talesofurbania @talesofurbania1 - Tumblr Blog

AO3 Guide and Resources

The Archive of Our Own (AO3) is home to over 18 million fanworks (as of 26 July 2026) and there's always room for more as long as you follow a few rules and standards.

If you're new to ao3 from wattpad, please read allthingswhumpyandangsty's post about this first. The Archive is different than what you're used to, and for good reason. If this doesn't sound like something you want to participate in that's fine. But for anyone who wants to learn I have tried to condense "AO3 How-To" into four steps:

1.Make an account.

Yes, even if you're only going to read and not post, make an account. You can Bookmark fics and save them as "Mark for Later" so you don't have 40 tabs on your phone that might disappear. Plus you'll see more fics this way because some are only visible to those with an account! You can also subscribe to works or creators so you're notified when they update. You can request an invitation from the Archive or ask in servers and communities if people have invites they want to share.

2. Learn the tagging and filtering system.

All ratings and kinks are welcome on the archive. The site is proship and profic. You do not need to leave out tags or warnings for fear of any work being taken down. Any kink or dark theme you want to explore in a legitimate fanwork* is welcome here.

*The asterisk is to say: legitimate means not a placeholder fic that's blank to save a title, not spam, and not plagarized or otherwise breaking the Archive's TOS.

The most important tags to add to a work are the "Archive Warnings" in the checkboxes you see right after you select a rating. Always be honest here, even if you choose not to add the optional Additional Tags.

Failing to use the Archive Warnings properly is like warning people off your fanworks going forward (at best) and might get your work reported if you say, select General rating, "No Archive Warnings Apply", and then post a dark, violent fanwork (as an example). Tag accurately for what you're posting.

For Additional Tags, you can tag anything graphic, mature, or explicit that feels like it should be a trigger warning. Or other tags that give people an idea of your work's theme, like "Fluff" or "First Kiss". It will help people find what they're looking for!

Sure, sometimes you don't want to spoil the plot and that's why some creators will skip the Additional Tags and instead put content warnings in the End Notes and let people know to look there if they're worried about triggers. Also you can use a catch-all tag such as "Explicit Sexual Content" or "Graphic Violence" to let people know why it might be rated Mature or Explicit, without going into detail if you want. (Note: Not all Explicit works are smut. Sometimes the rating could be for violence or other graphic content.)

@bookwermthings made an ao3 infographic and the first three slides in particular can teach you more about tagging

And for readers remember our cardinal rule: DON'T LIKE, DON'T READ.

This means you are responsible for what you decide to look at on the archive. Learn what things like Dead Dove: Do Not Eat means. You do not get to harrass or report a creator for posting something you personally dislike or disagree with. You can also block or mute an Archive user if you dislike what they post.

AO3 is a non-profit run by volunteers who read all reports of works possibly breaking TOS. You aren't harming a large corporation by reporting every work you dislike. Simply click away and move on. Instead, you can filter things out using the "Exclude" section of the filters that's on the right-hand side of all pages of fanworks.

Proper tags help our fanworks be found by our target audiences and also protect users who do not want to see that material. It's a win/win for all when we use it the right way.

3. Only leave positive comments.

If you enjoyed what you read or saw (or listened to - shout out podfics!) let the creator know by giving them a nice comment. AO3 etiquette is to not give critical or constructive feedback, even if you think you're helping.

Caveat: Some creators may add a note that they are open to critiques. This is the only time you can give this kind of feedback.

Remember notes in a Bookmark are public and can be also seen by the creator. They are not a place to critique the work either (see this bookmark post by @tumbleweedtech)

Basically, leave the kind of comment you would want to receive if it was your work. And remember: the A stands for Archive! This isn't a social media site. It doesn't matter how old the work is you can still comment!!

@dawnfelagund wrote a list of 101 Comment Starters if you need some ideas or @bizarrelittlemew taught us how to leave kudos as an image in the comments!

4. Customize your profile.

This is your space to let people know if your works are open to translation into other languages or having fanworks created that are inspired by your work. You can also let people know where to find you by linking to your tumblr, reddit, or other social media profiles.

Do not (repeat: DO NOT) advertise anything like a kofi or buy me a coffee or say anything about commissions on your profile or anywhere on your works. AO3 is very strict about this. Do not advertise if you are exchanging money for your creations. See this post from @ao3commentoftheday if you want to take commissions and not break TOS.

To edit your profile click on your username on the Archive home page. Navigate to My Dashboard -> Profile -> Edit My Profile. You might want to add an HTML hyperlink if you want outside links to be clickable.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

Need more help?

⋆ Archive of Our Own has an official tumblr: @ao3org to let us know if there's maintenance planned, updates to the site, or news like OTW elections

⋆ @transformativeworks is also ran by the Archive to post milestones, OTW news, and reblog fandom posts

⋆ @ao3commentoftheday is fan-run, not official, but posts helpful resources and guides

⋆ As referenced above @allthingswhumpyandangsty recently wrote a great guide about ao3 vs. wattpad for all newcomers

⋆ @fuckyeahladybug has written a thread of resources to help those switching from wattpad

⋆ @ghoulishbuck wrote a helpful guide with html advice and what ao3 numbers and stats mean and more about which options to choose when posting

⋆ @the-bar-sinister wrote a quick guide to what you can and cannot post on ao3 (link to a reblog version with more additions)

⋆ There are also tumblr communities you can join like AO3 - WRITERS - READERS - FANFICTION or Fanfiction Writers Unite (and probably others) if you want more of a "live help" discussion

I hope this guide is helpful and thank you for reading! Tough to condense 15 years of Archive experience into one post but I tried my best ♡ Shout out to everyone that is linked here for all the great posts you've made about ao3! Please reblog and share this guide in any servers or tumblr communities if you think it's helpful.

Below are a few bonus tips from me to enhance your user experience right out of the gate! ♡

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

sanlorenzoherald

good morning

sztupy

thatlittleegyptologist

You’ll need the link!

We got Musk off our land. Let's build a monument to remind him he's a sad little b**** with no friends.

natalieplease

Illustrations by Valentina Catto from The Folio Society edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (2020)

emptymasks

So you want to get into non-English language musicals?

So back in January of this year I was on the tail-end of one of my worst depressive episodes of my life and a German friend of mine (that’s you @gaymelie this labour is all your fault) and myself got talking about what music we were listening to and I mentioned I was listening to Six the Musical and found out she also liked musicals and what with her being German and all, she recommended me a few German musicals:

And I loved them.

Getting into musicals that aren’t in a language you understand can be daunting, but the thing is other countries are actually way better at making pro-shots / officially recorded musicals then the UK or America. You can buy Blu-Rays of recent German stage musicals, DVDs of most French musicals and Japanese musicals. I myself have a DVD of a Dutch stage musical from 2003. Most official DVD releases of musicals have English subtitles, but some of my favourite musicals like Tanz Der Vampire and Rebecca have no official video recording and so the only way to be able to understand it if you don’t speak German, is to rely on dedicated fans who make English subtitles. Where possible I’m going to provide links to where to listen (Spotify or Youtube) and where to watch (Youtube). Sticking with just Spotify and Youtube because most people have access to one or both of them.

This post is going to get a little long, so the list will be under the ‘read more’. They’ll be listed alphabetically and I will try and keep my summaries of them unbiased, but will mention which ones are my personal favourites. For some musicals there are different versions in different languages, and you may think oh well that’s just the same musical again, but that’s not always the case. A lot of the times musicals get non-replica productions meaning that the costumes and sets are different, sometimes entire songs are taken out or added, sometimes minor characters are changed to more be more major characters and so on.

(Also because of linking to Youtube and Spotify, Tumblr is likely going to block this post from showing up in tags so I would appreciate all the reblogs this can get. ❤️ Also because I worked for two whole days on this, it’s over 10,000 words long and Tumblr crashed and deleted half of it and I had to write it all out again.) And of course any can add their own recommendations in their reblogs. There are a lot more I know of, but I tried not to make this list too long. In a while I can always make a part 2 if this post does well.

There’s 32 musicals on this list. I tried to make sure they weren’t all German so there’s: German, French, Hungarian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Spanish and Polish. So, lets begin:

Keep reading

aphostraphe

pls give me 1(one) reason aces have ever been oppressed, and 1(one) example of aces being a part of lgbt history(before 2004 at least) and then maybe i’ll consider the idea that aces belong in the lgbt community lol

bi-asexual

Proof of the existence of asexuals in LGBT+ communities before 2000:

The Golden Orchid association (1644-1949) - a group of women in China that included lesbians, bisexuals, and “women who wanted to avoid both marriage options, and any romantic or sexual partnership” that today we would call asexual or aromantic.

Another Golden Orchid association link (which, interestingly, describes what appears to be a poly relationship).

Personal experience of a queer-identifying person noting that aces were part of the bi community in the 80s and 90s.

A book published in 1999 supports the previous link of someone’s personal experience, and notes that asexuals could be considered part of Kinsey’s “Group 3″ (the bisexuals) because they were “about equally homosexual and heterosexual” and “have no strong preferences for one or the other” just like bisexuals.

Another book that supports the personal experience source by noting that asexuals were considered part of the bisexual “Group 3″, which was published in 1999.

Another post of someone’s personal experiences of asexuals being part of the LGBT+ community in the 90s.

A source from 1999 noting that, while some female-female relationships in the early to mid-twentieth century were obviously lesbian relationships, not all of them were, but that it would be a mistake to label them all “friendships”. It specifically notes that asexual partnered relationships also existed.

This book describes a series of interviews done in 1990 by Catherine Whitney who interviewed heterosexual women married to gay men, and found that they were often asexual. It also describes how, in 1990, Ann Landers (a very popular advice columnist) asked her readers if married couples could enjoy a full life without sex and was flooded with 35,000 responses from people of all ages who had little or no sex and didn’t miss it. It also describes how “Boston marriage” was originally coined with a not-necessarily-always-accurate implication that such a relationship between women was nonsexual, but that later on the assumption was reversed to imply women in a sexual lesbian relationship, and how that caused some women involved in such relationships to hide the asexual nature of their relationships for fear of being called frauds by the larger lesbian community.

This 1997 book that states “To be a Kinsey 3 (bisexual) is to be equally attracted to men and women, i.e. completely bisexual…it is also to be equally unattracted to men and women, i.e. completely asexual. Bisexuality is never about two, only about one – asexual, or self-fulfilling – or three – continuously and equally attracted to both men and women”.

Proof of asexuality being considered as a concrete, distinct orientation before 2000:

One of the first online posts about asexuality in its current use, was made in 1997.

A study on anorexia and bulemia in gay and bisexual men done in 1999 found that 58% of anorexia patients were asexual.

The 1997 Australasian Gay & Lesbian Law Journal mentions asexual as a “relevant sexual identity”.

A 1983 issue of the Journal of Sex Research studied the Mental Health Implications of Sexual Orientation among heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual people.

The article “Asexuality as Orientation: Some Historical Perspectives” describes different historical studies on asexuality, including a study from Johnson in 1977 where the word asexual was used to describe women “regardless of physical or emotional condition, actual sexual history, and marital status or ideological orientation, [who] seem to prefer not to engage in sexual activity”. It also describes a 1980 study by Storms who included asexual as one of four orientation categories when mapping out sexual orientation. It also describes a 1983 study by Nurius that found out of 685 participants, 5% of males and 10% of females were asexual. It also describes a 1990 study by Berkley et al. that included questions “related to homosexuality, heterosexuality, and asexuality” and included four items (out of 45) that were specific to asexuality.

This book published in 1922 contains a lot of what I personally would describe as narcissism and pseudo-science, but acknowledges asexuality nonetheless: “In addition to the ordinary distinctive males and females, we have asexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and old women of both sexes.”

This book from 1996 that notes “A transsexual may have a heterosexual orientation, a homosexual orientation, a bisexual orientation – or an asexual orientation” and clarifies that “a very small number – are asexual or bisexual.”

This book mentions a study by Malyon in 1981 that noted the options available to gay and lesbian teenagers choosing whether, or how, to come out by “[describing] three possible modes of adaptation in adolescence: repression of sexual desire, suppression of homosexual impulses in favor of heterosexual or asexual orientation, or a homosexual disclosure.”

Kinds of oppression that asexuals face:

Eunjung Kim wrote a chapter titled “How Much Sex Is Healthy? The Pleasures of Asexuality” that describes how “the absence of sexual desires, feelings, and activities is seen as abnormal and reflective of poor health” in Western contemporary culture “because of the explicit connection between sexual activeness and healthiness” and argues that “medical explanations of asexuality as an abnormality that has to be corrected constitute a large part of the stigmatization and marginalization experienced by asexual people.” It also discusses the ways in which some groups, specifically Asian American males, that are desexualized can erase the space for asexual Asian American men to simply exist.

Asexuals also face sexual harassment, rape threats, corrective sexual assault, and corrective rape (which, no, is not a lesbian-only term according to actual South Africans) specifically because they are asexual.

There was a recent study by the AAU to identify sexual assault on college campuses, and broke down the responders to their survey by sexual orientation, including asexual. The results clearly show that asexuals are not immune to unwanted sexual contact, stalking, intimate partner violence, or sexual harassment.

A chapter of “Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives” that notes the specific way that asexual people are talked to/about: “Because asexual difference cannot be iterated in the linguistic field where sex and a sexed position dominate the discourse of sexuality and desire, the asexual subject is linguistically and visually dismantled and reconstructed in the position of a fetish object. This fetishistic conversion happens because the asexual person is made into an image, or spectacle, for consumption.” and “The difference between the unassailable asexual (someone who lacks all of the traits commonly blamed for asexuality such as past history of abuse, disability, etc.) and the spectacular asexual is that while the unassailable asexual allegedly makes asexuality digestible for a skeptical public and presents an accessible image, the spectacular asexual is always consumed as a fetish object, regardless of mental health, ability, and gender.”

The study “Intergroup bias toward “Group X”: Evidence of prejudice, dehumanization, avoidance, and discrimination of asexuals” is exactly what it sounds like. The article’s abstract states: “In two studies (university student and community samples) we examined the extent to which those not desiring sexual activity are viewed negatively by heterosexuals. We provide the first empirical evidence of intergroup bias against asexuals (the so-called “Group X”), a social target evaluated more negatively, viewed as less human, and less valued as contact partners, relative to heterosexuals and other sexual minorities. Heterosexuals were also willing to discriminate against asexuals (matching discrimination against homosexuals). Potential confounds (e.g., bias against singles or unfamiliar groups) were ruled out as explanations.”

The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality describes many issues that asexuals face, including: how asexuality is seen as “invisible” and lends to people thinking it does not exist, how asexuality is actively erased as “unimportant” or not its own identity, the explicitly and implicitly negative messages associated with a lack of sexual attraction, the fear asexuals face when they believe there is something physically or psychologically wrong with them for being asexual, the belief asexuals face about how they must be deeply flawed since they do not conform to other sexual identities, how asexuals face cultural ideologies that sexuality is biologically based and ubiquitous (that all humans possess sexual desire) and that don’t acknowledge asexuality, that to describe oneself as asexual is a statement of moral superiority or purity or failure to find a suitable partner, that asexuality is an immature state they will “grow out of”, that asexuality is a description of action or a preference, that asexuality is unnatural or unhealthy or has to be a symptom of something else, etc.

Asexuality has been shown in the media in a negative light for decades, reflecting the idea that (for various reasons steeped in classism and racism) any woman who wasn’t willing to marry and procreate was a threat to the status quo, as seen in this 1955 book that notes: “Women who did not marry incurred political and social scorn for another reason. The influx of eastern and southern European immigrants in the United States pushed the question into eugenic terms–the wrong people were reproducing. Educated women came primarily from white middle- and upper-class stock, the most desired element by dominant social norms. When these women refused to marry and reproduce, they forced a new concern into the public discourse. it is not a coincidence that the stereotypical asexual unmarried older woman emerged at this time as a source of popular humor.”

Some people in some religions are very explicit about hating asexuals specifically because they are asexual, seeing asexuality as “a perversion akin to homosexuality and bestiality”.

Other religions see asexuals as actually sinful if they choose not to have sex with their spouse.

While not every member of every religion looks down on asexuals, many people in portions of various religions choose to view asexuals negatively.

Some people even recommend asexuals avoid being in a relationship with non-asexuals and assert that “promoting and trying to spread” asexuality, or behaving in an asexual manner, is wrong or unhealthy.

Because of these religious beliefs about asexuality, that also opens up asexuals to discrimination in various legal ways, including (but not limited to) things like the new adoption bill in Texas.

Asexuality was implicitly pathologized until very recently, and even now, the DSM-V states that a diagnosis of HSDD may not be given only if the patient has a preexisting knowledge of asexuality and chooses to ID that way.

TL;DR:

Asexuals have long been considered part of the bisexual community. When people used to talk about bisexuals, it included asexuals because asexuals were the bisexuals too. Bisexual history is asexual history.

Asexuals have also long been considered as a stand-alone orientation that was part of larger non-straight communities and could be studied in comparison to other sexual orientations.

Asexuals face many of the same issues that other marginalized orientations face as well as issues specific to their orientation. These include erasure, medicalization, misidentification, harassment, rape specifically targeted at them for being asexual, and religious intolerance, to name just a few.

None of this is exhaustive. There are more sources to be found and studied.

livebloggingmydescentintomadness

please reblog this amazing post!!

bailesu

I have to note as a historian that refusing to marry and have kids has been pretty much frowned on in virtually every society. A few socities had some kind of out, but that usually meant being bound in other ways (being some kind of holy ascetic and cloistered). This pretty much runs from the moment we know anything about any society to the present.,

There’s always been pressure on asexuals to conform to that norm.

prismatic-bell

Have some photos from the 1970s:

What’s that?

Both of them have signs showing lists of orientations with “Asexual” included?

Gee, but I thought it wasn’t an orientation until 2004!

teaboot

Too bad the prophet Cassandra never met Odysseus

teaboot

They say if she made a prophecy Nobody would believe her

edgar-allan-possum

I’ve gotta say, that is exactly the kind of stupid thing that probably would circumvent a curse.

elidyce

Cassandra: YOU ARE ALL GOING TO REGRET THIS SO MUCH YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW.

Odysseus: Regret it why?

Cassandra: You won’t believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.

Odysseus: … I’m Nobody. Fill me in.

*A couple of months later*

Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, she’s great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother who’s not going to treat you like shit.

Penelope: … I’m going to need more details, but okay, sure.

Cassandra: *in tears* I love you, new family.

cipheramnesia

Cassandra: Penelope, I’ve had another vision.

Penelope, sighs: Go tell your father.

val-the-bun

sankta-wraith

the original? on my dash?

vixvigil

it’s never a normal temperature anymore it’s always some fucking bullshit

rosslynpaladin

I need you young people to know it was almost never this hot when I was a child. Millennials and Gen Xers are all nostalgic and excited about summer because it was about ten to twenty degrees cooler to experience it back then!

I cannot express to you how FAST it has gone. I grew up in a world that does not exist now. We're starting on the path to reverse it, globally. You might not know how much solar has EXPLODED in the last decade or two. It's gone from a side thing, a weirdo novelty that was just Not Viable... to whole countries investing in infrastructure. but we have to keep fighting big oil and fascism everywhere we can in order to keep on this road to a new better less scorching burning earth.

But any time you wonder wtf the weather is doing- THIS IS NOT NORMAL, NO. THIS IS NOT WHAT IT WAS EVEN TWENTY YEARS AGO.

pmamtraveller

Mammal in a Sunday Dress, by Georgina M. Cox, 2026

originalaccountname

Mammal in a Sunday Dress explores the uneasy relationship between femininity, civilisation, and the animal body. At first glance, the figure appears modest and withdrawn. Her posture is composed, her gaze seemingly lowered towards her bare feet, recalling the conventions of nineteenth-century portraiture where women were often depicted as passive objects of observation. Yet as the viewer moves closer, the illusion collapses. Her eyes are not lowered at all. She is looking directly back. The delayed eye contact transforms the encounter. The viewer approaches believing they are safely observing a woman; instead, they realise they have been observed themselves. The work refuses the traditional power dynamic of portraiture, denying the comfort of anonymous spectatorship. Looking becomes a reciprocal act. For Cox, the painting considers humanity's persistent desire to separate itself from the rest of the animal kingdom. The title quietly undermines this distinction. A "mammal" is not another creature—it is us. The Sunday dress, rich with cultural associations of femininity, morality, and respectability, becomes an attempt to distinguish ourselves from nature. Yet clothing cannot alter biology. Beneath lace and ritual remains the same vulnerable animal body. The work also reflects on the historical relationship between women and nature. Across art, religion, and philosophy, women have repeatedly been positioned as closer to instinct, emotion, reproduction, and the body itself, while men have been aligned with reason, culture, and civilisation. Mammal in a Sunday Dress does not reject this comparison. Instead, it questions why proximity to nature has so often been treated as something lesser. Chiaroscuro isolates the figure within darkness, allowing the luminous dress to symbolise the performance of civilisation while the bare feet quietly return the body to the earth. Neither is presented as more truthful than the other. The painting exists in the tension between performance and instinct, refinement and biology. Mammal in a Sunday Dress ultimately asks a simple but unsettling question: if every layer of culture were stripped away, what would remain? Not a king. Not a saint. Not a gentleman or a lady. Only another mammal, looking back.

source

maureen2musings

212._.film

podcastwizard

LIKES TO CHARGE REBLOGS TO CAST

the-goddess-of-annoying

you people aren't CASTING

the-goddess-of-annoying

galileosballs

Also, please do not listen to how people talk about cover letters on this site. Cover letters are important, and in many industries you can be damn sure they'll be read. And no, they're not 'fanfic about working in your office', or just re-stating the resume contents in a fancier guise. If you treat them like that, then of course they're not doing much for you. That makes you sound like a syncophantic windbag, and it's not doing anything else to help.

I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.

The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.

This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.

And the other mistake? Everyone writes cover letters that are too long. One page is fine. Two is the absolute maximum, and that's if you have a lot of specific things to say. It's a waste of your time and theirs to pad it out with fluff. Of my two most recent successful cover letters (i.e. jobs for which I was interviewed) one was 390 words and the other was 550. That's the length of this post. How long did it take me to write this post? About 15 minutes to write, 5 to proof and edit. That's how long you should be spending on a cover letter, maximum.

dizzyghoast

every so often i remember how awesome the modern interconnected multicultural world is. i grew up getting to hear fairy tales from all over the world. africa, asia, europe, america. everywhere in between. i can have bagels for breakfast, curry for lunch, and ramen for dinner without even leaving the city limits. music and art and philosophy and technology that originated thousands of miles and years apart from eachother have come together and interwoven into something greater than the sum of its parts. its hard not fall into despair when thinking about the horrors but god. god the wonders.

dizzyghoast

you can have friends on the other side of the planet! neither of you even has to travel!!!!! you can just talk to them whenever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wheremermaidsdwell

I've been meaning to make a post talking about my stroke because y'all got bits and pieces of the recovery but I never actually told the story of HOW it went down and the thing is the type of stroke I had is usually the type young people have and since having mine i've now heard multiple stories of people under 40 having very similar strokes and the scary thing is, is that they didn't get help right away. Because you're young and healthy and sure you feel weird but it'll pass right? but it doesn't, and it gets worse, and by the time you get to the hospital (some people literally take days to go) the deficits are worse and recovery is harder.

so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.

teaboot

The Victorian Era was shite compared to now obsiously but also titty piercings were popular everyone was on heroin and they thought bad sex made your kids ugly so the zeitgeist must have been wild

deafmangoes

I wish I could remember the source, but I once read a sociologist's take that the Victorian era was a complete abberation of human development. It was uniquely weird, never existed before, will likely never exist again.

I wonder how much of that was on the back of the industrial revolution. Maybe humanity had a similar "weird" moment in the Fertile Crescent when we figured out farming.

But yeah. Victorians were an odd bunch. Delightfully contradictory.

teaboot

I feel like the wild combination of Suddenly Having So Much New Technology We Barely Understand and Suddenly Using So Much New Technology We Barely Understand *May* have resulted in such new and novel situations as:

The baby will stop crying if I give it cocaine

My entire face is covered in arsenic

How Wonderful That I Can Buy Guns And Heroin At The Same Store! I Certainly Hope My Lead Poisoning Does Not Lead To Bouts Of Distemper And Irrational Thinking

There Are Bare Electrified Wires Running Through My House And My Technicolor Dress Is Highly Combustible, Which I Do Not Know Yet

My son, Lead Poisoning Georg,, shall someday inherit my gun powder and lead paint empire,,

NEW! Magical Miracle Substance! Asbestos! WILL NOT catch fire! CANNOT catch fire! YOU WILL NOT die! (From fire)

Impress Your Guests And In-Laws With The Tastiest Bright White Bread Chalk And Wood Shavings Can Produce

NEW! Baby feeding bottles! NEW! Glass baby feeding bottles! How do you clean them??? That isn't important stop asking questions. NEW!

If Heroin And Lead And Cocaine And Arsenic And Typhoid And Tuberculosis And Radiation And Ungrounded Wires And Lead And Chalk And Arsenic And Working In The Coal Mine Are Bad For Me, Then How Am I Moving So Fuckingn Fast

freewingthefree

@teaboot this maybe applies to modern times as well

Surely 500mg of caffeine will be good for me and help me function

The torment nexus glowing rectangle must be engaged with at all times

Look at all the profit to be made! This will surely grow forever.

Ignore the crowd begging for rational behavior, you dont want FOMO do you?

Money Georg, who has all the money in the world, is surely going to fix things

Wildly increased access to knowledge of things will not result in any cultural changes or upending of power structures

What do you mean there is a revolution in XYZ

Buy vapes! Use Ozempic! These novel things will have no negative health effects and will not be wildly popularized to the point of causing health crises

What do you mean the climate change we've been warned about for 60 years is real. I thought that was a torment nexus delusion

teaboot

^^^^^^^^

(I am aware I had a few historical points wrong there) but YES

I feel like that's *exactly* why new technology and ideas in younger generations always seems so scary while our present, boring technology seems so safe

we don't know the long term effects of ANY of it yet, but whatever bad things our parents raised US with, at the very least we aren't dead! Who KNOWS how this newfangled whatchamacallit might kill us.

NOW! To consume this bag of plastic particulate my parents gave me and assured me was fine and has not yet killed me

flavoracle

Mental Crop Rotation

When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.

To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”

So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.

Because I’ve found that when that unnecessary guilt and pressure are removed from the process, a good mental crop rotation can help you feel more energized and invigorated than ever once you’re ready to rotate back to that project.

bomberqueen17

: A crucial part of crop rotation is that the field is let fallow sometimes. You plant what’s called a “cover crop”, which is something you don’t expect to harvest– it’s there for its roots to hold the soil in place, and often it’ll be what’s called a nitrogen-fixer, i.e. a plant that can pull nitrogen out of the air and fix it into the soil with its roots (but sometimes it won’t, sometimes it’s really just there to shelter the soil surface), and then you’ll till in that cover crop, or let the frost kill it and the stalks lie as mulch, and then you’ll rotate productive crops back into that field the next season.

It’s important, though, to understand that during the fallow period, no nutrients are removed from that ground, and nothing is expected of it. Whatever the land grows then, it keeps, and it gets tilled back in or decomposes in place, to return its energy to the earth.

We’re not allowed, in our current society, to just let our minds be fallow for a bit, to produce nothing for export, to make nothing that can be sold. But it’s part of good land stewardship, to give every field time when it doesn’t need to give you anything back.

So yes, grow and produce different things from time to time, rotate them around your mind and exercise different mental muscles, take different things from your creative processes, yes– but also, give yourself a fallow spell now and again, and let the field of your mind grow things for itself to keep, to break down and save for later.

highvelocitysandwich

Positive mental health AND agriculture??!?

*slams reblog button*

vintage-tigre

Next time you’re watching any news show or political coverage see how many of these you can spot:

Quick rundown of each propaganda technique:

• Glittering Generalities: Using vague, emotionally appealing words (like “freedom” or “justice”) that sound good but lack specific meaning.

• Transfer: Associating a person, idea, or product with something already respected or disliked (like using a flag, religion, or celebrity image) to carry over those feelings.

• Name-Calling: Attaching negative labels to an opponent or idea to create fear or distrust without real evidence.

• Card-Stacking: Presenting only positive information for one side and leaving out or distorting the negatives.

• Testimonial: Having a famous or respected person endorse an idea, product, or cause.

• Plain Folks: Presenting the speaker as an “ordinary” person to seem relatable and trustworthy.

• Band Wagon: Urging people to follow the crowd with the idea that “everyone else is doing it.”

slightly-sigilant

I have a new standard for the level of haterdom to aspire to, and it's Reddit User KismaiAesthetics, who hates doing laundry so much that he got really good at it, so that he can (I quote) do it right the first time, every time, and get back to watching cat videos on the Internet.

and by "really good at it," I mean that he does a bunch of reading on the chemistry of laundry, subscribes to academic journals about laundry, and buys a bunch of different laundry products (including from outside the US) to scrutinize their ingredients and test them for himself. he writes a bunch of incredibly detailed longposts about his findings on /r/laundry and his website, which is also about laundry. he even got interviewed about his laundryposts, in which he revealed he's writing a book about laundry. this man is like ahab and the white whale, if ahab had a reddit account and moby dick was a pile of clothes with cheeseburger stains on them

slightly-sigilant

anyway the reason I encountered this guy was because recently, the household washer has been leaving these gross little oily brown flakes on anything washed in it. this is kind of a big problem for me, given that I not only have (literal, diagnosed, medicated) OCD which includes a contagion phobia, I also sew a bunch of stuff with the intent of gifting or selling it, and sometimes that involves prewashing fabric. only, you know, washing is supposed to make things cleaner, not dirtier.

and my research brought me to (gross photos warning!) Kismai's post on the very topic. apparently this stuff is called "scrud," and it's basically a residue that forms over time inside the nooks and crannies of a washing machine - leftover detergent reacting with mineral traces in tapwater to form a buildup that also traps dyes, grease, and other dirt, which bacteria then feeds on, because it wasn't already gross enough. it forms faster if you have hard water, use too much detergent (which most people do), use fabric softener, wash only on cold and the list goes on and on - point is, scrud is the reason that you have to actually clean your washing machine, or be super fastidious about how you do laundry.

(I'll take "things I wish school/my parents actually taught me" for 800)

so now I am engaged in a lengthy battle against scrud, armed with a tub of oxiclean and a sack of citric acid crystals. (we're renters, so disassembling the machine is out of the question.) pour in a scoop of oxiclean, run a machine clean cycle, pour in a scoop of citric acid, run another machine clean cycle, all while wiping piles and piles of scrud out of the drum at the end of each cycle. I'm on the eighth cycle now. there's still so much scrud. the reddit record for "how many cleaning cycles were needed to get a machine entirely free of scrud" is 22 cycles. help

slightly-sigilant

hey so like

it turns out that laundry sucks significantly less when your clothes and sheets and etc actually come out of the machine looking, feeling, and smelling clean, rather than looking, feeling, and smelling like despair dipped in slime

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