#read tags on ao3

[quillfulwriter]

Words: 1020 | Rating: T

Halsin is trans, and he offers to talk to Astarion about how the world has changed in that regard over the past 200 years.

Kofi commissions are also open ☕

[givemeureyes]

day 1 without ao3: i have gone through all 5 stages of grief multiple times and have invented a 6th. i will not disclose what the 6th stage of grief is.

[ao3-crack]

(x)

[writeouswriter]

People sorting ao3 solely by stats and only clicking on fics with a certain amount of kudos or comments, you will not survive the winter, nor the summer, nor at all, *brings out knife,* run

[pachimation]

the past vs the present vs hat guy

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

posting this with absolutely no context

[roughlytwentytwofrogs]

There is an issue in this community with misstagged fics on AO3, specifically in the FxF tags. I don't know if it's going to reach the actual people or not but I'm still going to put this here:

A lot of MxM and FxM are tagging FxF ships in the main relationship category despite the ship itself only being written in the background.

Which is a problem because when you go into your ship tag to find fics of your ship, a ridiculous amount of them are off topic. And while yes you can lower that amount significantly by filtering and tag exclusion, AO3 has a built in feature that is made to avoid this.

I am going to use the Shadowzel tag for that because it's the most popular FxF ship on there and it's also one of the most misstagged rn. As of right now, there is 607 fics in the Shadowzel tag without filter. If you restrict the search to only include FxF, you are down to 397 fics. That is more than a third gone!

And it gets rid of some shadowzel content as well, so it's either you filter that out or you have to scroll through a tag where 1 out of 3 fics are about Astarion, Gale, Halsin, etc instead of the ship you looked up.

If your fic, let's take for example a Tav x Astarion, has either consistent mention of Shadowheart x Lae'zel, the most popular wlw ship, or has them in the background as support characters, or even just mentions them as a funny little wink and you want to make sure your readers know they are in here, you do not use the relationship tag! You go down to the additional tags and add "Minor Lae'zel/Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate)".

Unless the pairing you are tagging is the main focus or have a significant role and spotlight on them, you should not use the relationship tag! It clogs the feed for no reason, AO3 is not a website where you have to advertise your posts to the most tags possible.

Adding a visual for clarity:

[rosanishelios]

canon-typical homophobia

[macaulaytwins]

“my pussy has taken me places I wouldn’t go with a gun”

the places in question:

[ecileh]

[quillfulwriter]

Rating: T | Words: 500

☕ Tip me on coffee if you liked the read!

[kulai]

DAY 24: First Date

check this out on twt ! based on ch16 of "between the shadow and the soul" on ao3. ANOTHERR heavy recommendation!

[ao3-crack]

(x)

[stiffyck]

shoutout to agent stone for being the prettiest man alive

[the-dot]

saw something that made me do a double take so: poll

1. for the purposes of this poll, if you have ever written any amount of fanfiction, even just a sentence, even if you don't post it, that counts

2. if you write fanfiction but don't read it please tell me why. i want to study you