#migrating from fanfiction.net to ao3

[kitkatt0430]

Instead of doing a Six Sentence Sunday today, I think I'll do a short tutorial on copying over fanfic from FFnet to Ao3.

So you've got some old fics on FFnet and you'd like to back them up to Ao3, given the instability of FFnet. And for whatever reason you don't have the original files for the fics, or maybe you have edits to the FFnet versions that you don't want to lose that the OG files don't have. Whatever the reason, you're looking to directly copy over your fic from FFnet to Ao3. And you're looking for a relatively easy way to do so, but Ao3's import functionality doesn't work with FFnet web pages.

Never fear! It's actually a fairly easy process to get your fic copied over from FFnet.

First, head over to FFnet and open up the fic you want to port over to Ao3. You don't need to log in if you don't want to, just so long as the fic in question is yours and you can access the page, then you're good.

In a separate tab, open Ao3 and login, then choose the option for posting a new work.

Now back on the FFnet tab, you should be able to directly copy over the title, summary, fandom, and what little tagging was available on that site onto the relevant Ao3 fields in the tab you have for a new fic. You'll also want to take note of the published date on FFnet and back date the new work in the Ao3 tab.

FFnet may not have a lot of useful tag data, but it's pretty easy to replicate and build off that in Ao3.

Now for the hard part. Which is still pretty easy. Getting the fic body, plus any notes in the fic itself, copied over to FFnet.

While getting around FFnet's lockdown on the text of the fics they host is fairly simple - I'm pretty sure it's entirely css based - you don't really need to do that in order to get the body of your fic copied. And, honestly, even if you do have a work around in place to allow copying of the fic's text... you will probably find the following method a lot easier still.

In the body of the fic, right click the first line of the fic, which should bring up a menu with a bunch of options. On Firefox or Chrome you want the inspect option.

This'll bring up the dev tools with the html inspection tab open and, if you give it a few seconds to load, the specific line you right clicked to inspect should become the visibly selected section of the html.

The selected section of the html should be a paragraph (or <p>) element. You're going to want to right click the div (<div>) element that encapsulates that paragraph and the rest of the paragraphs in the fic body. This'll bring up another browser menu with the option to copy, which will bring up a flyout menu when you select it. From that flyout menu, you want the select the option for Inner HTML.

You have officially copied the html for the fic body. And you can dump that entirely in html format straight into Ao3's html work text editor. Then switch it to rich text for easier editing if you want to fix any spelling, grammar, formatting, or aesthetic issues. I typically try to fix at least the line breaks since it took a long while before FFnet adopted real line breaks and so there are a lot of fics where I have various combinations of dashes, em-dashes, equals signs, and other characters as line breaks. I figure, if I'm bringing the fic to Ao3 then I can try to make it more screen reader friendly in the process.

You can also move fic notes around in order to move pre/post fic notes out of the fic body or basically whatever you want to the fic. Maybe re-read it to determine any additional tagging you want to add now that your fic has access to Ao3's much more robust tagging system.

But that's it. You can hit post and have your fic with all it's original notes, and a back dated post date to reflect when it was actually written, all available on Ao3 now.

It's a pretty quick process, all told, and the only real bottleneck you might encounter is any time spent in re-editing the fic between migrating and posting. Even chaptered fics are fairly easy to migrate with this process, since the bulk of the work in publishing a new chapter is just copying the inner html and then moving any notes to the appropriate location before hitting post.

Anyway, for my fellow fic writers looking to move your old FFnet fics to a more stable archive, I hope this process helps a lot.

[confession-of-the-heart]

So amid all of the pairing discourse being sent to this blog, one little thing stuck out to me. Someone commented claiming that AkuRoku is one of the most popular pairings on AO3 with some of the largest numbers of fics, but being the statistics nerd I am, and knowing the general trajectory of this fanbase, I decided to run some numbers and put that claim to the test.

(Actually, looking into that got me really curious about the general popularity over time of all the relatively notable pairings in KH, so I think I might eventually make a formal post compiling all my findings once I have a little more time. This is definitely informal, but it’s just an initial impression of my research thus far. Obviously, take this with a grain of salt: fanfic is only one piece of the general popularity puzzle, but it does seem to be generally understood as a decent benchmark for analysis of broader trends within fandoms.)

As a note, I measured fic numbers by date of update from April to April, year to year on AO3, so factors like game release date timing should be taken into account.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, SoRiku is the undisputed king of KH shipping. It’s been going incredibly strong since 02 but even then experienced a massive jump at KH3’s release, number of fics updated in the year multiplying nearly 6x in 2019 from where it had been in 2017. It’s slowly settled down since, but is still holding at well over 300 fics per year, even during this content drought. It’s vastly above everything else in popularity and always has been.

Most pairings have followed a similar pattern since KH3’s release: The entire fandom experienced a general jump in activity and most pairings got a boost from 2018-2020, although some more dramatically than others: Akusai fics (inclusive of fics tagged just leaisa, just akusai, or both, not counting the same fics twice) experienced a more dramatic leap than any other pairing in 2019, going from just 40 in 2017, to 183 the following year, to 350 in 2019–an 8x jump in interest. (Wow!)

Like Soriku, most other pairings have generally gone fallow since 2020, as that was the last time we all got any sort of content. (Missing Link when Nomura.)

As far as the stats for Akuroku go… Honestly a bit gobsmacked by the trends in the data. I decided to include both number of fics updated per year on both AO3 and fanfiction.net, as the fandom’s early 2000s heyday can’t really be accounted for on AO3. fanfiction.net’s numbers are a little inflated because I couldn’t honestly be bothered to separate out the infinitesimally small number of non-ship fics in the 2000s and early 2010s from the overwhelmingly large proportion of ship fics there, but if you compare how many fics that pairing used to get in its heyday from 2006-2011, it used to average out at roughly 1000 fics a year.

From 2012 on, the drop in popularity is precipitous—on both fanfiction.net and AO3. it had less than half the fics in 2012 on fanfiction.net than it did in 2010, and it’s continued to exponentially decline there since. For example, there were no AkuRoku ships updated on fanfiction.net last year, and there were only 2 updated the year before. (Noting that fandoms at large did begin to increasingly migrate away from fanfiction.net after 2012, which also explains similar but less extreme declines in otherwise healthy ships like SoRiku on that website).

It fares a little better on AO3, although it’s been eclipsed in popularity by ships that were once drastically less popular than it involving the same characters at several points—Leaisa/Akusai for example consistently had hundreds more fics than it from around 2018-2020, an impressive feat considering that ship basically didn’t exist prior to 2013~2014, although it’s gone quieter since.

AkuRoku has remained pretty much consistent at roughly 150~200 fics per year on AO3 since 2012 (a couple years have had roughly a 10~20 variance above or below that, no significant jumps either way, though it did roughly halve from a high year in 2020 to a low year in 2021) which leads me to believe that it’s… probably more off in its own world separate from what the rest of the fandom is doing than other ship communities? It doesn’t follow the same trends as ships that are more closely following the story developments in canon do.

It’s kind of surprising to see it be that much of a general drop, though. I knew it was less popular than it once was, but I didn’t realize just how much less popular it really is. 150~200 fics updated a year sounds like a lot, but if you compare it to how absurdly ubiquitous it used to be, it’s a shadow of its former self. Unless KH4 has a bunch of interactions with them and them alone, going by the trends and general attitude of the fandom, I think it’ll probably just continue to slowly lose momentum. It still has a lot of diehards, but it would appear that the majority compared to that of 15-20 years ago have jumped ship, so to speak. I have a feeling that if Roxas ever gains any significant peer relationships with different male characters in the future, it’ll likely be another nail in the coffin for it as enthusiasm for a gay Roxas ship bleeds elsewhere.

So, uh, basically… everyone who’s freaking out about it, chill? It’s probably just going to continue slowly petering out on its own eventually as the next games move away from the characterization that initially made it popular, whether anyone wants it to or not. That’s what fic trends would appear to indicate, at any rate.

Side note: out of all the pairings I’ve analyzed popularity over time for thus far, I’m surprisingly impressed by Naminé/Xion. I thought it was way more of a rarepair than it actually is. It’s not going anywhere crazy like Soriku, but it’s actually rather consistent with other moderately popular kid pairs like Roxas/Xion on AO3, and saw a jump in numbers above Roxas/Naminé of all things from 2019-2020, which I would never have anticipated. Let’s go lesbians! I guess KH3 really did change things up.

~~~

[prince-liest]

Just wanted to say, love that you’re on a Danny Phantom kick! Thank you for feeding my dash just when I get back into the show 😂💖👻

I am curious though, did you watch it when you were younger or is it a newer discovery for you?

Oh man, aside from the fact that I initially discovered fanfiction.net in middle school while looking up Twilight, Danny Phantom is my oldest and longest fandom!! I remember coming home from school and reading through Cordria's FFN updates. I'll always find my way back to Danny Phantom, hahaha. An interesting aspect of the fandom is that it's one of the oldies that has its biggest treasure trove of fics on FFN and unavailable on AO3; I'm really hopeful that some day more of them will be migrated over somehow!

[ghostsonthetardis]

I like how Twitter fandom negativity has invaded the fun safe spaces of Tumblr fandom. /s

This place, Tumblr is where I used to come to get away from the negativity, this is where, even if people didn't like something, they at least knew to not say those negative things out loud in a way that it would spiral.

It's like everyone's trying to speedrun this place into Twitter 2.0, and honestly?

It's very likely because of how many people have migrated here from Twitter and are using this place the same way, and honestly, it's very similar to how people on FanFiction.net started using AO3 comments in the same way as FF.N reviews, the only difference is people on AO3 have been educating those people on the fact that AO3 is NOT FF.N.

You're allowed to have opinions that differ, but when the place becomes an echo chamber, how long until those opinions turn to "let's burn this place to the ground"? How much of these things are your opinions and how much is things you've picked up from others, piggybacking off of your original unhappiness?

I have my own thoughts and feelings about it all too, but you know what I'm not doing? I'm not expressing those, not here, not where it can be easily dragged into the general negativity, not where I can get consumed by it.

If you don't like it, that's fine! but why must you make others unhappy in your quest to express your dissatisfaction?

Please do not turn this post into a pile of negativity, nor come to my asks to spread it, I will block you if you proceed with this behaviour.

[thesoulspulse]

Regarding Fanfiction...

Ok so to those of you who also use Fanfiction.net I'm sure you're aware of how buggy its been over the years and how especially bad it's been acting up since the middle of September. Now, I've been writing fanfiction since high school which means one of the main things that's kept me there so long is the familiarity along with liking the overall setup when it comes to posting new chapters. But it's been 13 years now and the site just feels, well, broken...

That's why I've decided to start migrating my work to AO3 too! It's going to be a big change for me since I'm not used to the set up, however, I'm hoping to gain a few new readers who haven't come across my work yet! I'm still planning to upload content on both fanfiction sites but updates might be slower on the AO3 end until I get the hang of everything. Plus I'm going to be leaving a few stories alone that I either plan to touch up later or are on an indefinite hiatus, mostly just the older stuff from my last major hyper-fixation lolz.

So yeah, on AO3 I'm under the name SecretSigil to make things easier on myself since that's my main username on most platforms and my plan is to consolidate my Danny Phantom fanfics in one place instead of two like I've been doing up until now. Might take some time though since I can't import the documents directly but hey, at least I have backups of everything so it shouldn't be too hard to make the move! Wish me luck as I start working on that in the upcoming new year!

[sing-in-me-oh-muse]

Writer Highlight - Yellow14

Each month on Sanctuary, a Discord server that nurtures writers of all kinds, highlights a writer and asks them questions about their writing process. October 2024’s writer is Yellow14!

Yellow14

FF.net Profile: yellow 14

Ao3 Profile: Yellow14

Works:

Juleka’s Guide to Breaking In

Queen Kalus

WITCH: Civil War

What is your writing process? How do you approach a fic or original work? (e.g. Are you a Pantser? Plotter? Do you focus on dialogue before description? etc.)

I’m a planner for the most part. I come up with the idea (or I have a prompt) hammer it into a vaguely story shaped outline (beginning-middle-end) and write. Writing itself involves building upon the basic plan and occasionally changing details on the way . Pantsing my way through a story is a very bad way to write, at least for me.

What was your first story and why did you finally decide to write?

Oh that’s complicated. I was inspired to write a sequel to another fanfiction writer’s work. I got permission from them to write it and I started writing it. But my first published fanfiction was an Ace Combat fic.

Where is your favorite place/time/conditions to write?

Home alone in the Living Room, sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea. Or in my room with a cup of tea. But always with tea, no matter how much of a stereotype that is.

What is your favorite pairing, platonic or romantic, and why?

Romantically it’s a toss up between Rose Weasley/Scorpius Malfoy from Harry Potter and Irma Lair/Cornelia Hale from W.I.T.C.H. The former because Ron hinted at it in the epilogue and I like the idea of the next generation moving in a positive direction. The latter because the two of them bicker too much to be ‘just friends’ and I’m a sucker for that sort of thing. Platonically it’s Alya/Marinette. I feel like the two of them have a very complimentary relationship in many ways.

Do you have any thematic elements you’re interested in or that consistently show up in your writing?

Not really. Themes and thematic elements are primarily emergent properties for me. I just write and let those details emerge from the flow.

How do you deal with writer's block?

I use a variety of techniques. Sometimes I switch to a different story. I also try to immerse myself into the source material and fanfics. And if nothing else works, I keep throwing out ideas at the story until I find something that clicks. It’s a brute force solution, but it’s very effective.

What do you do if you have too many ideas?

That’s my default position. I address the most pressing ideas and I put them on hold. If they survive, they’re worth keeping.

Many people have migrated from fanfiction.net to other platforms, but as far as I know, you never have. Can you briefly summarize why you've kept to this decision?

I like FFN. It’s easier to use than AO3. (No tags to worry about.) I have regular reviewers there and I don’t want to abandon the website I cut my writing teeth on. Besides, keeping my stories on multiple platforms is a good way to ensure their survival.

Thanks for your answers, Yellow!

Join Sanctuary today and sign up to be highlighted on Tumblr and the server!

[ernmark]

Ask Game!

Thank you to @sapphosewrites for thinking of me for this <3

How many works do you have on AO3?

I'm almost up there with Sapphose-- I've got 141, though I really need to finish tranferring my really old fics from my fanfiction.net account.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

Those 141 fics give me a grand total of 969,127 words.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

My biggest fandoms are The Penumbra Podcast, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Welcome To Night Vale (that's an oldie, hot damn) and Les Miserables, with Les Mis being the most recent one I've been active in.

4. Top 5 Fics By Kudos

I'm honestly surprised that Haunting, but not haunted (Penumbra Podcast ghost AU) has overtaken The Issue of Omniscience (WTNV). Just Like an Angel (WTNV Wingfic) ranks just behind those two, then The Case Files of J. Steel (a very very large Penumbra Poscast one-shot collection). What surprised me was I Could Be Your Own Avenging Angel (DS9 alternate take on Empok Nor) making the top five-- apparently that one's gotten some recs lately, which pleases me immensely. The fact that all of these are fairly sexy is not a surprise to me.

5. Do you respond to comments?

I read them all, I squee in delight at them all, but a lot of times I'm just flummoxed about what to say in response. I know theoretically just a quick 'thank you' is appropriate, but it feels... I dunno, trite?

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Listen, I'm an absolute sucker for angst, but I tend to go with bittersweet rather than outright angst in the ending.

Just a Little Wooden Boy (OFMD) is the most recent, and plays hard with the idea of deep hurt turning love into something cold that can't be fixed. (Like a Terrier (Sherlock) has a similar vibe.)

Stay With Me (Wolf 359) just plain tragedy. Eiffel succumbs to the Decima virus, the other humans are forced to flee the station, and so Hera is left to comfort him in his final hours. It's in the same vein as The Way Things End (Supernatural) and Off the Path (Bioshock Infinite) where they're very much about accepting death when it can't be fought anymore-- but in the other two, there's the hope of accompanying your loved one on the other side, where Hera is now just trapped alone with her grief and the body of her friend.

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I genuinely don't know how you would even go about judging that.

Most of my multichapter fics end with the idea that there's still work to be done-- causes to fight for, mental illness to struggle against, relationship issues to work out. The thing is that they now have a framework for dealing with the problem at hand.

So given that-- Of the Rapture That Impels (Les Miserables) deals with sinking into grief and despair and ends with actually being able to see a light at the end, which is pretty much the epitome of a happy ending in my book.

Skin and Scales (Penumbra Podcast) has the most classically happy ending, I think.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Thank all that is holy, I haven't gotten direct hate on fics since high school-- the fandoms I've been in have been lovely, and anyone who has unkind things to say about them has been polite enough to do it where I don't need to see it.

9. Do you write smut?

Yup.

10. Craziest crossover

I almost never do crossovers, actually. But years ago (so long ago that it hasn't actually been migrated to AO3 yet) I wrote a 9/Labyrinth crossover in which 7 was in fact Sarah, transfigured by the Goblin King in order to save her from the machine apocalypse.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I think they might have been yanked over to wattpad or whatever once or twice. It happens, it gets reported, I move on.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don't believe so-- or if it's happened, it was long enough ago that I've forgotten.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes. And let me tell you, I am very bad at being a co-writer. The more successful stuff looks less like co-writing and more like parallel play in the same sandbox.

14. All time favorite ship?

I'm with Sapphose here in that I don't have one favorite ship, so much as I have a favorite dynamic. I'm a sucker for damaged, self-loathing characters who are so determined to do right by the person they love that they wind up becoming better (stronger, happier) people for it.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Just one?

Probably A Dynasty of Liars (DS9). I love that story so much, but I genuinely have no idea where it would go next or how I would execute it.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm told that my angst is pretty damn solid, and that I can get voices pretty well.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Scene transitions, and particularly those detailed descriptions where we describe where we're at. It's one of the things I can get away with more in fanfic than in original writing, because a couple references will convey which setpiece we're in so I don't have to do the work. In anything remotely original, that's a much bigger problem.

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I'm in camp 'translate if the POV character knows it', with the addendum that "and they continued to speak in[language]" tends to be much more effective than actually writing long stretches of that other language, particularly if it's one that the writer isn't fluent in. If the reader doesn't know the second language, it conveys about as much as a keysmash. If they do, then you're prone to embarrassing goofs where you translate something badly without knowing.

19. First fandom you wrote in?

Lord of the Rings. A self-insert, Boromir-lives AU.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Pretty much any longfic that I've actually completed, I think. But lately, I'm partial to A Change of a Bizarre Kind (Les Miserables), because I did some stuff with the POV and structure that I'm really proud of.

Now that you've gotten to see me ramble, I'll go ahead and tag @ryosei-hime, @aftershocked, and @alecjmarsh

[thegirlfrombrowneyedcounty]

Hi Tumblr! My name is Stephanie, and before I start posting random story excerpts or fangirl over some of my favorite shows & movies I’m currently writing fanfictions for, I thought a brief introduction would be suitable as I plan to post weekly on this platform.

I first realized I wanted to be a writer some time in 2015 or 2016 when I posted a fanfiction on Fanfiction.net. Despite being riddled with capitalization errors, misspellings, and even inconsistent verb tenses, “Till the end” was my first solid piece of work, and boy was I proud! I went on to write multiple fanfictions after that, eventually migrating to platforms like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own. Although it would take me until 2022 to grow serious about writing original work (a newfound love for historical fiction also helped) and for my post-WWII short story, “The Doughertys’ Home Front” to come to fruition, I have since then been able to push out additional short stories and a novella, many of which have seen recognition from ambassador-led Wattpad contests. Today, I feel more secure than ever in calling myself a historical writer specializing in twentieth-century history.

Now on to the real story.

As much as I’d like to portray my writing journey simply, going from a fanfiction writer to a original fiction writer, that is not the case. Throughout my teen years and into my twenties, I struggled to write the stories I wanted to tell. I’d write fanfictions to appease certain audiences, and before I wrote historical fiction, settled on YA because it was “safe” and what I saw selling. I suppose I could sum it up like this: I fought the notion that my writing should grow with my body, my mind, and my interests, and instead, wrote stories that were not true to me.

But that continues no more.

Frankly, I never thought that I’d be writing fanfiction AND historical fiction side-by-side, with the former focused on a show that ruled my childhood for half a decade. Yet, here I am, doing exactly that, and I couldn’t be more excited to share my work and my love for certain fandoms with all of you. So, on my Tumble page, expect news about upcoming stories (maybe even some full-length chapters), tips and methods that keep me disciplined as a writer, and “interesting” facts about me.

Bear with me on that last part—I might just end up sharing some twentieth-century history facts with you all! :)

You can find my aO3 and Wattpad usernames in my bio.

xoxo

[lesawrites]

Hello all! I am one of the many migrating from Quotev after the admins there decided to get rid of the best features. I go by Lesa, though many knew me as Lara Kate on Quotev.

I am a writer of both fanfictions (specifically Twilight fanfics) and original fiction (sci-fi and fantasy, mostly) and will be posting about those as well as general writing things. I enjoy reading, especially sci-fi, fantasy, and dystopian among other genres, and am happy to hear recommendations for those genres.

My main twilight fanfic is called Rebirth and is currently seven chapters in, posted on Quotev, AO3, Wattpad, and Fanfiction.net. It’s about a girl who’s reincarnated with her memories every time she dies, which is always, always because of a vampire. In her newest life, she finds herself adopted by a family of vampires, the Cullens, and must either escape with her life or learn to love and trust them.

Rebirth on Quotev: https://www.quotev.com/story/16187295/Rebirth-Book-One

My main original fiction is called For All We Can’t Do and is not posted anywhere. Its about a girl who, after the majority of the world died from magic suddenly being released in the world, takes in a bunch of orphaned children and struggles to maintain everything and keep everyone safe, happy, and fed. The story is dual-pov, and also follows her brother who is a part of an organization with the goal of bettering the world they’re in and maintaining as much of the old world as they can. With many secrets, lies, and struggles in this constantly changing world, both have to figure out how far they’re willing to go for those they love.

Feel free to ask me anything about either of my stories or any writing related things!

[makoheadrush]

I have been combing through my old fics - still working on new stuff but nothing major. Really I’m just writing a few paragraphs a week at most, I certainly don’t write at the volume I used to (and haven’t really posted anything new in absolute eons).

I’m realizing now though - I never finished migrating some of my stuff from FF.net over to AO3, which is pretty much the only place I post these days, when I do post. (Does anyone even use FanFiction.Net anymore???)

Sooooo maybe I’ll work on moving the rest of my stuff over later today. Everything old will be new again? Something like that. Hell, I’m re-reading some of my stuff now, and barely remember writing some of it in the first place. I guess some things will be new to me as well. :)

Definitely have the itch to write again, it’s just a matter of carving out some time to do it.

[aelaer]

Hi! Hope you're doing well :)

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

For the ask game! 💖 Hope you have/had a lovely day ✨

This took forever to get back to but I finally am! Thank you Kitty <3 I love these silly ask memes.

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

Tropes: *goes to AO3* Lmao, "Hurt Stephen Change" is at the top. Which yes, is definitely characteristic. Other common tags are Canon-Typical Violence, Whump, and equally "Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence" as well as "Canon Compliant". I like exploring both realms with the MCU (in LOTR, it was largely canon compliant as I love the LOTR canon). While I love comedy, I write more angst than comedy likely because it's easier. Doing comedy well is particularly tricky.

For details: I love parenthetical asides and you'll see those very often. Some sort of visual details are seen in all my works, even if the reader's likely aware of what the character looks like. It's good practice in learning how to give interesting descriptions of both characters and settings. You get a lot of internal monologue in my fics, too. Limited third person in past tense is my primary writing style.

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

I'm very pleased with the alternate reality I've built with Earth-197320 (and I'm so pleased I'm finally posting the final fic in that series to tie everything together).

I also can't believe I managed to pull off the Kamar-Taj world-building in Wong, Target Sales Associate as well as I did.

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

I imagine that for many writers, it's easy to forget the good reviews and have the bad reviews that shine through the fog of memory. So while 99% of my reviews through my 20 years of writing have been good, some of the ones that stand out are the bad ones, including the ones that made me leave writing LOTR fanfic back in 2011 when my attempt at a "magnum opus" got some less-than-stellar feedback. I stopped posting and migrated completely to RP for the next 7 years.

The funniest of my negative reviews, though, came about 2 years ago. When I got back into fanfic in 2017, I still cross-posted to fanfiction.net, which included my first DS fic, a DS/LOTR crossover. One of the later reviews I received treated the fic as if it were a Good Reads book review and it was so odd that it still makes me snicker in disbelief. You can't reply publicly to reviews on ff.net so I didn't bother, but if I could I would've told them that this isn't Good Reads and that this is not how this works.

There are some good reviews that stand out over time, too, though. One of them was yours from about 2 years ago! You complimented me on my Carol and that still makes me beam since it shows that I can write characters I don't like so well that people don't notice. It's one of the best compliments a writer can receive, IMO.

Other reviews that stand out are people who tell me they're rereading a fic, a long review that clearly took some time and thought, or anything that catches a detail that I just don't know will be seen by others.

[all-things-alura]

2025 Alura Announcements

I wanted to give a quick update on the Alura books and where the series is going.

Crownless Royal Edits:

I’ve decided that I’m going to do the Crownless Royal edits to Alura and Starwalker before beginning Seraphite or releasing Sage and Failsafe. I will begin these as soon as I

1. Have time to migrate my Alura notes to my current outlining software, and

2. Have a better grasp of my schedule in other facets of life.

Starwalker is mostly getting maybe one or two additional scenes as well as general QOL/editing updates, but Alura is getting a MAJOR upgrade. There will be several new scenes added to the story as well as a set of memories regarding Micah’s pre-Mystacor life! These will NOT be posted as new books, but rather as revisions to the current drafts. However, nothing major in the existing text will be altered (i.e. no scenes will be missing, so the story fundamentally will remain the same). It is definitely worth a full reread of Alura because that book is getting a HUGE glowup. (1/3)

The reason I am doing this is twofold. As I look to the future writing Seraphite, I want to be able to have a clear and fair picture of the story. As I wrote both Alura and Starwalker when I was a teenager, there are certain things in the story that I wish I had portrayed more sensitively, fairly, and realistically than is currently in the drafts. There will be certain nuances added to Alura in particular that reflect my thinking as I’ve grown up and become more mature. My opinions of Shadow Weaver have not massively changed, so don’t worry about that.

I originally planned to do the Crownless Royal edits after Seraphite so I could do them all in one go. However, plans have changed because *deep breath and drumroll please*

The Alura Trilogy and Associated Works are Getting Graphic Novel Editions!

These will adapt the revised editions of Alura and Starwalker as well as the upcoming final drafts of Sage, Failsafe, and Seraphite. Here are some things to note about the GNs:

They will keep the spirit of the original story as much as possible. Due to being a visual medium, certain internal monologue will be portrayed as new dialogue (keep an eye out for more worldbuilding goodies and other easter eggs in the new dialogue, because it’s in there!)

These will replace the traditional illustrations for Sage, Failsafe, and Seraphite. However, this means they will be **more widely available** to compensate. I plan to upload the graphic novel editions to Wattpad, AO3, Instagram, Tumblr, and Deviantart once they’re ready.

The graphic novels will be split up into volumes of 15-25 chapters. Sage and Failsafe are novellas, meaning they will each have one volume. However, Alura, Starwalker, and Seraphite will have 2, 5, and possibly 4-5 volumes each (I’m not sure about Seraphite’s pacing yet, so we’ll see how many we need). The reason for splitting them up is for manageability as well as abiding by image upload limitations for these various platforms.

The existing illustrations in Alura and Starwalker will NOT be removed from the Wattpad and AO3 versions of the story. Don’t worry about that.

On Sage and Failsafe:

Sage will release in roughly 6 months, followed immediately by Failsafe. I have to wait for Starwalker to finish uploading to AO3 and Fanfiction.net, but once that’s taken care of, Sage and Failsafe will be posted concurrently to Wattpad as well as the aforementioned platforms. Stay tuned!

[kitkatt0430]

Do you know where I can find a following for my niche fandom?

Honestly i don't know that I'll be a lot of help on this topic. I don't use much in the way of social media beyond Tumblr. And here you just kind of have to put together what you think the most relevant tags for your fandom are and then check to see if the tag search gets you any hits.

Or use the google search trick of searching the tag + tumblr.com

You also have to keep in mind that character tags are going to see a lot of crossover between fandoms. Even fandom names may have cross contamination between fandoms. "Riven: The Sequel to Myst", for example, is pretty straightforward tag wise. You're really only going to see posts about the game Riven tagged this way. But a lot of people who have played the game don't use the full name. It's just "Riven". And they'll tag it as such. But "Riven" is also the name of a character in another fandom, so searching the "Riven" tag for posts about the game is also going to get posts about the unrelated character. Khione from the Flash also shares her name with characters from other fandoms, so the tag "Khione" has several different characters all grouped together. But not a lot of people who discuss Khione specifically from the Flash remember to use the "Khione (The Flash)" or "Khione [The Flash]" tags

So basically you're going to have to be patient and diligent and check through a lot of tag permutations that may or may not be populated from equally valid uses from other fandoms.

I don't really know much about discord beyond that using it tends to make me really anxious in a way that forums don't, so I honestly don't know how easy it is to find fandom spaces there.

Reddit might actually be useful here, it can serve as a gateway to fandom spaces. But it's very hit or miss.

Older fandoms may still have a presence on LiveJournal though a lot of those have migrated to Dreamwidth or Tumblr over the years. Pillowfort's a good tumblr alternative as well.

Older fandoms are also more likely to have a presence on older fanfic sites. Squidge - including the SquidgeWorld fanfic site - is older than Ao3 and is associated with a number of older fandoms. Fanfiction.net may be slowly falling apart but it has a huge repository of fic still that goes back several decades at this point. adult-fanfiction.org is still hanging around, though that one does cater more heavily towards R/NC-17 rated fics hence the 'adult' specified in the name and it will ask you if you're 18+ or not to view the site. And of course Ao3 itself is constantly absorbing new niche fanfic sites of varying ages in order to preserve the fandom history those sites and their fanfics represent.

But sometimes you just have to see where googling the fandom name + "fandom" will take you. And sometimes you have to be willing to be the first person to post a fic for the fandom on Ao3, or post a fic to a mostly dead fandom, and hope that someone else in the fandom will see it and choose to comment. Or start posting rambly meta commentary on places like tumblr and hope the tags attract the fellow fans you're hoping for. Though that last one might generate enough interest from your mutuals or followers that a few of them might check out the source material and wind up sucked into the fandom with you.

[iheartgod175]

Hello all! I'm making a list of chapters from the original Blazin' Trails to include in Redux, but I'd like to hear your feedback on which ones you'd like to see get an upgrade (or keep in its original form) in the remake.

Below are chapters 1-3, 5-7, and 10-12 (the reason why some are skipped is because I've tapped these for an overhaul in Redux), listed in order of publishing!

And for those who haven't read the original Blazin' Trails, the original fic is up on my profile on FanFiction.Net. I'll probably migrate it over to AO3 soon, though, as well as Redux.

Enjoy, and happy voting!

[lizzie-tempest]

Deviantart for me. From there, I found my way over to Fanfiction.net and after a few years, I migrated over to AO3.

Please participate in my research (also, if you say other, please put it in the tags/comments !)

[fakeyellow]

random but I crosspost one of my fics about a lesbian couple and a straight couple on both AO3 and FF.net and the FF reviews tend to ask me for more of the straight couple (admittedly I like the lesbian couple more 😅), while the AO3 reviews say they don’t usually read the straight couple but they like how I depict them.

Conclusion: AO3 is gayer than FF