The Starker Library

(As Used on Ao3) by Eiiri

Also available as a PDF here. This thing is 13,000 words.  The PDF is recommended.

Intro: What is Metatext?

Metatext is everything we fanfic authors post along with our story that is not the story itself: title, tags, summary, author’s notes, even the rating.

It is how we communicate to potential readers what they’re signing themselves up for if they choose to read our story, how we let them make informed decisions regarding which fics they want to read, how we get their interest and, frequently, how they find our story in the first place. A lot of metatext acts as a consent mechanism for readers, it’s the informed part of informed consent.

Since most of us who write fanfic also read it, we understand how important this is! But, for the most part, no one ever teaches us how to use metatext; we have to pick it up by osmosis. That makes it hard to learn how to use it well, we all suck at it when we first start out, and some of us may go years without learning particular conventions that seem obvious to others in our community. This creates frustration for everybody.

Enter this guide!

This is meant to be a sort of handbook for fic writers, particularly those of us who post on Archive of Our Own, laying out and explaining the established metatext conventions already in use in our community so we (and our readers!) are all on the same page. It will also provide some best-practices tips.

The point is to give all of us the tools to communicate with our audience as clearly and effectively as possible, so the people who want to read a story like ours can find it and recognize it as what they’re looking for, those who don’t want to read a story like ours can easily tell it’s not their cup of tea and avoid it, nobody gets hurt, and everybody has fun—including us!

Now that we know what we’re talking about, let’s get on with the guide! The following content sections appear in the order one is expected to provide each kind of metatext when posting a fic on Ao3, but first….

For those of you who haven’t seen this announcement, tumblr recently made some changes to the iOS version of the app, purportedly to comply with Apple’s content guidelines. These changes took effect on Dec 21, starting in version 22.5.1 of the iOS app. As some of you may recall, Apple’s strict guidelines were the driving force for the infamous Great Purge of 2018, which coincidentally also happened around this time of year, but it seems banning all of the female-presenting nipples wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Below is a summary of the important changes. Note that these changes technically ONLY affect those using the iOS app. If you’re accessing tumblr through a different app or operating system (Google Chrome, Android app, etc) it won’t affect you directly but it will affect your followers who use iOS so you should definitely be aware of it.

The list of banned tags has been expanded. As before, there’s no way to know which words or phrases have been banned until you try searching for them, in which case you’ll either get no search results or the following message: “This content has been hidden because of potentially suggestive or explicit content.” You may think this doesn’t concern you if you don’t post explicit material, but do not make the mistake of expecting the banned tags to be logical or reasonable. I’ve already encountered multiple completely innocuous posts (random fandom gifsets) that seem to be hidden on iOS for no discernible reason.

Blogs that have been flagged as explicit can no longer be viewed. Previously, flagged blogs just had their posts hidden from searches, but if you knew the username you could still visit it after clicking through a warning about sensitive content. Now you can’t access it at all.

Likes and reblogs from blogs that have been flagged will no longer show up in your notes. This one won’t affect most people’s user experience as much as the others, but it does mean you may be missing notes. It’s unclear if likes and reblogs from flagged blogs will still count towards the overall note total (and only be missing from the activity feed and note viewer) but I suspect that’s the case.

THE BIG ONE: ANY POST TAGGED WITH A BANNED TAG WILL NO LONGER SHOW UP ON YOUR DASHBOARD. Previously, if you tagged a post with a banned word or phrase (even if the words were used inside another tag), that post would not show up in searches, but your followers would still be able to see it on their dashboard. Now those posts are hidden from your own followers as well. This includes both original posts and reblogs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the real kicker: even if you don’t tag something with one of the banned words, if the OP used a banned tag, any reblogs of that post will not show up on anyone’s dashboard (on the iOS app). The only saving grace here, and I hate to even call it that, is that the blocked posts are still visible if you visit a blog directly or if you have post notifications turned on.

As usual, tumblr was extremely unclear and evasive about all of this in their official announcement. Not surprising, of course, since if more people were aware of these new draconian tactics I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be more of an uproar about it. Tumblr claims that these changes are somewhat temporary and that they are currently working on something that will allow for a less restricted iOS experience, but they refuse to say what that something is and when it will be implemented. And let’s just say, considering their track record, I’m not hopeful.

All of this is horrible and infuriating for many reasons, but the worst part is how insanely counterproductive it is to creating the “safe” environment tumblr (or more specifically Apple) supposedly wants.

Tags have always been used for both blog organization and filtering purposes. Tagging posts with triggers and content warnings is a common practice that gives users the ability to filter out content they may find upsetting or just don’t don’t want to see for whatever reason. By choosing to ban a bunch of unlisted “sensitive content” tags, all they’re doing is encouraging people who want to share that kind of content to come up with alternative less well-known tags or simply not tag that content at all anymore if they want it to show up on their follower’s dashboards, thereby making it more likely for someone to encounter it when they didn’t want to.

IT EVEN HIGHLIGHTS THE ULNA BONE  

Arm view: Red = Deltoids (all three heads are in one color) Blue = Latissimus Dorsi Green = Biceps Brachii Yellow = Triceps Brachii

Forearm: Red = One of the wrist flexors Blue = Brachioradialis

Back view, left side: Red = Deltoids (all three heads are in one color) Blue = Latissimus Dorsi Green = Infraspinatus, Teres Minor, Teres Major Yellow = Trapezius (all groups one color)

The Verge article. FMT article. Variety article.

Quotes of note: "Massive global IP and data catalogue." "Data-backed storytelling." "A new era of data-backed entertainment."

I'd like to prefix this by saying that none of these are obligatory, and that I'm making this solely because I've seen multiple people discuss wanting to be able to show more appreciation for creators/fanfiction but not knowing how. So, here are a few suggestions on things you could do;

Kudos This is the one-click button that lets the creator know you enjoyed their content. When you hit the kudos button, the creator gets notified and your kudos gets added to the numerical statistics of the work. Its a super easy way of saying; 'Hey, I enjoyed this, thank you!'

Comment Comments can be anything from a single emoji to a detailed account of your thoughts and experience reading the work. There's no minimum word count, there's no obligation to include specifics when commenting. You can even just mash the keyboard and leave it at that.

Recommend/Share This is the absolute best thing you can do for a piece of content, in my opinion. Especially here on Tumblr, where circulation and the lifespan of content relies heavily on it being shared. You can reblog the upload, or you could review the fanfic, or you could simply say; 'I really enjoyed this work, here's the link so you can check it out.' You don't even have to do it publicly. You can just message your friends.

Moodboards Making a moodboard is easier than you think! Most smartphones have a 'collage' option in the camera gallery, and there are multiple free sites online or on the app stores that let you create moodboards. Honestly; the hardest thing about moodboards is finding the perfect images or deciding where in the moodboard to put them.

Edits The term 'edit' encompasses a wide variety of media. It could be a still edit, where you've photoshopped a 'base' image to look like the characters. It could be a fan video, where you've curated clips and audio to make it resemble the fanfic content, it could be gif edits too. The options are near limitless. You could also make 'cover posters' or 'banners' for the work, which can be as simple as putting text over a base image.

Fanart There's a common misconception that only detailed, multi-layered digital art is 'worth it,' especially in terms of fanart for someone's fanfiction. That's a bold-ass lie. You could draw stick figures on paper and any creator worth their salt would adore your efforts. All art has value. It doesn't have to be extravagant or perfect.

Aesthetic Boards If you have a Pinterest account or an account on a similar platform, you can curate images inspired by the fanfic or images that represent/fit the aesthetic, plot or events of the fanfic. This might even be especially helpful to someone looking to make a moodboard of the work.

Playlists You can create shareable playlists for the work as a whole, specific chapters or specific events/scenes. Who knows, maybe you'll even be the reason the creator or another viewer discovers their new favorite song!

For @the-mother-of-lions​​ and anyone else that may find this useful here is a tutorial on how to use channel mixer on photoshop or photopea to adjust colours. Channel mixer allows you to change colours within existing colours using the principles of red/green/blue light rather than the colour wheel, which lets you add colours that don’t exist to a gif, or change the distribution of colours.  

This tutorial refers to hue/saturation and selective colour adjustment layers, which you don’t need to to understand this tutorial. However, they’re extremely useful to use together with channel mixer, or to try if you can do what you want to do without channel mixer, which is frankly a little bit fiddly and complex. 

I’m going to turn this:

Into this: 

I can’t use hue/saturation or selective colour because the lake has no existing colours to pick up on, and even the sword barely has any. I can fix the sword with saturation or vibrancy, but that won’t change the lake. I’m going to use channel mixer to add colours instead. Let’s get going beneath the cut. It’s long, sorry, because it’s a slightly complicated concept and depends on a good understanding of colours and light.