Off the prompt "cuddles."

So, okay, you know how Marvel Movieverse, aka Earth-199999, is: Iron Man, Thor, Cap, Hulk, Avengers, but not X-Men or Spider-Man, those are not getting the tie-in Phil Coulson in your movie?

It was bothering me that searching Marvel movieverse or Marvel movies pulled up everything, including lots and lots and lots of XMFC, which, you know, weren't tagged Marvel movieverse, they were tagged X-Men First Class, but they got wrangled in. I submitted a support request about it, and AO3 responded by creating a new tag:

Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, which of course no one has used yet, but if you tagged for the individual films in the series, it sorts in. So I guess--keep tagging for the individual films, or use their new Marvel Avengers Movies Universe tag, but know that "Marvel movieverse" is going to continue to be treated as a general catch-all and not be separated from the X-Men or Spider-man series in AO3 wrangling.

(I would vote using Earth-199999 or Marvel 199999, since I know people do use 1610, 616, and 3490 at times, but um, apparently most people didn't go geek out at the universe numbering system like me. And no one has tagged 199999 on AO3 at all. I AM A GIANT GEEK. MOVING ON.)

It hit yuletide length, so I figured I was morally obligated to post it to the archive.

Title: The Secret Lives of Muses
Author: jmtorres
Fandom: Vorkosigan, Dresden Files by allusion, and Meta, meta as hell.
Summary: In which Gregor wants to hear all about Ivan's adventures in the author's head.
Word Count: 1056

I may have mentioned in the past about Ivan being the only muse who hides from me. In the back of my own head. In other fandoms. Where he gets his just desserts. (Hiding from your writer, honestly.) azurelunatic asked if he could be convinced to talk about that time in Chicago, and the answer was--I definitely could not convince him, but he won't lie to Gregor. And I'm not above using that against him.

Gregor, at least, forgives me.

Fic on AO3.

Answer: Apparently.

I am frustrated by how people keep using the AO3 tag "Alternate Universe - Canonical" in a way that makes no sense to me. Like, they use it for things that I would just call Alternate Universe. To my mind, a canonical AU is one that makes an appearance in the canon, like:

--the classic Spock's Evil Beard universe
--any of the eleventy billion universes Stargate discovered via the mirror device
--and also that alternate timeline where no one discovered the Stargate and they all had sad, unfulfilled lives as ESL teachers
--or the thought-universe where Daniel went mad with power and blew up Moscow
--or the one where Rodney wears leather and is secure enough to go by Mer
--frankly Stargate had rather a lot of them
--*points up* the universe of my icon, that one episode of Andromeda where Rhade killed Dylan and the entire series was his journey to um, time travel suicide
--"unrealized realities" shown to us in Farscape, like the one where Scarrans took over the Earth in history or the one where everyone wore each other's make-up
--or like, I guess if you wanted to stake a claim on a particular episode of Sliders and write about the universe where sexism worked backwards and Quinn got slapped on the ass in his temp secretary job
--or that dream universe in Supernatural where their mom didn't die and Dean had a hot nurse girlfriend
--or that one time bisexual vamp!Willow wandered into Buffy's universe from next door

Right?

*breathe in, breathe out*

But since it seems that a lot of people are not using the Alternate Universe - Canonical tag in this way, and are using it as like, I don't know, "this AU is an 'I changed one decision from canon' AU and not a 'they are all girl scout cookies' AU or 'I transplanted them to the age of sail' AU or 'suddenly, there are dragons' AU" --I guess that is how they are using it?

That being the case, wtf tag could one use to indicate the first case outlined here--the AU whose existence was presented in canon? I tested "canonical AU" and it has been wrangled to point to "Alternate Universe - Canon" so that's out, which, fuck, that's what I use. And it becomes meaningless and impossible to find the thing I actually want when it's all wrangled together. Damn it.

I finally figured out how to find more than one author's Harry/Bob on AO3.

You have to call Bob "Hrothbert of Bainbridge."

*headdesk*

Left a note asking the wranglers to link those up and possibly giving TMI about my reading habits.

In other news, the sky is blue.

AO3.org redirects to archiveofourown.org YAY LESS TYPING

(eta: this was a suggestion I made. so my happiness is inflated by ego.)

Longtime readers of my journal may recall that I once ran a fic exchange for the Vlad Taltos and Paarfi novels about Dragaera by Steven Brust, and relatedly, an lj community named valabars. I am now attempting to kickstart the community on dreamwidth: valabars; and to get the ficathon fic archived on AO3 (if you wrote fic for that ficathon back in 2005, you can read how to post to the Valabar's collection on AO3 here).

But! This community is not just for the oldtime members who survived my first travesty of an attempt at running a fic exchange! It is also for anyone who thinks they might enjoy participating in a fic exchange for the Dragaera books in the future! Because AO3 automates so much that I might actually make the damn thing annual! If there is interest! I promise to use fewer exclamation points in the future. Really. I'm slightly drunk right now, is my only excuse.

Also, for anyone who wants to talk about the Dragaera books!. I myself just finished reading Iorich. ( spoiler? )

Who's with me?

So I was typing tags in on stuff I'm posting to AO3, and I typed "safe sex" in on a story in which Jack confirms Gwen and Owen have been using condoms and you know how AO3 suggests canonical tags? The only canonical tag it suggested for "safe sex" was "Unsafe Sex."

What.

Apparently the canonical tag that means something close is "Safer Sex," which I don't get? Is this a terminology change in sex education? Like how STDs have become STIs since I was in high school? Or... what?

I've been complaining to viridian5 about it and she mentioned that some of her tags have changed (like character name formats) or vanished from her stories. Is that a result of tag wrangling? If so, WTF? The way I understood tags and tag wrangling on AO3, the idea was you could tag however made sense to you, and tag wranglers would link tags that meant the same thing so a search for one would bring up linked others--but your tags would still be your tags.

So confused.

I more than doubled what I have up on AO3 today, though I am still far from getting all my work up.

Biggest pain in the ass: the fluffy marshmallow arc, now titled Alchemy and Other Lies, an epic ot3 wip for Fullmetal Alchemist that I was hunting down all the odd bits of on DW and LJ to provide appropriate reference and linkage.

I have to say, I kind of miss the days when I was multi-fandom enough to write Weiß Kreuz/Firefly and Taltos/Getbackers and Highlander/Earth: Final Conflict at the drop of a hat, all in one month. Like, seriously. I wish I could open a prompts post to any fandoms I've ever written and be able to pick them up again. Even aside from that, though, I think I used to write a lot of instant reaction fic to movies and books that didn't become ongoing fandoms for me, like Howl's Moving Castle and Logan's Run or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Random surprise of the night: vampire het chan desk porn. (Random surprise of last week: angel/demon porn.) Hey, guys, weird fact, I actually occasionally write porn.