omg i'm also in the midst of my first ever scandal watch! i just hit s4 and every episode is a RIDEEE

i hope you enjoy it! it's probably my favorite thing i've ever written though i'm maybe a little biased ☺️🧐

i will probably delete this because i HATE discourse always but i realized some of you might be curious about why authors DON'T tag, and it bothered me that people thought we were doing this to "trick" readers into reading dynamics they don't like when that couldn't be further from the truth.

does that mean authors like me, who don't tag for t/b dynamics on our E rated fics, might not get as many hits? sure, but it should also mean that the people reading our fics don't feel strongly about the dynamic either. it's as much a way for authors to curate their audiences as a t/b tag!

my advice will always be: if t/b dynamics matter to you (either all the time or just because you're in a specific mood), you should filter the archive for fics tagged with the dynamic you want.

i'm not here to say that having a preference is bad (or even that tagging a dynamic is bad!), i just want to express that by NOT tagging a dynamic, an author might be opting out of the unspoken expectations that some readers associate with a t/b tag

i know it SEEMS obvious, but i scrolled through four or five different threads about this last night and the comments were passionate... and contradictory. a few times i saw people say the dynamics should be tagged even in NON SMUT fics.

is it solely about the act of penetration? is it who is literally on top? is the t/b tag meant to represent the overall dynamic between the characters (i.e., top is dominant, bottom is submissive). if you see a t/b tag, do you subconsciously infer how the characters will be written by the author?

but what is a t/b dynamic tag supposed to tell you? i guarantee that YOU think it's obvious, but spend some time scrolling through people talking about dynamics and you might be surprised

but dynamic tags are a little different because they're TYPICALLY adding specificity to two other details already displayed prominently on the fic when it appears in search results: the content rating and the ship tag.

E tells you, "there's sex here"
the ship tells you between who

this doesn't work with most tags, obviously. you can't just omit "graphic violence" and expect readers to somehow know you're going to have graphic depictions of brutality.

a thing that gets lost in a lot of discourse around tagging for t/b dynamics in fic is that sometimes authors may choose not to include those tags as a way to signal to readers who care about a specific dynamic that they should not read the fic

yes, this is about—(gunshots)

casters and their emotional support barbarians, nothing more clasic than that!

oh sorry i assumed you knew much since you decided to come on here and slander me in front of god and everyone else 😭😭😭

is anyone ever really perma dead in DND?

he was a sorcerer :) RIP tom

this reminds me of the night they found out that kingdom hearts is not, in fact, a final fantasy game. nor is fire emblem.