Spicy Cheese

"*****smut marked with asterisks so you can skip!*****""

Don't. Don't do this.

You let readers know what your fic contains through proper tagging and rating. Content warning notes at the top of the chatter are also great. You can even summarize key "this is the plot relevant stuff you missed of you're skipping this chapter" notes at the bottom too! This is a much smoother reading experience.

This is HELL on screen readers which is a disability access issue. Screen readers will read out every single asterisk you put, which I have seen done as entire page breaks. It's an awful reading experience. Please just don't.

Readers do not need their hands held through the reading experience. If they're enjoying the fic but don't care for smut, they can just skim until it gets interesting again. If they REALLY don't like smut, you warned them. There's a back button. You don't have to do a special song and dance isolating out the specific parts you think might be "icky". (If you think those bits are icky and don't like writing them, consider just don't! Fanfic is a hobby we do for fun and you don't have to write anything you don't find enjoyable. There's plenty of readers for gen fic and smut free ship fic).

Please, please don't try to span the entire page with whatever symbol you're using for your scene breaks. It takes an eternity for screen years to get through, and typically has me noping out of even the most interesting stores.

Instead, use just three (or fewer) make. Three is standard, and does the job without making your story unreadable.

It is hell

It is absolute hell

From navigation to listening to the voices

It's just awful

Since then I've tried to write with screen readers in mind because the number of websites that think about accessibility is SO SO SMALL

If you don't believe me, use NVDA which is a free accessibility tool. Otherwise you have to spend thousands of dollars for a slightly better one. Then try to navigate a website.

damn near every time I mention im working on a fic or piece of fanart, he gasps in hopeful anticipation and asks "tamatoa and heihei?!" and he always acts bitterly disappointed

Zoey and Mira absolutely love them. They're hilarious and stupid.

Rumi hates it.

Because when those 'your mom' jokes are said to her, she can't tell if Celine is goofing or admitting something.

Celine: "I'm sending the rollie pollie, watch out!"

Rumi: "The what?"

Celine: "The spicey meatball."

Rumi: "Spicey-What?"

Celine: "The grenade!" *distant explosion*

Rumi: "Why not just say grenade! What? Are you five?"

Celine: "Yeah, five inches deep in your mom."

Rumi.exe has stopped working.

I often see women talk about how they experience constant sexual harassment starting around their tween years, and they talk about it as something universal ("Women have to deal with constant sexual harassment starting age 12")

notably, none of this actually involved an adult being attracted to or soliciting a minor. what it was, was puritanical assholes eyeing up my body as if i, a child, was some sort of succubus, just waiting to seduce people. and it was entirely done by people pretending they were somehow PREVENTING abuse by doing this.

As an adult who is often still treated as a woman in public, harassment has been pretty rare. i don't know if that's because i'm pretty reclusive, because i avoid those puritanical communities like the plague, or because i'm just lucky. i have been catcalled once or twice, and one time some guy told me i smelled good, but these sorts of things are honestly far less upsetting than what i dealt with as a kid. they usually just make me go ???? okay??? and move on.

bottom line: my own experience certainly does line up with the idea that girls start receiving a lot more weird harassment after puberty, but probably not in quite the ways you might think.