With More And More Ao3 Authors Restricting Their Works To The Archive (due To AI Scraping), They're Going

you have to be able to defend people who are receiving unjust treatment even if they annoy you even if you personally find them extremely annoying you still have to be able to stand up and say "well thats fucked up"

how can ppl say cats are heartless tbh

another x-men panel redraw… predictably I’m obsessed with this visual from Inferno #3

Care for a drink?

AND DO YOU HAVE ANY MCSR FIC RECS. FORGOT TO ASK

thank you for the asks! i mostly do my mcsr stuff on my sideblog but since you’re here anon i do have a few (and i will get to the other ask in a bit) i hope you don't mind incomplete fics, because i have quite a few of those in here. anyways, in no particular order:

A Field Guide to Speedrunners by loanword. honestly you should go and read all of tri's stuff but this is the fic that got me. snappy writing style and a great grasp on characterization

Grave Digging by sumactic is an ongoing fic in their pjo au and i am so fascinated by what is going on with their nerdi and k4. good writing and a very interesting dynamic and i cant wait to see more

into this world in wonder from a starlight sky by confusedkestrel is a fun read and i love how they wrote the dynamic between poundy and fein. you should go read all of their mcsr fics tbh

coffee beans, fein-ly ground by igneousarchive and *megamind meme* no villains? by justpressX are two (unrelated) oneshots that i thought were fun.

[FILE: FALLEN ANGEL ET AL VS. SHOCKWAVE ET AL] by weareallstardustfallen is set in a superhero au and also makes use of mixed-media (or, text-based simulations of it), which i am always a big fan of

and now, time for a bit of hashtag self promo but my current ongoing series is outfished. its an au making use of my oc universe setting and can best be described as a modern-day fantasy with a focus on worldbuilding and intrigue. i also play around a bit with css formatting and in-universe documents if you're into that sort of thing.

there's a lot of good fics out there in the tag that i haven't listed here so when you have the time i would recommend just going through the entire tag. its not a terribly huge tag (though it is growing) so its a pretty manageable browse imo. (then again, my perception of reasonable may be a bit skewed. iykyk.)

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

you will not replace me

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.