My Brother Saw This On My Desk And Kept Asking What It Meant

Went to Tommy’s Atlanta show earlier so I’m posting this now. This is part of a gift I made for him :)

This is part of a light box art thing where it includes a light you can switch on and off— when you switch it on the rest of the artwork appears. I’ll reblog this post with more about that but for now I share the drawing !! :D

do you know where "no beta we die like x" comes from and how it is used?

The term "beta" in this context is short for "beta reader" - a person who reads a fic while it's still in the editing stage and helps the writer get it ready to post. Some betas check grammar. Some check canon compliance. Some are sensitivity readers. There are lots of things that betas can do.

So functionally, saying "no beta" means that the writer didn't get this checked by a second person before they posted it. It's a warning that there might be errors or typos etc. It's mostly used when an author has written something quickly and is posting without doing a lot of (or any) edits first.

As for where it comes from? It all started with a bumper sticker.

This image was an internet meme at one point, and it got meme'd on in the form of "no ___ we ___ like men"

Here on tumblr, one of the versions that got really popular was from now-deleted user @grec1a who created this version:

From there, it migrated to AO3 as the "no beta we die like men" tag, and very often the word men is replaced by the name of a character who dies in canon.

always thinking about cc!techno’s corny graphic t shirts and his taped together glasses

“the author’s barely disguised fetish—” WRONG it’s the author’s barely disguised religious trauma again

ranboo posted on instagram !

[Caption: Me and the bf ❤️🥰❤️❤️🥰 happy to have known him all this time]

inspired by a friend misspeaking

Tomfoolery actually transitioned and only does she-nanigans now