#Honestly at this point you could probably consider me the grizzled vet watching the chaos unfold around them with a sigh

[forestwhisper3]

I’m wondering: are you at all planning on getting your fics off of ff.net and locking them to user only on ao3? I’ve seen a lot of writers do that in lieu of the evil evil robot overlords; le AI, since locking them to user only prevents scraping and stuff.

Honestly? I hadn't considered it before, no. I didn't even know other authors were doing that until you mentioned it. But truthfully, I probably won't.

It's just...not too big a deal for me? I guess? The idea of my stuff being copied/taken by an AI and their behind-the-scenes puppet masters is funny to me more than anything. My fics are either hit or miss, and the more popular ones seem to be good enough that I'm sure someone would tell me if they saw a doppelganger or funhouse mirror version of it somewhere. Not to mention my sporadic update rate. Anyone planning on copying from me is in for a bit of a rude awakening, ahaha. And if the intent is to scrap it? I was around for the big FF.Net purge way back when, and I've seen a few fanfic sites come and go over the years. So, even if I hadn't already been in the habit of saving my stories externally from the sites I post them on, it's well ingrained at this point. If any of my fics ever got deleted, I'd just post them again. I've already republished two of my older Lunaescence fics that got lost in the void of the internet, so while doing it with other fics would be annoying, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Would I be sad to lose all the reviews/kudos/likes they'd collected? Of course. I really enjoy getting feedback from all of my readers, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't constantly reread them (they give me boosts in serotonin/motivation). But in the end, I think the most important part for me is that everyone can enjoy what I write without restrictions, even something as simple as AO3's user lock. I just have to trust that it'll work out.