#also I suck at titles in general so I usually just name them on the spot as I upload them to ao3

[thebabyprince]

Can u do little! Scott and caregiver! Wallace head canons pls, I honestly wish there was more agere content in the Scott pilgrim fandom

I sure can!!! Hope you enjoy them, and I completely agree with you, that's why i decided to write for it!!!! Hope you like em :]

Caregiver! Wallace and Little! Scott

Wallace, maybe, didn't know the term 'age regresion' but knew that something was up.

Sometimes there were situations, where Scott would act much more childish than usual, and when confronted about it afterwards, he would deny it and act very defensive about it.

For example, the other night Wallace woke up with Scott curled up against his chest, his thumb stuck in his mouth. Wallace gently petted him on the back, and he let out a soft cry, hugging Wallace tighter.

"What? That didn't happen. You're making it up". "It totally did happen, bro, deny it all you want". "You were just drunk and imagining things!"

And Scott leaves the house as fast as possible, face red from embarrasment.

Then it happens again the next night, Scott against his chest, sucking on his thumb.

Wallace got an idea. He ruffled Scott's hair and Scott, predictably, let out a cry.

"Hey, Scott. Scotty. Buddy, we gotta wake up"

"I don't wanna-a!" Wallace chuckled, noticing that he sounds a bit softer and high-pitched than usual.

"I bet you don't, but we can't just stay in bed forever, can we?" Wallace shifts his position into a sitting now, Scott now being on his lap, hanging on his neck, whining softly. "There we go... Hey, pal, can I ask you a question? Can you tell me how old you are? You can show me with your fingers if you're shy".

Scott goes quiet for a moment, and then hesitantly shows Wallace 3 fingers.

"Very good. Thank you, Scott, you are being very helpful right now. I know it takes a lot of courage to admit things. You sure are a brave boy". Scott smiles so very gently. "Now, do you want to watch cartoons while i make us breakfast?"

And general headcanons:

Scott regresses either to 3 to 4 year old toddler or to a baby

They never established a parental title for Wallace, so toddler Scott just calls him by his name. However, baby Scott can't articulate words well, so he just pointed at Wallace one time and went "mama!!" Wallace accepted that.

Scott is a very talkative little, he likes to swing his legs while sitting at the table, telling Wallace everything about his day, all the cool bugs he saw and a level in the videogame he beat.

Wallace tends to take Scott play outside a lot, cause they both need that fresh air!!

Scott's the type of little to chew and suck on EVERYTHING. His thumb, his shirt, blankets, his toys, even crayons and markers. The first little gear Wallace ever bought him was a pacifier and two teethers, cause Scott just put anything in his mouth without thinking twice.

He also bought him a toy truck and an Eevie plush, which were also a hit.

Wallace lo-o-oves nicknames, sticking them in almost every sentence, but he tends to keep the overly sweet ones to himself. His usual go-to's are 'buddy', 'pal', 'kiddo' and 'champ'. He occasionally uses 'sweetheart' when Scott's being extra clingy and vulnerable.

He also calls him a tiny menace, as a cool title😎

Scott still really likes videogames when he's small, but he tends to stick to simplier ones, and sometimes he asks Wallace to help him beat them.

#age regression #agere #agere sfw #sfw age regression #age regressor #fandom agere #agere headcanons #agere fandom #scott pilgrim agere #scott pilgrim #spvtw agere #spvtw #scott pilgrim vs the world #wallace wells #agere writing

[crustaceousfaggot]

Why you should give Text Adventure games a try (and how to do so)

There is not nearly enough love for Text Adventure Games here on Tumblr. Or anywhere really. But especially here, I feel like you guys would really get a kick out of them. Here's why:

(quick note, I'm gonna be using the words Text Adventure and Interactive Fiction pretty interchangeably here. Technically that's not perfectly accurate, they are technically different things, but I don't care to explain the difference Just roll with it.)

So

Do you like weird short stories told through unconventional mediums? That's most of what Interactive Fiction is

You like story based video games but hate the finicky combat? Congrats, there is literally no combat skill required beyond the ability to type "hit guard with crowbar"

Blind or visually impaired? Since these games are (with a few exceptions) entirely text based, they work great with a screen reader!

Sick of profit motivated AAA titles with no creative integrity? Well, these games are almost always produced by a single nerd (usually a horrid amalgamation of computer geek and literature geek) with no budget and no responsibilities of the product they're making. And they're usually not paid, since these games are free. Text Adventure is a labour of love, and in most games you can feel the care and effort the creator has put into the game.

Sick of spending $20-70 on a video game? Lucky you, I've been playing TA for years and I have not spent a cent in doing so (Fallen Londen will try to make you pay. But Fallen Londen sucks and is run by bigots. Fuck Fallen London.) Games are either available free on a browser, or as free, small downloadable files (most of which can be played using the Parchment Interpreter)

Wish you read more, but reliant on the quick dopamine of digital media? Well now you can read while also being an active participant in the narrative.

Bad at puzzles? Me too! Games from the 80s and 90s, as well as more famous newer games, have walkthroughs and hints easily available online. Newer games tend to either have a "hint" command, or come with a walkthrough file.

Do you like weird surrealist horror? Well there's... A lot of it.

Okay, but where do I start?

So there are two types of text adventure. The one you might be more accustomed to, and which sees more modern use, is called Hypertext Interactive Fiction. The other is called Parser Interactive Fiction, it's generally seen in older games, as well as games that are larger, feature more puzzles, or involve more exploration.

Hypertext games

Basically, the game will give you a scenario, and then a list of options (hypertext links) to click on to decide what to do next. These are usually more beginner friendly since you don't need to fiddle around with parsers, but personally I find them a bit limiting. Nonetheless, if you're new to Text Adventure, they're a good place to start.

Some of my favourites hypertext games (summaries in green)

My Father's Long, Long Legs is an interactive horror story about family, unease, and loss. Really more of a story than a game, but still good. Very nice use of sound. It does have some visual aspects, so this one might not work with screen readers

Scene Kid Simulator is pretty much what it says on the tin. A cute, nostalgic, coming-of-age slice of life story from the POV of a 2000s scene preteen. Nothing special, but a fun time.

The Uncle Who Works at Nintendo is a strange, unconventional, witty, and heartfelt horror game. Your friend has an uncle who he says works for Nintendo. You're about to meet him, or so he says. A fun and spooky look at childhood, childhood friendships, and childhood lies.

16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonald's is... A joy to play. The name says it all honestly. Witty, charming, tense, engaging, and emotional when it wants to be. I actually found this one through a lucky Tumblr Blaze, which makes sense since this is perfectly suited to Tumblr sensibilities. This one has more puzzle aspects than most hypertext games, but it's still relatively easy and beginner friendly. You're a vampire hunter. It's your night off, and you go to McDonald's. But there's something wrong with the customer sitting beside you...

Toadstools is a game about hunting mushrooms. You have trespassed in a national park and you are wandering blindly through the woods looking for rare fungi. Good luck :)

Parser games

Okay these fuckers are where I really get excited. These games have the classic flashing cursor line where you input text like "go north", "search bookshelf", or "kiss my husband", and the game's rudimentary AI parses your input to decide what happens next. These are my favourites. They really allow you the feeling of exploring the game world, immerse you in the protagonist and the story, using just text on a screen and simple inputs. This does make them considerably more difficult, since a) you need to decide the right way to phrase what you want to do, otherwise it won't work, and b) more possibilities means more chances to mess up and miss things. Unlike video games, your cursor won't light up when you see something important, you'll have to search stuff and work things out on your own But, in my opinion, it is so, so worth it. Summaries in red

The first text adventure game I ever played was One Eye Open. It's an extremely graphic and gory medical horror game (although I would consider it tasteful medical horror, in that it never derives horror from medical procedures, disability, or ooOoHh gross scary sick people) You play as a volunteer test subject for a medical research facility, having to unravel the mystery of the hospital's bloody past. It's good. It's fun. It's tense. It has some really dumb mechanics. Don't play if you're sensitive to descriptions of gore, death, or corpses. This one doesn't have a walkthrough, but I've played it enough times to know the puzzles by heart, DM me if you need help.

Anchorhead is possibly my favourite piece of interactive fiction I've ever played. It's incredible. You play as a newlywed woman, moving to the small seaside town of Anchorhead after your husband Michael inherited a mansion from some distant relatives. There's something wrong with the town though. There's definitely something wrong with your husband's mysterious ancestors. And you're starting to think that there might be something strange happening to Michael. Get ready for some wonderfully atmospheric and immersive Lovecraftian horror, action sequences that are incredibly vibrant for Text Adventure, and a super compelling mystery that the game lets you work out on your own. The puzzles here are hard. I'm not gonna lie, I used a walkthrough at several points during this game. But my god it's worth it. Big massive huge content warning here for mentions of incest, sexual assault, and pedophilia. Not in excess, and nothing explicit, but it will be mentioned as part of the story.

Little Blue Men is a short, strange, sci-fi-ish horror-ish comedy-ish game by the same author as Anchorhead, though the two games are wildly different. You are an office worker. Cope with it. Take The Stanley Parable, Stella Firma, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, mash 'em together, and you have Little Blue Men. It's bizarre. It's evocative. It's pretty darn good.

Coloratura is a strangely beautiful sci-fi story. You're a weird little alien blob. You've been separated from your home and are trapped aboard a human spaceship. You need to get home, need to make the humans understand in the only ways you can: color and song.

Slouching Towards Bedlam is a brilliant little steampunk game about language, choice, cults, Armageddon, and triangles. This game has multiple endings. It's neat in that none of the endings are really "good" or "bad". Rather, you need to decide where you stand, and act in the way you think is best.

The Lurking Horror is the grandparent of horror interactive fiction, released in the late 80s. You're a tech student in university. Something more than electricity is powering the school's computers. Find it, but don't die along the way. Besides the comically archaic descriptions of computers, this game doesn't feel all that dated. It's tricky, puzzle-heavy, and charmingly surreal. (Fun fact, this game and another old TA game called Zork inspired the "darkness kills you" mechanic which would later be popularized in Don't Starve!)

Nine Lives is a very short, very weird, very cartoony game where you play a cat that is very bad at staying alive. Cw for non-graphic but repeated cat death.

Spider and Web is one of the most ingenious uses of Text Adventure as a medium I've ever seen. It's famous for having one of, if not the singular best puzzles in video game history. It's tense, it's fast-paced, it introduces you to mechanics slowly and then lets you test them out on your own. I won't spoil too much, but you play as a very badass spy, reliving your brilliant heist during an interrogation. This game even features a character destined to be a Tumblr Sexyman. It really has it all.

If anyone actually read through all this, and has even considered playing any of these games, I'll be a little surprised. This post turned out a lot longer than I wanted it to be. It was meant to just be "hey interactive fiction is a cool and underappreciated medium, go check it out", but this is my special interest, and not one I often get to talk about. I guess this was me infodumping to the only place that will listen, the empty void of the internet. But these games are fun. And they do not get enough love. Text games are a dying genre, if they're not dead already. Give them a chance, show them some love.

#video games #games #text adventures #interactive fiction #horror #horror games #lovecraftian horror #anchorhead #if #decided not to mention Cragne Manor #because that's a beast all it's own #and it isn't really worth reccomending unless you're already an Anchorhead fan and seasoned IF player #swarm's nonsense #gaming

[kafus]

okay i just talked to every NPC in veilstone because it's been a long time and man sinnoh's NPCs are peak, at least out of the 2D games i feel like they provide the most humor and the most random lore tidbits and stuff. i love this region. i'm going to talk about it

first off sinnoh is full of little things like this. random dialogue/flavor text that ties back to the mythos of the region. i love how widespread the sinnoh myths are

i'm also obsessed with when there's two NPCs that link together like this. you talk to one and you move on and then you talk to another and you're like oh! lmao. by the way the rage candy bars being here is cool because sinnoh is canonically connected to johto through the sinjoh ruins and the rage candy bars are from johto, which means they're imported and sold here. in general i'm obsessed with the locations in pokemon that have special treats associated with them, like the pewter crunchies of pewter city in kanto, or the lava cookies from lavaridge in hoenn. iconic

btw don't worry lady literally everyone sucks at making poffins. unless you have four players it's pretty much impossible to make poffins that are better than the storebought ones. good luck getting four people with rare berries who are good at the minigame to play with you, ESPECIALLY in 2023 jesus christ. the basement poffins are OPTIMAL

anyway in speaking of linking NPCs, these two - i wonder if the dialogue in the french version of this game is turned into english? they did that for lt. surge's french pikachu trade, the french versions of HGSS make the pikachu english instead lol. but anyway as usual it's very fascinating to me how much pokemon loves to drop foreign language in its titles, and fittingly i know a lot of people with english as their second language got interested in learning english from a young age due to wanting to play pokemon. how many kids do you think got interested in french because of dialogue like this. the girl even implies what the meaning of his words is

veilstone isn't short on game hints either, useless to me now as an adult longterm pokemon player who knows all this stuff already but still really cool to see. if sinnoh is your first time playing pokemon, those hints on trade evos and stuff are always appreciated.

of course, funny dialogue too that got a wheeze out of my nose, not uncommon for pokemon NPC dialogue SDKFSFDK some of this shit takes me so offguard it's like extra funny

like GIRL ISN'T THAT WHAT A PARASOL IS FOR????

edit: my DUMB ASS (lighthearted) has been reminded that parasols are for the sun and are NOT an umbrella equivalent. okay she makes more sense now LOOL

also LOOKER JUSTIFYING HIS GAMBLING :skull emoji: this shit is taking me out. see this is useful because it's like oh galactic is really all over this city huh. not only their massive building but they have their logo in the fucking slot machines, they probably have some amount of ownership over this place like team rocket did over the celadon game corner. but also it's funny because SDFSDFK

OH AND MAYLENE'S DAD IS JUST... HERE? generic NPC. generic sprite. no name. he's just here. maylene's dad. you know, one of the gym leaders. help girl

anyways i'm aware i basically just posted most of the dialogue in veilstone city verbatim but I JUST THINK IT'S INTERESTING! I MISS WHEN POKEMON GAMES WERE FULL OF DIALOGUE LIKE THIS AHHHH i have more to say about the galactic lore but i'm running out of image space and i need to use the bathroom and get some food so i'll post about that a little later

#kiki was here #kiki.txt #kiki plays games #pt playthrough #long post

[mylittleredgirl]

Least favorite Star Trek character in each series?

i love all my children equally how could you do this to me!!!!

slightly more rational answer: i have been thinking about this since yesterday when i got the ask and it's like every time i think i have an answer i immediately go "oh but i love them for XYZ" and they move up in the ranks. ultimately most treks are ensemble shows and removing anybody from the ensemble makes it all fall apart!

gun to my head, though, bearing in mind that i love all of them:

tos: gun to my head it's chapel i'm afraid and i feel bad about it. she doesn't really get to grow much and the other most-static character is probably chekov and i had a massive crush on him. in 1967 when they went "you know this show should add a mop top for the teenyboppers out there" they were talking specifically about me 30 years later.

tng: i would take the bullet for real.

ds9: man i'm going through main characters and then secondary characters and then tertiary characters and how are they all so essential and good????? literally i have gone thru a list of characters and a list of episodes and am coming up blank. even the villains are fantastic. eddington is annoying but he's supposed to be and his episodes are all great. sloan himself is fun it's just what section 31 did to star trek in general that sucks. like????? there's not a single name that shows up in the credits that doesn't make me go YEAHHHHHH.

voy: if we can count recurring characters i'm saying barclay. i liked him a lot as a character in tng and but go "for fuck's sake" whenever i see "guest star dwight schultz" on the voyager credits. i dislike pretty much every earth-contact episode after "message in a bottle" so maybe i don't like voyager-barclay because he just happens to be there?? for main cast it'd be neelix shut up shut up i love him in the ensemble but sometimes when they give him his own episode it's too much.

ent: sorry malcolm lovers this was the only show that was an easy choice. like we SHOULD dig into the fact that essentially his greatest wish is to sacrifice himself and he won't be happy until he dies on the job. klingon behavior but not at all for the fun and glory of it just because he kind of just doesn't enjoy being alive???? archer is terrible in so many ways but he's also much more enjoyable to watch being terrible.

disco: this is actually a very weird show to even know who to choose from. the cast changes every year! we barely even know the bridge crew! who is interesting enough to count as a main character?? of the main title cast i'm kind of hot and cold with adira. i like them but the sheer amount of anxiety radiating off them at all times makes me tense up whenever they come on screen. (i just realized it's kind of ironic to say adira because they're basically a mix of wesley and ezri, who would probably make this list for most other trekkies but are two of my absolute faves.) (i will think long and hard about this)

snw: i don't know that i have enough of a read on any of them? i still haven't finished it. chapel (again?? oh no) is the one i had the hardest time warming up to early on because she seemed the most wink-y and out of place in a franchise that usually takes silly things very seriously, but i did warm up to her!

lower decks: if we can go with guest characters i hate badgey (only one on here that gathers the "hate" rating!!). i don't find him (it??) funny and i know i SHOULD find it funny which means whenever it shows up i am both not having a good time and feel bad about not having a good time. the main characters are all brilliant. gun to my head it's boims but it's a close one i love them all.

i don't even know what other shows we have i've run out of steam???

oh right picard. captain shaw??? why is such a large subset of fandom so horny for him??? and shipping him with seven of nine of all things???? is it just White Guy With Trauma because there are like. a lot of other white guys with trauma in this franchise to choose from.

#chatter post #anonymous friend #star trek thoughts #this killed me i'm going to eat ice cream straight from the container now and i didn't even get them all

[tanoraqui]

Middle Earth Elvish Profanity Headcanons

“By the Valar!”

Yes it IS weird to take someone’s name in vain when you’ve literally met them. They usually don’t do it.

However, the line between invoking and cursing is blurred, and it’s normal to invoke/pray to a specific Valar for a relevant reason (eg, cursing recalcitrant rosebushes in Yavanna’s name, invoking Tulkas when threatening to smack your sibling upside the head). Sometimes the relevance is that this particular elf is devoted to this particular Valar, and so will invoke them for things outside their domain (eg, Mahtan says “Aulë help me” whenever any of his grandchildren get in new trouble).

There’s also a spectrum of how explicitly you’re referencing a Vala. Saying something like, “stars above” or “for the love of the tides” is implicitly referencing Varda, Ulmo, etc, but it’s also plausibly just about the natural phenomena themselves. Stars especially - Elves were swearing by the stars and cursing by the darkness long before Oromë first found them, and many of the oldest still do.

The next level of intimacy/explicitness is to reference a specific Vala by title, eg, “Lord of the Skies preserve us”, “Smith curse this casting!”, “Dancer speed your feet, because when I catch you I will cut them off!” Something general like, “by the Valar” would also be on this level. 

(NB: while it was...not uncommon in Beleriand to curse by “the Chainer”, “Dark Hunter” or other names for Morgoth, it was regarded as more dire than to reference any other Vala by a similarly semi-personal title. You don’t want to risk drawing his attention.)

Highest, rarest level of cursing by the Valar is of course to name them directly. Especially to name them in Valarin. (No one really does that - though it’s not impossible that Fëanor did in his infamous Oath.) Generally believed (correctly?) to call the Vala’s attention, and thus only done with real intent, OR by those particularly favored by a particular Vala, who know even their frivolous call is welcome. (Eg, Círdan in the most tired voice possible, countless times over the Ages when faced with the latest Noldorin nonsense: “Lord Ulmo.”)

(NB: the Gwaith-y-Mirdain are infamous for expressions like, “[drops hammer on foot] Aulë’s fucking tits!” This is commonly mistaken for arrogance, but actually is because they picked it up from the dwarves of Moria. In general, dwarves are very respectful of their creator, but when you drop a hammer on your foot it HURTS, so they don’t hesitate to complain to him loudly and creatively.)

“Shit”

Cursing by messy bodily functions is always a strong option, though Elves tend to regard it as more juvenile than Men do

“Fuck!”

Elves curse by sex, but with different connotations than Men. Sex is (generally) indistinguishable from both the social contract of marriage and a literal spiritual bonding of fëa, cemented by an oath invoking Eru himself. Very sacred. There’s 1 word in Quenya, and in Sindarin, etc, which means all of this at once, though there’s also less-often-used words meaning individually the physical, social, and spiritual aspects.

“Fuck” is a very coarse way of referencing the physical act only, implicitly reducing the whole sacred thing to the basest part (the social part involving a great deal of community joy, joining of families, etc.)

Other sex-related cursing - “suck it!” “balls” - have connotations of...the things you might do for physical pleasure without diving fully into a fëa bond of marriage. Opinions on such acts range across time and cultures from “blasphemy” to “perfectly normal behavior for younger Elves, or older Elves who haven’t found their soulmate yet”, which affects how satisfyingly rebellious it feels to reference them as profanity.

Other Things to Take in Vain

It’s actually pretty common to swear by “Song”, “the Great Song”, etc. It’s swearing by the holy nature of all creation without bothering anyone specific.

Relatedly, “Arda Marred” is a common curse for petty things, like stubbed toe levels of petty. Connotation: The world is unfair and YES I’m whining about it.

It was common to swear by the Trees in when they were lit, either individually or “the Trees”, but that stopped abruptly in grief once they were destroyed. Swearing by the sun and moon never caught on, despite conscious attempts.

Swearing by individual Maiar is much less common than by individual Valar, but: while for most Elves, invoking “the Queen” in a profanity way means Varda, for Iathrim it usually means Melian.

“Flame Imperishable”...okay, I’m not saying the supporters of the House of Fëanor were a cult, I’m NOT. But it was a...genuinely minor trend, in Formenos, to replace the names/references to the Valar, in curses, with Fëanor’s name - like, a handful of people were doing this, okay? Two dozen at most. As an active political statement. 

But then Everything Happened, including Fëanor dying, and it snowballed (fireballed)...rather fast. The Valar had abandoned them but you know who was plausibly still watching over them as a houseless spirit? Fëanáro! (That was superstition, everyone knew it was superstition. But it was a kind of a comforting one, and anyway, fuck the Valar.)

But all Fëanor’s sons were (varying degrees of) Uncomfortable with both the idea of their father’s unquiet ghost and the idea of venerating their father to minor deitihood, so the general Fëanorian host started using the euphemism “Flame Imperishable.” Which was already something to take in vain, and rarely done so, because it was so very holy a concept! (Arguably it was even more Uncomfortable for Fëanor’s sons than equating their father to “mere” minor deitihood, but at least now there was plausible deniability what people were swearing by.) So this is a win/win, in terms of profaning that which has forsaken and Doomed them! Many Sindar probably picked it up without realizing that it was about anything but the Flame of Creation at all.

But if you know, then you know. And it became so common in East Beleriand that many people forgot the contentiousness of its origin and kept using “Flame Imperishable” as a casual curse phrase after their re-embodiment in Valinor.

...speaking of Fëanor: the Oath! References to the Oath were common curses in East Beleriand and perhaps even the rest of Beleriand. “Elda, Maia and Aftercomer” as an expression of surprise, “Everlasting Darkness” as a curse, etc. In later days, as opinions of the Oath grew darker, “Oath take you.”

References to the Doom were used similarly.

Swearing by the Silmarils was also common throughout the First Age and well into the Second, either as objects of veneration or incredible cursedness.

Swearing by Gil-Estel was quickly popular and never went out of fashion. At first people tried to avoid doing it where Elrond or Elros could hear, including in Númenor, and indeed Elros never did join in, though he didn’t really mind others doing it. At some point in the early-mid Second Age (a few centuries after Elros’s death), Elrond stopped trying to avoid letting it slip into his speech and instead started pulling the power move of just saying “Father” in contexts where anyone else would be swearing by the Star. It’s very analogous to people particularly beloved of a specific Vala casually naming them in oaths. All his children imitate this, “Grandfather”, and Celebrian even picks it up sometimes (”Father-in-law”). 

#lotr #the silmarillion #lord of the rings #headcanon accepted #eldar #my fic #bringing you the REAL hot takes

[brambleghastblast]

i think a depressing truth of the internet ill always hate is that negativity is what leads to success

negativity, in forms of content creation, leads to comments of people arguing or saying "but i like that thing". comments lead to the algorithms of social media boosting said piece of comic. algorithm favoring your stuff leads to more views. views get you money

often times, i think most youtubers and tiktokers and people on twitter and whatnot actually force themselves to be negative out of necessity. because its the quickest and easiest way to get a post out there. and its really become a norm in social media thats made the internet suffocatingly bad lately

like.. take pokemon for example, youtubers and tiktokers and twitter users such talking about pokemon will complain to no end about graphics, taking the worst possible screenshots they can get or setting up elaborate glitches so they can take a picture, put it next to another game with the prettiest picture they can get, and then go "WOW CAN U BELIEVE GAMEFREAK MAKES STUFF LIKE THIS" which then starts arguments and spreads like a wildfire because people are pointing out "wow you really took the worst picture you could huh" but then random people desperate to argue go "UHHH GAMEFREAKS NOT GONNA MARRY U DUDE LOL" blah blah blah

or take some specific youtubers for instance, like videogamedunkey is a critic who usually lies about video games he dislikes, makes up stuff or complains about really little stuff, or tries to get glitches to happen to pretend the whole games like that. a reallyyy scummy youtuber but thats literally what he has to do to make money and that sucks! or like... alpharad whos kind of just an obnoxious jerk all the time and thats how he gets his attention because being a jerk gets you comments and comments get you views etc etc

the youtube channel gamexplain got exposed for not paying employees and fell off HARD.. but they made a full recovery and comeback. they used to post informative nintendo and other games news, but lately theyve just been posting negative memes or complaining about really little things or posting negative news with a clickbait title. like.. nintendos doing some reconstruction at their headquarters. so gamexplain posts this

its... just reconstruction. but the big letters, the sad mario, it looks Worrying and causes clicks and comments. its literally just reconstruction. but oh wow with a thumbnail like this they can fearmonger and milk it

it stinks too because generally positive youtubers are... Rare. most positive youtubers fall really hard and barely get any views compared to the big bad youtubers out there, cause theres not a ton to comment on without negativity. and thats so.. sad. (bumping a youtuber i love a lot here; nekolacey is a really great and positive pokemon youtuber and i love her videos!!! but her videos dont really get a lot of views compared to other channels which i find so sad. shes awesome!!)

i think the only generally positive gaming youtuber i know of who actually had a big following was chuggaaconroy, and he was making videos on youtube for MANY MANYYY years to even just get 1 million subscribers.

and then he got cancelled because of... uh... a chatlog from 2009. and... uh...... some out of context discord messages from some youtuber whos been known to falsely accuse autistic people to get allegations on them. and.... apparently some randos named antdude and missfushigaming made up allegations to get some clout but they got proved false... uhh... and also chuggaaconroy went to therapy, apologized a ton, asked everyone to please not harass the accusers, and has been deeply working for years to work on himself because he did have a geniune falling out with masaeanela over him not following set boundaries.

but.... yeahhhh its. uh. when you point out "wow did anything bad happen beyond a falling out with masaeanela" you're kind of just quickly hushed by a bunch of random people and to accept it and quit. they can't afford for that positivity to change the way things are, they need negativity to thrive.

its.. the internet trying its hardest to push down one positive creator who made it so they can hype up a dozen negative ones.

i think the internet has always awarded negativity but it was never really bad. like.. many youtubers back in the day would make top 10s, listing something like "zelda bosses" or "gen 4 pokemon". these were great because they got to gush about something they like, BUT they'd get comments and arguments because of things like "well i would've put ths boss over that boss" or "why isnt crobat on this list!". it worked great because they got clout from comments, but they weren't being actively negative

or, talking about an internet show i LOVE, death battle! this is a fun show where they take two fictional characters and make them fight! and they research to see who wins and have really great animation!

it thrived because not only is it super good, but it causes arguments. most viewers dont care about the real reasoning and numbers, they just want their prefered character to win. so if there preference loses, even if its right, they will get mad and argue, causing comments which cause views which causes success.

unfortunately, the positive ways to get comments just... hardly last. its sad but in the modern internet, being mad and angry is literally how you succeed. its near impossible to make it online if you arent angry or doing stuff to upset people.

it sucks. so much.

and it sucks even more because people trying to make a living on the internet Have to be negative. thats how they make a living. they literally have to complain to make money and survive and it sucks!! so much!!!!!!!!!

i think overall success on the internet always depended on causing arguments and negativity, but its really become suffocating in recent time. everyone tries so hard to be mad they've geniunely become mad. positivity is rare and out of style, negativity is what everyone wants. its.... so....... miserable honestly

#youtube #youtube channel #twitter #tiktok #pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #gamexplain #nintendo #chuggaaconroy #therunawayguys #death battle

[clevereverest]

Newsies Headcanon Collection!!

Chatting with the pretty cool @asexualbert and I wanted to share an apparently long list of my own headcanons, focusing on Race, Spot, Albert, and Finch :D

(+ Some concepts have been written about in my fics, while others are things I’ve never gotten to share before, which is exciting!)

- Modern AU Heights: Race 6’1” / Finch 6’0” / Albert 5’9” / Spot 5’6” (generous, I know, but Race is still 7 inches taller so it’s all good)

- Since I specified modern, the canon era: I firmly believe that Race and Albert would be the exact same height (maybe 5’10”) and argue constantly about who’s taller

- Still on that ^ Finch would be taller and Spot would be shorter, both settling the constant debates

- Race and Al are amazing cooks separately but doing it together is a recipe (ha) for disaster. Spot is a decent cook and Finch literally just sucks at it, poor guy. Good thing he has people very very willing and eager to teach him!

- Race plays sudoku because I say so (and literally wrote a fic about it….)

- Finch and Albert have a perfect sleep schedule. Finch got the preset circadian rhythm when he was young and when the two of them met, Albert’s body just kinda copied it.

- ^ Al doesn’t mind it too much, but thinking about it now, I imagine it being so abrupt. One night he’s staying up until 4 am with Race, the next he’s passed out cold by midnight and fully awake by 7 the next morning. It confuses him deeply. Then he finds out he can have Finch’s attention all to himself for a while every morning and he’s totally onboard with the change.

- ^ Also on sleep, Race practically has insomnia (bro has it rough) and Spot sleeps at mostly reasonable times but can stay up with Race if want/need be

- Spot and Finch are over-thinkers and Race and Albert deflect/ignore problems

- Finch does archery (the canon era slingshot to the modern era archery pipeline, also the reincarnation AU potential here !! Personally want something with that) and can play guitar

- Albert does baseball

- Race does dance (as most fans headcanon)

- Spot probably also does baseball

- Favorite Colors: Finch, light purple / Albert, a very specific dark orange / Race, light blue / Spot, dark red

- Real Names: Race and Spot are the usual ones / Finch = Adrian Cortez / Albert = just Albert DaSilva but he kinda hates the “old-timey-ness” of his first name (it’s a family name). He prefers to go by Sam around strangers/authority figures, short for Samuel (middle name).

- Finch comes from a rich family, he’s the “heir to the Cortez line” but hates the snobby sounding title (and he might have a twin brother sometimes). I heard this once in a random fic and ran with it.

- Albert has like 5-6 siblings, and I’m not sure if I’d place him right in the middle or the youngest

- Race is Italian. His family is huge. He has several sisters, no (blood) brothers.

- Honestly, I’ve never settled on Spot’s family :/

- Spot knows fluent French, Finch basically knows fluent Spanish, and Albert just listens to his friends and boyfriend speak in foreign tongues :)

- Oh and if it wasn’t clear, the relationships are Spot/Race and Albert/Finch. In my mind, every other pairing is platonic and likely brotherly too.

- Race and Spot have a fascination with each other’s eyes, specifically when the sun shines on them. They just kinda gaze lovingly when it happens <3

- Spot also adores the sound of Race’s laugh

- Finch loves it when Albert calls him by nicknames (listed below), he likes the sweet intimacy of it. Albert tends to just randomly watch Finch; he zones out and suddenly Fi is smiling all amused at him and isn’t that the greatest sight?

- Finch and Race both love reading, hardcovers and audiobooks respectively (taking Race’s preference from @ asexualbert)

- ^ Albert can’t say no to Finch getting new books because “He looks so goddamn happy, I don’t want him to be sad by saying no”.

- ^ Spot just has this issue where he physically cannot say no to Race’s pout — it’s a real issue sometimes. And “He keeps excitedly showing me all these books that he wants and I refuse to say no because then he’ll stop smiling and I’d rather that not be the case”.

- Albert and Spot are warm-bodied, the perfect pairs to cold-bodied Finch and Race

- In modern era, Finch, Albert, and Race are besties and Spot, Mush, and JoJo are besties, and there is often overlap between the groups (this may or may not tie into my multichapter fic…)

- Cute Nicknames!! Race calls Spot just Conlon, dumbass /aff, darling, and innamorato: Italian term of endearment for boyfriend (I’ve used it in fics and no one has corrected me so I’m assuming it’s right)

- ^ Spot calls Race just Higgins, dumbass /aff, love, and the other twenty billion names you can make out of “Racetrack” and “Antonio”

- ^ Finch calls Albert just Al, asshole /aff, sweetheart

- ^ Albert calls Finch just Fi, asshole /aff, and bub

ALRIGHT I’M CALLING IT!!! Let me know your thoughts on my personal headcanons, I’d love to chat and compare ideas :D

#newsies #headcanon #livesies #racetrack higgins #spot conlon #sprace #albert dasilva #finch cortez #redfinch #this was so much fun #had wayyyy more than I thought tbh #but to reiterate from earlier #they live in my head rent free

[bonefall]

shit it's clanmew day already?? after last clanmew day i translated a buncha my OCs names, here are the ones i'm proud of (and one that makes me want to rip my hair out). also these are for fan clans who i decided give honor titles very liberally so like no one has the prefix they were born with LOL. also also all the translations are based on the notes i jotted down while translating and that was nearly a month ago so if some are bad.. y'know how it is.

hawkstar - yi'ishai or eeaoshai. "hawk" originally came from his honor title that he got for viciousness and cunning in battle, so within his clan he's called yi'ishai or sparrowhawk-star, but outside the clan he's known for his bloody battle tactic of attacking nurseries - thus red kite-star, since red kites are known for stealing kits.

mothwatcher - ffipkeslaou. i know there's a clanmew name for watch(er) but i went with divination cause it sounded cooler. her name was given because she deciphered an omen involving moths (haven't fleshed out what the omen was bc i suck at my job). also used the word for plume moth specifically because she's kind of weird lookin.

aspenfall - kossakanoch. least direct translation as "tree-broken in half" since her name was given when she retired due to an injury from a falling tree.

tawnyberry - pyowaworrpraw. used the word for poisonous berries for her, she changed which word for berry was used in her name as a symbol of her grief and desire for revenge after her apprentice was killed.

brokenfall - fewlkiseplur. "fall-interrupted" since her name was given after she caught a kit who had fallen off the top of the nursery.

snailstripe - hehhefshofi. "slithering-trail" since he was named for the trail of slime snails leave behind. just thought this one was cute tbh.

beaverstream - kenkagargerreboshush. when i tell you this name made me lose my mind know that i am telling the truth. i could not find the clanmew name for beaver so i went with "built barrier-stream" since her name was an honor title for her building skills.

Just in case your name changes in the future, I need to state for the scientific record that your avatar is Jerma with a lesbian flag and it's the second most based thing I've seen today. what will they think of next

FANTASTIC names! Excellent use of poetic meanings, I love Mothwatcher specifically, "Watcher" brings out the best in people doing translations for some reason!

Here's some snails 'n beavers for you!

SNAILS

Snails and slugs are considered a type of worm (Pusa), divided further into several more generic categories. I'll give you ALL the generics, and a few specific species of snail.

ALSO: Be prepared, ShadowClan has more vocabulary around snails than other Clans, because they are the only Clan that eats them regularly. I'll be making sure to note when and how their dialect differs.

Slug (Mostly gastropods... and mussels) = Ssloo Slimeworms are any worm that's ESPECIALLY slimy. They are defined by being the wettest worms. Leeches have an interesting relationship to the Slimeworm category-- ShadowClan considers them their own category under Pusa, probably because of their deep relationship with them, and define the different species. The other four lump them in with slugs, and call all three species ssufrru.

Snail (A slug with a shell) = Kewiha (Comes from cave, "Ken", baby-they "Wi", and bringing, "Hageesh." Ken-WiHageesh, "The little thing brings a cave," contracted.)

Arion (Snails that live in water) = Alof Marine snails and mussels. This word is usually referring to marine snails, but could mean any shell-producing animal regularly collected by RiverClan. Also used by other Clans to describe RiverClan's shell goods. Jingleshells (an instrument), shell necklaces, and also occasionally windchimes that contain no shells at all. The etymology of this term initially came from freshwater mussels alone and had origin in Parkmew, but after mussels died out in the River Chell, it came to describe anything in the water with shells.

And now, specific species of Snails, in both Kewiha broadly and Alof... and GET READY FOR SHADOWCLAN TO MAKE THINGS DIFFICULT

(NON-ShadowClan) A white-lipped OR a brown-lipped snail = Porsh Other Clans do not care about the difference between these two snails, owing to their natural diversity of shells. Both species are used in a type of divination, called Shai-een-Sek... EXCEPT in ShadowClan, where both species have unique names and uses.

(ShadowClan) Delicious Snail (White-Lipped, Cepaea hortensis) = Gapor THIS snail is eaten as a delicacy, and in LARGE amounts. Processing these snails makes for delicious treats in ShadowClan, especially for kittens who have fun figuring out how to get the meat out of the shell. Because they are eaten, their shells are a byproduct, and considered sacrilegious to use in divination.

(ShadowClan) Herald Snail (Brown-Lipped, Cepaea nemoralis) = Poen But you can't just use any Brown-Lipped snail in ShadowClan. StarClan only deserves the best snails, you must present them with something worth their time. They come in many colors and morphs, but a proper Holy Snail has a distinct white swirl on its brown shell, with a brown lip around the rim. You may not use the OTHER morphs.

(ShadowClan) Cosmic Dust Snail (Also Brown-Lipped, Cepaea nemoralis) = Porsh OR Keshof. Using the word "Porsh" in ShadowClan is referring to a Herald Snail with an off-color shell, also sometimes called Kewiha Sh'hoffes, or Keshof. ShadowClan believes that these snails are the byproduct of StarClan working upon the world, bearing the "cosmic dust" of their work upon their backs. It can be a bit derogatory in ShadowClan, like calling someone an accident, and they insist that the other four can't tell Porsh from Poen.

Garden Snail (Cornu aspersum) = Mokew The most common gastropod that Clan cats encounter. Also eaten by ShadowClan, but not considered quite as delicious as a gapor. Shells are occasionally used in decoration when the patterns are particularly bright or contrasting.

Kentish Snail (Monacha cantiana) = Meyloo The waste-snail. Mostly used by ShadowClan out of disappointment they taste bad, but will be eaten when starving, other Clans just lump them under Kewiha.

Pond Snail/Whelk (Lymnaea stagnalis) = Wook The marine snail that RiverClan is most familiar with. Though it's not actually a type of Whelk, I encourage using it as a translation just so it looks good in a name, and has a similar spiral-shaped shell.

Freshwater Pearl Mussel (Margaritafera Margaritafera) = Kofoo From Arion + Lake. An extremely rare creature back in the Forest Territory, mostly spoken about in legends. The water quality was just too poor for these animals to thrive there, and they died out in the River Chell around the same time as SkyClan's exile. Once the Clan cats came to the lake, they were able to see these creatures for the first time in generations. The word Alof (which originally meant mussels) was combined with the word for lake, creating Kofoo.

Here is a bonus; some group-words for the various categories!

Patch of mussels = K'kbw OR Kikibwa Important because RiverClan makes notes of these locations and makes sure they don't take too many. This word is made to be said underwater, between cats who are diving. It's two clicks and a bubble. Above water, spoken with air, it becomes Kikibwa.

Beautiful shell = Sek Contrast with Eksh (hard shell, of mussel, describes curled horns of rams) and Babaak (exoskeleton, shining shell of insects.) Sek are the shells of most snails, decorative things that can be strung on a necklace.

A type of divination using the shells of Porsh/Poen = Shai-een-Sek [Star-inside-Shell]

The Lake = Oorr Sangkoorr A word that means "Lake Lake Lake." When Daisy was asked the name of the Lake, she explained it was called "Sang Koorr," which is a corruption of the ENGLISH word for SANCtuary Lake, which became Sang in Seamew, combined with the OLD LAKEMEW word for lake, which was Koorr. Lake Lakelake.

BEAVERS

AND, LASTLY, before we close out, Clan cats DO have a word for beaver... and here is a little tidbit from BB;

European Beaver (Castor fiber) = Hyoog Also sometimes called the Ukum Kenkagarn in ShadowClan. The Construction Buddy. Dovewing had a great reputation in ShadowClan LONG before she joined it, it was her quick thinking and great hearing while on her quest with Tigerpaw and the Beaver Patrol that made her realize the strange creatures were defending kittens in their dam. Rather than just destroy a structure the beasts would surely rebuild later, the patrol clambered in and stole the kits, luring the family all the way back to the Lake. While Rippletail died in the process, his sacrifice wasn't in vain. ShadowClan is very fond of the creatures and their willingness to help with Blackstar's Bog Project, protecting them zealously.

Side note: This is actually what a beaver sounds like. In fact, I want you to imagine what you thought a beaver sounds like right now.

Play it in your head a few times.

Got it?

Listen to reality;

#Clanmew #gastropods #snails #beavers #Clanmew expansion pack

[constellationnights]

A guide to Chinese names, as understood by a Chinese person

Ever struggle with coming up with names for your Chinese OCs in fanfics? Ever been confused which part is the first name and which is the surname? Ever not realized two names actually correlate to the same character? Well struggle no more as I try my very hardest to non-verbosely break down Chinese naming, all while maybe sprinkling in some meta about danmei novels because I can.

Is this a very solidly researched, evidence backed post? Nope, this is mostly a summary of my own personal knowledge plus Wikipedia plus me scouring Chinese forums to point my way to historical records. I don’t pretend to understand everything related to this subject, because there’s just sooooo much to know, but I’ll try my best! Feel free to point out any errors and missing things.

This will mention a lot of details regarding the different considerations when choosing names, some of which is outdated, so if you’re only interested in like the basic details you can skip like the second half of this post. Also also, this applies to Han Chinese only!!!! Other ethnic groups have different names and cultures surrounding them.

Basic Naming and Language Stuff

Since the written Chinese language uses logograms (individual characters to represent different things/ideas, combining them to represent other things), there is no such thing as a designated ‘name word’ (like Anna, Mark, Jason), which is why online name generators for Chinese names suck. Think of names like Rain, Lily, Hope etc. if they weren’t capitalized, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them and normal words, except that in Chinese there is literally no way to tell just by looking at the characters in isolation (it’s very obvious in context though). The character for Xie Lian from tgcf has a first name 怜 (lián), which could be a variety of things but I’ll put the definition as to sympathize. This is the exact character one would use in a sentence like I sympathize with him. Of course, there are certain characters that are basically only used in names, but they are not strictly for names only, people just tend to use more special characters.

First names can be any length of characters technically, but the most common ones are one character or two characters. However, when addressing a person, usually a minimum of two characters is used, so if someone has a one character first name then they are usually addressed by their full name, or by a two-character nickname (can be done by doubling a character, or adding a certain character. This also works for two character names). Generally, people can be addressed using different titles attached to their surname, typically related to their profession (if there was lawyer with last name Zhang, you would address them as ‘Lawyer Zhang’) or their relationship to you (a woman a few years older than you can be addressed as ‘Jie’, although this can be a bit casual). 

Now, for Xie Lian, Lian is his first name, Xie is his surname. Notice that the surname comes first. Like first names, they can be everyday characters or ‘commonly for names’ characters, however there are only certain characters used for family names (at least “naturally”, since you could technically pick a random last name but it’s not really a thing). Surnames are most commonly one character (e.g., Zhang, Wang, Lin, Li) but they can be two characters (e.g., Duanmu, Ouyang, Zhangsun, Shangguan). Longer surnames are likely not Han.

It’s entirely possible for two people to have the same romanized name but have their names be entirely different (due to different tones and homophones). For example, one person’s surname could be Wang (王) and the other’s could be Wang (汪). Just by romanization, you can’t tell that these are actually pronounced very differently since no one uses accents in English writing lmao. Or, the surnames Wei 魏 vs Wei 卫 or Jiang 江 vs Jiang 姜 which are pronounced the exact same and only differ by character.

Naming Traditions and Conventions

The Chinese term for ‘name’ is 名字 (míng zì), however, historically 名 and 字 were two different things, although in modern day there is no distinction and everyone just has one name.

名 is the name given at birth. It was typically only used by elders or people close to the person, like parents, or people more powerful than the person, like an Emperor. Shen Xu states in Zuo Zhuan (a commentary on a historical record, I’m doing a very very rough translation) five ways to name someone: using circumstances/events surrounding or near birth, lucky/auspicious characters, the features of the child, the names of things in the world, or characters related to the father. As well, children should not be named using names of states (this was a period when China was broken into many vassals), titles of public officials, names of mountains and rivers (or large geographical bodies in general I think), names of diseases, and names of ritualistic objects and sacrificial goods. According to Yili, an etiquette and rites book, this name is given three months after birth.

字 is the ‘courtesy’ or ‘style’ name, and it is used by people who aren’t supposed to use the 名. According to Liji, another etiquette and rites book, this is given to men when they turn 20 and women when they turn 15 (and for women specifically only after they’re engaged). Coming up with this name is very important, and there are many ways to do it: it can incorporate and expand upon the birth name, like the poet Li Bai (李白) and his courtesy name Li Taibai (李太白); it can have a relation to the birth name, for example the ‘Yun’ (昀) character in spl Gu Yun’s (顾昀) name means sunlight, while the ‘Xi’ (熹) character in his courtesy name Zixi (子熙) refers to the light of dawn; it can mention the birth order of the child; it can connect with the birth name to form a phrase; it can show a cause and effect relationship; it can be opposite of the birth name. The courtesy name has mostly gone out of fashion, but it was a thing until like early 20th century.

Since last and first name are typically presented together, it is not unusual for characters to have their surnames ‘connected’ to their first names, whether intentionally or not. Qiu Haitang (秋海棠) is a good one: 秋, her last name, means autumn, and 海棠 is the name for the begonia flower, so put together it would make her name mean something like “a begonia in autumn.” Jiang Cheng’s (江澄) name also works here: 江 means river, and 澄 can mean the process of water turning clear and all the particles settling and stuff.

Another interesting way to name characters is by referencing classical poetry.  For example, Jiang Fengmian (江枫眠) likely comes from a line in a famous poem by Zhang Ji: 江枫渔火对愁眠. Some other characters I can think of (likely) named this way would be Xu Qichen, Jiang Ting (and his alias Lu Chengjiang, which both come from the same poem lmao what a nerd), Lan Wangji. References to other pieces of literature, such as Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian and Neo-Confucian texts.

Distinguishing between generations was and still is very important in Chinese culture, and a way that they used to do it was through their names. For one character names, the characters themselves could have a connection. Let’s look at the Lan siblings from mdzs: Lan Huan (蓝涣) and Lan Zhan (蓝湛). Notice how the characters of their names (涣 and 湛) share a common left part, from which we can note that both of the characters connect to water somehow (just a bit I did dictionary it). A more common way of doing things is having a two character name, with one shared character for the children of the generation: Jin Zixuan (金子轩) and Jin Zixun (金子勋), Jin Rulan (金如兰) and Jin Rusong (金如松) (take what you want from the fact that Meng Yao’s name was changed to Jin Guangyao instead of Jin Ziyao). I believe it’s more common for this ‘generation character’ to be the first character of the name, although it can be the second character: Yuanchun (元春), Yingchun (迎春), Xichun (惜春), and Tanchun (探春) of the Jia family from Hong Lou Meng, for example. The differentiated characters can form a phrase or message (as is the case with the Jia girls above), or the characters used for the generation can connect with characters from other generations. 

Characters that sound like the names of Imperial family members, like the Emperor or the Empress, are basically, and if a character in your name coincides with someone important then you gotta change it. When writing names of these ‘higher people’ (most commonly, parents), one could remove a few strokes from the characters in order to avoid them, as a means of respect.

Now, if you really want to get detailed, we can talk a bit about 生辰八字 (shēngchén bāzì), which is really just a birthday (year, month, day, time). In folk religion and culture, it is used to predict how the rest of one’s life will go, and ways to avoid misfortune and such. I don’t fully understand it, but basically based on this you can calculate like which elements you have an abundance of/affinity for and which ones you lack (the five elements are metal, wood, water, fire, and earth). You can then find out what types of characters are suitable for your name: for example, based on my birthday, I lack water, so to remedy for that my parents could’ve named me using characters related to water. 

Some miscellaneous info and thoughts: 

In folk culture, the number of brush strokes in the characters of a name could mean bad/good luck

A nickname used by parents and elders to address a child when they are young is called a ‘milk name’

You can have more than one courtesy name

You typically don’t name after people 

People can be named after numbers, or ‘numbering sets’ (like first, second, third). This might be used by writers for background characters.

Girls are commonly named with characters that have the 女 radical (女 is the character for female). Uncommon characters with this radical are usually very specific adjectives used to describe women

The amount of puns that can be conjured is incredible omg

The Chinese characters for the elements on the periodic table nearly all have the 金 radical, indicating metal. According to the very reliable source of my dad, these characters came from the Ming dynasty, where all the members of the royal family had to be named with characters that contained that radical, so they just started slapping it next to random characters once they ran out

Doubling a character is sometimes a proper name for a girl (e.g., Weiwei, Yingying, Lili), but I haven’t see it for boys

I probably missed quite some stuff while making this post but yeah those are some of the things about Chinese naming that I know of. Any thoughts?

#chinese #chinese culture #chinese language #chinese novel #names #naming #danmei #mxtx #meta #a bit #just a bit yk #also some #mdzs #asdf i just love the mdzs names a lot

[fennecthunderfox]

Do you have any details about your Swap and Fell aus? I am curious about it!

Hey, sorry it took so long for me to respond to this. I had meant to answer way sooner and then I got sucked into other projects and meant to work more on this and then just… forgot. But I’m here now and I’m just gonna sum it up as best I can. It may be a bit scatterbrained, so I apologize in advance. 

It's been a while since I’ve worked with them, but I can give a basic rundown on them! They’re part of my “False AU Trio.” In which all the AU names have a prefix that means or implies “fake” so people know upfront they’re different from the typical swaps and fells on purpose. 

QUASISWAP

With QuasiSwap, my personal twist on it is in the environment. In QS, it’s not just the characters that swap, the area aesthetics swap too. 

-The Ruins become monochrome like New Home and are now called “Old Home.” 

-Snowdin Forest/Snowdin became cybernetic like The CORE and is now called “Loggedin.” 

-Waterfall is still dark, but instead of pretty cyan waters it’s now crimson red magma making this location “Magmafalls.” 

-Hot Land is now “Hot Springs” due to its proximity to Magmafalls heating up the water. 

-The CORE is now called “The Nexus” which is not a name that means much of anything, but it is VERY cold here. CDResort (MTT Resort) is actually built somewhat inside The Nexus because CDR likes the cold better than the hot. 

-And finally New Home- which I can’t remember the fun name for- is purple and plant covered like the Ruins. It might just be called "The Capital" sorta like how "The Ruins" is very self-explanatory as a name.

Character swaps are about what you’d expect. And while they all have codenames, they call each other by their real names with a few exceptions. Those exceptions are the skelebros and the ghosts, but I will list all swaps and codenames below.

-Chara with Frisk. Code named Chipper and Fable. Chipper because they’re generally a happy kid- usually smiling and Fable because you hear stories about them. 

-Asgore with Toriel. Code named Usher and Arch. Usher because he’s the one guiding Chipper through the Ruins and Arch is short for monarch.

-Papyrus with Sans. Their code names are P and CSG, and while it’s rare for anyone to actually call Sans CSG, it’s a lot more common for people to call Papyrus P. This is because my take on Swap Sans is basically just Brian David Gilbert- BDG for short. For an example of the energy this swap sans has, watch this compilation I found on YouTube.

-Alphys with Undyne. Codenamed Alpha and Psi-- after Greek letters. Alpha cause she’s a leader and Psi cause it looks like a trident and also is used as a symbol for “Water potential in movement of water between plant cells,” says wikipedia. 

-The Ghost Cousin Trio does a Rotation Swap. Napstablook takes Mettaton’s role, their name becomes CD Rob and Cyber Duke [REMIX] depending on their form. (While “duke” is typically a masculine word, CDR is still a nonbinary character. Duke is just a title I chose.) Mettaton takes Mad Dummy’s/Mad Mew Mew’s Role and is called Shining Dummy and Shining Wan Wan after possessing a life-sized vocaloid-style statue. (He becomes a dog boy instead of a cat girl.) And Maddy takes Napstablook’s Role, known to her friends as Rabbit, but her full name is Rabenant (A port-man-teau of Rabid Revenant.) These three go by these names in the story.

-Flowey/Asriel is too important to swap roles with anyone. He still changes, however. Instead of saying “Howdy” like Asgore he says “Greetings” like Toriel. And instead of a golden flower, he’s a crimson flower to match up to the red leaf aesthetic the Ruins have in the actual game. Flowey’s codename is “Leaf” and apparently I never gave Asriel a proper codename in this AU. I’ll give him one later.

-Temmie gets swapped with the Annoying Dog because both of these characters represent an actual person and it’s good to remember that Temmie- while not the creator of Undertale- made a lot for the game. 

PSEUDOFELL

PseudoFell is interesting, because instead of the codenames being an out of universe thing for me to differentiate who I’m talking about, the pseudonyms are actually a feature of the AU. Every pseudonym (should) start with the same letter as the character’s real name. 

Fray (Frisk)*, Facet (Flowey), Treason (Toriel)**, Sin (Sans), Punishment (Papyrus)***, Uproar (Undyne), Naething (Napstablook), Mauled Doll (Maddy), Macabre (MTT), Apathy (Alphys), Agony (Asgore), Axiom (Asriel), and Cairn (Chara). 

*Used to be spelled Frey, but I have since changed to the correct spelling.

**Considering changing her name.

***Sin will absolutely shorten Punishment’s name to “Pun” and he HATES it. 

As a bonus, Annoying Dog and the Tems are Toil and Trouble. AD used to be Toil, but I think AD being Trouble while all the Tems are Toils would be better. They can say “TOi!” and I have no doubt that Pun would consider AD to be nothing but Trouble. 

The reason the pseudonyms happen is because of trust issues and an old belief that giving someone your real name gives them some sort of power over you. Therefore, if someone actually trusts you enough to tell you their full name, it’s a real big deal. 

The main difference, however, is that I’ve introduced a special 2nd form monsters can take called a “Phobos Form.” The Phobos Form is typically a sharper, scarier version of the monster. Final Froggit would be the Phobos form of Froggit in this universe rather than a stronger, separate monster. 

The more powerful a monster is, the bigger, scarier, and stronger their Phobos Form is. The bosses in the game basically become Kaijus. I used to have concept art of these Phobos forms-- and you can still find them if you look hard enough-- but I find them to be… not great designs these days and would rather not present them as if they’re definitely canon to my AUs still. 

FAUXSWAPFELL 

You didn’t ask about this one, but of the trio I have talked about this one the least so you may not have known it existed. 

FauxSwapFell takes the location swaps of QuasiSwap and the pseudonyms and phobos forms of PseudoFell and combines them into one AU. 

The character swaps are mostly the same, however the Ghost Cousin rotation swap rotates counter to the QuasiSwap rotation. So Mad Mew Mew becomes the idol, Mettaton becomes the ghost snail farmer, and Napstablook becomes the dummy/doll. 

The other thing is that rather than becoming big scary kaijus, the Phobos Forms in FauxSwapFell are more like cryptids or scary on an unsettling level. Some forms may not have one distinct shape and shift between two forms. 

As for the pseudonyms in this AU, there is no theme for the characters’ names. Sans and Papyrus are named Neon and Argon in this universe and are color coded orange and purple respectively to match the colors of those two noble gases. (Gaster is Krypton and Corsiva- if you know who that OC is- is Xenon.) 

All this being said, most characters in this AU don’t have a codename yet. This is the least developed of the 3 AUs and the only reason it’s developed at all is because of being a combo of the other two. 

On the subject of color schemes, in my head the whole world is really desaturated except for the bright pops of color the characters have like Neon’s orange or Argon’s purple. Because of this I sometimes refer to FauxSwapFell as "Swapfell NEON" because they only standout colors on the characters are the bright highlight color.

Aaaaaand that's about it for now. I'd love to do more someday, but at the moment I sadly don't have time to really do much of anything with these AUs. There is a glimmer of hope that the overtime at work will end soon, so maybe I'll be able to get back into fun fanworks next year. Until then, thank you for listening~

#Fenn Speaks #Undertale #Undertale AU #QuasiSwap #PseudoFell #FauxSwapFell

[the-music-maniac]

I recently downloaded a book called “Not All Himbos Wear Capes” by this author named C. Rochelle cause yesterday was like a free Amazon ebook giveaway type thing and I was scrolling through the lists with my friend and this particular one stood out to me cause both the cover page and the title made me crack up - also it was a queer novel so - fdaiofjao that’s not the important part of this post -

I read it and I’m actually flabbergasted by how much these characters remind me of a - way waaay more exaggerated and satirical mind you, and i’m like 99% sure this book is satirical because they live in a city called B i g C i t y, so this feels like a call out to every single superhero movie out there that’s set in a b I G  C I T Y  (ahem new york ahem), and because a lot of the dialogue and names and stuff were absolutely RIDICULOUS in the funniest way possible, I paused several times to just stare at the ceiling and wheeze, it was cringe in a “this sparks joy” type of way, y’know? - version of Steve and Tony.

Like all the plot and the characters + the superhero and villain system and the world building concepts are original so it wasn’t similar per se, but specifically these two characters made me feel nostalgic enough that I sat up and took notice -

Spoiler warning:

The character of Butch - which is the superhero in this superhero x villain duo - first of all, named Captain Masculine (”CAPTAIN” my brain screeched at me) which is The Funniest name I have ever had the privilege of seeing on a superhero, i love it - while way less jaded than Steve is, less traumatized than Steve is - uhhh maybe not less unhinged than Steve is - and way more wholesome innocent, has moments where his demeanor is super reminiscent of what I’ve seen in early 2012 stony fics and some marvel 616 characterizations of him. He’s generally thought of to be a kind person, who has a public reputation that has been controlling all of his decisions and movements for years. And he goes along with it cause he wants to help. Sound familiar?

And Xander - aka the villain - is very much a scientist with multiple PhDs, a marine biologist and a genius inventor, no powers of his own (at the beginning ahem) - called Dr Antihero - is someone who is of course thought of as a villain in the general public even though this man really doesn’t try all that hard to be villainous, doesn’t believe himself to be a good person even though this man genuinely is a pretty good person who’s trying to use his smarts to make a difference in the world. Which is super reminiscent of the characterizations in alternate universe fics where Tony becomes a supervillain (usually for good reason).

There’s a lot there that’s not the same of course, most of the plot is this author’s own - pretty well written surprisingly, admittedly I didn't go into the story with any high expectations, the science was a little iffy but it wasn't the main point of anything so it was fine - and I still view Butch and Xander as their own characters - and i want to make it very clear that they remind me of the fanfic characterizations i’ve seen of steve and tony not the actual canon characterizations because the mcu sucks ass wait what who said that (i hadn’t gotten through all the comics by the time i lost interest in marvel so i don’t 100% know how the comic versions of them are)

If anyone who sees this post is interested in reading the book I also gotta warn that it's 18+ the smut dialogue is hilarious (in a good way - well to me it's a good way cause I had fun reading it even if I did find it cringe at times) but tis still smut

And I was all set to convince myself i was delusional until I SAW THE FANART PRINTS THEY PUT AT THE END OF THE BOOK AND MY MAN XANDER HAS A GOATEE????? AND BUTCH IS BLONDE WITH BLUE EYES????  IN A BLUE UNIFORM??? XANDER’S VILLAIN COSTUME HAS GOLD ACCENTS???

*insert “YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MOTHERFUCKER LOOK LIKE??!!! LOOOOOK” audio*

ALSO THE BOOK HAD MARVEL REFERENCES

Am I just trippin because I don’t know anything about this particular author - maybe i’m just pointing out the obvious - this is the first book I’ve seen of theirs but were they a stony fan in the past??????? Perchance???????

This has been an absolute adventure and a half

#i am bamboozled #flabbergasted #i swear to god i'm losing my mind i need to know #stevetony #stony #not all himbos wear capes #Butch x Xander

[likeabxrdinflight]

yeah okay let's do it, I'm near the end of the battle city arc so. let's talk about Marik Ishtar, Yami Marik, and why the portrayal of DID sucks.

For those unaware, DID stands for Dissociative Identity Disorder- you might also know it as multiple personality disorder, which was its old name. DID is the most severe variant of the dissociative disorders, which is a group of psychiatric disorders characterized by...well, dissociation. I think most people these days are somewhat familiar with the concept. But for those unaware, here's a page from the Cleveland Clinic defining the condition

One thing I want to say is that, despite the points I'm about to get into, I actually still really do like these characters. I like what the Ishtar family brings to the story, I like how effective and threatening Yami Marik is as a final villain for the Battle City arc, and I like the existential challenge the Ishtar family provides for Atem's story. And when I was younger and didn't really know better, I did find Marik's story to be interesting and deeply sympathetic. There's no question his trauma is treated as just that- trauma.

That said, this portrayal of DID specifically is horrible and it does play into some very damaging stereotypes so. Let's do this.

They do get a few things right, at least. One is that DID always stems from severe childhood trauma. You cannot develop DID without a trauma history. Full stop.

Next, they get the amnesia part correct- the "host" or "main" personality of the individual with DID cannot recall what happens when the other personalities (usually called 'alters') are in control of the body. Marik does not remember the times Yami Marik has been in control, minus the times when part of his soul is possessing other people and so can observe what's happening which................you know magic breaks the rules of mental health a little bit, it's fine. Kinda.

Finally, they...mostly get this part, that while alters are made unconsciously, they have a specific purpose in their creation and relationship to the host personality. Some alters are meant to represent the person's inner child, some are protectors, some represent feelings of anger or hatred about the trauma inflicted up on them, etc. They also get right that alternate personalities really are just that- they are completely different to the host, with their own sense of identity. Usually they have their own names (or some title they call themselves), and may have their own sense of age, gender, sexuality, etc. An alter is not just an extension of the host, they're like a whole different person, and a pretty stable presence at that (meaning they don't change around much, once an alter is formed it's a consistent presence). When someone with DID switches personalities it can be quite noticeable as their voice, mannerisms, and behavior can change rapidly.

Yami Marik clearly sees himself as distinct from Marik, yet still relates himself to Marik's family, still is connected to Marik's trauma, and definitely feels Marik's rage and hatred towards Atem. Yet he has goals and feelings of his own, he has characteristics of his own. He dresses differently, he acts differently, his vocal inflections and tone are distinct, he even duels differently. He doesn't really give himself a name (most alters do), but he does make it clear at least that he's not Marik.

So...now what they do wrong. Firstly, DID is just exceptionally rare. The prevalence rate is maybe at 1% of the general population. If you're working in a mental health field, you're going to come across every diagnosis in the book before you meet someone with DID. It's so rare we still debate whether or not it even exists. It's one of the few disorders I myself have not yet encountered in my clinical work- not even in hospital inpatient. I've encountered bipolar, schizoaffective, schizophrenia, PTSD, BPD, several other personality disorders, eating disorders, OCD- hell, I've been treating patients with complex trauma and dissociative symptoms for a solid three years now- I have still never worked with someone with DID.

I make this point because it is extremely unlikely that someone in Marik's position would ever have developed DID in the first place. To even have it at all, trauma typically has to have occurred at a very young age, usually younger than six or seven, and it must be a recurrent and overwhelming sort of trauma, so much so that it impairs the normal development of an integrated personality. Most of the time, this is due to severe physical abuse or neglect, sexual abuse, or other extreme circumstances like war, violence, etc., at a very young age. DID doesn't develop from one traumatic incident, especially not one occurring at age ten, which is what the show seems to imply with Marik. Now, it is heavily suggested that Marik's father was pretty abusive, but we don't quite know to what extent, and it certainly seems that it is Rishid that bears the brunt of this abuse, not Ishizu or Marik. Regardless, the show is pretty clear that this isn't what triggers Marik to "create" Yami Marik, it was the pain of the Gravekeeper initiation ceremony. But no matter how painful and traumatizing that would have been, it really isn't the type of trauma we'd expect to cause DID, especially not in someone that age. Second, people with DID do not usually develop only one alter. Most with DID develop a whole system of alters, the average is between 8 and 13, but there's really no limit. This is already a rare disorder, to be someone with only one alter? Not likely.

The show also seems to imply that Yami Marik can only be triggered when Marik feels very intense anger. This is...maybe partly accurate to real DID. Certainly intense emotions can trigger dissociation. But you wouldn't really expect it to just be anger that triggers it. Stress, anxiety, fear- these would all be more likely than anger to trigger a dissociative state. Like with PTSD, dissociative states (in this case, the appearance of an alter), would be more likely to happen when the host personality's trauma response is triggered. Anger can be a trauma response, but it's far from the only one. As well, for someone with DID, switches can seem much more random and unpredictable, and there's no way one specific person's presence could stop those switches from happening like Rishid does for Marik.

Something else that's a little more subjective but still maybe not super accurate here is that, if we're to accept that Yami Marik is the alter that is carrying Marik's rage and hatred, then...Marik himself shouldn't be all that in touch with this rage. The whole point of a dissociated alter is to protect the mind from the feelings which are intolerable- if there's an alter that's feeling this anger, it's because Marik couldn't handle that feeling, something about it would have been too threatening to carry within his own personality. They get this right in that Marik has totally and 100% dissociated any and all anger he should be feeling towards his father, but they seem to get it wrong regarding his anger at Atem.

And now the big one- alters aren't evil. Even the angriest, meanest alters are a direct result of trauma, and they are just as traumatized as the host personality. The body endured the trauma, so all the alters share it. Now, Yami Marik seems to be a very specific stereotype of one kind of alter- the sort of shadowy/dark/vengeful/protector type of alter. These alters definitely do exist, they're a bit of an archetype for a reason. But they're not gonna be bent on world domination, they're not going to be serial killers, they're not likely to be all that violent. Sometimes alters can be a little antisocial, but more likely in a rule-breaking, self-destructive sort of way. They're angry because that's their role in the system- they carry the feelings of rage at the perpetrator of the trauma. Every alter is going to have a different feeling about the host personality- some might think of the host as weak and blame them for letting the trauma happen, some might be fiercely protective of the host and instead angry at anyone else who might try to hurt them, some might be neutral at the host but instead be angry with an entirely different alter who they find annoying in some way. Sometimes alters might be a bit self-destructive, maybe the one they're most angry at is themselves for not being able to stop the trauma from happening. Either way, it is very very unlikely that this kind of alter is going to be dangerous to anyone else. The "evil violent alternate personality" is an extremely tired and harmful stereotype, it is not reflective of reality, it's just not accurate.

...and then it probably goes without saying that ancient Egyptian magic can do fuck all to cure someone of DID. Rishid's face tattoo could not seal away an alter, losing a shadow game could not destroy one, Marik should still have DID even after Yami Marik loses the shadow game, but..........you know maybe we'll suspend some disbelief there. But even so, even if it were possible to destroy an alter with a shadow game, Marik should still have more alters within him- we don't cure DID with ancient Egyptian shadow magic. But the show kinda treats destroying Yami Marik as a cure-all, which...has implications.

DID itself is a controversial diagnosis, so treatment isn't all that well formulated. But alters cannot be willfully destroyed once they exist. The most that might be possible is trying to integrate the alters back into the host personality, but this is a controversial practice at best and whether or not it even works is pretty debatable. It is more common for people with DID to learn to live with their system, to become aware of their alters, and learn to communicate with them and exist in tandem with them. It is better to treat the underlying trauma, not the DID itself. And actually if you're a therapist and you ever think you've encountered someone with DID, seriously- do not try treating anything but the underlying trauma/depression/anxiety unless you know what the fuck you're doing. There is a huge risk of harm if you don't. Seriously just. Just don't try it. I'm specializing in trauma and dissociation and I would never take on a DID case without intense supervision from an expert on that specific diagnosis.

...anyway tangent aside.

This depiction of DID is bad, it's inaccurate, clearly poorly researched, rooted in old stereotypes, and it perpetuates harmful myths. People still think of DID and multiple personalities as a violent or dangerous disorder, and it's not. It is a trauma disorder, first and foremost, and the person most at risk of harm from it is the person living with it. Suicide is a far greater risk than violence will ever be.

#yugioh #marik ishtar

[songsforthepierce]

Album Showcase: The Sickness - Disturbed

Back in high school I was friends with this guy who hated Disturbed and I never fully knew why. All I remember was him saying all their songs sounded the same and at one of their live performances they sucked. I haven’t seen this guy in years and I don’t really care for his opinion on the band (or his opinions in general at the time). This is one of my memory associations I have with Disturbed besides “It was that nu metal band I would listen to some of their songs back in high school”.

content/trigger warning for some light discussions to mentions of domestic abuse, and racism. Oh and ableism since this album does I guess touch on like mental illness (?) and like going uh...insane.

So the album cover is of some man or humanoid...flesh...thing...and it has a label saying this is “The Sickness”. I know that is the album title but I am just gonna assume this is the name of this being as well. Are they like an SCP or something? That is my best guess. Also the description beneath the title...I wonder if that’ll be relevant?

Doing research on this it made me realize I actually didn’t know much about Disturbed besides them being a nu-metal band. The band formed in Chicago in 1994. The guitarist, bassist, and drummer were originally part of a band called Brawl. They had a singer by the name of Erich Awalt but he left not long after recording their demo. So they advertised for a new singer in the Illinois Entertainer. David Draiman answered the ad and joined the band. This album was their debut released back on March 7th, 2000. Even though it was released in 2000 they recorded this from November to December of 1999. I guess it took them awhile to record. I would usually go more into the process here but I actually will save that when we talk more about the songs and near the end. So I should say that I am only familiar with five songs on this album. Actually let me correct myself, growing up I only listened to two songs from this album and a year or two ago I listened to three more of their songs through an unlikely source. Also before you ask, I do not remember how I first heard about the band.But before going further I should at the very least mention that around the early 2000s nu metal was getting big and for the metal community at the time a lot of metal elitist types HATED nu metal. I get there were some acts that weren’t good but like every metal genre has good to mid to bad bands. Nu metal is not like an outlier in this. Based on the fact I only would listen to a few Disturbed songs growing up I want to see if the rest of the album has some hidden gems that were overlooked.

Track 1: Voices

The starting track is something. At first I didn’t consider it that strong but then I had to remember this was early in nu metal so this would actually be unique for the time...maybe. I will say that David Draiman does have a unique voice delivery though there is something about how he sings that reminds me of something...it’ll come to me later. So this song is uh about the mental state of the narrator. That he is going through some psychosis. Apparently in the early days of the band’s live performances David would be wheeled onto the stage in a straitjacket and muzzle, before breaking free to perform the track. Uh...hmmm...the early 2000s were sure a time for this sort of deal. I am gonna take a good guess that nowadays he doesn’t do that when he performs the song. Oh and this song became a single and got an official music video. I don’t understand why this song got a music video and was somehow a hit-HEY the main guy in the music video is listening to a Disturbed song! And it is one of the tracks I genuinely like. Though that changes into well Voices. I know I could talk about the plot of the music video being about an overworked office worker but I am more focused on the fashion of both the band and the audience. Mainly because that type of fashion I remember from when I was a kid to teen. That and David’s outfit is cool and I wish I had it.

Track 2: The Game

Okay, now this track I like the energy behind it. The more tech to dance-like sound mixed with metal really works here. The rhythm and pace are steady and keep building. I can understand why this became a hit. Funnily, I first heard this around two years ago when I was watching the old Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z: Cooler’s Revenge. I was caught off guard when I first heard it there since I hadn’t watched that movie in YEARS. But it weirdly worked for the movie. Nowadays it is not used for the newer Funimation release of the film. Probably for licensing reasons. As far as I could find this song did not get a music video. Weird. So the song is about...actually I didn’t think about it until now. When I read the lyrics what it seemed like it is about a lady biting off more than she can chew with someone and this has deadly consequences. According to David,

“speaking about the manipulative nature of most people. That you should be cautious when playing with another person’s emotions or someone may make you accountable at some point in time.” 

Ah, yeah that makes sense I guess. This is a decent track and I do prefer it over Voices but nothing has really gotten me like “Oh I really like this track a lot” emotion yet.

Track 3: Stupify

Oh my god this track. Okay so I love this track. I genuinely thought this track would be later on in the album but no it is number 3. I first heard this in the end credits of Funimation’s Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug which this was the SECOND Disturbed song in the movie but the third song from the band to be in a DBZ movie. This makes me wonder of there are some Disturbed themed DBZ amvs. I know there are a TON of Linkin Park ones so there has to be some. This track along with Fear and The Game was what made me want to listen to the whole album. I know I could sit here and analyze the lyrics but the song is called “Stupify” and the beginning lyrics are,

Yeah, bringing you another disturbing creation From the mind of one sick animal who can't tell the difference And gets stupified

Do really expect me to find anything deeper in this song? This song isn’t meant to be deep and I am satisfied with that. I find it really funny this became another single for them but at the same time I get it. It is a genuinely fun song. But if you want me to see if this has deeper meaning I’ll look. WAIT THIS SONG IS ABOUT BEING AGAINST RACISM??? FUCKING WHAT??? Okay so this was written about one of David’s past relationships where he was dating a woman he loved who was a different ethnicity than him and her parents forced them to break up because of their relationship being interracial. I would have NEVER guess this song was about this at all. I read the lyrics three times and I am just baffled. Like it is cool this song is anti-racism but it is more of me being like surprised that is what it is about. Well, maybe the music video will help. Well, that didn’t help me. It had nothing to do with being against racism. It was about a neglected child that might be the lead singer (??) being haunted by people who do the shaky head effect from Jacob’s Ladder (?????). Oh and there is some Christ imagery I guess. The music video doesn’t do anything for me. Now, does this song good a good job getting it’s message across? Uh, I am not the right person to answer that. But is it an entertaining song in general? Yeah, big time. Oh, fun fact, this song mostly uses synthesizers. That’s pretty neat.

Track 4: Down With The Sickness

Oh fuck it’s the “OO WA HAHA” song. This was one of the two songs I would listen to on the album as a teen (they were the only two songs I owned). I know there were bits of David’s weird noises from previous songs but it is way more noticeable here. Now if we put aside the funny noise this is an actually solid song. The whole “becoming a monster” to “being taken over by an entity and becoming inhuman” is a fun theme and one that tends to common in metal which here it is no exception. I also got why this got as big as it did. It has this nice build up throughout the song. However, the song is notable with the inclusion of the odd domestic abuse interlude around 3:24 in the song. I know there are those who don’t like it either because of the subject matter, or how it is inserted in awkwardly, or because it comes off jarring. Now, I would not blame people for thinking it was inserted in for edgy shock value. But that isn’t the case here. David has stated he has had “crap kicked out of me when I was a kid, on more than one occasion," but stated the song is not about his personal experience but instead,

 "I'm really talking about the conflict between the mother culture of society, who's beating down the child yearning for independence and individuality, and the submission of the child."

I know in the same interview he did discuss difficulties opening up about his more personal life to write lyrics for the album. That is no easy task, I don’t deny that. Now did he pull it off well? That is up to you. This also got a music video and I find it jarring they use concert footage for this song than like make a story based video.

Track 5: Violence Fetish

Well that is a title I didn’t expect from Disturbed but uh so this song is about the human necessity for some violent release. Though I guess my view of the song was more about the narrator’s justifying the violent desires. This album is called The Sickness so maybe the narrator got infected by the creepypasta violence desire syndrome or something. Despite the title this song is not really sexual or really provocative. Maybe in 2000s this was for both the mainstream music world and maybe even in the early nu metal scene but there had to have been nu metal songs WAY more very in your face about violence than this. The instrumentals for this track are decent, especially around 2:25. One of the weaker tracks for me.

Track 6: Fear

This was the other Disturbed song used in the Funimation DBZ Lord Slug movie. Hearing this first from there was both jarring yet funny. My friends made jokes that Lord Slug was just playing his playlist throughout the movie. Though I will say that Fear is my other favorite track from this album. I know this is supposedly about like how little we really are and how people say we are significant but we really aren’t or some shit. And that the narrator wants to do something significant or something. But I really don’t care about that. The lyrics not deep but something about this song does hit all the right buttons for me as like a junk food song. I am a bit sadden though this didn’t become a single (still am baffled Voices became a single).

Track 7: Numb

Funny there are two nu metal songs from the early 2000s called Numb. It isn’t surprising since “numb” is a common word. Though I do prefer Linkin Park’s Numb over this one. The beginning doesn’t benefit the song but once you get passed the slower singing then it gets a bit better. But this song doesn’t really do much for me. Out of all the heartache songs I have listened to, I would not have this as my go to.

Track 8: Want

The song begins with this nice somewhat industrial sounding instrumental until the 30 second mark were David sings “She wants me, no!” then begins mimicking the sounds of an ambulance. Okay when I say that it made me think of that nurse duck from Dingo Pictures’ Animal Soccer World. ALSO, I realized what all of the “oo wa ha has” and “ra ras” reminded me of. Korn, more specifically Freak on a Leash. Is that bad? No, not really. But it is a very obvious influence. Though Korn was big in the early 2000s and was influential in the nu metal scene. Anyway, while funny noises part is funny the rest of the song is about a woman who wants to dominate the narrator but is denying herself that. I think that is what it is about. Okay, that is how I am choosing how to interpret the song because it makes it more interesting to me. Outside of my interpretation this is another weak song. Wait, this song got a music video too? But why? This makes my belief that Fear should have a single and got a music video much stronger.

Track 9: Conflict

It is about enemies and eliminating them. It is a very simple song with decent instrumentals. I do find David singing “ow, ow!” funny. I don’t really have much to say about a song like this because it is...generic. Not even fun generic but more boring type. Well except near the end where the narrator talks about someone loving life but also wants to kill life. Mainly because the instrumentals and vocals really bring it out. It makes me wish the sound of the whole song was that section.

Track 10: Shout 2000

Now this is a cover of Tears for Fears’ Shout. This stands out as a track to me because how it sounds more different compared to the other songs. But it being a cover probably helps that. Also, when I was listening to this album at work I legit forgot this was a cover and that this song was on here so when it got to these lyrics,

They gave you life And in return, you gave them hell As cold as ice (Now, bitch, you're ice, ice, baby)

I lost it. I was just both confused but also amused by the Vanilla Ice Reference. Fun fact, that reference was not in the original Tears for Fears version meaning they added it. You know what? I like that. I think that adds character to the cover. Now how does this cover compare to the original? While I do like the original both instrumentally and lyrically I actually like Disturbed’s cover. The main reason because the song is meant to be a call to action and be angry about what is going on in the world. Which Disturbed made it sound like that with the heavier instrumentals and vocals.

Track 11: Droppin’ Plates

This was the other song I would listen to as a teen by the band and I am gonna be honest, I love this song. Not because I saw this as a deep song as a teen. Actually I never thought it was deep. I genuinely find the idea of a song about hitting plates on your head stupidly funny. For years I actually thought that was what the song was about. Smashing plates. Well color me surprised to learn that is not what this song about when I actually read the lyrics of the song. It is a brag song about how many records they are selling and that their music is the best. Hence dropping plates I guess being a slang term for making records (??). You know what? I am gonna go back and continue believing this is about smashing plates. I feel like if you are gonna make a “Our music is great” song then maybe don’t release it on your debut album and put it on a future album.

Track 12: Meaning of Life

Okay the instrumentals on this track are good. I love the faster pace, the higher energy, and the nice rhythm. The lyrics of the song about the narrator wanting to do more rougher sex with his partner. Though the rough sex is more on the REALLY rough side. I will say it’s strength lyrically that this is very gender neutral so the song can be made gay if you want. Which I am gonna do. Though the lyrics “I wanna get psycho” makes me giggle because all I can think is going joker mode.

Bonus Track 1: God of the Mind

This song was released on the 10-anniversy edition of the album and this is a decent to good song. It is fun I’ll give it that. It feels like a more polished early Disturbed song which benefits it.

Bonus Track 2: A Welcome Burden

This was the second song released on the 10-anniversy edition of the album. The sound of the song itself is okay. Not great but all right. Reading the lyrics this is a political song calling all metal fans to tell them that the world is dark and how this can blended in music. The thing is the song really isn’t deep. Look, I do like both deep and not deep music. There is a time and place for a song to have a simple message or a song to have a deep message. However the thing about Disturbed I have noticed on this album is that they aren’t really great on trying to make deep songs. When I would listen to the songs without reading the lyrics, they were weirdly fun background noise. I don’t go to Disturbed for deep lyrics, I go to turn off my brain. Though I am not against bands trying to be deeper if they are genuine and put effort into it. It just comes off that the band is awkward about it.

Well, this album was just...there. Was it bad? Well it is not the worse album I have listened to. But was it good? Uh, I don’t think it was amazing. I know this was their first album but they got lucky at the time they got big in general. The songs I did like on this album were Fear, Stupify, The Game, Shout 2000, Droppin Plates, and Down with the Sickness to an extent. I enjoyed those as mainly fun junk food metal songs. But the last two songs had more polish to them which for the time does mean they have done some improvement and that’s great. In 2015 David did an interview on Loudwire talking about the first album and he states the success of the band overnight. That it was gradual taking around two to three years as a local band. Which I can get that, being a local band there is a lot of hurdles you have to go through to get noticed. But one part stood out to me and it was this,

“So there was a long period of time before that and a lot of struggle in a city that wasn't conducive to hard rock and heavy metal. Chicago was an alternative town. It was Smashing Pumpkins, Local H. It was not metal. So we were blacklisted. We couldn't even play inner-city clubs. We weren't cool enough. We were too metal. That was something that wasn't considered cool enough. We had to force our way in."

This was just a reminder to me that metal isn’t a popular and mainstream genre. Even nu-metal which did get popular and radio hits as still not gonna be as popular to accepted compared to other acts. It is funny thinking that back then in their town Disturbed was considered too metal when there are many metal elitist types who don’t consider Disturbed metal at all. It weirdly reminds me when I told one of my friends that Black Sabbath is metal and he was shocked. Note, he is not well versed in metal as I am. I know by modern metal standards bands like Black Sabbath would not be considered heavy in sound nor metal. But they are for their time. Disturbed is metal as well, doesn’t matter if you think they are good or not. Now as nu metal is concerned, I do think Disturbed for a time stood out but I would not consider them the best of the genre. But I will give some credit for them helping the nu metal scene and for them being some people’s gateway into metal. I saw many of the reviews for this album being three stars out of five to five out of ten. The album for me is a middle score album and that’s okay. This does though make me wonder if the album Indestructible holds up. I have a few songs from that album so I will check that out eventually. Not soon though, I need some break from Disturbed for a bit.

#Disturbed #The Sickness #album review #music review #nu metal #metal #heavy metal #album showcase #long post

[the-most-lamentable]

finish the murder mystery i double dog dare you. are there any fun facts or lil details that you couldn't fit in and/or are totally irrelevant but definitely exist nonetheless?

>:( well now I gotta finish it

Random shit that was cut, didn't make it, etc:

James and Keith live in Croydon since getting out of prison in small and very cluttered flat.

James had been homeschooling as a kid to keep up with his father's show schedule, rip to his education it was very neglected. Could he tell you about the war of 1812? Absolutely not but he can infodump about cardistry for hours on end.

The Bullet Catch has gone through like 4 different interactions including; scooby doo sort of armor that almost beheaded someone, a civil war canon that fires, narrowly missed because he saw a coin and tried to grab it, and one other I can't recall.

An exchange cut for pacing sake in Shock Blanket for 2 was the paramedic congratulating James for having the weirdest overdose she's had to help, he asks if he gets a prize and she gave him a sticker of a gecko.

Kevin's sister mentioned in epilogue is the most aggressively boring woman ever. Whole wardrobe of khaki suits. They are such wildly different people but they send post cards back and forth about their escapades (Kev sends one about his hospital visit after a failed stunt, she sends one back about office drama at Bethanys baby shower)

Additionally Kevin's accent got cut down, he's got a natural southern cadence usually buried under Generic American that turns up when stressed.

Bär is the reason Kevin lost his arm but it was an accident, probably. Throughout the show they had a contentious relationship as Kev used her utter lack of English to vent his frustrations onto her because she couldn't understand a word of it. In return she accidentally stabbed him on more that one occasion, impaled both hands, and accidentally shot his arm off. Kevin subsequently considered them even.

Mickey is a major fan of 90s boybands, which sadly doesn't come up.

Eugenia has a labyrinth for a backyard, full out hedge maze. Sadly doesn't come up cause of Locked Room Mystery. Additionally her house is full of fucking wild shit like there's a scrapped room that's just wall to wall accursed taxidermy beasts with a Bär Bear joke.

Finale was originally going to have one of those medieval torture things with the swinging axe that slowly descends, you know the one, then a saw trick that was also cut.

When a Door Closes was originally titled Secret Tunnel?

Most of the specifically named curiosities are things me or my relatives own such as my aunts umbrella stand full of swords.

A good chunk of stunts and magic tricks in there are things that I myself tested to make sure it made sense mechanically. This included me convincing my best friend to ties me up and time my escape, or pulling from my own experience drowning for the scuba stunt. Likewise Kevs aside about walking 4 blocks to 7 11 in a hurricane because he ran out of coffee is something I did, it was pretty bad coffee but I got a donut so.

James has no idea what his exact birthday is, his father just guesstimated a date. The only holdover he has from his mother is his first name. Fun fact his middle name is Aleksi, also not relevant. Either way he never really celebrated birthdays growing up (unlike his sisters who got their own parties each year), also based on personal life RIP.

Of the two times James has been arrested they learned to just zipcuff him as whenever they turned around he'd be out of the handcuffs. He figured out how to get out of the zip cuffs too (also something I tested, well prior when working a show where we somehow stole a pair of police handcuffs for a prop and I got handcuffed to a table right before a cue and had to learn escapology Very Quickly)

The Blades record for breath holding is 7 minutes drowned accidentally, 4.22 when not drowned. (Mine is 3.37 suck it houdini)

Here's the Playlist btw, each song correlates to chapters in order and boy howdy can I infodump about my song choices for that one https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5CgZY3wghYlxw15pruHBow?

#the great imposter #my drafts

[demonic-shadowlucifer]

How to spot and identify Clickbait!

(PT: How to spot Clickbait!) Slight trigger warning for unreality-inducing elements. Ahh clickbait. We've all seen it before. While clickbait may be obvious to identify, sometimes it's not always the case. With recent hockey rumors being spread (Something I already talked about on my hockey blog @blusical), I've seen a lot of clickbait titles/articles pop up. And I want to talk about how to identify it. First though, what is Clickbait? Clickbait is typically a link or a thumbnail meant to attract attention and hook readers into reading an article or watching a video. This form of content is typically over-exaggerated or straight up misinformation. One thing to keep in mind is that not all clickbait is exactly malicious. Most of the time it's usually annoying, though it can sometimes be used for humorous purposes (Say, a comedic YouTuber titling a mostly humorous video with "Here's why your hockey team sucks"). However, some people can take it too far, and it can be used to spread false information and can also be used to give people malware. When it comes to reading an article, try to look for the following when avoiding clickbait. Title format. Most clickbait articles use an advertising technique called Chumboxing, which refers to advertisements that use thumbnail grids and captions to drive traffic. These articles may be formatted in ways such as "Parents HATE this simple trick", "Secrets that the FBI doesn't want you to know!" and vise-versa. Another thing to look out for is words that are capitalized. Most clickbait titles tend to capitalize random words, or sometimes the entire title.

Additionally, keep an eye out for language that tries to make you do certain things or make you feel certain things. Stuff that's like "This is what happens when you do [x]", "Here's why you shouldn't do this!", "Moments that will make you happy/sad/angry".

(Watchmojo's in a lot of these aren't they?)

Those titles can also be very fear-mongering and may cause paranoia and anxiety in many. Also be sure to watch out for any title that uses sayings like "speechless", "shocking", "expert", "[x person] says", "must do" or any similar sayings, since odds are, they're clickbait.

Lastly, look for context in the article title if there's any? So the title mentions an expert? Is there a name? It mentions an athlete? Which one? Which sport? Is there a quote in the article? Who said it? And why was it said? Thumbnails.

Clickbait articles and videos will also use thumbnails or pictures to get clicks. What do those look like? Some thumbnails can be very heavily edited. This is one thing to look out for when it comes to videos. Now, this isn't always a sign of clickbait. Since many YouTubers do it to get clicks. Say, a gaming YouTuber simply adding "OMG" in the thumbnail of a video of them playing Dangranronpa (if you know you know).

However there are some that go over the top. Such as unnecessary text in the thumbnail, a bunch of images mashed together, those useless red arrows, you get the idea.

(By the way there is just so much wrong with this that I don't even know where to start).

Some thumbnails may also include images that, while they match the caption, don't provide much context to what's being talked about Again, context people! These usually tend to be stock images (And with the rise of AI, it's also important to look out for AI generated thumbnails too!)

And then there's clickbait with thumbnails that aren't even relevant to the title.

Some websites to look out for/avoid (Please correct me if I made a mistake):

While every website posts clickbait at some point, some do it more than others. And a lot of the times it's typically misleading or downright malicious. Most of the infamous ones include: Buzzfeed. TMZ (As well as most tabloids) AddictingInfo Upworthy. Deadspin (That site also just has questionable content to begin with). ViralNova Huffington Post And probably others but those were the first ones that came to my head. Final notes:

Not every article or YouTuber that does these things is automatically clickbaiting. However if it does more than one of those things, or it does it more often than not.. time to become skeptical. Again, clickbaiting isn't exactly good or bad. Most of the time it's just annoying, and in some cases can be used for comedic purposes (But either way, just... don't do it lol).

#and yes i'm very aware of the irony of using “how to” and an exclamation point in the title lol #lets talk about stuff #clickbait #internet culture #internet problems #social media #social media problems #unreality #sort of

[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!

#THE GUIDE #metatext #fandom meta #fandom etiquette #Eiiri made this