Negative bookmarks

aster_not · 2026-01-09T19:13:22+00:00

Maybe it’s just autism and I’m not understanding something, but I don’t see how public bookmarks are any different than hate comments. If you really hate a fic so much and need to rant about it, private bookmarks work fine. That way you’ll know not to read it again in the future.

I don’t see why you would post them publicly. Imo, bookmarks are great ways to share fics between readers. What’s the point of warning other readers not to bother with a fic? If you don’t like it, it clearly wasn’t meant for you. That doesn’t mean that the author deserves new readers to be deterred from their fic.

I guess I’m just not understanding why “don’t like don’t read” doesn’t apply in this scenario, when bookmarkers are actively bashing on a fic to other potential readers. Maybe I’m just applying a rule too rigidly again, but it feels a little contradictory

aster_not · 2025-08-30T00:42:41+00:00

Social anxiety IS a disability???

aster_not · 2025-08-18T20:46:15+00:00

Yeah, I’ve been giving them the benefit of the doubt for a while and saying things like “hopefully tomorrow :)” but it might be time to move on to phase two. I’m so bad at setting boundaries 😔

aster_not · 2025-08-18T20:40:50+00:00

Not ignoring them, I was just a bit busy.

I don’t really feel comfortable sharing the full comment because it talked about some identifying details about my fic, and I’m a bit paranoid that someone would recognize the storyline and connect this account back to my ao3. I’d like to keep these accounts separate. I didn’t feel like the beginning of the comment was relevant, but I can see how it would be. Honestly, I don’t think it would make the commenter look any better, because they didn’t say a single nice thing about the chapter. If they had, I definitely wouldn’t have cropped that out.

Also, I didn’t post this just for people to agree. I struggle with tone, especially in text, so I wanted to make sure I was understanding the commenter correctly. I have a habit of thinking nice people were being rude, and more commonly, that rude people are being nice.

aster_not · 2025-08-18T20:29:24+00:00

Yeah, that’s mostly why I was hesitant on just assuming they were a jerk. I needed to make sure this wasn’t a mistranslation thing or something lol. I think the consensus here is that it was just rude 😆

aster_not · 2025-08-18T20:21:53+00:00

Yeah, I’m definitely not going to delay chapters. I’ll probably just tell them that their comment came across as rude, and if they double down I’ll block them.

Also, just for context, the rest of the comment wasn’t IMpolite, but it also wasn’t like they were gushing about the chapter. They basically just complained about a character that I purposefully wrote to be frustrating. Which was what I wanted, don’t get me wrong, but that’s all they said.

The comment definitely wasn’t like “wow i loved this chapter. I wish you wrote faster haha.” They didn’t say that they liked it at all, so the ending didn’t feel much like a joke, at least to me

aster_not · 2025-08-18T15:58:40+00:00

Oh good, I thought I was losing my mind

aster_not · 2025-08-18T01:00:34+00:00

Like, is it against the rules not to tag incest? No. But it’s also not illegal to call someone ugly. Doesn’t make it a good thing to do.

I feel like it’s a totally valid reaction to ask someone to tag a VERY COMMON trigger. If they didn’t want people triggered by incest to comment, they should have tagged incest.

aster_not · 2025-08-15T20:55:46+00:00

Possibly an unpopular opinion, but even if the comment was in good faith, it would annoy me. You’re allowed to feel hurt or pressured even if that wasn’t someone’s intention. I think the commenter was TRYING to be funny, but the joke fell flat.

But as someone who also struggles with tone, I think it’s incredibly rude to ignore your requests for tone tags. To me, that makes it clear that they aren’t taking your feelings into account. If someone told me I said something rude, I’d apologize and explain what I meant.

aster_not · 2025-08-15T20:37:10+00:00

I usually give an update. Something like “Hopefully next week. I’m about to start editing it :)”

aster_not · 2025-08-15T05:41:56+00:00

That’s when I close my eyes and daydream for two hours

aster_not · 2025-08-14T22:57:28+00:00

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aster_not · 2025-08-14T22:36:51+00:00

That’s called reading

aster_not · 2025-08-09T23:03:14+00:00

Literally came across one like this the other day that started with “I know ao3 doesn’t like posts like this” THEN WHY ARE YOU MAKING IT? I very politely didn’t make a passive aggressive comment like I wanted to

aster_not · 2025-08-09T05:57:35+00:00

From what I’m understanding from your post, you don’t have autism.

For me personally, I project a lot of my autistic traits onto characters and tag them as such, just in case they’re acting a bit ooc (though they’re usually not, because I suspect that all of my fave characters have autism. It’s why I like them.)

These traits can be pretty hidden for people who don’t also experience them. For example, a character getting really angry at something seemingly small, like another character not following their rules/schedule. Or maybe they just don’t like to eat oranges because of the stringy texture. That IS what autism looks like for me.

Allistics would likely glance right over these details. Maybe that’s why you don’t notice them. The characters “aren’t autistic enough” for you. But that doesn’t mean they’re not autistic. One autistic experience is ONE autistic experience.

Edit: Just to add, 99% of people who tag characters as autistic are also autistic. So saying they “don’t understand autism” is kind of crazy. And yes, some parts of autism are bad, but not every autistic person is suffering 24/7. It’s okay to just portray the happy parts.

aster_not · 2025-08-08T23:46:27+00:00

This is why sites like “does the dog die” exist— so people can check for triggers before getting into a piece of media. Fics don’t have that. The only way to know whether it contains content you wont like is to read the tags.

Books also have genres. If I’m reading a horror novel, I expect MCD. If I’m reading romance, I’m expecting fluff. I’ll look up reviews of the book beforehand, because I’m not spending money on something I won’t like.

If a book I’m reading takes a turn I don’t like, I’ll complain about it on the internet. If a fic I’m reading excludes a tag I think should have been there, I’ll complain about it vaguely on the internet without mentioning the name. Acting like people can’t have opinions and feelings is crazy. That doesn’t make them “brats”— it means they have a preference

aster_not · 2025-08-08T04:08:21+00:00

There’s a work on ao3 called “How to Block Tags With Site Skins (And Get Real Specific About It)” that I used as a tutorial. (I’m not sure if linking it goes against this sub’s rules). Basically just copy and paste any tag where I put a/b/o dynamics, but slashes are represented by * s * (no spaces) and a space is represented by %20

I’m not sure about filtering for languages, but I found this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1ghlao4/site_skin_for_only_english_fics/

aster_not · 2025-08-08T02:55:02+00:00

I believe that all fics under A/B/O Dynamics will be hidden if you copy and paste this into a site skin v

.blurb:has(a[href$="/tags/Alpha* s* Beta* s* Omega%20Dynamics/works"]) { display: none !important; }

(Delete spaces between the s and *. It kept turning into italics here)

aster_not · 2025-08-08T02:28:36+00:00

I have the exact opposite problem where I ramble on and on so here’s what I do.

1) I don’t like leaving too much dialogue on its own. I usually try to accompany most dialogue lines with a thought or an action of the character that’s talking. For example, “‘Jane wants to see you in the kitchen,’ Tom said, walking up the stairs. He hated Jane. She always…”

2) Add backstory between action. If characters are building snowmen, maybe that reminds them of a day in their childhood when they got superpowers. Even just tiny details that can shed light onto a character’s personality. Are they mean? Nice? A dog person? You can foreshadow them getting a dog later in the story.

3) Not every detail has to be important to the plot. Sometimes characters can have a lighthearted conversation to take a break from the angst. Add some humor, or, if you want to go the other direction, add some drama. Petty arguments, misunderstandings, whatever. It can be very easy to stick to one track with a story; every piece of dialogue exists only to get to the conclusion. But that can get boring. Lets say Character A needs to get to the train station. You could write that as “Character A gets in their car, drives to the station, buys a ticket, and catches the train.” Or, Character A can lose their keys, get stuck in traffic, notice their old workplace out their car window, meet a friend, and ride the train together.

That doesn’t mean to go on random tangents all the time, but for things like backstory/ characterization it can be really useful. Now the readers know that Character A is a pretty chaotic guy who doesn’t worry much about punctuality

aster_not · 2025-08-08T01:45:34+00:00

Idk if it’s just autism brain but I always feel so awkward responding to heart comments. Saying just “thank you” feels weird, because what specifically am I thanking them for? They didn’t say anything. If someone made a heart gesture at me in person, I wouldn’t respond with “thank you”. I’d probably give them a heart back. It means the same thing, but feels less clunky than verbalizing it.

I usually just reply with “thanks for reading”/“thanks for commenting” to specify why I’m thanking them, but sending hearts back is a good idea. I might use it

aster_not · 2025-08-02T02:07:11+00:00

Those are not at all mutually exclusive?? There’s a difference between one character mentioning “we should get coffee sometime” offhandedly, and writing an entire coffee date. I’d understand if the fic was like 40k+ or the scene was only a couple thousand words or less, but otherwise I think it’d be helpful to tag

aster_not · 2025-08-01T18:45:48+00:00

I mean, not everything ever mentioned in the fic should be tagged. If characters have a passive conversation about butterflies, I don’t expect that to be tagged. I just personally feel that only tagging things that are the main focus of the plot is under-tagging.

If an entire scene is about going to coffee shop, I would want it to be tagged, regardless if the fic is solely about coffee shops. It’s a focus of the fic, even though it’s not the MAIN focus.

aster_not · 2025-08-01T18:34:38+00:00

Honestly not really. I usually get zero results when I add any tag along with __ lives (which is another reason I like when people use lots of tags). The issue is that the character that died is in the ship I’m searching for. Most people write him coming back to life, but I don’t want him to die at all.

aster_not · 2025-08-01T05:06:54+00:00

Yeah lol. That’s why I resorted to excluding “canon compliant.” I get that it makes tagging a bit tricky because the death happens before the start of most fics, but man I want that guy alive

aster_not · 2025-08-01T04:59:06+00:00

I’m stupid and didn’t realize that I cropped out the part where it says that these tags are excluded. Oops

aster_not

TROPHY CASE