Hot Artists Don't Gatekeep

the first rules of being pretentious and a hater in an honorable way is to not take yourself too seriously and acknowledge that you're being a little antisocial. if you become self-righteous about your correct attitudes and opinions on things that dont matter then you have become the very cringe you have sworn to fight

diving for shells

look at this wonderful gif of scallops getting scared and scattering like a flock pigeons

what is an RSS feed and why does AO3 have them?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and the word syndication here is referring to broadcasting or transferring or otherwise sharing information. I first encountered it as a way to aggregate all of the news sites and blogs I wanted to read that were scattered all over the internet.

You might already be familiar with tumblr blogs that start with ao3feed - these are automated blogs that create a new post every time a work is posted in the feed(s) that they track. You can follow those tumblr blogs and learn about new works that way. They've subscribed to the RSS feed so that you don't have to.

If you wish that you could get push notifications from AO3 on your phone instead? The RSS feed will allow you to do that. You just need to get an account with an RSS reader first. Here are a few that are free:

Feedly 

NewsBlur 

Inoreader 

They each have slightly different features, so depending on the search and filter options you want or how you like your information displayed, you might like one better than the others. All three work on the web, on iOS, and on Android.

Once you have a feed reader, tap on the RSS Feed button at the top of the tag results page that you want to get notifications for and open up the XML file. If it downloads instead, try opening in a new tab or just copying the link address. You'll want to grab a url that looks like this: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/9835/feed.atom (this is the url for Kirk/Spock, if you're curious)

That feed.atom ending on the url is what you're looking for. When you open your RSS reader and create a new feed, you can use that url to set it up.

Once it's set up, you'll be able to see everything currently available in that tab, listed out in your reader. Just like the ao3feed tumblr blogs, the reader will show you the title, author, summary and tags for each fic, and then it will provide you with a link to read the work on AO3.

It will also notify you every time a new work is posted to that tag. You can adjust your notifications to suit you.

Not every tag on AO3 has an RSS feed, but it's worth checking out if you've never tried it before.

Editing to add: the AO3 FAQ also talks about these feeds

honestly you all are so annoying because motherhood IS interesting but fandom people are simultaneously obsessed with deciding that every woman has motherly qualities and completely disinterested in actually exploring motherhood as a role that informs a character. I do think exploring a character being a mother can be wildly interesting if they are canonically one, but because of misogyny, people just view motherhood as a totally unremarkable naturalized state that all women must inhabit!

5 and 24 for the ask game!

thank you for the ask!

5: What’s something you learned while researching a fic?

oh you know me so well.... theres a lot of things, often little throwaway details, that i look up (since a lot of the bigger thing tends to be original worldbuilding or things i already know) and theres been so many rabbit holes ive sent myself down while researching. a recent thing that just started with trying to find out when exactly IVs became widely used led to me reading up (a bit) on wwi-era military medicine and adding a few things to my reading list that ill get to.... someday. but for a more specific example, i found out about mushroom-based textiles while researching for a different piece. from what i can tell its mostly a mycelium-based leather, though it seems like theres also a thinner fabric being developed. theres actually quite a few things being used to try and make leather alternatives, such as pineapple leaves and winemaking byproducts. sustainable textiles are the things that google likes to turn up when you look up "unusual fabric materials," it seems

24. Which scene/theme was the inspiration for [insert fic]?

since you didn't specify which fic ill just pick my main ongoing fic/series/thing. (which i will resume work on once i have time! soon!) its hard to say what exactly inspired me to do it beyond my deep love for crossovers and also my oc universe. but as for the specific plot threads ive put in, a lot of my ocs deal with bigger picture or higher level stuff. political schemes and grand plots. so i wanted to take a look at what the more "normal" people were doing, as it has also been somewhat of a blindspot in my own worldbuilding/development for the oc universe. and its definitely worked, since in the process of setting up the necessary infrastructure for the plots i wanted to work with in this au, ive done a lot of work fleshing out (or straight up creating) some pretty significant components of the "modern day" universe. for the ongoing fic, i've always wanted to try my hand at a sort of multimedia fic ever since i read subject: a comprehensive report (fantastic, albeit unfinished fic), and this was further fueled by q.a.b. (and its sequel. read it btw. well-executed crack treated seriously and fantastic css). and the plot sort of evolved from there. a lot of the stuff about this particular subplot actually came about after i got the initial idea for this fic and it also led to me completely overhauling a character (who has yet to show up) and accidentally getting obsessed with them so. you never know where ur stuff will take you. its always been conceived of as a sort of mystery/spy thriller type story, though the idea that "you are always being watched" only really solidified after i got working on planning this out more

i think i was born to be a tour guide for a whale watching program for the explicit reason that i dont particularly give a shit about whales that much. like theyre neat and beautiful and great creatures but most of the time when you go whale watching youre never watching a whale. this is where i come in to infodump at you about various seagulls, petrels, perhaps even an albatross, or point out the various jellyfish floating just beneath the surface and pontificate about the wondrous nature of the life cycle of a cnidarian. i think every whale watching tour would be incredibly successful if they had someone on the crew who went to smoke a cigarette when a whale showed up and then when they werent showing up appeared to gush at you about pelagic loons.

21 & 32 for the writer's asks :3

hi ezra! thank you for the ask :3

21. What stops you from writing more in your free time?

you guys all know me too well.... i even have a tag on my blog talking about how i never write. im ngl i have a lot more free time than it seems but i spend a lot of it doing... tbh idek half the time. my motivation is quite the fickle creature and its pulled in a thousand different directions at any given moment. that is further compounded by the fact that i get really easily stuck when writing. i envy the people who can whip things out quickly, even just as a first draft. even when i tell myself to just write whatever i almost always end up getting bogged down in some sort of dilemma about word choice or filler action or something probably not actually as significant as im making it. also the projects im most invested in (and therefore actually have enough motivation to push myself to write) either are long works or require further development before i can really get to the meat of it and well. what can i say i have an instant gratification monkey in my brain that is extremely good at getting what it wants, and what it wants is very much not conducive to getting writing done.

32. A character you enjoy making suffer.

now this is a really interesting one. i very much have favorites. i like them for many reasons, but one of them is probably that they’re fun to put into situations. do those situations sometimes involve what the character would consider suffering? yeah. so i don’t really enjoy making a character suffer so much as i enjoy throwing them into a new environment and seeing how they react. im splitting this into two parts, one for oc and one for like. fic stuff because if you know me you know that no one can compete with my most beloved oc, evelyn. she’s very fun to put into situations because she reacts to things in a nonstandard way. shes not afraid to break things (unless she’s imposed a rule on herself to be a good tourist and not break things). she gets annoyed in an extremely entertaining manner at “minor inconveniences” (her definition may not match most people’s). I don’t think I can really do my love for her justice without breaking it out into an entirely separate post complete with a cut.

anyways, as for fic… well, pulling from one of my current fandoms, it might be a bit of a boring choice but I really do love putting fein in situations. Or at least, my conception of c!fein. I think part of what makes a character situationsable is how solid of a grasp I have on them, and he’s definitely one of the more solid ones. he also works really well with a concept I like to play with a lot—godhood. (now who saw that one coming?) and if my explorations of those concepts happen to not end in the most ideal way for our focus character? well sucks for them i guess, but it’s very fun for me. so yeah id say i put him through the wringer (mostly in my main ongoing). also he’s fun to knock down a few pegs. thinking about how there’s always a bigger fish.

super simple low-effort ao3 summary methods that are 1000% better and 1000% less annoying than just saying you suck at summaries:

copypaste the first few lines of the fic. u already wrote ‘em. let ‘em be their own damn hook

if ur feeling fancy & don’t mind showing ur hand a bit, copypaste the first few lines of the fic that u feel are esp. Important or Interesting - the ones where u first start getting into the real meat of things

state the main tropes! theyre probably already in ur tags - just say them again - maybe as a full sentence if ur feelin fancy. or with a joke if ur feelin Extra fancy

ask a question. pose a hypothetical. eg what happens if u take [character] and put them in [situation]?

make an equation. [character] + [thing] = [outcome]

just write like a one-sentence summary of what the fuck is going down. just one (1) sentence. doesnt matter if it doesn’t cover every important aspect. or if it sounds bland. any summary sentence is gonna be miles better than “idk i suck at summaries”

just…explain the fic like u would to a friend? it doesnt have to be a polished back of the book blurb. it can just be “[pairing] coffee shop au, but like, still with murder, and also i made everyone trans. enjoy”

just stick a meme in there

honestly who cares

just put literally anything but a self deprecating comment in there & ur golden

GOING FOR WORLD RECORD