#Author platforms

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I am incredibly serious right now when I beg you all, please, and if you have Twitter or Tiktok or whatever to please spread the word: click on an author's profile on Ao3.

You want to know if an author has written more? Want to know if they're still writing? Want to see more from them? Want to know if they've written a trope or kink or sex scenario you enjoy?

Click on their name. And look at their profile.

I cannot tell you how many times in the last six months someone has read a new or newer fic of mine and said they (a new reader who has read nothing else I've done) "can't wait to see what you do next!" I've written 50+ fics and over a million words already.

"I don't know if you're still writing..." click on my profile. I am. I literally wrote a 128k+ fic for that ship last month.

"Would you ever do X?" "Please do Y!" I already did. Click on my name and look at my works.

Archive of our Own is a library. It's an archive. Not social media. It is your responsibility to fight back against the laziness that corporate algorithms have trained into you.

Click my author name. Just click it. Just click it.

Before you demand more, or ask if a writer will do XYZ, or wonder if the author still writing, or anything - click on their profile. Click on the author's profile.

I'm not trying to be mean or condescending or anything like that. I'm just exhausted. It's disheartening and frustrating to repeat myself ad nauseam, because someone couldn't take thirty seconds to do the tiniest bit of work to see if I've written lately, if I've written more for their ship, or scan my works to see if I've written what they're asking for. Please. Please. I'm begging.

Click the author's name, and explore before you ask.

[nicholasandriani]

Milan Kundera: The Maestro of Symbiotic Five – Remembering a Literary Alchemist and Master of Utmost Seriousness and Utmost Lightness Remembering a Literary Alchemist and Master of Utmost Seriousness and Utmost Lightness 📖 Favorite Quotes by Milan Kundera 🖋️ • “The only way to leave a trace of our passage on Earth is art.” • “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against…

[vanhelsingapologist]

Publishing has always been a fucking nightmare, but now it’s a layer of hell. It’s not enough that writers be good at what they do. Writers have to maintain an active social media presence and cultivate a following. Be available.

They have to be conventionally attractive enough to look good enough to see on a screen, aesthetically pleasing, kind, funny, up-to-date on trends, socially aware but not so controversial that they turn off a brand from California from slapping their discount code on a video promoting a book.

They have to do all of this with no media training, with little help from the companies that are supposed to be doing this for them.

Of course, a lot of this isn't possible for say, the 40-something mother of two who teaches English at a school and writes on the side. She’s boxed out of an already complex industry that already has enough walls.

On some level, I think authors have always marketed themselves a little, but we’ve reached such a crazy point where we’re demanding the author become the influencer. Accessibility in publishing has narrowed from an inch to a sliver. And that inch was hard enough to get in as is.

[fernsensei]

sorry im on a hiatus again have this silly ass mouse drawn gabriel

original vv

[elumish]

Maybe this is me just trying to articulate the same thing over and over in different ways, but I think some people in fiction (fanfiction and original fiction) circles have overcorrected and basically ended up at "all writing is value-neutral and nothing that is written is bad and nobody ever has the right to tell anyone not to write anything ever and we can never criticize old books with modern sensibilities."

And I think we should figure out how to have a useful and nuanced conversation about the fact that some things are bad and probably shouldn't be put out in public. And that's not me saying that anyone should be drawn and quartered or or harassed or cancelled or whatever. But we have to be able to think critically of writing and get past the knee-jerk reaction that any criticism ever is purity culture or censorship or conservativism in a gay hat.

[meadow-lands-faerie]

I have to say, the Neil Gaiman tumblr page has been reaaaaaal quiet since these accusations came out. Like, radio silent. I was getting at least five posts a day from his blog coming up on my dash, and since the day it became public he was being investigated, not a peep.

Maybe he had a pr team and advisor for his tumblr page the whole time. Maybe the told him to be quiet. Maybe he decided himself. I wonder what would have happened to his comments and reblogs had he continued as normal.

[fatherless-stuff]

Somebody please write a healthy AU. I'm begging you all! This fandom is allergic to happiness! I need them to be happy from start to finish!

[dutchs-blog]

American Dad Ai Genarated

[eliotquillon]

have recently realised that the reason why i struggle to seriously ship kevin with anyone in aftg is because i find the idea of him perpetually third-wheeling to be too funny. sorry kevin

[jstor]

hi jstor i’m an opinionated academic that would love to have the opportunity to be published one day but i have about -2 executive functions. can i have an honorary publication. no i don’t know what that means

[mostlymaudlin]

thank you to @rainbowrowell for writing the simon snow series which introduced me to @starwarned who is now my GIRLFRIEND !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[discworld-heritage-posts]

What do you think you add? Do you think you make a poignant post better when after scrolling down through it we see someone saying it's "official"?

I'm choosing to interpret this ask as a genuine question (albeit one that's been worded a bit rudely) instead of a hate anon, because I wouldn't want to tarnish people's dashboards with hate anons.

Now, to answer your genuine question... The "Discworld Heritage Post" tagline I add to the end of posts has as much validity as I have authority to bestow it: none. Do I think my tagline makes posts better? Of course not! And I certainly don't think I make them official, (and neither my url or my pinned post claim that I do so).

I don't know what reasons other people had to start their own Heritage Posts blogs for other fandoms, but I will gladly tell you mine: I got into Discworld. I discovered the Discworld fandom in Tumblr. And, one day, while scrolling down some Discworld related tags, the idea just popped into my head. After checking that there wasn't a Discworld Heritage Posts blog already, I decided to make one.

I personally follow a few Heritage Posts blogs, and my reason to do so is probably the same as to why many people follow this blog: I wanted to see that kind of content. Tracking tags and being up to date on the most popular posts of a fandom is doable, but doing so for the dozens upon dozens of media I'm into is impossible, so I like to follow some Heritage Posts blogs to get some of those posts directly into my dashboard (it's also worth mentioning that sometimes, some iconic posts are made when people comment stuff on them, and those don't appear in the search tags, so following blogs that post about a certain fandom is the best way to come across some of those collaborative posts, because otherwise you'd rarely get to see them). So yes, I created a blog that, had it already existed, I would have liked to follow. Also, while other blogs with this gimmick usually limit themselves to reblogging, let's call them the "greatest hits", I've said since the beginning that I didn't care about how many notes something had. Be it cool art or a funny or insightful post, if I like it, I send it to my drafts.

However, none of those reasons are the main reason why I made this blog. The main reason is that I did it for myself. After exhausting all the content that showed up in the Popular Posts tab, I couldn't help but think of all the gold and treasure that wasn't there, buried and hidden due to the way Tumblr's search engine works. If you're familiar with the Discworld concept of "lies-to-children", that's what the "top posts of all time" is in Tumblr. A 20k post from 2016 will not be there, but a six month old post with 400 notes will show up. Surely there had been amazing Discworld posts and art posted in 2015 and 2013, but I wasn't going to find most of them unless I expressly went looking for them. And this blog was the perfect excuse to do so. As of replying to this ask, there's nearly 600 posts sitting in my drafts, and if I didn't have this blog I would have never discovered 90% of them. And those are the ones I've seen. I still have dozens of places I haven't searched.

I know that if I reblog a month old post with over 2k notes, a lot of people in the fandom will have already seen it. However, a 2k notes post from 2014, or a drawing with 40 notes from 2012 is something that is less likely to have hit people's dashes recently, or at all. When you come across the "Discworld Heritage Post" tagline in a post, please don't picture me as an uppity monarch performing the Tumblr equivalent of a knighting ceremony, or a stuffy museum curator deigning a piece worthy of being included in an exhibition. Picture me as a kid enthusiastically jumping and flailing my arms around while yelling "holy shit guys check out what I just found!!", because that's how I feel running this blog.

Ultimately, whether one of my posts does better or worse is indifferent to me, because they aren't my posts, or memes, or drawings. I'm just the intermediary. That being said, of course it's not indifferent to me, because more engagement means that was a post many people hadn't seen before, or had forgotten about, and one of my goals was to run a blog that would allow people to find those hidden or long forgotten gems.

When all is said and done, Heritage Post blogs are just another one of Tumblr's gimmicks. If we're not your cup of tea, you're free to ignore or block us. If you want to reblog something and don't want the tagline, you can reblog it directly from OP (or from another reblog if OP has deactivated their account).

[disast3rtransp0rt]

rip to the people who grew up enjoying Harry Potter and then decided the safety-blanket of nostalgia is worth more than actual human lives but I’m different.

[hannie-dul-set]

i personally don’t agree with your statement what you’re expected to reblog. i thought i could just use this app for fun and to read about my fav artists without being expected to do anything, and never really planned on being active and making reblogging a routine parr of my reading experience

then i guess you're not really aware with how this app works. tumblr is a reblogging site. that's the only way posts, or in this case fics, can get around and reach new audiences. the algorithm doesn't care aboit likes. tumblr doesn't care about comments (but i appreciate those as well!!)

if you enjoy and have fun reading the works of authors who spend hours of their days making content for you to consume, don't you think the bare minimum you can do is click that tiny button at the bottom of the post to show your appreciation, no?

[fanhackers]

Platforms and Fan Experiences

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about platforms and the way in which they influence fan experiences. As a consistent lurker, I have been on Tumblr for more than a decade, and more recently on Twitter for the past few months, and have been reflecting on my experiences of fandom on both platforms.

In a roundtable discussion published in a tumblr book: platform and cultures, speakers Flourish Klink, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, Lori Morimoto and Allison McCracken discuss the ways in which Tumblr is a very visual platform:

Klink: Tumblr fandoms tend to be much more visual than other fandoms. I often find that this  is the most difficult part of Tumblr for people who are not familiar with it. The visual languages in play on Tumblr are as meaningful and complex as any slang or textual interactions on Twitter… Klink, Flourish, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, Lori Morimoto, and Allison McCracken. “A Roundtable Discussion about the Cultures of Fandom on Tumblr.” In A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures, edited by Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoch, 167–80. University of Michigan Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11537055.23.

I find this particularly interesting—and also ironic, in some ways—given that to me, as both a lurker, and a Fandom Old, the draw of Tumblr is that, while it may be a visual platform, it is not necessarily a visible platform, particularly in comparison to Twitter. There’s little chance of the celebrity you’re writing RPF about coming across your racy post or interacting with you directly.

In the same discussion, they go on to talk about the ways in which Tumblr’s visual culture has often led to progressive politics and practices, like race/genderbending.

Hutton: …One of my favorite things about being on Tumblr is seeing the way that members of the fandoms I’ve been in— primarily the DC and Marvel fandoms—reimagine their favorite characters as characters of color and give them queer and gender identities that match theirs. You can see photosets reimagining the Batman family group as more visibly diverse, and fancasts ( fans re-casting roles with actors of their choosing) of Marvel superheroes where they’re portrayed as women of color. And these fancasts generally push back against the idea of whiteness as a perpetual default. Klink, Flourish, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, Lori Morimoto, and Allison McCracken. “A Roundtable Discussion about the Cultures of Fandom on Tumblr.” In A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures, edited by Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoch, 167–80. University of Michigan Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11537055.23.

While Hutton also points out the ways in which a lot of it can turn into clickbait activism, later on in the discussion, without truly engaging with what it means to racebend a character beyond simply making a visual edit, it’s Pande’s comment about interacting with white fans that echoes my own experience:

Pande: When I first came on Tumblr for instance, I mainly followed people I knew from LiveJournal and “Big Name Fans” whose writing I had followed in previous fandoms. This resulted in my Dashboard being filled with almost exclusively white-dude content. In retrospect this is not surprising, but the visual-ness of Tumblr made it particularly apparent, especially post-Racefail at a moment in fandom in 2009–10, when POC fans had started becoming more vocal about this whiteness. Klink, Flourish, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, Lori Morimoto, and Allison McCracken. “A Roundtable Discussion about the Cultures of Fandom on Tumblr.” In A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures, edited by Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoch, 167–80. University of Michigan Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11537055.23.

As a PoC fan myself from the Global South, particularly one that does more lurking than posting, I often find that Tumblr does not always have the kind of linguistic inclusivity or even fandom inclusivity I am looking for. Perhaps it’s that I am a lurker, or perhaps I am not looking in the right spaces. Whatever the reason, I find Twitter has more of that inclusivity; whether I am looking for a fellow Hindi-soap opera fan, or a Supernatural fan, I can find both. And depending on which platform I choose, the content I make/consume differs—not just in form, but also in language and meaning.

What do you think? How has your platform shaped your fandom experience?

[ettawritesnstudies]

Assume you are interested in the book in question, and you could get which ever format you wanted in either situation. (Ebook, paperback, hardcover).

For the preorder: Everyone gets the same rewards regardless of what you order. There might be a larger giveaway that would be won by lottery.

For the kickstarter: You can pick your tier + rewards going up in value for larger items.

In general, the merch itself would be the same for both campaigns, for example, everyone in the preorder gets stickers, and everyone in the lowest tier on kickstarter gets stickers. The rewards would be exclusive to either the preorder or the kickstarter, so you wouldn't be able to get them afterwards, except at special events like book signings or something.

please boost!