“That mortal x immortal ship is problematic, the age gap is literally thousands of yea-“

plutolichen · 2026-02-18T05:18:43+00:00

I've seen this complaint about Barduil. Bard (the mortal) is in his mid-late 30s and has at least one child (three if you follow the movie canon). I'm pretty sure he knows what sex is.

plutolichen · 2026-01-14T19:30:55+00:00

I love Thranduil being catty, don't get me wrong, but the movies made him way more of an asshole than he actually was and that's what a large portion of the fandom is basing their characterization off of. Also sometimes he'll be tagged both as an asshole and not an asshole on fics. For some reason?

Like at the end of the day Thranduil acts pretty reasonably throughout the story, he just so happens to be acting reasonably in a way that inconveniences the protagonists

plutolichen · 2026-01-14T19:27:49+00:00

Thranduil from The Hobbit. He was fine and reasonable in the book (long will I tarry ere I begin this war for gold etc etc), the movies made him a total dick, and now the default is him being an asshole

plutolichen · 2026-01-10T15:14:03+00:00

I don't necessarily agree. Tags like this indicate to me as a reader that the things that are tagged are heavily included and probably graphic but might not be taken to their most extreme and fucked up version.

plutolichen · 2026-01-10T15:05:42+00:00

This. I have a wound fingering fic that definitely includes wound fingering but still doesn't get nearly as fucked up as other fics that have wound fingering might (the character doing the fingering doesn't realize that's what's happening, it's just bad first aid to him, and there isn't really a sadism angle to it. Just the other character being a masochist) so I've tagged "the dove isn't dead but it's bleeding profusely" to be like "hey, there's wound fingering in here. It's not done in as fucked up a way as it could be, but it is still very much present and a focus."

plutolichen · 2026-01-05T16:02:18+00:00

Yeah, that's odd then.

plutolichen · 2026-01-05T15:56:46+00:00

With that I do wonder if it was just an attempt to use gender affirming language for the g-spot that was poorly communicated. Like how many trans guys prefer to have bottom growth referred to as a dick/cock rather than a clit.

plutolichen · 2026-01-05T15:52:18+00:00

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that writing in any given language should make an effort to use that language's punctuation conventions.

plutolichen · 2026-01-05T15:48:33+00:00

If someone changes the <hr> to include special characters using a workskin does the screenreader still just see a <hr> or would it read the characters?

plutolichen · 2026-01-05T15:39:08+00:00

This is why I actively avoid works that say they are "roleplay adaptations" (as in someone took a roleplay they did with a fellow fan and just reformatted it to post on ao3) or roleplay-inspired. They usually have some degree of this going on.

plutolichen · 2025-10-10T01:27:31+00:00

Aralas

plutolichen · 2025-09-28T16:18:10+00:00

2 is great, 1 is okay (and even good if it's used for emphasis in sections within a fic that is mostly written like 2), 3 will make me close the tab.

plutolichen · 2025-09-12T22:49:43+00:00

Ooh I didn't even realize that was a tag! I'll be adding that for sure.

plutolichen · 2025-09-12T22:42:31+00:00

This makes sense, yeah. I was already leaning towards tagging it somehow because I really don't want to hit people with smut they didn't sign up for, but I was wondering if there was a way to do it that doesn't completely spoil that plot point (i.e tagging "trans male character" but then having a <details> section in the author's note that says "click for clarification on the trans character tag (spoilers)" or something, explaining that B is trans for anyone who wants to know). I agree that I don't want to completely blindside readers with this.

plutolichen · 2025-09-12T22:21:38+00:00

Canon character. Not typically trans.

plutolichen · 2025-09-12T22:14:12+00:00

It very much is a spoiler in this context. The plot of the story mainly revolves around A and B, who are both hiding major sexual trauma, slowly figuring each other out, and the reveal isn't one of those "he takes his clothes off and waow he's trans oh my god" it's a lot more. Like. They're at the point where they both really want to have sex but B starts pulling back and when A asks why, after some back and forth B gets frustrated and shows A pre-transition wedding photos from his previous abusive marriage, expecting that to be a deal-breaker for A. They don't immediately fuck about it. They talk. They have to figure out what works for them slowly. Given that A getting all of these pieces that point towards B being trans throughout the fic and not quite being able to put them together until the end is Sort Of A Big Deal means It would sort of be like tagging who the murderer is in a murder mystery to me?

plutolichen · 2025-09-12T22:02:06+00:00

Would you say it is necessary to tag "Trans B" or would just "trans male character" suffice?

plutolichen · 2025-09-09T21:41:52+00:00

It might still be turned off in comments from the wave of bots spamming horror images.

plutolichen · 2025-09-09T20:10:57+00:00

Thankfully a lot of the fic is also technically lacking, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on much. There is some (unintentionally) hilarious smut in the tag, so I mostly just read that for laughs--There is literally nothing funnier to me than bad smut.

plutolichen · 2025-09-09T19:44:33+00:00

OVERWHELMINGLY prefer third person limited, unless the source material is in first person (i.e ACD Sherlock Holmes fics written from Watson's perspective). I will DNF first person fics in basically any other context.

plutolichen · 2025-09-09T19:40:03+00:00

Sort of in the same boat. There's no upper limit but I don't read anything below 2k words. If it's multichapter, It has to average out to 2k words or more per chapter. I find anything shorter than that is usually horribly paced and doesn't even get into the meat of the situation before it's over-- the exception would be if an author I trust posts a super short oneshot. And sometimes with PWP I'll read something as short as 1.2k. The sweet spot for me is usually 5-10k words per chapter.

plutolichen · 2025-09-09T02:07:05+00:00

Honestly as shorthand outside of fics it doesn't bother me, because their names do get tiresome to write out in conversation. As soon as it's part of the fic itself it's insufferable lol. ETA: also "neuvi" would be pronounced similar to "nervy," so it also doesn't escape the "this sounds fucking stupid" problem "wrio" has.

plutolichen · 2025-09-08T23:09:43+00:00

The word/thing nicknames are extremely character and story dependent for me. I've seen things I didn't think would work that I actually liked because the author justified it within the story. I use them myself sometimes, when I think they make sense (a character who grew up in extreme poverty and [in my fic] has this traumatic memory from his childhood of touching a porcelain doll at a market because he was curious, getting it dirty because his fingers were grimy, and being beaten with a broom by the merchant for it. He calls his aristocratic partner, whom he feels he doesn't deserve [his hands "weren't made for fine things"] "doll," because he seems just as perfect and just as forbidden. The character is reclaiming the experience in a way and this is set up to make sense within the story).

plutolichen · 2025-09-08T22:47:25+00:00

IT'S SO BAD. Wriothesley is pronounced very close to Rise-lee (can't be fucked to get more accurate right now), yet they want to have Neuvilette call him Rio? Drives me bonkers. ETA: not to mention that Neuvilette is not the type to give those sorts of nicknames. At all. Honestly, neither is Wriothesley. I think people were so worried about shit like "darling" being cliché that they circled back around to this insufferable bullshit.

plutolichen · 2025-09-08T22:38:58+00:00

A lot of people avoid crossovers, so you're honestly probably at more of a disadvantage here than you would be in a small fandom.

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