Alright, to ao3's soon to be arriving Wattpad Refugees, a basic guide to general user culture:
1.) Unlike Wattpads vote system that let's you like each chapter, the ao3 equivalent kudos only allows one per work. Everyone is generally quietly annoyed about this. To engage with each chapter, you're heavily encouraged to comment. Trust me, it makes people's day.
2.) Ao3 has no algorithm. By default it's latest updated work first. You can find things to your taste through searches, filters and tags.
3.) 'No archive warnings apply' and 'user has chosen not to use archive warnings' mean two very different things. No archives warnings means the work is free from any content that could require a warning tag (character death, graphic depictions of violence, non-con, etc). User has chosen not to use archive warnings means it could contain any of the warning content, be it hasn't been explicitly tagged. Treat it like an allergen. No archive warnings apply is allergen free. User has chosen not to use archive warnings, may contain traces or whole chunks of the allergen. If you're likely to have a bad reaction, maybe don't take the risk.
4.) Speaking of warnings, ao3 has very few restrictions on the type of work that's allowed. Whatever your personal thoughts or feelings on that are, thats how the site is. You're likely to run across some dark subject matters and a lot of people are uncomfortable with reading that. You're well within your rights not like these works and have your opinion on whether they should be allowed, but harassing the authors of such works (or any works) is more likely to come back on you than them. Ao3 operates on a strong policy of 'don't like, don't read'. Use the tagging system to your full advantage to only engage with the kind of works you want to see.
We look forward to welcoming you all and seeing the fantastic works you create. Happy writing!
I just want queer safety and queer happiness
you’re twelve years old and you break your father’s hand when he hi-fives you. the first thing you learn is that the smallest slip up can hurt the people you love. your (foster) father smiles and says it’s okay (it’s not).
your parents are not your parents. the idyllic farming community that raised you is not your home. you’re a You-Don’t-Know-What from You-Don’t-Know-Where. all you know for sure is that you’re not human.
so you can fly. so you can run fast. so you can lift cars. so what? why do you even have this power? what should you even do with it?
your father said do what’s right, so that’s what you do.
you stop a robbery. the man’s knife shatters against your skin and you see the same fear in his eyes that you saw in your father’s when you were twelve. you catch a falling child before it can hit the water. his mother looks at you like you’re a god.
they love you, even though they don’t know you. the most powerful man in the world hates you because they love you.
you wanted to write when you were younger. you wanted to tell stories that needed to be told. you never wanted to star in them. you never wanted super-geniuses and demi-goddesses looking to you for advice; like you have any idea how to handle threats to reality itself. you’re just a kid from smallville who’s trying to do the best he can with what he’s given.
you try and get back to the farm as much as you can. it feels normal being back among the open wheat; where everyone smiles because you’re that nice Kent boy.
when you were younger, you pretended to fly, hands out to your sides and running through the tall grass by the river. it doesn’t look as beautiful from on high; the details get lost and the colors of your hometown blur together from a mile above ground.
the problem with flying is that it puts you so far above people you care about
Who cares what society thinks relationships should be like. Don't be afraid to have strange and unusual relationships with the people around you. Ask someone if they wanna pretend to date for fun. Kiss your homies goodnight. Buy your friends flowers and nice things. Who cares. Love your friends. Be a flirt. Be a whore. Be silly. Be free.
I need everyone to know that the ship Götheborg, the world's largest ocean-going wooden sailing ship, answered a distress call the other day.
Imagine waiting for the coast guard or whatever to show up and instead a replica of 18th century merchant ship pulls up and tows you to the coast.
Person: I want a story where witches do everyday magic, like spells woven into clothing and charmed earrings and spells made from knitting-
Me: *grabs their face* The Circle of Magic series. The thing you are describing is Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic series.
Me: There are four main characters, a white girl who has power to control and and bespell textiles, a black lesbian who can shape and enchant metal, a fat girl very easily interpreted as asexual who can control weather and cause natural disasters, and a possibly aromantic boy of color who can talk to plants. Their mentors include two queer women in a relationship and a black man. The entire series revolves around their friendship and supporting and drawing strength from each other.
Me: Along with this are very strong feminist themes, and not that exclusively white woman feminism, like real anti-racism, anti-classism, and sexual liberation stuff, along with storylines about honoring your culture while breaking away from what is traditionally accepted, anti-war sentiments and dealing with grief and PTSD.
Me: This is literally everything tumblr has ever asked for and it has existed for nearly TWENTY YEARS
Me: Please read it.
a little practice with colored lineart, used pink for this one!
commissions open!
""The index, Monroe said, is named in honour of Pratchett’s creation Sam Vimes, who in the Discworld novel Men at Arms lays out the “Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness”.
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money,” wrote Pratchett. “Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
The Pratchett estate has authorised the use of the name, tweeting its own Pratchett quote in support of Monroe’s campaign. “Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness,” wrote the late Discworld author in Men at Arms.
Rhianna Pratchett said: “My father used his anger about inequality, classism, xenophobia and bigotry to help power the moral core of his work. One of his most famous lightning-rods for this was Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch - a cynical, but likable, man who attempts to better himself whilst railing against the injustices around him. Some of which he’s had a hand in perpetrating in the past.
“Vimes’s musing on how expensive it is to be poor via the cost of boots was a razor-sharp evaluation of socio-economic unfairness. And one that’s all too pertinent today, where our most vulnerable so often bear the brunt of austerity measures and are cast adrift from protection and empathy. Whilst we don’t have Vimes any more, we do have Jack and Dad would be proud to see his work used in such a way.”