#places like ao3 where the algorithm is just. 'most recent fics with this tag' is so much simpler

[javis-burner-phone]

To Writers in the Pedro Pascal Fandom:

This fandom went full Chernobyl this summer. I need a hazmat suit to get through these tags. I recently saw an anon reach out to a fic writer here.

The anon is right that there's a problem in the fandom space, but they're misplacing blame. I'm writing this post for the non-hateful writers that have tried to feel a part of the community, but ended up feeling left out. I'm posting this on a burner account for obvious reasons that you'll see below:

The hateful posts about "big writers" have absolutely disgusted me, but I can relate to the frustration that many fic writers are expressing. We see very fun and active areas of the fandom where writers are communal, hyping each other up, reblogging fics, but only within certain friend groups. Most of us writers don't have that. Instead this fandom sometimes feels like a desolate wasteland for many of us.

Here's where us writers need to place the blame:

Since the introduction of algorithms, there has been a cyclical effect: popular Tumblr posts are boosted due to everyone's default feed settings and posts from new, lesser known blogs are pushed down.

Over years, this has impacted fandom spaces in a sort of feedback loop. We're currently seeing the late stages of this. This effect pushes most fandom activity towards the already popular blogs by default. (Yes, Tumblr has always shown popular posts first, but algorithms, and the feedback loops they create, have made the effect stronger over the years.)

Is that the "big writers" faults? No. Are friend groups to blame? No. In fact, we should have more friend groups in this fandom. That's how fandoms used to be. There were dozens of overlapping friend groups that would have long reblog chains and mainly interact with each other. New people could find other new people pretty easily and make their own groups.

Now new people/smaller blogs are far less exposed to other new people/smaller blogs by default. *That* is the problem.

Eventually, I found my people. I feel a part of the community and you can too.

You just need to make 3 virgin sacrifices and find the lochness monster in order to do so. What I mean is, it takes a lot more effort than it used to. Be ready for that:

1. Sort by "Latest posts" when searching fandom hashtags. Imagine if Ao3 used an algorithm to show popular fics first instead of sorting by most recent fics. New writers would be screwed, right? That's what Tumblr does. Support posts that resonate with you, but have low engagement. Leave likes, comments, reblogs! Guess what happens when someone that feels isolated in this fandom gets a bunch of notes from you? They're gonna check out your blog. They may want to connect!

2. DM people. Is there a lesser known blogger whose posts you like? Ask to be mutuals! Start a conversation! If you can't be social it's gonna be near impossible to build community. Sorry if you have anxiety, but that's the truth. Warning: half the convos will fizzle out. Move on to the next person as soon as you sense this.

3. Don't try to connect with bigger blogs for friendship. I've tried and as long as you gush over them, they respond, but the interaction ends there. DMing them works, but the convos almost always feel one sided and fizzle out. I'm mutuals with some bigger bloggers, but I had to add their usernames to my filtered content list in account settings. This means they can see my stuff, but I can't see theirs. Seeing them have fun in their friend group just reminds me of my failed attempts to connect. Maybe filtering them isn't fair, but that's how I deal with my negative emotions. No, they are not rude for not befriending me. I don't feel entitled to friendship.

(edit: I got a weird anon about this part. It's more difficult to befriend people who already have close-knit connections here. It's not impossible, but I've had much better luck with fellow isolated fandom members. The secret ingredient is our shared desperation lol. Befriend whoever you want ❤️)

4. Join/start a small PPCU discord server. The big servers will just make you feel more isolated, but the intimate ones are way more communal and it's easier to make stronger connections there than on Tumblr. 

These tips are for people that actually want to find solutions instead of spreading hate and complaining.

I'm saying this as someone that averages 50 notes on most of my fics after a year in this fandom(edit: saw this poll and thought I'd clarify. I get 50 notes now, but for 8ish months I got 5 on a lucky day. This post is for people who still feel isolated because I know how it feels.) It takes way more effort than in the early 2010s to feel a part of a fandom, not because of cliques, but because of the feedback loops the algorithm creates. 

I understand the frustration, but I'm not going to spread vitriol just because the fandom ecosystem went to shit. 

[londonfoginacup]

A New Larrie’s Guide to Tumblr

A probably incomprehensible, certainly incomplete list of what you need to know; whether you’re coming from a different platform or discovering Larry for the first time. 

My credentials

Hello! I’m Emmu. I’ve had tumblr since… 2008? Maybe 2009. I moved over from deviantArt and used Tumblr as a personal art blog for many years. I joined the One Direction fandom in 2014, so my 1D blog has 8+ years at this point. That being said, I will get on my soapbox a bit during this. Please excuse me, I’m quite passionate about cultivating a happy and healthy fandom.

What makes Tumblr different

The biggest thing that makes Tumblr, as a site, different from Twitter or Instagram is the rejection of algorithms. The “following” tab on your dashboard is in chronological order (and if it isn’t, you can – and should – change that), and the “for you” tab is both a recent feature and rarely used. Tumblr has very little algorithm, and the algorithm they have isn’t very good. It means that you’ll get the most god awful ads you’ve ever seen on this site, because they don’t utilize your data well. And that’s to your advantage.

Tumblr is a great place because you can curate what you see more than other social media. The people that you choose to follow are the only people that you see on your dash (unless you choose to follow tags, which I guess is an option? @lululawrence says “it is and it used to not do anything unless you went to the search page and then it would like autofill your followed tags options, but NOW they take those followed tags and plop them on your dash... SOMETIMES. usually only on mobile. but if there's only one new post in the tag, it shows you that post OVER. AND OVER. AND OVER AGAIN. IT'S SUPER ANNOYING ACTUALLY. SO I STOPPED FOLLOWING TAGS. lol anyway”).

So, the site is in chronological order. This is its biggest selling point.

There is also the opportunity for long posts. Masterposts. Things that are searchable without having to read through pages of screenshots or condensed twitter threads. You can write a whole lot more without worrying about character limit. People publish whole fics on here (I suggest ao3 for that, but tumblr is technically an option!).

Another important thing to know about tumblr is that the archives on tumblr run deep. There are newer larries here, and a lot of them, but you can also find older larries. People whose 1D blogs go back to 2010 or 2011. You can dive into the archives and read firsthand accounts of what was happening with One Direction or larry at that very time. Doing a bit of research means you find cute fetus pictures of the boys, but also you’re able to figure out for yourself whether something actually happened. Rumors always seem to spread quite easily and fandom memory always seems impossibly short, but here on tumblr you’re able to find out for yourself. That means the next time you hear about how xyz thing happened a long time ago, check out some of those archives and see what you can find.

Also, my personal favorite part of tumblr is that old posts are just as valid as new posts. Find a masterpost about RBB and SBB from 2015? Go ahead and reblog that; bring it back to the circulating dash. People will love that. Find a fanartist that you really like? Search through their tags, reblog anything you want. It’s not considered stalking or weird in any way. We love bringing back old posts here. Tumblr is a website where you’re not meant to just talk about the present. 

The cultural difference between Tumblr and Twitter

Speaking of the ways that tumblr and twitter are different, let’s talk for a moment about the 1D fandom in particular.

I’ve held this theory for a while that the twitter (and instagram) algorithm is fracturing the fandom. Because twitter is so dependent on the algorithm, people are more likely to split apart and join smaller and smaller communities based on smaller, more specific opinions. Tumblr, being a place where you don’t just get a post on your dash because someone else liked it, doesn’t have those smaller cliques. There are larries, and there are antis.

(if you get really in the weeds, there are also larry shippers [who don’t believe they’re together but like to read it in fic], and houis [who think they were together but broke up], but I just don’t hear about them as much).

While I do occasionally hear about blouies on my dash, for the most part this is a culture that exists primarily on other sites. 

On another note, because tumblr doesn’t have that handy algorithm, we have to work to make it a more active space. Likes don’t do anything here for anyone other than you, and it doesn’t really change anything about what you’ll see on your dash. Think of them more like the bookmark setting on twitter or instagram. Reblogs are necessary to get anything spread. Anything that you enjoy, or that looks interesting for any reason? Reblog it! That’s the only way other people will see it! And leave a happy comment in the tags if you’ve got one (more on that later). 

And, while lurkers do exist in this fandom (and we love them), it’s important to get an icon and blog header that make you look like a real person. People on tumblr have long been in the habit of blocking shady blogs, mostly because of a bot problem, so if you want to lurk, you have to look like a lurker. Maybe reblog a post or two to establish yourself, and make sure you don’t accidentally look like an icon-less bot posing as a sugar daddy. 

How to set up your account

Okay, so you’ve got a tumblr. Let’s take a minute to fix up the settings so that you’re not getting, well, the worst version of the site. 

My advice is to start by going into your dashboard preferences and:

Turn off the best stuff first (it’ll just show you things you’ve already seen)

Turn off “include stuff in your orbit” (you’ll see terrible posts that are mostly NOT in your orbit)

Turn off “Included based on your likes” (again, you’ll see posts you hate)

Turn off “shorten long posts”. It’s a ridiculous setting that, like many things on tumblr, had potential but was rolled out in an incredibly unhelpful and user unfriendly way.

Once you’ve got that squared away, go into filtering and block any tags and content you don’t like, as that is always proper fandom etiquette. Not seeing things you don’t like is your responsibility, not the responsibility of the person posting them. I personally suggest adding the topics you don’t want to see to both the content list and the filtered tags list, as that gives a much better likelihood of posts that are particularly unsavory for you getting caught by the filters. Please also note this might need to be done on both desktop and the app separately as, depending on where tumblr is at the moment, these filters do not always carry over from one application to the other.

Now scroll down to tumblr labs. These are their experimental things. Some are good! Some are very bad. They do change, though, so this might get out of date pretty fast.

Personally, I enabled fast queue

And disabled everything else

ALSO, an important note, if you are using the apple app, you need to go in and turn off the adult content filter. No idea offhand where that is, but it means posts that include tags like “mine” and “girl” are blocked. It’s ridiculous. 

Who to follow and how to find them

So, you’ve got a new tumblr and need people to follow. This makes sense! To really fill up your dash, I’d suggest the following

Find one person you like. There’s a good chance you know at least someone from twitter who also has a tumblr, so you can start there. If you’re not from twitter, or are looking to start fresh, you can dive into the search function (I’ve never tried finding someone this way myself, but searching larry stylinson or something similar would probably get you started)

Find the people they reblog from and check out each of their blogs! Follow people that make you happy

Follow some update accounts! Thinking of some off the top of my head, there’s @HLUpdate, @Stylesnews, @dailytomlinson, @HLDailyUpdate, or @neilswaterbottles (there’s definitely more though). 

Follow some fanart or fic rec accounts! 

I’d always suggest @1d-fanart or @hlcreators for art. 

For fic, you could check out @hlficlibrary, @ficsyoumayhavemissed, or @thelarriefics. 

Or, recurring fic fests! @onedirectionbigbang or @wordplayfics, which happen every year.

And if you end up not enjoying someone you’ve followed? Unfollow them! It’ll make you happier.

How to interact with posts

Tumblr is all about tags. Do you have a comment or thought? Reblog a post and say your thought in the tags. That way anyone you follow will see it, and the person who made the post will see it. This way a post doesn’t end up with a lot of cluttery additions that don’t mean a lot to the average person reblogging it, but if you browse the tags of posts you’ll find lots of interesting things. Tags can be used to keep track of things, too, of course — some people tag all pictures with who’s in them, or tag art or fic with tags that mean they can find them again. Tags are versatile! But reblog, don’t just like, and tag! The more you interact, the happier content creators are!

What not to do

Don’t repost. If you see something you like on tumblr, reblog it. Even if it’s a really old piece of fanart (like circa 2011). Reblog that old post! Reposting means people don’t get credit, and it doesn’t link back to them. That’s not cool, and in the long term makes fandom less happy.

How to cultivate a happy and healthy fandom

Send happy anons! Ask how people are doing, do question memes, say how much you loved fic/art/edits, etc.

Reblog art. Reblog fic. Reblog what makes you laugh. The more you reblog, the more other people see, the more the fandom moves! Content creators just want their things seen; every time you reblog, their phone gets that little notification and you’ve given someone a bit of happiness.

Unfollow people who annoy you. Follow people who make you happy!

If someone has a take about 1D that you don’t agree with, don’t tell them or send them argumentative anons. Find people who will agree with you, and complain to them privately. Or make your own post, not shading anyone, just presenting your own opinion and theories!

Remember that everyone is a real person. Cut them some slack when you find them being annoying. But also, unfollow. Curate your dash.

[kai-ni]

This is gonna be a hot ass take, but don't post art to Ao3. It's not what Ao3 is for, and it's scummy to writers who put their work out there.

And I'm not talking about fics with artwork embedded, that's fine. I'm not even talking about comics, because those involve writing and if they're ongoing I can see why they could work there. I'm talking about people that make a 'work' on Ao3 that's just an embedded image (or a collection of embedded fanart) and nothing else, 0 word count.

Ao3 is the ONLY platform FOR writers. You physically can't post longfic on twitter (I mean maybe in a bazillion tweets, but really?) buttt you can post art on twitter all you want. You can post writing on other sites like tumblr, etc (deviantart? does anyone use it anymore? you shouldn't. anyway) but that's not really what people are LOOKING for on those platforms, and writers will ALWAYS be overshadowed by artists on those platforms because art is easier to consume faster, and anyone scrolling the tags there can scroll past art, appreciate it, like/reblog it in a second rather than taking the commitment to read something (that may take hours to consume) and THEN coming back to like/reblog it/otherwise interact with it.

That's kinda just the nature of writing vs art, and it is what it is.

But people come to Ao3 SPECIFICALLY for writing. It's the ONE platform (I mean barring older stuff like ff.net that's pretty much defunct) where people go specifically looking for writing to consume.

'Okay I get it Kai, but one person putting art on Ao3 doesn't hurt anyone or take away from the writers on there, they're all... there.'

Alas, it does.

In a much smaller fandom I wrote in, one of my more successful fics was on the first page of search results for that fandom when sorted by hits (which is the most popular way to sort 'em and really the only way older fics are found), up until a popular fan artist posted a work on Ao3 that was just a collection of embedded fanart pieces (that they'd already posted on twitter and had been seen there and were very popular) and that very quickly knocked my work off the first page of hits. So, my work was seen less because that artist just decided to repost to a platform primarily for writers. Yea, you're gonna bet that upset me.

'Kai you're just jealous their art was better than your writing'

'Kay not gonna deny it probably was. But their art had already been seen/was really popular on another platform that I, as a writer, didn't even have access to. Doesn't feel great for them to come into the writer's space and also then overshadow. Because again, art is easier to consume. it's always gonna be, that's the POINT of having a site like Ao3 where writers can shine. Fine fine, call me cranky for being bumped, but I wouldn't have cared at all if it were by another fic.

'You can sort out works with 0 words you know'

Yea, sure. Does everyone just visiting Ao3 know how to do that? And again, that's not the default. If you just click on the fandom without doing anything, it doesn't.

Now imagine you're not on the first page, and still had a work in that fandom and your work was on page 10 or whatever for that fandom (again it was a small one). You're now on page 11. Very few people have the patience to search that far back, and now you aren't been seen at all because you got bumped by a popular artist. This isn't something that happens on twitter or other platforms - everyone's bound by the silly algorithm / time on twitter, and time on tumblr. it's a LEVEL playing field. it isn't really on Ao3. Yes, there's sort by 'most recent' and that's all fair, but by hits, kudos etc isn't.

So yes, when those sort functions are taken into consideration, artists posting on Ao3 really do hurt writers, and take space away from them, make smaller writers less seen, etc. It sucks.

There's plenty of other places to post your art. I know, there's fewer places to post NSFW works now and get feedback on them (unfortunately) but Ao3 doesn't even host the images anyway... you have to upload them somewhere else! there are other options. Don't take space from writers because sites like tumblr aren't good for NSFW anymore.

Again this is gonna be a super hot take, but that's how I feel and I lose respect for artists real quick when they do this. No shade, I'm not trying to call anyone out, this isn't specifically directed at anyone, just something that I've seen repeatedly and has been milling around in my head for years now. Disagree if you like, but I'm not looking to get into fights in the rbs so.

[strbymacaroon]

Het there, what made people notice your stories? cuz whenever i post like my story, noone notices it loll

I'm going to be so honest, I really don't know. 😭 The only series I was writing for was my Eren Yeager Spider-Man book, and that honestly didn't get that much attention. Also, I'm not really noticed either, I would say I'm still a decently small fanfic writer. However, I think I have a more dedicated following to my recent story, "Silent Love." I would also guess this is how you found my account. 😚

But, I can try to pass you some advice.

What I've noticed, is Tumblr is more of a horny space, people don't really want to be reading long-looonngggg fics here. That's why you can see many drabbles that are a few sentences long blow up. It's a quick dopamine hit, and most people want to read about smut. (Nothing wrong with that!) Tumblr is a form of social media, which means there are popular 'trends,' and tags people are going to be fed by the algorithm. Make sure you're tagging your work! And, if you don't know what to tag, look at creaters who make similar things to you, and glance at their tags.

However, Ao3 is more of a reading for the plot, place. (Still has people preferring smut over anything, tho! Again, not a bad thing.) But, this is where people can see the most recent posts, or what they specifically search for what they want to read. And, most importantly, it's an archive, not a form of social media. There's no algorithm.

You can be writing for a small fandom. You can be writing for a not so popular character, and so on.

But, I think you should just write what you want to write. Try not to think to much about the numbers, or interactions, it can become unhealthy and obsessive. If you want to write about something small and unknown, go ahead! Believe me, writing is supposed to be fun! But, if you're worried about interactions, it can become overwhelming.

But, I'm sure I would adore your writing! Keep it up, nonny! I'm sure you're going to find your right audience soon!

[sondepoch]

the sheer amount...of writing....that i have posted on ao3 but not on tumblr.....oh my god 😭 😭

i hate posting anything to tumblr bc the tag system is so frustrating (especially when :) you know :) your post won’t show in the main tags despite it :)) but wow it’s like. i have not posted anything here in ages. i have full fics and series out that just never made it over here. starting tomorrow i’m gonna start posting at least one thing a day so i can begin the transfer like i am so sorry to everyone following me but wow posting on tumblr is so much harder 😭 😭

[treeprince]

hello! ok 1. i love your writing <3 found you from ao3. amazing work *round of applause* 2. i wanted to know how you recommend finding fics / fic recs or promoting your own work? i have heard a lot of ppl say that tumblr doesn’t rly discuss fanworks like they used to and most of that discussion (esp with writing) has moved to discord but i feel like from an outside perspective its hard to stumble upon unless you have friends in the server? idk just wanted to get your thoughts :) have a lovely day!

ive been sitting here on this one all day like,

are... are you in the right place??? did u click on the right blog for this ask??? thank you?????? made my day and also got me v confused

but to answer your questions, ill do it in 2 parts: one for fic recs and the other for fic promos.

theres a couple different ways i look for fics, and im sure both of these are the most common, but the first is using ao3's filter system. i can pare down any particular thing im looking for in a fic with the filter system ao3 runs on, and the tag wranglers (bless them) have made sure that even the vaguely worded tags end up where they need to be under the larger umbrella tag its associated with. you can also peruse the bookmarks of authors on ao3 in their profile and filter those fics down to specific fandoms or pairings or even timeframes it was written!

the second is a combination of using friends recommendations- publically or in private servers- and fic recs on tumblr, usually thru the ship tag (if im following the tag, and if the author chose to promote their fic on tumblr, or a fic rec blog promotes it as some fandoms do)

it also depends on how large the fandom is when you come into it, and what specifically you are looking for, but if you have friends in that fandom who keep bookmarks of their fav fics or know of ones youd enjoy, id recommend going to them if the tag system isnt providing quite what you're after, as id trust a friend over anything else (word of mouth literally is the best promo)

there are also sometimes fic rec blogs, who's entire modus operandi is promoting works at large, so following a few of those (if there are any) can help bring new content to your door as well

as for promoting your own work, you really kind of have the world before you. make a link post on tumblr with a similar tagline to the summary and tag it accordingly. share the link in discord with friends or in fandom spaces. share the link on twitter and tag it so it gets seen. ao3 is not a social media website, so as long as you are the most recent post in the tag, youll always be at the top. theres no algorithms there like there are on other socmed platforms, so really the choice is up to you how and where you want to promote it! reblog the link as many times as you want! its up to you!

and youre not entirely wrong that discussion of fanworks doesn't take place on tumblr anymore, but it really depends on the fandom youre in. i follow several authors and fic rec blogs for one fandom who do regular fic promos of other writers works and gush about them, but in the way that youll see a blurb in the jacket cover of a book. its really just to keep the content coming back to the top here, and helps bring to the surface fics that didnt get a lot of readers in the first run, perhaps bc its an older work or a lesser known pairing.

discussion about fandom works themselves has turned private namely for the sake of reducing drama and hurt feelings in public spaces, and i dont blame them. ive been in ficbook clubs on private servers that were some of the best times ive ever had bc we were allowed to talk freely about an authors work without airing our opinions out for all the world to see, and frankly i much prefer that style of discussion over public ones, but thats me and i cant speak for everyone.

theres also just been a steady shift away from author engagement on socmed bc of how easy it is for them to get hit by negativity there. the culture just isnt the same as it used to be for fic writers as it was in the last decade. hell, in the last year alone, youd be hard pressed to find an author who hasnt experienced some kind of harassment over the course of their career on socmed, if we're being honest. my honest advice to you is: if youre following an author you like, and u want to know more about how they use their creative process, ask them! they may not all answer these days, but it doesnt hurt to try! just be polite, thats all anyone can hope for.

i hope this helps you anon, and thank you for the kind words! if you have more questions or are just looking to get recs, feel free to hmu!

[backofthebookshelf]

Your Handy Guide to AO3 Searching and Filtering

In the spirit of YKINMKBYKIOK (aka let other people have fun and stop complaining that they exist, jeez), and also because I am a Nerd and will apparently do my actual literal job for free if it involves fandom in any way: How To Find Fics on AO3

There are two basic ways to go about this: searching and filtering. In this age of Google we're all kind of used to searching, but Google's search engine is...special, and also not really how a well-constructed database search works. There's a lot of reasons for this, many of which involve "the unstructured chaos that is the Internet at large" and "Google's secret algorithm which we will never understand," but tl;dr you've probably noticed that searching for a specific fic or type of fic on AO3 doesn't always return the results you expected. There are ways to make it work, but I vastly prefer filtering to find fics I want to read.

First off: I usually have something to start with, most of the time it's a fandom. There are a bunch of ways to find your starting tag; usually, to be honest, I'm bouncing off of a direct link to a fic. If you're starting from AO3's homepage, though, you can use the tag search - the plain search box in the upper right won't do it for you, usually. Hit the search tab, pick tag search, and search for canonical fandom tags. 99 times out of a hundred that'll get you your fandom.

Now if you're looking for a specific character or pairing you could browse the resulting page, the one that gives you all the child tags (those would be tags that only apply to this fandom, usually but not always characters) and relationship tags. If your fave is rarer, this is a good place to start. Otherwise, click that Works button up on the top right.

Now you've got the page you're probably used to: your fandom's tag, newest works at the top. If you like to start your fic-reading from AO3's homepage, there's a handy Favorite Tag button up in the top right; if you click that it'll show up on your homepage for you and you can always and easily check the newest fics. But if you're reading this you're probably looking to do something more complicated than just read whatever was posted most recently, right? This is where the magic Sort and Filter option comes in.

Let's start with Include.

This is where you'll get your basic preferences nailed down: how much adult content do you want to see? Do you have strong opinions about any of the official archive warnings? Do you want a ship, or gen, and if you want a ship do you want het or slash or femmeslash or lots of ships or whatever this fandom might have decided "other" means (usually it's tentacles)? Click the checkbox for whatever you want to include. EXCEPT. Keep in mind that the checkboxes work as an AND search, not an OR - that is, if you check both "M/M" and "F/F," you'll get only works that have both M/M and F/F pairings. Anything that’s just M/M won't show up, and vice versa. If you have multiple categories and you'd be okay with fics that match only one of those criteria, hold onto that thought for a while. (If, on the other hand, you only want fics with graphic violence and character death, this is where you'd go.)

Now you could just keep moving on, but I like to click Sort and Filter at this point, because the options it gives you in the next section are sorted by popularity, and sometimes you'll get more of the options you want when you set your base preferences. The screenshot on the left is the Fandoms, Characters, and Relationships filters with no other preferences set; the one on the right is with them set to Rating: Teen, No Archive Warnings Apply, and Multi. You'll see that some of those crossovers have dropped out, the characters have shuffled a bit, and several pairings are just gone.

From here, with these kind of numbers, I'd probably just pick one tag I'm interested in - do I want jonmartin fic, or Jon fic of any description, or oooh, hey, Sasha/Tim - select that checkbox, and go from there. But if you want something really specific, like only jonmartin fic in which Daisy appears, go for it. You don't have to change any of your earlier selections, just click those checkboxes and click Sort and Filter again.

Huh, that's genuinely more fics than I expected.

Now, if instead of having something specific you know you want, there's something specific you know you DON'T want, you have the next section: Exclude. This is relatively new, and it's magic. Don't wanna see Explicit fic? Banish it. Never want to read Major Character Death? Boom. Tired of Jon and only want fics where he doesn't appear? You can do that, too. These checkboxes do work on an OR search, which means you can check as many as you want, and if a fic matches any of the checkboxes you ticked, it won't show up in your search. If there's a pairing or a character you just cannot stand, you can exclude them, click Sort and Filter, and bookmark the resulting page. You'll see every new fic posted to the fandom tag except for the ones that include the thing you've already decided you don't want to see - you can just pretend it doesn't exist. It's wonderful.

There are some more neat options down at the bottom - got strong pro or con opinions about crossovers, or unfinished works? Got a few hours to kill and want something 10k+ to keep you busy? Hoping there's something written in your native language that isn't English? These options also exist, and they stack with the other filters as well, so you can filter only by crossover status or by rating and wordcount or by language and pairing, however you choose to combine them. (My favorite combo is Complete works only, wordcount from 10k (leave "to" blank if you don't need to set a higher limit), and exclude the fandom's most popular pairing. There's some good shit in that search in pretty much any fandom.)

Don't forget the sort! You don't have to see newest fics first; if you're still getting caught up on the canon, you can sort by oldest first and be careful never to read past the date you're caught up to. You can sort by word count to get the longest fics first or the shortest, by hits to see what people read the most, by kudos to see what the most people liked, by comments to see what gets the most interaction, by bookmarks to see...honestly I'm not sure what bookmarks indicate, but you can sort by them. Also by title and author, if you prefer an alphabetical organization for whatever reason.

Unfortunately there's not a good way to clear the filters, so if you change your mind about what you're looking for, you will have to go back and un-check the boxes you've selected before you do another search. Or you can just click on the fandom tag under the first fic in your results list; that will take you back to the main tag with no filters on it, which is what I usually do.

And there you have it: AO3's excellently curated filters, which allow you to curate your fandom experience. If that still isn't enough for you, there are some browser extensions you may want to look into (ao3 savior for tampermonkey; AO3rdr) that let you do even more customization, but those are tricky to use on mobile or if you're switching between multiple devices, so I prefer to rely mostly on AO3's built in tools.

If any of this isn't clear to you I am happy to answer questions! Note that I have nothing to do with AO3 personally other than having been a loyal user for 13+ years now, I'm just a librarian and a nerd for good organizational systems. And goddammit, AO3 is amazing.

[tempestaurora]

Also! As you're studying creative and professional writing: do you have any writing advice? Anything you picked up along the way that's incredibly helpful with your original fiction and fanfic?

alright, i’m gonna try and culminate the last three years of my degree into the most helpful advice i received that i can remember and it might be completely useless to you all but who cares:

adverbs are the enemy. if you can say she smiled prettily you can sure as hell take another four words to describe what was pretty about her smile instead. (if you gotta keep 1 or 2 adverbs in, fine, but purge the rest.)

kill your darlings is usually relevant but only because that one sentence you love so much is usually only loved because it doesn’t actually fit in with everything else. if your darling fits and works, don’t go killing it - raise everything surrounding it to that standard.

when posting articles/content online (especially on websites like medium), post towards the back end of the week, in the second half of the day. wednesday and thursday are the best ones for it. the algorithms of medium and other websites will make sure the article ends up trickling into friday, when bored employees go online during their breaks, and if enough of them read it, it’ll be especially popular over the weekend. (case in point, i did exactly this for this essay on depression.)

be warned though, popularity can be down to your tagging system, your title, any featured image and subtitle. just because you post at the exact right time doesn’t mean you’ll get the reads. here’s a masterlist of free stock images you can use, just because i’m nice.

read everything you can

read where we came from as much as new books. i don’t like classics but even i have to admit that reading ray bradbury can provide important and helpful tips and tricks, as much as reading the hunger games can.

try as many genres as you can, but if you know what genre you want to write in, focus your energy on that. a teacher of mine once said that he regrets dividing his energy between literary fiction and horror. he reads and writes both, but because he spent his time split, he never mastered either of them. if he had focused on one over the other, his talents with it would be much more than they are. (though, note, if you want to focus on multiple genres, do it anyway. i can’t decide between sci fi and fantasy, so i’m willing to master neither so i can enjoy them both.)

write everyday if possible. my teachers all recommend morning pages - you write a page in the morning before you get up and leave. do it during breakfast or when you’re still in bed. it can be about anything - word association, prose, poetry, whatever. it also does not have to be good. here’s a good book we were recommended on the subject if you want help with this.

for fan fic specifically: write in third person. unless you’ve got something super Artsy and Forward Thinking going on, your readers will only find themselves uncomfortable with first person, as we’re already trained to consider these characters as outside ourselves. putting first person in makes us the same person as the character, and whether readers are aware of it or not, that’s not the experience they came to fan fic for.

try to observe the trends of fan fiction when you can. i did this when i wrote for the 100 (i noticed that more people wrote during the hiatus between seasons, but more people were reading during the season airing and immediately after it finished) - you’ll find you’ll get more reads than you expect.

on tagging, just because it’s relevant to me: tag however you want on ao3, but tumblr only pays attention to the first 5, so make them the most important ones that are most likely to be read. from 6 onwards, tumblr won’t put your post in that listing when searched, so don’t bother.

don’t make the same mistakes i did with the prose around dialogue. it’s not:

“Hey there,” Jackson said. Emily smiled.

“Hey!”

as soon as your prose stops relating to the dialogue and jackson, you gotta start a new paragraph. even if you’re going into exposition or description - it doesn’t belong on the same line as the dialogue and it’ll start confusing the reader. especially when you stop saying things like “jackson said” and the reader starts attributing the dialogue to incorrect characters. try:

“Hey there,” Jackson said.

Emily smiled. “Hey!”

be as economical in your writing as possible. seriously. i love purple prose but we don’t need it everywhere. sometimes the reader just needs the facts and not three paragraphs of adjacent information. (sometimes, however, the reader wants that information, so it’s about being economical with how often you’re economical.)

for correct formatting for scripts, use the BBC writer’s room. they also have contests and open submissions. very occasionally, the people who submit can get hired to the BBC.

let yourself be shit at writing. it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Reading List:

here’s the best books i can offer you for writing. some may be helpful, some not so much for you - but these are the books my teachers recommended and i connected with.

The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler is a staple, okay? it was the first book we were told to buy, because it breaks apart a story into so many pieces and shows you how they’re to be employed. it’s not an enjoyable read, but it’s a really good place to be starting from.

The Elements of Style, Strunk and White. Another staple. Very short and apparently, very important.

if you want help with novel writing, Thomas Emson’s How To Write a Novel in Six Months is my go-to. he came in and delivered a lecture, the book takes only 40 minutes to read, and it comes with a lot of great advice you can pick and choose from. i reference him every time y’all ask for writing advice and it’s because the things i took from his book are the most helpful to my process.

Stephen King’s On Writing is pretty good. I was bored as heck through the first half, where he writes his life story, but the second half is all writing advice and super helpful.

as mentioned in the morning pages point: The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron.

The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting, Syd Field.

The Ode Less Travelled, Stephen Fry. if you’re interested in writing poetry, this is a very good one to use.

On Writing Well, William Zinsser. if you want to write non-fiction, this is the one for you. get the most recent edition you can, the edits are worth it. (for example, zinsser originally wrote ‘he’ when talking of the writer, and eventually changed to ‘they’ and ‘he or she’, because he learned feminism lmao.)

my playwriting teacher recommends The Art of Writing Drama, Michelene Wandor which i haven’t actually read yet but i plan to.

Heussner, Tobias, et al. The Game Narrative Toolbox is good (though a lil expensive) for when it comes to writing for games.

so is Rusch, Doris C. Making Deep Games: Designing Games with Meaning and Purpose, but again, recommended for games.

sources: i’m a third year creative and professional writing undergrad, taught by professional writers in fiction, experimental literature, poetry, non-fiction, playwriting, young adult and children’s literature and game design. 

[thebluesideofmyworld]

I was tagged by @makeitpoppy​ . Thank you, Sheryl :)

Are you staying at home from work/school? Yes. The university where I work at has been moving all classes into remote teaching mode since mid-March so now I am doing all my work from the living room.

If you’re at home, who is there with you? My parents (they’re over 60 years of age so I kind of glad that I am at home since I can do stuff for them, I just don’t want them to do too much work around the house), and my adopted niece.

Do you have pets to keep you company? Nope. I’m not an animal person anyway.

Who do you miss the most? My students :(

When was the last time you left your home? Yesterday, to buy some needed groceries and I also needed to pay some of my bills.

What was the last thing you bought? Some groceries for the people at home, and I got myself some coffee

Is quarantine driving you insane or are you finally relaxed? I am stressed out for so many reasons. Some of the stupid people in my country are breaking the rules even though most of the cities and towns (including the city where I live) are in a semi-lockdown order. I’m worried for my parents as they are quite vulnerable to the virus due to their age (and my mother has asthma). I’m stressed out because some of my students that I am supervising can’t finish their research for their final projects so they can’t graduate on time. I am stressed out because this whole remote teaching stuff makes me feel like I am not doing my job good enough. But now this is the end of the semester so I can be a bit more relaxed than before. 

Are you a homebody? Yup. I don’t really like going out to places with so many people.

What movies have you watched recently? I don’t really like watching movies , so it’s been a while since the last time I watched a movie. But I guess it was Midsommar? I prefer watching series. I’ve been binge-watching Queer Eye, and I’m now watching The Umbrella Academy 

An event you were looking forwards to that got cancelled? This writing workshop in Malaysia. I got a grant to attend it so it’s such a bummer that they cancel the on-site workshop and moved it into a remote workshop instead.

What’s the worst thing you’ve had to cancel? My classes :(

What’s the best thing you had to cancel? Meetings with other faculty members XD

Do you have any new hobbies? Not exactly new. I go back to writing some fics but it’s not a new hobby 

What are you out of? Eyeliner and mascara.

What music are you listening to? Mostly pop music but it looks like my Spotify’s algorithm keeps on playing some pop-indie music for me.

What shows are you watching? Queer Eye (I’m almost finished with Season 4) and The Umbrella Academy.

What are you reading? Right now, Pearl Dragon by Yon Ha Lee. It’s a YA book where the writer mixed Korean mythology into some sci-fi setting. And some fics on AO3

What are you doing for self care? Reading more, I guess. This whole WFH thing actually gives me time to read more. And writing fics, occasionally.

Are you exercising? I am exercising my patience.

How’s your toilet paper supply? It’s...okay? I am Indonesian so toilet paper is not really a thing here in Indonesia? We wash with water. 

Have you made any changes to your hair? Nope. I really wanted to dye it into red but my mother would have a heart attack.

[data-monkey]

AO3 stats project: kudos

Up next: what kinds of works get kudos?

The Data | Basic Questions | Fandoms | Tags | Correlations | Kudos | Fun Stuff

Thanks to @eloiserummaging for beta reading these posts; any remaining errors are my own.  A Python notebook showing the code I used to make these plots can be found here.

I want to be really specific before we get into this: I don't mean "which works are better." There's a perception I see sometimes in fandom that more kudos = better material (e.g. when you're sorting on the works page). That may be true within narrow categories, but kudos also relate to things like "was this emotionally moving vs technically skilled or both or neither" and "what would I be embarrassed to be seen liking" (since the usernames of people who leave kudos appear at the bottom of the page). So exactly why some things have more kudos than others is outside the scope of this post.

The first thing to look at is how the number of kudos scales with the number of hits. Obviously, if more people look at your work, more people are available to leave kudos. But we wouldn't expect the same ratio at low hit counts and high hit counts. That is, if 10 of the first 100 people who looked at your work left kudos on it, we would expect fewer than 10 of the next 100 to do it. That's basically because the top fans--of the author, of the genre, whatever--are more likely to read it right away when it's new, while people who read it later may not fit into the target audience quite as well. Even if a lot of them like it, statistically, you might expect that fewer of them will hit the kudos button. Also, because you can only leave kudos once, repeat visits will increase the hit counts without increasing the kudos counts; that will matter for works that people like to reread, or for works that were posted one chapter at a time.

So here's kudos vs hits. The blue-colored region is showing where the most works are: low hits and low kudos, like we already knew. The heavy purple line is the average trend. If you look very closely at the low end, you can see it bends a little bit: the average kudos-to-hits ratio is higher for low-hit-count things, like we predicted.

In fact, we can just plot that (average) ratio:

We can do the same for bookmarks and comments. (I’m just going to show the ratio from now on, because it’s easier to interpret.)

Those are pretty similar, with fewer overall numbers, and slightly more comments than bookmarks. I’m not sure what to make of the fact that bookmark & comment ratios increase with the number of hits. I don’t really use either bookmarks or comments, so maybe I’m missing something of the essential psychology there.

Okay. That’s averaged over all works on AO3. Do things change if we subdivide the works into categories?

First up: have the number of kudos per fic stayed the same over time? The first few years of the Archive didn't have the kudos feature, so the oldest works we would expect to be very low, but did things change after that?

Yes. I was a little surprised by this, but it does look robust: Works seem to get peak kudos (adjusted for hit counts) in 2016 and 2017, with less both before and after. I think there are a few possible explanations for this besides "people got more likely to leave kudos and then less likely to leave kudos." One would be a difference in other kinds of reader behavior: for example, repeat visits to the same work will drive down the kudos-to-hit-count ratio, because you can only leave kudos once; or, if people click on a work to mark it for later, that can register as another hit without actually being another human reader. Another would be a difference in reader populations: maybe the same people who have always left kudos are still leaving kudos, but the AO3 is now big enough that we also get readers who aren’t in fandom social circles and are less likely to hit that button.  Also, if works in progress get a lower kudos/hits ratio, then more recent stories with a higher WiP rate might have a lower average--although, as I’ll show below, I don’t think it’s large enough to explain this discrepancy.

How about word count?

By the way: the labels have the same color as the lines they go with. I’m using an algorithm that tries to place the labels so they don’t overlap, which sometimes means the labels aren’t that close to the line they go with--for example, here, the 3,000-10,000 word line is actually mostly covered by its label, and there will be some cases below where the labels are pretty far off. Just match the colors and you should be able to figure out which is which!

Anyway, peak kudos occur around the 3,000-30,000 word count. Lower for the very longest and very shortest things. My anecdotal experience is that very long works are most likely to be ficlet collections or otherwise works in progress, and so you might expect more repeat visitors to those works as authors add new chapters. Actually, let's check on works in progress in general. Here's complete works and works in progress:

You do see signs that having a WiP gets you fewer kudos per hit. Again, this is almost certainly because the same readers come back for successive chapters but can't leave multiple kudos. The differences aren’t very large, though--look at the y-axis.  The different years range anywhere from 0.03 to 0.08 at a low hit count, but the same range here is like 0.060 to 0.065!

Ratings?

Here’s an example where the labels are pretty far off the lines--“Not Rated” is the green line that ends under the second “e” of “General Audiences.” Teen and gen are a little higher, explicit a little lower--I would guess some combination of more repeat visits to explicit fics and possible embarrassment at leaving kudos on fics with certain kinds of content. (Also, higher ratings are somewhat more likely to have warnings on them, which may change the emotional calculus that goes into whether you hit the kudos button.) But again, these differences aren’t that big--nowhere near the differences for years or word counts, for example, if you look at the range the vertical axis is spanning.

How about pairing type?

As a reminder, those pairing types are gen (no romantic or sexual relationship); male/male, male/female, and female/female; then “multi” meaning either multiple types of pairings, or a relationship with more than two people; and “other” meaning everything that doesn’t fit neatly into those categories. I could have seen this plot going either way--M/M is the most popular so people like it, or other things are less popular and so readers reward them more. Looks like it’s the former. Not sure what to make of “other” and “multi” being the lowest.

Are fandoms different?

Indeed they are. (I don’t think this is entirely explained by differing kudos rates & fandom popularity over time, although that's probably some of it.) How about tags?

I feel like there's a paper somewhere in this plot alone...

One last note. As I mentioned, people tend to view kudos as a measure of quality. I have no way to measure actual quality of works. But I do have one way to think about it: Creators are likely to produce similar-quality work. (Not always, as fans of many published authors can tell you. But often.) So how much do individual authors' kudos counts vary? As I mentioned in the first post, I have a policy of not showing data for individual authors here. But I can show my own, since I can give informed consent as to this usage of my data. :) So here's the average kudos vs hit count line, with my fics shown as dots around the line.

I would definitely say my works have variable quality (particularly because I included all my own backdated works, meaning my fics span more than 15 years of my life--and I hope I'm a better writer now than I was when I was 18!). But you can see that the kudos to hit count ratios are ALL OVER the place. Twice the value of the line, 1/10th the value of the line--really varying, right?

So here's how I made the plot I'm about to show you. For every creator in the database, I look at their kudos vs hit counts for all their fics, and I measure how far away from the average line they are (and whether they're above it or below it). And then I measure what's called the “standard deviation” of those distances--basically, asking how much those numbers vary. A really low value means of an author’s works are the same--and that could be "every work has only 10% of the average number of kudos" or "every work has 1000% the average number of kudos"; doesn't matter, it just means they're consistent. On the other hand, a high value would mean, well, somebody like me: with some works that get a lot of kudos, and some that don’t. Here's the distribution of that standard deviation, for all authors with more than one fic and at least 1000 total hits on all their fics:

So you can see it does, actually, vary a lot. My particular number, by this count, is 0.44, and you can see that that's a little high but still pretty typical--even though it's a lot of variation if you look at it! So I think this is support for my statement earlier, that you shouldn't think of kudos (or kudos/hits) as a measure of quality, for some definition of quality. It's measuring something--but it's way more complicated than quality.

One more post after this: just some fun questions.

[alittlelessalone]

Backsliding - a Winston Billions fanfiction

Characters: Winston and Taylor

For some reason, I can’t post links on tumblr and still have the tags work, so I just decided to post this here. It’s also on ao3 if it’s easier to read there (the fic’s name is the same and I’m ArabellaTurner).

Also, Winston doesn’t have a last name, so I gave him one. Make what you want of it, but don’t feel the need to read into it unless you want to. Anyways, here we go:

Taylor rubbed the back of their neck and sighed. It had been a long day and they were happy to finally be heading home. Ever since they had joined back up with Axe Capital, Taylor’s days seemed to just be one headache after another.

Today had been worse than most. With every day Taylor continued their charade of being allies with Axe, they could feel his grip tightening just a little bit more around them. Yet it was still too soon to betray him. There were still too many moving pieces and unknowns.

As Taylor made their way through the desolate office, they were relieved at least that everyone else seemed to have gone home already. Lauren had offered to wait up, but Taylor had sent her home a few hours earlier. There was no reason why she had to sit around waiting just for Taylor’s sake.

Taylor was immensely grateful for the support, but they were not going to ask too much of their employees anymore. They had dragged everyone unfairly into battle before and this time they planned on being more careful.

Lost in their thoughts, Taylor almost missed the dim light coming from the southern stairwell. Those stairs lead down to the the quant work area, or quant dungeon as they knew Winston had taken to calling it.

Taylor frowned at the electricity wastage. Winston usually knew better than to leave the lights on when he left. Although Winston did have Math Meetup on Thursdays, so perhaps he wasn’t the last one out that day.

Taylor made their way over to the stairwell to turn the lights off, but froze when they heard noises coming from below. There was no way that anyone was still down there, was there?

Taylor squared up their shoulders before heading downstairs. It would not do to show any signs of fear, especially in their own office.

“Hello?” they called out. “Is someone down there?” They were greeted in response by a startled yelp.

“Winston?” Taylor asked, recognizing the voice and heading down the stairs. “Shit. You scared me. I guess I sort of got into the zone and lost track of the time,” Winston responded.

He stood up to greet Taylor as they got to the bottom of the steps. “What are you still doing here at...” Winston paused to look at the clock on his computer.

“Holy shit. What are you still doing here at 1:30am?” Winston asked, looking at Taylor with concern.

“I was taking care of some things,” Taylor responded vaguely. “Why are you still here?” they countered. “I was coding,” Winston responded, a little defensively.

Taylor made a mental note of Winston’s tone as they gave him a once over. He looked tired and defeated. “Don’t you have Math Meetup on Thursdays?” Taylor asked gently. Winston shook his head.

“Not anymore,” he replied miserably. He slumped back into his chair and stared dejectedly up at the ceiling.

Taylor frowned slightly. “What happened?” they asked. Winston sighed. “Well, you know how I’m an asshole?” he began. Taylor felt the corners of their mouth twitch, but refused to smile and Winston’s self deprecating comments.

“I know how you can be somewhat abrasive,” they replied diplomatically. Winston let out a slight chuckle at this. “Yeah, well, apparently they don’t want ‘abrasive’ people there,” he admitted.

Any degree of amusement Taylor was feeling before instantly disappeared. They though back to how Winston’s eyes lit up whenever he talked about Math Meetup. It was clearly something that meant a lot to him. Losing it like this was surely a painful blow.

Taylor stared at Winston’s sad eyes for a moment before making a decision. They quickly grabbed a chair and sat down next to him. “Did I ever tell you about my times as a child poker star?” they asked. Winston shook his head.

“Well, back when I was younger, I discovered the world of online poker. It was an amazing experience, really. I was just a kid, but I was already playing against and beating adults at that point. And I won quite a bit of money too. I felt like I ruled the world.

Only my rein was short lived. Eventually the other players grew tired of my success and rebelled. They kicked me out of the server and refused to let me back in. And even if I made a new account and pretended to be a different person, it was clearly only a matter of time before that one was banned as well.

They took something that I, just a kid at the time, loved and ripped it away from me. And even today it still hurts to think about,” Taylor concluded, their face more open and vulnerable than they had intended to get.

Winston blinked in surprise and let out a small exhale of breath. “Shit. That sucks ass,” he responded. Despite it all, Taylor felt the corners of their mouth twitched up again as they let out a slight chuckle.

“Yes,” they replied. “It does, as you so elegantly put it, suck ass. It really turned me off from the whole concept of poker for a long time. In fact, it wasn’t until Axe signed me up for the poker tournament that I was willing to play again. It was one of the few positive impacts that man has had on my life.”

Winston cocked his head and smiled at his boss. “So you’re saying that I shouldn’t let being kicked out of Math Meetup stop me from doing what I love?” he asked.

Taylor only raised an eyebrow mysteriously. “I’m simply telling you a tale about myself. What you take away from it is up to you,” they replied.

Winston stared at them for a second, then suddenly started to laugh. He continued to laugh until tears streamed down his cheeks. Only the tears continued even as the laughter died away.

“It was the one place I felt I truly belonged,” Winston admitted. “It wasn’t just about the math or the code. I felt like I had friends there. I saw those people all the time. Sometimes we would all even order food in during the meetup and eat together. Do you know how many other people willing eat together with me?”

Winston stared sadly at Taylor. “Without Math Meetup, what do I still have? All I’m good at is math, programming, and making stupid and inappropriate comments. I just lost the people who accepted me for the first two because of the third.

I feel like I’m backsliding so far. I promised I would become a better person, but here I am, months later, and nothing has changed. I’m still the same asshole I always was, only now I have less to show for it. If my skills can’t outshine my shitty personality, then what hope do I have for my future?”

Taylor stared at the sobbing boy for a few seconds before holding out their arms to him. Winston paused for a moment before realizing what Taylor was offering and sinking into them.

Taylor winced a little at the warm, wet form collapsing into their chest, but wrapped their arms around him regardless.

“You still have us, you know,” Taylor said gently. “You asked what you still have, and you still have this. You are an important part of the team here at Mase Cap and that’s not about to change.”

“But only because you don’t care about my personality,” Winston protested. “You are willing to overlook flaws in exchange for skill, but what if the other employees eventually can’t? I’ve already driven people away. What if I keep making that mistake?”

Taylor felt a small pang in their chest and let their arms wrap a little tighter around Winston’s body. “You’re wrong about that,” they admitted. “I didn’t hire you despite your personality at all. Your personality was one of your selling points.”

Winston sat up in surprise. “What?” he asked in confusion. “But you rejected me because of it! Then you only offered to let me try again if I stopped being such a piece of shit. And you only let my backsliding slide because my algorithm was so good.”

Taylor shook their head. “I reached out to you because I needed someone with passion and drive. I needed someone who was able to take risks and wasn’t afraid to challenge me. You were always so much more than just your code.”

Winston felt his body start to tremble. Was he really more to Taylor than just some extremely talented code monkey?

“Just recently you helped me realize how dangerous the path I was walking truly was. I lost sight of my goals, my values, and myself, but you helped guide me back. And sure, you were a little self-centered and abrasive in your words, but your anger was well-founded. And only you had the courage and passion to take me on.

There is a reason why you come to all my executive meetings and it isn’t because of your code. You are a valuable part of this company. You, Winston Kleinman, are the resource I was after when I hired you, the incredible code you produce is just a side effect.

And I’m sorry if you never realized that. It was my job to make you feel welcome and I guess I failed to do that.” Taylor looked around at the quant room. It was easy to see why Winston called it a dungeon.

“And you are important to me. Me, personally. Even if you were not my valuable employee, you would still be my friend,” Taylor concluded. Their body grew a little more rigid now that the words were out there. These were not words easily uttered, but they were completely true.

For his part, Winston was in a daze. He honestly couldn’t believe his ears, but he know better than to ask Taylor to repeat themselves. These were midnight words, he determined. They were the sort of words that were only uttered late at night while alone together in a windowless room.

Yet they caused Winston’s heart to swell. He had a friend. There was somewhere where he belonged, somewhere where he was wanted.

“Thank you,” he whispered. There was nothing else he could think to say. Taylor simply patted him awkwardly on the back.

Winston got up and moved back to his own chair. Taylor’s arms were a warm and safe place, but he didn’t want to overstay his welcome.

The pair stared at each other in silence for a few minutes. The tears in Winston’s eyes had dried up and the pain had faded from his eyes, but there was still uncertainty and fear there.

“Have you eaten?” Taylor finally asked, breaking the silence. Winston’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “I completely forgot to,” he admitted.

“There’s not much open at this hour,” Taylor continued, but there is a 24 hour diner not too far away from here. They have some decent enough vegan options there and you could use something in your system. Want to join me for a late night meal?”

Winston was once again rendered speechless, but as Taylor stood up and held out a hand, Winston found himself taking it. Wordlessly, he followed Taylor up the stairs, absentmindedly flicking the light off as he climbed the last one.

“I thought you always turned that off when you left,” Taylor remarked when they noticed Winston’s actions. “What?” Winston asked, startled a little by Taylor’s voice suddenly filling the air. “I almost without you left earlier,” Taylor explained. “But I saw the light was on and wanted to see what was going on. I’m glad I did.”

Winston felt his cheeks grow warm. He had thought that Taylor’s compliments would be limited to the confines of the quant dungeon, but they were on the main floor now.

“I’m glad you did too,” Winston agreed. “You should look for a new programming group to join,” Taylor suggested. “I’m sure there are plenty of others out there.” Winston nodded reluctantly. He knew that Taylor was right, but he was still scared.

“Once you find it, let me know the meeting dates. Then we can plan our dinners around them,” Taylor concluded, a smile once again tugging at the corners of their mouth.

Winston nearly tripped on a desk. “Our dinners?” he inquired. Taylor nodded. “You implied earlier that you wanted to eat dinner with friends from time to time, so I thought you might want to grab a bite with me sometimes after work. If I’m wrong then...”

Winston shook his head empathetically, cutting Taylor off. “I would love to grab dinner with you,” he assured them. “I’m just still getting over the fact that you want to spend time with me outside work.”

“Well, I do,” Taylor replied. “And I bet others do too. Have a little bit more faith in yourself, okay. Backsliding isn’t just about how you treat others. Treat yourself kindly too.”

Winston nodded. The tears were back in the corners of his eyes, but this time they weren’t from sadness. “Okay,” he agreed. “No more backsliding. This time I’m going to get it right. Just you watch! Winston Kleinman is ready to face the world! Nothing can stop him now!”

As his excitement grew, so too did the volume of Winston’s words. On the last ones, he jumped in the air, pumping his fists. And Taylor couldn’t help themselves. They laughed, bright and clear. And then Winston laughed too. The entire ride down the elevator was filled with the joyous sound.

And as they stepped into the cool night air, Taylor realized they weren’t stressed anymore. Their problems had not gone away, but they seemed so much smaller in the moment.

Taylor shot a quick text to Lauren informing her that they had left the office and were going to grab a bite before heading home. They then slipped the phone back into their pocket and turned back to Winston.

“Shall we?” they asked. Winston nodded and grinned. “We shall,” he replied. He then jumped up once more and did another fist pump. “Lead the way, my friend!” he declared, enjoying the sound of his voice echoing throughout the city. And with another smile, Taylor did.

[cimness]

meditation on the fandom history & future of recs (the latter esp. @ ao3)

When I started a recs list, everybody's were hand-coded html lists on their websites. Livejournal changed that, and popularized recs lists far more by removing the biggest barriers to participation, the need for webhosting and the need to code html. But livejournal was far from an ideal situation for a recs database, as it didn’t have tags for the greater part of its existence. Many people’s recs journals were simply filled with posts that started with a list of which fandoms were represented within; many didn’t contain a masterlist and were hence not searchable. Fandom-wide resources Crack Van (where reccers could sign up for a week or month at a time to represent their favorite fandom, pairing, or subgenre with curated recs and introductory blurbs) and Recs Rainbow (a blog that maintained an index of self-submitted fandom reccers and when they were updated with what) also came into existence. Navigating these resources in search of new recs lists for a new fandom was itself a big task, but they still made everything a great deal easier, because navigating the maze of personal blogs and fic posted directly to topical communities all over the site, + fic posted to smaller archives and personal sites, was still very difficult - arguably more difficult in some fandoms, because finding fic meant performing keyword searches for communities, paging back through their entire catalogs of entries, surfing from person to person. Delicious.com, with its revolutionary tag sorting that went beyond the individual user account, became the best place to find and search for fic very quickly. Suddenly you could look at the most recent bookmarks from other people in real time for any pairing you could think of - although without standardized tags, they weren’t all the bookmarks for the fandom; for that you had to surf around between different bookmarkers’ accounts using their networks, or find them by clicking on popular stories to see who else had bookmarked them and going to each person’s account. External bookmarking services still rely on the user to fill in all the info, though, so not every bookmark is equally informative - warnings, ratings, summaries, even author names or story lengths, or more importantly, the fact that something was still a work in progress, could easily be missing from the bookmark. In some ways - like the automatic inclusion of the author's headers - AO3 is already an improvement on Delicious. In others, it’s a pretty drastic step backwards - like the fact that you can’t follow a particular user’s bookmarks, or see whose bookmarks they follow. Right now AO3 is primarily adapted for saving your own bookmarks, for which purpose it’s quite useful; and the archive itself and its search filters already let you discover new fic with much more ease than the previous disconnected systems ever did; but they miss an essential function of recs lists, which is: they weren’t just for finding any fic, they were an aid in narrowing down the field of fic to ones you might be more likely to enjoy: the recommendation part. Simply the fact that someone, or several someones, has recommended a thing before isn’t the same as getting a recommendation from someone whose taste you already know is like yours in some respect. Sorting the search results by number of kudos or bookmarks is only going to give you the Billboard Top Whatever list, while reccers are djs, curators of content. And as the recent discussion of exposing bookmarker-side tags as a provider of content warnings show - particularly for racism and other issues where the creator may be unaware or not want to tag correctly - AO3 has the potential to create new functionalities with tags that could do things we've never been able to do before. A simple 'hot right now' or 'trending recently' algorithm like the ones used at Ravelry and Pinboard's Recent Fandom Bookmarks page (which doesn't work, because of the fandom exodus away from Pinboard, but was a great idea) could make it much more efficient to check out recent significant developments in a fandom, for example. My present workaround is to use the works search, filter by date for things completed or updated within the last (2 weeks, 6 weeks, 1 year, whatever, depending if/when I last looked at the fandom in question) and then sort by descending bookmarks, kudos, or hits. The ability to follow other bookmarkers could let you surf to see what friends of friends are reading and discover new people with congenial taste, which is the best way to receive recs from outside your own fandoms. And if bookmarker tags were or could be exposed when browsing the archive, a highlight color for someone you already follow could allow you to pick out comments that are more likely of interest. Any of that functionality is definitely still in the future, if not a complete pipe dream, and it's quite rightly behind other issues for the people who are coding the archive. A support and feature request person commented on the recent Tumblr discussion that inundating them with duplicate requests would be useless, but someone on the post suggested that using the bookmark tags and bookmark collections functionality more would be the best current step. Of course, I don't know if that person was correct, but I've got nearly 900 bookmarks there, so beginning to tag them strikes me as a fun and exciting (albeit long-term and time-consuming) task.

This post on Dreamwidth

[lucystillintheskywithdiamonds]

Hey Lucy! I'm a long time follower of your blog. Before I even knew what Tumblr was I stumbled across your blog when googling Spock and Uhura stuff and checked it daily before I realized there was an actual website full of folks like you and me who I could freak out with😂. Anyway, enough rambling. Could you recommend me some of your favorite academy era S/U fics on AO3? The website confuses the day lights out me; I can never narrow it down to the fics I want. If you don't mind. Thank you!

hi! ..I’m ..- *blushing like crazy*  I’m glad I made you find this crazy site^, LOL

as for your question, tbh AO3 used to be my least favorite site for ff precisely because the filter and tag system was confusing (and there is the ongoing problem of fans of.. ehm.. other ships spamming the S/U tag with break up fics). So for a long time I only used fanfiction.net that had a better tag system (that’s why most of the links I have are from there, but also because most of S/U’s ff are there) until they, of course, made that site a mess too LOL

there are so many great academy era S/U ff that I’m totally, 100%, sure I’ll miss some of them now (and there are many great ones I probably didn’t even read because, as I recently discovered, apparently I didn’t really read all the good ff out there). Also, did you read the starfleet academy licensed novels? because those are amazing too. (I posted some quotes, but it’s worth to read the books)first of all, I suggest you to read everything by @psicygni (ao3 page   |  The Place Between  is epic and so are the others. Oh and Discovery you are late because someone already gave Spock a sis ) @notesfromaclassroom (ao3  | ff.net) and @cgockel (ff.net)

my tag for recs is a good start. There is a Spock/Uhura Archive over ao3 but it isn’t updated with all the ff (this is their ship tag where I filtered out the sp*rk stuff, tho now we might need to filter out sp*nes as well )some links (shameless copy/pasted from an old post of mine), I bet you already read some of those

“Break” ~ YahtzeeLinks: livejournal | AO3author summary: During their final semester at Starfleet Academy, two people who have no intention of ever changing transform each other.a classic!

“Miscommunication” ~ SalR Links: fanfiction.net | livejournalauthor summary: Another take on the how-they-met-at-the-Academy story. This version is inspired by the wonderfully combative Farragut scene in the movie. Fireworks, anybody? ;  (this is a bit inspired by pride and prejudice so double awesome)sequel?:yes

for another p&p inspired story check also   “Pride and Logic”    by Yalegirl03

“What We Think We Know” ~ NotesfromaClassroomLinks: fanfiction.net | AO3author summary:Commander Spock hires his best student to be his teaching assistant-and both instantly regret it.sequel? yes! (you will want to read them because they all make one big series)check the author’s page for the chronological order: NotesfromaClassroom

“Descartes’ Error” ~ StarTrekFanWriterLinks: fanfiction.netauthor summary: Starts with Spock accused of misconduct - specifically with being involved with a certain Cadet we all know and love, and flashes back to how he got in such an illogical predicament to begin with. Romance/Sci-Fi/Humor/Drama - Spock and Uhura Origins.sequel? yes!The Vulcan | Reunion: The Rejoining | What Feels Rightone shots that are set in the Descartes’ universe (but can be read as standalone too):Logical | Vulcan Kissing | Once Bitten | The Bean Jar | Descartes Drabblescheck the author’s page for more: StarTrekFanWriter

“Like the Stars, Like Your Destiny” ~ anodynaLinks: livejournal | AO3author summary: Nyota Uhura has always been drawn to things that resist her understanding. Finding out she’s lived her entire life in an alternate reality is a mystery she’s not sure she can solve. Sleeplessness and self-examination ensue.

“Flawed Logic” ~ PoorQueequegLinks: fanfiction.net | AO3author summary: Spock for all his Human gentility, was by Vulcan standards an utter cad.

“Sufficiently Familiar” ~ PoorQueequegLinks: fanfiction.net | AO3author summary:He calls it a delicate situation. She doesn’t call it anything at all. Spock/Uhura pre-movie angstfest.

“Winds against a Star” ~ valyriaLinks: fanfiction.net | AO3 author summary:An obsession with a brilliant young cadet leads to Lieutenant Commander Spock discovering the truth of the Vulcan heart. A Spock/Uhura origins story set at the Academy. Mildly AU.sequel? yes!Part of the series “Kaiidth“ 

“The Sum of Both of Us” by igrockspocksummary: The first time Spock asks Uhura out, she turns him down.  He is forced to present a logical argument to change her mind. 

“If You Should Take Me”  by Sigridhrsummary: On the first day of Advanced Vulcan Nyota sits in the front row, takes meticulous notes and tries not to think about the way her professor’s voice makes words like phoneme and morphology sound like something one might say between lovers.

“Historical Perspective on the Changing Politics of a Relationship“ by carnationsandrobots (ao3 link)

“Logic and Linguistics” by  lily winterwood

“Caesura“ by Lanesy 

Boldly Go: Twenty Sentences  by SEEKER-2000 (not academy itself but this one just kills me. One word, one sentence and it all shows their relationship)

some I read recently:

the academy era series by @tomfooleryprime Seventy-Four Hours Later and An Algorithm for Dating

 “Trust”  by KaCole(not academy era, but it’s a different take of how they’d become a couple post battle of vulcan)

 “Improvisations” by powmeow

“The Appearance of Favoritism”  by  powmeow

“Exegesis” by  karikes (still have to read “like birds’ wings” too)