of 2018 to celebrate 1,000 tumblr followers, so it makes sense that it would have a lot of kudos. It also leans HEAVILY on a lot of tropes that the TSS fandom was really into at the time, and even has song lyrics in it with links to said songs on spotify. I stand by the quality of the actual story and writing on display here, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that those aspects make me cringe just a bit today 😅

2: A Fiendly Reunion, originally posted on July 7th, 2019, with 7,621 hits and 766 kudos. This story is one of my proudest achievements, both in the TSS fandom and as a writer in general. At 30,000+ words over 10 chapters, it is the longest single fic I've ever posted, and the only multichapter fic over 4 chapters that I've ever completed, outside a Big Bang challenge I did in 2018. It took over a year to write, and was a huge passion project for me. I'm really, really happy that it's at the number two spot, and that my readers loved it as much as I did. I'd honestly be surprised that it wasn't at the number one spot, if it weren't for what IS at the number one spot...

1: Broken Wings, originally posted on September 9th, 2018 with 7,747 hits and 1,159 kudos. This fic is the most popular thing I've ever posted on AO3, and it's tumblr cross-post has over 1,000 notes, which is a lot for a fanfiction on this site. Why? It's short, at just under two thousand words, it's angsty and it's fluffy, it has protective-and-self-sacrificing Virgil, protective light sides, vague and abusive dark sides (this was 2018, ok, the fandom was a very different place then), it has wings, and to top it all off it was actually based on fanart, this amazing workby @asofterfan who came up with all the wing designs and potential dynamics that the winged sides would have, I just took their vision and translated it to words. I kind of love that my most popular work is actually something that's collaborative in nature, I think it says something about the way fandom comes together as a community <3.

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

I do! I used to not as often because I felt awkward, and I'm not gonna lie, I still do sometimes, but these days I try to respond when possible, because I really, really appreciate comments! They're absolutely everything as a creative.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I'm not really into angsty endings, very rarely do I leave something unhappy on purpose. Sometimes I start out with something unhappy, only to later go and add more fic to give it a happier ending. I'm Left in the Dark originally was a short prompt fill, chapter 1, but then I went back and wrote chapters 2 and 3 to resolve the plot.

All that to say, I think the angstiest ending out there is actually the ending of an instant of great white gravity, which is the first installment in a series I hope to write more for that I'm calling Before and After, though I haven't made it a series on AO3 yet. By it's very nature of being a prequel to the events of Who Killed Markiplier, the whole thing has big 'doomed by the narrative' energy, and even though not every fic will necessarily have a melancholy tone, great white gravity does, because it's about Will being too late to ask Celine out and having to live with watching her marry Mark instead, and about Damien watching the friend group he used to be able to count on be irrecoverably changed by this tension. Goooood angst, right there!

7. Do you ever write crossovers?

I do! Or, I've written one, at least. The Marvel AU isn't a recasting like most of my other AUs based on existing stories, the Marvel characters also exist and are in the story.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don't believe so, no! I've been very fortunate in that regard, the little hate I have received over the years has all been in my askbox directly, never in the comments of a fic that I can recall.

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

Nope! Sex-repulsed asexual over here, but y'all have fun in your corner of the internet!

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

To my knowledge/recollection, no, but I do know that someone reposted one of my fics on Wattpad once. They credited me as the author though, so I didn't ask them to take it down, but in general, I don't like it when people do that.

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

Yes! Until the Sun Rises, a walking dead style zombie AU, is a collab with @buzz-by-bee, aka @a-valourous-choice, author of the To Build a Home series! We haven't updated it in a long time (oops) but it has a sideblog over on @until-the-sun-rises that has some pretty sweet fanart as well as all the content if you're interested!

You Don't Own Me (You Don't Even Know Me) also started out as a collab with @5-falsehoods-phonated, aka RoseyWinter on AO3, but he has since left the project and left me to finish our plan on my own (which I keep saying that I'll do and then not doing, whoops).

Also, I swear I've written a fic with @theinvisiblespoon, but maybe I'm just thinking of the hours we used to spend rp-ing and all the times we've talked about writing a more structured story together and then just never doing it (have you spotted the theme yet?)

12. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Oh gosh, that's so hard. Even back when I only wrote for One fandom I was a multishipper, and now I'm shipping in other fandoms? Too many good choices, how dare you make me choose. If I have to limit it to 5 all time favorites though... Analogical, Moxiety, LAMP, Kanej, and the Leverage OT3.

13. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Undertale! if you go waaay back on my AO3...or, you know, just click on the Undertale fandom link there, you can see the few works that I put out: a series of prompts for Cheer Up the Skeleton Week, an event focusing on depicting Sans as Happy for once, an OC self insert story that I quickly abandoned after a few chapters, and Your Fault, a piece about the multiverse breaking down that I'm still actually pretty proud of, all things considered.

14. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

Oof, that may be the hardest yet. A Fiendly Reunion, because I actually finished it? A Sanders Carol, because it was my first ever Big Bang, and my first ever completed multi-chapter fic? The Secret History of the Invincible II, because it's new and exciting? They're Only Children because I have so many ideas for it? I honestly couldn't tell you. I love all of them, they're all very dear to me.

15. BONUS QUESTION: Do you have a WIP that haunts you?

Dude, all of them. If I've filtered things correctly on AO3, then of the 24 works in progress that I've started, only 9 are actually complete. That's 15 unfinished stories floating around in my mind, and I know it's actually at least 17, because there are two that show up as completed because I'm doing multiple single works in a series instead of chapters in a single work, so they look complete right now but I know that they're not, plus there's a few that never have been posted to begin with. SO many unfinished stories.

But the one that haunts me the most has to be Our Own Villain, because it is quite possibly my oldest wip, over 5 years old at this point, and it's still not finished but I want it to be so badly. Other wips I've kind of made peace with potentially not continuing, but I swear to god, OOV has to finish before I die, even if Sanders Sides as a show has changed so much since January of 2018 when I first had the idea that the whole premise is now fundamentally flawed, I just have to finish. It's my fanfiction white whale.

---

This was fun! If you've never read any of my work before (tho let's be real, if you made it this far you probably have), I do have a masterlist pinned right at the top of this blog that you can check out. Most of this post was sanders sides because it's what I've written the most of, but I'm actually focusing more on some in space with markiplier and six of crows stuff fic wise, as well as my own original writing. Thanks for reading, I'm not going to tag anyone specific since this challenge is so old. Any writer who sees this and wants to do it, go for it!

[dearestones]

Hiya Devin :) for the recent ask game!

10 (short, huh?), 26, 27, 43, andddd for 50: Why writing? What inspires you/ got you into it in the first place? Thanks Devin :) Hope you're having a slay day! <3

Hey, Devin here!

10. How tall are you?

Did you know... shortness is only a matter of perspective? I'm 191 cm. Obviously. Like Floyd Leech. You should totally believe me.

150 cm

26. What are some seemingly childish things you like? 

Ohhhh, that's a very cool question! Ummm.... hmmm...

I really like cute notebooks, planners, scrapbooks, and calligraphy sets! I don't have a creative bone in my body when it comes to writing legibly, much less decorating planners or scrapbooking, but it seems like a good hobby!

Another a childish thing I like? I really like my happy stims! It's a sore point for me in real life, especially if other people are in the room when I stim, but I like flapping my arms or jumping up and down. The happy chemicals create more happy chemicals in an unstoppable feedback loop that has originated since childhood. :D

Ohhhh, puns! I like to grab seemingly random objects and making puns out of them!

I mean, with all of these questions... It seems like this is a quest ur on to know more details about me! ;)

Yes, I know it's bad shhhh...

27. What’s your favorite book? Or just one you’ve read a few times? 

Oh gosh, please don't be mad at me, it's been years since I've read a book that wasn't a reference text or a manual. Can fanfictions count? From my most recent memory, even though it's been a while since I've last read it (but I have read it upwards to 10+ times over the years)... Snakeskins by Lsunnyc.

I know you like worldbuilding and lore, guess what that fanfic is composed of! (It's also one of my main inspirations to how I write nowadays. I really look up to that author and you should check them out and their ao3 if you're interested!). It's a Hetalia/Harry Potter crossover fanfic and it's... very long, but hey. It's really well written.

But an actual book? Gosh... No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai? That's one of the last few books I remember reading and that was definitely a trip. I related to the main character a bit too much and the subject matter, trajectory of the character... It really hits and there's a reason why the book has the reputation it has.

43. Do you have siblings? How many?

Yup! Two of them!

50. Wild Card. Any question, ask away.

Why writing? What inspires you/ got you into it in the first place?

(Answer under the cut because it got too long!)

Okies, so I know in the past I think I admitted to having started posting fic in 2012 and my first fandom was for Tokyo Mew Mew. However! My first ever fanfic was for Sharkboy and Lavagirl and it was written on yellow legal pad and will never see the light of day ahaha!

The reason I bring that up is because when I was younger and school would let out for the summer, our class would have this ritual of throwing away our tattered old notebooks that we weren't planning on using for the next school year into the recycled bins. However, before I left for home, I would take all of the notebooks that had been dropped into the recycle bins, take them home, rip out the old notes and doodles, and then keep them over the summer.

So that I can write in them.

I started in fifth grade when I realized that it would be a waste just to let those notebooks be recycled when there were some that had tons of clean pages??? In them??? That's why I saved those poor notebooks.

The thing was, I didn't realize that I had like half a dozen or so notebooks that had clean pages that I realized... I could do things with the notebooks. So, over the course of the summers from 5-7 grade, I would write short stories (seriously, short as in like one paragraph long onto a single page and call it a day). It wasn't until the summer of 7th grade that I realized... wait, why write stories only in the summer? Why not write during the whole year instead?

At that point, I amassed a lot of notebooks and scraps of papers filled with stories. Somewhere along the way, I shifted from purely original fiction to fanfiction because it was through my first official fandom (Tokyo Mew Mew) that I realized fanfiction was a thing.

I totally thought, upon reading my first fanfic in ye old ffnet, that it was actually canon material until I checked the comments and other stories. And thus, my eyes were opened.

So yeah, come eighth grade and beyond, I began writing more fanfics in my free time and eventually, in high school, I began bringing my fanfic notebook into class so that I could work on them during breaks.

I think what really inspires me to write would be because... there are entire swathes of the story, of the behind scenes, that we never get to see in canon. You can infer a lot from subtext or hints dropped from characters alluding to events, character perceptions, etc. but there's a difference from accepting the subtext or canon as it is and... Taking what you know and then adding depth to it and transforming it into something new.

I don't know... breathing life into characters who already has an established character is so exhilarating to me! There are people out there who roll their eyes at fanfic, but like??? Writing a character and making them stay in character while also transforming them in the process??? It's creation in one of its more pure forms while also paying homage to the original creator.

There's a quote somewhere... maybe on tumblr? and this person said that writing fanfic or any sort of transformative work is like playing with the sandbox that the original creator has left behind. That's what I'm doing, I'm playing in a sandbox.

And I'm having a lot of fun with it! :D

Anywhoozles, thank you so much for the questions and I hope that you have a wonderful day!

Feel free to ask more questions and I hope that you have a wonderful day! :D