sing hallelujah

I desperately wish people would start actually reading the AO3's TOS before confidently making 'user guides' to the AO3 that are just blatantly, flatly wrong.

Yes the AO3 has banned content. They do not allow anything that's illegal under US law - though US law, importantly, does not ban fictional depictions of things - and they do not allow any commercial content. That includes your ko-fi link, or mentions that you do fic commissions. If you do post fic commissions to AO3 and want to mention the commissioner, the fic is a 'request' from the commissioner. This protects the AO3 and you from copyright law.

No the AO3 is not 'a creative fanfiction archive'. It is a fandom archive. Your meta, insights, and theories are absolutely welcome and encouraged there. AO3 also encourages you to post other types of fanworks, like fan videos, podfics, and art, but unfortunately isn't able to natively host those like it does text, so fic has kind of become what it's known for. That absolutely does not mean that other types of fanwork aren't allowed, or are discouraged by the site culture! Anybody who tells you otherwise is just plain wrong!

And another thing:

IT’S AN ARCHIVE - A STORAGE SPACE

THERE IS NO ALGORITHM

IT’S A LIBRARY, NOT A SOCIAL MEDIA SITE

So… (sigh) TAG YOUR FICS APPROPRIATELY AND PEOPLE WILL FIND YOUR STUFF.

That’s it.

Justice for the underpaid store employees...

diversity win! this alien's gender is none of our business!

he found a poster for a phineas and ferb theme party and just. decided to go. oh my god 😭

If you ever feel like you’ve had an unproductive day writing, please know that one time novelist/playwright/essayist Dorothy L Sayers wrote a letter to Bun (her literary agent) that said “herewith the striking results of today’s literary labours” followed by two pages of rabbit sketches.

idk what dm needs to hear this but you arent getting that done in a single session

I've seen posts going around claiming that petting animals is basically tricking them into thinking they're being groomed, and it's bugging me because, like, there's no trickery afoot. Petting and scritching are grooming activities. They help to dislodge loose fur and foreign objects and more evenly distribute protective oils, among other things. Primates are social groomers, and the human impulse to scritch is the legacy of our primate ancestors. We see an animal we like, even a dangerous one, and the monkey brain says "groom that thing".

as an optimist i dream of a beautiful world where people are fucking normal about aromanticism

At first I read “as an optometrist” and was just ready to accept the statement as is like oh yeah maybe some kind of pun about if people’s views weren’t clouded by hatred and biases they could be normal about aro and aspec in general but then I reread it was like “sigh, time for my nearsighted ass to go back to the optometrist.”

as an optimist i dream of a beautiful world where all these beautiful aromantic people get to go to the optometrist

Ok so today I was on the bus with another trans guy and we were talking about how hard it is to get testosterone. The waiting lists, the price, all the doctors you have to go to, that kind of stuff. Except, we were calling it ’T’, like you do when you’re both closeted and in public.

Then suddenly the elderly lady sitting behind us was like ‘young men, either I’m going crazy or you both have never heard of supermarkets, they have shelves full of tea there! Do you need directions to one?’

To which my buddy starts to explain, because why not. ‘Well you see, we’re both trans, and… ’

The lady didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. ‘Oh no, I don’t mind that at all! Now do you want to know how to get to a place that sells tea? I’m actually heading there right now!’

We let her take us to the supermarket. We let her show us, excitedly, where the tea was. We both bought loads.

This is beautiful

i went way harder than i needed to drawing this, but i finished it!!

writers and artists will go "this isn't good enough." my brother in christ, you're creating something new out of nothing and expressing yourself creatively. your productivity and unrealistic standards of perfection do not define you or the worth of your art. you're doing great.

Thanks for the question, Anon!