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dittomander · 2 years

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Advice for New AO3 Users

In the vein of all those "guide for new tumblr users" posts, bc someone might as well make one, right? ao3 itself has a pretty robust FAQ that goes into far more detail on the mechanics of the site than I can realistically cover, so my main focus is going to be on common concerns/issues I've seen myself:

General Site Notes

or: AO3 is not actually a social media site:

there is no algorithm. there are tags you can search and stats you can sort by, and that's how you're gonna find stuff to read, and that's how readers are gonna find your work. Even tumblr at least has the explore tab; AO3 truly has no "recommended" feature.

like yes, getting more kudos and comments will bump your fic in the "sort by kudos/comments" filters, but this isn't a targeted algorithm pushing your fic toward certain people. there's no way to be "good for the algorithm."

so the way you get people to engage with your work is by presenting it in a way that makes it easy for people to find what they're looking for. You will want to tag your fic appropriately. You will want to write a summary. You will NOT want to be self-deprecating about your skill. Remember, your fic is likely one of hundreds, if not more. If people can't gauge what to expect, or if you tell them to expect nothing, then there's always another fic they can check out instead.

a minor thing, but Wattpad folks, no one on AO3 calls them "books". Like I'm not gonna say you have to stop but just understand that when you call your fic a book, you are advertising to everyone on the site that you are an Outsider.

Tagging Guidelines

honestly I think I see "I don't know how to tag things" with even more frequency than "I don't know how to write summaries" but I'd argue that for AO3 the tagging is probably more important since tags are what people use to actually filter/search for fics, so some general tips on weird things I've seen:

Archive Warnings: these are the major character death/underage/noncon/graphic violence tags, as well as the "chose not to use archive warnings" and "no warnings apply". Those latter two are inherently incompatible with any of the former four. If you say "no archive warnings apply", then using an archive warning anyway is just confusing. Similarly, "chose not to use archive warnings" and any of the actual warnings just... doesn't make any sense. If you're using an archive warning, then you, uh, did choose to use archive warnings. I've seen people tag with all 6 at once. This does not inspire confidence in the quality of the fic, it does not draw people in - it just makes people doubt that you know what you're doing.

Relationships: the "&" is for your platonic/familial/friendship relationships. the "/" is for your romantic/sexual relationships. I've seen people make cases for both for QPRs, but let's be real most fics are not about those so that's a bit of an edge case. Please remember that tags are used for finding and filtering -- when you mis-tag a "/" as a "&", not only will people looking for a romantic fic of your couple have a harder time finding it, but you're also making it so that the people that don't want to see that pairing can't filter it out.

Characters: You probably don't need to tag your OCs by name. Remember: finding and filtering. If you're the only person using them, then having those names in your character list aren't going to actually communicate anything about the fic or help people find it, because people outside of your circle aren't going to know who those characters are. This can also be confusing to the tag wranglers and people new to the fandom, who won't know if those characters are even in the source material or not. The multitude of variants on the "Original Character" tag is fine for most circumstances.

Additional Tags: This is the section for any other information you want to convey about your work, and it's the section I see people struggle the most with. Suggestions for the sorts of things you can cover here include: genre, timeline notes (i.e. pre-canon/post-canon/canon-divergent/AU/missing scene/etc.), tropes, themes, content warnings, and other features of the story. If you're having a hard time coming up with things to tag, AO3 will have suggestions if you start typing something. Remember that the goal is to communicate information about your fic that you think people might want to either find or avoid.

People using the tags for brief author's notes is also a pretty common thing. The keyword is brief, though. Lengthy commentary in the tags can distract from the actual content tags and can mess with screen readers.

Going overboard with tags is also an issue for that same reason. This is a "use your best judgement" type of thing.

Use your best judgement on what you consider "in" your work to tag. If a character only shows up for an irrelevant background scene, for example, does it really make sense to tag them? People looking for that character will be disappointed that they were barely in it, and people looking to avoid that character might just filter out your fic even if they wouldn't have been put off by the cameo.

You can edit your tags after posting a work, at any time. As the content of your story changes, you can update the tags accordingly. You don't actually have to tag everything that you plan to include in your story right at the start, and in fact, you probably shouldn't. See the above bullet for why. If your fic is abandoned or otherwise slow to update, having misaligned tags can be confusing or disappointing.

Also: DON'T CENSOR TAGS. Your fic will not get taken down for having the word "die" in the tags I promise. Censoring tags just messes with the filters and makes it harder for people to avoid potentially triggering content.

Posting Tips and Tricks

bc there's a lot of weird formatting happening in fics lately and I'm not sure how common knowledge this stuff actually is:

there is a pair of buttons in the "Work Text" section labelled "HTML" and "Rich Text", respectively. AO3 defaults you to HTML. The average user is gonna want to switch that to Rich Text. HTML gets you far more direct control over how your work appears, but if you're just using a basic word processor's formatting options, it's gonna be way easier to just copy-paste into Rich Text.

paragraph breaks in the Rich Text editor are already double spaced. You only need one return between paragraphs. If you manually double-space, or if you copy-paste in something double-spaced, there's going to be a ton of empty, floating space between your paragraphs when you actually post.

when you post chapters for a multi-chapter fic, you will generally have the option to add a chapter specific summary and notes. This is not the case for chapter 1. When you post the first chapter of the fic, the summary and notes that you wrote are associated with the entire fic, not just that chapter.

What this means for summaries is that if you want a Chapter 1 specific summary, separate from the fic summary, you'll have to go back and edit that in after you post it.

Notes follow the same principle, but I specifically want to mention end notes: If you add your "chapter 1" end notes at story creation instead of editing them in later, those notes are now associated with the entire fic, which means that as you add new chapters, they will no longer appear at the end of chapter 1 and instead get repeatedly pushed to the end of the latest chapter.

Editing an existing chapter won't send a notification email to subscribers or bump the fic in the "recently updated" list, no matter how much you've added, so no one will have an easy way to know there's new content. If you want to make sure people are seeing your work, you'll want to either post your additions as new chapters or just wait to post your story at all until the chapter you're writing is actually finished.

Next to the Post button is a Preview button for seeing what your work will look like before you actually post it. This is extremely helpful, especially if you're using the HTML editor, to make sure everything looks the way you're expecting. There's many a wall of text in the archive that could've been saved if their author had just checked first to see if it looked good.

Feedback Etiquette

readers: 99 out of 100 authors are going to absolutely love getting comments. you do not have to worry about being annoying or not mattering or not knowing what to say. If you leave a comment on someone's fic, you will probably make their day, and it may even lead to more conversation and/or content.

that said, it is generally considered poor form to offer unsolicited criticism on someone's fic, no matter how well-intentioned or constructive it might be. Remember, fan authors are hobbyists - they're writing for the fun of it, and it can be really disheartening when something you're doing For Fun is met with judgement. Try to remember that fic authors are real people, behind the screen. They created something that you can read, for free.

writers: what that means for you is that if you genuinely want concrit on your work, you will have to explicitly welcome it somewhere in your notes.

HOWEVER: writers - you are also not entitled to comments in any way, shape, or form, and the line between encouraging people to comment and guilting them into doing so is actually not that fine. Comments are not some sort of admission price to your work - that's already covered by someone spending their time to read it. Please remember that the people reading your fics are real people, too. They do not exist solely to provide you with validation.

also, frankly... some of you could probably afford to offer some benefit of the doubt to comments outside the mold of what you consider "good". The person who asked when the next update is probably doesn't think you're an automaton that exists to write tirelessly for them - they probably just like your fic and are excited to see more. The person that said your fic reminds them of show XYZ probably wasn't accusing you of plagiarism - they're probably just making connections, which is like, analysis 101. The ideas of "it doesn't matter what you comment just comment!!!" and "these are the DOs and DON'Ts of commenting!" aren't exactly the most compatible. The only reason I even isolated concrit above is because that's actually explicitly critical - most things people list as "incorrect" ways to comment are, uh, probably pretty benign.

look, the tl;dr on comments is just please remember that you are not the only real person on the internet and that communication is hard, so try your best to be kind and support one another.

On Kudos

I'm pulling this out to its own section actually bc the feedback section was getting very long. Anyway:

Kudos is a measure of popularity, not a measure of quality. There's some poorly written stuff out there that's swimming in kudos and some absolute gems that have next to nothing.

Factors that can play into how many kudos a fic gets: the time posted, how many places the fic was crossposted, pre-establishment of the author, fandom size, crossover familiarity, ship/character/trope popularity. Again, there's no algorithm for this - these factors don't affect a fic's relative popularity because of some behind the scenes code that's playing favorites, it's just dependent on what people are most likely to look for or be willing to check out.

the more niche something is, the less attention it's going to get, and that's something you've kinda got to be prepared to accept.

what all this means is there's not really any value in comparing your stats to other writers. You're just setting yourself up for disappointment the second something disproportionate happens - of course Bonnie BNF's fics are getting more attention than yours; she's been writing the fandom's most popular ship for years already. She has ten times your audience out of the gate.

That said, quality is still a factor. It's not the end-all-be-all deciding criteria for what's going to get a fic attention, but it does matter. And I'm not saying this to be cold or disparaging, but to be realistic. I've seen people fall just as readily into the trap of citing their work's subject's unpopularity as the only reason for their lack of feedback, all while ignoring glaring issues with their pacing, grammar, or characterization, as I've seen people fall into the trap of beating themselves up for not being able to match the pace of a fandom's more established authors. Sometimes the answer to "how do I get more kudos" really is just "write better fic."

Look, at the end of the day, though, neither the attitude of "I am but the helpless victim of fandom preference" nor "omg my work must be such shit" is actually very helpful. There's always room for improvement, and fandom can also be a bit of a crapshoot. Your best bet is to just focus on how you feel about your work rather than on how strangers on the internet do, because that's damn near impossible to predict. Yes, validation and feedback is important, believe me, I'm a writer too, I know, but you've gotta have some intrinsic motivation to be happy as a writer.

So that's about all that I personally wanted to cover - like I said at the start, the AO3 FAQ is pretty good, and this post wasn't really meant to be comprehensive. I'm more than welcome to any site veterans that want to add more tips on things they've seen, especially re: posting and tagging advice.

Otherwise though, the main takeaways here are just be nice to people, be honest about your fic's content, manage your expectations, and please preview before you post - your readers' eyes will thank you.

#ao3 #archive of our own #writing #fanfiction #long post #idk someone's probably made something like this already #but every 'how to use tumblr' post under the sun crossed my dash last month #and I didn't see any posts w/ tips on ao3 #i dunno maybe this is all common knowledge and not helpful #but at least in my circles whenever I share the 'html/rich text' or the 'chapter 1 summary' thing someone says its new info

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29daffodils · 2 months

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and this is not even just "oh i am not a fan of this ship but i like your art/fic so much!"

those are understandable, i think most creators aren't very bothered about the fact that you don't ship something but you love their work.

what changes things is unwanted criticism, or like i said, backhanded compliment - "oh, this was so ooc but i like your fic/art!" - or simply just being all passive aggressive like - "i can never see them doing this!!"

like, listen, if you are on ao3 and it's appropriately tagged (which i always make sure of, for most important themes in a fic), then the fact that you find a writing sample OOC is on you. if you cannot see them doing something like "pet play" when the author has outlines in the notes why they chose that theme,

DO. NOT. READ. IT.

PERIOD.

i don't want to wake up at 7 in the morning, excited to know someone commented, and then tear up after reading something like that. maybe i am a pussy, but idc.

i will also state here, that i know social interaction is tough for a lot of people. i tend to say stuff that comes to my head immediately, in my worse circumstances i've lacked a brain-to-mouth filter and have learned my lessons the hard way.

but this is the net. you have the option of deleting/editing before you post. if you have trouble articulating, but want to comment anyway to show your gratitude, please write a draft note! if i can write 4 drafts for a 3k word fic before posting, surely you can try with at least 1 before you comment if you find it hard to do otherwise. because once you've posted something and the creator has seen and it's made some impact, there's very little you can do to take it back besides apologize. and sometimes that doesn't cut it.

anyway,

CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY!!

#fandom etiquette #fandom #thai bl #my rants #my posts #source : 29daffodils

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lothricshopsathottopic · 4 years

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I really need to get something off my chest. This is really, really long, so forgive me, in advance.

Please, keep in mind I'll be talking about mental illness here - specifically, anxiety and depression - and that might be triggering for you. If so, please, PLEASE skip this post (and if you're having suicidal thoughts, I've compiled a list of hotlines at the end of this post that you can call; skip to the bottom.) I don't want you to hurt yourself by reading this. Go look at some fanart, or watch funny videos, or something. I want you to be well. You deserve to be well, no matter what your mind may tell you; it's lying through its fucking teeth. Trust me.

That having been said: ya'll really need to start tagging posts with triggering subjects appropriately.

I'm saying this because I have been diagnosed with GAD and depression around 8 years ago. For 8 years, my mind was a fucking hellscape; I hated myself, every part of me. I felt like no one really gave a shit about me, like no one would care if I died or disappeared, and that I deserved to die anyway because I was such a shit person.

I've lost count of how many nights I cried myself to sleep; that was just something that happened to me, then. It became routine, just as routine as brushing your teeth is for most people. Speaking of which, I'd spend several days in bed, too, without showering, without brushing my teeth, without changing clothes, without getting up to do anything but go to the bathroom. Some days, I'd eat nothing.

I contemplated suicide several times. I researched ways to make it as painless as possible, the quickest way I could kill myself. I never self-harmed by cutting, or drugs, or alcohol, but I did it in other ways. I deprived myself of food, of water, of sleep, of showering. I beat myself up mentally, as much as possible, as often I could. I didn't want to talk to my friends; I was convinced they all only tolerated me. Whenever I did talk to them, I hid my state of mind so well they always convinced themselves I was fine. I was convinced I was ugly, undesireable and unlovable. This all was despite having been on meds and seeing a psychiatrist regularly.

But worst than the depression, in my opinion, was the goddamn fucking anxiety. Feeling afraid of everything all the time takes an enormous toll on you; it cripples you and stops you from doing things that are normal to most people; sometimes even initiating a conversation was, for me, a mountain impossible to climb. The anxiety made me want to kill myself just as much - if not more - than the depression, because, surely, death couldn't possibly be worse than what my fears turned into likely possibilities in my mind. I was convinced dying would hurt less. Death scared me less than the shit in my head 24/7.

The reasons I held on, were my parents, whom I logically knew love me dearly - even if my mind made me feel like they didn't - and the things I still wanted to experience. I wanted to go to Vegas, and Japan, and Germany, and Norway, and Mexico; I wanted to see the world. I wanted to play all of the games I was excited for, finish all of the ongoing shows and fics I was watching and reading, as well as revisit old media I used to love. I wanted to reread my favorite books. I wanted to have a girlfriend. I wanted to finish my fics in progress, as well as start the ones I'd been thinking about. I wanted to perfect my drawing techniques. I wanted to learn other languages. I wanted to listen to my favorite songs again. I wanted to go swimming again; I've always loved swimming. My parents, my hobbies and entertainment were what made me hold on despite how much I was screaming at myself to give up, and no matter how much people told me my hobbies and passions were worthless. I looked at childhood pictures of myself and saw how happy I was in them; I longed to be happy again. I thought about how sad that little kid would be if she knew her future self would be contemplating suicide. I wanted to believe being this happy again was possible, so I kept going.

Thankfully, I changed psychiatrists. I changed my meds. I got a therapist. Things started to look up again for me. Over two years, I managed to recover from a 8-year long crippling depression. I'm no longer suicidal. I no longer despise every bone in my body. Of course, I have bad days; depression never really goes 100% away. You just end up finding a way to deal with it and make it hurt much less. Meds and therapy are only two of the things that help you with that (though they are crucial.)

One thing that didn't really get better, though, was the anxiety. No matter how much I tried, I was never able to turn my catastrophic thoughts off. The meds suppress them a bit, but depending on the day, they're still way too overwhelming. Meditation doesn't help. Videos and games don't help. The thoughts are always screaming at me, gnawing at the back of my mind, and once they break through and make me notice them, it takes days for them to leave - and even then, they don't leave completely. It's especially worse because you can't control what other people say or do around you; a lot of them know you have an illness, and say triggering stuff anyway, because people don't really understand how debilitating a mental illness can be. I won't lie; sometimes there's still that little bitch at the back of my mind whispering, "if you killed yourself you'd be able to avoid all this scary shit, you know," but I manage to stomp it into nothing most of the time. Still, unfortunately, you can't avoid seeing or hearing triggering things all of the time.

Which brings me to the reason I'm writing this in the first place.

See, you can't control what people say around you, but you can control most of what you see on the internet. Tumblr has a tag filter. I myself use it a lot; to filter out NOTPs or topics I'm not interested in, but mostly, I use it to filter things that'll take away my sleep at night (I actually think there should be an option to completely hide posts containing filtered tags and pretend they don't even exist in the first place, instead of simply showing a message saying that they were blocked, since seeing the message alone already will make me anxious about what the post might contain, but I digress.)

So why is it that I'm still coming across a lot of triggering things on here?

I understand some things might slip. It's not as if I haven't failed to properly tag posts before; I get that you'll sometimes look at something you don't find triggering, and so it won't even cross your mind that it might trigger someone else; sometimes it's something that's, to you, so mundane or banal you can't fathom how it might send someone into an episode or a downward spiral. But mental illness is like that. Different things trigger different people.

I am BEGGING you: PLEASE tag your posts appropriately. It doesn't matter how minor a thing you think it is; if it's a dog post, put the tag "dog" in there. If it's a post about politics, tag it as "politics." If it contains insects, tag it as such. Even if it's a humor-centered post. Tag it anyway.

I know people need to stay informed about important things. That doesn't matter. A lot of people on Tumblr come here to relax or have some fun, and from my personal experience, a lot of us have a history with mental illness, or are struggling with it to this day; a lot of the time it's debilitating. I see a shit ton of suicidal people on here, venting. I used to be one of them.

I use Tumblr to distract myself, to see funny and cute shit. Most of the triggering things here are stuff people already know about anyway; in fact, they're probably bombarded with them everywhere else on the internet. You don't have the right to shove stuff down mentally ill people's throats because you think they need to know it and spread the word, no matter if you're mentally ill yourself. People have the right to choose what they want to see on social media during their leisure time. We know what we can and can't handle. And a lot of us can't handle the news right now. I never could, to be honest, so I always filtered my exposure to it very heavily, but now I find myself avoiding it entirely, because it just sends me into a fit and takes away my sleep. You're not doing us a favor by making us see this shit; you're making our illness worse. There's NOTHING wrong with us deciding that something is too much for us to deal with; we are not ignorant, we are not naive and we are not blissful. In fact, we're very aware of these issues; painfully so. They're probably already eating away at us, and are the reason we try to distract ourselves in the first place. We're avoiding this kind of shit to avoid harming ourselves even further than our mind already harms us. Some of us do this to avoid suicidal urges, even. You cannot take this right from people. You don't get to decide what we should and shouldn't see online; we do. And you don't get to scream at us when we decide not to look at something we KNOW will destroy us.

Of course I'm not saying you SHOULDN'T post and reblog these things; it's your blog. You have the right to post and reblog whatever you want, as long as it doesn't violate the terms of service (i.e. p*rn, gore, bigotry, etc.) But PLEASE have the mindfulness to tag your posts appropriately. It's hard enough for all of us to deal with all this shit every day, let alone right now, let alone during a year that has been, for the most part, a complete shitshow. You never know how many more straws it'll take to break the camel's back. And for the love of Christ, DO NOT yell at us if we decide to focus on the positive and ignore the negative on Tumblr. You never know what a person is going through; focusing on the positive on their social media might be the only way someone's found to fight suicidal urges.

I, unfortunately, felt forced to unfollow people I've followed for years, because the onslaught of posts - a lot of them untagged - that I found triggering, this year, were starting to become overwhelming for me. If any of you are reading this, please don't take it personally. You've done nothing wrong, and you're all wonderful people. I unfollowed you because I thought it best for my mental health and wellbeing, during such a trying time. I really don't have the mental or emotional strength to deal with bad news anymore. I just got better, and I intend to keep myself that way. Seeing all of that is just gonna make me fall into that old hole again, and I don't know if I'll be able to climb back out if that happens. I'll do what I can whenever I can, and, on Tumblr, I'll signal boost donation pages, awareness posts about racism, LGBTQphobia and privilege, and petitions, but when it comes to everything else, I'm focusing on the positive, and my goal with reblogs is to brighten my followers' day if only a little, and signal boost posts asking for help to those who need it. Regardless, I hope you all are doing wonderful, and I wish you all the best.

TL;DR: please, PLEASE tag all of your posts appropriately if you think there might be anything even remotely potentially triggering to someone in them. Mental illness is a very insidious, irrational thing and the smallest crap can send us into a downward spiral that can last days or even weeks. Despite how the term "trigger" has become a meme, triggers are something very real and very debilitating to the vast majority of us who struggle with mental illness. There's nothing funny about real triggers. Please, take your followers' well-being and safety into consideration.

Finally, I feel like I really need to say this: if you're having suicidal thoughts of any kind, PLEASE do not hesitate to call for help. Below is a list of hotlines you can call if you're thinking about killing yourself. Please do not do it, I promise your death would negatively impact someone, and you would be missed. You are loved, you are valid, and you deserve to live and be happy. I know you're probably really fucking tired of hearing this, but it does get better. I thought it never would, but it did, for me. It will for you, too.

Algeria: 0021 3983 2000 58

Argentina: (54-11) 4758-2554

Armenia: (2) 538194

Australia: 131114

Austria: Telefonseelsorge 24/7 : 142 Rat auf Draht 24/7 : 147 (youth)

Bahamas: (2) 322-2763

Barbados: Suicide Hotline: Samaritan Barbados (246) 4299999

Belgium: Suicide Hotline: Stichting Zelfmoordlijn 1813

Bolivia: 3911270

Bosnia & Herzegovina: 080 05 03 05

Botswana: National Lifeline: 3911270

Brazil: 188

Bulgaria: 0035 9249 17 223

Canada: 1 (833) 456 4566

China: 800-810-1117

Colombia: 24/7 Helpline in Baranquilla: 1(00 57 5) 372 27 27 24/7 Hotline Bogota: (57-1) 323 24 25

Cyprus: 8000 7773

Denmark:4570201201

Estonia: 3726558088; in Russian: 3726555688

Finland: 010 195 202

France: 0145394000

Germany: 08001810771

Ghana: 2332 444 71279

Guyana: 223-0001

Holland: 09000767

Hong Kong: 852 2382 0000

Hungary: 116123

India: 8888817666

Indonesia: 1-800-273-8255

Iran: 1480

Ireland: +4408457909090

Israel: 1201

Italy: 800860022

Jamaica: 1-888-429-KARE (5273)

Japan: 810352869090

Jordan: 110

Latvia: 371 67222922

Lebanon: 1564

Liberia: 6534308

Luxembourg: 352 45 45 45

Malaysia: (06) 2842500

Malta: 179

Mauritius: +230 800 93 93

Mexico: 5255102550

Netherlands: 900 0113

New Zealand : 1737

Nigeria: 234 8092106493

Norway: +4781533300

Philippines: 028969191

Poland: 5270000

Portugal: 21 854 07 40 and 8 96 898 21 50

Romania: 0800 801200

Russia: 0078202577577

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: (9784) 456 1044

Serbia: (+381) 21-6623-393

Singapore: 1 800 2214444

Spain: 914590050

South Africa: 0514445691

South Korea: (02) 7158600

Sri Lanka: 011 057 2222662

Sudan: (249) 11-555-253

Sweden: 46317112400

Switzerland: 143

Thailand: (02) 713-6793

Tonga: 23000

Trinidad and Tobago: (868) 645 2800

United Arab Emirates: 800 46342

United Kingdom: 08457909090

United States: (800) 273-8255

If you know of any I've forgotten, please don't be afraid to let me know. I'll add it to the list.

Stay safe, everyone.

#vent #long #personal #trigger warning #tw #triggers #tw: suicide #tw: depression #tw: mental illness #mental health #tags #tw: self-harm #tw: GAD #actually depressed #actually suicidal #actually anxious #Tumblr posts #serious #hotlines

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missemarissa · 7 years

Note

but here's the thing there's still no need to be a dick about people's triggers k thnx bye

Ohhhhhhhh my god... See. No. Here’s “the thing,” honey. When you go around on your blogs making posts calling me and my fellow authors disgusting, sexual deviants, etc. just because you don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about??? No, no, no, I lost my already very fucking thin level of patience.

I ALWAYS tag my stuff appropriately. ALWAYS. ALWAYS. ALWAYS. Because I do care, deeply about triggers and people reading something that might upset them. So when it comes to fic, I am considerate as fuck. And I will continue to be considerate with tags, because I care. You can count on my fics ALWAYS having a warning for content if applicable. Always.

If you’re triggered by the mere existence of a fic? I suggest you get the fuck out of the habit of reading fanfiction because, now that this fandom is expanding with the popularity of the bellarke ship, you can expect to only find more triggering material on AO3. Again, it is NOT a “safe space.” At all. New authors are coming around every day, and not all of them are going to have content that pleases you. Get used to it or get the fuck out... As this fandom gets bigger and bigger and we have more writers producing more fics (we’ve been getting 20+ updates a day! which is amazing!), you’re going to see more triggering content. It’s what happens with all of the big fandoms. If that upsets you, I sincerely suggest you take care of yourself and stop reading fanfic on mobile or other platforms where you can’t install filtering extensions for AO3. Seriously. (That advice is not meant to be condescending. I do want readers to take care of themselves.).

People are not asking for proper warning when they’re asking things to stay on LJ. You’re asking for fics not to exist on a platform that was designed specifically to host their content (AO3). Sorry. You don’t have a fucking leg to stand on now get down from your horse. We’re not going anywhere...

Anyway, back to replying to this ask, sent by yet another period stain of a human being in this fandom:

I’m through being “nice” or “not a dick” here. Like I said, when it counts, I am respectful as fuck of your triggers when it comes to tagging my fics. And I will continue to do so, where it counts.

BUT, when it comes to being publicly insulted and called a sex offender for supporting and writing in the kink meme, and watching my friends be drug through mud the same way? No. I'm not considerate of that kind of childish behavior. So yes, I'm going to be condescending and bitchy in reply when your illiterate ass is being fucking stupid and reptilian. You want to be a shitty little fucker and whine and complain like a goddamn toddler on your blog? Don't be surprised when the people you've been shitting on decide to call you out for the depressed and depressing piece of shit that you are.

And you know what? Fuck vague blogging. I'm talking about bob-morley, idontgiveaneffie, and adrianaquagmire, at the very least.

You don't know my history, you know nothing of the abuse I've endured in real fucking life, but I refuse to use my past as a sob story to justify attacking others... (But, clearly, I will strike back if attacked. Fuck “turning the other cheek” right now...).

Also, for all the people who have felt like they had to share really personal and traumatic details of their past just to be taken seriously by the people in this fandom? I am humbled by your courage and bravery, and shame on the people who have made you feel like you had to expose yourself like that. My heart goes out to you, and I hope you’re able to find peace, despite the bullshit on this fucked up hell site.

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