✧glwostoneGoon✧

how embarrassing 🤨…

I loveee fantasy settings doing magical exhaustion:

Druid, low on magic: I'm [coughs up flowers] fine.

The duties of Redhoods sidekick

“He even got a picture of all three boys, together, in Times Square. Smiling. Like a family.”

*teleports behind you*

*teleports behind you*

*teleports behind me behind you*

WHY IS THERE A GIF FOR THIS

Pillow Fight by Richard Scarry

pinkie pony club

This.

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.

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.

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.

do not go gentle into that good night

be a bit of a bitch about it

Post-war sketches!

They're such stupid boykissers fr.

merlin in his favorite outfit! :]

Wip for an idea I have, accidentally turned into a cvnty value study

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BELOVED HALF ALIEN LOSER KEITH KOGANEEE‼️‼️💕💕

"No, because Robin-Man sounds stupid." BABY DICK GRAYSON IS A NATIONAL TREASURE.

Viktor just went from being some guy to my all time favourite Arcane character. Funniest possible direction they could’ve gone with him. Every fuck in his mind body soul was spent and gone when he emerged from that goop. Woke up purple from a near death experience and immediately dumped his situationship, quit his job, fucked off to the undercity wearing nothing but a blanket and then became the second coming of Christ on accident. King of protecting his peace. Imagine being that guy who tried to shank him. Some Czech twink with dick and balls hanging out starts glowing and then magically cleanses the poison from your body. I’d be on my knees worshipping him too man what a fucked up situation. Someone please get him some trousers