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@satisfyingsalad

inconsistent use of tags, beware
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satisfyingsalad
fixyourwritinghabits
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frownyalfred

Reminders for new ao3 users (in no particular order):

- filter your searches like you would on a library website or in an online catalogue

- don’t post placeholders, fic searches, or recommendations as fics. DON’T! It’s against ao3 TOS

- there is no algorithm. ao3 sorts by date posted/updated unless you filter with specific search criteria

- ao3 is a non profit. that means it doesn’t sell ads to make money — it only survives on donations. this is why it can show you so many fics without ever flashing an ad or pop up at you!

- report fics that break TOS when you see them (I.e., placeholder fics, searches) to help other users navigate better

- the tag “dead dove, do not eat” doesn’t equate to gore/awfulness automatically. it is a complementary tag that enhances current tags. E.g., if the fic is tagged “gore” and “dead dove, do not eat” the author really wants you to mind the gore tag

- most fandoms have a variation of “no beta, we die like (x character)” and they all link back to the “No beta” tag

- publishing a new fic sometimes means it won’t show up in the fandom/pairing tag for a few minutes

- subscribers receive update emails at different times, depending on when you update/publish your fic. there’s no good way to predict when an e-mail will be sent — it can be in 30 seconds, or two hours later

- some fics are restricted by authors to those with ao3 accounts only. if you see a blue lock in the upper right corner, that fic is only visible to logged in ao3 users

- you can block commenters now! this didn’t use to be a thing

- updating a fic just to stay at the top of the pairing tag/fandom tag is a dick move. unless you’re legitimately editing or adding chapters, this just annoys readers and fellow authors, and people will skip over your fic

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bundibird

- make sure that you tag your ships correctly, both romantic and platonic. Putting an “&” between a pair of names means that the ship is platonic. Putting a “/” between the characters means its romantic. For example: “Greg & Steve” = platonic. “Greg/Steve” = romantic. They are NOT interchangable.

- if your fic includes original character/s or reader insert or y/n or etc, then TAG THOSE IN THE CHARACTER TAGS. Not just in the relationship tags!! They are characters in the story, so include them in the character tags. Failing to do so means people who want to find fics with those tags won’t be able to, and people who want to exclude fics with those tags won’t be able to.

- NEVER EVER EVER ADD A LINK TO A PATREON OR KO-FEE ACCOUNT OR ETC. Ao3’s entire legal protection hinges on the fact that no one is making money from fics. If you start commissioning fics or linking to a monetary platform, you are in breach of the Ao3 terms, risking legal action, and risking ao3 as a whole. There are loads of authors/companies who WILL sue if they think you’re making money off their intellectual property.

- seconding what OP said about Dead Dove Do Not Eat. It doesn’t automatically mean “gore”; it just means “heed the tags.” It means “Hey yeah when I tagged this as [thing] I was NOT fucking around, ok? Only read this fic if you’re OK with reading [thing].”

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arahir

additions from someone who has posted way too much on this site please listen to me:

  • there are no best times to post but generally sunday and monday are a good zone for traffic
  • you must double check and make sure the publication date matches the day a chapter is posted or it won’t show up on the first page of updates. sometimes you have to physically edit the posting date multiple times for this to be fixed.
  • on that note: artificially editing your publication date so your fic shows up at the top when you haven’t added a chapter is the dickest of moves and will make you a pariah. do not do this. yes everyone will notice.
  • editing existing chapters doesn’t count as updating a fic and won’t change the publication date.
  • ao3 usually adds weird spaces after italics if you copy and paste in your writing pre-formatted. it doesn’t add these until after you’ve saved a draft or posted so you have to re-edit.
  • check the “add space after paragraph” option in your word precessor of choice to avoid having to delete an extra space between all your paragraphs on ao3.
  • when you add a second chapter to a one chapter fic, your original start/end authors notes will now be appended onto the notes of every chapter unless you move them to the now extant first chapter notes sections. this is confusing, but you’ll see what i mean.
  • to post on anon: add your fic to the anonymous (anonymous) collection. it’ll take up to fifteen to minutes to show in the tag once posted. it’ll show up (to you) as AUTHOR NAME: fic title. no one else sees it this way. it will never show up on your own dashboard unless you go to your stats page. if you ever de-anon, all your subs will get an email about it as if it were just posted.
  • if you update multiple fics at once, ao3 will group the updates into one email.
  • to transfer a fic to a new ao3 account: make a new account, make the new account a co-author, remove the old account as co-author.
  • you cannot mention money changing hands for fic on ao3, ever. don’t say commissions. say a fic was requested if you must say anything. your fic can get taken down for this.
  • reply to comments or never complain about engagement in fandom.
  • per that: EVERY TIME YOU EDIT A COMMENT, THE AUTHOR GETS A NEW COPY OF YOUR COMMENT IN THEIR EMAIL. we can see all the edits. be aware.
  • tagging is both a warning and an enticement, do so accordingly. you really don’t need to tag things that fall outside that unless you want to.
  • on that note: please don’t do the “short fics for 300 different fandoms in one fic” thing. no one wants to scroll past that. i mean you can but it just makes it harder for people to find the thing you’ve written that they want to read.
  • if you are really bad at summaries just think of it as a movie tag line and don’t say you’re bad at summaries. don’t neg your own fic.
  • re all the questions i saw in replies: fic searches are people looking for specific fics. i don’t know what the fuck a placeholder fic is but these aren’t fanworks and you can’t post them. you can’t post discord links or rp requests or complaints about fandom. you can post fanart and meta essays. that’s allowed.
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mouseinthecastle

Also Ao3 has a google docs posting script that makes life so much easier when copy+pasting to post !

#ao3
satisfyingsalad
taffybuns
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madhyanas

we don’t talk abt how stressful buying new glasses frames is. ur shopping for your whole personality there. life on the line. do or die. all for two pieces of glass and some sticks

satisfyingsalad
bunjywunjy
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jrbsfx

In case you’re wondering how smart rats can be, and if Ratatouille is real, then allow me to share this story: I once had two rats, River and Chell, both rescued from a laboratory as babies. Chell was whip-smart and liked to ride around on my shoulders as I walked around the apartment. She would recognize places she wanted to go, such as her cage or the sofa, and I would raise my arm up to let her run across to her objective. She quickly cottoned on to this and, in an entirely self-taught behavior, would run to one of my shoulders or another and tug on my sleeve, to signal me to raise my arm in the direction she wanted. In this manner she was able to steer me around the apartment and would frequently use me as a taxi instead of walking herself. She then taught her sister how to do it too.

satisfyingsalad
harlequin-wheels
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oldinterneticons
Image

wow. well, it’s 2007. We now know that Pluto isn’t a planet. Two snowflakes can be alike. Humans can be cloned. There is global warming. Everyone hates America and you’re weird if you don’t have internet. But there’s still one thing that will never change: i love you.

satisfyingsalad
headspace-hotel
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pseudonymjones
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prinxvariety

The most ridiculous thing about this shit is that the idea that skeletal remains can be easily and unambiguously 'sexed' is absolutely bunkus

In 1972, Kenneth Weiss, now a professor emeritus of anthropology and genetics at Pennsylvania State University, noticed that there were about 12 percent more male skeletons than females reported at archaeological sites. This seemed odd, since the proportion of men to women should have been about half and half. The reason for the bias, Weiss concluded, was an “irresistible temptation in many cases to call doubtful specimens male.” For example, a particularly tall, narrow-hipped woman might be mistakenly cataloged as a man. After Weiss published about this male bias, research practices began to change. In 1993, 21 years later, the aptly named Karen Bone, then a master’s student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, examined a more recent dataset and found that the bias had declined: The ratio of male to female skeletons had balanced out. In part that might be because of better, more accurate ways of sexing skeletons. But also, when I went back through the papers Bone cited, I noticed there were more individuals categorized as “indeterminate” after 1972 and basically none prior. Allowing skeletons to remain unsexed, or “indeterminate,” reflects an acceptance of the variability and overlap between the sexes. It does not necessarily mean that the skeletons classified this way are, in fact, neither male nor female, but it does mean that there is no clear or easy way to tell the difference. As science and social change in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that sex is complicated, the category of “indeterminate sex” individuals in skeletal research became more common and improved scientific accuracy.

Source: https://www.sapiens.org/biology/intersex-biological-sex/

Cis transphobes, you too could have your skeleton miscategorised hundreds of years after your death, because neither gender nor sex are the clear binaries you want them to be. Which you would know if your view of science in these fields wasn't perpetually stuck in the first half of the 20th century.

(another good article from Sapiens on transgender perspectives on archaeology/anthropology - https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/transgender-people-exist-in-history/ )

Anyway I just wanted to put this here to say that the assholes who go "when they find your bones" aren't even correct, in recent decades that narrow approach has been challenged in the fields of archaeology and anthropology, and don't let anyone invalidate the joy we feel in life.

Trans joy now and forever.

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brehaaorgana

Yes!!!!

A) not all archaeologists are osteoarchaeologists

B) the ones that are, are aware of ambiguity in human bones!! Which exists! This is like osteo-archaeology 101 (literally my intro bones & stones class covered this. It was "likely," this or that, not guaranteed).

C) all of them can conceive of human remains in context of how they were found meaning that a good archaeologist doesn't just look at a pelvis and declare the sex of the skeleton and that's all they ever study or do. ....that would be silly and also pointless. Archaeologists are gonna look at lots of things. They're going to look at epitaphs/tombstones, burial objects, clothing, location of burial, etc etc.

Like if an archaeologist digs up a person whose tombstone says "loving daughter, friend, sister, she will be missed," and that person's pelvis isn't as wide as expected they're going to get laughed at if they declare that the skeleton is actually a man on the basis of ignoring literally all other data points and the fact that outliers exist all the time.

An archaeologist might be able to gather enough data to argue: "this person could have been/was likely a trans woman, and here's what we know about their life, and they existed back then, and here's how they were honored in death." But it won't be done by bone size alone, and also... just shows trans people exist and are real and have history.

terfs just hate admitting science might validate trans existence as legitimate and real. But science doesn't work by running around making claims and then forcing evidence to fit those claims.

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failure-to-adult

Also I just don't care what a random archaeologist in a thousand years is going to say about my bones? I'm pretty sure I bone spur riddled skeleton will be the least interesting thing about me. Why was she buried with a sword and a staff? Why is she holding a metal tablet saying "This Is Not A Place Of Honor"? Why is she wearing an amulet that is CLEARLY cursed, but also real cheap and beat up sneakers?

"Damn, bitch," the archaeologist will say to my skeleton as the seal is broken and the Hungry Gods descend from a shattered sky to eat reality from the edges, "Did you seriously live like this?!"

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headspace-hotel

Can we just appreciate "Karen Bone" as well

satisfyingsalad
headspace-hotel
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caleanamajored

The berry pickers creed

I will leave unripened berries untouched

A ripe berry need only be negotiated with, not fought

I will reasses my surroundings after every step, for my new perspective could reveal a berry patch previously hidden to me

The plant gets excited and happy when a barry is picked

The bug is not to be feared or killed, but gently celebrated, for it facilitated in the creation of the beloved berrys

I will not allow myself to be bullied by sharp thicket and I will retrieve even the most protected barry

satisfyingsalad
headspace-hotel
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theillusionofpants

So do I just like....follow...anyone? Like real people? Like the actual people and not the subject matter? That isn't like following someone to their doorstep? Why does this seem so personal???

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lizluvscupcakes

Think of it as, you are a stray cat, and every evening I put out my garbage and you come and eat it

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theillusionofpants

This garbage is now mine.