Fandom - Blog Posts
saint pentious
I wish they didn't make charlie swear and she would say stuff like "mother trucker" and "heck" instead of "f_ck" Instead I think it fits her bubbly character more 😭
Anyone who’s ever said that Ao3 needs an algorithm needs to shut the fuck up. I LIKE Ao3 because it DOESN’T have an algorithm, because algorithms often cage you in and end up showing you the same kinds of content over and over again for the same kind of topics.
With Ao3, you can actually search and read everything you want to, without content being almost hidden from you because it isn’t popular or doesn’t match what you’ve read before.
On an unrelated note, I HATE the people that keep whining about wanting Ao3 to be a an app.. NO.
FUCK NO.
Ao3 does not need an algorithm, you're just lazy
Ao3 does not need a 1-5 star rating system, you just want to bring down authors writing for FREE
Ao3 does not need automatic censorship, it is an archive, therefore anything can be posted
Writing or reading about something illegal does not mean the author nor the reader condones it, if that were true, you could never read a story involving anything negative
Purity culture is ruining fan culture and you all are fucking annoying
SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).
I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.
IN SHORT
Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.
When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using
his dyslexia;
his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and
a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,
as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.
When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there.
THE TAKEAWAYS
1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain;
2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and
3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again.
THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)
Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):
This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)
I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:
Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.
I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice.
I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.
After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.
While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:
And then I went to bed.
By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:
@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.
That response came only an hour or so later:
Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.
I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.
A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)
A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.
Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.
Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :
Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):
which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)
... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)
After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether.
It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:
And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.
That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:
They were completed works;
They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and
They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.
If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!
I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.
I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.
Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***
That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.
Sooo—
We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them.
This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:
Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.
Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.
THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):
*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that.
**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation.
***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.
Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.
Thank you all so much.
if I was a fanfic tag
Link to the Quiz: https://uquiz.com/quiz/vNQPkn?p=6864178
thank god that I got internet access at 11 and started reading fanfic about Stony
Kinda crazy how speaking English is almost a form of literacy without which your access to the relevant scientific and sociopolitical conversations of our time is seriously limited.... Thank God I started reading yaoi fanfiction on American websites at age 14
My categories for favorite Characters
You know, I think it’s very clear that there are different types of favorite characters that you can have and so far I have split them in four categories:
• the “I relate to you” category which is basically just people that go through the same or similar struggles in their story that you had to go through / are going through
Example from my list: Luna Lovegood (she’s also an INFP, so she’s very similar to me)
• the “you’re literally my baby” category, which mostly consists of cute characters that you want to take care of
Example from my list: Qiqi from Genshin Impact (she’s hated by a lot of people in the fandom but I just find her endearing)
• the “please be my parent” category, which is kinda the exact opposite of the last one, just characters that you may see as a mentor or parental figure
Example from my list: Miranda Bailey from Grey’s Anatomy (she’s stern but means well and also a very good teacher)
• and last but not least the “I am attracted to you” category, which is kinda self explanatory, a lot of people have characters in that category, that might not really be the nicest of all, but they still like them because “they’re hot okay?!” Example from my list: Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7 (what can I say? He’s hot and I have a thing for men with long hair)
weirdly specific genres of fics i love
teacher au where all of the students think that they are cheating on their partners but the characters are actually married
streamer/youtuber au where two (or more lol) characters are dating secretley, but their channels are sort of rival like and the fandoms each hate the other
that brand of hurt/comfort (iykyk)
chat fics and i have a love hate relationship but you know when you find that one that is just the perfect mix of jokes that might be old but you still love and great plot *muah*
i mostly read angst (oops) but finding that perfect fic of the characters just cuddling is the best thing ever
this ones more for superhero fandoms but anything that includes an identity reveal, but only in the two extremes of either super angsty or the biggest joke ever
soulmate au where everyone is confused and nobody knows whats happening at any point in time but at least they love each other
GAME SHOW FICS THEYRE SO RARE BUT SO GOOD
ive never read the hunger games series but hunger games au’s just hit so different
personality swap/mood enhancer au’s where either the anxious person gets super snarky or the stuck up person gets super sad usuabshsksudfjeie i love these ones
and last but not least, the strongest and/or angriest character is faced with a small animal or bug and it is revealed that they are greatly terrified of this creature
ok everyone im very late but it’s still november so here’s my hot take:
not only are multishippers the least problematic in a fandom, poly shippers are even less toxic
W ramach research'u do FF przejrzałam "Lonely place of dying" i zastanawiam się skąd do cholery BatFam Fandom wytrzasnął "Tim Drake przyszedł do Batmana i zaszantażował go, żeby być Robinem". Wg tego komiksu, wiecie, genezy Tima, Tim: stalkował Dicka aż do cyrku, wcisnął mu kopertę ze zdjęciami Batmana, Dick zabrał go do Wayne Manor bez zadawania pytań bo "nie zostawi dwunastoletniego dzieciaka samemu", Tim odwalił 3 strony ekspozycji mając gdzieś, że właśnie przywołuje jedno z najbardziej traumatycznych wydarzeń w życiu Dicka, po czym na jego wyjaśnienia "Batman potrzebuje Robina" Dick odpowiedział "Nie, Nightwing mu wystarczy" i wyjechał. Wtedy Tim&Alfred wcisnęli Tima w stary kostium Robina i pojechali na miejsce akcji, gdzie trzynastolatek bez żadnego doświadczenia miał sobie jakoś poradzić, po czym Batman&Nightwing stwierdzili "Well, skoro i tak nie możemy go powstrzymać"...
But I guess to by nie wyglądało dobrze kiedy Jason wraca kurzony, że jego rodzina go zastąpiła, so...
FF upierają się, że Batman stał się ch*jowym ojcem po śmierci Jasona, bo ta go tak załamała... Jak na ten moment tylko przeglądałam pobieżnie te komiksy, ale osobiście dochodzę do wniosku, że DC po prostu miało przez ostatnie kilak dekad challenge gdzie z każdym kryzysem robili z Bruce'a gorszego rodzica, a całość New 52 mam wrażenie, że próbuje to potwierdzić XD
Ja: Narzekam do kuzynki, która nie ma bladego pojęcia o BatFamily i nie czytała fanfików o fikcyjnych postaciach od dwóch lat, o tym jak spora część Jason-focused FF go przedstawia.
I nagle mam wielką urge, żeby przeczytać/napisać FF o tym, że 17/18-letni Dick zostaje zabity jako Robin, wraca do życia, zostaje przygarnięty przez Deathstroke'a i wraca do Gotham gdzie przejmuje czarny rynek, tworzy sierocińce dla dzieci i planuje zamordować Robina Jason'a Todd'a. A przy okazji adoptował kilak bio dzieci Slade'a jako swoje rodzeństwo.
Nie zrozumiem fandomu Bleacha.
Canon wręcz błaga o "Ichigo to reinkarnacja Kaiena" FF, a jednocześnie z jakiegoś powodu prawie nikt o tym nie pisze?!
Szczerze to na początku byłam pewna, że to w tą stronę kanon idzie? Seria poruszająca silnie temat śmierci, duchów, równowagi między obydwoma światami. Ichigo był rysowany prawie że identycznie jak Kaien, no i cała sytuacja z wicekapitanem 13 oddziału. Umówmy się, ten oddział nie miał wicekapitana od dekad. Zamiast tego mieli 2 osoby na niższym stopniu, a na dodatek wyjątkowo potrzebowali kogoś na tej pozycji, ponieważ ich kapitan był chorowity i nie zawsze mógł pełnić swoje obowiązki. Ta cała sytuacja wrzeszczała "wciąż go opłakujemy, jeszcze sobie z tym poradziliśmy", nie mówiąc już o tym, że Rukia wciąż czuła się winna za tą całą sytuację. Spotkanie reinkarnacji Kaiena i realizacja, że wszystko będzie w porządku mogłoby być swego rodzaju catharsis - zamiast, wiecie, zabicie kontrolowanego przez Hollowa pseudo-klona Kaiena.
Mam odrobinę doświadczenia z żałobą i wiem, że czasem prawdziwe pożegnanie (którego, umówmy się, nikt z życia Kaiena tak naprawdę nie miał) może zdziałać więcej niż lata powtarzania sobie, że wszystko będzie dobrze, bo... cokolwiek twoja wiara ci nie mówi, że dzieje się po śmierci. (jeśli usłyszę jeszcze raz "nie płacz, ta osoba za którą tęsknisz jest teraz w lepszym miejscu i jest szczęśliwa" to chyba kogoś zastrzelę)
I tak, wiem, że żałoba jest zawsze inna i każdy ją przechodzi inaczej. znam ludzi dla których ten cały "oni są w lepszym miejscy" bullshit działa, nwm jak oni to robią już nawet "ah, niedługi i tak do nich dołączę" mojego św.pam. dziadka brzmi lepiej. Jednak mam wrażenie, że to miałoby więcej sensu z czysto narracyjnego punktu widzenia. Also mogłoby ładnie wyjaśnić dlaczego Ichigo jest taki silny/szybko się uczy.
Anyway, Ichigo-to-Kaien to świetny pomysł, powinno być o tym like milion fanfików, a ja z radością przyjęłabym każdy z nich.
Jeśli następne Young Justice FF jakie będę próbowała przeczytać to znowu będzie "Chcę napisać o komiksach, ale wezmę YJ timeline, bo DC nie ma pojęcia jak iść w chronologię" albo "Zastąpmy czas Dicka w Titans pierwszym sezonem, a później zapomnijmy, że te postacie mają charakter i relacje inne niż w komiksach" to coś mnie trafi.
Właśnie widziałam zwiastun "Trollhunters: Rise Of The Titans".
Orginalny serial uwielbiałam do czasu, bo jestem bardzo continuity-logic-centric osobą, zwłaszcza kiedy w grę wchodzą jakiekolwiek podróże w czasie, więc takie rzeczy mnie mogą wybić... i naprawdę cieszę się, że mogę być mniej-lub-bardziej częścią fanbazy Tales of Arcadia akurat w takim momencie. Fandom naprawdę ekscytuje się zakończeniem franczyzny i cieszę się, że mogę brać w tym udział.
Jako fanka Peggy Sue (i AU-Canon Divergence) naprawdę mnie denerwuje, że praktycznie wszystkie FF korzystające z tych tropów uparcie podążają za ‘The Stations of the Canon’ najbardziej jak się da. Dlatego uwielbiam, jak My Next Life as a Villainess w pewnym sensie wyśmiewa ten sposób myślenia.
Katarina po odzyskaniu wspomnień jest fanką, która grała w grę otome i za cholerę nie dociera do niej, że jej akcje mają znaczenie, a Butterfly Effect zmienił całą historię praktycznie kiedy tylko się obudziła. To że Kat jest taka nieświadoma zmian które sama tworzy i wciąż wydaje jej się, że podąża za fabułą gry, ma efekt komiczny, ale dla mnie już chyba zawsze pozostanie komentarzem do autorów obsesyjnie przepisujących kanon w swoich FF. I tylko za to My Next Life as a Villainess ma u mnie +10 XD
Cała seria sprawiła mi dużą przyjemność, świetnie się na niej bawiłam i naprawdę nie mogę doczekać się kolejnego sezonu! Also, opening jest cudowny, zwłaszcza jeśli chodzi o muzykę.
Największym minusem tego anime jest chyba to że za żadne skarby nie da się zapamiętać całego tytułu, zwłaszcza po japońsku. Czy oni brali udział w jakimś konkursie na najdłuższy tytuł anime/nowelki roku?..
For those new to AO3
Authors can see your bookmarks as a default. You have to mark them as private if you don't want authors to see them. There is an argument that bookmarks are a reader's space, but if you don't want authors to see what you are saying, make the bookmark private.
There is no algorithm on AO3. Seriously. It does not exist. Sorting by kudos, comments, length, etc. is the closest thing you will get. It is very much a curate your experience situation. Embrace it because you never know what gems you'll find if you give less popular fics a chance.
Depending on who you ask, kudos are not a good metric to judge a fic on anymore. As to if they ever were is, again, depending on who you ask. There is a spider/web crawler (we call it the kudos bot) who gives a bunch of guest kudos to fics. We cannot summon it and we cannot remove the kudos. At best, we can set our fics to private. So, if you see a fic with way more kudos than views, that's why. Many of us do not want these kudos, but we have to live with them.
Concrit (constructive criticism) is divisive because this is a hobby for many people. There is a culture on AO3 for concrit to be opt-in instead of opt-out, but not everyone subscribes to that. If you do not see an author's note saying concrit is OK, you can ask if it's OK. If they don't say anything, take it as a 'no'. If the author is cool with concrit, great. Concrit away.
Asking for updates is also divisive. Some people want/need that encouragement and some don't. Leaving a polite 'can't wait for the next chapter' is totally fine. If you ask for an update and the author asks you not to, please respect their wishes. You don't know what else is going on behind that screen. We all use fic for our own reasons and it's impossible to tell if that was someone's project to forget about things that they don't want to deal with.
There is a difference between A/B and A&B. A/B is for shipping and A&B is for non-shipping relationships (such as platonic and familial relationships or bullying or work situations). Please tag accordingly and please do not accuse people of writing shippy fic when they tagged it A&B.
Comment totals on AO3 count author responses. It doesn't make a distinction between a response and a new comment thread. Comment thread counts are in the author's stats page only available to them. Authors are not inflating their comment counts by responding to get more views. They are just trying to interact with people who support them.
Not all authors respond to comments. For many older fans, this can be due to years of harassment in fandom, witnessing friends being harassed, not having time, etc. etc. Their reasons are their own and it does not mean you are a bad person or said something wrong if they don't respond to you nor does it say anything about them. Authors do not owe you interaction just as you do not owe them comments. It's your prerogative if you only want to leave comments on fics where the author answers back, but it does not mean the author isn't grateful or doesn't care. You do not know what else is going on.
You cannot take a kudos back. Seriously. It's permanent. If that means you want to wait until a fic is finished to leave a kudos, that's totally fine. To authors, if you see a bunch of comments and views, but few kudos, this is probably the reason. It does not mean your fic is bad; it just means readers are holding kudos back until the fic is finished, which is perfectly legitimate.
Please read author's notes at the beginning and end of chapter updates. This is where authors are The Most Likely to tell you if there has been a change in their update schedule, if they made changes to previous chapters, explained a certain choice they made, etc. Same with checking the tags thoroughly before reading a fic. Most authors take tagging and warning/updating readers very seriously and the spaces they can do it in are the author's notes and the tags.
Because there are so many people from so many cultures on AO3, the categorizing of fics may not be totally even across the board. Tagging might have discrepancies. For instance: some people might view smut as M and not E depending on the level of detail; some might even view it as T. Please exercise caution and look at tags carefully when clicking on a fic. If you come across something you do not like, the back button is always an option.
There is a hard limit of 75 tags on fics, so not all characters that appear in a fic are likely to be tagged. For many of us, we only tag major players, major ships/&-relationships, and background relationships as a courtesy and save the rest of our tags for known triggers and making it easier for people to find our fics by tagging the tropes we use and certain parts of the content (such as 'AU where A loses their voice').
If you hate a character or a ship or a certain trope or have certain triggers, there is nothing wrong with asking a fandom friend for recommendations. If anything, we probably should bring back fic rec lists and you could be doing an amazing service for fandom if you start making one based on your preferences. Don't rely purely on other platforms to lead you to amazing fics; you never know how that person is finding fics and they could be missing out on some really amazing ones.
AO3 currently does not have a messaging system and many users prefer it that way. I am not positive what the future holds, but if any author wants you to get in contact, they will probably leave other socials in their notes or on their profile. They might even tell you to contact them in a comment response. You can absolutely respond to them on other social media platforms and talk fics or art or fandom. The AO3 lack of messaging is a comfort for many people because of previous experiences regarding harassment and, for some, that's the closest thing to a social media that they have. Some fandoms are more than 40 years old and not all of it has been positive for everyone.
Please do not leave 'placeholder' ideas in the fic tags. By this I mean, 'here's an idea I plan to write. Let me know if you like it!' and there's one or two sentences but no actual fic. AO3 is not social media. You can be reported for this and the post taken down as per AO3's guidelines. Fic, meta, and art are welcome on AO3. A plan to write a fic is not.
Lastly, please enjoy your time on AO3. It is an archive that dedicates itself to preserving fandom works, whether we agree with those works or not.
comments on fanfics
I thought about writing this post for a long time and decided, fuck it, I'm gonna write this.
All over my dash I see people being disappointed because nobody is leaving comments on ao3 anymore/rebloging things on tumblr.
And the only thing I can think about this is: it's so true.
Two weeks ago I posted the epilog of my 60k words fanfic (I've been writing on it for almost a year and got some positive feedback on it) and I got ZERO comments, or kudos on the epilog.
I can see that people kicked on it, but I have no idea whether they liked it or not. (And I used to get a comment on my story now and then)
Last week I posted the first extra chapter (I planned three of these) and also got no reaction.
No I'm just sitting here, wondering if my writing is just true shit.
This is also the reason I was hesitate to post this. Maybe it's not the people and just that shithole of a story I've been writing.
Things like are just running around my head now and must say that the motivation to even finish those extra chapters is gone.
GUYS, IF YOU LIKE A FANFIC PLEASE LET THE AUTHOR KNOW, IT MEANS SO MUCH TO THEM.
So if you read a good story, not some bullshit like mine, write that comment.
People used to comment on web comics.
People used to comment on fanfiction.
People used to comment on fanart.
People used to comment on OCs.
I hate "content" culture.
I hate "consuming content" and scrolling immediately to the next thing.
People used to be excited about the art that other people created.
People used to want to share that excitement with creators.
I hate this future.
Thing I love about Nico is how miserable he is
Thing I love about Nico is how miserable he is
My favourite thing about fan fiction is the experience of watching/reading something and being like ‘huh - I can see a potential pairing there, those two characters could be interesting together’. And then you casually look up the pairing on AO3 and someone has written the most beautiful, heart-wrenching love story you’ve ever read, with character analysis that makes you want to scream, and they’ve teased out the threads of the relationship dynamic in such an interesting way that makes so much SENSE, but you never would have thought it would be so fucking ELECTRIC. And then you recover enough from that fic to read another one, and it’s JUST AS FUCKING GOOD, and before you know it, it’s 3am and your eyes are burning and you’re squinting at the 100th scene of them confessing their love for each other and it’s still not enough. You know what I’m saying???
why you should reblog and support content creators
i’ve been on tumblr since 2012 and became a content creator in 2014/5, so i’ve been here for years and I can confirm that: people barely reblog posts now and it’s becoming an issue. yes content creators make stuff mostly for them, but if we post them it’s so people can see and enjoy it. and this happens when you hit “reblog”
the likes/reblogs ratios is a big disaster. when I first started, the reblogs were like 70% of a post with 30% of likes. now it’s 10% reblogs and 90% likes. likes are good, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t give us visibility.
reblogging = sharing posts to your followers. it’s easy and quick
WHY YOU SHOULD REBLOG
reblogs are important because it motivates people to create stuff and create more
it’s a great way to introduce your followers to a show/an artist/sports. i don’t wanna throw myself flowers but a few of my followers got into motorsport because I was reblogging posts about it (and also creating gifs and edits)
reblogs are a great way to make new friends because your followers/mutuals will see you have stuff in common and it will help to engage a conversation and start a friendship.
content creators spend a lot of time editing and a reblog shows that these hours weren’t lost
reblogging helps us making our work be seen as tumblr’s tags are sometimes broken and they don’t appear in tags
it encourages people to create more and. i’m posting graphics and reblogs are encouraging me to keep posting them and creating more
top bonus is when you leave nice stuff in the tags. we see them and we love it and we love you
reblog because it’s free and the button exists for a reason
there is many more reasons but i won’t spam you
WHY YOU SHOULD SUPPORT CONTENT CREATORS
we are nice
we provide stuff for free
we take requests and make stuff you ask for
we share our resources: colorings, writing tips, where to get pictures, where to get fonts, tutorials, links for softwares
because we struggle a lot with tumblr’s tags
because people are sometimes rude to us and send rude asks (ex: writers - to publish their writings sooner)
because our work is being stolen by people claiming it’s theirs
because our work is being reposted on other social medias without asking us and crediting
i’m not pointing a gun to your face screaming “REBLOG”, i’m just telling you that if you like a post, you should think about reblogging it so your followers can see it and you’ll make one person happy <3
