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when the split fiction ladies aren't sapphic so you have to resort to petty sarcasm with ur friends to survive

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they've taken over my brain ur honor

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"i asked chat gpt if--" don't bother finishing this sentence, mon ami. whatever you are going to say means nothing.* the other day i heard a professional journalist start an interview question this way to a person i admire very much, and i know it's just part of the language now and there's no real point in continuing to chafe against it, but the skin-crawling secondhand embarrassment i felt almost drove me out of the auditorium

*exception if it is VERY funny. it can't be just a little funny because it's always a little funny in a mostly depressing way, it has to be either a really left-field spectacular joke or a boggling self-own like that guy who sexually harrassed his AI "employee"

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https://ko-fi.com/emilygwen

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me: i want to enjoy more gl series. i’m just over the whole nice-girls-in-love schtick, y’know. i need some complexity, some tension! maybe even some bickering? perhaps the tiiiniest of raised stakes?

universe: i gave freen a gun.

me: you really do love me this year, don’t you?

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i walk a fine line between “i’m asexual and i hate how much the world revolves around sex” and “sex is way too stigmatized and people should be able to be more open about it if they want to”

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:C

I’m so fucking sick of AI

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Next time you're around when the mail gets delivered, ask your delivery person if they're understaffed or not.

But don't hold them up too much, they have a lot of work to do.

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Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton behind the scenes of The Magic School Bus

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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

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sometimes someone will casually mention using chatgpt or some other generative ai thing and I can actually feel the little

above my head

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FOR PARENTS OF YOUNG KIDS IN THE US!

Someone over on bluesky posted this and I figured I'd better repost it here. It's the pre-RFK 2025 vaccination schedule for babies and young children, ya know, just in case it mysteriously disappears. Save this and give it to your child's pediatrician; tell them this is the schedule you want your child on.

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one of the best academic paper titles

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As a former librarian I'm actually required to remind you that many libraries that subscribe to Libby are opted into a program that lets you subscribe and access magazines for free with no wait

And that this is actually a really fun, low cost way to not only access news and larger cultural magazines, but also to get free patterns for many different crafts that you can screenshot if need be and that lower the financial barriers to entry for trying new things

From my experience working in both academic and public libraries, many libraries are use it or lose it funding-- I have to say this because a lot of patrons feel guilty for how much they use the library and how often they're using it funny enough, but the worst thing you can do for libraries is not try out new features and not use what's already given to you as much as possible.

The numbers that come as a result of your patronage are how most libraries justify their continued existence in times of financial hardship, which sucks but, go check out some magazines on Libby!

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People have written a lot of touchy-feely pieces on this subject but I thought I’d get right to the heart of the matter

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A useful thing to know about AO3 tags is that they're wrangled by humans. A human being will read your tag, understand what it means*, and then connect that tag in the backend system to other tags that mean the same thing (if there are any)

that's why, for example, the tags

not beta read

no beta

no beta we die like men

no beta we die like mne

no beta we die like [insert character who dies in canon]

unbetad

unbeta'd

unbeta-d

un-beta'd

and a million more versions are all searchable and filterable if you just tag one of them. A Tag Wrangler (the job title of a human volunteer who manages AO3 tags) has made sure that AO3 understands that those are all synonyms, so AO3 treats them that way.

When you're tagging your fic, or searching for a fic, or filtering a tag to find or remove works from the list you do not have to use every possible version of a tag. You just need to pick one - unless using more is a stylistic choice you're making, in which case have at it.

*or research what it means - which is why wranglers really appreciate it if you put (OC) behind the name of your original characters so that they don't have to scour every source they can find to see if it's a named background character in canon.