#probably be doing more fic recs later on have dozens of them marked as favorite

[haasegawa]

🔖 RinHaru Fic Rec

Ok, I rewatched all of Free! not long ago and finally, finally!, watched part 2 of Final Stroke this week, so I'm having A LOT of RinHaru feelings and part of controlling them (or just making them worse, really) means reading (and, in this case, rereading) a bunch of fanfics. And, unfortunately, this fic doesn't seem to get as much attention as if deserves in my point of view, so I'm putting it out there (and don't worry, there are no spoilers whatsoever):

Kiss, Interrupted by starstarfairy [T, 5.8k]

Seriously, how hard is it to get five minutes alone with his boyfriend?

I'm a sucker for established relationship fics and I am absolutely IN LOVE with this one, ok? It's basically 5k words of kissing and affection, featuring romantic and cute Rin, confident and smitten Haru and it just captures Rin and Haru's relationship exactly the way I imagine it'd be like. I got cavities reading this but it's so much more than fluff, they're still sarcastic and competitive and UGH do yourself a favor and just go read it.

[king0fcrows]

I have got to start using all the tools available on Ao3.

I love the site, have donated, have used it for years.

Never learned to properly use the site to its full potential.

Like, for example, I completely forget the kudos button exists most of the time.

I comment a lot—I’m not shy about commenting—but when I started reading fics it was on livejournal (with what was little more than a shell account I also never learned to use properly because livejournal was already in decline by then) and fanfic.net.

If either had a “like/kudos” function I don’t remember it and never used them. (I remember “favoriting” but that was more similar to bookmarking, if I recall correctly.) I was so use to these sites formats that when I transitioned to Ao3 as my primary site, I really struggled to understand Ao3’s formatting and never actually learned how to use it properly.

So I never bothered to start using kudos, but I also never bothered using bookmarks or the “mark for later” functions.

To this day I just open up a dozen tabs to track potentially interesting stories, even though that’s really chaotic and I’ve probably end up missing out on lots of good fics when the tabs inevitably get closed out of a week down the line.

I think it’s only somewhere in the last few months that I went through and bookmarked my absolute top fics. I have a (admittedly outdated) rec list ON THIS BLOG of my faves, but literally never bothered bookmarking them in the main account I use to access fanfic.

It makes no sense. I know that! I’m literally only making things harder on myself.

Like, I was just reminded on a post by someone I follow that bookmarks have a private or public function. And that there is an option to rec them through bookmarks! And that can you can, like, make entire groups of fics with completely different authors and fandom but tag them together! SO YOU CAN HAVE ALL YOUR FAVORITE FICS THAT FOLLOW A SIMILAR TROPE GROUPED TOGETHER?!

GOD WHY HAVEN’T I BEEN UTILIZING THESE FUNCTIONS?

(I know why. It’s because I feel like I can’t “start” doing this for new fics until I go back through and organize all the old fics in my histroy tag--WHICH I ALSO DIDN’T KNOW EXISTED UNTIL A FEW MONTHS AGO OH MY GOD I HAVE LOST TRACK OF SO  MANY FANTASTIC FICS BECAUSE I NEVER BOTHERED SIGNING INTO MY ACCOUNT WHILE READING BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW IT COULD KEEP TRACK OF WHAT YOU WERE READING AUTOMATICALLY AND AGAIN I NEVER USE THE BOOKMARK FUNCTION WHICH I KNOW IS FOOLISH WHHHHYYYYY AM I LIKE THIS?!--but that is literally 57 pages of fics to get through and I KNOW it makes no sense to wait, that I should start using the tools immediately, it’s just....It’s the same weird compulsion that tells me “you have to read/watch/listen to all of these things in their exact order even if they’re completely non-sequential and unrelated plot wise.” It’s nonsensical but the compulsion is strong. I have this weird feeling that I’m “cheating” somehow if I don’t do everything in a specific order...)