It Occurs To Me The Guy With The Starfleet Badge Could Use A Vulcan Persona, And Dress As An Elf, Ears

An interesting demonstration of how the human brain works.

But also something of a lesson regarding perception, and the unreliability of subjective perspective versus objective reality.

You can be extremely certain about how you perceive the world, your "lived experience," that which you "feel it in my heart." But that doesn't mean it's actually true. And it doesn't mean we have to endorse it, or ignore or outright deny objective reality.

That's a "you" thing, not a "we" thing.

Just how rarely have idiots like that even sampled knowledgeably-recommended examples of the genres they scorn?

people I still want to stab over a decade later:

Creative Writing Professor at a former college: Welcome to creative writing! By the way, you will not write fantasy, ghost stories, pranormal, or science fiction in this class, as this is a creative writing course.”

A+ trope-subversions short story

In fairy tales and fantasy, two types of people go in towers:  princesses and wizards.

Princesses are placed there against their will or with the intention of ‘keeping them safe.’ This is very different from wizards, who seek out towers to hone their sorcery in solitude.

I would like a story where a princess is placed in an abandoned tower that used to belong to a wizard, and so she spends long years learning the craft of wizardry from the scraps left behind and becomes the most powerful magic wielder the world has seen in centuries, busts out of the tower and wreaks glorious, bloody vengeance on the fools that imprisoned her. 

That would be my kind of story.

Seriously just a bit of pollen could make your cat sick within a matter of minutes. Stay far away from Easter lilies if you have kitties!

Thank you, /r/ProgrammerHumor, I love you endlessly.

Redditors competing to make the worst volume sliders possible...

[Image description in Alt Text.] [ID: Red, block text on a transparent background. The text reads: ‘Fanfic Author PSA’. The dark red Archive of Our Own logo is depicted on either side of the lettering. End ID.]

Many people who read fanfiction also require the assistance of text-to-speech or audio description software. Blind and visually impaired people are very much present in the fanfiction and fandom communities, but are so frequently disregarded or forgotten about.

If you are writing a work and like to utilise paragraph breaks, please do not use combinations such as the following:

[Image description in Alt Text. I have used an image to avoid what I will describe below.] [ID: Four examples of punctuation and icons that are disruptive when used as line breakers. The first line is a series of O letters. The second is a series of asterisks. The third is a series of dots, circles and stars. The last is a series of tildes. End ID.]

The software will read these combinations out loud letter for letter or symbol for symbol. For example; it would read to the user the word ‘asterisk’ six times in a row, or the word ‘tilde’ five times in a row.

This is unpleasant, confusing and often irritating for blind or visually impaired readers. If you would like a similar sample of what it would sound like, enter one of the above combinations into Google Translate and use the audio button.

Here is a post by @ao3commentoftheday​ that also details this difficulty and provides links to downloadable audio transcribers and fanfiction audio readers. These are also helpful for if you simply wish to listen to fanfiction but can’t find a podfic of the work.

Screen Reader Friendly and Screen Reader Compatible are AO3 tags that help visually impaired readers track and access fanfiction that is consciously created with their needs in mind. Please consider adding these tags to your works in order to expand the range of works that visually impaired readers can safely and confidently access.

Alternatives to these are:

Utilise HTML or embedded line break functions where possible, such as the feature on the Archive’s editing functions. Most screen readers should be equipped to understand these.

[Line breaker] can also be read by most screen readers. While not as aesthetic, it’s still functional.

Use an image divider/breaker and utilise the Alt Text or [ ] descriptor functions to label it as a line breaker.

Reminder: ‘liking’ this post does not spread awareness.

Rags and Bones cover

The Reichenbach-inversion fic I made this for is… unique, and hard to define. It's under 3K words, but very memorable. Its Sherlock "voice" is brilliantly done, and not quite sane.

Unfortunately, the hand-skeleton image I liked best in terms of position and wiring (why do so many anatomical models have the thumb wired too far up?!) is only available at a small resolution, so until I convince myself to use a different photo, this is as good as it gets.

One of my all-time-favorite fanarts from one of my favorite fanartists.

<- I’m with genius 

A Grimmauld Place cover I made for Vorabiza’s Drarry longfic “Secrets” https://archiveofourown.org/works/8184311/

My very first Tumblr post, so I can share it on the Archive! (I still haven’t figured out/remembered the simpler method I used to know to “Paste Transparent”, but I found a workaround.)

This is PERFECT! 😆😍 (And I'm very picky about portraits.) Oh, I didn't even notice the communicators at first! 😉🏅

Stargate: Enterprise

(This art was made for the Russian Fandom Battle - the Stargate Team. Check it out cos it has more cool art!)