#i love seeing cartoon characters getting to drink and do adult things

[tokidokitokyo]

My Favourite Japanese Children's Shows

My son is 3 and I have watched a lot of Japanese children's shows with him (screen time is family time!). Here are some of my faves and why. These shows are all from NHK E-TV. Would I recommend to use these for personal study? I am using them to help teach my son Japanese, and for this it works doubly well as I learn how children's society operates in Japan and how Japanese people learn Japanese as well as social etiquette. If you don't have a child, you might get bored easily from these as they are not designed with an adult audience in mind, and you can find much better resources online. You also need a subscription to NHK somehow to watch them, which could be difficult or costly to obtain overseas. However, I like the stories and the characters, as well as the little things I learn from watching them. If you are thinking of teaching your child Japanese this might be a useful resource.

いないいないばあっ！ Inai inai baa! (Peek-a-boo!) This show is designed for very young children and features the beloved dog Wan Wan, played by the same actor since it first started airing in 1996. Wan Wan is accompanied by a young girl, played by various actresses in a succession over the year, and other fun characters. There is singing and make-believe and crafts, as well as short segments featuring nature (animals, plants) or short animations. It's very slow as it is made for infants and toddlers, but that makes it very cute. A group of specially selected young toddlers appears for the dances and songs. Why I Like It: The animation is fun and visually appealing, the activities are play based and you can do them at home, and you learn some new vocabulary. Age: Infants to young Toddlers Clip: DVD Advertisement

おかあさんといっしょ Okaasan to issho (With Mother) This show is designed to be watched with mom (it comes on in the mornings and evenings on NHK E-TV). There are a male and female singing talent, and a male and female athletic talent, who participate in singing and acting clips. There are also a group of costumed characters that have a short story that is continued each week. It has a variety of songs, short skits, a collection of human and costumed actors, and a predictable flow that changes slightly based on the day of the week (e.g. teeth brushing days, story days, etc.). It also shows real kids doing real activities, which kids like to watch. Why I Like It: The songs are easy and catchy, the stories are easy to follow and the words are spoken clearly and precisely. Age: Infants to Toddlers/Preschoolers Clip: DVD Advertisement

アンパンマン Anpanman (Anpanman) This cartoon is a long running cartoon for children (since 1988!) with an incredible line of every toy imaginable to supplement your love for the red-bean bun man (anpan = red bean bun pastry). The story lines are simple and predictable, there are a variety of "fairy" characters that are composed of different Japanese food items, plants, utensils, and animals; and in the end the villains are just really hungry. Anpanman works to help people who are in trouble or hungry (sometimes even the villains), or being bullied by the hungry villains and the story always ends well. Why I Like It: The plot is easy to follow and you can learn about Japanese food and drink specialties via the endless supply of characters, and the songs are catchy. Age: Infants to Toddlers/Preschoolers Clip: Ending TV Theme Song

ピタゴラスイッチ Pitagora Suicchi (Pythagora Switch) Pythagora Switch is a 15-minute long show involving devices (Pythagora Switch) that are equivalent to the American Rube Goldberg machine and the British Heath Robinson contraption - basically, a sequence of events made from household objects that end with (usually) the words ピタゴラスイッチ being revealed. The idea is to encourage children to augment their way of thinking and to solve or understand what the machine will do before they see the movements happen. There are also other segments in which mechanisms are explained and shown visually. And usually there is rock-paper-scissors via a Pythagora Switch where you work out what the device will throw and try to beat it! The language in this show is more complicated because it is geared to a wider, older audience. Why I Like It: It helps me to think and enthralls my son with the moving parts. It's puzzle solving and sparks interest in the way the world works. Age: Toddlers to Elementary School Students Clip: 4 3 2 1 2 1 そうち

[kaleidosouls]

im too lazy to put the vpn on to tweet so im gonna tumblr post; talk watch abt the amazing digital circus ep 3 (spoilers ofc) [Edit: i had more thoughts i guess il put it in the replies bc tumblr has those now? maybe itll be more accessible for my twitter generated yapping disorder)

finally some appreciation for my man and favourite character kingler like he goddamn DESERVES. i actually have not enjoyed tadc very much theres so much i rly dislike abt it but its like super well produced and indie so like you watch to be on the loop (i wish it was actually rendered closer to the quality of cd games from the 2000s that it seemed to be referencing but like, it looks how it looks and thats how it is), i rly disliked the script for the mpst part in the first 2 eps but ive loved kingler from day 1 so having an ep with mostly just him and pomni (i have mixed feelings on her too but w/e) was great great great and we had some lore n stuff but rly like i could smell a fellow traumatized man whos a bit wacky to cope from miles away and im glad to be proven Right

sorry im older man fucker so he rly hits all the boxes bc hes actually so sweet and helpful hes just mentally unstable (love him for that) and a lot of his endearing like caring nature comes thru in the physical aspect of the character and with less dialogue, rly the less dialogue the show has the better, idk who does the scripts and i dont wanna diss them but like oof i fucking hate it shkdh like its not like its never funny but its just, off, ive still not been able to properly explain to my wife the way that its off to me, and it bothers me to not be able to cohere those emotions! anyway

kingler so cute so very handsome and uwu so gentle and kind 💖💖💖 i love how gentle he is and good to pomni (ofc ppl are gonna call it fatherly or god forbid grandfatherly when hes like 40, and now if you ship them ppl will say its incesty when theyre two grown adults but w/e) like idk i just love a kind mentally unwell man!!! im simple!!! him just overexposing at the near end in dialogue was rly awkward in the writing like man they just, the dialogue is so not good. but in theory his character is so good and the thing abt the darkness and such was sweet. like hes just always been so endearing and the ep just gives a lot of free real estate kingler screentime to drink with my eyeballs, it doesnt change my opinion on the character at all bc ive always loved him this much

the rest was ok just the typical fare for the most part, like tadc rly often makes me so dissatisfied bc it has so So much potential but the ways it kinda just ends up like a dumbed down typical cartoon is really meh. i do love caine though and more proof that hes a non malicious (although maybe harmfully ignorant) ai. his gags almost land for me if they werent really Really lampshaded, i love how much he cares but is incapable (yet) of improving, i thought it was sweet zooble was so earnest with him. like, the whole tadc def improves the less mean spirited it is, for me. which is hard bc the most favoured character is rancid mean disney purple guy.

gghh why is this show so agdidhsifirh (gestures of anger) like its like, much worse ENA or smth but i know theres more that bothers me abt it than that, and i cant grasp it. im stil in hell irl so i cant cohere a lot in general so w/e, i need to chill and let go. i did like the horror trophy head designs of everyone that i could see (i wanted to get a better look at kinglers but i couldnt find a good frame from watching on my phone) like they were super over the top and fun. i wish the settings they travelled to still felt like, even remotely circusy? they truly feel like just we’re in a different cartoon. but its ok i only hate 749374947493 things abt the shows style choices

i want a framed photo of kingler so i could kiss it. or maybe i could trt to makena plush of him. he is my beloved to hurt/comfort. hes wacky and nice and traumatized and has memory issues and i wuv him

[msfbgraves]

I know you mentioned somewhere that Terry doesn’t know where Daniel keeps his linens but…Is Mob!Terry really totally useless around the house lol? Like, can he help cook or clean? Does he know what curtains go with what bedspread, how to boil water for pasta if Daniel is under the weather? Can he bottle-feed a puppy, or make them lunch for school? Or is the whole sphere of domestic life completely foreign to him? Like, he would literally flop like a fish out of water if Daniel went on vacation for a week and left Terry to run the house? Is this a Terry thing, or is this an Alpha thing?

Daniel would go on vacation for a week and leave - sorry, what, haha?! ☺️😋 Both Daniel and Terry have bluescreened several times during that sentence alone. You'd have to forcibly remove Daniel to make that happen.

Terry can take care of the household stuff you can't buy easily even when you don't have servants. OK what does that mean? He can hang his clothes, polish his shoes, may remove a stain from his slacks. He can tidy, brew tea and what he thinks is coffee, can make sandwiches. He can wash out some socks and underwear and he can sweep things up. He had a housekeeper in his rooms when he was single, he left things presentable. But he can't do laundry, make beds, he has no idea what soap to use on what kind of floor, he can't iron, or polish and even if he could scrub he doesn't know how or what, he'd need a manual for any appliance, doesn't know plants. He can dress scrapes and cuts, but the sense of organisation you'd need to run a household smoothly, how to keep groceries fresh? When what is in season? He has no idea. Those little twirls and flourishes to make things not only practical but actually nice and welcoming? No. Clue. Many Alphas are so outside focused that if they live somewhere they wouldn't know why, when their living space has everything to functionally keep them alive, it doesn't nourish them... Because they don't own any plants or rugs, don't know what colour schemes they like, they don't have pets, they would never buy a blanket for in the living room, don't know how to place their photos... And an Alpha alone with pups, that is simply cataclysmic for them. Say an Alpha's beta mate dies in childbirth. The pups would of course miss their mother as a person like nothing else. But also, the home would lose all personality. Even if the Alpha, in despair, would hire a decorator or a nanny they would not know what little comfortable things their pups specifically need. I mean, juice is juice, right? They might even try to memorise which brand of juice but why their pup wants the brand (does it have pulp? Do they love the colour green? Is there a cartoon character on it?), they wouldn't even know how to ask. It's really distressing, because they love their pups and they want to care for them and they know their mother would know but they can't wrap their brains around it. It's part of the reason they would much rather die themself before they lose their mates. There's a reason why Daniel immediately called his mother to care for his elder pups while taking Gianni. Terry can make them breakfast and pour them drinks and play with them but no, he couldn't bottle feed Gianni, wouldn't know what to do with soiled diapers (that would make part of the house unlivable within two hours) he doesn't know where the special blankets are kept, it's all kinds of Not Good. Many Alphas meanwhile joke that they'll never see their married friends again.... not understanding the reason their now married friends hung out with them around the diners and pubs so much is that these places serve hot food! They don't consciously get that!

So Terry is not completely clueless and could keep an adult functioning but the first time an Alpha has a boyfriend or girlfriend over at theirs and they go out for an hour and suddenly there's coloured napkins on the table. And a little flower somewhere on the window sill. And they framed a picture of them together and wouldn't that look nice here? And they brought their snuggly blanket and would you like one too? They're thinking brown would be really nice, it would go with the dresser, they can buy them one? And a poster of their favourite sports team in that corner, wouldn't that be nice? They'll buy them a team scarf, it goes with their eyes - sweetheart? Why are you crying? Because something inside them would so physically relax at all that. O thank all the gods. But they still wouldn't exactly understand what it was that their lovers were bringing to their life, besides of course their presence.

[aprillikesthings]

I am still a little obsessed with this

I had an idea for a Catradora fic like a year ago and ugggh I'd need to rewatch the whole show to do it any justice and I dunno if I have the patience

Anyway have some barely-edited info-dumping I did last March in a tiny discord server for a completely different cartoon ship*:

The other night when I couldn't sleep it occurred to me that there could/should be a very realistic fic out there of catra and adora, after the events of the last season, having a very passionate but over-dramatic relationship for a couple of years, then breaking up and getting back together multiple times before one or both of them decides Actually, we have to break up, for real, we are slowly killing each other over this; and one of them moves away and they both get therapy of some kind and both try dating other people but it just isn't working out (I can absolutely see Adora in a relationship that's perfectly fine and healthy but also boring as fuck, and her just thinking: huh, I guess normal people are supposed to feel like this? but it just feels like it's missing something, but the thing it's missing might just be a lot of arguing and crying and make-up sex, so like, I should just. stop missing that. probably. And Catra ending up in a bunch of short-term things where all of them end with either the other person going dude you are in love with someone else and I can tell or her feeling guilty and breaking it off bc the other person is obviously more into her than vice-versa)

And anyway after like ten years or something they see each other but one or both is still dating someone else and it's like ha ha our younger days were SOMETHING ELSE weren't they, oh did you get therapy oh good me too, I'm glad you're doing well, nice to bump into you :) but they're both internally screaming because yeah those feelings are Still There, fuck fuck fuck

The current partner of whichever of them dumps them bc "you're still in love with your ex" but neither of them say why the dump happened and the dumped one doesn't say anything to the other, which means they hear about it through the grapevine, and their heart goes YOOOOO and their brain goes "I thought we were actually done with this and being Good about it fuck fuck fuck" and theyre both :) still normal to each other :) all the time :)

PINING I love pining hhh lol

But yeah there's, I dunno. A party? with a lot of people? maybe they each have one (1) drink, not even enough to impair them, and the next thing you know they're making out in a closet or something somewhere, and then one or both of them is crying hysterically, and after a lot of talking they're like, I want to try again. But as actual adults who've had time to grow up and have a lot of therapy. So they do, and it's good, and all their friends are like Oh thank god you two are both the stupidest motherfuckers on earth.

Halfway through the first post I realized I am half re-writing one of my fave Sherlock fics but putting it on top of She-Ra characters and adapting it to spop's plot but it'S JUST A GOOD STORy and honestly how it would actually happen

Because they were SO YOUNG in the show and neither of them had ever seen a healthy relationship modeled, ever, by anyone; and they're both heavily traumatized on top of it. And love isn't always be enough to deal with all of that. It's just not.

Me: this would make a good romance novel if we could file off the serial numbers

Also me: it's only interesting to me because it's THESE CHARACTERS like how the fuck would you include the backstory lolol

My dumb brain is like, "look I know spop ended three years ago and also, this is obviously the kind of story that AN ACTUAL ADULT writes, generally speaking; so nobody would read it, but what if you spent a year writing this"

But also half the plot feels like it's lifted from The Speed of Objects in Motion by holyfant (linked above) which is still, easily, one of my top-two Sherlock fics of all time, bc it's just so painfully realistic--they do end up together again at the end, but there's a lot off off-again/on-again and arguing and then a few years they're not together in the meantime

Anyway, re: spop: Fate and destiny are great but real happily ever afters would be so hard with everything that lead up to the end of the series

------------

>:( at myself for being like "oh it would take a year to write this" bc if I had actually done it I would be done by now pfffffft

(*Amedot)

[kerubimcrepin]

Liveblog 7: episode 4

Sorry for the long wait. First I had finals in uni, then I spent a week drinking and replaying disco elysium after celebrating new years eve, sooo yeah. But, for now, until the exams, I am back.

Let's begin! :)

Joris is so quick to find him and look at what he's doing. I love how dedicated he is to it. Kerubim is just... immediately tired.

Glad to know my fic's characterization of him being tired of Joris's questions the second they're asked is still holding true.

Very well said for the guy whose house even, after cleaning, is a major death hazard. But ok.

I LOVE YOU JORIS. I won't read too much into this, because there really isn't much here, but really, Joris knows how to manipulate Keke.

Manipulating adults is kinda THE thing kids have to learn. He's very good at this.

To come back to the past post's Lou Divorce Theorising, it's important to note that both of them were equally unhinged and prone to breaking up with one another. A very deep and meaningful relationship.

We will see later what he means by "It's not my fault I have fans," in the depictions of his relationship with her that aren't censored by him being the storyteller.

AKA the fact that mostly, it means him cheating on her. Lol. I'll talk about it during one of the most important episodes of this entire show.

Anyway,

The thing is that, despite how awful they are together, he really does love her.

He can't really stop playing the role of the macho playboy who gets all the chicks, even for love, because that's his entire self-esteem, but it doesn't mean the love isn't there.

(Something-something, I will elaborate on the role of masculinity in Kerubim's story, and how it worsens his already bad, uh... mental everything. But that's a talk for not-the-literal-fourth-episode-of-the-show.)

When he thinks about her, he thinks about her silliness first and foremost, instead of her looks. Even after they part ways, he blames himself for decades. And that's love.

To be fair to him, Lou can't stop manipulating & stringing him along herself. Neither of them is a very good person.

As I've said, thats a very, uh, deep and meaningful relationship they have here.

God, I really, really love the art style of this show.

"My very own puppy-girl was catomized" that's a whole ass new sentence that's never been said before.

ANOTHER character analysis moment: What really bothers Kerubim the most isn't saving his lover, but being The Hero, especially to her. And I really think it says a lot about him, even if he does love her.

He just immediately starts congratulating himself on being a good boy, and asking her if she also thinks he's a good boy. His self-esteem is so, so bad.

Another theme of the show that is introduced early on is luck, and Kerubim's relationship with it.

I think Ecaflip just got tired of watching Keke suffer, honestly.

She only likes him on her own terms. When she gets to make him feel indebted, or lucky, but not as if she were a damsel and he were her savior.

It makes their relationship sort of one-sided, but it's far from the thing that is most toxic about it.

Let me be pretentious about this for a second, since this shot composition WAS chosen by someone, and put into the show on purpose.

The whole shot, including the two of them, is blue: the color of being non-confrontational, stagnant, and predictable. It can mean honesty and deceit, being unforgiving or free, and most of all, it is a color that often represents sadness and loss.

They are walking on water here, which is the first thing that one might notice. I will not reference the bible, in a cartoon analysis, but it does conjure up connotations of being at one's prime, and having the strength to do anything.

In comparison to the clouds which surround them, they seem like giants, walking through the sea, which conveys well how his youth must have felt — the whole world is on a platter, and his strength was larger than life.

But the storm clouds surrounding them above and below, in turn, just seem even more giant and looming.

It also brings to mind the connotations of the saying "to have one's head in the clouds." Absentminded, unknowing of the facts of the whole situation.

Overall, this shot puts their relationship well: They were young, beautiful and capable together, travelling the whole world, — but in the end, their bond is marked by sadness, because they were never willing to address their faults in time, and it drove them apart.

And most importantly, the colors disappear when she slaps him, so in a way, it is a very romanticized view on things.

Pretentious tangent over.

This is our first clue in the show that Kerubim might lie and change the stories he tells, but it is also our clue to take what we are shown seriously regardless.

True, everything shown might be in-universe fiction, but despite Kerubim's narration, we get to see exactly what happened here. So it's best to just take things as they are presented, but with a small grain of salt.

There's something to be said about the way they are both walking towards more of these storm clouds, or the way she is walking to the left (in cultures with languages that go from left to right, characters walking to the left often symbolizes moving towards the past and stagnating), with him running after her, but eh. I think I may just be reading a lot into it.

It is still fun though, no?

This whole show, in a way, he is chasing the past, telling stories of their lost love. And in a way, he'll always be chasing after her, no matter how doomed their relationship was.

Though it's a very bleak depiction, compared to one that will follow later in the show.

...Perhaps, judging from some concept art, he'll keep chasing her that way, even centuries after she stops living. But that remains to be seen, if Waven takes us there.

If that's the case, it just adds a layer of tragedy to their relationship.

Even if she never left him, they wouldn't be able to live together forever. She was mortal. He is not.

And that's all there is to say on the matter, I suppose.

(This is a small edit from future me: Kerubim can't stop talking about Indie and Lou in Dofus MMO, even though it happens 200 years after the show. Which is depressing. But I'm still waiting for him to talk about them in Waven, to decide just how depressing this all is.)

[ticktockbuster]

GLASS JOE HEADCANNONS!!!

Let me explain before anyone thinks this is racist. Because we don't want that here, no!

In this little world, we have the WVBA, an association where you have to fight against stereotypical boxers from around the world. Before, these boxers were separated into three groups, the Minor Circuit, the Major Circuit, and the World Circuit, pretty much all of that changed after the new Italian-American boxer became the world's boxing champion, which encouraged the others to rise to the top just a little in order to prove themselves, while the rest just settled in to train and/or waited themselves to get their revenge. Now, all of our iconic boxers are in the World Circuit and are still living it up to it after Little Mac's retirement.

Everyone knows how each boxer is. All of them are all based on their stereotypical nationality (minus Mr. Sandman, even though the wiki has stereotypes of himself, is just not enough to be cartoony… except for the fact he destroyed a building with his bare hands. Like cheese and rice, dude chill). After reading the wiki, I thought of the idea that instead of the boxers being stereotypical, why not the background characters? I'm just adding that since I think it would make things more interesting and funny since I'm basing this on cartoon logic.

Glass Joe.

So let's start here. The first fighter we meet is a guy named Glass Joe, a french boxer straight from the city of Paris

The French don't like fighting.

For Glass Joe, it seems like he doesn't mind boxing. I think what it is implying here is that the French do not like hurting anyone or have a grudge against anybody. This mostly involves outside of the ring. If some random guy wanted to pick a fight with him for no absolute reason, he'd probably decline and try to settle things like a mature adult (if he's brave enough). And boxing? It's different, since you're not punching to cause harm to anyone, you're fighting because it's a part of the sport, and as long as his opponent is playing by the sport and doesn't mind getting damaged then he can carry on with the match.

The French love their own cuisine to an extreme level, often eating baguettes and croissants, and drinking coffee several times a day.

The French frequently visit the Eiffel Tower and Arc De Triomphe.

As the introduction slides go by, we see Glass Joe with a cup of coffee and baguettes along with the two famous landmarks of Paris behind him. He's proud of his nationality. Heck, his defeat ended with croissants and baguettes flying all over the ring. What's not more French about that.

The French are not skilled in what they do, but enjoy doing it anyway.

To make a point, he does seem to be well maintained at what he does despite him having about 100 losses. That 1 win in his boxing records is probably the one thing that gave him the determination to continue on.

(Fun Fact : Glass Joe's defeated Nick Bruiser. By accident. Like how the-).

The French are usually seen as cowardly and very weak.

Maybe he is. It all depends.

If he were in a bad situation, he would either stay quiet or be scared, but if it was really frightening, then he would panic, ALOT. (Sort of like shaggy from Scooby-Doo). But that doesn't mean he would hide in his house all day. his an independent man and goes out for important things to complete, also has appointments with his doctor to keep track of his health and if he's in a good mood, he will go to a nearby café and order his favorite. You guessed it, coffee and fresh French bread.

Glass Joe seems to be the guy who is clumsy at times but is also very cautious with his surroundings. He can also sometimes be critical to others. In Contender mode, the TV shows information about Little Mac and Glass Joe. You can see how he looks at Mac with some judgment in his eyes. He's probably thinking that boxing a teenager has to be absurd, but then again, we have magic and horseshoes and an islander with no proper information about himself whatsoever, and -

More surprisingly, he acts confident around Little Mac probably because he feels comfortable with him as his opponent. In Title Defense mode, he comes back with a more assertive attitude pretty much because of the helmet he was given. Little poised Frenchman. I would also like to add that when he gets angry, it wouldn't be all too intimidating, though it is enough to make you chuckle. Similar to how you'd Mickey Mouse angry. I'm pretty sure it sums it up. He would have enough courage to correct someone, but if it's to the wrong person, he will immediately regret it afterward, especially if the person appears to be stronger than him. The time he fears somebody is the way they present themselves, and if that person has all the red flags, then he's sure not getting near them. You can't be too sure people are friendly nowadays, and he makes sure to observe carefully. He observes people by their actions and their appearances whether they look tall and intimidating or are aggressive and violent or if they're just straight up spooky and just stare at you with empty eyes, he'll try to avoid them as much as he can, though he doesn't always succeeds as he keeps finding himself stuck in the place, and that would always result with him getting into a bit if a pickle, in other words, getting into the most chaotic of situations you could ever imagination. He feels safer back in his country, and being in America might not have been easy for him. Though he managed, he gathered up the courage to forge on, and he's determined to make his one dream come true and become the world's boxing champion!... somehow.

[looniecartooni]

Sonic IDW issue 62 spoilers (not like I haven’t been reblogging a bunch already)

I love the scene between Mimic and Clutch sharing a drink. There’s a great amount of visual emphasis being displayed along with the dialogue. Sure- it’s a bit cliche, but it shows both characters motivations and how they shift as the dialogue progresses...

Mimic initially refuses the drink while Clutch still holds onto it, waiting for him to take his offer. We’ve known from the Bad Guys arc, Mimic doesn’t trust anyone unless they appeal to his interests. Even then- he doesn’t fully trust them until he’s done extensive research on them.

Clutch, on the other hand, likes appealing to people’s wants to get his own needs fulfilled. Heck- he pretty much tells Mimic this straight off the bat when he walks into Clean Sweep Inc. Even when Mimic doesn’t accept the drink (much to his disappointment) he doesn’t let go of it. He appeals to Mimic’s interest via his own extensive research.

And after Mimic’s interests are appealed to, he’s willing to take the job and “trust” Clutch. Clutch has convinced Mimic to do what he wants by appealing to his needs. Thus their motivations meet and Mimic takes the drink (which now probably has a melted ice cube in it because a certain someone kept holding it).

They even clink glasses to seal the deal- it’s beautiful.

Also also- we see that Clutch kind of is evoking most the power over Mimic here, towering over him, being uneasily close to him while he makes his offer, and of course- never letting go of Mimic’s drink.

I also love this scene because it has a very age appropriate stand in for whisky on the rocks (err rock? I don’t drink- I don’t know).

I hope Chaos is getting gratuity on that name label. It also evokes a bit of “Enerjak sounds more like a sports drink” vibes from Archie Sonic. Still- it’s hilarious what an obvious stand in this is for- but hey, you do have to keep this age appropriate. These over 21 -year-old Sonic characters are just drinking adult soda out of totally a soda bottle.

I’m not trying to make fun of it- I really like what they did with this scene and I actually am a fan of the trope where a businessman pours a drink or offers something like a cigar and tries to take power over a character by simply explaining how their ideals align. I also love it when cartoons or comics try to disguise adult things with more creative or child friendly things. It’s a fun little reference too- typical of Sonic IDW. It’s also funny to me of just how much it resembles a whisky bottle where even the label is said to be premium. I don’t think soda usually has a premium label or a sealed top (or maybe it does? I don’t really drink soda either).

Anyways- this scene is fun and interesting for many different reasons, but I think I spoiled it enough already.

[emilieautumnarchives]

Keeping Austin Wierd!! or Some Borders Are Meant To Be Crossed…

Posted: March 23, 2006 Archived from BonnyTymePyrate’s Journal Archives

Well, well, well…what happens when goth girls and comedians unite? Floods and earthquakes, that’s what!

Or just a lot of drunkenness, refusals of invitations to urinate on people, multiple chocolate cakes, hyperventilation, sweet sweet metal, and enough laughter to make your face hurt for a very long time and halt those suicidal thoughts for at least three hours.

SXSW: home to a million bands whom I did not see because why? Because I was drinking with YOU! That’s right, you. You know who you are, you beautifully intoxicated brethren of Austin.

Originally, I was merely going to SXSW to burn things and hopefully get arrested with friends from Adult Swim:Cartoon Network.

But I ended up onstage playing the “Kaftka: Rock Opera” from Home Movies with my “great pal” and fellow goofball, Brendon Small. Which was odd, because the first thing I’d ever seen on HM was that particular episode years ago, and I think I tuned in just in time to say to myself “what the fuck is this? someone’s skimmed through Metamorphosis!”…but nothing could have rocked harder than having the honor of doing the fancypants-licks in the DETHKLOK theme song. DETHKLOK is a new show coming soon on the Swim, a cartoon about a death metal band, and I was pleased to join co-creators Brendon and Tommy onstage to accompany them on my shredolin and be “metal slut,” a part I think I’m particularly well-suited for.

Pictured here: Brendon and Tommy drink their pre-show nerves away with Dave from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Sure, it’s water, guys…sure.

I have another method of warmup, and it involves proving just how sexy being double jointed can be. It’s working right? Right?

This guy seemed to like it:

After a bit of gear checking (thanks Troy D!!!), we were ready to ROCK!

Brendon and Tommy start things off, warming up their voices to some delightfully nasty language. I’m so trying that next show.

I had thought it would be funny if I were introduced as some goth chick they found strung out in their hotel room when they arrived in TX. I was too busy looking metal to hear what they actually said, but I’m sure it was something at least as unflattering.

And here I come:

And here we go, performing the DETHKLOK theme song from a very diagonal angle:

Look at that shred, his bloody guitar’s on fire…murder!!

If you’ve seen my show, you know that I spend more time on the ground than I do standing upright. And I’ve got the scars to prove it.

Dave comes up to do a bit involving the Aqua Teen characters, including an interview with “Carl”…awesome…

The DK gentlemen were brilliant, awesome, inspiring, and I tried my very best to stay in “metal bitch” character, but it was tough when all I wanted to do was laugh and roll around on the floor. They did a bunch of songs from the show, including a metalized coffee jingle which went over particularly well (do you folks like COFFFEEEEEEEEE!!!!!).

And finally, at the show’s end, having a shred-off during the Kaftka piece.:

After the show with my new best friend, Keith “Fuckin’ A!” Crofford, Adult Swim’s illustrious producer:

There happened to be a band playing before us called The Black Irish (and may I thank you gentlemen for giving that phrase new meaning for me…) in which was a lovely fiddler boy called Mark, but we’ll just call him “Mark” to protect the guilty. After the show, it was decided that “Mark” and I should have a fiddle-off, and it went something like this:

I’d now like to leave you with perhaps the best picture in the world. That’s right, this beautiful poster that we saw while strolling around the town, weaving our way between look-alike indie rockers and buying Cannibal Corpse posters just because we could. Note the composition. Note the boy with the gun. Note the beautifully placed gum on the boy’s hat. Note that funky owl. Note the Kristofferson. And take this away with you, my sweet friends, in all seriousness. “Some borders ARE meant to be crossed.” But for scientifically experimental purposes only…

[photo missing]

With all my sweetest metalCakes,

Your EA

ps Thank you so much David B. for the photos!

[regarding-stories]

Love letter masterpiece: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

I recently had reason to fire up Fallout: New Vegas for this article, and guess what it reminded of...? Yes, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (WFRR?) - of course! Actually, the connection is a bit indirect, as in New Vegas a classic song plays on the radio (as these games love to set the atmosphere with what I assume is royalty-free or cheap-to-license classic music), "Why Don't You Do Right" by Peggy Lee.

Yes, the song of this famous singing scene where Jessica Rabbit displays her sultry charms.

WFRR? is a masterpiece. It pays homage to classic cartoons, it manages to be an actual, valid noir story and yet accessible (somewhat) to kids, it's a buddy cop story, it's a convincing combination of animation and live action, and it's original and funny. And maybe it's a bit too much for general audiences.

A noir story

A story can take on the trappings and the tropes of a genre or previous stories, and yet miss the point. Like in "Doctor Who" where the 13th Doctor writing team let the main character say things that sound like The Doctor but without any sense of context or the values beneath. (Best. Video essay. Ever.) Or like Fallout 3 does not understand how to offer tradeoff choices the way previous games did.

Is that true of WFRR? I don't think so.

The tale starts with a washed-up, alcoholic detective hired to dig up dirt on an extramarital affair. In doing so, he gets involved with Roger Rabbit who gets framed for a murder. They run from the law together. Eventually the protagonist, Eddie Valiant, overcomes the trauma of having his brother murdered and uncovers a conspiracy masterminded by a corrupt politician/judge to erase all Toons for a money-making scheme that is heralded as the coming of a new age.

Take away the cartoon elements and you immediately find a completely valid noir story beyond simply using the visual and auditory trappings of the time. They're not fooling us, they really, actually made a noir story.

While this is a brilliant move in terms of making a great movie, it's also very risky in terms of mainstream appeal. It being Disney and featuring lots of beloved cartoon characters, it's easy to see how the target demographic can be kids. But there's murder, corruption, unlawful behavior, drinking, there's even a cute Toon erased in full view. WFRR? is just not quite daring enough to be the adult cartoon it at heart is.

It's also a trailblazer, through the same themes I just mentioned, for the whole phenomenon of putting elements into animated movies that kids don't get and make adults laugh. Except here it's not so much only jokes as all the elements of the story. Adults get what's going on all-to-well!

WFRR? may, by necessity, not hit you with the full force of a noir experience. But when Marvin is shot through some blinds we don't see the murder in a way reminiscent of a movie language that evaded censorship by hinting and selecting perspectives very well. So, it may seem like a trick, but it's the same trick pulled in period pieces that were following the Code.

Playing with the familiar

WFRR? takes us back to a time where the modern, pre-internet world didn't exist yet, but there are things that bind our experience and the one in the movie together. The cartoons that we watched on Saturday mornings? Back then they played before a newsreel and movie.

The world the finale hints at where the car is king and public transport spotty was the reality for many Americans living when the movie came out (and in many ways, still is). In a sense, the movie says that the baddies won. Eddie and Roger may thwart one plan and save the Toons, but history will still swallow most of their world. But to think a Disney cartoon actually throws shade on the dark side of capitalism and its notion of progress? Waaaaay out there.

At the same time it brings us to a time where Depression era poverty lingers, before (more) widespread prosperity. A world where there was no TV and hence you had to go out to amuse yourself, and where you knew your neighbors much better than you do now. It's a small world where a trip to the beach may be a sweet memory. And the movie does it oh so well.

A love letter also to classic cartoons

The slapstick and humor of the movie also deserve credit for bringing us back to the shenanigans of classic cartoon characters. It's almost as if we see them "before they cleaned up their act."

It's oddly believable that Toons have problems and careers, and yet established within the limits of a movie, imitating the originals with, well, original characters, and giving us the classics in a new light.

It does this with an ease that never distracts us away from the story as it unfolds.

It's also a buddy cop story under the hood as Eddie and Roger set out together as this mismatched duo that has to clear the name of one of them while getting the other one out of the rut he's in. Once you start looking, you begin seeing how effortlessly the script weaves these threads together.

Too many classic moments

Come on, talking ammo?!? This is just batshit insane, especially since the ammunition aged poorly. The irreverent nature of parts of WFRR? harks back to a time when Bugs Bunny was constantly cross-dressing and shorts allowed a lot more leeway in what stories could be told. It's reminiscent of the many characters that actually didn't make it into the movie that were even more wild than that.

Finally, this:

(Jessica Rabbit's famous quote: "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way.")

This is probably the best moment straddling between old and new, the noir vibe and humor. WFRR? is full of genius moments that way. It may not necessarily be a movie to show to kids, but it's worth watching all the same.

[silyabeeodess]

I know there's a chance no one who follows me is a soap person, so this is just me venting: I've been stuck either watching The Young the Restless or listening to it from the other room because my family likes it despite it having some of the worst writing with the most hypocritical bunch of characters with the shortest memories I have ever seen in a series--oh but meanwhile, "CaRtOoNs AnD aNiMe ArE sO bAd AnD uNrEaLiStIc."

I wouldn't call this show for kiddies, if still for young adults, so on top of it being long, I'll keep things below the cut.

Case in point: They brought back a character named Diane some time ago, who faked her death and abandoned her kid for years (I wanna say about 20, but in hindsight it could be less: I'm not counting real-time, but whatever time in which the kids in the show do their crazy growth spurts) to escape a crime. Everyone's talking about "oh she's changed" and "she's so reformed," when her every action is like you're clearly watching someone poison your friend's drink and they keep taking shot after shot anyway no matter how many times you point it out. She's a snake, and either the writers are being extremely subtle with it or are giving her the Victoria treatment where she could skin puppies alive and somehow be viewed as a hero by everyone else.

So, what has she done? Well, how this starts off is her using Jack Abbott's (one of the male lead's) lost granddaughter as a pawn/bargaining chip in order to get him as an in-between to reconnect with her son, Kyle. In this first meeting, Jack is very much disgusted by the revelation of all this, but is eventually convinced--with the help of a friend/at the time love interest, Phyllis--to allow her to see Kyle... following some strict terms. (An important note for those who don't watch the show, Diane and Phyllis despise each other, so more on that throughout.) These terms are that she waits until they give Kyle the news and allow him to choose if he wants to see her or not. Now, let me back up a bit to something I caught that happened in their conversation. Already, Diane was being conniving, using the nostalgia of their former bond as a means of persuasion. She basically says, in not so direct terms, "Oh, Jack! Remember when you loved me, Jack? We had a baby together, Jack! Wasn't it so wonderful, Jack?" while this man was still coming to terms with the fact that this woman was still breathing.

And what does Diane do when she gets the ok? She immediately ignores the terms they agreed to, going to the city where they live, sneakily booking herself in Phyllis' hotel when she could've gone literally anywhere else, and later goes so far as to gate-crash a wedding. Her excuse? She was just so excited and so desperate.

All is forgiven.

Now, let me get to Diane and Phyllis again: They've been arch-enemies/rivals for Jack's affection for years. In other words, Phyllis hates this woman, is already suspicious, and can already see the red flags. Her only reason for saying Kyle should see Diane was for his sake--and she was very patient and reasonable in this decision, talking Jack down from refusing Diane completely. Is Phyllis a good person? No, nobody in this show is and she's had a history of stunts as a villainess character herself. However, she's mellowed out a lot over the years as well, with her crazy side only really coming back where her loved ones are concerned. She has to get in their business whether they want her to or not, because she has to protect them. If anyone is going to push her back toward that crazy side, it's Diane.

And Diane makes her presence known to Phyllis constantly, letting her know that she's not going anywhere, even gate-crashing another event. During one argument, Diane even hints to Phyllis that she's getting closer to Jack as much as she is Kyle--which of course pushes Phyllis overboard. This leads Phyillis to acting extremely territorial to the point of sleeping with Jack when they've, so to speak, barely rekindled the flames of their relationship that they've been walking around eggshells with for months if not longer because of how it all crashed and burned horribly in the past. Needless to say, Jack overhears Phyllis bragging to Diane about this development, considers himself used, and breaks up with her.

Only for Diane to snag him within pretty much weeks of this and Jack to let Diane do the exact same thing to Phyllis later down the line without so much as batting an eye.

Now, let me make this perfectly clear. I am not a shipper, and I especially do not ship anyone with Jack Abbott. Why? Because while the man has the heart of a teddy bear, he has the brain of toaster. I was fine when he and Phyllis were together, but I can honestly say I do not by any means want him with her now. They've played with same song and dance with another character named Sally Spectra: Phyllis constantly warns Jack that the girl he's "so in love with" is bad news; he vehemently denies and ignores every fact tossed in his face; Phyllis goes too far, but is ultimately right; and Jack ends up hurt and alone. Wash, rinse, repeat, only now the bar is raised to 11 because now everyone in his own family is warning him about Diane and, in turn, he's been threatening to kick them out of the family house for not accepting her as he has into their lives. If and/or when this whole mess blows up in his face, if he runs back to Phyllis as he did when he broke up with Sally, I want her to spit in his eye and walk away.

Since this is already going on too long, here's a bit of a recap of other stunts Diane's pulled:

When the fighting continues between her and Phyllis, to the point of their kids (also their bosses) getting involved and threatening to fire both of them if they keep at it, Diane confesses about the fighting, resulting in Phyllis getting fired while she keeps her job. For those who don't know, this is the equivalent of two people getting into a fist fight and one of them quickly calling the cops after it's over so the other gets arrested for assault even though the both of them were at fault.

Later, Phyllis finds out that Diane has been lying about her squeaky-clean reputation since faking her death (shocker) and, again going too far, calls the man she worked with (Jeremy Stark) into town to deal with her and reveal everything. Now, while Jeremy Stark is described as an extremely dangerous man by everyone in the cast and thus everyone turns on Phyllis for bringing him to town... He does nothing. At all. Except for saying some foreboding words while standing around. Menacingly.

At this point in the story to a little bit after it, at best, this is truly an ultimate case of all tell and no show... Ironically enough, much later down the line, the only person Stark comes to physically threaten is Phyllis herself.... before soon getting killed off as nothing more than a plot device.

Diane plays the victim and says that Stark tricked her into playing a part in his crimes... however, further scenes where she attempts to trick him prove that she was a willing participant. How? While dragging Jack into a crime across state lines as a means of framing Stark to get him out of town, she does her part to trick Stark by saying her being with Jack is all a ruse. Pay attention, because this act could only work either if she was always that way with Stark in the first place or if Stark was the dumbest man alive. And unfortunately, that position is still reserved for Jack Abbott.

Let's do a massive time-jump now to Phyllis joining hands with Stark and faking her own death as a means of framing Diane. (Both for revenge, but Phyllis also still wanting Diane out of town in general.) Now, most of the actions here I'll admit aren't so much on Diane as they are on the people still constantly defending her. When Phyllis tries to back out of the scheme not long after it's already in motion and is forced to go on the run or else get arrested for faking her death (and murdering Stark, granted, him threatening her for quitting heavily hints that it was self-defense)... Everyone calls Phyllis a hypocrite and demands she go to jail. Here's the thing though: If Phyllis a hypocrite for this, then so is Diane and everyone protecting her. And yet, Diane still walks free while everyone wants Phyllis' head. Moreover, at this point, Diane's "miraculous" return is widely known by the public because she and Jack revealed their relationship. No one tries to arrest her over how she faked her death though. Granted, I don't know how the statute of limitations works on a case like that, but I don't think it's something that would normally be given a pass. Diane didn't steal from a pawn shop: She fake her death and she framed someone else for it too.

Much of anything else I get into will involve other characters which I could also rant about, but I will add two more points. There's an earlier scene as well, when Diane is hiding from Stark and has a dream about getting married to Jack. She knows Phyllis' daughter, Summer, doesn't like or trust her, and yet fantasizes about Summer called her "mom." Now, that in itself wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that, during all of this, Summer has greatly shut Phyllis out of her life for the latter's actions. Because of this context, it all just seems delusional and creepy, like Summer is just another thing for Diane to take from Phyllis. Later on, when Phyllis reveals to Summer that she is alive after the other has been grieving and blaming Diane... Diane's idea of "forgiving Summer" isn't to pull her aside in what should be a private conversation, but to do it in front of the Abbott family in a very snide way. This comes off as her painting the scene as the "loving, forgiving mummy-in-law" vs. the "horrible, judging daughter just like her criminal mother." She's still being a snake and, of course, Jack is still blind to it.

Now, I understand that, during all of this, I'm probably coming across as very pro-Phyllis, so let me repeat: She's not a good person herself, she oversteps where she isn't wanted, and a lot of what has happened to her is her fault as a result. So, why am I defending her? Well, for one thing, despite her methods, it doesn't change the fact that she's right. Diane did come to town with the intention of pursuing Jack as much as connecting with her son. Diane was lying about her history and likely still is. Like I said earlier, it's Sally all over again, which leads to my second point: Yes, Phyllis is crazy, but I don't blame her for that, because the circumstances around her--especially for a personality like hers--would cause her to go crazy.

There's a Greek legend of a woman named Cassandra who was a prophetess that was cursed so that no one would believe her. That's Phyllis right now. No matter what advice she's given and points she's made, no one has listened--and, more specifically, Jack has never listened. She lost her relationship with him. She lost her connection with her kids. She gave up her hotel and was fired from her job by her own daughter. Her daughter then spent the Christmas holiday with her infantile hubby and witch mother-in-law. One of her best friends left town and another one of them has shown support for Diane, so she can't even really talk to the people she trusts most to sort out what she's going through. I don't like what Phyllis did by faking her death, but I can't blame her for losing it. At this point, just give the woman a therapist and a long vacation away from these people.

Anyway, I'm tired, rant over. Sorry about posting this here, but I don't have an account to the soap forums and really don't think I want one in the first place. I try to drown out this show with headphones as it is and only look at them for some kind of vindication to finally drop since it has been forced upon my consciousness.

[spookyscarydemonbabe]

Question: if you somehow got teleported or isekai’d to the stranger things universe, what would be the first thing(s) you would do? And also what 5 things would you bring to show the characters and stuff?

Lol for me personally would try to befriend Eddie and the hellfire club at school, and then the rest of the teens/Steve and Robin. I would also love to play dnd and do art and stuff with Will but he’s in Cali sooo a. I think I would bring the Harry Potter movies because I feel like the teens would love that, Ready Player One (movie), my Cavetown record, I would also try to convert one of my little Spotify playlists on a mixtape or record (because I heard somewhere that you could customize your own records and stuff), and lastly one of my favorite outfits.

OMG I LOVE THIS QUESTION 😍😍😍

tbh i’m definitely an 80s girl so the first thing is do is calm down from how excited i am that i actually get to experience it 😂

and with the way that i look and act i’d definitely try to make friends with the Hellfire guys, maybe get them to teach me how to play dnd and i’ll slowly start to make friends with the rest of them.

(and ofc they’d all fall in love with me because i’m so pretty and wonderful to be around 🙄)

i definitely have a few of my favorite things i’d bring back to show them 👀

firstly- blazy susan prerolls would blow their fucking minds, especially Eddie. i think he’d love that they were pink, when he smokes them it makes people do a double take as to why a guy that looks like him has a pink joint.

secondly- monster, but specifically the white pineapple one. i know that either Max or Mike would be all over it, but for very different reasons. Max would like it since it gave her more energy for when she skateboards, and she’d love knowing that they have actual skateboarding sponsors for it. Mike would like it because he thinks he would look so cool drinking it in front of other people.

third- id want to bring a season of the simpsons, but it has to be one from the late 90s/ early 2000s when they were at their best. Dustin would absolutely LOVE the simpsons, or even just adult animation in general. it’s one of my favorite cartoons so it’s something i can give him lots of trivia facts about.

fourth- Grave Encounters or House of 1000 Corpses. Jaws is my favorite movie but they already had that so i figure they’d love to see a high quality terrifying found footage movie along with a Rob Zombie staple. the corroded coffin boys would have a fit with how much they’d love them.

lastly- everything i have in my savings because i know damn well i’d be buying up clothes, cassettes and concert tickets like there was no tomorrow.

[styxnbones]

i cannot claim any great familiarity with your OCs BUT since i reblogged it from you i want to offer you this: for each character, do the two you most hope someone will ask you about them because you have the answer locked loaded and ready to go and really want to talk about it

Cass: 7. Do they have any unusual fears? It's not exactly a "fear," or least you'd never hear them call it that, but Cass has an irrational and violent dislike of mirrors. The first thing she'll do in a new hideout or haven is go around and smash any mirrors there might be. For someone who has spent almost the entirety of their undeath in a cartoon character-like static wardrobe of white long-sleeve t-shirt and black jeans, you wouldn't expect them to be particularly fussy about their looks, but the truth is that in life she was very conscious of how she presented herself. She dressed casually, but in a very precise way that gave her a lot of confidence, and since she can no longer see herself in mirrors the inability to properly check how she looks is a very very sore point.

28. Are they a #gamer? Very much so, though less through actual skill and more through the most bullshit hacks you've never even heard of. Like, Cass is the kind of person who will invade you in dark souls and get you insta-banned just by spawning in. And she loves it. Auto-aim, wall hacks, you name it she's got it, and she'll call you disconcertingly personal insults over vc (+she'll doxx you if you report her). They have a whole pc dedicated to running tf2 bots. That kind of gamer.

Kellen: 8. Do they collect anything? If so what and why?

Kel has always been really fascinated with bugs, particularly beetles, and as they got older they graduated from critter catchers, to asking for pinned beetles for birthdays, to eventually learning how to preserve their own (and also having adult money to spend on more exotic specimens). At this point, their whole basement is full of various preserved insects and is of a level of maintenance and documentation that for the purpose of their Tzimisce bane counts as part of the "museum collection" that is their charge.

37. Are they religious? If so do they have a strong sense of faith, are they uncertain, or are they somewhere in between?

They were raised catholic, and they have a lot of complicated feelings about it. In part just because, you know, catholicism, but also because their pastor growing up was also secretly a vampire who had ghouled their father before they were even born, has been using that as an in to feed off their family for literally their entire life, and would eventually be the one to turn them into a vampire too. However, despite no longer being traditionally religious, they do still consider themself a "believer" in that they ascribe to many of the suppositions christianity puts forth about the world- and what they've learned of the Book of Nod has only reinforced that. And, while they no longer see God and Jesus as worthy of their devotion, they've never quite been able to quell their faith in the guidance of a higher being and their desire to worship- so instead they have redirected those feelings towards their regnant, Bernadette.

Apollo/Leora: 16. Do they have or want kids?

Apollo was actually embraced the night his son was born. He never wanted a kid, or even a wife, but this was an era where that was necessary to protect his career in Hollywood, and she had threatened to leave him if he didn't give her a kid so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . He would then go on to accidentally drink her to death after trying to hide from her after she got home, because he had no fucking clue what was happening and was wild with hunger. He also ended up ghouling his infant son, again because he was delirious and had no idea what else to feed him but blood. Luckily for him, he was (and still is) filthy fucking rich as was able to, for the most part, cover it all up. Lily killed herself in a fit of post-partum depression, and he was going to step back from public life to raise Hector as a single father. mhm. yep. (definitely not going to start a cult of sun-worshiping vampires)

32. If they could change one thing about themselves what would it be?

Honestly, at this point, despite what she would tell you if asked, or even what she tells herself, she wants nothing more than to be human again. Go back to some semblance of a normal life, ignorant of all this crazy bullshit supernatural stuff, let the world end and just not have to worry about it. "Golconda" isn't a word she would ever dare to utter- obviously thin-bloods are the future and what she has now is the culmination of her ascendancy, but like.... why stop with being able to walk in the sunlight yk?

[eiirisworkshop]

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!

[shutupandplayasong]

Cobra Kai headcanons

Not x reader. Just general headcanons I have for the main characters. Will probably do a part 2 for the adults and side characters

Tw for quite a bit of swearing.

Miguel:

The cursed child craves raisin cookies

Like. He just? Eats them? For fun???

This boy gets lost taking the trash out.

His sense of direction is so bad it makes his GPS cry

Kicks ass at arcade games like pinball or pacman

Could fall asleep in the bed of a moving truck he doesn't care. When he's tired, he. is. tired.

Eli:

Im splitting up Eli and Hawk so this might end up janky oops

I feel like he'd have an emotional support dog? Especially before he joined CK

I'm picturing a doofy lil corgi. Probably named Nemo or Yoshi or something cute like that

When he was a kid he'd BEG his mom for a little sister. He's still lowkey disappointed he never got one.

His most "embarrassing" secret? He wants to see snow.

He was born and raised in California so he's never seen snow in real life and he desperately wants to. Straight up dreams of it

It'd be like one of those viral husky videos where he's sitting in the middle of a blizzard, caked in ice and when you ask if he wants to come inside he'd just be like "nah"

He'd never admit it though. He thinks it sounds childish.

Hawk:

He obviously talks a big game and acts tough but if there's one thing that'll make him scream like a little girl it's gonna be rats

Like just the word "rat" makes him gag

Paints his nails. He's actually pretty good at it

For sure tried "guy liner" once but Johnny told him it wasn't badass :/

The most agro backseat driver but if you pull that shit with him he'll cry

Demetri:

Secret brony

Definitely had a FNAF phase

Oh and Undertale

Very big into ARGs. Like the Mandela Catalogue or Daisy Brown

LOVES those low-budget, made-for-TV Sci-fi movies.

Forget camp. This boy wants garbage.

Can't drive for shit

You're telling me Demetri went to the Halloween dance in a serious costume?

Blasphemy.

He is too lanky and too ironic to not go as Mr. Noodle or something stupid like that

The neediest, whiniest, most annoying patient when he is sick/injured. He takes full advantage.

He pinches his finger in a drawer and he's not lifting a hand the rest of the day. You pick up the remote.

Gives me "weird double jointed kid" vibes

"Hey did I show you I can flip my foot backwards?"

"Yes. 37 times."

"Well lemme show you again just in case"

Robby:

Also paints his nails but does a much messier job of it

Left handed

I feel like he has a knack for learning new languages

Can turn anything into a 5 star meal

Give him cheerios, clamato juice and a single banana and he'll make it work.

Unlike Miguel and Demetri, this boy never gets lost and is the calmest, safest driver you could travel with

Why do I have driving headcanons for everyone wtf

Very good at board games

OH HE FOR SURE HAD A MAGICIAN PHASE

Sam:

You wouldn't guess it but she can kick anyone's ass at any videogame

Likes cosplay

Idk I just feel like her character is a lot dorkier than the show portrays?

Very wimpy driver. She just let's everyone cut her off and she'll apologize?

Theater kid energy

The biggest horsegirl

Tory:

She's a reformed horsegirl, thank you very much 😒

Definitely listens to Twenty One Pilots. You decide if that's a good or bad thing.

Look me in the eyes and tell me she wasn't into that whole Jeff The Killer/creepypasta craze

Straight up making creepypasta roleplay quizzes on Quotev

Is the one cutting people off on the road

Very much into soap operas. She watches them with her mom :)

She also watches cartoons with her little brother or plays pretend with him when her schedule allows it

Wants to move to Europe when she's an adult. I'm thinking Italy or Spain?

Aisha:

Ultimate plant mom

She gives me "Christmas is my favorite holiday" vibes but like. Tastefully.

Will nag her friends to drink water and go to bed on time but can not and will not take her own advice

Obligatory mini-van friend.

Best driver, just behind Robby.

I'm so mad she and Demetri didn't have any screen time together. I just know they'd be best friends.

Oh and Moon. I feel like they'd bond over journaling and crystals and stuff

Oh what I'd give for a spin off show about Demetri, Aisha and Moon.

Demetri, the pessimistic geek on one end of the spectrum. Moon, the wholesome, patient, optimistic hippie on the other end. And Aisha right in the middle. I don't know how it works but it just does for me.

Back on track. She has her own Etsy jewelry shop

Likes to feed stray cats <3

[stulili]

Obey me! Logs

シファー, もう一回! (Lucifer, one more time!) ANIMATION

I decided to report the progress, because it will take a lot of time, and I’m curious how many people would be even interested in seeing the whole project as it is.

Today’s 6/2/2022

Storyboard: 85 panels are done out of 120 Animation: 83 seconds are done out of 452 Background: 1 is done out of 6 (A friend of mine works on this.)

I started the project on 5/8/2022.

I’d planned this for a long time now, but I didn’t have the opportunity to make it because of my exams, and I was unsure whether it would be a good idea or not. (Thank you @sir-crocodile-slut​ for convincing me it was. Though, I’m still a bit unsure, but oh well, I love you.)

Original audio: Obey Me! Official Podcast — Otaku FM Anime and Chill — #07 (Available on Youtube and Deviltube in the game)

These are the first character designs, though, I had to make them more cartoon-like, because they would be a pain in the ass.

That’s all I can give now. *evil chuckles*

Obey me! Log 2

Today’s 6/9/2022

Storyboard: 86 panels are done out of 120 Animation: 89 seconds are done out of 452

Here's a little animation from the whole thing. The background is merely a sketch yet.

And these are the "final" character designs. First I wanted to draw Leviathan without his jacket, but he looked a bit odd, so I decided to keep it. I know that hand looks terrible in the corner, but I had to make sure I'll be crazy enough to animate his two sided gloves with different colors.

... I am.

If you have any questions,  just hit me with them, it would be my pleasure to answer them.

Until next Thursday!

Obey me! Log 3

Today’s 6/16/2022

Storyboard: 93 panels are done out of 120 Animation: 116 seconds are done out of 452

Okay, so this half tugged shirt is really a thing for him. Awesome.

__________________

Art collab for the animation:

Baby Lucifer (Me) DONE

Baby Mammon (Linus) DONE

Baby Leviathan (KJ) DONE

Baby Satan (@angeredmelon ) DONE

Baby Asmodeus (@proudimouto ) DONE

Baby Beelzebub (AyakoAizawa) DONE

Baby Belphegor (Alma) DONE

Baby Lord Diavolo (Jeni) DONE

Baby Barbatos (Kinga)

Baby Simeon (Bogi) DONE

Baby Solomon (Lazy) DONE

Luke (Kincső) DONE

Mephisto (Kincső) DONE

Thirteen (Kincső) DONE

Raphael (Me) DONE

Michael (Kincső) DONE

If you’re interested in participating, feel free to DM me, and I’ll tell you the details!

EVERYONE IS TAKEN!

Obey me! Log 4

Today’s 6/23/2022

Storyboard: 97 panels are done out of 120 Animation: 124 seconds are done out of 452

Look at that impressive Satan impression. Leviathan really is the best at cosplay.

This is the only time we’ll see Leviathan in his adult demon form though, it’s a pain in the ass to draw. Only this little 2 seconds of animation absorbed my whole afternoon… Don’t get me wrong I LOVE his demon form, but it’s really detailed.

Baby Lucifer on the ground, my poor soul.

Obey me! Log 5

Today’s 7/1/2022

Storyboard: DONE (120 panels) Animation: 127 seconds are done out of 452 Background: 2 are done out of 6

This is a chaos, but this is the beauty of an animation.

I might take advantage of taking off their body parts. But honestly, wouldn’t you do the same if you could? Making them bald, jawless, and it’s only a click...

Obey me! Log 6

Today’s 7/7/2022

Animation: 135 seconds are done out of 452

I’m so excited to see how this one live action scene will fit in the whole project. 

(Ps. Please if you can somehow read the phone number, please don’t call my sister- Yes, she’s Lord Diavolo)

Bonus... Drinking wine while cosplaying Lucifer.

Obey me! Log 7

Today’s 7/15/2022

Animation: 146 seconds are done out of 452

Storyboard + Animation

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Today’s 7/21/2022

Break.

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Today’s 8/4/2022

Animation: 162 seconds are done out of 452 

No tween, only pure lineart.

I took a long break, but my friend could continue 2 background, and I still have to add details to them, thus I’ll have to deal with them too. However I’ll continue now the animation as soon as I can.

I hope I can finish it this year, but since I’ll go to a college, I have my doubts.

Ah it’s done! Not the background, that’s still work in progress, but the family photo in my style! I think they look cute on the wall in the kitchen as a big lovely family. <3

Until next Thursday!

Obey me! Log 10

Today’s 8/11/2022

Animation: 178 seconds are done out of 452

Speed animation:

https://youtu.be/ULU5rYg4ZBI

Goodness, please stop me from this.

Obey me! Log 11

Today’s 8/18/2022

Animation: 189 seconds are done out of 452

When you animate 2 people. Folder 1 is Lucifer, Folder 2 is mini Leviathan.

“HANA RURIIII~ FLASHUUU!” Oh my Lord, I love animating them.

Obey me! Log 12

Today’s 8/25/2022

Animation: 212 seconds are done out of 452

Here are the notes on the fridge. It’ll be only a small detail in the background, but come on, I couldn’t miss it.

The notes are made up, except the one which was addressed to the Main Character, which is connected to the fridge mission in game. (Since Beelzebub basically bit in half the note addressed to him, Lucifer had to ask MC to take care of him. And yes, he drew a little heart next to his signature for his beloved sheep. <3)

I wanted to mention everyone on the notes, basically because Lucifer is taking care of them like a father, except of Leviathan (to some extent). The whole episode is about the third and the first borns’s relationship, how left out Leviathan feels himself, how he thinks Lucifer sees him as a ghost, and when his 3 years old self tells him how he’s looking for excuses to spend some more time with his brother is really heart warming.

Lucifer and Leviathan don’t really have much in common, but they still really love each other, even though they can’t do anything together in particular. They’d do anything for each other.

The recipes are canon:

The Devil Carrot Curry is Beelzebub’s invention from  Obey Me! The Anime #3 — Carrots, Please! episode.

The Siren’s Song was Beelzebub’s wish from Lesson 34-5.

The sticker is Leviathan’s favorite little pancake, Azuki-tan! (He can’t be left out of the fridge.)

Obey me! Log 13

Today’s 9/1/2022

Animation: 244 seconds are done out of 452

MORE THAN HALF OF THE ANIMATION IS DONE!

Though, I unfortunately won’t be able to work as fast as before, because in the dorm I’ll be in have barely any wifi, not to talk about I can’t bring my precious computer with me, thus I can’t animate... *cries*

But let’s celebrate...? Pfft, who am I kidding, nobody reads this. xd

Obey me! Log 14

Today’s 9/11/2022

Animation: 285 seconds are done out of 452

I actually finished the last part of the animation, so the ending is done, the last 40 seconds. I move into my dorm today, and the school starts tomorrow... But fear not! I’m planning on keep continue the animation, even though I won’t be able to animate, I want to do as much as I can.

Also, team Verstappen.

Obey me! Log 15

Today’s 9/16/2022

Animation: 285 seconds are done out of 452 (+4 seconds Diavolo)

Now this should be interesting. It’s sooo much fun to make a phone call with these two. (Lucifer and Diavolo)

Obey me! Log 16

Today’s 9/25/2022

Animation: 294 seconds are done out of 456

I found 4 more people for the art collab, and I could finish the phone call I was working last week. I have quite a few other work to do, and at the moment I lack of motivation a little, but I’ll do what I can. I could animate 2 scenes this weekend, which is 9 seconds total. I think this is fair.

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Today’s 10/2/2022

Animation: 304 seconds are done out of 456

I’m so glad I could animate a little! Here you can see the result. In the dorm, I started to work on the special scene, which will force me to think a bit more than it should. xd It’s a challenge, so be it.

CLICK HERE for the animation. 

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Today’s 10/9/2022

So I’ve decided to make an extra animation to start the whole video, because my 2 years old nephew was so cute and participated by imitating my voice. I couldn’t miss the chance to animate a baby Lucifer, now could I?

CLICK HERE for the animation.

Obey me! Log 19

Today’s 10/16/2022

Animation: 315 seconds are done out of 456 (+16 seconds)

Storyboard:

Sketch:

Lineart:

Color:

Final(Except the Background...and other small details I won’t name now.):

See you next Sunday!

Obey me! Log 19

Today’s 10/23/2022

Animation: 330 seconds are done out of 472

Isn’t he adorable with those hungry eyes?

Obey me! Log 20

Today’s 10/30/2022

Animation: 379 seconds are done out of 472

Dare to say that they’re not adorable. (OH NO SPOILER ALERT)

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Today’s 11/06/2022

Animation: 434 seconds are done out of 472

Today, I’m honored to demonstrate: How to hold a bag of potato.

This makes things just worse.

Obey me! Log 21

Today’s 11/13/2022

Animation: 440 seconds are done out of 472

Finally! I’m so excited to see how these puppets will look like once I’ll be able to finish and edit them!... After record them with my precious staff from my dorm. xd

Obey me! Log 22

Today’s 11/20/2022

Animation: 457 seconds are done out of 472

I have nothing else to say. I can’t solve the problem with the green screen. But take it as I’m an amateur, and it was on purpose. It was so difficult to execute. AND I FORGOT BARBATOS’S CLOTHES HAVE THE SAME COLOR AS THE BACKGROUND. ...I mean I did not, but later when we recorded it, I happened to not remember it. xd

Obey me! Log 23

Today’s 11/27/2022

Animation: 457 seconds are done out of 472

Break.

I did try to animate, but I really wasn’t in the mood it seems. Even if there’s only a little left... Please give me energy. xd

Obey me! Log 24

Today’s 12/4/2022

Animation: 465 seconds are done out of 472

I could continue it a little. It’s almost done, but bruh... exams and essays. Boring.

Obey me! Log 25

Today’s 12/11/2022

Animation: DONE (472 seconds total)

YES THE ANIMATION IS DONE, GUYS! I’ll have to deal with the not animation part of the video, which means recoloring stuff, effects, editing, sound effects, subtitles, writing the cast etc. 

And I’m still waiting 3 art from the baby collab. And someone who would draw Raphael for me... Hm, maybe I’ll just do it myself, I love him either way. Oh, and also the backgrounds. I think that will be the biggest problem of them all.

Obey me! Log 26

Today’s 12/23/2022

Background: 3 are done out of 6

So now that the animation is done, I’m working on everything else. I’ve done a lot of editing, fixed almost every little detail I found, I recolored everything needed. Also 2 more babies are done, 2 to go! (Barbatos and Raphael.) And the backgrounds... I feel like they will be never done... *sighs* Looks like I’ll have to gather all the sound effects too, because the guy I asked to do it only promised it, but still did nothing after... months.

I won’t go insane, I prom... I hope. xd

I even redraw my part of the collab, because I didn’t like the first one... Oh wait, no, I also did it, because the one who drew KJ forgot the fact, that I drew Lucifer like this, so he can hold Leviathan’s hand. But oh well, who can blame them, right?... I mean, obviously, it was a long time ago since we talked about it.

Maybe I should use this instead... Or this? Nah, they’re all used.

Obey me! Log 27

Today’s 1/7/2023

I’ve finished with quite a lot of editing, I’m basically only waiting for the backgrounds to be done. So until then, I’ll work on the after credit scene, which will be a little extra, a live action scene with the cute brothers together. It’s mostly a pain in the ass, but at least entertaining.

[unknowconcreteflower-art-blog-me]

Why Husker will be the driving force to save Angel Dust; Instagram deep-dive story! Angelhusk explained.

Okay full disclosure Hazbin Hotel is an adult cartoon has dark touchy subject matter so please tread carefully. This goes into shipper territory and I don’t want to get attack in my inbox about this or attacking each other too much shipping wars plus I’m a multi-shipper... But for the sake of this post it’s going to be all fuel Angelhusk (or Huskerdust), yes okay great thank you. This is a continuation of my previous post which was just a prequel to this one. I ended the post saying Husker will be the one to reach out to Angel and helping him. 

First I’ll be breaking down Husker’s first appearance and how his character is. When Alastor first summons him, he’s very pissed off when he’s pulled from the poker game. And he’s very quick show his anger, without fear despite Alastor being “one of the most powerful demons in Hell”, and does not care. Though this is a very short interaction we know that Husker does not put up with BS, he’s a drinker, and a poker player. How is this important to Angel Dust? Well Angel Dust, often hypes himself up but also tears himself down in the process, emphasizing that during the limo ride after being scolded by Vaggie that “his body is flawless, everybody wants a piece”... and thinks that’s all anybody wants from him. This is Angel’s way of protecting himself; he flirts with them first before they can hurt him, it’s just hidden with his confidence.

In reality he thinks everyone looks down on him, which is why he doesn’t accept help or confine in Charlie (like when he flipped her off )he isn’t taking a pity party. Angel hides his pain with vibrato and at the same time is too prideful to ask for help... he won’t admit when he’s in trouble. I explained this a little more in detail in my previous post why he thinks Charlie and Vaggie look down on him. But with Husker he in the same boat; using his addictions (gambling & drinking) to cope with his problems. Angel will be more incline to gravitate towards Husker and telling him his problems. I say this because it’s the same reason why Angel confines in Cherri, and is close with her. And unlike Charlie who can be naive at time ( don’t get me wrong I still love her), Husker will know when he’s over stepping his boundaries, and when to helping him since he’s going through something similar.

(Charlie wanting to help Angel but doesn’t know how...)

So all of you maybe wondering, how is Husker gonna help Angel dust then if he hides his problems like that. Vivziepop made Husker a poker-player for a reason, he knows how to tell if someone’s bluffing. And it’s already been established that Angel has a terrible poker face... so Angel can’t lie to Husker. This is why he was angry at Angel’s flirting when they first meet because he already sees through his facade, (plus he’s shy about it). He knows that he doesn’t really meant and he’s hiding something. His sense and observation skills are very necessary cause he can spot when Angel’s actually in trouble.

links to official instagrams below to follow the narrative: 

Angel’s instagram/Husker’s instagram/Nifty’s instagram/Sir Pentious’ instagram

This post starts the saga where Angel is waiting to be picked up at the studio. Saying “Waiting at the studio to...Be picked up for some fucking...Food.”, Val is quick comment on this saying “Forgot to pick you,lol.” and takes the chance to make him like an after thought and after Angel asks to be picked up again Val answer back “yeah but we are filming, I already ate.” just to rub it in. But that’s where Huskers intervenes and get Angel something to eat ,  and there’s a key detail here that it’s only Husker that comes to his aid. Now most of the main cast has an Instagram so you’d think they’d help him but they don’t... They all probably think he’s just being cute and sassy totally unaware of the Angel’s situation with Valentino, but we the audience know... (I’ll bring this point back later)

This one post is enough for Husker to be able see that Angel was really in trouble, which is why he goes out of his way to get him something to eat. And I would also like to point out after this post Husker starts following Angel’s instagram liking all his instagram posts. There’s more to this... keep in mind he starts following Angel after his posts about being tired and hungry. He’s not following him just because he has a “little crush” on Angel... he’s doing this because he wants to make sure Angel’s doing okay. He cares about Angel Dust well being and follows him to make sure doesn’t go hungry again. But during this time Angel isn’t aware of this... that Husker doing this out of worrying for Angel. I say this because right after Angel gets Husker tickets to his strip show, as “thank you” for the food. Showing that he trusts Husker but not entirely...

At this point Angel I don’t believe that he sees Husker’s actions as a gustier of genuine kindness towards him. No, he sees Husker as someone who just wants his body and this is just his way of getting towards that goal. Offering his services (or being flirty) is Angel way of not getting attach to someone (like I’ve said before): think of it as “ripping the band-aid quick off before it hurts more...”  it’s so he doesn’t get hurt again like with Valentino. I believe Val also managed manipulated Angel by doing nice things for him at first, like saying nice words or buying him nice gifts as means to just use him for his body (this is a real thing pimps do). And Angel thinks Husk is no different from the other guys who used him, that what everybody wants from him... he might as well give him what he wants. 

Night of the show rolls around and Husker misses it, kitty got too drunk... which we know takes place during the music video of Addict. In which we get another post about backs my statement the cast doesn’t know about Angel’s abuse. Nifty’s posts a pic, of Angel Dust looking sad after his show... saying “Saw Angel earlier, i hope he doesn’t leave the butts there 😅” Nifty wouldn’t have posted this if she knew what was going on. But Husker knows, that Angel’s depressed and feels bad about missing the show commenting “Oh fuck is that what I missed. Aw shit.” Feeling very guilty about missing Angels, usually Husk tends to hide his feelings but in this moment is very honest. Meaning he really did want to go to the show, not only that but realizes that Angel is actually upset. And he didn’t have to post this comment on Angel’s instagram but he had to he wanted to show that he was remorseful for not coming showing he is attracted to Angel Dust. 

This picks up to with a post with Husker saying “Ugh... Since I missed the show, @angie_fluffy_bootz is sayin I owe him one and is making me watch his fuckin pig... I ain’t a fuckin babysitter!” in which babysits Fat Nuggets, which means he went out of his way to say “ what can I do to make it up to you”, and the conversation after it is a major turning point in the relationship for them. In the comment section Husker complains that Fat Nuggets ate all the food at the bar and says he wants to be payed back. Angel’s offer to pay him pay with a “private show”, in the only way thing he thinks Husker wants (I mean that all anybody ever wants from him). He does this with his usually flirty response, but it’s very different (this is a cut version of the convo.):

Angel: “tell ya what I’ll pay ya back with another private show”

Husker: “...I’m not doing that.

Angel: that or nothing babe. I think it’s a good deal.

Husker:“Jesus fucking Christ...” 

Angel: Ugh. Fine I’ll quit it. Only if you join me for shakes.

Husker: Yeah okay I think I can do that. 

This is major turning point in their relationship; this conversation is very important. Like I said before this is just his way of ripping the band-aid but there’s a reason why he’s really pushing it this time. It’s because Angel knows that he’s starting to catching feelings for Husker. And he’s not sure if Husker wants his body or if really means it. And the matter of the situation is Husker’s feeling the same way. When Husker says “Jesus fucking Christ...” it’s his way of saying “For the last time I don’t want your body, I’m not playing this game”... Here’s the thing Husker believes he’s proven enough that he doesn’t see Angel as a sex object, he’s more tried of the facade than he is annoyed. He doesn’t want Angel Dust to be a “fuck buddy” to him...

And this is a major turning point in their relationship, Angel finally understands that Husker just wants to be there for him. This is why he offers to go out with shakes with him, and of course Husker denies it and says “it’s not a date...”, but we know Husker is happy, because he’s willing accept this as being payed back for the food fat nuggets are, to him this was enough. Needless to say to say it was very cute and I loved it. Not only that but Husker becomes more active on Instagram and low-key tries to flirt back to Angel in his own grumpy cat way. 

Try and tell me they aren’t flirting with each other!

A week after their date Angel Dust does a instagram post showing off his new outfit he got and Husker is quick to ask “why so many zippers”, he’s still too nervous to flirt directly Angel Dust responses with “More to pull down, respond...” Huskers clueless and responses with a “eh” still likes it anyway (the feelings are mutual now). And within the same week Husker posts his own selfie“ Wanted to wear a tie for once. 🥃”, posting one because of Angel. And this isn’t for nothing the pics clearly mirror each other (no pun intended). Just-wanted-to-wear-a-tie-for-once-my-foot ..he clearly did this to impress Angel with him asking “If he needs help with that tie...”, with Husker still being oblivious with the sexual reference but kitty’s still trying. 

This to me highlights why Angel is good for Husker (and vice-versa)... During his first appearance he comments “I lost the ability to love years ago...” and drinks down his booze. Which alludes to why he drinks because he feels lonely. Angel makes him active thus eliminating his reason to drink, as we can see through Husk trying things he hasn’t done before like wearing nice clothes. Now he didn’t have to but Husker pushed himself to be better. As for Angel it gives him a genuine romantic relationship that is centered by an emotional connection and not physically. Husker prioritizes Angels feelings and well-being first.

And for those of you that are confused with Huskers grumpy tendencies. In an interview Viviziepop has said about him is that he is a tsundere. Now a tsundere, it is a character the initially appearing as cold and hostile only to hide their true feelings. This is a troupe used  many times in animes (but if you are not familiar with the term or need an example of one Helga from Hey Arnold is a prime example of one).  His actions disregard his attitude towards Angel... Most of his grumpy responses to Angel are to hide his feelings for him and never used to cut down or degrade Angel Dust (like Val does). I will even argue that Husker is the total opposite of Valentino; Val uses flashiness and with sweet words to hide his heinous and vile intentions. While Husker seems hotheaded and temperamental initially his actions show he’s actually a very kind and caring individual and Angel defiantly sees that...

HUSKER MADE THE WALL!

Angel is special to Husker and he feels the same way... Now and is upper there with Fat Nuggets and Cherri Bomb. And of course Husker is embarrassed, realizing his pics there too saying “what the fuck!” but we know he’s happy. At this post we can assume that Husker is just as important to him as Cherri & Fat Nuggets is to him... and vice-versa. Which is why I believe that Husker will be the one Angel reaches out to first for help within the Hazbin Hotel. And I know some of you may not be convinced, that it’s just platonic or think that Husker just sees him as a friend, but as we know Husker is not a man of words... but a man of action! 

There is a key detail in this story that I’ve been keeping under-warps up until now, (and the reason why it took me so long to because once I found it piece of info; I had to change my original plans for this post). 

Remember how I said that the rest of the cast doesn’t know what’s going on with Val... and that Husker’s observation skills were going to be integral in helping save Angel. Well around the same time as the PJ pic... on Sir Pentious’ instagram he posts a pic of himself trying to make his minions look like Valentino and Vox: I wasn’t even trying to find this but low and behold guess who pops up in the comment section...

Now what does this post say to you. (Husker also liked the post too)

Now repeat after me...“You don’t hear shit about people unless you go looking for it.” ... HUSKER KNOWS!  My theory is that he’s been suspecting that there was something up with Val, ever since the pick-up post, so he’s been keep tabs on instagram Angel to make sure he was safe. And as time went on Angel became more precious to him and became more worried about him. And Husker not wanting to overstep his bounds by asking Angel directly, (because it’s none of his business but still super worried) so he goes around digging info on Valentino. SO then he probably knows that he abuses his workers.  

(Or Angel told him whats happening... I’m leaning towards that Husker did his own digging because narratively it would be too soon and we wouldn’t have a story to tell and would have told Charlie and the rest of the crew too already... Either way..)

Val sent him this, scumbag! And it only takes Husker seconds to defend him and makes sure Angel knows he’s not fat. (most recent post)

Husker has knows, he’s actively been looking into Valentino and the shit he’s done, because he wants to protect Angel Dust! And it’s evident now, he has been defending him on Instagram as well, now being in the know, Husker defending his boy! He is not afraid of Valentino and is not putting up with his BS for putting down Angel anymore... our boy Husker is watching you rat-man.

He maybe the only one who knows that Valentino is abusing Angel (or catching on to it). Which will lead Angel coming clean about how Valentino raped him... And at this point Angel trusts Husker so much that he maybe willing to listen to him when he says “Hey you need to tell someone” or “you need help” and Husker already knows Angel well enough to know how to help him without having Angel push him away. 

AND THAT is why I believe he will be the major driving force in saving Angel from the RAT-MAN (Val)... And we know Husker isn’t afraid of overlords; he’s gonna protect his boy. He is proven time and time again that he loves and cares for Angel Dust so much... and oh I’m gushing now.

AND LOOK HOW CUTE THEY ARE! I just want them to be happy, I want the best for our bois!

Thank you and I hope you all enjoyed the post (and please no shipping war in the comment section I don’t condone it whether you support it or not! Not fighting in the fandom)