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YOU ARE THE REASON
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tumblr dot com
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@owl-song
in 2026, remember how GOOD writing feels. remember how satsfying it is to get your characters to the point you have been dying to get to, where they will experience the love, fear, relief or whatever the feeling you want to bring to life may be. let this year be the year of writing, prgress and of satisfactory endings.
Listen if they want to give the "voices in a chain" credit for their additions why don't they use the reblog map? Why have they forgotten the Tumblr balls?
Make the map more accessible for those who want it; maybe use different coloured balls for people who made additions or something. And then if you want to see why so many people reblog a particular chain you can click on the ball and get to the post on whatever form it is there. There, problem solved without having to mess with any core features
I'd like it if there was a toggle so we could choose to make additions visible in the map or not, then people who wanted could keep their relative anonymity
@staff this one’s good! @changes
no punctuation we read like romans
NOPUNCTUATIONORLOWERCASEORSPACESWEREADLIKEROMANS
INTER·PVNCTVATION·WE·INSCRIBE·LIKE·ROMANS
words doesn’t classical matter order in greek;
we, in a manner akin to that of a man who once was, in Rome, an orator of significant skill, who was then for his elegance of speech renowned and now for his elaborate structure of sentences cursed by generations of scholars of Latin, the language which he spoke and we now study, Cicero, write, rather than by any efficiency, functionality, or ease of legibility have our words, our honors, the breaths of our hearts, be besmirched.
The fact that this has yet to devolve into boustrophedon is a miracle… or a challenge. I’m looking at you @terpsikeraunos @macdicilla @labellamordens
I’m up to it
Not many jnſtances of Punctuation - but for many Daſhes – et words Capitaliz’d for emphavſis, but not logicaly - ſpeeling and word Endings varied Gratelie - and the long S - ſ - vſed in at the ſtart and Centre of wordes - & the short “s” vſed only at the end - as with the U and V, and the I and J - but v and j only at the ſtart of wordes (we diſtinguishe not between Vouels and Conſonants, only decoratiue Letteres). Ye letter “y” being in lookes cloſe to an Olde letter “þ” which is vſed as “th” - Y may be vſed in the place of TH - but only ſparingly - and ſtill Pronounc’d the ſame as TH. Long and rambling ſentences - ſeeminglie without end - a paragraph can conſiſt of One whole ſentence, and ſhort ſentences are rare – we ſcribe like hiſtorical Modern English – and other european Languages.
And furthermore, Carthage is to be destroyed.
I hate all of you.
forgive me father for i have opened a notification and read the message within to make the red dot go away and then forgot to reply for a month . it will happen again
Dear Fandom readers - an etiquette fail
AO3 is not goodreads. It is not the NYT bestseller list.
You paid no money to read these stories. They are, in fact, a labor of love, done on the off time in the off hours of people who are writing for the joy of writing and the joy of the story.
Your ratings are not appreciated. Not by other readers, who don't know you from adam. Not by fandom-savvy passerby.
And not, in fact, by the author. Who again: Wrote this for fun. In their spare time - around work, around family and friend commitments. Around the rest of their lives. Fandom clout almost never "pays off" in any monetary gains, in any form of physical or financial security.
So please stop "rating" us on something we do for joy.
Today, a fellow fanauthor shared this with me. It was not on any story of my own, but they understandably needed a moment to go "wtf" and process it all. With their permission, I now share this with you.
You won't find this comment on AO3 anymore, by the by.
I have... a lot of issues with this. First of all being something that would be a C-grade in any US school system is not a "Good Rating" for most folks, but many of my issues would be the same even in this commenter had rated this a 10/10.
It boils down to this:
Why are you grading us on something we all are here to do solely for fun and personal enjoyment? Why does it have to be good?
Why can't it just be a labor of love and of joy to be good enough for you, dear commenter?
Do I, as a fanauthor, want to write well? Sure! I do want to write good stories. But I didn't ask random readers to grade me on them. Not in bookmarks that I can easily check, and certainly not in my comments section. And I never will want them to. Every author I've talked to agrees. Is there someone out there who might want this? Sure. Most likely, even! The human experience and desires are broad and varied. But in my experience, if they do exist in Fandom, they're the vast minority. So please:
Don't.
This is a very often a no-payment gift economy! If you make yourself condescending down to the people writing free works for you, you may find that there's suddenly no more writing for you to read! 👀
I know the culture of fandom has changed to the point that I am not up on what The Youth are doing and haven't been for awhile. That said. I am just a person who likes the same TV show as you. Talk to me like a person, not like a service provider.
Nope this made me mad so I’m gonna add more
YOU DO NOT GET TO RATE A GIFT!!!!
Fan fiction is a gift to the community. You do not get to give any gift a rating out of anything
IT’S FUCKING RUDE AND ABSOLUTELY APPALLING MANNERS!!!!
WHO RAISED YOU IF YOU THINK THAT IS IN ANY WAY APPROPRIATE?!?
JUST DON’T!!!!
Maybe some of you guys got confused when you saw writers saying you should always comment on a fic! If what you have to say about something made out of love and available for free with absolutely NO REQUESTS for constructive criticism is something like this...
Just don't comment.
If it sucked, close the fic. It's called bad luck - sometimes the tags seem promising but the author has a style you don't like, or a the story takes a turn that makes you cringe. Thats part of the experience - fanfic is kind of a "blind box" situation, you dont know if you'll get what you want until you read it.
"Waah, but if it sucked i should get to complain, right?"
Yeah thats how it is when you order a meal at a restaurant, or you buy a product at a store. You paid a professional, you should get your end of the deal. However, unlike in those scenarios,
You got your fanfic for ~free~ from someone who does it as a ~hobby~
They dont owe you professional quality or a product tailor made for your taste because this is not their job. And you don't get to complain because you didn't pay for any of this.
If a friend knits you a plushie and gifts it to you, does not request an honest criticism of it, do you tell them its a 7/10 job?
No, because that's how you lose friends. No, because that would be rude to someone who spent a week weaving thread into a little creature just for you. No, because you aren't their knitting teacher.
The kudos button is for saying you liked a fic. The comments section is for expanding i why you liked it, or thanking the author for their work of passion, or for keysmashing out of joy.
What is the button for when you dislike a fic or find it only 7/10?
That's the red square box with an "X" on the top right of your browser window. Close that fic and move on.
If you actually want to remember which fics were "solid" (cuz, honestly, 7/10 is a good solid fic and I wouldn't close it) and which were "awesome", AO3 has this very nice feature called a "private bookmark". You can put your personal ratings and note-to-self comments there and all the author will see is that someone liked it enough to bookmark it.
Okay we are trying this again this time with clearer instructions and options.
Please read all instructions before voting.
If you are using the desktop site, mobile site in the browser, or an updated version of the app, please vote with the number of REBLOGS ONLY (not total notes) you see at the bottom of the post.
If you are using an un-updated version of the app, please vote "un-updated app." If you don't know what version of Tumblr you're using, please vote "I'm not sure what version of tumblr I'm using."
If you vote, please reblog. The purpose of this is to examine the new reblog behavior on Tumblr.
Please DO NOT add text to the body of your reblog.
The post you're seeing should have the word "Apple," "Banana," or "Coconut" as the first tag under the post. This is to track how the reblog behavior works with tags as opposed to reblogs with text. If you reblog, please tag and make "Apple" "Banana" or "Coconut" your first tag based on the first tag of the post you are reblogging from.
Again, the instructions are:
Vote with the number of reblogs ONLY (not total notes) you see on the updated app or desktop site. If your app hasn't updated or you're not sure what version of Tumblr you're using, make that your vote
Reblog this post without adding text to the body of your reblog
Tag your reblog "Apple" "Banana" or "Coconut" depending on which of the tags the post you are reblogging from is tagged with. Please make this your first tag.
How many reblogs do you see at the bottom of this post?
1-5
6-10
11-20
21-35
36-50
51-100
I'm using an un-updated version of the app
I'm not sure what version of Tumblr I'm using
Please reblog and tag with the same first tag as the post you're reblogging. This should be "apple" "banana" or "coconut."
You can add other tags, but please don't add text to the body of your reblog. If you want, you can tag with the reblog count that you saw when you voted.
You can reply, but please do not reblog with text in the body of the reblog.
Thank you for participating in this experiment!
One under-appreciated breed of fic writer are the ones who hyperfocus on logistics to the exclusion of all canon shortcuts, and thus usually strike upon an awesome way to flesh out the worldbuilding or characters.
Like, I’m not necessarily talking realism here since often it’s still pretty far from realistic, but more like, “someone has to be running spies in this fantasy kingdom, and we’ve seen the whole royal court, so which background character is it? How does that change these three major interactions?” Or “real life historical nobility did in fact have some things to do that were like jobs, how does this human disaster cope with running an estate?” Or “there’s no reason for a sci-fi robot detective to know how to whitewater kayak, where’d she learn?” Or “if this guy is serving the emperor directly he has to be way high up in the space empire servant hierarchy, why is he doing this menial task for someone else? What’s his motive? Does he perhaps have the secret space telepathy?”
Anyway I’m always DELIGHTED to find a fic or writer who asks these questions because the fics themselves are universally bangers.
person who knows how logistical things works has picked up the cannon, hefted it thoughtfully, and put a single chalk mark precisely on the problem.
Friday the 13th, Pi Day, and the Ides of March back to back.
What a busy weekend.
THIS
🍄🌿🍄🌱🍄🌿🍄🌱🍄🌿🍄🌱🍄🌿🍄
You! Have been visited by the gnome of executive function! Reblog to send them along to make sure they visit the next person in need!
🍄🌿🍄🌱🍄🌿🍄🌱🍄🌿🍄🌱🍄🌿🍄
“They have called this day the eleventh of March! And whomsoever of you gets through this day, unless you are shot in the head or somehow slain, you will stand at tiptoe when e'er you hear the name again. And you will get excited at the name March the eleventh! We happy few, we few, we band of brothers… our names will be as like… household names! And those who are not here… be they sleeping or doing something else, they will feel themselves sort of crappy! Because they are not here to join the fight on this day the eleventh of March!
Move out.”
-Sgt. Buck Frobisher, March 11, 1999
Due South finale “Call of the Wild”
Whenever America starts a war with a nuclear power everyone starts yelling about WW3 and it's only just occurred to me that when Americans say 'WW3' they are at least partially expressing an anxiety that this time their government's blind aggression might have hit somebody who'll actually hit back.
I was gonna say 'like WW2' but then rapidly remembered that neither of the existing world wars involved like. much of any direct damage to civilian populations either because America's eternal wars haven't touched its own soil since like the 1860s. except for Pearl Harbour, which was literally One Attack in the whole of WW2 (and which was also primarily targeting a military base. and was in a colonized nation far from the mainland USA). I am not kidding if you look up 'attacks on American soil' every single thing since 1900 except individual attacks (Pearl Harbour and 9/11, basically plus a couple of border skirmishes with Mexico) is like 'America was attacked In The Gulf States' or 'America was attacked In Asia'. like mate where is the US? you can't count attacks on military bases as 'attacks on US soil' unless you need to bulk out the list which. look at the history.
Like imo one of the reasons the US is so comfortable being leisurely belligerent against Literally Any Country In The World is that it's been literally well over a century since the fight actually came to them. why WOULD the US government stop being blindly aggressive when the only costs are financial?
and instead of being primarily concerned about like. the actual thousands of people who are actually gonna die in these strikes. every time the US's unprovoked aggression hits a nuclear state of a state with a measure of international heft, the loudest concern from Americans is OH NO WHAT IF THIS ONE'S WW3
because. war is so abstract and foreign. because it's spent 150 years constantly happening Over There and only involving Americans who are in the military. foreign wars don't register as a threat because they're NOT a threat to Americans (the only Real People) and the way in which they're frightening is the abstract possibility that the other party might at some point bring America actually into the war. which has basically never happened so it's this vast unknown threat.
(the UK btw is also not immune to this but it's a wee bit different. our economy was permanently crippled by direct damage in WW2 and the Irish republicans got a lot of hits in so there's still some memory that War Has Consequences. but by and large we still approach war as something that Happens Elsewhere and are scandalised by the idea it might directly affect us at home. this is still a fairly abstracted and fictionalised threat to us which we treat as More Worrying than the actual bombings currently happening, but I just don't think it's as completely abstracted as the American relationship to foreign wars)
The Black Tom explosion in 1916 was a German terrorist attack on US soil and resulted in 7 deaths, hundreds of injuries, about half a billion dollars in adjusted damages, and complete annihilation of an island in New Jersey.
Also, WWII was a nuclear war.
SEVEN. SEVEN DEATHS. A CENTURY AGO. is the 'war has come to US soil' you wanted to pull?
Preliminary figures today (4 March) is 787 Iranians killed since 28 February. so forgive me if I say you're proving my point pretty effectively.
similarly yes you are correct WWII was a nuclear war. so far the only one. a war in which the US made the decision to kill over 200,000 people Over There on a different continent and then spent the next 80 years making sure nobody else would be able to either retaliate or do anything similar. And the American (and Western) relationship to nuclear arms remains primarily not 'Jesus Christ I cannot believe America killed close to a quarter of a million people in a civilian centre with one set of orders' but 'oh noooooo what if this means we have to mitigate our aggression in case they do something like this BACK TO US'.
so. again. my point. war in the American cultural imagination remains an abstract thing that THEY do to OTHER PEOPLE where the concept of any enemy action reaching people in civilian centres is so completely abstracted it just becomes a boogeyman and apparently we should still be talking about the 7 American civilians that were killed in a war that claimed in the region of 6-13 million civilian lives in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Seven. Fuck me. I thought I was being needlessly shitty when I wrote this post but you have really helped clarify that this actually is how warped American perspectives on civilian casualties are.
the only context i wanna see people talk about "World War III" is Abdullah Öcalan's theory of it, which states that it is not something that will occur, but rather has been occurring in the Middle East since the 90s since the fall of the USSR led Western capitalist powers to jump at the opportunity to control the area and its resources, and prevent the rise of any new social movements that could replace "real socialism" as a viable threat to capitalist hegemony. WWII is defined by
low-intensity, protracted proxy warfare (rather than troops fighting troops, states use private mercenary armies, religious-fascist militias, and advanced technology like drones; to quote op, the war is "so abstract and foreign.")
economic warfare (the use of tariffs, import bans, and sanctions to weaken enemies, starve populations, and force submission; again, see op: "why WOULD the US government stop being blindly aggressive when the only costs are financial?")
flexible alliances (friends and enemies change rapidly based on capitalist interests; states like the US and Russia might fight each other indirectly in Ukraine, but coordinate their military activities in Syria)
reliance on media as ideological tool (ideology and media played a role in the previous world wars, but in WWIII it is central to how the war is being acted out; when there are limited battles and the fighting is done through distant drone warfare and proxy militias, media takes center stage, especially when that media is global rather than local)
biological and chemical warfare (tactical nuclear weapons, attacks on nuclear sites, chemical arms, and epidemics/pandemics are integral tools to manipulate people, cause terror, disrupt social cohesion; technology is used to cause destruction, terror, and to divide people)
this theory was born out of the actual experiences of people in the Middle East, particularly marginalized groups like the Kurdish people who have faced the brunt of both state repression & violence from within the region (by Turkey, Iran, etc.) as well as from foreign imperialist powers, and Öcalan specifically focuses on how this affects the women of the Middle East and how imperial violence cannot be separated from patriarchal violence. this theory has also been applied to the imperialist exploitation of South America.
this quote in particular really sticks with me:
This war strikes at the very foundations of what makes us a society. It seeks to destroy the social fabric, our communal bond, to isolate us from each other and to empty our existence of meaning. It reduces us to mere bodies for exploitation and consumption. It is a metaphysical war of a system that wants to create a materialistic world. It is difficult to tell people who are taking bullets in their bodies made in the USA, Germany, Israel or Russia that this war is not yet global. Although the Leviathan of our age, the capitalist system, is more cunning in hiding its intentions, this does not make it less true that is eating us from the inside. The veins of this monster, the trade and transport routes, are expanding through mega-projects and the same corporations seek to reach all parts of the world, not hesitating to eliminate an entire people if necessary, to achieve their goals. In Abya Yala [Indigenous term for South America], this reality is more tangible than anywhere else on the planet.
also this one:
It’s true that World War III is taking place in the Middle East in a unique way. However, certain particularities distinguish this war from classic military-political aspects. Although defining it as a clash of civilizations is correct, its content is often incorrectly interpreted. Frequently, not enough attention is paid to its historical and social dimensions—what side particular forces are on and their methods and goals are not clear. Even though there is plenty of talk about various plans and projects, the war in question appears to lack a plan and to almost be running on its own steam. We are, so to speak, faced with a war that aims to create chaos.
if anyone wants to read more on this, here / here / and here
TL;DR op is right. USAmericans fear the idea of a future WWIII because we are ignorant of the reality that our state, and related imperialist states, have been waging a war on the world for decades, with the goal of causing chaos and destruction and death for the sake of preserving capitalism, the destruction of nature, and the monopoly over power. any fearmongering about a future WWIII is a distraction from the urgent reality that people around the world have been living and dying in for years upon years.
Absolutely horrid that a 10hr sleep does not cure you of all that ails you
it doesn't even cure me of being tired
It should work like in RPGs. I want to be able to go to bed exhausted, poisoned, and missing half of my blood and wake up at 100% fully recovered
some crazy good fanfic in my google docs. whatever guy started writing it i hope he finishes it
Filtering ≠ "Search"
It's amazing how often I still see people arguing about how AO3 does or doesn't have good search features while talking past each other.
I know this will be blindingly obvious to most of you, but for that remaining percentage, if you've ever thought "WTF? AO3 does not have exclude functions. What are you all on about?", you need to filter rather than search.
When most people talk about "searching AO3", they're not talking about this or this:
Yes, I know that on every other website on the planet, the default way to search is the simple search text entry box in the upper right or the advanced search. But not on AO3.
AO3 is patterned on oldschool fic archive, so the expectation is that you're looking in the index of fandoms or, in this upgraded version, starting from a ship or character or something. You're starting from a tag.
If you start from a tag, you will see a sidebar (on a computer) or have a sidebar you can unhide (on a phone):
This is what everyone else is actually talking about when they describe AO3 "search".
--
Anyway, the next time you see someone claiming that Wattpad has better search features than AO3 or that exclude filters don't exist, this is probably why.
And if you're the confused person wondering why everyone else is describing the search page in a bonkers way that bears no resemblance to what you're seeing, this is definitely why.
AO3's work search is more similar to advanced search on academic journals website like ScienceDirect, Wiley, JSTOR etc. (with better capabilities at narrowing down things since the the tags are wrangled and categorized) than to wattpad.
And even in fanfiction.net people is more likely to search fics via the fandom index, then filtering fir characters, age rating, etc.
I've been thinking recently about the way the design has aged over the last 17 years. In 2008 we were conceptualising finding stuff as two complementary but different features: Search (for ANYTHING) vs Browse (cruise a specific topic). The first was for people who wanted to go as broad as possible, the second was for people who already had some sort of criteria and wanted to see what was there then narrow it down. At the time we expected people would either start with a Fandom and go straight to Browse or Search then immediately switch to Browse.
We had fandom building a folksonomy on del.ico.us out of tags for the express purpose of bookmarking content for personal and shared use. Plus to a lesser extent tagging was being used on LiveJournal. It was normal and expected to have a bunch of tags/filters to Browse! The hardest part on the AO3 was the tag wrangling feature so we could have a curated folksonomy that evolved over time.
Fast forward 17 years and for more and more people the default user experience is the mobile/app ecosystem where Search is the primary tool for finding stuff (especially if looking for your own stuff in-app, but it's the default for online shopping) followed by Browse (looking for other people's criteria-specific stuff in-app or filtering on websites after you've realised how many shoes / types of yarn there really are). In-app we Save/Download and don't necessarily consciously file things in a specific location with a specific filename, and we don't have to go back and look for things where we filed them, we can just Search. There's also a whole rant I could make about how apps are monetised and need to optimise for 'engagement' which promotes a design where Browse is as many clicks as possible which pushes users towards Search but I'll stop now.
Which is a long way to say I suspect today's default behaviour has shifted enough towards Search that Browse needs to become more visible in the AO3 user interface.
Yeah. It was obvious back then. Mostly. But what proportion of current fic readers remember Delicious in a way that would let them intuitively get why AO3 looks how it looks?
It was obvious, and now it's not. And this change to an app ecosystem is exactly why.
