#I HAVE REALLY OVERTAGGED AND I AM NOT SORRY

[olderthannetfic]

I've had one person get mad at me for tagging something because it's "condescending" to them to do so and another thank me for it because it's how their brother died and they're used to it not being tagged and stumbling onto it. They can read it, they just need a heads-up so it doesn't smack them in the face out of the blue.

I know it'll anger a lot of people who follow your blog but honestly I'm more happy that I didn't randomly trigger memories of someone's brother's death than I am sorry I annoyed the first person by "condescending" to them. If 'accidental death via ___' in the tags offends someone to read then I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be rude here, but I find that way more sensitive than the person who's actually traumatized. That person actually went through shit. You (the complainer, not you specifically) read one tag. There's twelve tags total. Most of them are pairings + specifying what ending of the game the fic is set after. I do my best not to overtag but if a description of content angers someone that's just beyond my ability to warn for. What, should I put "TW: this author uses TWs for specific and graphically depicted causes of death" at the very start of the tags so people don't get offended?

I'm sure someone is going to cry, "you should just tick the box for character death, not tag a specific cause of death!" but I would like to invoke an old fandom stand-by line in response, "Don't like, don't read." If my using a tag offends someone, they should just block me and move on. Why am I in the wrong for tagging a method of death being caused?

I really think if someone finds something that small and easy to skip offended, they have a victim mentality. Even though they're on the opposite side of the spectrum of antis in terms of preferred reading material, they have the same "you have hurt me and I intend to make it your problem" mentality, and it's just embarrassing because... they're adults. Old enough to know better. This is the internet. Not everyone is going to cater their content to you, including their tagging practices, and people aren't obligated to change their tags so that your delicate feelings aren't hurt. The world is not about you.

It wouldn't annoy me so much if this person hadn't then tracked down my tumblr - which took some doing, as I don't have that info on my AO3 profile and the names are different - to whine about it.

Bro. Bruh. Sometimes scrolling past is the mentally healthier option. Not being an anti doesn't mean you're behaving in a healthy, rational manner.

--

The appropriate response to most "overtagging" is to roll one's eyes and move on, yes.

I'm certainly happy if an actual person who's talking to me was helped by a tag. What I won't do is tag things I don't care about tagging "just in case" some hypothetical person could avoid being triggered.

[atundratoadstool]

Welcome to this very old blog: bringing you yearly Dracula reads with commentary for ten whole years. A few things you might want to know:

I still tag like it’s 2013 and my blog probably looks weirdly overtagged now. It should be very easy to find every post I have ever made/reblogged about given characters, adaptations, or concepts though. You can check my blog’s header if you want a bunch of links to major posts I’ve made about Dracula and vampires over the years or tags for former re-reads.  If you need me to tag any harder so you can avoid some sort of topic, please let me know.

I liked Dracula so hard I went to grad school for it. I am now a doctor (as of the end of the month) and used to be a professor who occasionally taught Dracula. If you think for any reason I was your Dracula professor at some point, please don’t let me know.

I try to keep this blog very SFW and chill. I don’t really do the DNI thing, but I block whenever I see it as necessary and curate my feeds carefully.

I love asks, and while I presently have an impending non-academic job hunt and an infant to juggle that may cut into my time, I’m happy to answer Dracula questions when I’m able.

Hate mail goes straight into the void, as do signal boost requests I cannot authenticate.

My views on Dracula, Bram Stoker, vampires, literary scholarship, and life in general have changed a little over the past decade. Please feel free to engage with older content on this blog (I try to keep it archived and accessible for a reason), but please also understand if atundratoadstool of 2013 isn’t marching lockstep with the atundratoadstool of today.

Yes. I know the website is broken. I am very sorry, and I keep being bad at wrangling my fellow dev into fixing it.

[iero]

Hey kam! sorry to bother you but you’re a gif maker and you’re nice so I thought I’d ask you: i wanna start making gifs but im afraid of all my gifs getting no notes. do you have any tips on your gifs getting notes?

Hi anon! You're not bothering me at all! I can try and give some tips for you:

Always try and gif with the biggest quality possible. 4k is the preferred if you're giffing any kind of video/TV show/movie that offers it, but if you have to gif in 1440p/1080p, that's fine too! Also, don't forget to always sharpen your gifs if you can!

I've seen gifmakers say "Never post when the Americans are asleep." and to be honest? It's true. Definitely don't post in the middle of the night and/or when it seems like your dash is dead. I live in EST time and I never try to post a gifset earlier then, like, 8 AM or later then, like, 8 PM unless it's a My Chem show or something that's happening in the moment. Definitely use the 'schedule' option for gif posting if necessary!

Don't be afraid to tag people/use their tracked tag! The tracked tag is what is in people's bio that says '#user[THIS]' or 'tuser[THAT]'. It's definitely there for fellow gifmakers to use. I know it's tough and sometimes you feel like, "Damn, I'm gonna be bothering them if I tag them in this..." but I promise you: That's not the case 99% of the time. Most everyone who does have a tracked tag LOVES seeing people who tagged them in stuff. I have one as well if you ever want to tag me in things you create! I'd love to see it!

On that note, and this might be controversial, but I say don't be afraid to overtag your stuff. Now, I don't mean tagging gifs with tags that have nothing to do with what is being giffed, but if you feel the tag fits your gif(s), put it there!

Sometimes, it really just comes down to luck with your gifs getting notes. To be honest, I have sets that have flopped for sure, but such is life, especially if you're giffing something that doesn't have a huge Tumblr fanbase. The like/reblog ratio sucks on this site lately unfortunately, but with those tips, maybe it will help you? Let me know if you have questions/need any gifmaking tips/help! Happy to always help and thank you for asking! :)

#answered #Anonymous #Also thank you for saying I'm nice. I'm- 🥹

[terendelev]

so umm sorry if I am overtagging mutuals because bg3 really unlocked my inspiration and I have a sudden urge to gif everything lmao.

#also let me know if it is ok to tag you...

[bericas]

Teen Wolf

I’m curious about this Isaac and Kira agenda you’ve been pushing

Violet

teen wolf answered here!!

for isaac/kira

When I started shipping them: i don't remember exactly what made me think of them together!! it was probably around a year or so ago (i think it was around when i made that first kirisaac set?) but i mostly committed to it out of stubbornness because it was such lowhanging fruit!! they're sweet girl and bad boy!! she's so short and he's so tall!! they are RIFE with tropes and i don't know why they're such a rarepair

My thoughts: like said above, they're truly just lowhanging fruit. and i also think they'd play really well off each other!! they're both kind of Mischievous, and i think kira would be even moreso with isaac encouraging her, and i think isaac would have a lot more fun with it with kira encouraging him! like i think isaac does a lot of hijinks out of like Revenge and a healthy outlet for anger, whereas kira would have more fun with it. i think they'd have a lot of fun together and be really very adorable

What makes me happy about them: i just know in my heart that isaac would think the fox stuff in s5 was hot. sorry. i know there's a lot to unpack here re:the abuse in his past and i know kira going Bonkers in Yonkers would not be the best and most healthy thing for that. but i also think he'd think her getting out of bed to wave a sword around and being on so much fire when he looks at her with his werewolf eyes and flattening half the players on the lacrosse field is really hot. this would be a problem in-text. it is just also true. and again i really just think they'd have so much fun in general i just can't picture them as a ship that isn't like lighthearted and cute and fun

What makes me sad about them: they never really got to interact!!! criminal!!!!

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: there's not a ton of fic about them i don't think? it's annoying to me when they're like the fifth background ship and i have to ctrl + f to find anything in the fic and they're mentioned. like. twice. but i too am guilty of overtagging so i cannot throw the first stone here etc etc

Things I look for in fanfic: just decent characterization? i'm not that picky!! just for the isaac/kira fic to actually read as Isaac and Kira to me is all i ask, but this obviously is subjective as well

My wishlist: at this point i guess my Dream is for them to be cast in something together so i can use the footage to lie more easily. ideally they'd kiss but i'll take what i can get

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: scott and allison! either for either of them<3

My happily ever after for them: oh hmmm i think it would be fun if isaac came back for The War (read: he came back because scott needed help) and then kira came back from Underground and they could kind of bond over feeling like... displaced? it's weird to do so much growing up and come back to a place that's exactly the same and i think it would be fun for them to find comfort in each other. is this a happy ending does that count

for violet:

How I feel about this character: i love her and i think she's so fun!! i really respect and enjoy that the teen wolf girlies will get obsessed with any background character but it hurts me that violet was never one of them!! teen girl assassin is so fun!!!

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: garrett/violet obv, also theo/violet for my Kids Raised to Kill should kiss agenda, and also tracy/violet for my mean girls should get to kiss agenda, hayden/violet because i think after garrett dies (i'm sorry to garrett but he always dies in my head) she would really be interested mostly in people she could replicate that type of dynamic with and she would project on hayden and trick herself into developing real feelings, also similar thoughts for lori/violet.... i can go all day. i love to lie about violet

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: still theo/violet, tracy/violet, braeden/violet is a fun one too i think it'd be fun for braeden to like Mentor her in Conscience Having while also Killing Sometimes, i think gabe/nolan/violet could be fun (similar to the tracy agenda, this would be an au where violet infiltrates the hunters as a favor to the mccall pack who she owes a life debt from s4, and becomes reluctantly fond), and also liam/mason/violet is just really funny to think about. given. they were friends!

My unpopular opinion about this character: SHE'S FUN! WE SHOULD LIE ABOUT HER MORE AS A COLLECTIVE!

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: she should've become a nagual after kate killed her for fun

Favorite friendship for this character: theo/violet in my Head, liam/mason/violet in canon cause they're her only friends in canon and also sincerely it's just so funny to think about

My crossover ship: HMMMMM. hm. jeremy gilbert and violet could be fun? the hunters of it? the not staying dead of it? also davina clare and violet could be fun in terms of like. having such a huge capacity and capability of violence and finding where to draw the line

#asks #braedenhales #once aagain im gonna #tag for blacklist but i want it to not be #in the general tags! #so!! #please* #also #kirisaac #violet #i have more of these im gonna answer the rest tomorrow! or maybe the next day if i don't have time tomorrow #love and light!!

[kuwdora]

the emoji ask meme is super fun! 💞 & 🤭, please and thank you!

welp, sorry this took me several weeks to get around to answering! Life and anxiety happens!!

💞 Who's your comfort character?

If you had asked me this back in 2021, I would have said writing Jaskier. Easy to fall into the sunshine-y bard with lots of feelings. This year I have really enjoyed and found a lot of comfort in writing Yen. I want to do a lot more with her while she's figuring out her heart and mind after she loses and gets her magic back. There's so much character growth here to play with and explore and I like trying to see things from her perspective. I also have a significant amount of emotional investment in Leshen Eskel which has become a very interesting and happy place for me to explore. Also it's so specific and niche and it's probably a little overwhelming from the outside perspective, ahaha. This comfort character is definitely not anyone else's comfort character but ayyyyy I love my tree boyfriend, okay.

🤭 Do you have a favorite tag to use when posting your works?

AO3 tags? Or tumblr tags? I am terrible at tagging, generally, and I spend too much time fretting over it.. and I end up thinking I overtag anyway, and probably feel like people are less likely to read the stuff based on my tags but I think that's just an anxiety brain thing. Anyway, I get a lot of mileage out of the AU - Canonical Divergence and Character Study tags. One of my favorite type of AUs to write and think about are those "what if things are like just slightly different enough to continue deviating slowly as time progresses?" Which is what you can see in my "what if Eskel survives?" and "what if Yen's magic doesn't feel/work the same way once she gets it back and it's a magical disability?" So many possibilities to run with here... it's catnip. Kuwdora-nip. But I really am hammering away at the softness/tenderness tags because I want my blorbos to have some soft, squishy emotional and physical intimacy. I also do plenty Hurt/Comfort, too. My favorite freeform tags this past year is 'soft sex comedy' -- which I get to use for a second time for an upcoming fic, yayyyy.

Anyway, gonna try to answer the rest of my asks this week! I got a lot of writing on my brain this month. Feel free to send me a witcher writing ask and I swear it won't be 3 weeks for me to answer.

Fanfic Writer Emoji Ask Game

#answerdora #meme #writing #the writing process #my witcher fic thoughts

[spade-snax]

Alright, follow-up post to the "ooooo serious post" I made earlier. You can tell I wasn't really feeling too well when I made it appear ten times more serious than it really is. My apologies, I was overthinking things again.

But my point stands, it is more serious than more things and I need to step my foot down and listen to my needs. (And all the other things around me. Oh, here's a quick sorry again if this is written way worse than my previous post, I woke up a while ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about this since I went to sleep.)

What I want to talk about first is the name for the AU, being "Cingesnax". I haven't chosen the name myself, it popped up suddenly and people began using it/recognizing the AU as such and so I began tagging my reblogs and posts using the name. However to myself I still just call it "Shadow Filbo AU"

I'm not naming names, and you probably know who I am talking about but for a while there was an user who felt quite hurt by the use of "Cringe" in the name. I don't really like the name either, but I don't mind it as much.

I hammer it in often, which I am sure everyone knows and respects but - this AU is NOT meant for any harassment or making fun out of things. It's purely lighthearted fun and shitposting. It's tributing those things. To me these characters are based on me and my childhood which I poke fun at.

I can see why someone would feel hurt or targeted by the use of the word cringe around these things, considering how it's been used/overused to harm people.

I feel like I had to address this because I do not want to feel like anyone is targeted because of my creation. There won't always be people who like it, yes - but as the creator I feel liek I need to take some respolsibility here. And seeing people ahrmed is the last thing I want, really.

(The person does understand now though, they've replied to me and they're fine, so that's good, but I wonder if there's people who feel upset and haven't spoken up. I mean, that's their thing, they can just block the tag, which is why I overtag my things wich character names and such if you just don't want to see them for any reasons, especially triggers.)

I am still overthinking this and making this more serious, sure. And I KNOW not everyone will read and agree to this, but a simple solution to stop people from coming to conclusions would be figuring out a new name, or just me hammering it in even more as the og creator of this whole thing that it is lighthearted fun.

(Hell, a lot of the things being "made fun of" in this AU I genuinely like or are still a part of. Like Furry Gramble - I am a furry myself, and as I've said many times before he is heavily based on me when I was a younger, way more edgy furry kid.)

But that isn't the main and only reason why I am here and I am just overexplaining myself and making things appear way worse than they are. It's just me overthinking, really - but I still feel like letting everyone know and be responsible is important. Just a lil' reminder, a bop on the head if you will. Nothing too bad, but I fear nobody will read it if I'm not serious in the slightest.

Anyways, onto the other thing, being how this affected me as a peson. I absolutely LOVE seeing everyone's involvement and creations! I'm so very glad my creation brings joy to so many people, not only me and my friends. That it brings us together to just have fun, bond, and create. As said to me before, the fandom hasn't had anything like this before so I believe Shadow Filbo is important in that regard.

I'm still just a person and I want to talk about my work and interests to other people. Like people, you know. But I've also made it as an effort as a creator of a thing to respond to all the fanart I get, and just help people's work get out there. Same with OCs and all other creations within the AU. It all deserves to be seen, you're a great artist. And it makes me really happy to see people happy themselves when I respond to their work.

And even if the amount of stuff I've been getting daily has slowed down, it's still quite overwhelming to me sometimes. It feels like a chore sometimes and I don't wanna force a "YOOO ADSJDFEWRGREWGBRSTH" reaction onto everything because it's not always so genuine. I love seeing all the work but I won't have the excitement if reblogging it and putting in all the tags feels like a chore to me.

I want all this to be genuine and I've been feeling drained. It's absolutely amazing and I am glad that I had the chance and luck to have my work well-knowna nd noticed within a small community to be recognized even by the CREATORS of the thing I am hyperfixating on. But at the same time I feel responsible for a lot of stuff, and the effort I've made to be interactive is quite draining, as I've stated before.

It's taking a bit of a toll on me, and getting more stuff to respond to is like - dishes in the sink piling up into a bigger pile. I genuinely love all of this, but I'm just tired. I need a little break from responding to all of this... Just all the attention and stuff is making me socially exhausted. Definitely the fact I'm a massive introvert and my ADHD kicking in veery nicely. /s

I'm probably going to only reblog stuff involving my characters for the AU and Shadow Filbo himself - and any discussion in regards to the AU. Not someone else's art and OCs for the AU. There's a lot of it. Anyways, I'm starting to lag a little bit with how long this is getting. Yes, my computer is just that weak.

I'm already loosing track of what I've said but, yeah.

This AU has been great, I love it. I love you guys. I am happy for all the cool new people I've met, even if we aren't exactly friends. It's taken a bit of a toll on me and I'll do my best to take care of myself and just - not let it take effect on me. And I hope we can keep this place as accepting and inviting as it can be. Even if it takes changing the name etc. Though i know I cannot change individual folk's opinions.

Yeah, this is realy long now and I am getting double thoughts on this - and I have a test in 20 minutes so I am not sure how active I can be with this, but I doubt I'll be getting many responses yet considering it's 3 or so AM in the US. (9:50 AM here)

Cya guys, take care too. I'll upload a doodle I did yesterday as a little comfort thing after this :)

I hope I can get back onto working on OCs too, and just kinda sit down without artblock or executive dysfunction. Buh-bye now

(Also, sorry this is written in weird blocks/paragraphs, I'm doing this so it's easy on *my* eyes.)

#ramble #rambles #long #longpost #txt #shadow filbo #shadow filbo au #cringesnax #keeping that tag for now #I'm gonna have regrets once I'm less tired #The second I have slight regrets while typing or doing something I WILL regret it more later #I've made that observation well enough #But I hope what I mean comes across well enough... #bugsnax

[evilvarric666-archive]

This is gonna be long, so sorry in advance, but as someone who enjoys long fics here are my two cents:

I get why some ppl may not want 75 tags in fics, but this is gonna hurt long fic writers. On a long fic there are probably gonna be more relationships that are central to the plot that aren't the main ship. And side pairings that may be a squick to some ppl. Not to mention trigger warnings and tone tags.

For example: a long fic with the pairing Y x Z. Z had an abusive relationship, and that's gonna be explored. So the author tags abusive relationship, bc that's a trigger, but an explanation next tag saying "not current ship" or smth.

Then Y has very important friendships with some of the cast. These are central to the plot so they're tagged too.

Turns out, character W is controversial in the fandom, but they're central to the fic too. The author is gonna tag after the character tag W positive/negative; so ppl who don't wanna see positive/negative things about W can skip this.

And guess what? Ship A x B appears in this fic too. Maybe it's not that central, but this ship is also disliked by some people, so the author will tag it, so ppl can filter through.

Another problem is with media that has different mediums, like, the media Y, Z, etc are from has movies, and books, and games and a tv show. All these things actually have different stories, different enough at least that ppl may only want to see fics written for the movies! But the author wants to take plot from the movies and the books. So instead of just tagging the all media tag for that media, they also tag media (movies) and media (books)

These tags end up accumulating. And especially in long fics. The author could make the first chapter a list of tws and stuff that they keep updating, but that destroys the purpose of ao3 tags: you can't filter content like that, you can only filter tags.

I honestly think they should just find a way to delete the fics with the trolling tags, or make a readmore thing so it doesn't hurt the browsing. At the very least make the tag limit longer.

sorry in advance that this is going to be rambly and weird. I have a lot of thoughts.

I get where you're coming from but I also still disagree. Like it's definitely going to change the way longfic writers tag, but I really don't think it's going to hurt them. I think it's going to encourage more effective tagging and that that's going to be better for everybody in the long run. If anything, I think that overtagging is what's hurting longfic writers, it makes their works look unappealing, and actually important information gets buried in a wall of text.

i will admit though that I do understand better now why less room for trigger tagging is going to be an issue. My preferred tagging style is "General/umbrella warnings in the tags, with whatever elaboration/specifics the author deems necessary in an author's note/author's notes at the beginning of each chapter" (example: "animal death" in the tags, so that the filters catch it + people who can't handle the subject At All know to keep scrolling, and then the author's note specifying that its in the context of game hunting & not a pet death, so that people who were uncertain and needed more info could click in and get the specifics.) and I thought that preference was pretty universal? But apparently a lot of people use the tags as an exhaustive list of warnings, which I didn't know because when I see a work with more than, well with more than 75 tags, I just start scrolling until it's gone.

(this is a tangent and I get that my experiences are not universal. but I genuinely dislike full warning lists in the tags because, for me at least, it makes it harder for me to figure out if the story is something I can/want to read. The things I Really Do Not Want To Read about are rare, and rarely tagged the same way twice, so the exclusion filter isn't really helpful for me. I have to actually read the full list of warnings and if the things I'm looking for are sandwiched inbetween a bunch of trope/character tags in a big wall o text I am going to miss it. This has happened to me multiple times.)

I think that that's an ineffective tagging style, basically. Lots of tags is kind of the opposite of useful tags, imo. Short, to the point and consistently worded warnings are better and I think having less space will encourage people to do that. I understand why people do this other style, though, and also why it would frustrate them that they can no longer do that. I think it really sucks that ao3 let everyone wild west their website for so long that it managed to spawn like three distinct groups of people who all use the website in completely incompatible ways, and now it's at the point where any new rule implemented is going to screw a lot of people over no matter what. But I digress.

Anyways, as long as someone isn't putting Revolutionary Girl Utena levels of warnings in their tags (and if your fic needs that much... maybe you should just put yur top 10 biggest warnings on there and slap a Dead Dove Do Not Eat on the end there, yknow?), I think that 75 tags will fully accommodate them. I get that tags start adding up, but also I think a lot of people are underestimating how many tags 75 tags is.

Like to just add up how many tags are used in your example: three / pairing tags, lets go crazy and say three more & pairing tags, tag every character tag in those pairings that's twelve, #abusive relationship + #not main pairing tags, three fandom tags bc multiple source mediums, a #[controversial character] positive tag... that's 24 tags. Like all the necessary character & pairing tags are handled in less than a third of the space given (and personally I consider this slightly over tagged. I think the only character tags you should put on a fic are the very mainest/pov characters, but yknow) and honestly if you can't then figure out a way to communicate the rest of the necessary information about your fic in 51 tags and a 1250 character summary then I really don't know how to help you. I personally would have to really push myself to figure out how to put more than 75 tags on one fic, regardless of the length of the fic. And I can't help but notice that a lot of the fics I could find with over 75 tags while searching last night had a lot of... unnecessary duplicate tags, often for information that could've been easily otherwise intuited (tagging #mandolorian #mandolore #mandolorian character and #mandolorian culture on a Jango Fett pre-series fic, for example)

I do have some criticisms about the current change though. I think it would've been better to have individual tag number limits for each individual field (x number of fandom tags, x number of character tags, etc.) instead of a 75 tags over all limit (or make a "warning tags" field that's separate from "additional tags" but that's a separate essay and would... probably mean overhauling the whole site. so not very practical.) A readmore option would be good too, and I'm not sure why they didn't go for that? I also think that this change will be most effective if done in combination with other changes. Like posting very loosely or not at all enforced official tagging/style guides for the site. I really think that even a tepid attempt at standardization will increase the site's usability like, A Lot.

I'm not sure how cohesive that was. TL;DR I appreciate hearing your thoughts, mine are that I still think this is a step in the right direction. And that cutting back on overtagging will lead to more concise, effective tagging which will make browsing and filtering easier in the long run.

#ao3 tag

[staringatthetwinsuns]

So, I'm new to Tumblr. And I've been away from fandom for a long time. And it's come to my attention that I might have not gotten off on the best foot for either. So this is an attempt at a bit of explanation and apology.

Dear Tumblr, I am socially awkward. I don't have a nice diagnosis to go with that, although there probably is one in there somewhere if I only pay for ENOUGH counseling? But I have never had an easy time making friends. So if you've interacted with me in the past week or so since I set up this account? THANK YOU.  I really do LIKE making friends and talking about mutual hobbies. But it sometimes takes me awhile to really get off on the right foot with people.

If you're one of the many people whose posts I've liked or maybe responded to... I'm sorry. I don't know how to say to you that I think you're cool and that it would be really nice to interact with you.  It would be.  Some of you know me, from LJ or from FFN years ago.  I don't know how to say "Hey, you're that person who beta read a chapter for me or got my prompt in a fic exchange and I still remember that and am grateful." But I do remember, and I am grateful, and I think *everyone's* a bigger deal than me so it's really, really hard to do much more than click the little heart. I'm sorry I disappeared from the fandom.

I'm sorry that I don't really KNOW how to fandom? I'm older than some of you and younger than some of you, but my first "fandoms" were back when there was no such thing (at least if you lived in the middle of nowhere and AOL wasn't even popular yet), and it was just me and my sister and my friends being silly. So my fanon isn't always FANDOM'S fanon. And I'm not that great at dealing with it sometimes.

For what it's worth, I actually love having fandom friends who don't agree with me and like different things about the fandom, as long as they're willing to discuss it maturely. One of my best friends back in the day was an Anidala shipper.... I don't get them as a couple at all and mostly wrote OT stuff, but I LOVED discussing the fandom from different perspectives. We had some really interesting conversations, so... while I personally might like Porgs and think Rian Johnson's script writing abilities mostly suck, if you feel the opposite... that's cool. Let's talk about it. You might be able to open my eyes to something I didn't see before.

Moving on, I don't fully understand tags... here or on AO3. I don't know what kind of things other people search for.  I think it's a balance... like, I should maybe tag for major themes and characters? But if I tag "X-Wing" for example, and there's an X-wing barely mentioned in one chapter of a 20-chapter fic... that's misleading, right? I think it is, but I'm really not sure. So if I undertag or overtag, that's USUALLY because I just really, really don't understand. If you read my fic and think "Hey, this is okay, but why did you not tag that X-wing?" (or whatever), I'd actually really appreciate concrit in things like that because I'm really, really bad at picking up on social clues and unspoken rules.

I take my writing seriously. I created this blog so I could enjoy writing in a space WITHOUT the emotional baggage of my original fiction. But I am interested in developing my writing as a professional skill.  That includes things like building up suspense, where the reader doesn't know if a character will life or die, or if a couple will end up together.  I MARK THIS. In my fics that are "No Archive Warnings Apply".... NO ARCHIVE WARNINGS APPLY.  In the others, maybe they do and maybe they don't. I didn't want the reader to know one way or the other. AND I SAY THAT UPFRONT, so you can decide if you want to read it without a guarantee or not. That's your choice, and I respect you either way.

That is NOT because I want to hurt you or trigger you.  That is because I remember being a preteen and being blown away by the ending of The Empire Strikes Back, or of the incredibly bittersweet end of Lord of the Rings.  I loved Bridge to Terebithia. Even though eye trauma literally gives me nightmares, I'm glad no one told me NOT to read Dragonquest because of it because OMG I love and hate that scene so much, and FOR ME that emotional high is what I read for, and what I write for.

I write for teenage me.  Because I want to make some other kid under the covers FEEL. If you WANT to read my fics and would like to send me a message and ASK if they have your personal trigger or squick in them, by all means do so. If you tell me up front that you want to be spoiled because you can't deal with XXX right now, I will tell you whatever you need to know.

My goal is not to hurt anyone. My goal is to help MYSELF through my writing... because just as readers read for comfort, writers write for comfort, and also to give other readers the things that *I* got from my favorite stories once upon a time. I'm trying to pay it forward. I might have failed.

I think every single one of us who is in a fandom, or who is creating, be it fanworks, original works, or both... we're here to get some comfort out of it. We're here to form connections.

So I would like to apologize to anyone I've interacted inappropriately with... I try to interact with others the way I'd like people to interact with me, but I realize that I may have been wrong to assume that other people enjoyed the same kinds of interactions as I do, and I apologize.

I'm not at all sure whether I'm going to stick around here, or keep my fics up, etc... but I'm sorry, if I liked your posts too many times or replied or reblogged when I shouldn't have.  I'm not sorry for writing my stories in my way, but if I've ever gone against the rules of whatever archive they're on, please let me know and I will correct that immediately. Thank you.

#fanfiction #writing #tags #ao3 #ao3commentoftheday

[esselley]

hi! so i just made an archive of our own account and i don't know what to post first. do you have any tips or advice for posting on ao3? do you have any tips for ao3 in general? thank you!

Hi there anon! Thank you for your question!

First things first: I think to a certain extent, what to post first is going to be entirely up to you. Whatever you feel like writing, whatever format it’s in, you should write it up and post it! Or, depending on how long you’ve been using the site as a guest, you can look through other people’s content to pay attention to tagging, author’s notes, formatting – that kind of thing. AO3 is user-friendly in most ways, and you’ll grasp it pretty quickly.

But, I do have a couple tips to help you out on your first run-through (and actually some helpful tricks I think some more familiar users may not know, as well)! 

BTW since we’re on the topic, if you use the subscribe function on AO3!!! Did you know about the different ways to subscribe to an author, a series, or an individual work?

You can only subscribe to an author from their dashboard or their profile page! If you are in the middle of reading a particular fic, and you hit the subscribe button at the top of the page, you will only subscribe to updates for that fic. Same deal if you want to subscribe to a series, you must be on the series page. Subscribing to a fic within that series will only subscribe you to that specific fic – you will get updates if that story is updated/chapters are added, but not if a new work is added to the series.

I suspect some people are unaware of this, due to the frequent amount of subscriptions I get on one-shots! (But, idk… maybe there’s just some really hopeful people out there laijefliajelsjf)

Anyway, now, onto the rest of this textbook (it got long)!

NEW WORK vs DRAFTINGWhen you go to post your very first work on AO3, you’ll go to Post > New Work at the very top to open up AO3′s drafting tool. From here, you can go through and copy over a work from Word or Google docs or whatever writing program you use, or just write up your fic in the post box itself! 

Either way you choose, you can then decide to post your work right then and there (Post Without Preview), or if you are still editing it, you can choose the Preview option. This will take you to the work as it will appear once posted; from there you can go back to the editing page, which will now have a Save Without Posting option. Use this if you would just like to save your work and come back to it later. Note: drafts are saved for one month only.

HTML vs RICH TEXTWhen you open your drafts/start a new work, the main field for your text has two options: HTML or Rich Text. HTML just shows you all HTML codes in your work. Rich Text is probably what you want to work in while editing, because you’ll only see this bar in that format:

However, sometimes you will want to use the HTML section in order to copy over text from another source that allows HTML format; for instance, Tumblr! I always copy the HTML from my tumblr fics over to AO3 when posting, because it is the easiest/fastest way to ensure the formatting stays intact. Here’s where to find that:

AVOID BACKDATED DRAFTSThis is a pitfall I encountered with my first fic I ever posted. When you create a draft, the date of posting defaults to the date you first saved the draft. So if you are like me and you draft fics way in advance of posting, you need to make sure to update the post date before you actually hit post, or it will backdate your fic – this happened with This Place in the Sky, and it was several hours before I realized it had backdated by a week, and no one was seeing it T.T Learn from my mistakes, younglings

(And if you want to backdate a draft, then you would go in here to alter the date.)

ITALICS ISSUESome people have noticed an issue with AO3 that causes fics to have odd spaces after punctuation (periods, quotation marks, dashes). This is a glitch related to italicizing when you transfer over fics from another source. To avoid having to search your entire fic for those spaces, always italicize the punctuation that precedes/follows your italicized words. For instance: 

“No!” – quotations/exclamation not italicized, glitch makes it show up as: 

“No!” – all punctuation italicized, now shows up as:

:D It’s just less of a headache to have to comb through and find all the random spaces, I find, when you just italicize beforehand! A preemptive strike. 

PARAGRAPH SPACINGLet’s look at the variations of line spacing in a posted fic: 

And here’s what this looks like in AO3′s Rich Text editor:

Sorry that is so tiny, but notice the clear difference in spaces between paragraphs while editing! There’s no actual correct way to do this, but! The “regular” option of spacing is the most common on AO3, and also the easiest to read. Avoid the no spacing option at all costs! It can be a huge headache to read, unless you are indenting paragraphs (less common on AO3, but acceptable). I tend to dislike the double spacing option as well because I feel like it breaks up the flow of wording, but that’s just personal preference.

HOW TO AVOID DOUBLE SPACING BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS

Frequent posters may also have noticed a thing AO3 does where it will insert double spaces at random intervals, often for large sections of the fic at a time, for no discernible reason. This happens often when you copy your work over from another source. But there’s an easy fix!

On MS Word and Google docs, find the “Add space after paragraph” option, and enable it for every fic you write. When you hit Enter (ONCE) to go to a new paragraph, it will autospace for you (meaning, you should not need to double tap the Enter key).

Now when you copy this over to AO3, it will read ONE SPACE reliably, giving you that regular spacing option up above. Cool news: if you copy your HTML from Tumblr to HTML on AO3, you don’t even need to worry about this. HTML be chill like that

QUICK HTML CODESAnother thing I see people asking is how to add hyperlinks! But also, did you know you can add links, bolded, and italicized text to your summary/notes as well? You just have to put them in HTML, and this:

ItalicsBoldHyperlink

will show up as:

You can easily bold/italicize/add links in the Rich Text editor, but summary/notes are HTML only and you will have to use the above. These are the most useful/common options you’ll need, I think. Try to preview before posting to make sure you got it right (and haven’t bolded your entire summary and the world with it on accident). 

LINK BACK TO TUMBLRThere’s an easy way to link your stories to Tumblr (or Twitter) that automatically includes your title, tags, summary, and all other relevant information right in the post! Just hit this button at the top of your fic, once it’s posted – it’ll take you to the Tumblr log-in screen, so log-in and from there you can edit the post. This is what I use to make all my AO3 fic posts on Tumblr \o/

TAGS/SYNOPSISFinally, more of a stylistic note! Be thoughtful when tagging your fic/writing a synopsis. In general, try to be clear and concise, so people can see what they’re getting into at a glance. Tag what’s important to the theme and tone of your fic. This really varies from person to person… maybe you want to tag every single thing your fic encompasses! I find really long tags to be overwhelming when browsing AO3, and prefer simple ones. I tend to overtag more for smut-heavy/PWP than I do for longer, plot driven fics.  

Your summary should also be clear and to the point, and describe the content of the fic. You can put any other thoughts in your beginning and end notes; if you are leaning towards saying anything like “sorry this sucks this is my first fic/I am bad at summaries/etc” just leave that out! If you don’t like summaries, use a quote from the fic. You don’t have to apologize for posting, even if you don’t think it’s a Shakespearean masterpiece. You still wrote a fic, and that’s awesome!

This is everything I could think of for the time being…I hope it’s helpful!!

#ao3 #archive of our own #writing advice #anonymous #esselle replies #long post #i'm so sorry... #i thought this would be short #posting on ao3: a guide by esselle #1st edition #writing advice: social media

[alittledizzy]

Hi, a casual poster at IDB here. *waves* You won't really know who I am so I'll just be on anon. Anyway, sorry for bothering you but can I ask an advice from you? I just posted a phanfiction which accurately represents how I feel at the moment so the work is quite personal to me. I was just wondering, short of self-promoting on IDB and Tumblr, how else do I capture a reader's attention? There's always a deluge of fanfics in the Phandom that I fear no one will ever read my fic. :(

You’re not bothering me at all! It’s actually a really good question, and not one with an easy answer. Writing and posting fic and feel like a very lonely process sometimes. For me, personally, it’s quality over quantity; I’m okay with less people reading it if I feel like I’m actually getting feedback from the people who are. But I still run into the issue of: how do I get people to see it? Especially on tumblr, where notes and reblogs (and therefore, exposure) are more of a popularity game than a reflection of actual talent. 

Looking outside of myself, my advice would be:

Make sure you have good formatting. People will decide whether to keep reading or close out at a glance so that first glance matters - new paragraphs when a new character is speaking, spaces between paragraphs, italics and bolding used sparingly, capitalization unless you’re forgoing that to capture a specific style. 

If you’re posting on tumblr and not ao3 (though I highly recommend ao3 to everyone) make sure your tumblr layout is conducive to reading fic. I’ll also close out if I click a link and it takes me to a layout that has super tiny text or just hurts my eyes. 

Have a summary that’s simple but accurate. There’s a fine line between vague to capture someone’s curiosity and so vague that it gives the potential reader no idea what your story is going to be about. (Yes, I need to take this advice more.)

Tag accurately, but don’t overtag. Just pick out a couple of key themes of the fic so people know what they’re getting into. If you’re writing tropes, definitely tag those.

Do post it multiple places, but maybe not at the exact same time. If you post your fic on ao3 it will go into the phan tag automatically via the ao3 feeds. So posting it on ao3 then tumblr at the exact same time just means your fic shows up multiple times in a row. If you post it on ao3 then wait a few hours to post it on tumblr, you might catch a different group of people checking the tag. 

Submit it to a fic rec blog, like phanfic or the phanfictioncatalogue. I’m not exactly crazy about how those work, because they tend to only pick up a sliver of the fic that actually goes out into the phandom but I can’t deny that whatever they post tends to get tons of notes - the only problem is that the notes you get are usually on their post, not your own. (And I’m not sure how often that even translates into feedback. It seems very much like a ‘demand and consume the product, ignore the creator’ setup.) 

But I’ve found the best and most rewarding way to get feedback is to be friends with other writers. Not just a “promo 4 promo” superficial thing but to actually talk to them and show an interest in what they do. You get kind of a two-fold benefit from it, because you’re talking to someone who understands what goes into a fic (emotion wise, time wise, etc) and you can vent/bond about that as well as how nice it is to have someone interested that wants to read it and tell you what they thought.  

(Also, please send me your fic when you’ve posted it!)

#anon asks #phan #Anonymous #dubious advice tag