#like a fleeting mention to a background character eh you don't need that

[elytrafemme]

one day i might want to make a master post with all of my AO3-user tips because (and this is a toxic trait of mine ik) i get REALLY irritated with a lot of ‘advice’ posts that just repeat the same basic information in a patronizing way without offering like... actually specific input. 

and i think ao3 as a whole is a relatively easy site to use you just gotta get the hang of it. in a sense i would really liken it to tumblr because one of the things about tumblr is that you can’t just join the site and then hit an explore page directly, that’s not really how this place works, you usually have to populate your dash with blogs. with ao3 it is significantly harder to just search up ships and works imo, it’s best if you already have favorite tags and how you do that is finding specific fics and then going from there and exploring in a branch off method. so once you use it for a while it’s extremely comfortable and remarkably convenient it’s just not really the easiest from the get go.

#nightmare.personal #i think a LOT of people talk about like. don't over tag. but idk do people know when they should and shouldn't overtag? #that's a specific thing i think about because. i mean TLDR i think when it comes to characters and ships #you tag them if by removing them from the fic you would lose a substantial portion of the fic's content #like a fleeting mention to a background character eh you don't need that #but if a background character is not directly pictured but is repeatedly referenced then yes i do say you tag that #though you can note them as being mentioned and i think that's a tag that filters into their main so #just helpful as an indicator #also as i was saying earlier you can tag pretty broadly #bc ngl there are a Lot of Really Specific Tags on ao3 but they honestly lack a LOT of tags that i at least commonly use #derealization and dissociation iirc aren't formal tags there so i kind of do my best to tag that anyway and then #clarify in the beginner's notes. notes are SO useful #i think when you approach something like a series of drabbles in one fic that gets a little more difficult to explain but #i think you can find a way to manage that too #it would just mean only tagging the most critical components of the fic or things that are sweepingly occurring #so like a several chapter dump of drabbles might warrant a whump tag if like 4/10 are whump centric #but if like 1 character appears in the background of only 2 of them i wouldn't say tag that #also having a table of contents chapter or very descriptive (non artsy) chapter titles + beginner's note is super helpful