#i think it's pretty self explanatory if you click on the tag and see what's in it

[carlyraejepsans]

Hi what does hotland art club mean?

i need to make a FAQ

[xmanicmushroomx]

nsfw alphabet || katsuki bakugou

tags: aged up katsuki bakugou x fem!reader, nsfw alphabet

cw: HEAVY nsfw [obvi], mention of bodily fluids, slight bdsm themes??, sexual positions and scenarios

a/n: holy shit you guys???? 1k notes on my “your birthday party” bakugou scenario??? i’m so blown away. you’re all so amazing and i hope you know how deeply appreciated you are.🥹 to celebrate, here’s an nsfw alphabet for our favorite boom boy.

a is for aftercare (what they're like after sex)

katsuki is so incredibly attentive after sex. he’ll bring you a glass of water and a warm wash cloth, clean you up, and then he’ll pull you into his arms so the two of you can go to sleep.

b is for body part (their favorite body part on their partner)

he’s an ass man, through and through. he’s always touching your ass: slapping or pinching it as you walk past, hand in your back pocket when you’re out in public, sneaking his fingers up your dress while you two stand in the corner of a crowded elevator. he can’t get enough of watching your cheeks get red from his blatant teasing.

c is for cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

if he’s not cumming inside you, he’s cumming on you. he loves making a mess of you. he treats it like marking his territory, covering your face with it and taking pictures of you like that. [he doesn’t share them with anyone, obviously, he just pulls them out and shows them to you anytime you think you can outdo his attitude. “you keep talking to me like that and you’re gonna end up on your knees looking like this again, pretty girl. shut your mouth.”]

d is for dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

no one knows how you and bakugou really met. your story is always “oh, we reunited at a conference a couple years back and just clicked!” but that is complete, utter bullshit. you’ve been friends with benefits since just after your graduation from ua. the two of you caught feelings, HARD, and decided you needed more.

e is for experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

does he know what he’s doing? he genuinely might tie you to the bed if you ask him that question face to face. even if he’s not experienced, he’s a quick learner. the second he finds that spot that has your eyes rolling back, he’s absolutely abusing it until you’re a stuttering, drooling, mindless mess underneath him.

f is for favorite position (this goes without saying)

bakugou can’t stand to not look at your face while he’s fucking you. he wants to see every expression and gauge every little reaction you have to him. he hikes your knees over his shoulders and practically folds you in half, nose to nose, hands in your hair to pull your face closer to his, “eyes on me, babygirl,” “if you close your eyes again i’m stopping”.

g is for goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

bedroom bakugou is always. all. business. he’s not messing around. he has one goal — make you cum as many times as possible, and then take care of himself with your body.

h is for hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

it’s thick and just slightly darker than his hair. he keeps it trimmed and neat for you, but if you didn’t ask for it, he would rather let it do what it does without a care in the world.

i is for intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

he always reassures you before. [“you know i love you, right, mamas?”] but during… oh boy. [“‘cause i’m about to fuck you like i hate you.”]

j is for jack off (masturbation headcanon)

he used to, when you two would have to go weeks between seeing each other. but now that you sleep in the same bed every night, he doesn’t have to.

k is for kink (one or more of their kinks)

he’s dominant, no questions asked. and he loves brats. it riles him up when you go to an event together and catch an attitude with him. he’ll fuck it out of you the second you get back home. if your attitude is really bad, he’s dragging you to a secluded guest room to put you on your knees.

l is for location (favorite places to do the do)

any- and everywhere. he’s sliding a hand up your skirt under tables, sitting you on his lap whenever possible, pulling you into a closet or kitchen to pin you against the wall or push you down on your knees.

m is for motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

your attitude is his biggest turn on. when you start mouthing off to him, he knows what you really want to say is, “please fuck me on the nearest possible surface before i lose my mind.”

n is for no (something they wouldn't do, turn offs)

drunk-you and asleep-you are both completely off limits [unless you are into that and specifically ask him to do it]. if either of you show even slight discomfort at anything new, he stops immediately. he’s not one to be outright opposed to most things you suggest.

o is for oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

when it comes to oral, he’s a giver and a taker. he’ll lick your cunt until his jaw is numb just to hear those pretty noises falling from your lips. he’s patient when you’re offering, tangling his fingers in your hair and letting you set the pace. but when he’s punishing you.. i hate to tell you, girlie, but your throat is a goner :)

p is for pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

this honestly goes both ways, depending on what he wants out of it at the moment. sometimes, he just wants to worship your body — everything is slow and sweet, whispering in your ear how much he loves you, “you’re fucking divine, baby”, tending to your every request. other times, however — like when he’s had a particularly bad day — he is absolutely fucking you through the mattress and growling low, empty threats in your ear. “shut up and take it, mamas,” “gonna tie you to this bed if you don’t stay fucking still”, “need’a cum inside this pussy before i start blowing shit up”

q is for quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

he loves them. he’ll take you at every opportunity. [see location!]

r is for risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

ohhh yes. he’ll have the most random idea for a position, kink, or anything else sex-related. he’ll ask you about it beforehand, of course, because he’s not just gonna spring the shit on you in the middle of it. if you’re interested in giving it a go, he’s absolutely trying it.

s is for stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

this man could go all day. he’s spent YEARS perfecting his body, increasing his stamina, training his entire system to be as active as possible for as long as possible, to be a hero. and he’s absolutely no different in the bedroom.

t is for toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

he’ll use them on you — but just to tease you, because the only things you’re cumming on when he’s around are his fingers or his cock. his favorite toy is the vibrator that connects to his phone. he’ll sit you on the bed and kneel between your legs when you’re both getting ready for an event, lapping at your clit while he slides it inside you. [“be a good girl tonight, or else i’m maxing this thing out while you’re talking to someone until you behave.”]

u is for unfair (how much they like to tease)

bakugou will tease you until you’re crying out of desperation. he’ll relentlessly brush his fingertips against your sweet spot, over and over, until you’ve cum so many times and you’re so sensitive it hurts. it satisfies him to no end, smirking like an absolute devil, while you sit there with tears in your eyes begging him to fuck you already.

v is for volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

bakugou doesn’t do loud. he’s yelling at everyone all the time, so sex is the one instance where he’s always calm and collected. what he does do, however, is whisper or growl in your ear about everything. [“you’re so wet for me, mamas.” “always such a good girl.” “you can do it, baby, gimme one more.”]

w is for when (is there a specific time of day they like to do it most?)

bakugou is always doing something sexual. he teases you all day, if he doesn’t already have you underneath him in bed all day.

x is for x-ray (let's see what's going on under those clothes)

he puts the word muscular to shame. he’s a pro hero, #2 at that, so of course he’s fit as a fiddle. he trains daily. broad shoulders, narrow hips, long arms and legs. he’s extremely proud of his own dick — ten and a half inches long and just thick enough that it stretches you out enough to feel like the first time — every. single. time.

y is for yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

this man could fuck you before every meal and he’d still want more. making you come undone is his own private serenity, and sometimes he genuinely thinks it’s the only thing keeping him sane.

z is for zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

after taking care of you and making sure you feel okay, he wraps you in his arms and pulls your head against his chest. he’s out like a light [and you usually are, too.]

[pedroshotwifey]

Hi! I have one request. Just a horny Joel Miller jacking off to porn. A solo session. That’s pretty much it 🫶

You got it, baby. Hope this is what you were looking for ;) If not, please feel free to send me another request or message and I'll fix it up for you!

Also gonna make a PSA here and say sorry that I still don't have updates for TTF or FB. I also want to apologize for not being super active lately. I promise I'm trying, I just have a lot going on right now. Love you all and hope you're doing well!

W/C: 1.1k

Tags/warnings: male masturbation, pornographic details, I mean c'mon it's pretty self explanatory

Stress Relief

It’s been an absolute shit show of a day. Wrong tile ordered after being on the waitlist for a week, two employees calling out, a customer changing their mind on the layout three fourths of the way through the project. Between it all, Joel didn’t get a single break. 

He’s tired, fed up, and ready to go home to an empty house. With Sarah gone to sleep over at a friend’s, he knows what he’ll be doing tonight. He’s pent-up as hell and there’s only one good release he can think about right now. Unfortunately, he’s been brewing on it the entire hour-long ride home. 

Thinking about the pull on his cock, his fist wrapped tightly around it. How good it’ll feel as he pushes all his thoughts away for the build-up. How the relief will take over him after he comes, exhaustion finally able to catch up to him and let him rest.

By the time he pulls into his driveway, he’s straining almost painfully against his jeans. And by the time he’s locked the door, he’s decided that anything else he needs to do tonight can wait. 

He shoves his coat off and drops it in the front fall before making his way to the living room. He doesn’t waste time turning on the light, instead bypassing the switch and scooping up his laptop to open on the coffee table in front of where he takes a seat on the couch. 

Shamelessly, he unbuckles his belt and opens a new tab. He clicks on the first video, not bothering to be picky. It begins to play, showing a man sitting on a couch, a woman coming up to him and sliding into his lap. Joel licks his lips and reaches for his cock about halfway before coming to a stop. His lube is sitting in the top drawer of his nightstand. 

And sure, he doesn’t need it, but god would it be so much better if he did. He decides to just get up and get it, stomping through the house into his bedroom to retrieve it. 

By the time he’s back to the couch, the couple in the video are naked and grinding against each other. As he opens the bottle of lube and squirts it on his open palm, the man slides inside of the woman’s heat. He begins thrusting up into her as Joel frees his length from his boxers, his heavy balls resting outside of them. Even the cool air against him feels heavenly. 

“Oh, fuck,” Joel groans as he wraps his lube-slicked fist around his aching cock. His hips buck with the contact, thighs tensing in both relief and anticipation. Lewd moans stream from the speakers of his laptop, the exaggerated noise turning him on way more than it probably should. 

He can’t help it though, the way his dick twitches when he looks down at the screen just in time to see the couple in the video switching positions. The man grabs the woman roughly only to bend her over the arm of the couch and slam back into her. The camera comes in close to capture the way her body jolts with the force in which the man is thrusting into her stretched pussy. 

Joel grunts, his teeth gritting together as he squeezes his cock. His stomach clenches as he tries to control himself. She sounds so sweet, her little whimpers and pleads for more of her partner’s cock swirling around his lust-filled head. He resumes up and down motions on his cock, tugging furiously and focusing only on the way the smooth skin of him feels so good gliding against his lubricant. He wants to draw it out, but he knows he can’t. 

He closes his eyes and listens to the symphony, imagining it’s him pounding into her sweet pussy instead, him getting his frustrations out through her body. His cock making those squelching noises with each push in, his cock collecting a milky rim at the base as the girl writhes in pleasure around him. 

He licks his lips, chest and cheeks pinking as he gets lost in his own fantasy. He pictures himself using the side of the couch for leverage, thrusting fast and slamming as hard as he can against her to get her to scream out in ecstasy. He would wrap her hair in his fist to pull her soft, warm pussy onto his dick until he spills inside, filling her up to the brim. 

Joel begins to pant as he tugs harder, opening his eyes to see they’ve switched positions again. This time, the girl is laying flat with her back on the couch, the man in front of her with his tongue on her cunt. The man is holding her down by her thighs and stomach as she squirms in overstimulation, but she cries for more even as her body tries to get away. 

Joel wishes he could taste her on his own tongue. It’s been far too long since he was able to feast on a woman in such a way. Too long since he had anybody to get him off but himself. 

Suddenly, the girl starts to come, her moans getting louder and more high pitched as she clenches around the man’s fingers. He doesn’t slow as he helps her through it, prolonging the orgasm until the girl is openly sobbing. 

The sound of Joel’s furious pumping is starting to get louder as the lube spreads and warms even further, the slick slapping noise every time he hits his pelvis almost drowning out the sound of the video. If he tries hard enough, he can even imagine it’s a real cunt he’s fucking into right now. 

He knows he’s getting closer. His balls start to tighten and he throws his head back, ears beginning to ring as he puts all of his focus on crossing that finish line. His breath comes out thinner but still noisy, whines and groans tumbling from his lips, unrestrained in the empty house. 

“Shit, shit, shit,” he grunts a final time before spilling over his hand. His jaw falls slack as he drags it out, pumping himself dry even after it becomes too much. He relishes in the way his own cum easens the slide and keeps him warm as he softens. He wants so badly to keep going, get himself hard again, but he can’t. 

He hisses through tightened teeth and finally lets his hand fall from his limp cock. The video’s ended, leaving him alone in his living room to cool off. Deciding he’ll just let himself relax to get his bearings for a moment, he lays his head against the headrest on the couch. His eyes fall closed again as his breathing starts to even out. He can only tell at the last second that he’s about to fall asleep, but he’s too far gone by then to care.

[billowingangel]

Welcome ✧

I've been into hetalia since 2016 and for a while I tried to pretend I didn't like it....And I'm tired of living that lie! So I'm back to thinking, loving, obsessing, and writing about Hetalia.

I also block very freely and I'd rather people be 18+ to interact (since occasionally I may post nsfw/nsft which I will always tag)

I'm currently working on a few fanfictions which you can find on AO3 and FF.net

My favorite character is Canada 🍁 And I ship him with pretty much anyone...and I mean anyone...If that makes you uncomfortable please feel free to block this blog or the tags associated with ships you are uncomfortable with. I may at times reblog problematic ships, I'll add tags for the ship and a cw for the problematic element of the ship. Please take care of your mental health and curate your online space to what is best for you ♡ ˎˊ˗

more information below the canada picture

Wow, you clicked continue reading so here's more annoying stuff about me and this blog (^_^)

I spam reblog, mostly fanart (so many in this fandom are so talented!) and miscellaneous things (memes, random shit, writing tips, etc).

I'll occasionally post some of my own fanfictions (drabbles or links to them)

I also will post my rambling silly thoughts. I have decided to let myself loose and be as annoying authentic as possible here.

Also I will do my best to tag content/trigger warnings but I may forget (memory of a goldfish) so if I do please let me know

Here are some tags I use on this blog to organize (still working on what tags to use) ᯓ★

#art reblog ( ˘͈ ᵕ ˘͈♡): self explanatory

#hetalia fanart ✨: reblogs of hetalia fanart

#canon tbh: posts that I see as accurate to character's personalities, how I perceive them, and how I think they'd act

#hetalia fanfiction:

#hetalia meme:

#positivity: posts and reblogs that are positiive

#misc: posts that are surprisingly not related to hetalia

#me core: reblogs that I really relate to

#fanfic imagine: imagining a fanfiction and maybe i'll write or finish the idea

#fanfic in progress: my thoughts during the process of writing fanfiction, debating whether I should do this or that, talking about what I plan to do, blah blah

#my fanfic: fanfiction that I have written, usually a link to ao3 but may also be to ff.net

I also mostly tag hetalia characters as hws so if you look up hws canada (for example) you'll be able to see all posts about that character

Some of my favorite posts of mine ┈─★

Now more about me which is why you're reading this (I'm just kidding)

Call me angel or anything really I don't care what I'm called (ᐢ. ̫ .ᐢ)

Also please feel free to message me!! I love talking to people but I get a bit hestitant about initiating. My discord is billowingangel if you want to talk there!

I'm 20 years old and I go by she/her pronouns and I'm a lesbian I love me some boobs what can I say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I may be a raging homosexual but I'm also a raging hetaliansexual (joke), I am attracted to so many fictional male characters and shockingly a ton of them are from hetalia (shoot me dead)

I love hetalia if that isn't obvious, it's on my brain a probably disturbing amount what can I say I'm mentally ill. I also like other anime (demon slayer <333, jujutsu kaisen, the witch and the beast, parasyte, etc), doctor who (so happy there's a new season), yuri manga!!, and other shit. I love horrors and thrillers! I rarely watch romantic comedies but I love reading romance in fanfiction ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm working on my own book (probably my 20th book) but I'm hoping to actually finish this one.

I am also working on multiple fanfictions: red means it's completed

off the grid: canada slightly snaps and goes on vacation lol

???:idk what to call it, america, england, and france are all fighting for canada's love and he's oblivious

unhealthy obsession: another country becomes obsessed with canada

Falling for Canada: multiple rarepair oneshots with Canada

My first omegaverse 0.0

a really stupid horror drabble that I posted

amecan week 2024

And I believe that's it~ Maybe I'll add my favorite ships

[hecatesbroom]

How I organise my (fic) writing in Notion

@this-geek wondered how I organised my works in Notion, and considering I'm nothing if not always happy to ramble about anything concerning lists and sorting my various things, here we are ;) thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about this haha

Under the cut because I have unfortunately rambled quite a bit (sorry!)

Okay so first off: I really only use Notion for my fic writing (I prefer to work on original projects in physical notebooks or Word, for reasons unknown to even me) and I only keep my first drafts in here. I move on to Google Docs for second drafts (again, who knows why I do this? I sure don't!) Anyway, onto the organisation:

This is what my main page looks like! I have some fancy sidebars I never really use, the to do list is horribly outdated, and I haven't updated that quote (from one of my favourite book series: The Locked Tomb) in ages, but I still think it looks nice!

The thing this is mainly about, though, is the part in the middle that says "all fics". This is what Notion calls a database. It's basically one gigantic collection of pages (in my case: fics) that you can add tags to and display in various different ways. I prefer gallery view because it allows me to add a picture to the overview if I want to. I used to do this for my Locked Tomb fics and it looked pretty fun:

The thing is that it's also a lot of work to find pictures to match your fics (and nowadays I'm more focused on writing than all the thing surrounding it) so my Golden Girls overview looks more like this! I still like the gallery view because it gives you a little preview of every wip :)

As you can see, there's lots of different tags under the titles. The stuff you see in this view is a quick overview (mostly to help with sorting, so all my posted wips line up, and the rest shows up according to which state of unfinishedness they're currently in)

When you click any fic in this view, you'll be taken to the actual fic, and its complete overview of tags & info! I like to keep track of a lot of things (when I remember to, anyway). Here's a little overview for the things I tracked for the finish line :)

Created: shows me the date I started the document (and therefore the fic). Very useful! I love this feature a lot

Fandom: is mainly there for organisation purposes! I set my gallery view to toggle per fandom, so it's all sorted into neat little sections thanks to this tag

Characters: pretty self explanatory

Type: I've got several categories here: "one-shot", "multi-chapter", "drabble", "ficlet", and (reserved for one AU in particular) "i honestly don't know anymore"

Status: again, there's quite a few options for this one: "plotting", "writing draft 1", "1st draft", "2nd draft", "finished", "posted", "hiatus" and "abandoned" (which I rarely use)

Quick summary: is where I play around with my ao3 summary whenever I'm bored and don't really feel like writing

Draft 1 wc: I usually just put the final word count for the first draft there, unless I remember to track individual writing sessions (in which case I add those word counts as well, like in the example above, because I love looking back on the process!)

Draft 2 wc: I tend to completely retype a fic into my google docs for the second draft. Once I've done that I put the end result into my Notion doc

Finished wc: after I've reread and edited my 2nd draft, and possibly managed to have it all get a little out of hand (like you can see in that doubled word count for the finish line, lol) I put the finished word count here!

WC goal: is just a fun way to see what my initial idea was for the fic (I try to set a goal when I've got a general idea of what I want the work to look like, and always end up exceeding it)

The rest of it is just my writing, basically! Scroll down from there and you get the body for the fic :)

I hope this was somewhat helpful! I'm not a pro at Notion by any means, but if you have any questions or need some help, feel free to ask! I'm happy to try to help out!

[newsiesficchallenges]

Would you maybe be willing to go over the process of tagging on ao3? I've never used it before so I can figure out most of it but the entire posting process is new to me

Of course! 

If you don’t mind, I’m just going to cover all of it, because you aren’t the first person to ask this. 

So- tagging! 

In simple terms, tags have the same purpose on AO3 that they do on Tumblr. They’re to inform you of the content, summarize and warn, and to help organize the search system. They can be complicated, and daunting, but can also be largely unique if one so chooses. I’ll explain how in a minute! 

By adding a tag, you are inserting your work into a list, or a system, of other works that fall under the same category. For example: if you are writing a Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski work, and you tag that relationship, the work will show up when you search that relationship. It’s one of AO3’s best features, and a way an author can gain popularity in a fandom. 

Now, starting at the top of your AO3 form, we have the rating. Now, I like to think of your rating as a movie rating. Everyone has a little bit of a different view on these, but for our collective purpose of explanations, let’s use this standard guide. 

The first one is general audiences. This is a PG rated movie. Minimal language, some sexual and adult jokes that might fly over someone’s head, and little to no violence. You would let your 11yo cousin read this fic and not be concerned. 

The next is teen and up audiences. This is your PG-13, TV-14. We’ve got curses going around, but not all of them. Sexual jokes, light sexual content that probably doesn’t go very far. If there’s violence, it’s Marvel movie, see blood but no gore style. 

Mature is where things get interesting. Say whatever you want, have the smut scenes, and shoot outs in the alleyways. Children aren’t allowed into this R-rated movie, but we all know it’s for the 15+ girlies who are reading on their computers in the dark. 

And explicit is anything goes, basically. If you’re reading an explicit fic, and you get surprised by what you see, that’s a you problem. ‘Tis the smuttiest of the smut, the most hardcore violence and angst, and characters run rampant in their actions and words. 

And then we have the warnings! These are what I consider to be the most important, because a lot of these things are triggers. It’s pretty self-explanatory, as you can pick and choose anything that applies. 

Fandoms is also pretty self-explanatory. You use AO3’s list of fandoms, and click whatever fandom you’re writing for. For this exchange, you would type Newsies, and select the options and forms of the show you took inspiration from. 

Categories is more confusing, I think, primarily because one can never decide if you want to click every button that applies, or just the important ones. In my personal experiences, I tend to just click whatever option represents the main ship I’m writing for, and then make sure I tag anything that doesn’t fit that category in the relationships tags. You are definitely free to select everything, though!

Relationships is pretty important, just for information purposes. Most people search AO3 through specific relationships they want to read, and so I make sure to tag everything I can, just for algorithm and accessibility reasons. You can tag the romantic relationships (the ones with the / between the two character names), platonic relationships (the ones with the & between the character names), and everything in between, depending on how you want your fic viewed, and how you want it sorted in the tagging system (by this, I mean if you want it put in the list of ‘x’ (ex. Harley Keener/Peter Parker) works, falling under a specific tag). And if you want viewers to be aware of the different relationships, especially the romantic and platonic ones, always double check that you have selected the right tag (again, for romantic there’s a /, and for platonic there’s a &).

Characters are also important, but I want to stress that you do not need to tag all of the character that appear in your fics. I would simply tag the ones the work focuses around, or that have an impact on the story. It will take you forever to tag everyone if you’re writing a longer story. 

Additional tags is another very confusing thing. A lot of people view them as similar to Tumblr tags, like I said earlier, and this is where you can have some originality, like the Tumblr tags. When I am adding additional tags, I will read the story as I tag it, and make sure I add tags that apply to the important bits. You can keep it professional, with just the tags that will help get you more readers, and trigger warnings; or you can have fun with it, and simply put your thoughts about the work there, as another summary; or you can do a mixture of both. I do a mixture, and will add tags that add the work to popular searches, and add a running commentary/summary as I do so. This part is completely up to you, and you can explore what you want to put by typing random letters or names (things will pop up by either most common or alphabetical order, depending on what you’re typing) into the search bar, just to see what shows. My main suggestion- and pretty steadfast requirement for this exchange- is that you make sure you have a tag for plot points that might be triggering for some. Other than that, the world is your oyster!

That’s it! Hope that helps! If you have any more questions, let me know! 

[themouthwasher]

sighhh, this is my selfship sideblog, for jimmy, i selfship with him

i guess you can call me LP, kinda like lp records lol, thatll be my nickname here, he/it pronouns, 18 years of age

pleaseeeee check hidden theres some clarifications in there cause i know an account like this needs clarifications (plus a bit more random info bout me)

PLEASE READ THIS!!!

yes i know hes a horrible piece of shit, i dont support his actions, i hate him, but my brain says fuck all to morals when it comes to stuff thats fictional and decided "hey this guy seems silly, im gonna fall in love now!" whenever i think of lovey dovey stuff i try to place it in a sort of au where he didnt do... all of that. but yeah, theres really no "good" way to do it is there? i get most people will see it as wrong no matter which way i try to spin it so just please block and move on if you have a problem with it

not particularly proud of the fact i selfship with him (if you couldnt tell by how ive been talking about it so far) which is reason i made this blog, im not gonna admit this to anyone else so i might as well make an account where i can love him anonymously, honestly i have quite a bit of internal turmoil over loving him but thats to be expected when its... him. expect random bouts of "i fucking hate this man he makes me so mad /srs" immediately followed by doting on him cause my brain hates me being happy

tldr; i dont support his actions and lowkey hate the fact that i selfship with him, but hey i didnt chose to fall in love (if i could chose this would be a daisuke blog just sayin)

a bit about me

uhmm ive got autism, adhd, and bpd, and i feel like that definitely all shows itself in the way i act, i guess i act pretty unstable?? im also a very paranoid person, over like, everything, idk what causes it but its basically the stereotype of what people think of when they think of paranoia, i dunno i think that pmuch sums up whats wrong with me

i draw sometimes, though i doubt ill post anything, and i like music a lot, its my spintrest (but ill try to keep music talk to a minimum lest anyone manages to figure out who i am by my music taste) other than that uhhh i guess i like horror and bugs, and i bet youll never be able to guess what my favorite game is

dont really have much of a dni? dont hate on me obviously, i wanna say proshippers dni but with the nature of this blog i feel like most of the people who would actually accept me are proshippers :/ id prefer if you guys didnt follow me if you were open about enjoying really problematic stuff but id be hypocritical to cuss you guys out, id say im an anti but at this point idc, if i have a problem with you ill just block and move on

speaking of not really having a dni, any doubles, if youre out there i guess, feel free to interact, although sometimes i do get really protective and jealous outta nowhere so do be warned

tag list!!! woohoo!!! this post is also tagged with all of em so you (or more likely i) can easily click on them and get scrolling

"💚 i can fix this" is my rambling tag, check that out to see me talk about how much i unreasonably love that man

"💚 tuplars copilot" is for fanart reblogs

"💚 kills 99.9%" is my misc reblogs tag, whether it be non fanart posts about jimmy or completely unrelated posts that i reblogged with him in mind

"💚 i hope this hurts" is things reblogged/posted with hatred in my heart, i probably actually got mad at jimmy seeing/making those posts but bleh whatever its jimmy so on the account it goes

"💚 chatterbox" is me either talking to other people or posting stuff that doesnt really have anything to do with jimmy (and the tags not a reference, how revolutionary!)

"💚 not safe for tuplar" i think im so funny, i wont be rebloging anything too extreme and ill try to keep post like these to a minimum, but thats just there if you wanna mute it i guess

"💚 favorite posts" is self explanatory

[ninjakittenarmy]

Was thinking about the trend of people compiling oneshots from unrelated fandoms into one published anthology labeled as a crossover and I figured like some others I’d try to explain a few things to people doing this for why this isn’t a good idea.

Putting multiple fandoms into a work gets it labeled a crossover. The expectation is that the two+ settings will be featured in one story. There’s a wide variety of types of crossover but people generally expect stuff like characters from each setting interacting, or characters from one setting being transported into another or an overarching story relevant to both worlds even if they don’t interact directly or stuff like that. It’s fairly self explanatory. If you tag with more than one fandom, that’s what people usually expect. I can think of other things that could justify it but not separate stories that are unrelated. You publish those as separate works. If you’re going to publish separate oneshots as an anthology, they best ALL be crossovers. Anything that isn’t should be published separately. Otherwise it clutters the search results and makes it harder for everyone to find what they’re actually looking for and that is only going to attract negative attention to your work as people grumble about them while scrolling past.

There’s not much benefit to publishing anthologies on AO3 to begin with. Anthologies of unrelated short stories are typically published like that for convenience for the reader and publisher. It’s far easier and cheaper to buy a whole book of short stories than to buy them as like, pamphlets. More profitable too because more people buy them as collections. That’s not relevant here since you already have a website full of search results for all of these stories. Only real reason to publish oneshots together is if there’s something tying them together. Same continuity, same theme, same scenario etc. and DEFINITELY same fandom and preferably ship(s). This sort of anthology makes sense because it’s meant to be viewed as a whole work as well as a collection.

AO3 already has a feature for putting stories into collections. Collections have their own tags for stuff common in all the stories. Title can reflect the reason they’re paired together. The stories still show up individually in the search so everyone finds the one they’re looking for without sifting through all of them but they’re still told they’re part of the collection so they’re prompted to look into it. Tutorial here.

Adding on to that, there should be a reason for these stories to be in a collection aside from the fact that you wrote them since people can just view your author page for that. People do actually click on those pretty often.

There’s no algorithm on AO3. This one you’ve probably heard shouted in bold text in large fonts often. I’m trying to keep this more calm since that can get overwhelming at times. There’s no feed on AO3, just search results, and the search results are based solely on what is entered in the field. This means that there’s no inherent benefits or drawbacks for stories of long or short lengths. This is in contrast to social media sites, a lot of search engines, and video platforms who prioritize promoting the content the company believes is most profitable for whatever reason. On say, YouTube, you see stuff like content creators combining videos that were posted in parts into longer videos because the algorithm used to favor short stuff and now favors long stuff, and that fluctuates a lot. We don’t have that on AO3 bc it doesn’t matter what becomes popular there. AO3 doesn’t make revenue off the site, it was designed not to because companies and authors have sued a lot of fic writers and sites for copyright infringement if they did. Fanfiction.net gets away with having ads so long as it’s nonprofit, but AO3 relies solely on donations because advertisers tend to demand you make sites friendlier to their brand and that’s a whole other can of worms. Point is, AO3 doesn’t care which content becomes popular, it’s just a place for it to exist at all. More or fewer tags, fandoms etc. won’t game the algorithm to promote your stuff. Only thing it changes is who’s looking for it. People who want long stuff search for higher word counts and vice versa. Without an algorithm trying to convince you to favor something, it’s a complete toss up who reads what as far as you’re concerned. Which tags you use and how many also do not boost your work’s likelihood of showing up.

[exar547]

Didn't think i'd see myself making this anytime soon since for a while i've just been a small Tumblr artist, but since i'm gaining a bit of attention lately might as well. Read below to know some stuff about me!!

Howdy, shalom, however y'all greet. I'm Exar. I'm a neurodivergent unlabeled artist who moved from Twitter to Tumblr a bit ago! My pronouns are he/him, they/them and ey/em. I don't really have any kind of sona or blog mascot or anything (though i do have original characters), so you'll have to rely on a no-facer to recognize me

I mostly count as a fandom artist as of writing since i've yet to post any OC content, but that's subject to change. I'm an everything artist. My interests change pretty quickly, but no matter what: I love robots. A lot. Think Wheatley or Fandrew or Wall-E or Axis 014, those kinds of robots. If something i see has a robot with a personality, i am immediately going to like that character.

Here's some of my personal tags to organize stuff:

#exar artwork - I tag all my fully finished artwork here! If you wanna see some of the stuff i've drawn i recommend browsing this one.

#exar doodles - This is similar to the one above, but it's for artwork that might be just a sketch, or unshaded or simply a doodle as said. Thought i'd separate them for those that only wanna see the fully shaded/rendered stuff.

#exar talks - Just me rambling. Not much to it.

#exar reblogs - I tag this on everything i reblog! I have forgotten to do so a few times, but i think it's become enough of a habit to not be forgotten at this point. (also, i usually have something to say in the tags of my reblogs, but not always)

#exar shitposts - Name is self-explanatory; i post whatever dumb shit i feel like posting.

#exar writing - Very very recently made tag, i'll mostly post links to my AO3 or Wattpad fics here. Though, i might post some other writing-related stuff other than that.

#exar asks - The tag i'll use every time i answer an ask!

Hope this post tells you a bit about who i am, feel free to explore my blog. Or don't.

(P.S. sorry that clicking on the tags doesn't send you straight to searching them, i don't know how to put tags on Tumblr posts outside of the actual tags section below this text. help appreciated)

[itsevanffs]

Rarepair Tag Game

Thanks for the tags <3 I'm not gonna tag anyone because that's too much effort for my sickly victorian twink body (as my wife puts it) but I guess I'll extend an open invitation to anyone who wants to do this as well.

Rules: List the top rarepairs that you like outside of your OTP, and why you ship it! (Criteria for what makes a rarepair is up to your own discretion.)

Um. I barely read anything outside tomarrymort, but these can never ever go wrong with me:

1. Tom/Tom Sr

Yes. His dad. Lord Voldemort and his dead corpse of a dad. I'm not particularly into necro which is why I like them underage, like I did in Malachi 1:6. If you know me you kind of saw this one coming 😌

2. Tom/Tom

Yes. Himself. My first foray into Tom-centric fic was one where I made him fuck his own reflection in a mirror. Masturbating with a clone I guess. I think he deserves himself

3. Tom Sr/Harry

Yeah. If Harry can't get Tom he should get his dad. On that note

4. Tom Sr/Harry/Tom

Harry can also just get both of them. No loss for me. I enjoy some good old spitroasting and double penetration and this father/son duo is perfect for that. Also I headcanon Sr is just as bad as his kid we just never got to see it

(Wow. I really have a trend... I'm gonna shake it up a little. Look:)

5. Hedric. But only when Cedric is evil, possessed by vee/a horcrux or just vee/a horcrux in disguise

I think this one is fairly self explanatory. I do think it's a rarepair, and I'm clearly always right. Amanda is the best for making a fic about it especially considering I am too disorganised to make my own

...Yeah. I mean I guess I'm pretty loyal to tomarrymort and its adjacents so even my rarepairs don't look very different. I tried to get into tomdric for a bit and crow did a fucking spectacular job with that gore snuff fic and vonn did an incredible job with the tomdric prefect bath art in converting me, but that click isn't quite there... yet. Who knows? Maybe I'll have -counts on fingers- six rarepairs soon beside tomarrymort.

[leothil]

Hi not the initial anon but I would love access to a copy of your reading tracker! Never occurred to me to do that and it sounds very cool!

Hi! Sure thing, I created a condensed version and put it here! I left a number of fics on the list just to leave some data for the purpose of being able to click around and seeing how things work. It's view only, but you should be able to create a copy of the document to save to your own drive that you then can start modifying.

The doc has four sheets. Fics is self-explanatory, where you list all the fics you read. Stats is the overall stats page, counting everything. On the monthly stats page, there's a drop-down menu where you can choose which month to look at. The sheet automatically updates all the data when a new month is selected. On the right side of the sheet, the data for the month is extracted from the main fics sheet - this is just to make it easier to sort through it and make the relevant monthly stats without having to make more complex queries within the document. And the tag check sheet is sort of a storage place for base data that is graphed in the stats page (and also a cheat sheet for what tags I currently have in use when I inevitably forget if I called it "love confession" or "love confessions"). I also included a neat little search-filter-thingy that lists all fics I have under a certain tag, certain author, certain month, or a combination of those!

If anything seems to get messed up when you're trying things out, one of the first things to look at is how the data is formatted - for example, I don't track every singular date I read something, just looking at it as "read this month", but for the monthly sheet to work, every read date needs to be set to the first of every month. There are some other small quirks like this but I think they're pretty easy to spot. :)

[galesdevoteewife]

YESSSSS <333

Thank you OP!!! I was so happy and excited while reading the article.

1000% with this post. Something that has been haunting me and putting me to starve for so long. I do not stand to oppose anyone’s canon/world, I respect any types of stories/needs/relationships/HCs, but merely want to point out some facets that I don’t think have been mentioned enough. Gale had a clear idea of what ideal love-making should look like:

Gale: The art of the body. The exploration and acceptance of the self and the other. The art of the night itself.

[!] The following contains spoilers all the way to epilogue & is slightly suggestive. [!]

The approach – or, so to speak, the technical aspect – can, however, be varied; they were all merely means to that ultimate goal. The interaction could be incorporeal or physical or (what others might consider as) weird/vanilla/plain/kinky. The bonding and exchange of affectionate feelings were what mattered to him. A reason why thinking about a romance story with him is so healing for me, for I have felt and been bothered by the coldness and emptiness in sexual interactions. Being touched or getting orgasms doesn’t automatically grant the comfort of love, even worse when the temporary pleasure fades. Gale was a character who would consider exchanging poems with you a better way than bang you to express his love. Not saying he was immune to the pleasure of flesh – quite the opposite, he wasn’t shy to outright state he wants you – but tangling the bodies is far from the only way. The two hearts beating for each other is the real beauty.

It shouldn’t be too much about dom/sub/switch, which I somehow feel the tags themselves carry too much context and perception, blurring the uniqueness of the character. Just like in real life, many facets of a person could be ignored when the labels stand out too strongly. While these tags are efficient in communicating ideas, they should be read and comprehended with awareness and a fluid mind.

With that being said, I think he was adaptable and negotiable, but initially leaned towards the controlling position. He rarely gets nervous ('I always wondered what being nervous would feel like. I hate it.') and I think the point-and-click lines were pretty self-explanatory ('Creator. Destroyer.' 'What fools these mortals be', 'Knight to king five', 'Checkmate', 'Let me recite their demise', 'Go on - excel', 'Make me proud'…). This guy loved to be right, powerful, know it all, in control, have the upper hand, and win. He also especially wanted to be a wish granter for his lover. I think he would be thrilled to discover his partner's secret desires and would happily, proudly feed them. Turned on and satisfied by how well he was knowing/doing – but within a stretch.

He knew what he wants and doesn’t. Despite his devotion in love, he knew when to walk away, and he would not hesitate to do so. He was clear about his deal and did not hesitate to end the chapter if the player soured the trust. You prefer a new lover? You can’t have both. Slept with Mizora? A ring that can’t be unrung. Open relationship? It’s either exclusive or it ends now. And if it must be the way, please try to do it out of my sight. Prostitution was a bit in a grey zone since it's more of a trade in carnal business. The 25 persuasion check was far from the definition of ‘a little push’. It only took 18 to convince Lae’zel into half-illithid!

I totally agree that pain giving/receiving was very unlikely to be his cup of tea, degrading only in roleplays perhaps but nothing he would be too keen on. When I say he liked to be in control I don’t mean he enjoyed behaving anywhere near bossy/strict/demanding; it's more of a concept than an action code. If him whimpering and wet-eyed begging is what gets you going, he would do it with carefully calculated timing and tone to give you a good show. I didn't see any signs in my playthroughs where he enjoyed being ordered/dominated so I wouldn't say subbing was a default preference for him. Plus he could enjoy teasing but tend to get annoyed and salty when being denied. In my opinion, a subGale would be much harder to earned, and would take a lot more than some ropes/toys/spells/tentacles to mess him up and break his control. What it takes instead, is trust. Lots and lots of trust for him to really let go and let someone else have his rein. He had to be certain about the person knowing him well and he will be in good hands, and will not be forced into doing things that he wouldn’t like. Something that requires his partner to prove their understanding of him so well, in that notion would he find pleasure. He was not an abandoned sad puppy waiting to be collared, who just wanted to be loved by his human. Even if he was, he would be the 'Labrador who may or may not have rabies.'[1]

And a bit of my canon <3 These are 100% personal and made up. In my canon, I love Gale when he was being the sweetest dom ever. Rope would rarely be seen; props were mostly improvised or simply words would be used. Whips and paddles? Never. Magic would be used for all kinds of stimulation. And his dirty talk? Would be the most ingenious, unconventional, flowery, and well-mannered praise. His words could sound like courting compliments at a banquet, when his deeds were erasing your gravity. Messing with the mental would be something on his darker appetite. His mind was his ultimate sanctuary and he would pay the same respect to his lover. But the thrill and temptation were unparalleled when he was invited and trusted with handling the most important, private, and delicate part of a person. (In a modern translation, probably give him access to all your search history/albums/social media passwords XD???) I personally just want to spoil some of his traits I love – which were often considered flaws – as being ambitious and arrogant, because in my opinion he had been suppressed for too long, by mortals and immortals. ('…one particularly cut-throat assessment at university - my "abject and incorrigible self-delusion"', 'To know you are not frightened by my ambition. That you would nurture it, and meld it with your own... I cannot imagine a better partner on any plane of existence.', 'Gods, it's refreshing to share the company of someone who sees things the same way I do') Even Tara was like: "The Gale I knew wasn't like this. He recognized his mistakes. He was contrite. All he wanted to do was live." He would also definitely be turned on when his lover shows how well they know him. Knowing where to kiss, when to touch, perfectly paced, learning a spell or two for him, surprising him with a meal that’s exactly how he would prefer, bringing him a book that he would love. As generous as he was, he would want to have, I will quote Tim on this:

"...a proper relationship, as in it’s a two-way street. It’s a two-way thing we’ve got to have. You’re going to have to do stuff as well. It’s not just me, it’s the two of us together. We’re going to create things together."[2]

I think sometimes he was perceived as an all-give-not-receive type, but I have my argument about how much the player had done for him. Dragging the whole team and risking their lives for him. Player's input had been mixed up with the gameplay and tends to be missed. He fell for the player knowing his love would be echoed. The exploration and acceptance of the self and the other. It’s what it should be. And again a big thank you to op! Kudos to that line: "melting into one perfect whole, not knowing where he ends and his partner begins." BIG YES to everything listed in the kinks paragraph!!

[Note] [1] Quoting Tim, originally from here. [2] Tim Downie Gale Interview with Dan Allen Gaming for Baldur's Gate 3. The 'Gale is easy to romance & character traits' section [3] Do I want to eat the wizard and get all sweaty dirty and panting? YES. I. DO. I spend a ridiculous amount of my time searching for Gale’s smut 🫠 🫠 🔥 [4] OP has a great blog with tons of awesome metas please check them out!! [5] An interesting read from reddit asking about the appeals for being a dom. A most popular answer was the satisfaction in revealing their partner's desire and feed it. Followed by the comfort of receiving trust. It's really not only about sadism or roughness. I was keenly searching for these to make sure it's a thing for some people but not just one person doing all the labors.

thank you sm for the ask!! 💕 i’m glad you enjoy my posts and it is not a strange request by any means!

note: this is merely my read on gale’s sexual preferences/kinks. i don’t want to police anyone on their headcanons or claim they are “incorrect”. since the game doesn’t provide too much detail, many things remain up to interpretation. (and lest we forget fanfiction has always encouraged the exploration of dynamics that may not be present in canon.)

gale is a character who isn’t interested in walking the straight and narrow route. he is all about new experiences, favoring non-traditional means, putting his own spin on things, and the thrill of seeking the forbidden. the sheer romance of the uncharted and the unknown. he is enthusiastic in almost every aspect and possesses an infectious zest for life. in regards to his sexual preferences, this translates into an eagerness to explore, witness new sensations, and reach new heights together. while approaching the topic of sexuality with a generally playful, adventurous attitude.

if you’re looking for harder kinks, however — i don’t believe gale is the character for you. and in case it needs to be said again: there is nothing wrong with being vanilla.

initially, i see gale as a switch, who gravitates more towards assuming a dominant role, due to his ever-present desire to give and to impress. i do think he enjoys giving up control, yet you still have to actively convince him to let himself go and be spoiled for once. his first focus will always be to fulfill his partner's needs and drown them in his all-encompassing love and adoration. i also believe that gale will grow more comfortable with being the center of attention, once their relationship has reached a point of total security (and he had ample opportunities to show in just how many ways he can wow them). gale is not a strict dom, nor a sub. in his ideal relationship roles would be discarded entirely, deeming them too restrictive in his expression of intimacy with a trusted partner. it’s all about variety and ridding oneself of the shackles of the worldly, after all. melting into one perfect whole, not knowing where he ends and his partner begins.

gale: we are all sensual vessels. illusory magic lets us sail farther, and feel more deeply.

gale: [..] i could use the weave to make us feel sensations beyond reckoning.

based on what we know about gale, these could be some of his kinks:

lots of praise (this is non-negotiable), sensation/temperature play (waxplay, electrostimulation/all the many perks magic has to offer), sensory deprivation, light restrictions and bondage, the occasional roleplay, katoptronophilia (self-explanatory), altered mental-states (hypnosis, psychedelics), orgasm control & denial, body worship, olfactophilia and given his propensity towards verbosity: narratophilia and some very inventive dirty talk. as for my own self-indulgent take: due to the recurring emphasis on hands during his romance, as well as his being the main tool in how he shapes and navigates the world: quirofilia.

nodecontext: flustered, standing in front of his romance partner in bondage gear. not necessarily uncomfortable with the bondage aspect, just trying to stay focused.

now, what are gale’s hard-limits?

gale, after the player received loviatar's blessing: your hide, your choice. not quite my cup of tea though.

while projecting your own kinks and fantasies onto fictional characters is fine and well, disregarding and ignoring the source material (and the character's stated boundaries) is another matter entirely. fanon!gale is rather ooc and very different from his canon portrayal, which is something that tends to irk me. although this remains a common fandom phenomenon.

personally, i don’t see gale as someone who enjoys pain of any kind, be it giving or receiving (with the exception of spanking and light choking, if a certain mood strikes. although it is kept mostly playful). contrary to what fandom may claim, having self-worth issues, being loquacious, emotionally expressive, and vulnerability-seeking (as well as being commonly perceived as arrogant and insufferable) doesn't automatically equal having repressed masochistic tendencies. he could be convinced to dip a toe into sadism, but only upon his partner’s insistence. although i doubt he himself would find enjoyment in that.

the same applies to degradation/humiliation. i doubt that a character who is still very much struggling with inherent self-worth issues and a general feeling of being defective/not worthy would derive sexual gratification from being degraded. yes, it can certainly be healing for some, but gale doesn’t strike me as someone who would find particular enjoyment in that. quite the contrary, actually. nor would he like to do the degrading for that matter (he would vehemently refuse. all he wants to do is sing your praises.) gale wouldn’t enjoy being leashed and/or collared in any way either. the prospect of being tied up or restricted is rather intriguing, cause it serves to center one’s vulnerability while also allowing for more intense sensations. anything that taps into the puppy play/slave territory tho? he would find it demeaning… and, quite frankly, silly.

gale is also not a voyeur, nor a cuck. the entire scene with the drow twins leans way too much into dub-con territory for my tastes. the only way you can get him to participate at all is by rolling a persuasion check with DC 25. in every other dialogue option, he immediately (and explicitly) declines. even if you do manage to pass the persuasion check, he is still very hesitant about participating.

gale: i might enjoy watching you tangled up with the drow, as long as i was five paces back.

he then immediately runs from the room, because sending a simulacrum in his place was the only way to somewhat remove himself from the situation while still being able to please tav. because of course he wants to please and clearly this is important to tav so he might just… have to discard his reservations and... just go through with it?!

gale: well i suppose it would do no good to back out now. let us begin this little anthropological study, if we must.

i am aware that fandom uses the fact that his “orb lit up in telltale excitement” as a justification that persuading him was the right choice, as well as confirmation that he was secretly into it and “just needed a little push" to explore his desires/get out of his comfort zone. that implication alone is very suspect and goes straight into the sort of logic abusers often use. you can be physically aroused by certain scenes, images, or sounds, even while being visibly uncomfortable with the presented scenario. it is a natural response that you can’t often control. which is what he is showing throughout the entire scene: discomfort. he was coerced into this situation, without any prior discussion or an opportunity to talk about his boundaries. furthermore, this is what he has to say if you approach him after the threesome:

gale: ahem. i hope you're not here to ask about our recent, erm, activities. i'd rather those were consigned to the footnotes of our romance, if it's all the same with you.

since he is strictly monogamous, any arrangement involving another person is also a no. he made this rather clear when tav sought him out after receiving halsin's proposal. him being monogamous isn't solely rooted in his trauma, it isn't something he has to “overcome” in order to heal, nor does it mean that their relationship is any less fulfilling. call him greedy, stubborn, or old-fashioned, but he cannot comfortably agree to that.

[copper-16]

AO3 Tip Number 1: Introduction to the Site/Sourcing Works to Read

This is for those who have perhaps never been on the site. How do you find works? How do you find authors? These are all good questions, and I’ll answer some of them here. 

This is the home page on ao3. I don’t find it terribly relevant, if you would like to do something with it go ahead. What I am going to do however - is go up to this search bar on the top right. Let’s say you want to find works on Ingrid - I am going to type “Ingrid Engen” into the search bar. 

These are the results. As you can see several works from Ingrid pop up - I am going to click on her individual tag (The gray highlighted tag are relationships, the non-highlighted ones are individuals and any other tag). I highlighted her individual tag in yellow for you to see.

This is the result of doing so. It pulls up a list of all the works that Ingrid has been tagged in, organized by date (newest on the top). If you want, just scroll down and look through what’s there to read! If you’re looking for more specific, then keep reading.

If I can direct your attention to the top right, you will see a few gray boxes. I am going to click the one that says “Filters” which will pull up with a bunch of different filters on the right in a gray box. If you want to search for specific things - you can do so here! 

For starters, you can sort by date updated (which is automatic), date posted, author (organized alphabetically), etc, if you don’t just want the order to be newest work first. 

Now, for the categories, which are: Rating, Warnings, Categories, Fandoms, Characters, Relationships, and Additional Tags. 

Ratings is going to be whether the work is mature or not, is it explicit, etc. I don’t find these to be hugely indicative of a work necessarily and therefore I rarely filter for it, because for the most part I don’t think many authors put a whole ton of emphasis on the rating over explaining the work in the summary/notes. 

Warnings are going to be a little more specific - is there any graphic depictions of violence, any non consensual storylines, etc. 

Categories is what kinds of relationships are present in the work. F/M, F/F, multi, etc. If you’re reading this then most of the works you’re reading are going to be F/F, and you don’t need to really filter for it either imo. 

Relationships is pretty self explanatory. You want to read about Ingrid and Mapi? Click the check next to their name under “Include”, and then hit “sort and filter to apply,” and you’ll only see works that include the Ingrid/Mapi tag. 

Additional tags are going to be things such as Fluff, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, etc. 

Now, for these categories you can both either include or exclude them, “Include” is first and “Exclude”, as you can see is under that. More Options below includes things such as completion status, if you only want to read complete work. You can also search by word count, if you want to read a longer work or a shorter one. The drop down below also allows you to search just for specific languages. 

Any questions? Shoot me a message or send me an ask, I’m happy to answer them!

[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!

[imasimpforshanks]

party games they’d play as an excuse to kiss you

ft. luffy, zoro, nami, ace, law, shanks

a/n: MY MUM SAW ME WRITING THIS HHHAHAHHAHAUAHAHAHAHAHAHH IT WAS SO FUNNY 💀💀💀💀💀 yeah um so idk what this is but it was actually really fun to think about lmfaoooooo

luffy - kissing tag - pretty self explanatory game, it’s tag, but to get the other person in you have to kiss them. imma be real here, he didn’t actually play this game as an excuse to kiss you. he just heard the word ‘tag’ and was like “hell yeah!!!! TAG IS SO FUN!” but then he saw people kissing one another and then something just clicked “WAIT I WANT TO TAG Y/N!!” so then he asks to be in next and immediately chases you down smiling and laughing as you run away laughing just as much as he is then he grabs you, wrapping his arms around you, smiling as bright as the sun as places a quick kiss on your lips “HAHA YOU’RE IN NOW!”

zoro - seven minutes in heaven - a classic party game so im not gonna explain the rules of it. he’d play this game for a few reasons. firstly, he loves how jealous it makes sanji seeing the two of you locked away in a closet! zoro is such a little shit. but the biggest thing is that it’s private!!!! it’s just you and him. no one else is peeping or interrupting the two of you and that fact alone makes him a lot more comfortable (he’s not one for intimacy or PDA in front of others).

nami - spin the bottle - another classic game, not gonna explain the rules to this one either. i think nami really enjoys the thrill of this particular game. going into it she knows there’s not a 100% chance that she’ll get to kiss you, but that makes it all the more exciting!! her heart is racing as the bottle she just spun slows down. and the second it stops on you, her breath hitches. it’s the moment she’s been waiting for. she smirks at you as you both lean across the circle, your lips meeting in the very centre.

ace - guess who - a simple game where one person is blindfolded and has to try and guess the person who is kissing them. he sees you being chosen to be blindfolded first and he absolutely cannot help himself so he pushes ahead to be the first one to kiss you in the game. he finds something so attractive about you being blindfolded n having to guess it’s him. it’s a challenge and he goes all out feeling ridiculously proud when he pulls away and you breathlessly say his name.

law - truth or dare - very straightforward game, petty classic so im not gonna explain the rules lmao. i thought this would be the most fitting for law but im not entirely sure why????? i don’t particularly believe he’d voluntarily play (he’s not really a party games type of guy) so, when his crew sees you happily participating in this game, they come up with a ‘genius’ idea. they don’t even give law the option of choosing truth, instead saying “we dare you to kiss y/n.” he goes to scold them, until he sees you blushing slightly and avoiding his gaze, so he mumbles a “fine then” trying to ignore his rapidly increasing heartbeat as he leans in to kiss you.

shanks - pass the card - bunch of people are in a circle and have to pass a card around the circle by sucking it so it holds to their lips and then passing it to the next persons lips. shanks loves this game, he switches spots with person who would be passing the card to you, so he can be the one to pass it instead. being the cheeky mf that he is, as soon as he gets the card he’s turning to pass it to your lips but just before you reach him he drops the card (intentionally of course) so he can kiss you properly, chuckling a little into the kiss as he hears the complaints around him “you did that on purpose!” “C’mon man!!!” he can’t help but give you a little wink and a fake apology after “im so sorry about that, the card just slipped.” you just playfully roll your eyes in response.

[tittyblade]

tumblr etiquette 101

a list that is nowhere near exhaustive, from yours truly.

First off, welcome! Whether you’re a twitter veteran looking for anything but whatever twitter is, or a new user just done signing up, glad to see you in our ranks beloveds! Welcome home. Refer to this quick tour to make sure your fandom experience (or tumblr experience in general) is a positive one!

Disclaimer: I know it’s long, but please try to read or skim through til the end if you’re new here! This is by no means meant to be a rule book (for the most part lol), only a guide to help you get settled easier!

1) Your blog

This is where people will see and interact with you, so put some effort into it!

Try to choose a name (url) that’s simple. You can see it as your brand, it’s how people will perceive you and remember you. If you’d like to interact with other users here (and not use the site just for the content) it’s better to have something short and sweet, preferably without spaces. (Of course, these are only suggestions.) Rest assured, you can change it literally any time you want.

Have a theme. Utilize the tool that lets you edit your blog’s color or the font of your bio! You can make it match your profile picture, or your blog if it has a theme of its own. Make it feel homey :]

Fill in your bio. People will be checking out your profile probably more often than you think. Don’t leave it empty! Put in any information you’re comfortable with sharing and isn’t too personal (like your age if you’re a minor, or other TMI that can be found on other people’s carrds). It’s always better to add a name/nickname people can use to refer to you by, but feel free to use your blog description to shitpost still.

You can have an intro post. More often than not, you’ll see a blog have a pinned post, a post permanently appearing at the top of a blog until you pin another post or unpin it. You can make one of those, if you’d like to introduce yourself in more length, link any other socials or a carrd, and show others visiting your blog how you tag things so it’ll be easy for them to navigate. Not an obligation.

Keep your anonymity and your safety. It should go without saying, but there’s no harm in repeating it just in case. Your comfort, privacy and safety has the utmost importance. Don’t share any information you don’t want to. Don’t share your age if you’re a minor, or any other incredibly personal info. I’d encourage you to go by a nickname that’s not your real name, (blog name, your brand, remember?) since there’s safety in anonymity, and that’s lowkey one of the big deals of tumblr, but that’s up to you still.

Choose what you want to be visible. Your liked posts and who you follow are all things you can set to keep to yourself and hide from the publics eye, how handy! You should go through all the setting while you’re at it, set it to your comfort.

Side blogs are a thing. You can have multiple blogs that you can use for different things (see: different fandoms, art blog, etc) to keep them organized or away from your followers. Just remember that the replies and off-anon asks you send will be from your main blog, as well as where you follow other blogs from.

2) Interacting with others

You’ve set up your account, now comes the fun part!

Follow to your heart’s desire. If you care about others seeing who you follow, fear not! In tumblr, usually only two types of blogs keep their following visible to others: newbies, and big blogs using it to point people on other good blogs’ direction. Just turn it off, and go ham following people.

Customize your dashboard. Gonna mention just two things here: this is another reason why it’s really important that you follow blogs without sparing, your dash will collect dust otherwise; and you should turn off “best stuff first” in your dashboard settings, to have a better community here and all.

Follow tags. You can set it in your settings that posts with your followed tags appear on your dashboard.

You can check the og post for edits and context. When you see a reblogged post you don’t understand the context of (or don’t recognize the character in case of fanarts), click on the profile so it will take you to the original post. From there you can check the original poster’s tags to get the context, or see if there have been any edits made to the post, since when you edit a post it doesn’t update any past reblogs.

Send people asks... This is how you make mutuals, people! Do it off-anon if you’d like them to know your blog, or anon if you’d rather not! (You can still end your messages with a signature to show you’re the same person, -[name] is one example.) Send them nice messages, ask their opinion on something, discuss things, or just straight up shitpost lol. Go wild. The sky’s your limit and it’s definitely more than 280 characters.

...and let them ask you! You can set your preference in the settings, do it on desktop tumblr to access more settings tho! What you can customize on mobile is limited (like letting people ask you things anonymously, that’s only on desktop settings). In my personal opinion, it’s always better to tag their username (or a nickname you give them, if they’re a friend) on that post, since you wouldn’t want your interactions with your friends to get buried in your blog forever.

Comment on posts. If you have something to say but don’t want the post to appear on your blog you can add a comment. The owner of the post will get a notif for it, but for anyone else you need to tag them.

For the love of god, reblog. People will only see your liked posts if you have it visible to public and they specifically go on your blog to look at them. You like something? You reblog. It’s already hard for posts to circulate properly, if you don’t reblog them literally no one will see them. If not for anything do it for the artists. Just hold and drag on mobile to fast rb.

3) Your Posts

Finally here! Don’t be a lurker, post and engage!

Make use of “read more”. If your post is long, add it. That’s what you clicked on earlier to expand this post. On desktop leave an empty line and you’ll see three dots appear, and on mobile type :readmore: on that empty line.

Draft a post to come back to it later. Pretty self explanatory.

Queue your post. Whether it’s your own post or you’re reblogging, make use of the queue feature to a) not spam reblog and fill up the dashboard of people following you and b) keep your blog active while you’re gone. Mess around in the settings, it’s fairly easy to set up.

Schedule your post. Same as queueing, the only difference is you get to choose the exact time your post will go up. Handy if you want to schedule a post for certain dates like april fools, or 5 years in the future for some reason. 

Format your texts. You can do all kinds of fancy stuff here (that’s a link, try pressing on it). Twitter doesn’t have this, make use of it. Changes depending on whether you’re on mobile or desktop. (Desktop has less features.)

Check your stats. If you’re trying to understand the algorithm better or want to look at some pretty graphs you can get your data on that on desktop tumblr.

@ people in comments. You’ll get all the notifs when people comment on your posts but they won’t see your reply unless you tag them in your message.

4) Tags, and tagging a post

This is where my earlier statement “this isn’t a rule book” stops being applicable. It’s not a war crime to go against these, I won’t come chasing you (don’t take my word for this) but you’ll work up a bad rep. Just saying lol.

Do NOT crosstag posts. It’s really tempting to add unrelated tags to increase your posts’ interaction, I know, but that’s not what tumblr is about. Don’t be a dick and make other communities’ experience worse for them.

Always tag your posts with “crit/critical/discourse/etc” if it calls for it. There’s no exceptions to it. This is the reason you see people migrating to tumblr. Let people enjoy things.

Don’t main tag a critical/negative post. If your crit post is about “Thing”, you add the “Thing critical” tag, but not the “Thing” tag. People block crit tags if they don’t want to see it, don’t shove it in their faces by main tagging it. 

If you don’t want to see something, just block it. Another reason why people are able to survive on tumblr. You don’t start discourse, you don’t make call-outs, you block. You can find something for every community you can think of if you go looking for it. The worst of the worst probably won’t ever appear on your dash, but if you’re worried or feel the need for it, you know where the block button is.

Feel free to shitpost or ramble. More often than not you’ll see people rb a post with a comment, and their elaboration will be in the tags. The tags are only visible on your profile and the notifications of the owner of the og blog. Just a thing people do.

Reblog artists’ posts with nice comments in the tags! Commenting on a drawing is usually done through the tags (Not an obligation, again, just a thing people do. Feel free to add your comment on the rb itself if you’d want other people to see it tho!) and leave nice messages for the artists! It’s a win-win for everyone involved. 

If you have more than a single follower, always use the common tw warning tags. You don’t need to tw everything, but tw’ing some common things is the bare minimum human decency. Keep it safe for others. 

Tag a post “long post” if it’s really long. Pretty self explanatory. Don’t make people scroll through all that please lol. 

You can use them to organize your blog. This is more of a pro tip, if you’d like to not miss a post in your blog, cause they will start pilin’ up soon enough.

#Liveblogging is pretty fun. If you’d like to talk to people during streams, don’t forget to add the relevant tags still! Again, you won’t show up on people’s dash otherwise.

Whew! That got out of hand. Hopefully I didn’t bore you too much. Check out blogs like @heritageposts and @hellsite-hall-of-fame to honor our past o7. @mcytblr-hall-of-fame too maybe :eyes:. Anyways, don’t forget the most important rule of them all:

Enjoy your stay! You’re meant to have fun on here while also making friends (if that’s your thing). Just be kind and respectful of others, you’ll get the hang of the rest! <3