#read guys

[halloeverynyan]

i made a fic

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

ok bye

[homeless-clefairy]

AO3′s tag system is spoiling us

Like, for real though. Its tag system is amazing, not only helps people to avoid the fics with tropes you don’t like, but it also helps author to promote their work by reaching the people who wants those tropes. 

But at the same time, is making us forgetting how to pick clues from texts, how to catch foreshadowings and even the same basics of a story, such as the narrator! 

Under read more because this rant it’s way too long.

Today I’ve seen some people criticising a book because the lack of worbuilding (since it only mentioned the elites in a heavy cast system), how one character seemed too awesome to be real and how all in all it seemed more like a fanfic written by a character’s fan rather than a book sequel. And like, these arguments would be taken seriously... If the book was written with an omniscient third person narrator.

But the book is not written like that. It’s written as if the three main characters are telling their memories of a certain event and how did they particpate in that. One of them is a teenager, the other is a young woman victim of a cult and the third one is one of the cult’s high rank officials and is using that testimony to try and save her ass from being imprisoned. And it’s clear by the beginning of the novel that these are the narrators, as the P.O.V.s start as “Transcription of the Testimony of X” or as an diary entry. Only that should make you think that the narrator will not be objective and their critics can easily be explained:

Why it’s only the elite mentioned in the novel? Because the narrators are part of the elites. And they don’t care about the lower classes and have no reason to get involved with them. Why does this character seem to have plot armor and little emotion? It’s a teenager retelling her memories. She might have exagerated some facts and suppresed others Why does these chapters make this character so sympathetic when we know she’s evil by th eprequel? Because those chapters are written with said characters P.O.V., so of course she’s gonna make herself more sympathetic

I Love AO3, I really do. But having AO3 and your only reading platform might make you forget how to comprehend a book by its text alone, since the tags give you clues of what it’s about to happen (”Major character death” warns you, so you spend the book wondering which character might die instead of building the tension if you didn’t know. “Angst with happy ending” relaxes you since no matter what might happen, you know it will have a happy ending. Unless there’s the tag of “unreliable narrator” we assume that we can take what we’re told at face value.)

I’m not saying you should stop reading fanfics or using AO3, this is more like an unexpected consequence of a great system that it’s used by organization purposes (AO3 is an ARCHIVE after all, so of course needs to be organized). But I greatly advise you to also look for fanfics in other platforms were tags as not as present (difficult since we’ve taken tags as internet ettiquete) or go to your local library and borrow a book or two. Books aren’t tagged, but they’re organized by genre and age appropiance to read them, so it’s easy to pick books you might like. If you like that book, maybe you can try to buy it and support the author or their legacy. If you don’t, you can easily give it back. The thing is, we need to read and learn how to take clues by the text itself, not needing an extra page that tells us what we might find in a book.

[illwonaire]

you can't answer some anon messages okay people??

[poltergeits]

plis read it's very much important "sende me your opinion"

[lemonpasta]

im still hating the Misophonia phrase thing that keeps showing up in this tag. Its making me really upset because it makes this seem less of an issue than it is. Getting irritated doesnt mean you have fucking Misophonia guys. Okay. I mean that quote has two things listed that im sure many people would be irritated by. If you ACTUALLY THINK you may have it please go to Misophonia.com ok thanks

please stop self diagnosing yourselves based off a quote. Even if you really do have it I strongly suggest looking at the website for any advice/assistance.

im sorry for sounding so catty I just can't stand that phrase. "Getting angry when we listen to people breathing or eating is called Misophonia, which is an actual brain disorder" 

[socksandbuttons]

im going

to lay here

and just

read