I don’t know about others but the only reason I put both is so that whichever someone clicks on, they will find my fic. So if there is supposed to be rules, I guarantee you that no writer knows these ones. We can barely get people to comment, you think we’re going to specifically choose & or / ? Hell no.
I’ve been in fandom for twenty years, and “/” means romance and “&” means no romance was literally one of the first things I learned. It dates back to Star Trek fanfiction of the 70s. I’m boggled by the fact that anyone who’s been reading fic on AO3 for more than like five minutes wouldn’t know that, and I’m curious as to what fanfic community you come out of.
I don’t think that tagging with both is actually going to get your fic in front of more readers. People looking for romance often exclude the “&” tag if there are too many gen fics tagged with both. People looking for gen often exclude the “/” tag if there are too many fics with both. So rather than putting your fic in front of twice the people, you are in fact more likely to get your target audience ignoring your fic because it has a tag they don’t want.
Also, by overtagging you are more likely to annoy potential readers away from your fic than entice them. A fic tagged both & and / better have both romance and a ton of platonic interaction between the two characters, like a slow burn romance friends-to-lovers arc. If it isn’t, I’m going to be very unhappy because the author lied to me with the tags to try and trick me into reading a fic with deceptive advertising.
When I’m in a fandom and see tagging where some of the tags don’t really apply and are just there to get it in front of more eyes, I’m going to assume one of two things. Either the author is a newb who doesn’t know anything, or the author is purposefully spamming the tags because they don’t care about lying to their potential audience and think that “spray and pray” is an effective tactic. In the first case, their writing probably will not be very good, so why bother reading their fic. In the second case, the fact that I can’t trust the tags to be accurate means I’m not going to read it to see if it’s interesting even if it has a tag I like. Chances are, that tag isn’t actually in the fic anyway, and even if it is, by spam-tagging the author is making the archive harder to use for everybody. Why would I reward bad behavior with attention? No. Far better to mute the author and move on.
More to the point–and no, I will never stop harping on this, because we have GOT to stop leaving our strongest points in the drawer–it doesn’t matter if you heard of this convention before joining AO3 or not, because it’s in AO3’s tagging FAQ.
[id: the “How do I tag a romantic or platonic relationship?” section of the tagging FAQ here.]
“But Jo,” you may argue, because you’re wrong. “There’s no way to find that without digging through site FAQ menus, and that’s really inaccessible!”
sure
except
that when you go to post a new fic, and you go to put in those relationship tags, you see this
[id: the Relationships field]
and that tooltip, the one THERE TO EXPLAIN HOW THE FIELD WORKS, links to the Relationships segment of the tag FAQ, which explicitly lays this shit out.
I don’t care if you don’t know fandom history. I don’t care if you’ve never heard a goddamn word about the spirk shippers. I don’t care if you’ve never been exposed to fandom culture in your life. It is, frankly, not fair to expect those things of everyone.
What is entirely fair to expect is that you will READ THE INSTRUCTIONS PRINTED NEXT TO THE FUCKING BOX, actually. Forget fandom conventions. It genuinely doesn’t matter whether you agree with or respect fandom conventions. This is a site policy.This is explicitly how tagging on AO3, specifically, works.
I just got an ask about a Native spirit that many Natives have asked monsterfuckers to not use.
It starts with a W.
People from the culture it’s from do not say its name because in their culture, saying the name summons the spirit. Out of respect for my friends from that culture, I do not say/type the name either.
I would kindly ask you not put that creature in my ask box in the future. I know the person that submitted it likely didn’t know so there’s no hard feelings. It’s alright. I’m not upset.
I’m not really the best person to educate folks on this topic and I wish I had some resources on why that’s not a good thing for non-Native people to use for their fiction.
I’m sure even my wording here isn’t great. I know the spirit is from a specific Native culture (there’s a lot of them, for those that didn’t know lol) and I can’t remember which one(s) and my brain is still fuzzy from being sick.
So if any of my followers are familiar with this issue, please feel free to share the info of why this isn’t good.
Again, I understand the person that sent the ask likely didn’t know all this. I’m not upset. I just think it’s worth mentioning.
Ugh I’m trying to research to find resources of actually Native folks saying it’s bad for non-Native folks to use this spirit and instead I’m just finding Hot Takes like
“The *** may be a figure from American Indian mythology, but it belongs to all of humankind”
No? Like haven’t we (colonizers) taken enough from Indigenous people without also appropriating their spirits and misusing them? Fuck right off.
I’m too sick to deal with this shit today.
Hello! Hi! Yes! Maybe I can help here!
Here are some very basic things to help people understand this:
The spirit in question, for those who can’t recognize it from the op (which is fair), is the w-ndigo (plural w-ndigoag). It is specifically from the Algonquin people, but it’s also been spread to other Anishinaabe tribes and cultures.
(Quick side note: Algonquin is a specific tribe while Anishinaabe is the cultural group. Think of it like a country in a continent, like how Japan is an individual country but shares some cultural aspects with some other East Asian countries because of cultural exchange and shared histories.)
We (Anishinaabe people) aren’t actually supposed to say its name, like the op said, especially in winter or at night. We believe that its name has powers and can call attention to it. Many people online censor it, while people irl will use other terms for it to avoid saying the name.
Usually, we only talk about it in detail at specific times. It’s not something to be casually discussed or used as a fun character in movies and games.
(We’re also taught not to whistle outside during winter nights because that calls its attention. It’s a running joke in a lot of Anishinaabe circles.)
The most likely theory behind its appropriation is that people who were invited to Anishinaabe story circles and other cultural events, with the expectation that they would behave respectfully, took our sacred stories and shared them without permission, butchering them in the process.
Everything about it in media is wrong! So, so wrong! In every way! The only accurate thing about in media is that it’s a cannibal spirit, that’s it.
It’s not a deer. It has never been a deer in Algonquin or Anishinaabe folklore and the idea is wild to me. Where did that even come from? Its actual physical description varies but it’s always humanoid and that’s as much detail as I want to get into here.
It’s very much a local spirit, based around the winters Anishinaabe tribes experience in the Northern US and throughout Canada. Trying to put it anywhere else… doesn’t make sense. This is aimed at you, Hazbin Hotel fandom. A w-ndigo would die from heat exhaustion in New Orleans.
The w-ndigo itself isn’t just about cannibalism, it’s about greed and selfishness and how taking everything you want makes you stop valuing the people and world around you and stop caring about who you’re hurting. A person doesn’t have to be a cannibal to become a w-ndigo, they just need to be a selfish asshole (and, depending on who you ask, Anishinaabe).
Many moden Anishinaabe people see the w-ndigo as just a warning and a metaphor; Potawatomi author Robin Wall Kimmerer used it as a manifestation of climate change and environmental destruction in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. Other Anishinaabe people, particularly those of us who are more spiritual/religious (like me!), believe the w-ndigo and other spirits to be real beings who deserve respect and care, not just scary stories.
And finally, this spirit is sacred to us. No, sacred doesn’t always mean good. The w-ndigo is a vital part of our cultures and our histories and it deserves respect. Our peoples have been massacred, our children kidnapped, our dances and languages and religions criminalized, our lands stolen, our spiritual leaders murdered. Please just leave our spirits alone. Let us keep hold of what little colonization and genocide has left us.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if the phrase “self care” doesn’t resonate with you, try calling it “system maintenance” and see if that clicks.
These are Bags of Holding for sale at a relatively cheap price. The catch? They’re used - plucked from the bodies of fallen adventurers. They contain random amounts of money or jewels, but are mostly stuff with 15 items of random things from the players handbook.
Characters cannot preview the contents of the bags. Items from the bags cannot be resold at that vendor for more money. And above all ALL SALES ARE FINAL.
