toaster where the pop tarts hang out

30 | they/them | chaos witch | fckn nerd | crafter | adhd/c-ptsd | terfs, nazis, magas, etc are unwelcome here

[thesylverlining]

Me: yeah I'm a Norse Pagan but pretty soft about it, the stories are largely or entirely allegorical to describe various natural and social phenomena; when considering polytheism I can buy that deities are aspects of a collective unconsciousness expressing itself through human creativity; there's also a lot of Weird Shit out there we don't understand and I'd probably describe myself as an optimistic agnostic viewing reality through a heathen lens?

Also Me: except for Loki. Loki's just an actual guy

[strwbrypoptart]

Demand the respect of patience.

[strwbrypoptart]

Feng Shui says not to point your mirrors at the bed but Sacha Dhawan as the Master got me feeling like they really should be (AKA holy FUCK I wanna look @ you but also BEND ME OVER)

[strwbrypoptart]

November 11th, 1981 was the first full moon Remus Lupin had to endure after the loss of James, Lily, Sirius, AND Peter.

[ripfic]

Absolutely random thing, but allergy is completely underrepresented in fiction, it's always either a deadly nut allergy or a small rash/sneezing that is either used for comedic purposes or barely bothers the character.

We need a bigger variety of allergic reactions in fiction, because so many people don't know that there IS, in fact, a variety.

[strwbrypoptart]

I'm over a decade late to the "super" part of "superwholock"

and I gotta say

jfc I need to make some friends

[strwbrypoptart]

"That's me in the corner

That's me in a bean-bag

Losing my religion"

-R.E.M. or something

[strwbrypoptart]

Vetting a new doc like "hey u know bout the clit, right?"

"We're new to each other and I hate to ever doubt a medical professional but a while back I had an ultrasound and asked some questions about the internal structure of the clitoris and the technician had no idea what I was talking about so now it's important to me to make sure my care providers are aware of this bit of anatomy, and I really want help finding info about testosterone's effect on this bit of anatomy. I know that "T" elongates and thickens the erectile tissue of the glans and body/shaft of the clitoris. I would like to make sure you're aware that the clitoris also has corpus cavernosa, crura, and vestibular bulbs, and I would appreciate any help you can give on providing information about what effect prescription testosterone treatment in nonbinary gender and FTM situations does to these parts of a clitoris. I don't have active pain or concerns about these parts of my body, (just euphoria at the lengthening and thickening of erectile tissue that I can observe), but it is extremely important to me to be informed and aware. Many "thank yous" in advance!!"

[strwbrypoptart]

Update: I don't think she knows about the clit

[strwbrypoptart]

never did find out about the clit...

[strwbrypoptart]

i like repairing my trash. gives me something to think about other than death or oppression.

[badwolfkaily]

This.

[strongwomenunited]

I don’t know about others but the only reason I put both is so that whichever someone clicks on, they will find my fic. So if there is supposed to be rules, I guarantee you that no writer knows these ones. We can barely get people to comment, you think we’re going to specifically choose & or / ? Hell no.

[beatrice-otter]

I’ve been in fandom for twenty years, and “/” means romance and “&” means no romance was literally one of the first things I learned. It dates back to Star Trek fanfiction of the 70s. I’m boggled by the fact that anyone who’s been reading fic on AO3 for more than like five minutes wouldn’t know that, and I’m curious as to what fanfic community you come out of.

I don’t think that tagging with both is actually going to get your fic in front of more readers. People looking for romance often exclude the “&” tag if there are too many gen fics tagged with both. People looking for gen often exclude the “/” tag if there are too many fics with both. So rather than putting your fic in front of twice the people, you are in fact more likely to get your target audience ignoring your fic because it has a tag they don’t want.

Also, by overtagging you are more likely to annoy potential readers away from your fic than entice them. A fic tagged both & and / better have both romance and a ton of platonic interaction between the two characters, like a slow burn romance friends-to-lovers arc. If it isn’t, I’m going to be very unhappy because the author lied to me with the tags to try and trick me into reading a fic with deceptive advertising.

When I’m in a fandom and see tagging where some of the tags don’t really apply and are just there to get it in front of more eyes, I’m going to assume one of two things. Either the author is a newb who doesn’t know anything, or the author is purposefully spamming the tags because they don’t care about lying to their potential audience and think that “spray and pray” is an effective tactic. In the first case, their writing probably will not be very good, so why bother reading their fic. In the second case, the fact that I can’t trust the tags to be accurate means I’m not going to read it to see if it’s interesting even if it has a tag I like. Chances are, that tag isn’t actually in the fic anyway, and even if it is, by spam-tagging the author is making the archive harder to use for everybody. Why would I reward bad behavior with attention? No. Far better to mute the author and move on.

[mylordshesacactus]

More to the point--and no, I will never stop harping on this, because we have GOT to stop leaving our strongest points in the drawer--it doesn't matter if you heard of this convention before joining AO3 or not, because it's in AO3's tagging FAQ.

[id: the "How do I tag a romantic or platonic relationship?" section of the tagging FAQ here.]

"But Jo," you may argue, because you're wrong. "There's no way to find that without digging through site FAQ menus, and that's really inaccessible!"

sure

except

that when you go to post a new fic, and you go to put in those relationship tags, you see this

[id: the Relationships field]

and that tooltip, the one THERE TO EXPLAIN HOW THE FIELD WORKS, links to the Relationships segment of the tag FAQ, which explicitly lays this shit out.

I don't care if you don't know fandom history. I don't care if you've never heard a goddamn word about the spirk shippers. I don't care if you've never been exposed to fandom culture in your life. It is, frankly, not fair to expect those things of everyone.

What is entirely fair to expect is that you will READ THE INSTRUCTIONS PRINTED NEXT TO THE FUCKING BOX, actually. Forget fandom conventions. It genuinely doesn't matter whether you agree with or respect fandom conventions. This is a site policy. This is explicitly how tagging on AO3, specifically, works.

[adribelladonna]

Also, idk if it's just me, but whenever I see an overtagged fic with a bunch of "/"s and "&"s thrown in seemingly at random I'm going to scroll past it. I'm going to assume it's a plotless, half-baked attention grab. Because it most likely is, 9 times out of 10 it is.

A few tags relating to what's in the fic? Great, amazing I can clearly see the author's intentions, I know I can trust them with what they're doing, I can kinda infer what's the fic gonna be about just from the tags alone and see if I vibe with that or not, the description is gonna help entice me and pull me in.

A giant wall of all concievable tags on the site? Welp, looks like the fic is trying to be everything at once, I have no idea what the fic's gonna be about, the author went unhinged with tagging and I'm uncomfortable, cuz it's either really going to be everything at once and yet nothing of substance at the same time (and most times in a form of a chatfic) or it's literally going to be the most normal fic out there that could've been summed up in 3 tags or less and the author is a liar.

You're not getting your fic to 2 audiences at once, girliepop, you're just putting your lack of effort and respect for potential readers out there to scare them away. Just pls learn how to properly tag shit. It's not hard to tag fics correctly.

Use the fucking "&" properly, pls, I'm begging you, I'm starving for my platonic relationships content in this barren AO3 land and the morsels of "&" I stumble upon all turn out to be FUCKING PORN! THIS IS A CRY FOR HELP PLEASE

[strwbrypoptart]

I'm 22 days from having been directly exposed to the atmosphere for a grand total of 30 gregorian years.

And today I had the thought: "Yeah, I could fuck a 46 year old. Feels like a healthy age gap."

The Joke is I was fuckin a 55y/o at 23 so this feels like an improvement.

[strwbrypoptart]

Background info: I have this hope/working belief that when I die, I'll get an End-Game Results Screen so I can see stuff like how many dogs I've petted and how many times I've listened to The Bad Touch by The Bloodhound Gang, etc

Definitely gonna need the Life: Wrapped stat for how many times I've sobbed about trans stuff and Harry Potter stuff, (also specifically while in my kitchen) with to-scale venn diagrams

[frigbob]

Person who wants to do stuff trapped in a body that needs to lie down

[vixvigil]

this email could’ve been a fight to the death

[strwbrypoptart]

Hogwarts founders polycule

[strwbrypoptart]

Bought t-shirts saying "It's raining them" and "Brick first" at pride and used ASL to sign "thank you" when I said it in verbal english to those running the vendor tent and the two vendors both responded in both ASL and verbal english saying "thank you" in return and I REALLY think we should normalize using sign language whenever possible my dudes

[strwbrypoptart]

Stevan moffat would NOT understand how I experience gender or sexuality. He would not write it accurately.

I believe that Russell T Davies, in comparison, would.