Had a dream this morning that Archive of our Own had a Random button which would simply take you to a random fanfic, like Wikipedia has. (AO3 does not appear to really have this, I checked and couldn't find one, but I kinda wish they did.) Someone had started a game where whatever fic you got, that was your new fandom, which is very fun! I would love this meme in real life.

The problem came in where so many people used the button that it broke and just started sending everyone to Stealing Harry, and like...I have fond memories of Stealing Harry but it's not my best work and nobody should be assigned to be a Harry Potter fan in this day and age.

So I decide to go off and find Astolat and demand she fix this but when I finally did (there was a whole quest) she turned to me like the baddie in a horror flick and said, "But that's the most random story there is" in a dark voice and I was terrified and woke up.

In the cold light of day I know there are more random stories by me on the archive, let alone by others, but I'm not going to try to get back there to argue my case. Pretty sure whatever I spoke to was actually the demon specifically assigned to plague fandom and not Astolat at all.

I'd say "get thee behind me, demon" but I know just how many porny fics on AO3 begin with that premise. (I've written some.) Begone foul spirit, and take your Satanic Panic with you!

This made me laugh so hard - of all the things a sleeping mind can offer up as entertainment, poor Copperbadge was visited by a demonic Astolat impersonator.

I wanted that Ao3 random button though.

SO I MADE ONE

It's a generator that produces a link to a random work page on AO3, using a number generator in the link.

Fair warning, it turns up 404 errors pretty often, because many works have been deleted. Keep clicking, you'll get something eventually.

Also, this is literally any work on AO3, so remember the back button and browse responsibly.

overstimmed at the pub

(btw soap is just having a heated convo with someone. no one is being mean 👍)

the notes are broken 😂

Reblogging partly for awesome computer shortcuts, and partly because I wish to once again take part in a Post That Broke The Notes. 

WAH

How???

Those wildlife photographers with animals climbing on them, but make it CoD

You just know he's smiling under that mask 😁

it takes ghost and soap a good few tries before settling on a sleeping position comfortable for them both when sharing a bed.

being soldiers, they’d never been afraid of getting close—of sleeping pressed against one another, of huddling for warmth, of minimizing occupied space. but that being said, the first time they sleep in a proper bed together, they’re both stiff.

it’s too… casual. too calm. there isn’t a reason for them to be close and yet they both itch to be.

they start back-to-back. then separate again. then attempt any possible combination of spooning. then ghost complains because he’s cold and the blanket is too thin but soap runs hot so he can’t have anything too thick. then they say fuck it and tangle themselves together, too the point where it’d be difficult to figure our where one ends and the other begins. that almost works.

finally, miraculously, the solution is found one morning after they agreed that it had been one of the best sleeps of their lives—soap draped completely over ghost like a weighted blanket, providing both heat and comfort to ghost while avoiding overheating all together.

it’s a little unconventional, but it works. neither ghost nor soap had ever been aware that sleep could be so peaceful.

Best sleep for them ever

IG : @emperorofmischief

I want to add this article here … they not only find it relaxing, it gives them control over their environment and it makes their stress levels go down!

I like the trope of can dance vs can’t dance.

Soap who grew up going to church dances and private catholic school dances and balls, so he knows how to dance pretty much any kind of dance.

Ghost hadn’t ever been to even a school dance. He preferred wandering around doing dumb shit like fighting or chasing bugs or whatever it is teenage boys do. He doesn’t know how to dance, never bothered to learn, he doesn’t even know how to grind to music at a club.

John doesn’t care at first, really. Simon doesn’t mind him dancing with strangers as long as he wanders off when it gets too serious. Simon encourages it, even, because he knows how much John loves to dance.

He’s seen Simon try to dance. Simon’s awkward and embarrassed and stiff and after a few moments he runs away. The most he does is settle his hands on John’s hips and let John dance on him rather than join in.

And, John loves him, so it doesn’t matter.

And John loves it when he’s in the kitchen and dancing while he cooks or washes dishes, and Simon is watching him with that stupidly soft expression. “Come dance with me.”

“I cant dance,” Simon says softly. He leans against the counter, teacup gently held close to his chest. John just continues swaying, holding his arms out and wiggling his fingers. “There’s no music either.”

John does a spin and gathers Simon’s tea, setting it gently on the counter. Simon chuckles quietly. John pulls him away from the counter, settling Simon’s hands on his hips and wrapping arms around his neck to pull him closer. “It’s just swaying.”

Simon shakes his head a little, looking down at their feet and trying to keep the pace up. It’s adorable how Simon struggles to keep up the slow circling motion, the way his eyebrows scrunch together when he misses a step. John bites his lip to hide a giggle when Simon nearly trips. “Honey, it’s swaying.”

“It’s not my fault i have two left feet and horrible balance.” John gently grabs the hair at the back of Simon’s neck. “Fuckin’ dumb.”

John hums the beat of a song he doesn’t remember the words to. “Stop over thinkin’.” John moves a hand to his face and cups his cheek. “Look at me.”

Simon looks up from their feet. “I don’t wanna step on you.”

“You wont. And if you do it’s okay.”

Simon frowns. “I cant dance.”

“Just sway to the beat.” John hums a little louder, dramatically swaying with Simon. Simon’s frown flips into the upside-down smile he has when he’s mildly embarrassed or insecure about a particular thing.

“We’re gonna fall.”

“No we wont.”

John isn’t sure how long he hums the song, or how many times they almost fall from Simon tripping over his own feet, but it’s fine. The kitchen smells like lasagna in the oven, and Simon has started humming too.

They’ll have to take a dancing class for their wedding. John doesn’t mind.

the "canon isn't real we make our own rules" to "i am begging you people to revisit the source material" pipeline

For me it’s the same idea as the “know the rules before you start breaking them” thing for art and writing-it lets you break them deliberately

If you’re wondering what the whole drama regarding tieflings is in the Dungeons & Dragons fandom: basically, capitalism ruined tieflings, and for once that’s not even slightly a joke.

Tieflings were first introduced as a playable species in Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, via the Planescape campaign in 1994. At the time, there were no particular rules regarding what a tiefling was supposed to look like. The text explicitly stated that their basic physiology could vary wildly depending on what their fiendish ancestor was, and one of the first major Planescape supplements even included a table for randomly generating your tiefling’s appearance, if you were into that sort of thing.

This continued to be the case up through the game’s Third Edition. However, when the Fourth Edition rolled around in 2008, the game’s text suddenly became very particular about insisting that all tieflings looked pretty much the same. Some campaign settings even provided iin-character explanations for why all tieflings now had a standardised appearance. Understandably, this made a lot of people very annoyed.

There was naturally a great deal of speculation concerning what had motivated this change. It was widely cited as “proof” that Dungeons & Dragons was trying to appeal to the World of Warcraft fanbase – which was nonsense, of course; nearly all of the Fourth Edition’s allegedly MMO-like features were things that popular MMOs had borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons in the first place, and to the extent that tieflings’ new look resembled a particular WoW race, it was in that they were both extraordinarily generic.

In reality, it was a change that had been lurking for some time. Though Dungeons & Dragons is directly published by Wizards of the Coast, Wizards of the Coast is in turn owned by Hasbro, and Hasbro has long regarded the D&D core rulebooks as a vehicle for promoting D&D-branded merch – in particular, licensed miniature figures.

This was a bugbear that had reared its head before. When the Third Edition received major revisions in 2003, Hasbro corporate had ordered the game’s editors to completely remove any discussion of how to improvise minifigs for large battles, and replace it with an advertisement for the then-current Dungeons & Dragons Heroes product line. Implying that purchasing licensed minis wasn’t 100% mandatory simply would not do.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably already guessed where this is going: tieflings having no standard appearance made it difficult to sell tiefling minifigs, as any given minifig design would only be suitable for a small subset of tiefling characters. In the brutally reductive logic of the corporate mind, Hasbro reasoned: well, if we tell tiefling players that all of their characters now look the same, we can sell them all the same minifigs. So that’s what the game did, going so far as to write justifications into several published settings for magically transforming all existing tiefling characters to fit the new mould!

This worked about as well as anyone who isn’t a corporate drone would naturally anticipate – and that’s the story of how capitalism ruined tieflings.

Here’s that table, btw.  I really dig the art in the old Planescape books.

Oliver Stark about the negativity concerning Buck's bisexuality

also im just fucking cracking up at oliver going "at the beginning of the season I was going to play buck as having a sexual awakening whether the writers were doing it or not" and that translating to buck looking at eddie with the most down horrendous blushy heart eyes possible in every scene cause WHAT would he have done if tim didn't decide to make it canon. at some point he would've been in a scene with eddie and marisol and you would just see buck in the background gagging. he would give that boy Hanahaki disease in the name of character development.

#another reason to hate Fox

Ghost finds out Soap has a lot more piercings than he thought (some of them don’t make sense, shhh I think think they’re neat hehehe)

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

Once again, people being jerks make everyone else pay the price.