katherynefromphilly:

cleanlenins:

arahir:

bundibird:

frownyalfred:

Reminders for new ao3 users (in no particular order):

- filter your searches like you would on a library website or in an online catalogue

- don’t post placeholders, fic searches, or recommendations as fics. DON’T! It’s against ao3 TOS

- there is no algorithm. ao3 sorts by date posted/updated unless you filter with specific search criteria

- ao3 is a non profit. that means it doesn’t sell ads to make money — it only survives on donations. this is why it can show you so many fics without ever flashing an ad or pop up at you!

- report fics that break TOS when you see them (I.e., placeholder fics, searches) to help other users navigate better

- the tag “dead dove, do not eat” doesn’t equate to gore/awfulness automatically. it is a complementary tag that enhances current tags. E.g., if the fic is tagged “gore” and “dead dove, do not eat” the author really wants you to mind the gore tag

- most fandoms have a variation of “no beta, we die like (x character)” and they all link back to the “No beta” tag

- publishing a new fic sometimes means it won’t show up in the fandom/pairing tag for a few minutes

- subscribers receive update emails at different times, depending on when you update/publish your fic. there’s no good way to predict when an e-mail will be sent — it can be in 30 seconds, or two hours later

- some fics are restricted by authors to those with ao3 accounts only. if you see a blue lock in the upper right corner, that fic is only visible to logged in ao3 users

- you can block commenters now! this didn’t use to be a thing

- updating a fic just to stay at the top of the pairing tag/fandom tag is a dick move. unless you’re legitimately editing or adding chapters, this just annoys readers and fellow authors, and people will skip over your fic

- make sure that you tag your ships correctly, both romantic and platonic. Putting an “&” between a pair of names means that the ship is platonic. Putting a “/” between the characters means its romantic. For example: “Greg & Steve” = platonic. “Greg/Steve” = romantic. They are NOT interchangable.

- if your fic includes original character/s or reader insert or y/n or etc, then TAG THOSE IN THE CHARACTER TAGS. Not just in the relationship tags!! They are characters in the story, so include them in the character tags. Failing to do so means people who want to find fics with those tags won’t be able to, and people who want to exclude fics with those tags won’t be able to.

- NEVER EVER EVER ADD A LINK TO A PATREON OR KO-FEE ACCOUNT OR ETC. Ao3’s entire legal protection hinges on the fact that no one is making money from fics. If you start commissioning fics or linking to a monetary platform, you are in breach of the Ao3 terms, risking legal action, and risking ao3 as a whole. There are loads of authors/companies who WILL sue if they think you’re making money off their intellectual property.

- seconding what OP said about Dead Dove Do Not Eat. It doesn’t automatically mean “gore”; it just means “heed the tags.” It means “Hey yeah when I tagged this as [thing] I was NOT fucking around, ok? Only read this fic if you’re OK with reading [thing].”

additions from someone who has posted way too much on this site please listen to me:

• there are no best times to post but generally sunday and monday are a good zone for traffic
• you must double check and make sure the publication date matches the day a chapter is posted or it won’t show up on the first page of updates. sometimes you have to physically edit the posting date multiple times for this to be fixed.
• on that note: artificially editing your publication date so your fic shows up at the top when you haven’t added a chapter is the dickest of moves and will make you a pariah. do not do this. yes everyone will notice.
• editing existing chapters doesn’t count as updating a fic and won’t change the publication date.
• ao3 usually adds weird spaces after italics if you copy and paste in your writing pre-formatted. it doesn’t add these until after you’ve saved a draft or posted so you have to re-edit.
• check the “add space after paragraph” option in your word precessor of choice to avoid having to delete an extra space between all your paragraphs on ao3.
• when you add a second chapter to a one chapter fic, your original start/end authors notes will now be appended onto the notes of every chapter unless you move them to the now extant first chapter notes sections. this is confusing, but you’ll see what i mean.
• to post on anon: add your fic to the anonymous (anonymous) collection. it’ll take up to fifteen to minutes to show in the tag once posted. it’ll show up (to you) as AUTHOR NAME: fic title. no one else sees it this way. it will never show up on your own dashboard unless you go to your stats page. if you ever de-anon, all your subs will get an email about it as if it were just posted.
• if you update multiple fics at once, ao3 will group the updates into one email.
• to transfer a fic to a new ao3 account: make a new account, make the new account a co-author, remove the old account as co-author.
• you cannot mention money changing hands for fic on ao3, ever. don’t say commissions. say a fic was requested if you must say anything. your fic can get taken down for this.
• reply to comments or never complain about engagement in fandom.
• per that: EVERY TIME YOU EDIT A COMMENT, THE AUTHOR GETS A NEW COPY OF YOUR COMMENT IN THEIR EMAIL. we can see all the edits. be aware.
• tagging is both a warning and an enticement, do so accordingly. you really don’t need to tag things that fall outside that unless you want to.
• on that note: please don’t do the “short fics for 300 different fandoms in one fic” thing. no one wants to scroll past that. i mean you can but it just makes it harder for people to find the thing you’ve written that they want to read.
• if you are really bad at summaries just think of it as a movie tag line and don’t say you’re bad at summaries. don’t neg your own fic.
• re all the questions i saw in replies: fic searches are people looking for specific fics. i don’t know what the fuck a placeholder fic is but these aren’t fanworks and you can’t post them. you can’t post discord links or rp requests or complaints about fandom. you can post fanart and meta essays. that’s allowed.

• “Read by Author” tag is not a tag to say that you proofread the fic. It is specifically for podfic, saying that the fic is read outloud by the author
• Remember the Block and Mute feature. Block means that someone cannot interact with your works. Mute, however, means you will not see the person’s works in the search. If you don’t want to see fics by a specific author, mute them.
• Basic html works in comments. If you want to add an image, use <img src=“URL”> with the image url replacing URL. Keep the quotation marks.
• Comments are not for critique. Unless the author specifically asks for critique, you are a jerk if you start pointing out everything you dislike. It doesn’t matter how vile you think the content is. If you don’t like it, just back out without saying anything.
• If you do not want a work attached to your account at all, you can Orphan it. When you Orphan a fic, you can no longer edit it or delete it. This cannot be undone. If you just want to be anonymous, use the Anonymous feature described above.
• If you wish to make a collection of fic that includes all of the fic you have read, consider making a collection of your bookmarks instead. Not every author wants their work to be in a million collections, but you don’t have to ask permission to make a collection of bookmarks.
• The “Inspired By” option is great if you draw inspiration from another author’s fic. And it helps give credit to other amazing fanfic writers.
• Fic can be downloaded in many different ways. If you want to download a fic and use it like an ebook, go for the EPUB version. But all versions have their merits.
• No fanfic author in existence is going to be upset that you made fanart.

8 years on AO3 and I learned things from this post, including the reason why my author comments on chapter 1 wound up being on every following chapter of the story. Thank you for that.

Some additional insights:

• RPF should be tagged with Real People Names. Do not include their fandom character names — EXCEPT if you’re writing an AU where the real people and the characters really do interact. Otherwise keep RPF and canon characters separate. RPF isn’t everyone’s kinktomato
• Use story excerpts for summaries when in doubt. If you can’t think of a summary (part 2 to the above), copy/paste a couple paragraphs of your story that you enjoy. Seeing a writer’s style is enough to draw in interest and readers
• Authors can see your bookmark names and comments. The comment of “pfffff, really not as good as everyone says” is going to show up in your bookmark for “don’t ever read this again”.
• Fic collections are not bookmarks. Requests to add a story to a fic collection that looks like it should be a bookmark “stories to read” are likely not going to get added to a collection
• Fanbinding can violate AO3’s terms of service — if you use a third party. When asking an author if you can fanbind their story, be sure to let them know you’re not going to send it to one of those 3rd party sites where the printer claims rights. That’s commercialization, and it’s against AO3’s terms of service, and illegal in the eyes of the IP that owns the characters. Read the Terms of Service very, very, very carefully on those 3rd party houses. They almost ALL claim some sort of “we can use this” in there.
• AO3’s search is better than most corporate search features. You know those funding drives? Whelp, a ton of that money goes to fund the servers (you can see this in their funds statement), and also to the search engine software and indexing systems. I’ve worked a long time in tech, and I have NOT YET SEEN a private corporation that funds their search engine or content ingestion services as well as AO3. Thank you, OTF, for that.

(via papysanzo)

julek:

am suffering a severe case of Rereading My Wips And Getting Excited But Realizing That in Order For Me To Read “The Rest” I Have To Write It-itis. please respect my privacy during these trying times

(via solrika)

deadrabbitohno:

This expresses my feelings precisely.

(via ph0tocynthia)

nutopiancitizen:

who’s left- Mariame/Prison Abolition

by Flynn Nicholls

magicmooshka:

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I Am Not Your Asian American Doll: a comic for AAPI Heritage Month 2023

I usually spend a lot of time editing and fine-tuning my comics so that they come across as polite and inoffensive. But honestly, I’m really tired of the way Asian cultures and countries are treated / talked about while Asian people themselves are excluded, and thought it was about time I really let my rage out lol.

id in alt

ahhhsami:

A Simple Trick for Fic Writers

Hey, if you’re a fic writer and a character speaks in a different language, you don’t just have to add the translation in the notes. Use the following HTML coding to add ‘text on hover’ to the word(s). If the reader is on a computer they can hover over the text to see the translation.

<div title=“This is the text in the box!”>This is the text that shows in your fic!</div>

Here are some examples from a fic on my AO3.

This coding here <div title=“a fool, idiot (lit. emptyhead)”>Eyn utreekov</div> will show this on hover.

This next example shows that you can add a lot of text. The formatting is the same as above.

PS: When doing this, there may be spacing issues, but you can edit the text through AO3’s html or rich text editor. From there you can add italics (like I did), bold, etc, and fix any weird spacing issues. Just be careful not to delete the coding that you worked so hard on 😂

(via all-this-panic-still-no-disco)

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys:

strawbebbynya:

rjalker:

continuityssue:

iridescentides:

can we talk about how literally 64% of people wear glasses, and yet we NEVER see them in movies/tv unless it’s on some nerdy or uncool character? why do we adhere to such a weird beauty standard that subconsciously makes us feel bad for,, not being able to see???

I used to work for LensCrafters and I can tell you for a fact that they make a big deal out of wanting as many customers as possible to want to get contacts. Every meeting there was a reminder that we were to push contacts. Hell, the other employees /managers repeatedly tried to push contacts on me even after I informed them that there was no way that I would ever shove a piece of plastic into my eye.

To them, the difference between selling glasses and getting a customer to sign up for contacts is like the difference between selling a video game and getting a player to get a monthly subscription.  And failing that their next big sell is for frames that cost twice to three times as much, but have little to no frame (and thus almost look like you aren’t wearing glasses at all) and are fragile as all hell (and thus are likely to break and have to be replaced).

They can’t rely solely on our prescription getting heavier or otherwise changing to the point that we have to buy a new pair every year. They want to push you to buy their product every time that you visit the optometrist and then some more in between.

As counter-intuitive as it might seem, it is in Big Optic’s best interest to convince us that we look terrible if we wear glasses.

The next time you need an eye exam, ask for a copy of your prescription. Take a picture too.

You can buy prescription glasses and even prescription sunglasses online for a fraction of the cost as they will force you to pay in stores.

The only thing you need is your prescription, and your pupil distance, which you can just measure at home

Firmoo.com

Eyebuydirect.com

I forget the other ones but these are the two I’ve used. Firmoo always has a lot of coupons and buy one get one free deals.

If you buy them online, you can get prescription sunglasses for $30. If there’s a buy one get one sale, you can get two pairs of prescription sunglasses for $30. And they don’t have to be the same prescription. You but yourself prescription sunglasses for $30, and you can get somebody else a pair of prescription sunglasses for free. Or just a backup set if something happens to the first one!

Seriously!

You do not need to be spending $60 on glasses!! Buy them online!!!

It also means that if you break them catastrophically, you can just reorder them online instead of having to go to the eyeglasses place, which would suck even more for you if your eyes are so bad that you can’t drive.

I use zennioptical.com for my glasses, which is how I got the heart shaped ones

This is all true but it’s actually because it’s difficult to film people wearing glasses - they reflect the set lights and camera and stuff. So it’s easier not to bother. Most times I’ve been filmed, doing any sort of head shot/speak to camera stuff, the camera operator has had me take mine off.

Knives Out went to ridiculous lengths to allow the actors to wear glasses, sculpting different light diffusers so the reflections would be natural and everything

(via materassassino)

bunabi:

I wish being the bigger person was as emotionally satisfying as getting evil revenge bucknasty style I really do

(via kazliin)

dramono:

bruciemilf:

bruciemilf:

Did I daydream this, or was there a website for writers with like. A ridiculous quantity of descriptive aid. Like I remember clicking on “ inside a cinema ” or something like that. Then, BAM. Here’s a list of smell and sounds. I can’t remember it for the life of me, but if someone else can, help a bitch out <3

I FOUND IT BITCHES

This is going to save me so much trouble in the future.

(via pyjamacryptid)

mantorokk-writes:

Never ever be normal about fictional characters but please GOD be normal about the people who play them, I am begging you

(via victorianpining)