Ramblings of a sapphic writer

ARMAND COME PICK YOUR BABY UP HE LONELY

“A Fragment out of Time”, published in 1974. Kirk / Spock. page 1 page 2

So imagine you've pasted your fic into the Rich Text option at the bottom of the upload page and you want to add your annotation. (I'm using the dropdown option because it's so easy peasy and mobile friendly, but there are others.) Click the HTML button at the top-right of the Work Text section.

Find the lines of text you want to squeeze your annotation between. [Enter] to make space. And you're going to type:

<details><summary>Whatever you want the header to say</summary>Whatever you want the additional text to say</details>

(In html formatting, you'll have one command at the start telling it what to do and a second command at the end with a slash to tell it you're finished and closing out.)

So for my example if I put:

<details><summary>Side Note:</summary>I wanted to mention something here.</details>

My fic will look like this. (I use dark mode.)

And it will behave like...

Your readers can collapse it again after reading. You don't have to put header text ("Side Note:") if you think that's too distracting. Do a hyphen or something else small between the summary command if you want. Your choice.

Note that this would also be good formatting if you want to include warnings for your fic but don't want to spoil anything, thus making it optional for people to click the dropdown at their discretion.

After playing around with it a bit I've settled on this:

<details><summary>text of the paragraph</summary> <blockquote><em>annotation</em></blockquote></details>

As you can see it also works on mobile:

I added the blockquote and emphasis tags to differentiate the annotation from the rest of the text. Unlike La_Temperanza's hover method, which was mentioned most often in the notes, this one doesn't require a workskin, allows for longer commentary, and, most importantly, it works on mobile, without moving the clicked line to the top of your window!

Big caveat: <details> only works if the user is reading on ao3! If they download the fic as epub, all text will be there but only the <em> tags survive. If they download it as pdf the whole annotation vanishes and the arrow becomes unclickable!

thought about Grace’s eureka claps

+ bonus:

*the bookshop, the last thing in existence*

aziraphale, writing the new book of life: how is your part coming along?

crowley, scribbling: yeah, good *shows what he's written* what do you think?

aziraphale, exasperated: crowley, you can't just write 'nebulas'. what happened to your beautiful creativity?

crowley, waves his hands: yes, alright, give me a minute. there's a lot of pressure here in case you haven't noticed

aziraphale, worried: we don't even know if this will work

crowley, flipping through pages: it will, angel. just imagine the universe created by us

aziraphale, smiling: our own alpha centauri

crowley, scribbling away, excited: the humans, our humans, will be back, angel. and they'll create and invent

aziraphale, sighs: oh, and we'll get to live it all again, crowley. how we should have

crowley, pacing, muttering: this has to work...it has to

*an indefinite amount of time later*

aziraphale: *sets the book down*

crowley, holds his breath: it's done?

aziraphale: *nods, glances at crowley*

crowley, swallows: if this hasn't worked...

aziraphale, approaches crowley and takes his hand: at least we tried, my dear. and it was worth every moment

*the two turn to face the bookshop doors*

crowley, takes a shaky breath: I love you

aziraphale, tearful, squeezes crowley's hand: oh crowley *sniffs, wiping away tears* I love you, too