Tagging multiple versions in AO3 is redundant, because of the tag wranglers. Those Victuuri variants up there would all get parsed by the system as "Yuuri Katsuki/Viktor Nikiforov," because that's the canonized tag and all the others are basically redirects.
i think gay sex would go to a different tag than anal sex, tho, because you can have perfectly heterosexual anal sex
Why did we stop doing spoiler warnings? Back on livejournal, spoiler warnings were super common. They'd be up there with the other basic information and warnings. Fic for a show might say spoilers through [episode] or spoilers through season 4 or spoilers for everything. Sometimes there were even estimates as to the severity of the spoilers. I really really miss that, especially with huge sprawling canon situations or ongoing stories. I pretty much find myself looking at the last update timestamp on a fic and comparing it to the approximate year of release for wherever I am in the canon, if I even know that. It's a bother and means I skip over a lot of fics that would be perfectly fine for me, because there's just no way for me to tell.
god, i dunno that it's all that similar a topic, but I'm remembering this Kylux fic I saw once that had a summary like "Kylo wrestles with the morality of his past actions and his thoughts on how one might make amends for the unforgivable" tagged as "Boy's Love" and "Boys Kissing". A bit of tonal dissonance there, my dudes.
I am not a fan of supersoft nearly conflict free g-rated f/f fics. So I get why this genre exists, because it fulfils a need of a certain sector of readers and writers. Reading those I get ..bored. The characters sometimes read as flattened versions of themselves. I am fine with low conflict fic, if I get a sense of who the characters are as people or what the world they navigate in is like. I do miss spoiler warnings (I see fics that tag episodes now to signal they are related to those episodes, episode reaction related tags, or episode fix it tags).
I think it definitely depends on your fandom, though. A lot of the...honestly, a lot of the anime fandoms I'm in, and the fandoms that are anime-adjacent, in that they're populated mostly by people who are also in anime fandoms (say, JRPG fandoms), tend to still do this--not all the time, but still pretty often. I think it's because we're kinda used to people being at different points in canon depending on if they're reading the manga or watching the anime, and whether they're waiting for the legal release or pirating it. Like, just to give examples, My Hero Academia and FFXV are pretty decent about this, and they're both relatively young fandoms. That said, yeah, I feel like it's fallen out of fashion in a lot of movie and TV show fandoms, for all that I don't go there that often.
Nrgh. Followed a link to a fic that was on a list of recs, and I mildly regret it; I ended up noping out several chapters in. An AU where Sirius and Lupin set up shop near where the Dursleys live, so they can keep an eye on Harry (because in this AU where Sirius didn't go to Azkaban and was either a war hero or at least considered a perfectly respectable citizen of a very respectable family, he was still somehow unable to get custody of Harry? This is not explained by the point where I noped out), only to kidnap Harry once they realize the depth of how shitty the Dursleys are treating him. Followed by Dumbledore going "oh, you can't take him, the blood protection", followed by Lupin going "nah, it's fine bro, Harry and I are related" (which, the fuck they are - Sirius and Harry, sure, but you're gonna have to work a bit to explain to me how Lupin's related). And then Lupin's going "oh, I must fuck off to a different continent, as I do every so often in my search for Peter, who I am 900% sure is not dead. My certainty comes from the spoopy dreams I keep having where I see that scene out of PoA where Sirius is going on about how they have to find and kill Peter", followed by "oh shit, now that we have Harry, I must return to the Shrieking Shack, because there is nowhere safe for me to stash myself as a werewolf otherwise, never mind that I've been fucking around as a werewolf with Padfoot for years now and we must've come up with some solution that doesn't involve a werewolf charging through the streets of Little Whinging every month despite there being no Wolfsbane yet". (Because it's not like they're wizards who can soundproof and ward a room to make sure a werewolf can't bust through it. Nope. No alternatives here.) Cue brief interlude where Harry sneaks through the Floo with Ron (because he's been yanked out of regular school and is getting homeschooled by Molly with the rest of the Weasleys now), which ends with Snape rescuing a lost Harry (who has played out the "whoops, ended up in Knockturn Alley" scene 4 years early) and segues into "well, Harry ought to get some interaction with the Wizarding World in a very carefully monitored way" and results in Harry going to Hogwarts 'occasionally' (the sense of timing is...really weird; by the point I noped out, it had allegedly been three months since Sirius and Lupin had swiped Harry, but the narrative acts like Harry's been with them for at least a year and going on Hogwarts visits for a good four to six months including a sleepover in the Gryffindor boys' tower) and being introduced around as Snape's nephew, Parvus Rana. Which feels like it's a piece pulled from an entirely different fic, tbh. Then suddenly Bellatrix is out of Azkaban, and she and Peter are attacking Harry and Neville, and...granted that this is getting shown from the perspective of Remus and Sirius (and occasionally Harry), but there's no explanation for why Peter would come out of hiding, bust Bellatrix out of prison, and then go for either of those kids. (The fic also has Remus and Sirius, and...basically everyone else except Harry bashing Peter's magical ability and intelligence, and states that Lucius Malfoy went after Peter and is supposed to have killed him "because none of the other Death Eaters really trusted Peter, and thought he had betrayed their Dark Lord". Author, no - Lucius Malfoy was, at that time, a reasonably sane person who took a look at the landscape of the time and went "nope, definitely wasn't a Death Eater, definitely got Imperiused to do shit" as soon as he could. If anyone in that camp is going to lose their shit and go after Peter for a perceived betrayal of Voldemort, it's Bellatrix.) Intersperse a lot of Sirius going "bluh, I don't want my family's house, I stg I'm gonna just sell it to Andromeda for a sickle, why would I ever want one of the most heavily-warded houses in all of magical Britain now that I have custody of a small child who needs heavy security?" and bits with the Weasley family and the Tonks family, and a heaping helping of Sirius and Lupin shipping with a side-course of "and they're adoptive dads!". I didn't mind the adoptive dads part, but the romance and smut didn't come off well for my tastes; it felt like the author was banging two dolls together and going "NOW KISS!" Honestly, the actual writing was decent? Just...too many bits that bugged me for me to keep going. Like, Sirius not having gone to Azkaban is a very interesting AU idea! But if he's considered a respectable citizen, you need to explain why Dumbledore would've gone for dropping Harry on the Dursley's doorstep and gotten away with it if Harry had any legal relatives in the wizarding world who could lay claim. Canonically, he only pulled it off because he could argue that Petunia was Harry's closest living relative and he needed to be out of the public eye for safety's sake. If Sirius is still a free man who made it through the war? He's probably considered a war hero, and he's also got the Black family name and money to back him if he decides to legally fight Harry being moved somewhere. And Lucius Malfoy is not going to go off the rails and attack Peter - that's Bellatrix's attack pattern, and there's no reason she'd have known where he was quickly enough to find him before Sirius did; Voldemort very specifically didn't tell anyone where he was going, it's why Bellatrix later led a flying squad of nutters to go torture the Longbottoms to see if they knew anything. And if Sirius has a house across the street from the Dursleys, it makes way more sense for Harry to move in there, and not try to cram two adults and an eight year old into what the narrative describes as an apartment that's too small for all three of them, and what I can only envision as being something like if you put up walls in a studio apartment. (Granted, I am somewhat crap at mentally picturing spaces unless there's clear description and I'm having a good brain-day, and I haven't been having a good brain-day lately in terms of focus. But Sirius and Lupin both complain several times to each other that the apartment isn't big enough for all three of them.) I mean, sure, have Harry stay at the more-warded location until after wards are put up on the place he'll be staying permanently, that makes sense, but why are these wizards cramming into a tiny space and not actually doing anything to fix it? (Doylistically, I know the answer is "because it forces them to share a bed". I want the Watsonian explanation for why Sirius and Lupin have both forgotten they're wizards and can expand their living quarters any way they want.) Plus, like - if Peter has hidden himself with the Weasleys as Scabbers (which seems implausible, given that Arthur and Molly were Order members and Sirius or Lupin are likely to visit at any time), then why would he blow that up by first, going and springing Bellatrix out; and second, attacking Harry? Peter's main priority has always been his personal safety and survival. He doesn't give a fig for dignity (see: willingness to toady to Voldemort, despite all that Snakeface does; see: willingness to grovel to all the kids, in hopes that one of them will step up to keep him from getting murdered by Sirius; see: willingness to stick around near the Weasley twins in the form of a small animal, because it beat being on the run and in hiding as a dead man) so long as he makes it out reasonably intact and alive. (See: willingness to fake his own death.) If Peter had latched onto one of the Weasley kids as Scabbers in this AU, he'd have skulked off quietly and run to Australia or America as soon as he saw Lupin or Sirius start showing up where they might spot him. (Also, where the hell is Lupin getting leads on Peter's whereabouts from? Is he looking it up in the classifieds? ...you know what, I now headcanon that Lupin's leads on this are all the result of Peter dropping hints for his old buddy, and ensuring that Lupin goes on the longest goose chase ever in the hopes that Lupin will wear down enough to give up on the search.) Peter isn't going to bust Bellatrix out of jail - she's the worst wild card in that deck, and everyone who would know says that she wasn't particularly sane before she went into Azkaban and her stay there didn't improve matters. Plus, he's not about to let someone else take credit for his heavy lifting if he's about to try and bring back Voldemort (which - why? no one asides from Bella and her fellow fanatics, all of whom were dumped in Azkaban, wanted him back; they were happy to have him gone and weren't about to fuck up what they had now that they could start trying to rebuild their lives). The other thing that's bugging me is from an entirely different fic, which was fantastic asides from one thing which bugs the shit out of me (but not enough for me to have stopped reading): the author has, at one point, Snape recall that he was forced to witness Bellatrix Crucioing Neville's parents into insanity because not going with her on the trip would have gotten too much attention from Voldemort. It's perfectly in-character (for the fic) and it makes sense....except for the part where that's not how the timeline goes at all, since this fic is an AU where the timeline doesn't change until second year (where Lockhart's attempted mind-wipe works more successfully, if not with the result he'd hoped for). And in the canonical timeline, the Longbottoms didn't get attacked by Bellatrix and her flying squirrel-bait until after Voldemort fell - they got attacked around November or December, soon enough after the fall that everyone was still on high alert and they got caught almost immediately, but with enough time between the fall and the attack that Bella and the squirrel-bait were all able to plausibly argue an Imperius defense up until after they got caught torturing two war-hero Aurors for information on where Voldemort was and what had happened to him. (...I wonder if Bellatrix is why Lucius' defense is considered thin; she used the same one, after all, and then went and blew it up.)
i've read the fic you're referring to, and the weird thing is that i didn't even notice this, but you're right. i think it's because a fair amount of fanon got the idea that the longbottom torturing happened either just sometime during the war or like, at the same time (or close to it) as voldemort going after harry? like i've def read fic that basically has voldemort order bella & co to go after neville (or just "the longbottoms") while voldemort goes after harry. (with neville not actually getting hurt because he was with his grandmother, or because bella & co got torture happy and/or someone else showed up in time to save neville but not in time to save his parents.) i'm honestly not sure how this became widespread fanon, but it's widespread enough even i didn't notice that it wasn't the actual canon timeline. weird.
@turtleDove i have also tried and failed to read that fic. I can't understand why that guy's stuff is so popular, all of his writing is mediocre at best but it shows up on every reclist for every fandom that he's in. /grumps
for what it's worth, the fic in question (the one about sirius and remus taking harry from the dursleys) was written in 2004. i wasn't able to finish reading it either, but in general i like the author's more recent work; i think he's improved a fair amount since then. (that's just my opinion tho, it's alright if you disagree :p. he is kinda a BNF tho which i think leads to a lot of his stuff getting recced, whether good or mediocre.)
Yeah, it slips in subtly enough that it doesn't actually disrupt anything? Which is probably why it didn't bug me enough to nope out (although it comes near the end of the fic anyways, if I'm remembering right). It's just...not correct, for the timeline the fic is using. Well, if I remember right, we didn't find out when the Longbottoms got attacked until...I want to say Prisoner of Azkaban? But it might have been Goblet of Fire. Possibly GoF, since PoA gave us the bit about the prophecy, I think? Which, without knowing when the Longbottoms got attacked, meant it was plausible for Voldemort to have swooped in to deal with the Potters himself while sending Bella and some other highly-trusted Death Eaters to deal with the Longbottoms. And that's long enough to give a piece of fanon legs, if it's not something that's been pretty blatantly jossed - and the timeline in HP is a mess in various points anyways, because Rowling never went back to double-check her memory of things. Yeah, that sounds about right, considering the whole bit with Remus claiming he's related to Harry. And I think there were a lot of fics in a similar vein popping up around that time, too. (I definitely remember one where Harry was being raised by Sirius and Remus, and where he got that ghost-knife and was later attacked by Peter. But it's long enough ago now that I don't remember if it was by the same author or not.)
can someone explain the "- freeform" tag to me? what information is being communicated by #homestuck - freeform that isnt communicated by #homestuck?
I have no idea on that one. Maybe like, stream-of-consciousness stuff? A gripe of mine is when things suddenly just completely change mood out of the left field in stand-alone fic between characters that isn't part of a series, and there's no like...explanation for it? If things go for nice and cordial to hostile, I generally like to know...why...
From what i can tell From a past experience trying to input a tag without the freeform but getting the freeform anyway Perhaps the tag didn't register properly in ao3 and appended freeforn for no proper reason i can discern?
My sister and I were watching MST3K the other day and I remember thinking the movie they were sporking was doing that very thing. Best I can guess, they either understood that a story is supposed to have conflict without having a good concept of how conflict actually happens, or there was a disconnect between what the script writer(s) conceived in their head(s) and what actually got put on the page.
"Freeform" is a component of the AO3 tagging system, so it gets added on by the archive, not by users. There are 4 categories of tags: Fandom, Relationship, Character, and Additional/Freeform. If a tag is already canonical in one category, then if it's used in another category that category gets affixed to the end by the archive. So if someone sticks "Homestuck" in additional tags, since it was used as a fandom tag first, it ends up as "homestuck-freeform"
