never look back at your ao3 account

[melannen]

TFW you find out from a Tumblr post that someone you wrote fic about once has publicly stated different preferred pronouns than the ones you've been using for them

and then you go back to edit the fic and then remember there was already a NB character in it and what if it's super-confusing

and then you realize that no, actually, the fic now has three different characters that all use different pronouns and it's SO GREAT to not have to deal with that pronoun-confusion nonsense OMG.

Anyway so I have updated Girl of My Dreams to reflect SUE's current stated identity preferences. (I'm not updating it with anything else from their twitter, though, there lies madness.)

(That fic is probably the number #1 mismatch in my AO3 fic between "how much I like it" and "how many kudos it has")

I also changed the category from "F/F" to "Other", which made me realize that "other" is my second-most-common category tag (after "gen"). I also seem to have changed how I'm using it - apparently I used to use it to mean "mixed-gender multi-person ships" and "asexuality content or platonic life partners" and "contains non-shippy sexual content" where these days I would just tag those as whichever of the others is the best fit.

Anyway, other than those, here's what I've used the "other" tag for so far:

1. Implied explicitly nonbinary Loki/assorted unspecified Sakaarans
2. Male lycantant splice/genetically engineered orgy fairies
3. Enjolras/Patria
4. Doctor/TARDIS
5. Newt/Kaiju
6. Female cat/nonbinary dinosaur skeleton
7. Enjolras/Patria + Vimes/Vetinari/Ankh-Morpork
8. I think this was just "I, too, am confused by the shipping here"
9, 10, 13: Troll romance
11. Asexual m/m/f poly wolfbond
12. m/m/unembodied AI that uses "he" pronouns
14. m/f/canon genderfluid character
15. Various humans/various supernatural creatures as AU dragons in various sex/soulbond configurations
16. Ray Kowalski/the abstract concept of Winter
17. AU!Holmes deliberately being an asshole by being mysterious about his sexuality and relationship status
18. Presence of the Long Family
19. John/glowy ascended Ancients
20. Methos/the cultural concept of romance (hateship)
21. Elizabeth/energy-eating cloud of darkness

Comments

[dhampyresa]

A T-Rex skeleton on Twitter has stated their pronouns are "they".

THE FUTURE IS AMAZING.

[melannen]

SOMETIMES THE FUTURE IS WORTH IT.

Also SUE's entire twitter account is AMAZING, if it had existed when I wrote that fic the fic would have been a lot longer (and contained more ham.)

[lannamichaels]

I'm never sure how to use Other, but those reasons are the best :D

[melannen]

It really does make me feel like we need different tags for "ship including person who just doesn't happen to be male or female" and "ACTUALLY other", but I'm not sure how we could even do that, and then again, maybe the lesson is just that I should write more ships with unremarkably nonbinary people like SUE to go with all the glowy clouds and abstract concepts.

[umadoshi]

That list is a thing of beauty. *wipes a tear*

[melannen]

It makes me happy.

[sylvaine]

Your pairings are the best pairings. :D

[melannen]

Pairings that are not m/m or m/f or f/f are always the best pairings, it's truth.

[snickfic]

I am bewildered and irritated that there is no "poly" or "threesome" option on Tumblr. Sometimes that is specifically want to find, and not everyone includes it in their freeform tags!

[melannen]

That's what I've been using "multi" for but there's no consistency so it's not very useful to filter on. :/

[snickfic]

Yeah, lots of people use "multi" to refer to multiple non-intersecting pairings, like Steve/Bucky and Jane/Darcy together, for example. Which is not helpful. :(