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This is what happened when a fanfic site is profit driven. Wattpad sucks 😞

The email from Wattpad is so condescending imagine pressuring writers to update and work while they are doing it for free and fun. Also the discovery? Algorithm? Of Wattpad looks like a stressful popularity contest 😑

#fanfiction

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me as a writer: Oh no I can’t write that, somebody else already has

me as a reader: hell yes give me all the fics about this one scenario. The more the merrier

#fanfiction

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Reblog if you write fic and people can inbox you random-ass questions about your stories, itemized number lists be damned.

#fanfiction

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Reasons to get an AO3 account as a reader

Every time I see someone who reads lots of fic on AO3 but doesn’t have an account, I have to wonder if they realize how many features AO3 has just for readers. This is not an exhaustive list, but here are a few (and I’ve saved the best for last!):

Bookmarks - You probably know these exist because you’ve seen them on fic you read. But did you know that you can:

Make private bookmarks that only you can see - they don’t show up when someone clicks that “bookmarks” link. Not even the author can see them. 


Organize your bookmarks with tags.

Filter them like you would a search.

Add your own comments/descriptions, either for your own benefit or the benefit of people looking for something to read. (Just remember that unless your bookmark is private everyone including the author can see tags & comments.)

History - AO3 can track every fic you’ve ever viewed. My history is 373 pages long. However, you can delete any fic from your history with the click of a button, clear your entire history at once, or turn this off.

“Marked for Later” - Some people use bookmarks to save fics they haven’t read yet, but there’s also a separate system for that. When you’re logged in there’s a “Mark for Later” button on each fic. Then you can filter your History down to just those Marked for Later. Once you’ve read a marked fic you can then hit the “Mark as Read”  button and it will drop off this

The downside to both the History and Marked for Later is that this system currently can’t be sorted or filtered beyond that, but it can be useful nonetheless if you want to save your Bookmarks for rereading your faves.

Locked fics - Some people lock their fics to registered users for many reasons. They don’t want their fics showing up in search engines, they don’t want bots stealing them, they’re having a troll problem, etc. Without an AO3 account you won’t even see that these exist.

Comment notifications - You have an inbox on AO3, and anytime anyone replies to one of your comments you will get a notification. No more having to go back and check fics to see if authors replied to you! You can also opt to get an email every time.

Customize how you see the site - You can use site skins, hide tags or warnings on fics, skip the extra step to view adult content (if you’re 18+), even customize how your browser titles the window.

Last but very much not least:

Subscribe to fics, series, or authors - I honestly don’t understand how anyone keeps up with WIPs without this.


Get an email every time a new chapter is posted, or every time one of your favorite writers posts a new fic or chapter!

Don’t want to read a WIP as it’s being posted? Subscribe and know as soon as the last chapter goes up.


Worth getting an account just for this alone tbh. 


How are you living without it???


(Hitting subscribe is also one more way to show an author you care, although authors can’t see subscriber #s on series.)

There are probably more, but those are the main ones. Yes, you have to wait a few days to get an account, but it’s worth it. If you’re worried because you don’t want people seeing you kudos certain fics (that one tentacle fic you’ll never admit to having read?) - the way login is setup it’s actually super easy to log out, leave anonymous kudos, and log back in without leaving the fic. AO3 is designed by users; they’ve got your back.

And hey, if you ever decide to take the plunge and post something, that’s one step out of your way!

(And seriously, subscribing is a game-changer.)

#ao3

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As promised! I wrote about the illegal fanbinding that's led to writers deleting their works recently, how that connects to the current pull-to-publish wave, and what happens when the rapidly expanding sphere of fic readers starts to get disconnected from *fandom*:

The ever-increasing reach of fanfiction has inched the practice away from text-written-in-community to a more traditional author-reader relationship—and the context collapse that’s come with viral works being treated like any other romance novel has spurred clashes between different types of readers with different sets of expectations. In the past few years, fic authors across all corners of fandom have increasingly complained about shifting attitudes from readers who treat them like any other content creator, demanding the next chapter as you might demand your favorite influencer’s next video. But unlike on creative platforms like TikTok and YouTube, the fic writer doesn’t get revenue from their new installment.

We'll also talk about this in some capacity on the next episode of @fansplaining! (In contrast with today's episode, on the non-monetized, gift-economy practices of many fanbinders, whose hobby is also imperiled by the people selling and buying fic.)

#fanfiction #fandom

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But it does.

#ao3

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About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

#ao3 #delete later

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The Four Sacred Artistic Motives:

-what if this bad thing was good instead

-how about Make-Believe Land can have whatever I want

-would that be fucked up or what

-I think that shit's hot

#fanfiction

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Guest comments temporarily disabled

Due to an influx of abusive spam comments, we've temporarily turned off the ability to leave comments while logged out. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope to have guest comments back on soon! (16:06 UTC April 21, 2024)

#fanfiction #ao3 #delete later

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Last time for this enemy line up. The 2nd time I used almost the exact same line up on first half as the 1st time, just with Navia all the way through on the second half. This 3rd time, I used a slightly different team for the first chamber, based on an anemo only run video. Once I actually executed the rotation properly (Kokomi E > Faruzan EQ > Venti EQ > Kokomi Q to refresh jelly > Wanderer E until Faruzan is off cooldown), it worked very easily. Wanderer can really keep the operatives juggled indefinitely if you catch them before they fall down from Venti Q.

The current state of Abyss on my alt, now that there's Newville Neuvillette. He really is a great utility unit.

Chamber 1 in particular put the Burgeon team against the dendro chicken, so it can said that they did great on the whole. I could have probably optimized chapter 3 a ton as well, since I kept screwing up and not being able to do much damage during the shield down phase of the generator robot. As for chamber 2... well, that was always going to suck, husks are the worst, especially when they're one of three waves, and PMA isn't great either.

Qiqi is there just because so, and she'll in theory be replaced by Childe at some point when I finally get him. I'm just... really unsure how that will go. He's had plenty of reruns, so he could end up in Chronicle, but I also don't see where they'd group him, given that he's not part of any nation or group except the Fatui, and the Fatui don't have enough characters for a banner right now.

#spiral abyss

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Team GrayLu over Gruvia

I am team Graytear lol

#asks #watching fairy tail

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Read chapter 11-20 of Disaster Class Hero. (2% completion lol)

There's a lot of interesting points in general, but worth noting is that novel vs manhwa definitely has a difference in tone due to the things that got dropped or toned down. The novel has some comedy from Lee Geon being kind of absurd, but the manhwa is more humorous in general, especially since they remove some of the bloodier violence, a lot of mentions about how oppressive the temples are, and how wildly incompetent the saints are without Lee Geon.

My biggest other takeaways:

Lee Geon is mentioned as being 25 before the Tower, but looking 50-60 due to speeding up his aging from burning his life energy to fight. Post Tower, he looks like he's about 18 and repeatedly compared to a high schooler. I thought the art for the novel and the promo chapter was twink Lee Geon, but it's actually true. Tbh I'm gonna quietly scrub that from my brain, I can't deal with it.

Hugo is stated to look late 30s, early 40s (so barely younger than his actual age??), and thinking about them side by side is hilarious.

When mentioning how he doesn't know what smartphones are initially, Lee Geon thinks he's from 2005, which would be only five years after the calamity invasion started. The manhwa dated his and Hugo's first meeting as 30 years ago, so something mysterious going on with the timeline.

Hugo has a photo that shows Yooha and Sungjae, ages supposedly 9 and 5 respectively. Sungjae is 16 in present day and turns 17 partway in. So that would mean Yooha has to be 20 at minimum. Given that Hugo and Jiwoo were supposed to have met after the tower (iirc?)... I suppose everyone might be rounding down when talking about how the tower was twenty years ago. Otherwise, I do recall that Koreans sometimes count age differently, and you basically need to reduce it by one, so maybe it's that?

Novel does explain why Hugo mistook a random person for Lee Geon. He specifically expected Lee Geon to look even older than before the tower, like in his 70s, so he singles out an old man who also happens to be a tourist wearing a replica of Lee Geon's mask and even makeup to mimic his scars. So it's extremely understandable that he doesn't get it. Actually, even the divine gods who don't distinguish people based on their faces don't recognize Lee Geon, so he's basically entirely different from his previous self.

Worth noting is that Lee Geon seems to genuinely not understand how different he is from everyone else and what he can expect from others, to the point that I'm kind of surprised he hasn't killed someone accidentally by misjudging his strength. (my fanfic brain: bodyswap shenanigans with a touch of angst, yes??)

#reading webnovels

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I can't believe FGO is getting me like this with a silly event(tm).

Most of it was just heavy duty nonsense full of cameos, but then at the end, it turns into very quintessential Fate stuff.

You get Dagon having a very Fate concept as his backstory - being changed by how you are recorded in history and how people perceive you. Same idea as Karl in Extella Link, or Vlad in Apoc, or even Liz. And then on the opposite side, you get the sisters and the discussion of why they became revered as gods: they might have lost, but their battles had meaning - same as FGO's overall main themes about all life ending in death and whether living still has meaning, whether trying to help those in Lostbelts has meaning, etc.

I did not expect them to hit me so hard at the end, what the heck...

That aside, it was great seeing and using Eresh again. She was my first SSR, and she is still as great as I remember. Penguin Melt also had a good showing too. The Con grinding is kind of a drag, but overall it was a good event.

#reading fate

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Screenshots of the completed sets from the Feline Fortress event.

(Bonus: I did not expect that the event icon would also show in screenshots, haha)

#playing genshin #genshin impact

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To celebrate (?) my doc for Disaster Class Hero reaching nearly 200 pages (and having to get split into two, so that it wouldn't lag as much), I finally started the novel.

I'm at only 10 chapters so far (2% completion, haha), but it's been an interesting comparison vis a vis the manhwa.

First, the most amusing points:

Lee Geon's personal characteristics include "masochist" which is not what I would have seen coming.

Hugo owns a bunch of vending machines that refuse to sell to you if your level is too low and your social score is not high enough. What does that even mean? What are you even doing....

The system has audio to accompany (?) the popups.

Hugo actually went into the Tower at one point, seems to be twelve years down the line. Sounds absolutely insane, considering the timeline (but of course my fanfic brain immediately went "but what if he did find Lee Geon back then")

I keep taking notes as I read, but tbh there's too much, so it would be inconvenient to post.

In a more general sense, I have some mixed feelings.

I want to make it clear that I am enjoying it on the whole, so the endless complaining below is just because I'm a negative person. Take all this with a grain of salt.

The biggest thing is that I find it kind of hard to tell sometimes what is supposed to be going on in terms of worldbuilding details. It feels like the author either wasn't bothering to keep track of things or else didn't convey it well. It's not the big stuff, but more like the entire logistics of what actually happened in the Tower, or what Lee Geon was or wasn't wearing, stuff like that. The manhwa isn't always great either, but it's both visual and just gives less details in general, so it feels less noticeable.

Second, the novel always refers to the "Twelve Zodiac Saints" as a collective, even though it's pretty obvious at times that whatever is being said only applies to some of them. It's just really jarring to know that, given their personalities, some saints were definitely not doing this stuff, but the novel still says "the twelve all did X."

Third, I do not super jive with how the novel presents Lee Geon in comparison to everyone else. They really emphasize how Lee Geon is literally the only useful one ever. He did everything, made everything, everyone else is just ripping off his ideas and deeds. The moment he's gone, the saints can't even win a single fight for three years straight. Given that he's not even a human per se, it really kinda grinds my gears that humanity is capable of so little, as a result.

Fourth, there's some hmm feelings about the pseudo politics going on, but nothing really concrete. I think it just feels a bit silly to make it so parallel (presumed) to the real world, because that opens you up to questions like what the heck is going with massive populations like India, Africa and Latin America, since they're not represented among the Saints at all, as far as I know.

Of course, these aren't really angles you're intended to think on. It's just that I am reading into them for no reason. The actual readthrough is going quite well.

#reading manhwa #reading webnovels

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4.5 pulls have basically wrapped up.

Results on main:

Jean at 80 pulls, Chiori at 77

30 additional pulls afterwards

C5 Gorou

Not pulls, but C5 Amber from shop

I started at C2 Gorou, so that's 3 copies in 187 pulls :))) Great that we're getting a free one next patch to finally reach C6, but jesus christ.

I currently have another 50 pulls, which isn't enough to guarantee anything next patch, even with what we'll get from 4.6 events. I'm debating with myself whether to try for Lyney bow (I want to put it on Childe) while "risking" Arlecchino scythe, or to go for Arlecchino herself... Weapon banner is currently at 55 pity, so it seems the likelier option. I'll get Arlecchino on rerun, I suppose.

Results on alt:

Dehya at 74

Neuvillette C0 at 64

Tome of Eternal Flow at 63

Neuvillette C1 at 77 (50/50 win)

I have nothing left in savings tho and no pity afterward. Which is fine, tbh. Newville is truly a great utility unit. Domains and various Spiral Abyss tediousness is so much easier now. Just the time and effort saved is worth it. I'll also go for his C2 on his next rerun.

Aside from that, Chronicled Wish makes some changes to my priorities. The thing is that Chronicle is inherently worse to use than normal banner, so I want to get as many guys as possible before they hit Chronicle.

Itto is already a lost cause, he's gone. Childe qualifies, but I have some doubts about how they would group him into it, given his everything. I need to get him regardless though, so I'll just try to set aside enough savings. Rizzly hasn't even had his first rerun, so he's probably safe for at least a year. Newville will have at least one more rerun, which is all I need for his C2, and there's no need to invest further.

And that leaves Alhaitham, who is due for his third overall banner, which might end up being his last normal one. I was previously going to just leave wishing on him for last, but I don't want to do some future Sumeru Chronicle for him, so... he just got moved up to second place in the priorities.

Aside from that, I've finished prefarming everything except Alhaitham boss, Anemo Traveler books, and weekly boss mats, which is nice.

#playing genshin

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It's so weird writing fanfiction now.

Comments are like unicorns. So rare.

It's a bit disheartening since you can't even get feedback and I don't know if I did okay or not. And I know I got clicks, too since I do get kudos at the very least. But comments hit different, because they can uplift an author the same way a fic lets a reader's imagination soar.

#fanfiction