#(moderate use for readability)

[parasitoidism]

Nothing ever changes in scrap world

[friendofthecrows]

One of the (many) reasons I think people need to use libraries more is that it would seriously reduce the "need" for chatgpt/similar AIs.

Sometimes a topic IS difficult to research and it CAN be hard to know where to start.

Anecdote: I know someone who, when confronted by a whole lotta irrelevance in their first several online searches, will then plug their whole, wordy, unpolished question with several synonyms per term into an AI and get a fairly clear, if flawed, summary and then they ignore that and ask it for source suggestions and seach terms to learn more about it and look up those seperately. I don't advocate for that, but it shows a usecase I think most of the "people are just using chatgpt to cheat on homework" crowd are ignoring. (And yeah, I agree, a lot of people are using chatgpt to cheat on homework, that happens too.)

Many libraries have research assistants, and even in those that don't, most librarians are more than happy to point you to good sources.

Worried the library is unlikely to have books on the topic you're researching? I've been there, given the number of recent case studies on hyper-specific forensics topics I've written for college. But you know what librarians are great at? Library science. Libraries have computers, and often libraries will have subscriptions/access to some journals and academic databases. Librarians are very, very good at using those databases, and research in general, and they're usually very enthusiastically willing to help, especially if you go on a quiet day.

Fun fact: library computers are also a fairly anonymous way to do research. Libraries might have usage guidelines for their computers to prevent things like people downloaded a massive number of viruses on them, but I promise you the librarians are not judging you. Think of them like the doctors of academia (not to be confused with PhD in Education, that's totally different). Doesn't matter what your research is, ask for help if you need it.

If your search engine is giving you nothing, or if you're stuck, go to a library.

[empty-movement]

Welcome to Something Eternal: A Website Forum in 2023 wtf lmao

It's 2023, and a single belligerent rich guy destroyed one of the primary focal points of uh...global communication. Tumblr is, shockingly, kinda thriving despite the abuse it gets from its owners, but that I will call the iconic refusal of Tumblr users to let Tumblr get in the way of their using Tumblr. Reddit killed its API, removing the functionality of mobile apps that made it remotely readable (rip rif.) Discord, our current primary hangout, has made countless strange choices lately that indicate it has reached the summit of its usability and functionality, and can only decline from here as changes get made to prepare for shareholders. (NOTE: WROTE THIS POST BEFORE THEIR MOBILE "REDESIGN" LMAO)

The enshittification is intense, and it's coming from every direction. Social media platforms that felt like permanent institutions are instead slowly going to let fall fallow incredible amounts of history, works of art, thought, and fandoms. It kinda sucks!

A couple years ago, I posted about a new plan with a new domain, to focus on the archiving of media content, as I saw that to be the fatal weakness of the current ways the internet and fandoms work. Much has happened since to convince me to alter the direction of those efforts, though not abandon them entirely.

Long story short? We are launching a fucking website forum. In 2023.

If you remember In the Rose Garden, much about Something Eternal will be familiar. But this has been a year in the making, and in many ways it's far more ambitious than IRG was. We have put money on this. The forum is running on the same software major IT and technology businesses use, because I don't want the software to age out of usability within five years. It has an attached gallery system for me to post content to, including the Chiho Saito art collection. It has a profile post system that everyone already on the forum has decided is kinda like mini Twitter? But it is, fundamentally, a website forum, owned and run and moderated by us. We are not web devs. But we have run a website on pure spite and headbutting code for over twenty years, and we have over a decade of experience maintaining social spaces online, both on the OG forum, and on our Discord. Better skilled people with far more time than we have can and will build incredible alternatives to what is collapsing around us. But they're not in the room right now. We are. And you know what? Maybe it's time to return to a clunkier, slower moving, more conversation focused platform.

You're not joining a social media platform with the full polish of dozens of devs and automated moderation. Things might break, and I might need time to fix them. The emojis and such are still a work in progress. Because e-mails no longer route in reasonable normal ways, the sign-up process instead happens within the software, and has to be approved by mods. Design and structure elements may change. Etc. The point being, that the forum isn't finished, but it is at a place where I feel like I can present it to people, and it's people I need to help direct what functions and things will be in this space. You all will shape its norms, its traditions, its options...choices I could try to make now, but really...they're for us to create as a group! But the important stuff? That's there. Now let's drive this baby off the damn lot already!

Come! Join us!!

PS. As always, TERFs and Nazis need not apply.

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! I’m a hearing person currently doing research to write a short story where the main character is deaf. While reading your pinned post, I saw you advised against using italics.

“If you really want to differentiate signing from speaking, you can use italics or different dialogue marks, but I advise against that.”

I’m curious why you advise against it and I’d like to know more. The character in my story is postlingually hard of hearing (he has moderate hearing loss after an accident ((not present in the story))) and sometimes has to speak with other characters in order to communicate. When signing, I had the dialogue in italics and when speaking I had the dialogue with quotation marks.

Could this be seen as offensive? Or is it simply a tool for helping readability? Below are some examples from my writing. I’d also like to clarify that although the protagonist is deaf, the focus on the story is on his love interest, on his rivalry with another character, and on the severe thunderstorm they get trapped in.

Examples:

While he was lost in their ominous blue glow, Lilly tapped him on the shoulder.

Want to play tag? She signed.

Max balanced his book on the railing before replying. No, I like it up here.

…

Lilly looked out on the prairie. She, too, found herself focusing on the clouds. Those look kind of scary. I thought it wasn’t supposed to rain?

It’s not, Max replied.

…

“So, Maximus,” Jackson started. “What’re you reading?”

“Nothing,” Max said curtly.

End examples.

Thank you for your help. Although I’m looking at many websites/organizations to try and understand the Deaf community, it’s useful to have personal insight into the preferences and opinions of individuals.

Hi!

So in my opinion, italics devalue sign language. Spoken language gets the "proper" common quotation marks, even in books where characters switch back and forth between multiple spoken languages, while italics are marked as distinctly "other". It's not a connection I like.

I'm also not the ultimate authority on how to write d/Deaf characters. I'm sure there are Deaf people out there who would disagree with me. And if it is necessary for clarity, by all means use an alternate style for writing sign language dialogue! It's not offensive, italics are just a stylization I and some other people I know don't love.

Mod Rock

[forsaken-headcanons]

For Robloxians, "usernames" are their birth/real names, but most go by nicknames. That applies to these guys. 007n7, Shedletsky, Builderman, and Dusekarr are all clearly usernames, but what about everyone else? Well, they're going by a nickname. Noob is just called Noob by everyone else, but they have an actual username and it probably doesn't have Noob in it. It'd be more personalized. Same applies to Chance. Two Time's username is some jumble of letters and numbers that are borderline illegible. The only readable portion is "2time" and therefore people (the cult) started calling them that, and they ran with it. Elliot's username I specifically feel would include "BuilderBrothers" in it. Bro got the brand in his birth certificate. Taph, however. I don't actually think that's a nickname, I think that'd be their real name; They're an admin/moderator, and those guys tend to get to name themselves whatever, so of course they'd be able to use simply "Taph." That, and the other admins also are just using their usernames too.

as for killers? 1x1x1x1, John Doe and c00lkidd are all obviously usernames. Jason... nobody actually knows for certain. Bro's weird. Azure's said to be "Azurewrath" from the roblox items, however I'd personally go to say that they're named after the actual Azurewrath, and not actually named Azurewrath. aaand that's all I wrote you can probably fill in the blanks yourself for everyone else; I know you like iTrapped but I shouldn't need to say that's just a username like it's obvious lol

Interesting. Yeah, I have thought about usernames for specific characters before.

[everybondyoubreak]

every bond you break

Chapter 2: Georgia on My Mind

pairing: joel miller x female reader chapter summary: You and Ellie become closer and questions about your past start to come up. Joel confronts you to ask what your deal is.

tags: slowburn, seriously, like super slooowburn, mutual pining, blood & gore, tension, competence kink, enemies to friends to lovers, reader is age-appropriate, overprotective joel, eventual smut, eventual romance, found family

AO3 link here

A/N: I have the other chapters uploaded on AO3 for now! Trying to catch up and post the other chapters on here too. Thank you all for the likes and nice comments!

“You ever read this?” You called out to Ellie, holding up a water-logged copy of The Golden Compass. She popped her head above the bookshelves and made a face, “Hell no! You could hit someone on the head and kill them with that thing. How many pages are in that?”

This was your fifth supply run with Ellie and the rest of the crew. Things were going well, the two of you operated with a particular synchronicity. She’d stick by your side, making a two-person assembly line as you sorted through these abandoned places. Every so often, you’d pick up an item to gauge her interests.

For this particular week, Will had brought you all to an abandoned strip mall further out west. Most of the storefronts surrounding the parking lot were unrecognizable. You could still make out the tracings of a sign that once spelled out “Barnes & Noble”. You called dibs and dragged Ellie inside, promising that they also sold comics in these bookstores.

“Think the copy I had at home was about…400 pages?” You flicked open the book in your hands. The page numbers were smudged and illegible. The text itself though was still readable. “It was good.”

Ellie’s eyebrows raised, “When and why were you reading that?”

“Middle school,” You smiled, “For fun, I was a bit of a dork as a kid. Kinda like you now!”

“Ha-ha…” Ellie glared at you through a gap in the bookshelves.

“What? It’s not a bad thing, I was a lot more fun as a kid too.”

Ellie stepped out of the bookshelves and began hovering closer to you, “Well, what happened?”

You looked up at the dusty ceiling to recollect your thoughts. “I was very concerned about looking ‘cool’ once I got to high school.” You passed a book to her to survey, “Then you know, the world ended. You grow up pretty fast once that happens.” The next book you picked up you immediately tossed into your bag to bring back to Jackson. Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, 2002 Edition. Could be useful.

Ellie tossed one of the paperbacks over her shoulder into the reject pile building in the corner, “So…what was considered ‘cool’ then? You know, back in your time?”

“Back in my time…” You grumbled. She looked up at you with a mischievous grin, “What? I’m curious! Like, what did you do all day?”

The question stumped you for a second. When the world went to shit, all you ever thought for about for years was the future that had been stolen from you. The past was painful and filled with broken promises. You decided it to be easier to just forget it and focus on the "now". Yet, as meditative as living in the present sounds, it can become dissociative without moderation. Now, you were scrambling for any semblance of who you once were.

Some things came to mind. “Well, I was on the equestrian team. I’d do fencing with my brother.”

“Did you just make a bunch of words up? What is a-quest-train team?”

Your realization of Ellie’s situation snapped your self-pity in half. She had no semblance of what life used to be. No idea of what the world was or what it was supposed to be for her. All she had were these strange scraps of a society. These words and concepts from your old life never made it into this one.

“Well, the equestrian team was a fancy word for horseback riding,” Ellie’s head tilted in confusion, “And fencing—actually you’d probably like it…it was basically sword-fighting.”

“What, like a pirate?” She exclaimed. You gave a half-smile and shook your head,  “Sort of. We’d use these really skinny swords and wear this heavy protective gear, it was more like fake-fighting.”

Ellie looked disappointed, disappearing her face into a comic book she found earlier. You kept quiet and sorted around for more items to bring along.

“What were you doing alone for twenty years?” She asked, her voice surprisingly timid.

You kept your eyes on the books at first and continued sorting through, “What do you mean?”

“You weren’t like, alone for all that time, were you?” Her tone teetering between curious and cautious. You turned to look at her and saw her big eyes holding onto you closely.

“No, I had my family with me for a while,” You said lowly, “Then it kind of came down to me and my dad. We had visitors here and there. People like Maria and her father. They kept in touch, my dad helped her dad with setting this place up in Jackson.”

A memory set upon you suddenly. Times when you were stuck accompanying your father on these visits or “very important” meetings. He’d boss you around, making you wait outside locked rooms where he was in deep discussions for hours. 

You didn’t want Ellie to feel that way. Shut out.

You tried to let her in a little more.

“My dad worked with a lot of people to try to ‘rebuild the future’” you took a deep breath in, “It obviously didn’t work.”

“Was your dad a Firefly?”

“No.” You asserted, trying to find a way to politely end this conversation. But you could tell Ellie was still looking to hear more, “He was…very supportive of their cause though, finding a cure.”

Your voice came out wobblier than intended. Ellie was sensible enough to stop asking at this point. The young girl started rubbing her nose nervously, she stood up and walked across the room, “I’m gonna check out the…DVD section down over there.”

"That's fine." You weren't sure who you were asserting that fact to. 

The rest of the time, you both searched in silence. Separately.

-

Later in the day, you all arrived back in Jackson at sundown. Everyone began to head off to their respective families waiting nearby. Before Ellie ran off, you quickly tapped her on the shoulder, “Hey.”

She looked up solemnly. You handed her the copy of The Golden Compass you found earlier, “Take it, I’ve read it a million times already.”

She gave a soft smile, “Uh, thanks.” Her eyes wandered about, her attention obviously elsewhere.

“You don’t have to read it.” You added. Ellie shook her head, “No, no, it’s nice, really. Sorry...I just got tired earlier. I’m having trouble sleeping here still.”

“Well, I could give you a longer, more boring book to read then, maybe that’ll help you fall asleep.”

Her smile widened, “I’ll let you know. Thanks again.” Something else seemed to come over her, as she suddenly wrapped her free arm around your waist, pulling you in for a quick hug. The surprise burst of affection sent you into a brief shock.

You tried to recover quickly. Patting her awkwardly on the back was your best response. In a low voice, you could hear her say, “I’m sorry about your dad.”

There were a million things you wanted to respond to her. But you settled on a quick, “Thanks”. She broke apart, your hand lingering on her shoulder as she ran off.

“See you next week!” You called out, watching her run off to Joel in the distance. Even from this far away, you could feel his gaze locked on you. Was he watching this interaction the whole time?

Your rumination on his surveillance was broken by Will’s mention of your name. You looked over at him, “Hm?”

“I was just saying you’ve been doing great.” He nodded off in Ellie’s direction, “Especially dealing with her.”

Your eyebrows furrowed, “She’s been great to work with, actually.” Will shrugged, “I’m just saying, I told Maria she should really think about adding you to patrols.”

A part of you was excited to hear this, but you found your pride overpowered by a newer, stranger feeling, “What, why?”

“You could still do the supply runs. I just think you have a good eye. You know how to look out for others. Decent with a gun too.”

“Will, you saw me shoot a gun once,” You added, “And that…thing I shot was tied up.”

Sure, you had killed infected loads of times. You had been doing it for years. Always alone though. It was still taking time to get used to working with people again. Now, you realized you also had to get used to caring about other people again on top of that.

What if that infected from your first day hadn’t been tied up? What if it had attacked Ellie? Who would be the one to handle that? 

“I’ll think about it. I think...I just need more training.”

Will nodded, “Yeah, of course, we’ll have you do some practice. I can ask Tommy about setting something up.”

You nodded, and the two of you walked over to the stables to put the horses away.

-

Will gave a quick goodbye and “See you next week!” as he hurried home for the evening, leaving you alone with the horse you’d been riding the past month.

The first week or two, you had privately named your designated horse Georgia. She had a reddish-orange coat that reminded you of a ripe peach. The other day, you realized her true name, Misty. It had been carved on her stall door this whole time.

You rolled your eyes at the sight of the carving. You liked the name Georgia for her better.

As you took off the horse’s gear, you began humming the song “Georgia on My Mind”. You hung up her saddle and sauntered back to the horse. With everyone gone for the evening, you wanted to take your alone time out here slowly and sweetly. You began stroking the horse’s mane, singing softly as you patted her snout.

A low voice came from behind you, yanking you out of your trance, “What do you want?”

You peered around the stall, spotting Joel in the doorway of the barn. He was leaning against the door frame, so casual in contrast to his demanding tone.

You kept your hand firmly placed on Misty, trying to hide the fact that your hand was trembling, “What do you want?”

“You know what I mean by that.” He snapped back.

“I don’t actually. ‘Cause I’m not a fuckin’ mindreader.” You held your hands up in the air as if to convey your innocence, your literal empty-handedness. Joel looked around you cautiously, as if you had fire coming out of your fingers.

Maybe you were delusional, but you refused to consider him a threat. Your defenses took over.

You stepped towards him and tried to take charge, “What exactly is the issue here? And why are you cornering me at night like a weirdo about it?”

Something was rocking around inside you now, conflicted between getting even closer to him or getting the fuck away from him. He placed his gaze on you, “Maria told me about you.”

Your ears prickled. It was your turn to talk now, but you knew to keep it brief, “Oh, really?”

“Tommy, too. Told me about your father.”

Your mind pulled back to Ellie’s questioning from earlier today. Curiosity was contagious. You wondered who caught it first, Joel or Ellie?

You got closer, feeling the front of your face tighten, “What did they tell you about my father?” Looking up at him, your chin pointing up like a knife to his throat. 

His voice lowered as he looked down at you, “I don’t need you tellin’ Ellie about this high and mighty Firefly shit-”

“I haven’t told her a fucking thing!” You yelled right in his face. One of the horses in the other stalls cried out, clearly just as spooked as you were. 

The conversation in the bookstore was the first time you had mentioned anything regarding the Fireflies to Ellie. You hadn’t said a single good word about the Fireflies and you never would. To anyone.  The truth of that shot straight up your spine.

For the slightest second, you saw him falter. You could see the depths of his brown eyes waver.  His gaze still held onto yours, searching inside for the slightest hint of insincerity. You stood there, letting him take it all in with no sign of deception. He suddenly shook his head, ending your staredown, “Why does she keep asking me about them then?”

“I don’t know, Joel. Talk to her, she’s curious.” You stated, “She’s allowed to learn about the world we live in.”

“I’m fully aware of that fact-” He growled, lifting himself off the door frame to stand taller above you.

“Are you? I’m not too sure of that…” You side-stepped him, slipping through the doorway to make your escape.

You were about to storm off to safety, but you stopped to turned back around. Thankfully, he didn't seem to want to chase after you. He was still standing in that stupid barn, the lantern’s glow beaming behind him. The light streaming out covered his features, making him just a silhouette in the doorway. A shadow that seemed to just keep following you.

“Since you seem so interested in my father, Joel, let me give you some insight,” You took a deep breath, ready to blow,  “The whole controlling, obsessive thing you seem to have going on with your daughter? Doesn’t end well!”

You spun back around and charged off. The tears in your eyes made the whole walk home a blur. When finally made it inside your house, you kept your clothes on and laid on your bed, staring out the window until you finally fell asleep.

In your dreams, you dreamt of doors again. It was the closet door in Wilson Valley, but this time it opened to lead into the basement of your father’s house. You knew where it would lead you to. At the far end of the basement awaited a vaulted door.

You knew what was behind it.

And you knew you could never open it.

[antimony-medusa]

How To Set Up An Ao3 Exchange

One of the first things I say whenever anyone asks me about running exchanges is that if you have more than about 30 people in the exchange, do NOT try to match it by hand. That is so much work and takes so much time. Use Ao3's matching algorithm. And people say sure, and then they look at how Ao3 works and they go uhhhhhhhhhh I think we can make a google form work. Because google forms are reasonably intuitive to make work, and Ao3 exchanges are— not.

But the thing is, once you understand the underlying logic for Ao3 collections, they are not that bad, and seriously I can't overstate the benefit of having Ao3 do the matching for you. That's like the difference between 80 hours of curating data as it comes in and then matching it (what happened with hand-matching 325 people for holiday exchange), or 2 hours of double-checking the matching (what happened with matching 125 people for 48 hour exchange). You have to put in extra work to get an Ao3 exchange set up, but it super pays off in the end. So! Here is an intro to how Ao3 exchanges work on the back end. This explanation assumes you know how to sign up for an exchange because I've posted ones like that before, for example, here.

Let's get into it.

THE COLLECTION

The first thing you want to do is set up your exchange collection. If you go to your right-hand drop-down menu, you click on My Collections.

That brings you to every collection you have ever made, and you go to to the right and click "New collection".

That brings you into the back end of the collection. You want to go down and put in a name for the collection that will be the url (so no spaces), a display name, an email for the collection to email when something happens to the collection (this will be public, so use a fandom email), and a basic description.

There's places there to do custom icons and headers, but those are optional, but you can go in and make your exchange pretty later if you want!

We are still in the "setting up" stage of the exchange, so once we go to preferences, you want to select all the tick boxes and make it look like this.

Moderated means that you'll have to manually approve things to be added to the collection (not absolutely necessary but can keep out trolls, and it also means that you can manually check that gifts meet minimums before you let them in to the exchange), Closed means that no one can submit things to the collection yet (once you open your exchange you de-select this), Unrevealed means that any works in the collection will show up as "mystery works" and not be readable (so you keep it unrevealed until the posting date, so people can post early but not spoil the surprise), anonymous means that all authors will be anonymous (this depends on if you have an anonymous portion of your exchange, so it's optional), "show random works" just means that you get a selection of different works when people visit the collection at different times, "send a message to the collection email" is optional but is useful for moderation (like if you're checking people off a list when their gifts get delivered), and "type of challenge" you want to be set to "gift exchange".

and then on this page the only other things of concern are places where you can put in an FAQ, a description and some instructions, but those are all optional! I normally host the FAQ on tumblr, so I just say "go check the tumblr at [link]".

And then you hit the submit button.

Now we get into the nitty-gritty.

First up is some optional stuff— you can add in the times that you're going to do things! This is useful for communication, but not necessary. We're still setting everything up, so you do not want Sign-Ups to be open, that is only selected once you have everything ready to go.

Then scrolling down, you get to Requests and Offers.

This is where you specify the absolute minimum ships or characters that you want people to give you to sign up. 10 is the maximum Ao3 allows, so I always set it to 10 for both "allowed", which is the maximum the site will allow. And required is the low number. I usually set it to a minimum of three, to make sure someone doesn't sign up with "i will only write one ship" or something. This way, people will have to do a minimum of three separate requests and offers.

The "requests visible" is part of the back end thing, and it's up to you if you want to select it or not. If you keep it unselected, the only person who will be able to see requests is the mods, and eventually each person will see their assignment. If you select it, people will be able to browse everyone's requests and both maybe target offers so they can write for a specific person, and be able to find treats (extra bonus gifts) to write for people whose requests they like. Each side has its own benefits or negatives, it's up to you which ones you want to go with!

And here we get into more of the matching info! Let's look at Request Settings.

Now this is what the settings would look like for a multi-fandom exchange. The "details/description" box you want to make mandatory because that is where people will put their DNW and their prompts (and you absolutely want to make sure everyone has a DNW), and the url is an optional one which lets people link an off-site letter on google docs or dreamwidth.

Fandom allowing up to three fandoms means that people can do crossovers if they want (or tag a request something like 3rd life/hermitcraft), and if I wanted to say that people had to request 3 separate servers I would say "must be unique" but I'm okay if people sign up with three Dream SMP relationships in this idea hypothetical exchange, so I'm not selecting the unique button.

I'm ignoring the characters button cause that's extra complication, the only other thing I want to look at is the relationship button. A minimum of 1 ship per request (and there's a minimum of three requests), and let's say you can go up to 20, so people can request LOTS of different ships. I did select "must be unique" so someone can't sign up with the same ship three times. The "allow any" button is off, which means that I will have to select relationships that fit under the fandom that I selected one up, I can't request Shubble/Niki Nihachu (Origins), and put it with a fandom request for Hermitcraft. This has set it so that the absolutely minimum someone can sign up with is 3 relationships (3 requests * 1 relationship each), and the absolute maximum is 200 relationships (10 requests * 20 relationships each).

Requests will look much the same, except I am not putting down details/description or a URL, because I'm not letting people submit requests about what ship they "really" want to match on, they are going to be equally matchable to everyone they offered. Some exchanges will let you submit a requests DNW, but honestly that is so much extra work for the mods, I would not recommend it unless you think it's necessary to stop people from dropping their gifts later.

Okay, so now we take a brief digression into a tag set.

THE TAG SET

Okay so basically a tag set is an extra set of sliders that lets you fine-tune your exchange. If you do not use a tag set, when people sign up they will be able to use every canon tag on the archive, and only canon tags. Which is a LOT of tags, but when I ran an exchange without a tag set there were multiple times of hitting non-canon relationships or tags. But it's also a definite extra complication, tag sets are extra fiddly work and they are even less intituive. If you just want to go without a tag set, skip down to the matching segment. If you do want to avoid hitting people signing up with non-canon tags, keep reading.

I'm gonna say right off the bat that tag sets are the single most like "oh I am getting into the GUTS of the machine" part of running Ao3 exchanges, but if you can make them work they can super streamline both the sign-up (for your participants ) and the matching process (for you).

Oh boy, tag sets. Here we start getting into how exchanges start squeezing the interface to make it do what we want it to. I'm using a tag set, so first I clicked on the "tag set" url there and I made my tag set, and then I came back and selected its name from the drop-down menu on the collection.

When it comes to the relationship settings, you have three options:

Leaving both boxes unticked will allow someone to input any relationship that has been wrangled into the fandom and any relationship in your tag set.

Clicking Fandom Only will allow people to use any wrangled tag that has been associated to this fandom— but only those tags.

Clicking Tag Set Fandom Only will allow people to use any tag in your tag set that is associated with your fandom— but only those tags.

Fandom Only is not very useful for how we're using tag sets, because we specifically want non-canon unique tags we are designing for our purpose. Both boxes unticked is only useful if you want people to be able to do mash-up signups where someone puts ZombieCleo & LDShadowLady (3rd Life) on a signup for a fandom of Dream SMP— which in most cases you don't want, because matching that is gonna be very difficult. (We do something like this for mcyt recursive, but recursive is— weird.) The usual and simplest way to run is to click Tag Set Fandom Only, and that way your participants will get a drop-down autocomplete menu of the tags in your tag set, the ones they can use, when they sign up. Easy and simple!

I am leaving characters unchecked, because in both cases selecting a box will restrict the options available to someone signing up to character tags that have been associated or wrangled into a fandom, and we are either a) not using characters at all, or b) using the character field for gift types (more on that later), and we specifically want unassociated gift type tags that are not affiliated with any specific fandom. What tags? Well. Let's move over to the tag set itself.

So, I started a new tag set, and I'm over there on that screen, looking at it. What does that screen look like?

Okay so, part of the appeal of a tag set is that your participants are able to specify the difference between "Rendog & InTheLittleWood" and "Rendog/InTheLittleWood". You don't have to worry about people getting undesired shipping, because people were specifying if they wanted shipping when they signed up. You can reduce a great deal of people getting matched badly by using relationship matching, because most of the time even if people want a Tommy-centric fic, there's a pretty big difference between people who want "Tommy & Technoblade" and "Tommy & Dream". By specifying who you want the gift to be about, you remove a big hurdle of matching right away. That's why most exchanges run on relationship matching.

However, if there are 37 people on a given server, that's something like 2,600 possible combinations of people if you include both romantic and platonic, and that's before you start getting into trios, and that's just way too many tags for the mods to enter manually. So what you do is run a nomination period, and for a week or two weeks you go to all your participants and you go "do you want to sign up for this exchange? Nominate the tags you want to use now! If it doesn't get nominated, it can't be used!" And then people head to the tag set to nominate.

So, on this page, you want "visible tag list" to be selected, because you want people to see what's already been nominated so they don't duplicate, and you want "currently taking nominations" to be selected because you will be taking those nominations instead of doing them all yourself.

So you have to set up limits on those nominations.

The point of taking nominations is to make matching easier, so people normally use the same fandom and relationship limits as they are going to use on the sign-up, to make sure there aren't dozens of tags in the tag set that nobody's using, just cluttering up the space. It also helps stop the issue where someone sees a tag in the tag set, goes "oh man I love that ship" and signs up, but its an extra tag that no one intended to offer, so they don't match to anyone. That's why sometimes people keep the amount of tags that can be nominated low, I've seen people limit this to 10 tags per fandom, or even 7, so that's up to you.

And you save, and now when you link your participants the tag set, they will have a "nominate" button.

They will hurry over to press that button, and then they will see a page that looks like this.

This is a thing where you absolutely want to give your participants detailed instructions, because what Ao3 will try to do is auto-fill people's nominations with canonical tags. WE DO NOT WANT CANONICAL TAGS. CANONICAL TAGS ARE THE ENEMY OF EXCHANGES. CANONICAL TAGS ARE THE ENEMY OF MCYT EXCHANGES IN PARTICULAR.

Remember back when we clicked the button that says tags have to be unique? The canonical tag for Philza & Technoblade doesn't have a server on it, and people might want to be requesting that relationship for SMPEarth, Dream SMP, Origins SMP, or arguably even QSMP. If you only have the canonical tag, people can only request a specific dynamic once, for one server. And that is a problem for every situation where people interacted on multiple servers, and with the network of overlaps that is Empires/SOS/3rd Life/Hermitcraft and DSMP/Origins/SMPEarth/QSMP, that's going to lead to unhappy participants. So you tell people to nominate the ship and also "disambiguate" it, and add the server in parentheses. And then all your participants will hit the button to submit, and you will go into the "review nominations" button, and you will let those tags into the tag set.

Now I just distributed the tag set to a couple friends, so let's look at what this looks like behind the scenes.

Brace yourself, it's gonna be wild, but I believe we can get through it.

Now here is a perfectly standard look at tag set nominations after a few people have gotten into the tag set. This is why they pay tag mods the big bucks.

As you can see, there are a few things to be gathered. The first things is a bunch of people used the canon tags (because that's what Ao3 tries to get them to do), someone else nominated an x-reader ship, we have one tag there twice (spelled differently), and the tags are Piped (they have both the person's tax name and the username). (You can let tags in that are Piped, but I find that it makes the tag set harder to read, and usually exchanges are character-focused unless you're writing video blogging rpf anyways, so I ask people to submit tags unpiped, using usernames.) And for the tags that were nominated in a way that I want (unpiped, and disambiguated so they're unique), Ao3 is trying to get me to use the canon tag. But I don't want the canon tag, I want a unique tag, with the server on it, with no pipes. So.

So were I moderating the tag set, after a few minutes it would look like this.

That's going through and disambiguating the tags (adding the server, which I could tell because of the fandom it was nominated under), removing the piping and using the usernames instead of tax names, and then re-ordering the names so they're alphabetical so people can find them on the list later, rejecting the x-reader tag, rejecting the duplicate and allowing the one that's spelled correctly through. Amazing. I have tags that I want to use (I did some other tags that were ready to go in other fandoms as well). I hit submit. Am I ready to go?

Not yet! First, associating tags. If you accepted the tags through the tag nomination process, you will have a button up there that says Review Associations.

If you click on this, on the back end, anything that you accepted under a previously accepted fandom will be helpfully paired up with this fandom, with Ao3 trying to say "ah, does it go here?"

You just go down the list, and if is trying to put it in the right fandom, then you click the box, and at the bottom of the page you press submit, and then there's your tags sorted out to your fandoms! Bingo! Are you done now?

No.

Because tag sets are the most complicated part of exchanges.

So. if you open up your tag set, and you scroll down to "Unassociated characters and relationships" there are a bunch of tags that are are lost, Ao3 doesn't know where to put them. This happens when a) you accepted a tag that was associated with a fandom that hadn't been accepted yet, b) it was trying to associate it with a basket fandom that you don't want to associate it with so you couldn't accept the suggested associations (for example: Philza hardcore tags will show up in Dream SMP but you don't want to associate them there), c) sometimes Ao3 just breaks, spaghetti code d), you had manually added these tags on the Edit page— more on that later. So all of these tags you have to manually associate.

You hit the Edit button on the tag set, and scroll down to the bottom, to "tag associations", and start selecting where tags go.

Honestly this is a great time to be listening to a stream or a podcast or something, and then you have the tag set open in another tab so you know what all the unassociated tags are, and you just go down the list like a databasing machine. It is not hard, cause you disambiguated each tag with its own server, it's just time consuming. Note. This is why people go in and accept tags regularly during the nomination period, because if you do this all at the end you've got a BIG job ahead of you.

So, you turned on your VOD playlist and you associated all your tags, and all the tags are where they are supposed to go. You have a beautiful tag set.

But wait, you say, looking at this beautiful tag set. Some of those tags look at little different. What is the "Dream smp and only dream smp" that a couple of them have?

Well.

You see.

Ao3 designed tag sets to work a certain way, and nobody uses them that way. It turns out that "Quackity/Wilbur Soot (Dream SMP)" is a wrangled canon tag, and the system goes "ah, I know where this goes, this is a sub-tag of the major tag, and the top-level tag is Video Blogging RPF, so it goes under Video Blogging RPF, as all MCYT tags do. I am very smart. I have stuck this Dream SMP tag under Video Blogging RPF. I am a good machine". And then you go AUUUUUUUUGH, and then you turn up the podcast a little louder, and then you sit down and you delete the old tag and you write out a new tag that the system doesn't know what to do with, and it goes uhhhhhhh and sticks it in "unassociated tags" and then you go in again and you manually associate it into the right server.

Edit in 2024: I use (DFE) at the end of the tag now, because it's shorter.

It's not hard, it's just time consuming. Shouting at the tag set like STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO as it helpfully tries to stick dsmp tags in SMPearth and you wrestle it out of SMPEarth and into the right fandom bucket.

Deep breath moment. Honestly that's the most fiddly part of a fiddly process, so if you can get through this you're absolutely golden.

Anyways. You got clean disambiguated unique tags, and then you associated them in the right spot, and then you found the ones that got sorted to the wrong spot and you associated them yourself, and now you have a beautiful tag set ready to go. It's a thing of beauty. Shed a tear. Your participants can select from anything in this tag set, and you know they want to use these specific relationships, because they submitted them to you. What next?

THE MATCHING

Okay. You have your tag set set up and it's accepting nominations. Your participants are filling it out right now. You go back to your collection. it's time to tell it how to match.

This is the "minimum number to match" pane, and this is the minimum numbers to make a successful match. You want 1 for Fandom, and 1 for Relationship, and that's it. People will show up to the machine as a viable match as long as they have submitted a fandom and relationship that matches someone else's offered fandom and relationship.

This is a minimum viable exchange. You're ready to go. As soon as your tag set is done (or immediately if you're not using a tag set), you're ready to go back and open your exchange to sign-ups.

Congratulations!

FURTHER TWEAKING

HOWEVER. There is more that you can do. For example, do you want to allow people to request or opt into NSFW? There's an easy way to do that! First thing is you go back to your tag set, and you scroll down to the "ratings" section that you've been ignoring.

You select G and E, and that way, if people are opting into explicit that means they're okay with NSFW, and if they only select G, that means they only want a non-explicit piece.

Then on the collection you switch the requests and offers sections to include a place to specify a rating.

You want them to definitely specify at least one, and if you maximum allowed is 2, people can opt into both and say "i'm good with whatever"!

Then you scroll down to the matching section, and you tweak that to make sure that people will match on Fandom, Relationship, and at least one Rating.

Bingo. You now have a toggle to turn NSFW on and off.

But a lot of people like to match by TYPE of gift too, specifying if they want art or fic or playlist or web weave etc. How do you do that? Ah, at this point you are master of all you survey, and you can make tag sets do absolutely anything you want. Remember we talked about using the character slot? You go back to the tag set and you scroll down to "characters".

Now we were matching on relationships, so the character box is unused. And it lets you put in your own tags. So what you do is you start to add in custom tags.

And then you go back to the Collection settings, and on the requests and the offers you go in to the "characters" section and you say "must select at least one, can select up to six".

And then, you guessed it— you go back to "minimum number to match" and you set that "characters" tab to 1 minimum, 6 maximum. Now people who specified that they wanted Art can be matchable to artists who Offered Art. You have unlimited power, the world is at your fingertips.

There's even more customization that you can do, too! There's "additional tags", which is entirely custom tags you add yourself, that can be anything from specifying if people want fluff or horror or hurt/comfort etc— with the recursive exchange we used it to specify the works people were recursing— I'm considering using it for holidays with the holiday exchange. You can let people opt in or out of major archive warnings by selecting "archive warnings" as a thing that's in the tag set and that you're matching for. Once you understand how the underpinnings of how the machine works, you can wrestle it into almost any shape you want.

So. Whew. That's how exchanges work, under the hood. When I say that this is significantly easier than hand matching the holiday exchange, I ask you to picture just how complicated hand matching gets. Go forth! Thrive! Set up exchanges if you want! The world is your oyster!

Feel free to message me if you have further questions.

[kuroshitsuji-wiki]

Kuroshitsuji Wiki... to migrate from Fandom Wiki!

Hello! A few weeks ago, I made a post regarding a recent issue with Fandom Wiki that has made many pages on the Kuroshitsuji Wiki unable to be edited and asked people to participate in a survey asking whether a wiki migration would be okay considering the circumstances.

And now, it's time to reveal the results!

(As the survey is now closed, all infos regarding Kuroshitsuji Wiki's issue with Fandom Wiki in particular and Fandom Wiki's problems in general can be found here.)

Thank you to everyone who shared my posts and took the time to participate! A total of 63 people participated in the main survey.

59 out of 63 voted "yes," 3 "neutral," and only one "no."

In the smaller-scale poll I conducted on tumblr directly, in which 22 people participated, the results were similar.

18 out of 22 voted "yes," 3 "neutral," and only one "no."

As such, I can announce with great joy that Kuroshitsuji Wiki will migrate from Fandom Wiki in 2025!

Results to the second question of the survey "Did you ever have any issues with Fandom?", your comments, and a preliminary "battle plan" for the migration can be found under the cut.

Second question results

14 said that they never had any issues with Fandom, 14 had minor issues with Fandom, 8 had major issues, 15 said they despised Fandom, and 12 reported they had no strong feelings about Fandom.

Of 63 participants, 29 were so kind to tell me what exactly their issues with Fandom were/are. (Out of them, 5 mentioned that they were wiki editors themselves or had, at least, a Fandom wiki account.)

Most common complaints:

The absurd amount of ads: This was mentioned by 18 people. They said that the ads are placed terribly and clutter the screen which makes navigating wikis more difficult - or even near-impossible. 3 people mentioned that they (even despite using adblockers!) often cannot access Fandom wikis because going on the website crashes their browers, pages freeze up, or all the ads make even short pages load very slowly.

Layout: 8 people complained that Fandom wikis were hard to navigate because of their layout, i.a. because of the sidebar, the ads, and formatting. The bad layout was also noted to decrease the readability of pages.

Mobile experience: 3 people specifically mentioned how awful it is to go to Fandom Wikis on their phones, i.a. because of the ads.

Other complaints:

Inability to edit pages because of the abuse filter/the offensive terms policy (Maurice's page was mentioned specifically)

Bad content moderation of some wikis

Fandom keeps logging them out

Website seems user-unfriendly in general

Using wikis for ad money and profit

Generally terrible functionality

AI usage

Lack of customisation of wikis makes everything the same

(One person simply wrote "gives me a headache" which sounds so like Violet, it's my favourite.)

Thank you all for your complaints! It was very refreshing reading them all because I could only nod along. I was particularly glad to read that people said that Fandom makes their browser crash, pages freeze up, and articles load slowly because I had/have the same issues. While Season 4 was running and I was writing the episode summaries, doing the image galleries, etc., my browser crashed all the time. Part of my plight is immortalised in article histories^^'

At the very least, Fandom automatically saves your progress or I might have killed someone. Still, having your page freeze up and your browser crash mid-edit is horrible, and I often had to restart my laptop afterwards too -.- (And I have a gaming laptop that was, at that time, just a year old!) I thought it was merely a problem with my laptop, so hearing you mention the same problem was very reassuring.

While long loading times for short pages were mentioned, loading times for long pages can be outright abysmal. There was a time no one from the admin team could really open up and edit Ciel's and Sebastian's pages (the two longest pages on the wiki). It was horrid.

I also like that the terrible mobile experience was highlighted a few times because, believe it or not, many decisions Fandom Wiki has made to their layout and such were meant to improve the mobile experience (often to the detriment of the desktop site). Wikis look so ugly and everything is extra "stripped-down" on mobile so that wikis would "run better and more smoothly on phones." Maybe we would know if this was actually true were it not for all the ads, hm?

Your comments

Thank you to the 15 people who left a comment! Most spoke out again in favour of a migration in their comment, saying that it would be for the best - one expressed their support despite having nothing against Fandom Wiki personally.

(Some of the comments were specifically for me which I didn't expect and so, so kind even. Thanks for wishing me luck and all your nice words. :'))

The only question that really came up was who would be the wiki's new host. I will answer this in the next section :)

(Preliminary) "battle plan" to move the wiki

Wiki's Next Host Site

One comment specifically suggested Miraheze as the next host, and another mentioned the migration history of the Twisted Wonderland Wiki (it moved first to Miraheze and then to wiki.gg).

While I am not opposed to the Kuro Wiki moving to Miraheze as I have nothing against that platform, I think it would be best for the Kuroshitsuji Wiki to move to wiki.gg.

My main reason for that is the fact that Miraheze cannot help migrating wikis with moving their images to their platform. An image dump can be given to Miraheze, but they cannot help gather all images. Fandom Wiki also prohibits the automated scraping of images.

The Kuroshitsuji Wiki currently has over 6k images.

So downloading and re-uploading them all manually is off the table. (I uploaded a great many images to the wiki but not all of them, and I'm just one person orz)

If you move a wiki to wiki.gg, however, the wiki.gg staff moves all images for you.

I moved another wiki of mine to wiki.gg (Ron Kamonohashi Wiki), and all its ~1,600 images were moved (I did not expect this at all, honestly; I was fully prepared (though dreading) to reupload everything. In that case though, I had uploaded the vast majority of images (really, like 98%) myself anyway, so I didn't have to download them first). Only 32 images "broke" in the move and had to be re-uploaded which was fine.

(Videos are not moved as they are only "linked" to wikis anyway. There are not many on the Kuro Wiki in the first place though, so embeding them with a template is quickly done, like I did on my other wiki (example). Videos are often too large to be uploaded, so they need to be embeded instead.)

Secondly, Miraheze is known for server outages which can cause data loss. The Twisted Wonderland Wiki was affected by such an outage once when it was still at Miraheze. (They did not leave the platform for that reason, but because Miraheze nearly closed in 2023. (This, thankfully, did not happen in the end; still, the news caused quite the panic.))

Further, wiki.gg possesses a better SEO than Miraheze. The moving of a wiki's content is the "easy" part of a wiki migration. The difficult part is for the new wiki to beat the Fandom Wiki in search results and visibility because Fandom will not delete a wiki after its community has migrated.

(To the person who wrote they wish I can "cleanly remove myself from Fandom Wiki," that, sadly, cannot happen.)

(Source)

(The image is a bit outdated because wiki.gg now hosts non-gaming related wikis too.)

As you can see from the pictured table, one of the pros for wiki.gg is "best mobile experience."

And I have to say, it really is fantastic, omg. When I moved my other wiki, I did not look at its mobile version while I prepared for the re-launch; I only accessed it on mobile afterwards, and the gasp I let out when I finally did, I tell you...

Let's take two pages (a character page and the main/home page) from the RKDD Wiki as examples. (Templates are the same as on the Kuro Wiki.) I logged out before I took the screenshots.

On Fandom Wiki's mobile version, these pages look like this:

Advertisement before the top navigation already; ads at the bottom

Weird auto-playing video ad at the top of the character page

The "gallery" tag that is used in infoboxes to "tab" the images is broken

Ads between all the sections (note: "Durchfall" means diarrhoea, btw...)

The scrollboxes don't work, so all references are rolled out in full at the bottom of the page (there are 300+ refs! have fun scrolling)

The note references don't work and give out an error message

The quote template has become very ugly and reduced (the source of the quote, though given, is omitted on mobile)

The notice spoiler template was stripped of its colours and formatting (note: all templates that are categorised as "notice" are actually invisible for non-logged in users by default on Fandom mobile; you have to categorise them as "design" or so for them to be visible at all)

The main page on mobile is not the main page on desktop, and only shows you trending articles and categories; you have to click on "view full main page" a bit farther below to see the actual main page

If you do, you find broken code, e.g. a broken slider and a broken character portal template

To compare, the same pages on wiki.gg's mobile version:

Advertisement at the top of the page and at the bottom

No auto-playing video ad

The "gallery" tag in the infoboxes work

No ads between the sections

The scrollboxes work and contain the references

The note references work

The notice templates look just like on desktop

If you have references popups enabled on your wiki, the popups also work on mobile! (on Fandom, clicking on the ref on mobile will send you to the bottom of the page, even if popups are enabled)

The main page looks just like the desktop version

No code is broken on the main page, e.g. sliders and character portal templates work just fine and (mostly) look as they should

I also added a screenshot of how the site navigation looks like because I think it looks neat??

While Miraheze has no ads whatsoever which is great, wiki.gg does have ads, but only very few. (And only if you're logged out.) They're definitely not as invasive as on Fandom Wiki. There is an ad at the top of a page and another at the bottom. On desktop, there is one on the side too. That's it.

Example page from wiki.gg:

The same page on Fandom:

... Yeah.

(I had to turn off my adblockers and malwarebites for the ads to reappear on Fandom. And then the page froze :D The browser I opened the wiki on didn't die (I use it less frequently, so less adblockers to turn off) - but another browser I have open did???)

Because wiki.gg has only existed since 2022, it does not have all the MediaWiki extensions like Miraheze does. The wiki.gg staff is working on this though. I'm particularly excited about polls and discourse forums, two features Fandom Wiki killed in the last years (forums were replaced by the undercooked Discussions, and polls are more annoying to add to pages (they are embeded Discussion polls) and only logged-in users can participate in them).

Wiki.gg would be the first choice. In the off-chance my migration request is denied, Miraheze would be the second choice.

Migration schedule

You have to send in a request if you want to open a wiki on wiki.gg. I plan to do that in early January. Because the new wiki needs to differ from the old one so that Google doesn't mark it as a duplicate, new content has to be created and old content edited. I will start with that before I send in my request. (For example, I plan to do the much needed and long overdue story arc page overhauls. I only re-did the Public School Arc page so far orz)

After the request is (hopefully) accepted, the onboarding phase begins. If a wiki is "onboarding," only those with a password can edit it; it's not open to the public. This gives editors the time and opportunity to fix up pages and code so that everything would be (more or less) in place when the wiki becomes public. Onboarding lasts a maximum of 4 weeks, but you can ask your wiki to become public before the deadline too.

So, the new Kuroshitsuji Wiki would launch either in late January or sometime in February - right in time for Season 5 in April. (And for when the manga returns from hiatus; whenever that will be.)

To summarise, the preliminary schedule is as follows:

late December to early January: work on pages for the new wiki

early January: send in wiki request

January-early (mid?) February: onboarding period

late January/early (mid?) February: re-launch! the new wiki becomes public

If anything greatly changes, I will let you know. As soon as I get the onboarding deadline date (if the wiki.gg request is accepted), I will be able to provide a better schedule.

----

I think that's it for now? I hope I haven't forgotten anything important. Thank you for reading all that! And merry Christmas and happy holidays!

If you have anything to add or want to ask a question, please feel free to do so.

[galax-dragon]

Coroika Fanfic Beta Reading!!

Hello, as an avid Coroika fanfic reader and writer, I have decided I would like to encourage (especially new) Coroika fanfic writers by helping them out! So I have decided that during the summer I will open up offers to beta read your Coroika fics!

More info under the cut because there will be A Lot lol

WILL OFFER/HELP WITH:

Grammar/spelling fixes, sentence structure/readability advice, PARAGRAPH BREAKS, help with plot/helping out of writer's block (if it's a multichapter and I am invested enough in the story idea). Will also try my best with characterization but I've never cared much about mischaracterization nor can I really tell when someone's OOC unless it's extreme. If you mainly need help with characterization I'm probably not the best beta reader out there for that.

WILL READ:

Any characters

Most ships, I am very open-minded

OC x Canon

Any good-faith headcanons

Oneshots

Any AUs

Mild to moderate gore/violence

Any level of angst

Character death, both minor and major

G, T, and M rating on Ao3

MAYBE?

Extreme gore/violence

X reader/reader insert fics

Mild/implied sexual content (depends on its role in the story)

Multichapter, depends on length (I will only be doing this for a set amount of time, more details below)

E rating on Ao3 (depends on reason, if it's smut then no)

WILL NOT READ:

Explicit smut/NSFW

Pedophilia/incest ships, even if technically SFW

Rape/SA, even if mild/implied

Explicit/on purpose character/ship bashing, ESPECIALLY if it's one I love (more details below)

FAVORITE THINGS:

Characters:

Goggles

Rider

Army

Aloha

Mask

Skull

Aviators

Shadow Goggles/shadows in general

Ships:

Goraiglochi or any ships within it (gorai, glochi/glovechi, gloverai, gochi, raichi, gloggles, any trios too)

Aloami

Aviskull

Queerplatonic ships!!

PLATONIC SHIPS (aka just. friendships)

Tropes:

Domestic Fluff, especially with ships living together <333

On the other side of the spectrum, heavy heavy angst

Whump (physical angst/pain basically. don't see ENOUGH of that with coroika)

Character death (yes I am a psychopath /j)

Fantasy/Supernatural (not the show) AUs

Extremely dark AUs 😈 (as long as they don't involve any blacklisted topics)

Any AUs in general, I eat that shit UP

Oddly Specific:

AUs where Goggles and/or Team Blue is evil (oddly specific but i NEED MORE)

Fics where Rider has PTSD from the Metro and Goggles (or someone else) comforts him

if you have an au of the magnus archives i would PAY to see that (not really but i love tma so much)

I will be offering beta reading until either July 28th or August 11th, I still need to decide for sure. Will have 4 slots per week open for now, multichapter fics that last for a week will have a slot full the next week as well (I hope that makes sense)

If you are interested, you can either DM me here on Tumblr or send me a friend request on Discord, my username is galaxdragon.! (With the period) I would prefer Discord, though if you send a friend request let me know so I don't assume it's random and deny it. If you DM me on Tumblr, replies will be much slower than on Discord since I have limited time to use it on my phone.

Feel free to share this around, though like I said I do have limited slots. Time and energy is also limited considering I am working on my own fics. Will always try to make time for to beta read though!! Excited to see what you guys have to offer!!

[adelineiserman]

Got my first hate bot comment today!

A reminder that this is a thing that's happening. If there's nothing specific to your story, it's a guest comment, and it reads similar to this, it's probably a bot. Don't let it discourage you. Turn off guest comments or guest readability if you need to. I personally use comment moderation but allow guests to read and comment.

Lastly, if you get one of these, don't delete your fics. You wrote them, you were brave enough to share them, and people want to read them.

[separatist-apologist]

Is it bad if I say I might not read the next books. Even if it is Elucien, and they might be my only exception. Like yesterday I was reading an Azris fic and, I just realized how much better those two characters would be together and knowing SJM would never do it I became so over canon.

And then I started thinking about all SJM’s mishaps and I was like damnn I don’t know if I even care to read the next books.  I don’t want to spoil the memory of fanon ACOTAR by reading it.

I know she is trying as a writer but I am just getting exhausted with her plot points and it’s also another reason why I choose not to read CC and no one will ever make me do it.

When I was reading the pregnancy plot I remember rolling my eyes and being like SJM don’t do it and she did it.

I am done with SJM I think. Like I said, except the elucien book is really good, and I hear about it every where like the way MAF was, I won’t bother and that might be a stretch. And people might flake me for this but honestly I don’t care it’s a personal preference thing. If you still like the books that’s fine.

Oof

I agree with you anon. I want to see the conclusion of this series but I think for me, I would not have liked these books if I'd read them after something different. I think a lot of it is like, an introduction to these sort of stories and how fun and easy it is to read. I didn't really enjoy TOG and I don't really understand why everyone hypes it up as her best story- it's not even readable until book 3, regardless of WHEN she started writing it. And CC is overly bloated and just filled with all her worst qualities as a writer. I was moderately enjoying the mystery of book 1 CC until what, 600 pages in, the whole thing is solved with "Bryce knew all along and already saved the boy" like okay. Thanks for wasting my time.

As far as ACOTAR, I loved the first three books and I was really excited for ACOSF because I enjoyed Nesta a lot. She's so different from other heroines and then we got...all...that. It felt like everyone was punishing Nesta for not being Feyre- including SJM. The baby plot also genuinely bothers me so much because Rhys harps on and on about telling Feyre the truth and things being her choice until its time to REALLY put that into practice, and suddenly he's all the things he claims to hate. Like when he says that sometimes you can love someone too much, as a criticism of Tamlin? HELLO?

I know she needed to take Feyre out of the plot to push Nesta forward but just being pregnant should have been enough. The book could have focused more time on Feyre and Nesta and Elain hashing their shit out than all the back and forth with Cassian and Eris and how Eris was hurting Cassian's feelings for being...Eris. I don't know this for sure, but I'd bet Eris could more talking/page time than Elain did in NESTAS book, where her whole arc across the main trilogy is protecting Elain.

I think SJM is an entertaining writer- I'm not going to sit here and pretend she's the worst thing to happen to literature when those ladies who wrote the Zodiac Academy are right there, but she's inconsistent and leaves the rest of us to kind of piece it all together. Like, you can find a million theories we treat as canon on why Rhys/Feyre did this why Nesta said that, who was doing the domestic chores in the Archeron house or what Azriels deal with Mor is. And that's just the interpersonal character drama. I've read fics that flesh out her magic system and world so well and it'll remind me that like, oh shit she didn't tell us ANY of this.

I'm still going to read it- sunken cost fallacy. I've spent so much time here, and I love it even if I'm just whatever about the author. I don't think I could be convinced to pick up a new series of hers based on name recognition alone, though.

[londonspirit]

NYCC Rant

I am soo pissed on behalf of our beautiful cast!

I mean, they KNEW they couldn't talk about their amazing show (and mind you, I TOTALLY support the strike, no questions asked!) but whoever thought playing a stupid game for the WHOLE FUCKING HOUR needs to be given a VERY stern talking to!!!

You have six amazing actors on that stage, all with a shitload of life under their belts (sorry, Con *cackles*) - you could've let them talk about ANYTHING, could've asked about basically EVERYTHING, and they could've still adhered to the strike rules and made it a fun panel!!! (Somehow this now feels like the con itself didn't trust that they would actually do this which makes me even more mad!!! They've been on the lines, they KNOW what can and can't go, no matter how badly they WANT to talk about OFMD! GEEZ!)

But you go and have them play a stupid game, where two of them barely understood a thing (and you didn't do jack shit about it), the questions were silly and boring (which Rhys actually pointed about because that man was (rightfully) ANNOYED AS FUCK!) and for those of us at home some answers weren't even readable because the camera person didn't know where to go first.

They all TRIED so hard to play along but it was just sooo embarrassing to watch, and I feel so soo sorry for everyone, the amazing cast on stage and the people in the audience. (Even worse for poor Matt to have his first convention be like THIS!) (Yes, i am VERY mad at the wealthy studio assholes who are not able to see that paying their artists a living wage would benefit EVERYONE *grrrrrr*)

There could've been sooo many other ways to run this panel and sadly they really fucked it up. (Right now watching DT who's just rambling along about pizza and bagels, audio books, his dogs and all the NOT SAG things he'd done, (while adhering to the rules!) which is adorable but also a very good example as to how to do SO MUCH BETTER!!! (but then again, that moderator was PREPARED!)

So yeah, that was a terrible disaster and an utter train wreck, and I can only hope every other con after this (while the strike's still ongoing) does better - for the sake of the cast AND the audience!!! NOBODY deserves this!!! /rant end

Please understand I am NOT mad at ANYONE striking - they are NOT at fault! It's the fucking greedy studio bosses who think they can get away with their sleazy shit!!! But I am sad that the convention people weren't able to come up with something less humiliating for a cast that deserve the fucking WORLD!!!

[candyrain-collective]

System City - an 18+ DID/OSDD Discord Server

Hi guys, it's me again! I'm opening up an existing syscord that I currently moderate, so we can get some new members! The invite link will be up for about two weeks. If you're interested in a recovery-focused space with an emphasis on introspective discussion and advice about living with DID/OSDD, then come check us out!

discord.com/invite/MaDzSJrR

This server is endo-indifferent. This is a traumagenic-centered space, so endogenics may not find what they are looking for here, but we do not have an explicit policy or ethos surrounding the existence of endos. Similarly, this server is syscourse-indifferent. If you come in here bearing strong opinions on syscourse, we ask that you please limit your discussion of it.

We offer:

Pluralkit, Octocon, and Tupperbox

A simple, readable layout

Experienced moderators

Advice channels

DID/OSDD Resources and Literature

Discussion of DID/OSDD Literature

lmk if you have any questions!

[shards-of-silver]

Thrawn RarePairs Challenge 2024: Complete List of Rules

It's official! The Ao3 collection for this challenge has been created. To submit works to it, simply enter "Thrawn RarePairs 2024" into the "Post to Collections/Challenge box on Ao3. Talk to me if you run into problems.

This collection is moderated, so your work will not appear right away. It will be reviewed for compliance with challenge rules first. Full list of rules is below the cut.

1. Participants can create fanworks for any Thrawn Fandom ship that has less than 100 works on Ao3 as of April 2, 2024.

2. Said fanwork must be for a Thrawn fandom or adjoining fandom (like Rebels or Ahsoka). Includes both Legends and Canon. Thrawn himself does not have to be part of the ship.

3. Any (fic) word count is acceptable! All mediums of art welcome! Threesomes and friendships are allowed too.

4. No plagiarism from another fanwork, no AI-generated work, and no remixing another person's work ("fanfic of a fanfic") WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE ORIGINAL CREATOR. If anyone has reason to believe an entry in this collection has violated this rule, they should reach out to PTV (the collection moderator) immediately so that appropriate action may be taken.

5. No work that was published (in part or whole) before April 2, 2024 will be accepted. Honored as PTV would be if this challenge inspired you to update a WIP, the purpose of the challenge is to generate new works.

5a. The first chapter of a work (if work is a multichap) must have been posted within the challenge's monthlong window. However, if someone decides to update their fic after the May 1, 2024 deadline has passed, they will NOT face a penalty of any kind.

6. Anonymous, orphan, and collaborative works are all allowed.

7. Appropriate rating, warning, character, etc. tags are REQUIRED for acceptance into the collection. Message PTV if you are unsure how to tag your work appropriately. The moderator respects people who choose not to rate or post warnings on their work, but for this challenge, it is necessary to use correct tagging.

7a. Reasonable people can disagree on the difference between one rating and the next (the line between M and E, for example). As long as you made a good faith effort to tag appropriately, your work will be accepted into the collection.

8. Works will not be denied solely based on poor grammar, but excessive lack of proofreading/poor formatting/inhibited readability may lead the moderator to believe your entry is a troll. Troll works/hate works are not allowed in the collection.

8a. While all languages are allowed, PTV is only fluent in English. This is relevant for rule #9's purposes.

9. All works will be personally reviewed by PTV before they are accepted into the collection. You will receive a kudos and a comment from PTV upon your work's acceptance into the collection. If your work does not meet challenge rules, you will receive a message explaining why.

9a. The review process may take a couple days. PTV DOES have a full time job and family obligations IRL. If you think your work has been skipped due to an oversight on PTV's part, you may POLITELY message her to inquire. Excessive harassment of the moderator is grounds for denial of entry into the collection.

9b. Non-English works will likely be fed through Google Translate. PTV will take translator flaws into account with regards to rule #8.

10. If you have any questions that were not answered on this page, you can send an ask on Tumblr. It will be answered as soon as possible.

I'm excited for the challenge to begin! Expect to see a work or two from me as well! 😉

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia! I was curious, as I understand, this story was written long time ago? Did you edit it with almost 10 years of practice on writing since 2014 now? And more in general, do you feel like writing is easier or not withos much practice (I read about smut, that it is harder now, but in general - worldbuilding, character creation and so on) ?

Hi hi anon!

Yeah the story was first drafted in 2014, and has gone through big edits since then (the latest being 2017, though I did some cursory stuff this year as well to just double check that it's not terrible).

Tbh, prior to 2014 I was writing like... very serious award winning short stories with tragic endings and winning awards for them, so I'm moderately confident the story is readable. I've been writing novels (for fun mostly) since 1995. And I have a university education in writing that started in 1999.

My fanfiction/serial style is very different to my 'I'm writing a book / I'm writing a short story' style.

I think it will feel different to my serials because I wrote it like a book, there's less sprawling character exploration, and the pacing is much, much tighter. There's a lot more focus on plot, and folks used to my serials might feel like the story ends really quickly! Because it's like much shorter (100k) than my serials.

If anything, I think these are the things to watch out for in Tradewinds:

100k novel means much tighter pacing and prose, and often very little time for too much character reflection.

Possibly not as much character exploration as people are used to from me (though there's still some!)

More plotting

Less smut, and the smut is also more 'vanilla' than what I normally write, because at the time I was a lot more wary about putting BDSM into the market. There are power dynamics though (i.e. a vibe where one character 'feels' more submissive to the other)

Robust scene-setting (i.e. description, place, anchoring)

Lively dialogue

I actually think I was probably a better literary writer back in the 00s but it wasn't much fun for me. I quit writing for a while and then picked it back up again to write fanfiction, which was easier and more relaxed for me. (And still is! The Ice Plague is an exception to that because it had more robust plotting and was structure more...formally.)

I honestly think writing gets easier or harder depending on the project and writing style involved.

Some writing gets easier with time, some doesn't. Sometimes that will flip or switch. Sometimes one thing is easy for years and then becomes harder with certain stories.

It was Gene Wolfe who said:

"You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing."

And yeah, I tend to believe for the most part that's true with how hard or easy something is. How ambitious a project is, its genre, its length, its complexity can all play into that.

I pick easier projects as my main projects right now, but I have hard projects coming up too!

I would say overall writing does become "easier" in the sense that foundational skills become second nature (I know how to build a character and their dialogue now without thinking about it, and while there's always more to learn, I can now start in a place of just knowing how to do that instead of knowing I need to learn how to do that), but that the stories themselves will still pose unique challenges to a writer.

Er so TL;DR yes writing for me is easier but I'm choosing easier things to write, and sometimes it's still very hard!!!

[accessibleaesthetics]

Hello! First, I'd like to thank you for this blog, it's really helpful and informative!

Second, I have some questions about image descriptions and plain text:

1.) If an image has an alt text, should I copy and paste it in a post when reblogging or is it accessible as is? What about if there are several images with alt text in a post separated by text? I'm guessing if I post an image myself it's best to have both alt text and a description, but I've seen you do just alt text, so is it enough?

2.) What if another user posted some images and the text under them is generally describing the images but is not marked as image description. Should I write an image description in my post when reblogging? Just say that the images are of what the OP talks about?

3.) If there is a post that is made of multiple additions and reblogs and several undescribed images. Is it accessible to just describe them in order of appearance in my reblog? Or is it confusing and I should just tag it as undescribed instead?

4.) Is plain text needed when any kind of text formatting is applied or are there exceptions? And again, if only some posts in a chain need plain text, is it accessible to just list them all in a reblog or is it confusing?

5.) this one is more minor, but is it ok if my avatar and banner are only described in the pinned post or should I put them in my bio as well?

If you answer this or leave some links to the answers, thank you greatly for your time!

You're so welcome!

1.) This one is tricky. As you've noticed, I've decided to consider images with alt text as accessible enough to be on this blog becasue they come with a built-in expandable written ID, and even do it myself when it's short enough. However, some people still very much prefer image descriptions for various reasons. You can also use them together by putting a short description in the alt text that ends by directing people to a longer description (when needed) in the body of the post.

2.) This is what I like to refer to as "functionally described." Once in a while I will reblog something without an image description and tag it #functionally described as an indicator to people that the text in the post fully described the image or images in it.

3.) I usually described them in order, yes.

4.) This one is also tricky. Some will say yes, but there are certain cases, such as headings, where I've yet to encounter someone who benefits from making a smaller plain text version of the large text. I hope some day to meet one, because in theory they exist. I am also a bit more lax with things like bold or italics in moderation, because the research suggesting that can hamper readability for those with dyslexia is really more for huge chunks for text. But again, doesn't necessarily hurt!

5.) That one is up to you! I do it in my bio to make it as easy to get to as possible, but I think a pinned posts is good too. Honestly, I wish they'd let us add alt text to it, it would be a good use for it.