#<- for blacklists

[overtake]

Daylight - Taylor Swift [Insp]

#i don't actually listen to taylor swift but this just fits him so well #max verstappen #f1 #op #edits #f1edits #jos verstappen #<- for blacklists

[themetalvirus]

if you think cops will protect you when you need it, you're either delusional or white and wealthy!

never forget that cops are fifteen times more likely to perpetrate domestic abuse. over one thousand people have been killed by police in the past twelve months, and the number of police shootings has gone up every year for the past six years!

cops are a tool of the bourgeoisie to keep the underclass oppressed so they can continue to leech off of our work and suffering. cops are not your friends. always remember, do not talk to cops.

#exoticbutterstxt #doodles #idk if filler tags are still a thing but uhh #filler #tags #police brutality #abuse #shootings #<- for blacklists #last post on this subject!

[mishapen-dear]

tbh i think that even unwinnable fights should be winnable. some of the BEST fights i've ever run as a dm were ones i built kill the players (in a fun way. I had some cutscenes prepped so even the loss would be a different flavour of win)- but then they were clever bastards and managed to either win the fights or pull themselves out of trouble. I think it's perfectly fine to plan for a fight that players aren't supposed to win, but you need to let them. if they can't win, they can't lose, and the meaning of that encounter is diminished. do that too many times, and they stop trusting you to give them roleplay prompts and start expecting to sit there waiting while you drive the story for them.

but if they can win... if there is always the chance to win, no matter how impossible the odds, then they ALWAYS have hope. they always get invested. they feel the big emotions of success or the big emotions of failure, and you fucking Win as a dm/roleplay prompter/lead bastard.

#qsmp neg #qsmp crit #discourse #<- for blacklists #im not grumping or anything im just musing on like. the mechanics of why everyone is so upset about the latest fight #and how it can be avoided while still keeping these fights genuinely difficult and intense #its hard because there's so many players and they all have wildly different strengths and weaknesses #so someone who could take on the code easy needs that enemy scaled differently than someone who isn't a big fighter #but it's hard to do that in a world where they interact w the same enemy #and you only have so much man-power to cater to a big server like this one #and then you bring in the big powerful items that the players can and can't access but which the admins have ultimate power over #and the fact that some of the admins themselves have lag issues or aren't super great at pvp so they accommodate that with better gear #and it starts getting messy #but for the fights themselves yeah regardless of what armour or gear or killing-methods they use there should Always be a win condition #and idk maybe there was one and we just didn't get to see it #but if that win condition is 'parents sit in the safe room with their babies while the others are overrun' #then i think there are ways to build better win conditions #anyway i love game design and player/dm interactions qsmp hire me now i want to know your behind the scenes #jk im too busy to apply #but man. i wanna nerd out so bad that sometimes i think about it

[girlballs]

hey sorry for rickand mortis posting but. i'm pretty sure they killed rick prime halfway through this season of r&m because they're desperately afraid of keeping that thread around too long and being "cringe", aka "a serial drama". like theyve had rick make a couple jabs at that part of the plot and it's convinced me that they're reluctant to just have a genuine plot without it being couched in a bunch of stupid edgy bullshit and dick jokes because doing anything genuinely is cringe

#rick and morty #<- for blacklists

[phantasm-masquerade]

Me vs B*gleech - The Rhetorical Failure of Fantis

I know I tend to say debating reactionaries rarely gets you anywhere, but damn if it wasn't satisfying to run rhetorical circles around this motherfucker.

#hibiki//discourse #proship #youthlib #anti anti #bogleech #<- for blacklists #long post #csa mention #adultism #rape mention #paramisia #< just to be safe

[hustlerose]

#alcohol #<- for blacklists

[silkdong]

hi 2 ft. gf

#hollow knight #hollow knight silksong #hk hornet #hk lace #lacenet #Silkdong Art #tw drugs #<- for blacklists

[nobodymitskigabriel]

I understand that a lot of jack related dean criticism gets essentialized to dean bullying a defenseless toddler which is incorrect and often intentionally misrepresentative by people who just dislike dean. But when it comes to actually describing jack's relationship to the members of tfw, it's difficult for me to put dean on a level comparable to sam or castiel just based on their literal canonical actions in season 15. Like dean explicitly said that he didnt consider jack family. He apologized for the fact that jack heard it and that it was phrased so harshly but he never took it back. Jack craved dean's validation and dean made him believe that the most valuable thing he could do for them was die.

#✨️op likes dean and considers jack a young adult✨️

[figureofdismay]

the thing about the post-resurrection arc where Mulder is written as not know the baby is his and believing that he's been replaced in Scully's life professionally and privately, yadda yadda nonsensical characterization.... Is that if they wanted to have an arc about Mulder worrying the baby wasn't his, why didn't he, fresh from abduction torture, assume that it was the Syndicate that interfered with her? Scully canonically had that question and investigated it and "Dr. Parenti" so it's not like this would have been a shocking suspicion, why was the question Mulder had when he woke up "does she have a new guy?" and not "did they do this to you? were you taken, too?"

probably this was discussed to death at the time, and since, sorry, I always tuned out any s8 and beyond discussion bc the later stuff really broke my suspension of disbelief. But I'm writing a strange little post DeadAlive AU, and the thing that instinctively made sense to me was a freaked out Mulder waking up and seeing a pregnant Scully and saying "what have they done to you" because that's where his head would be. And I can't figure out why that wasn't what happened on the show 🫠

#txf s8 #<- for blacklists

[mimetolith]

thou shalt not crush, throw, or brutally mishandle

#a poem about being gentle to potentially insentient things #collage #art journal #multimedia #original poetry #collage poetry #robots #bugs #<- for blacklists #id in alt text

[scoobydoodean]

Irony at it's finest.

#that's as far as I got. #why on earth would I read the rest of this. #You want an audience in my inbox over posts you didn't fully read #then I respond to you politely and you send me a post telling me you won't read my reply. #Why on earth would I read yours? #what is the point of talking to me if you won't read what I say? Why would I respond when you tell me twice you don't want to hear from me #go drink some water and take a nap #also get blocked #hate mail #<- for blacklists

[mishapen-dear]

bad has been in a cell for HOURS. he's been going mad. he wants to kill everyone and he's losing track of time. he's filled the cell with animals. he played with a book and made it sing "BOUNDARIES???" to him.

then he got company. he calmed down. foolish has been hanging out with him for at least an hour. richas is rapidly clicking a lamp with him. he's not having a good time, but his family is there, so he's okay.

dapper is alone.

#she has her animals BUT SHES ALONEEEE #shes asleep now according to @v@ but. i dont trust that motherfucker. #alternatively tho fucking hilarious if she ends up hibernating thru the entirety of her kidnapping #that would be awesome #baby kidnapped so many times she knows how to deal with it by just taking a longass nap #qsmp #qsmp dapper #qsmp badboyhalo #child harm #<- for blacklists

[angeloncewas]

The fact that periods exist and I just have to live like this continues to horrify me

#its not even in a dysphoria way #its an oh cis men aren't on a 20-something day cycle #of intermittent horrible moods and sudden horniness #menstruation #<- for blacklists

[catlokis-blog]

Why the actual FUCK are you calling a minor sexy at your grown age???

i'm only 18 also that is my girlfriend

the fact that you're clearly trying to frame me as a pedophile for simply continuing a relationship i entered as a minor is disgusting & frankly you need to check yourself

#cats thoughts #cats asks #pedophillia #<- for blacklists #i dont like to respond to these kind of asks but i felt the clarification was important #framing me as a ''grown age'' and my girlfriend as a ''minor'' was so obviously choice words. we're not doing anything fucking wrong we are #two kids who started dating and surprise surprise the slightly older one turned 18 first

[silkdong]

hi

#I think she deserves to have a little weed #As a treat #Also mood #hollow knight #hollow knight silksong #hk hornet #Silkdong Art #tw drugs #<- for blacklists

[miralines]

Before I say anything, I just want to inform you that I just randomly came across your post browsing the discourse tag for something else. I don't know who you are nor what's happening with ao3 users here. I don't know if you wanted a deep(ish)dive into someone's thoughts and reasons for choosing fics based on kudos and hits ratio, but 100% ignore if you didn't! Sorry if I am intruding by doing this!

I come from multiple giant fandoms and when there are multiple fic choices with tags and summaries that I like, I do choose to go by kudos and hits ratio. Just to pick which one to check out first. I did notice however, that in smaller fandoms or tags this couldn't be applied because there's not enough fics, so I just read what I'm interested in most.

Why? Kudos signify how enjoyed the fic is to me, because usually the more kudos it has the more talked about it is on other platforms. Why would that be important? It's just that I enjoy exploring content made by others after I'm up to date with a fic. It's really fun to see people talk, theorize, make art and speculate or scream over things that will or did happen. It's giving me an opportunity to find people with similar interests and see what they make overall!

Sometimes though, if fic in a fandom or a tag that's incredibly popular gets hundreds of hits and very few kudos, I choose not to read it. This is based on a few bad experiences I had giving those fics a chance, where something in them made me uncomfortable or hard to read. I don't have any very specific needs when I'm reading fics, I just enjoy reading as a part of enjoying the fandom, so when I see the general readers avoid giving kudos in fandoms where it's very usual to have a lot on fics, I don't want to read that fic for my enjoyment.

I really don't know much about this, I'm sorry! But yeah, I basically use kudos to hits ratio to oriantate myself and avoid something I wouldn't like based on previous correlations I made. I don't know if that's wrong or upsetting for others, but if you find it that way, I would like to know why too and improve! Sorry for any grammatical mistakes I made!

Oh hi anon! I wasn’t expecting anyone to reach out like this, but thank you for taking the time to write out your thoughts! (Also. Please do not feel the need to apologize for grammatical mistakes. I do not believe in ‘correct’ grammar; as long as I understood you, which I did, I think you’re absolutely fine and using language as it’s intended!) (I am. A particular kind of nerd and not policing grammar is something I have Opinions about hence this tangent lmao)

This got terribly long, so I’ve put a tldr above the cut and divided the rest under headers for ease of reading.

Tldr: I see your points with regard to differences between large and small fandoms, and with the specific goal of finding “sub-fandoms” for particular fics. I still disagree that kudos-to-hits ratio is the best way to decide what fics to read, both because it isn’t an accurate metric of engagement and because I dislike the idea of using engagement as the primary metric in the first place. When I use A03, I prefer to sort by what’s recent and use the tags and summary to decide what to read, or to use the (excellent) search function to find what I’m looking for specifically.

I’d also like to note to anyone else reading: I doubt this will be an issue, but if anyone is rude to anon I’m going to turn off reblogs on this post. I know this is something some people feel strongly about, and discussion is fine, but this is absolutely not worth being mean to another human about.

Size of fandom

To begin my more thorough response: This is an interesting perspective– not one I entirely agree with, but I can certainly see how in larger fandoms with a lot more content it would be valuable to be more selective. For context, my main fandom is an obscure storytelling band with under 3k total works on A03, and these days I mostly occupy a niche of that fandom (one specific album) with only 128 works. The largest fandom I’ve been active in currently has 37k works on A03.

I don’t know what your fandoms are, but as some examples of bigger fandoms, Star Trek currently has over 100k works, Supernatural has almost 300k, and Harry Potter has nearly 500k. That is a big difference! I’m currently working on a goal to read every fic in my 128-fic niche (with some exclusion criteria), but in larger fandoms it’s impossible not to be selective. This is all to say– I definitely agree with you that the size of a fandom impacts how a person can and does interact with it.

Fans of fics

Your point about wanting to interact with other fans of a particular fic also makes sense! There was a particular fic series in my largest fandom that had a pretty decent following, and I still have friends from that sub-fandom several years later. If this metric helps you find fics that match your goal of having that experience, I can see how the kudos-to-hits ratio could function as a potentially useful metric, though I still think its usefulness is a bit limited for reasons I’m about to go into.

Kudos-to-hits isn’t accurate

I have two reasons for thinking that kudos-to-hits ratio isn’t the best way to determine what to read. The first is purely numerical. If you’ve been watching this discourse, you’ve probably already seen people discussing how users can only leave a single kudos, but may be responsible for 20-plus hits on a work. This is especially applicable to multichapter works, which in my experience are the fics that are able to develop their own following. If you want to sort fics by engagement, it seems like at the very least, using comments for the ratio is a more accurate measurement.

Using engagement as a metric at all

Secondly, though, I (and I believe, a lot of people) dislike the notion of using engagement as a metric to measure fics in the first place. I think the current discourse is partially due to some regrettable phrasing on the part of the OP of the post I was vaguing– if I recall correctly, they said that they use this metric to determine if a fic is “worth reading”. I think this phrasing was hurtful to a lot of fic writers who may not have large followings or a lot of engagement, but who work very hard on their fics and feel frustrated that this person implied that they aren’t worth reading. I have fics that are personal favorites of mine, but that I haven’t gotten a lot of feedback on.

Of course, this is just part of writing, and it’s an important skill for any writer (of fic or anything else) to learn to handle rejection or just lack of feedback. But I also think that particular post was phrased in a thoughtless way that interacted poorly with pre-existing insecurities (this is part of why I suggested that post was bait– the phrasing seems to me like a perfect storm to make writers upset and defensive, but of course this could also be due to the OP just being a bit careless with their words, and not expecting to have hit quite nerve they did).

There’s an excellent post here on engagement on fics and what a realistic assessment of “successful” engagement metrics are based on professional standards (which includes a stat about how Harry Styles, one of the most popular and successful current celebrities, only gets a 1:30 ratio of likes to views on his social media. I don’t know what ratio you’re using, but iirc the post I was discussing suggested 1:10). Personally, though, I worry about both authors and readers depending too much on statistics, especially in a broader cultural context when it feels like everything is performed, measured, and monetized. Most social media platforms have gone from a place to share with friends to a place to compete for attention and make money and fame off it. There���s a lot of cultural anxiety around that at the moment, which is another reason I think this discussion has gotten so big.

Why I disagree with using engagement

I think this discussion, at its heart, is a debate about what fandom should be, and I feel focusing overmuch on engagement statistics contributes to a fandom culture uncomfortably close to the commercialization of everything else on the internet. I feel that fic should be enjoyed as art (whatever art means) and not as a product. I’m not saying you’re personally approaching fic that way, but unfortunately there does seem to be something of a broader trend towards that, which troubles me.

As a writer, I would hope that when people come across my fic, they give it a chance based on the metatext information I give them in the tags and summary, the quality of my writing, and whether my work matches what the reader is looking for. Judging it based on the numbers feels reductive to me, and makes me feel like nothing about the work or passion I put in matters; just the popularity. My fics aren’t going to be for everyone, and I understand that. If someone comes across my fic and decides they’re not interested, that’s their prerogative. But I hope that potential readers don’t discount my work just because it doesn’t meet a numerical standard that, in my opinion, is extremely arbitrary.

My suggestions for what to do instead

As a reader, I default to sorting by what’s been posted recently, and then using the tags and summary to decide what to read. That’s what those things are designed to be used for, and I think they’re much more informative than the stats. Worst-case scenario, I start reading and then go back to the search. All I’ve lost is a couple minutes.

In large fandoms, this might be an inefficient way to search for fic, and I recognize that. I’d encourage you to try using A03’s (fantastic) search function to find what you’re looking for– you can both include and exclude fandoms, characters, pairings, and tags. I have come across people who don’t realize that A03 has no algorithm, and haven’t realized they need to learn to use the search function. This is understandable, given the state of most of the internet and what these (often young) fans have learned to use before, but I think learning to search and filter is a vital skill to develop. I have no idea if you’re in this boat, anon, but if you are, please check out the search. It is, in my experience, the best way to find what you’re looking for on A03, and can at the very least supplement numbers-based selection.

Conclusion

I don’t think you have a moral responsibility to stop using engagement as a way to determine what you want to read. Frankly, this isn’t that important. I don’t think you even strictly need to stop using kudos as the measure instead of comments, though I think that would be more accurate if you do prefer to sort by engagement. But I do think you could be surprised at the hidden gems you could find if you didn’t limit yourself to only reading fics with high ratios. I don’t know the nature of your bad experiences in the past, and obviously how you use A03 is up to you. But I think there are better ways to decide what to read.

Thank you again for reaching out– you’ve helped me understand the other perspective as well! I really do appreciate your explanation. I hope I’ve been as respectful as you have, and that I’ve helped you understand where writers who share my opinion are coming from. If you’d like to continue talking about this or respond to any of my points, please feel free to shoot me another ask or a message. I hope you’re doing well and that you have a nice day!

#not maintagging this either because I don't want to get too involved in the discourse TM #this ended up being a bit of an essay. I tried to cut it down and it just didn't work #discourse #<- for blacklists