Fighting the demons (urge to rewrite Topsoil)
poor things, well we should definitely make this easier on them by never repeatedly mentioning their name and deeds on the "reblog things forever" website
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and the word syndication here is referring to broadcasting or transferring or otherwise sharing information. I first encountered it as a way to aggregate all of the news sites and blogs I wanted to read that were scattered all over the internet.
You might already be familiar with tumblr blogs that start with ao3feed - these are automated blogs that create a new post every time a work is posted in the feed(s) that they track. You can follow those tumblr blogs and learn about new works that way. They've subscribed to the RSS feed so that you don't have to.
If you wish that you could get push notifications from AO3 on your phone instead? The RSS feed will allow you to do that. You just need to get an account with an RSS reader first. Here are a few that are free:
Feedly
NewsBlur
Inoreader
They each have slightly different features, so depending on the search and filter options you want or how you like your information displayed, you might like one better than the others. All three work on the web, on iOS, and on Android.
Once you have a feed reader, tap on the RSS Feed button at the top of the tag results page that you want to get notifications for and open up the XML file. If it downloads instead, try opening in a new tab or just copying the link address. You'll want to grab a url that looks like this: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/9835/feed.atom (this is the url for Kirk/Spock, if you're curious)
That feed.atom ending on the url is what you're looking for. When you open your RSS reader and create a new feed, you can use that url to set it up.
Once it's set up, you'll be able to see everything currently available in that tab, listed out in your reader. Just like the ao3feed tumblr blogs, the reader will show you the title, author, summary and tags for each fic, and then it will provide you with a link to read the work on AO3.
It will also notify you every time a new work is posted to that tag. You can adjust your notifications to suit you.
Not every tag on AO3 has an RSS feed, but it's worth checking out if you've never tried it before.
Editing to add: the AO3 FAQ also talks about these feeds
its so windy my poor poor chickens are being blown around like dry leafs they look like this
thinking about eyes in outfished. how they’re some of the first things to change about a person when they start growing in power (or otherwise experience other changes in their capacity for magic). how they’re a very visible marker that you’ve become something a little other (though still human. there’s a long way to go before you lose that). (do cosmetic contacts become more popular? food for thought.) sometimes the changes will start spilling over into hair, and maybe even become markings on skin, though that’s usually for extreme cases (or cases where this is explicitly part of the mechanism by which the user accesses magic)
on the other hand, the most dangerous ones tend to also be very normal looking… though appearance should never be the only thing used to judge someone’s threat level
anyways i need to get freakier with the eye designs. more unusual pupil shapes. more irregular iris patterns. more playing around with the sclera.
end of season design for divorcesteal arch :3 start of season ref under the cut for comparison
you have to be able to defend people who are receiving unjust treatment even if they annoy you even if you personally find them extremely annoying you still have to be able to stand up and say "well thats fucked up"