Wanted to make a little line-up with what I thought all the Brinarr look like. Their armor and clothes would probably have actual colors of course, but for simplicity’s sake the dark blue is armor and the white is cloth. The coral however is what I like to think of them as.

some sketches i like

[id: 8 images, all but the first being red sketches.  the first image is 4 black sketches. in the first, lup and barry kiss in the background, while taako in the foreground looks bored and annoyed. in the next lup and barry are kissing on a bench, while taako sits next to them looking at a phone and holding an umbrella over them. in the third lup and barry are standing next to each other with their arms around each other on a flight of stairs, while in the background taako falls down the stairs. in the last barry and lup are standing and kissing, while lup holds a drink out behind barry, which taako is bending down and drinking from.  the second image is a thumbnail of a comic. three shirts are hung over a table. merle says, “none of them are my size.” taako responds, “i have magic powers.” merle says “oh yeah!” taako grabs a shirt, saying “i’ll take tres.” merle throws his arms up, saying “i want horny!” magnus and taako grimace at each other. taako says, “that’s disgusting,” while magnus says “we can’t allow that.” merle points dramatically and says, “the other option is for you to take horny, smartass!” magnus says angrily, “i’m a beautiful rustically hospitable man!” he continues, “it’s funny when i do it, it’s gross when you do it!” taako nods sagely. taako says, “counterpoint, if we happen to be separated, would you rather be wearing a shirt that says ‘horny,’ or ‘boys?’” magnus says, “fair point.” then says, “both are kind of bad actually.” taako shrugs, saying “that’s why i acted fast, homie.” then he smiles and says, “since merle already volunteered, let’s let him take one for the team.” merle looks up angrily, saying “hey, wait a minute!” magnus shouts, “this is what you wanted, old man!” merle thinks for a second, then says, “oh yeah.” the third image is a sketched comic of a conversation between taako and barry. the fourth image is a sketch of taako and lup. taako is writing on a piece of paper while lup sits next to him with her head resting on her hand. taako says, “ok, how do we feel about cake?” lup responds, “oh don’t worry, barry’s bringing the cake.” taako looks annoyed and says, “ok... what about ice cream? something sweet and creamy?” lup says, “don’t worry, barry’ll be the sweet and-” taako shoves her, saying “you are impossible.” the fifth image is a sketch of klarg, a bugbear, holding a teacup. the sixth image is a sketch of the thundermens’ final forms from the graduation finale; argo controls a wave of water; the firbolg has rocks floating around his head, which is growing berries and mushrooms from his hair; fitzroy is grinning with lightning running down his arms and surrounding him.  the seventh image is a sketch of ampersand five, a person made of coral who’s holding a lantern. the last is a sketch of ol’ uncle joshy, a grizzled old fisherman with a thumbs up, with two sharks with x’s over their eyes to either side, and text reading “ol’ uncle joshy’s school for training psychic warriors against blink sharks” end id]

finneas cawl x ampersand five but in a "they asked for no pickles" shouted by a tiny lantern light held gingerly by a terrifying coral giant type of way

Dungeons and Dragons pet peeve: People who abbreviate the "and" to "n". It's D&D, not Do Not Disturb.

btw yall remember ampersand-5 from ethersea. does anyone else want them or is it just me

Would you look at that, five posts!

/&

Ampersand count: 0

(rather disappointing really)

om/post/691834473636069376/lecteur-code-barre-terminaux-dinventaire.

0/118

If anybody has, like me, wondered: "Would it be possible to make a sentence with NO periodic symbols in it?" last night I found out the answer is: "Yes, but it's really, really, really, really, REALLY difficult."

The only letters you can use are A D E G J L M Q R T X and Z. There are still combinations of these that are periodic symbols that you have to avoid, though: Ag, Al, Am, Ar, At, Er, Ga, Gd, Ge, La, Lr, Md, Mg, Mt, Ra, Re, Rg, Ta, Te, Tl, Tm, Xe, and Zr.

So, depending on the source/dictionary you're going off of, you have a list of only about 50-80 words to pull from, not including people's names. Even then, you still have to be careful about how you order your words; while "let" and "me" don't contain any by themselves, "let me" contains Tm. That list of ~80 words that I was pulling from did not contain a single instance of the letters R or Q because of how restricted everything is. (Also, ironically enough, Lead is one of the valid words to pull from, despite being the name of an element itself.)

Without at least "and" or "the", constructing a coherent sentence is next to impossible with so few words, but if we allow ourselves to use an ampersand (&) in place of the word "and," it becomes a bit more plausible; after all, the character '&' doesn't appear anywhere on the periodic table. The end result is going to be an over-alliterative mess with a bunch of weird, obscure words that barely anybody knows the definition of and an over-reliance on the &, but it does make it possible.

In fact, last night I wrote a little 5-sentence short story containing zero periodic symbols. It is, however, an incredibly dark scene, with family death via mercy kill, disease, alcoholism, and drowning, so I will be leaving it under the cut. There are most likely many different stories that could feasibly be constructed with this rule set that aren't so morbid and traumatizing, but at this point I've spent too much time writing and rewriting this scene to not share it.

Ajax, dazed, deemed Lee a dead, addled egg. Me & Dell melt, jaded & mazed. Lee’d let glee & mead meddle & led Lee mad. Mead & maze & leg & tzetze & edema & eel & lead… made Lee dead. Dad jelled a jade adze & elm axle- made a deeded ax- & met dead, ex-Lee melee.

[A family- consisting of the narrator, their father, and two of their three brothers Ajax and Dell- has recovered the near-dead body of the narrator's third brother, Lee, who had wandered off drunk, getting lost in the woods and dying in a polluted river stream. Lee's body is bloated, his leg broken, and his flesh having been picked at by flies and eels. Ajax had found his body and brought him back, though rightfully said that there was no hope for saving him. Dell and the narrator are mortified. Their father solemnly crafts together an axe, with a dark green blade and wooden handle, and uses it to put Lee out of his misery.]

DID/OSDD/UDD flag edit by m0dem.0n&!

Since the original creator of this flag deleted all posts surrounding it to my knowledge, we wanted to do our own interpretation of the same flag! A nickname for this flag is the "Plural Peafowl" flag, since the colors are reminicent of peafowl. This flag includes UDD peeps with systems as well, if they want to use it! -md0n

Please check out our ToS (& optionally FAQ) before using! Information about the flag's colors & symbols are under the read more~! 🦚💜💙💚💛🦚

Color Meanings: Dark Violet - Dissociation Purple-Navy - Unaware Systems (& Alters) Steel Blue - Discovery (that you are plural/a part of a system) Mantis Green - Aware Systems (& Alters) Spring Green - Acceptance (of systems and plurality) Light Lemon - Recovery (from trauma & other mental health issues that coincide with dissociative disorders)

Symbol Meanings: & ampersand: A common plurality symbol symbolizing "many" or "and more", though I'm not sure of its roots! If you have info about this that we can put here, please let us know! Plural Peafowl: When originally redesigning this flag, I always thought the colors ended up being reminicent to the ones found on peacocks! And then I thought, "what if the many eye spots on the peacocks feathers were to symbolize plurality too?" so! I thought to design a peafowl icon for it. I may redesign both symbols in the future but I like how it looks so far!

Note: We have retired the simplified version of this flag (11/5/2023).

& (ampersand) - letter 27 best known for: uniting lists, British nursery rhymes about apple pies

VERSUS

Z - letter 26 best known for: snoring sound effects, the cool way to pluralize nounz

Stucky Fic Recs Part 2 - will add later

Bucky and Steve's Excellent Adventure by blue_beans I Chapters: 48/48 I Completed Post-Avengers: Endgame Bucky Barnes is very suicidal for a good chunk of this, Sentient Infinity Stones, Fix-It fic, Action/Adventure, Time Travel, slow burn

Six months ago, Steve set out on a final mission to return the infinity stones to their proper timelines, and returned a minute later having lived out a life of peace and contentment with Peggy Carter in the past. He died in his sleep a few days later, surrounded by his friends. Or so Bucky assumes. He wouldn't know, he'd been busy being locked up on the Raft while the government decided whether or not to pardon him for the whole Winter Soldier thing. What with the court-mandated therapy and the constant surveillance by alphabet agencies and the crushing weight of his past, he's not sure if giving him a chance at "normal life" is more cruel than the alternative. But he's doing fine. Great, actually, so don't ask. He didn't have a nightmare. Especially not that strangely disturbing one about Steve... *** AKA I wanted to write the reverse time-heist and I'm still salty about Endgame. This is the result.

Seasons of War by eretria I Chapters 11/11 I Completed Friends to Lovers, World War II, war horrors, Dark

Chasing Bucky, always a step behind, Steve remembers the cycle of seasons that took him from the raw and naive young man to the Captain America who led the Howling Commandos into hell and, except for Bucky, out again. As his memories center on Bucky, one question haunts him: Is the Bucky he knew in the war the same one he knew before?

ampersand by kaydeefalls I Chapters 1/1 I one shot World War II, Friends to Lovers, the Winter Soldier started long before Bucky fell from the train

They've been steveandbucky since they were kids, but that ignores the parts of their lives that don't wrap around each other, that never did. (Bucky needs to figure out who he is, just him, with or without Steve.)

In Vain by kireteiru I Chapters 1/1 I one shot James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers(unrequited), Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Endgame, All hurt no comfort, not a fix it :(

"Nothing of the heart remains, Even if we could've stayed, We've been here long enough, Long enough to know it's all in vain. Everything we tried to say, Up until the final day, I guess we said enough, Said enough to know it's all in vain." _ "In Vain", Within Temptation (Resist) A choice was made, and now the world will bear its consequences.

i'm the furthest thing from heaven, but the closest to home by @buckyismybicycle I Chapters: 6/6 I Completed Guardian Angel Bucky, Identity Reveal, Canon Divergence, Memory Loss

When Steve loses Bucky in Kreischberg, he’s lost the only thing left he cares about. He crashes the Valkyrie into the Arctic, ready to be reunited with his love, but instead, he’s saved by an angel. Except this angel isn’t like the ones he’s read about — no, his angel is armed to the teeth and has wings the colour of blood and night. Yet, there’s something eerily familiar about this angel.

Good God, Let Me Give You My Life by @bellefyre I Chapters 6/6 I Completed Bucky/others, One-Sided Relationship, Non-Consensual Touching, rape, Hydra, Steve/Bucky is Endgame

5+1 meme, five people over the decades who fell in love with the Winter Soldier and died because of him and the one person the Winter Soldier loved and lived because of him.

How to Woo the Winter Soldier by @writeonclara I Chapters 6 /6 I Completed funny fic, gift giving, Steve falls for the Winter Soldier before finding out his Identity, Courting, Identity Reveal, Identity Porn, bad ideas

“I think I’m ready to date again,” Steve said. “What,” Natasha said. “What?” Clint said, lowering his binoculars. He blinked at the dumbstruck look on the Captain’s face, then followed his gaze to where he was staring dopily at—at the Winter fucking Soldier. “Steve, no,” Clint groaned. Or: Steve courts the Winter Soldier.

Ready to Comply by @exclamation I Chapters 31/31 I Completed Canon Divergence - Post-CA: The Winter Soldier, Dehumanization, Hurt/Comfort-But Mostly Hurt, Angst, Protective Steve Rogers

The asset's orders at the end of The Winter Soldier weren't to kill Captain America, but to capture him, so that he could be wiped and turned into another asset. The asset has succeeded in that mission, capturing its target and taking him back to the Hydra base. But the Hydra soldiers are dead, captured, or fled, so there is no one there to give the asset new orders. Alone with its captive, the asset has no instructions on how it is meant to act. But the more time it spends with its target, the more old protocols start to assert themselves, like the protocol that when that face is hurt and bleeding, the asset is supposed to clean away the blood.

From Grit to Pearl by @bluesimplicity73 I Chapters 38/38 I Completed Bucky & Rebecca Barnes, Bucky Recovering, Body Horror, BAMF Bucky, BAMF Rebecca Barnes, Angst, AU - Canon Divergence, Hydra

He does not have a name. He has been called many things over the years; a weapon, a ghost, HYDRA’s Fist, the Soldier, and from what they have told him his work has shaped the century. But he does not have a name. His name, like so many other things, has been taken from him, stolen. Forgotten. Until the day it is not, and remembering, he breaks free, killing his handler and making his escape in a desperate bid for freedom. Frightened, lost and hurt, he seeks out the last person in the world he can trust, his baby sister, now an almost eighty-year-old widow, somehow knowing she is the only one who can help him. It is a difficult journey, one filled with pain, tears, and things that should not be possible. But also with recovery and redemption, rebirth and miracles, family and hope. This story is a love letter between Bucky and his sister Rebecca, the world, and eventually his childhood best friend, Steve Rogers, the boy he once loved. But ultimately, it is the love letter Bucky writes to himself, as he reclaims who he once was, discovers who he is now, builds a new life for himself and realizes he might, just might, be as strong, as beautiful, as precious as a pearl.

Bookmark Series

Til the Sun Goes Down by @scyllaya I Part 1 - 2 I Bucky & Loki, Thor & Loki, Kid Loki

Stucky with Fanart

to memory now I can't recall by @etharei | Chapters: 16/16 I Completed Time Travel, World War II, Memory Loss, Identity Porn, Alien Technology The Good Monster by Taste_is_Sweet | Chapters: 2/2 | Completed Canon Divergence, Transformation, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Body Horror, Self-Sacrifice, Self-Harm despite the threatening sky and shuddering earth (they remained) by @praximeter | Chapters: 20/20 | Completed Non-Consensual Body Modification, Canon Divergence, Identity Reveal, Drug Withdrawal, Body Horror, identity Porn, American Sign Language The Second Labor by @aidaronan I Chapters: 18/18 I Completed wartime imagery and violence, pre-serum steve, Alternative Timeline, Psychological Torture, Medical Torture, AU - Canon Divergence

Bookmark Series

Ipseity by @skyisgray I Part 1-3 I Completed Dissociative Identity Disorder, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Torture

ampersand 5

[id: a drawing of a brinarr, a person made of coral. he is tall, thin, and orange. he has a symbol of an ampersand on his chest and is holding a lantern with a blue flame. end id]

Moving on to the summary stage!

Now that writer signups have closed, it’s time for writers to turn their attention to the summary stage of HxHBB24!

Summaries are the only thing artists will have to choose their top 5 fics they’d like to work on (more to come there soon!), so be sure to put some thought into this. See our handy dandy guide below for what needs to be included.

Title

This one is relatively self-explanatory, but try to have a title ready for artist claims!

There have been untitled fics in the past, and artists will refer to your work using our organizational codes during claims (GEN 4, LP 3, etc.) HOWEVER! Having a title may draw in a potential artist versus not having one.

Pairings

Including pairings helps artists to narrow down their focus while reading through summaries.

Using a SLASH (/) indicates a romantic pairing while using an AMPERSAND (&) indicates non-romantic or general relationships. For example, Killua/Gon would refer to a romantic relationship between the characters, while Killua & Gon would refer to a non-romantic friendship.

Romance is not a requirement of this event, so please feel free to indicate your story as “Gen” if there is none and add platonic relationships if you wish to specify!

Rating

Please indicate whether your story will be rated General (G), Teen (T), or Mature (M) to help out artists gauge what they are comfortable with.

As a reminder, this is an all-ages event! Any stories rated E for Explicit or that may contain dubious content are not within the scope of this event and mods will ask that you rework your idea.

If you’re on the fence with your rating, please reach out to a mod for clarification!

Tags and Content Warnings

Be sure to include any relevant tags and/or content warnings for your stories. Just like you might tag your work on AO3 to help readers curate their experience, the same courtesy is needed for artist claims.

Summary

This is the real attention-grabber for our artists! Do your best to give a clear picture of what your story will be about—you may want to include spoilers if necessary.

Summaries should be between 100-300 words to give artists ample information to make their claims. Do your best and make it enticing! Feel free to ask for assistance in the writer workroom, as this is an important stage for writers!

You do not have to use the summary you submit to mods as your final summary when you post your story. The summary you use on Tumblr/AO3/etc. on your reveal day can be different!

Summaries count as a writer locking in their story for the event, so please refrain from changing your idea drastically after submitting your summaries!

Especially with this year’s return to a completely blind event, accurate summaries are imperative to ensuring artists are not caught off-guard later on in the event.

Summaries are due February 18th, so be sure to get those creative juices flowing!

25 Things in 25 Years, Part 2:  25 Things I've Learned about Being on Staff in 25 Years of TV Writing

Here’s the second half of my 25 Things in 25 Years spew. This one is about working on a television writing staff. 

1. TV Writing is a team sport. You need to be able to work well with others.

2. If you are the showrunner, your job is to tell great stories, but it's also to make sure 250+ people keep their jobs as long as possible.

3. If you aren’t the showrunner, your job is to make the showrunner’s life easier. Full stop.

4. If you’re on staff, every episode produced is your responsibility. Not just the ones with your writing credit. Be engaged. Participate enthusiastically in every episode (within the working parameters of the show). 

5. Don’t credit grab. If you’re a Story Editor or above, your name is already on every episode. Don’t force an ampersand or an AND on a lower ranking writer. It’s your job to make their work better. You’re not their writing partner. You’re their boss/mentor. 

6. Never punch down. 

7. If someone has a better idea, use it. Say “Thank you.” In the room/interviews/etc, credit the person who had the idea. 

8. Actors are under tremendous pressure. The entire production hinges on them. They have a ton of dialogue to learn, long hours, their faces are out front. Be patient and understanding.

9. Actors deeply inhabit their characters. They probably understand how they should talk at least as well as you do. Give them the benefit of the doubt. 

10. Be collaborative whenever possible. That said, encourage feedback early in the process and lock the script down as soon as possible. 

11. If you have to say no, make sure you really have to say no. Think it over a bit. Give it some time. Say it as nicely as possible. “I’ve thought about that and tried it out and it’s not going to work.” 

12. The studio and network are laying out 100 million dollars or so for a season of television. Listen to them. Pick your battles. 

13. You’re replaceable. Everyone is replaceable. (Except maybe the lead actor.)

14. When hiring a directing producer/#2/etc. make sure they do not have a lean and hungry look.

15. If you’re the #2, don’t spend your days plotting to become the showrunner. You may win out, but it’s a shit move. If you don’t respect the showrunner, don’t take the job. 

16. Keep the chain of command clear. Don’t let the studio or network confuse things. If they’re empowering multiple people, the show will probably fail. Get together, compare notes. You’re a team. Act like one.

17. Always check with references. Always. Don’t hire assholes. They don’t change. They’re poison for your production. 

18. Always build a cave set. Your cave set may vary. What this means is build a set that can be redressed/reused for multiple purposes. Hospital room & corridor for cop show, for example. 

19. Ambition beyond the ability of your cast and crew to execute is folly. Ambition beyond your budget doubly so. Know your show's strengths and weaknesses. Write to maximize strength and minimize weakness. 

20. Night exteriors, especially in foul weather, wear down your crew. Use sparingly. 

21. The cast and crew are not drones who exist to do your will. They are hard-working, talented artists who turn your dreams into reality. Treasure them.

22. If you’re on set, always eat what the crew eats. Wait in line like everyone else. If the food sucks, replace the caterers ASAP. 

23. If you’re on set, be on set. You’re the one making them do this, so do it with them. Don’t hide. Don’t leave early. Call to Wrap, just like everyone else. 

24. In the room, no shorts, no flip-flops. Dressy casual does not mean looking like a bum. Cellphones either out of the room or on vibrate. Maintain good hygiene. Go outside to fart. 

25. Be excellent to each other. 

Since I am still chewing on the DIE Stapling post, I am going to do another about effort mechanics in ttrpgs because I am trying to write that Blasphemous inspired Trophy Gold hack (placeholder name: Penance). And one of the coolest mechanics for Trophy is its Risk Roll, which is basically an effort mechanic.

"But, Ampersand, what is an effort mechanic?" I hear you ask, dear mutual I am making up in my head. An effort mechanic allows you to reroll an action you have already attempted but failed or to get a bonus to a roll at the expense of some resource. Usually, that resource being the character's health. But it can also be something else like clues in an investigative game or even a narrative consequence (but that's usually called a Devil's Bargain).

The important part is that it gives a benefit but requires a sacrifice. And that's when the whole fanfare of psychoeconomics start. Because you need the sacrifice to be big enough to give the player pause and not use it every roll. And also you need the benefit to be significant enough to make it worth the risk and the expense. If properly adjusted, an effort mechanic can become a slow but sure spiral into the characters downfall.

Let's look at some examples!

Numenera is the first system I learn that had such a mechanic (but certainly was not the first ever). It is pretty straightforward in its implementation, too. You spend a fixed amount of the appropriate life pool and you get to reduce the difficulty of a task. Easy enough. But Numenera, being a tradgame as it is, the power creep upends any weight of the sacrifice. Once you level up enough, your pools become deep enough as to make effort something to just add to whichever skill roll you thought it needed a bit more oomph. This is not something wrong per se, but it can easily make your characters overly competent!

On the other hand, there's Dungeon Crawl Classics. DCC is a peculiar OSR game in that it is a really spiced up retroclone, wriggling DnD B/X ruleset to a point where it is almost unrecognizable. I am sure there are plenty effort mechanics peppered in the text, but I want to point out its magic system because I absolutely adore it. To be a wizard in DCC requires active dedication. That is because almost every spell has a writeup of about an A4's length, filled with the various effects a spell may have once the dice is rolled. And the effect can be wildly different from a roll of 5-10 to a roll of as high as 30 or more. There are many ways in which you can tweak your narrative positioning to get bonuses to a spell roll (components, helpers, magic foci, whatever), but when the die is cast and the result is just not good enough you still have a last chance: to sacrifice your own atribute values to get one last push that might be the difference between a proper spell and a fiasco. This is the main cause of withering of elder wizards: they have sacrificed too much in order to achieve the power they sought.

And then, there's Trophy. Both Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold have excellent effort mechanics baked directly into their ADN thanks to the masterful procedure that is the Risk Roll. These are games in which you are tempted first and consumed later by an evil forest. You have a really small ruin pool and once it is filled, you are lost to injury or its dark influence. You are also a destitute adventurer that needs to get any gold or face almost certain death. So you need to get shit done, you need to amass enough successes as to bring bread home and you need to survive the process (or try to, at least). And that's when the Risk Roll comes and lures your with the most satisfying effort mechanic I've ever seen. You can always make a reroll, adding an extra die to your pool to boot. But if those extra dice, dark dice, ever become the highest ones, you automatically mark ruin. You get your success, yes. But you become closer to losing yourself. It exactly hits the spot between actually worth it and inescapably dooming the character.

Obviously not all games need to be about losing oneself to fate or circumstance, but I feel an effort mechanic very much pushes the narrative in that direction. You are sacrificing yourself, in order to achieve your goals.

And I think that's a quite powerful narrative device.

Guys. I shouldn't have to say this, but

AO3 is not TikTok.

Play all the silly algorithm games you want by tagging every irrelevant trend and current pop song on your TikTok vids to try to boost their visibility, but that nonsense does not belong in a structured, tag-ordered archive like AO3 (which doesn't have an algorithm). It is not acceptable community behavior to list every single relationship tag in a fandom on your fic in order to try to accumulate more hits. Tags should reflect what's actually in the story so it can be properly categorized and filtered. If an 1,100-word E-rated fic is tagged "PWP, smut, seriously it's just porn, explicit sexual content, don't like don't read, [six more specific sexual act tags redacted so nobody has to encounter them on their Tumblr dash without warning]," IT 👏 DOES 👏 NOT 👏 BELONG 👏 IN 👏 THE 👏 GEN 👏 TAGS.

I just scrolled through four pages of the primary gen tag in one of my fandoms, and a full 70% of the fics in the results were slash fics -- many explicit -- that people had added gen/& tag(s) to, either out of ignorance of what those tags mean, or in an attempt to sucker more people into clicking on it. (I promise you, if someone is in the gen tag because they don't want to see romantic or sexual content, they are NOT going to enthusiastically R&R your slash fic. Filters exist for a reason. Shoving content at people who are not its target audience just annoys everyone.)

Some of this is obviously deliberate tag sandbagging: A <1K PWP for the main ship that also includes multiple slash and gen tags for multiple supporting characters? Hella sus. A fic that lists eight slash and gen tags for the main pairing alone, using every conceivable spelling permutation of their names? Probably looking to maximize hits (and clearly unaware of how AO3's search function actually works). But it's likely that not everyone is doing this maliciously, and since there might be some legitimate confusion surrounding the use of relationship tags, here's a review for new users or anyone who needs a refresher:

Which AO3 Relationship Tag Should You Use?

Character A/Character B: A slash between character names means that they are depicted in the story as being in a romantic and/or sexual relationship (it does not have to be both). This relationship can be canon, fanon, headcanon, crack ship, crossover, whatever. It just means they're romantically entangled to some extent within the tagged story. (Fun fact: The slash has been used to denote this kind of fanfiction for over half a century! "Slash fic" has its roots in early Star Trek zines, which were the first to codify the slash between names as indicating a romantic relationship. This shorthand spread to other fandoms in the 1970s and '80s, and became the standard for internet fanfiction archives when they came into being in the '90s.)

Character A & Character B: The et/ampersand ("and") between names means that the characters are depicted in a non-romantic/non-sexual relationship, OR that they might be in a romantic relationship (canonically or otherwise), but the tagged story focuses on non-romantic aspects of the relationship. Stories that deal with characters' friendship, rivalry, family bonds, betrayal, coming to understand each other, etc. all fall under this heading. This is also called "gen" or "genfic," derived from the AO3 relationship category (below):

In the event that a fic qualifies for both types of tags, you can use additional clarifying tags such as "pre-slash" (characters are not yet in a romantic relationship, but are heading in that direction), "background Character A/Character B" (the romantic relationship exists only as a backdrop for or incidental to the main story), or "slash applies to chapter 5 only" (if only one scene or chapter deals with the romantic aspects of the relationship) to help readers know what to expect from the story. (The last tag is also used for fics which jump content ratings between chapters, usually due to an isolated scene of sexual content or graphic violence, e.g. "M rating is for chapter 8 only.")

Learning how AO3's tagging system works and using it as intended will only benefit users (authors and readers) in the long run. AO3's filter system is the most extensive and versatile of any fanfiction archive in existence, so you can find the exact things you want without scrolling for days. (There are even additional search tools you can use to narrow your results beyond the basic filters!) But it all depends on the tags being accurate. If authors don't apply the correct tags to their fics, the system breaks down.

So go forth and tag properly! Please. I beg you.