Thoughts and questions about the 852 Prospect move

[mab_browne]

And I hear you saying, "Mab, why don't you address those to the OTW people?" And I'd agree, and I already have, but these are an entirely different set of thoughts.

Cut for confusion, naked neediness and one or two genuine thoughts and questions on fannish history and protocol. If you don't want to read those things, you know what not to do.

Comments

[t_verano]

So... what happens to the stories that OTW transfers untouched by us to the 852 collection -- do they retain 852-style formatting? (Have they told us this? Have they emailed you?)

But I digress (I think). I have to admit that personally, my default "this is the way it should look and the way it reads easiest" is A03. I can deal with LJ when I can display a fic in style-less mode, but my ability to bounce happily between massively different font styles and sizes and background colors and images went down for the count a year or two ago and I can't see any Lazarus moments popping up in its future.

Occasionally I accidentally get AO3 displayed to me in a serif font (when my connection is slow and it can't load the style quickly enough) and I find it disconcerting and... okay, it sort of breaks the wall for me, I guess, and it's a little harder for me to forget that I'm reading and to just be live inside *what* I'm reading.

That's just me, though. I understand your feelings -- both the sentimental and the "LOTS OF WORK" sort -- and a) a couple of years ago I felt that same sentimentality / desire for historical continuity; now, for whatever reason, not so much. TS is forced to be dated by its mostly DVD-less state, by being closed-canon in a big way, by having had lots and lots of outstanding writers who left the fold more than a decade ago. Things that make it less dated seem good to me, as far as helping it stay a living and attracting-new-people-to-it fandom. And B) heck, I can't even get motivated to know where all my fic is, much less upload it,,, but, okay, jeez. If I were uploading my 852 stuff directly myself, I think I still have the original copies of those fics and would upload from there, or maybe copy and paste the fic from 852 into Word and tidy them up that way, and end up with standard AO3 formatting if I could. Because, I guess, even though I apparently don't care about posting fic, I care that it matches formatting with wherever it lives. (Something tells me that's NOT the right priority to have, but how things fit together visually is my comfort zone in life, sorta.)

Having said all this, I rabidly believe you should do whatever you feel like doing. I can blithely write all that above stuff because I have tons of older TS fic saved -- original formatting and all -- on my hard drive, and when I read older TS I *will* most likely read it from my hard drive and thus read it in the original formatting I first read it in, and -- despite my "It's Gotta Look Just So" speechlet above, I will be HAPPY that what I'm reading looks the same way it did when I first read it years ago. I am nothing if not inconsistent. (So I guess that means that I want to read stuff I'm sentimental about exactly how I first read it, but if it's something I haven't read before, I want to read it AO3ishly. Isn't that helpful... *eyeroll*)

As far as the rest? Backdating and whatever? Whatever makes you happy? (I have no idea what I'll do when/if I start gathering up all the scraps and shoveling them into AO3.)

(How is your kitty????)

[mab_browne]

If you check out the DW post Merlin provides some links reflecting what happened with the Smallville archive move. Haven't actually checked them out myself, and don't have a reply to my queries yet. I expect that they have to need to check things out first, but no doubt they will reply - AO3 is generally pretty good about that.

I'm maybe not as particular as you are but I know where you're coming from so far as uniformity of presentation is concerned. A nice plain sans serif font, or else good old Times New Roman or similar, and I find myself using zoom functions a lot more than even a couple of years ago. ::sigh:: Getting old.

I will probably drip feed if for no other reason than that even bulk importing takes time - quite aside from my 'issues'. *g* I'd rather move things over first than delete stuff. It feels more in control, and I can edit any obvious mistakes or formatting issues, which yes, I could do after the change-over but I would have put more stuff on AO3 if I hadn't known about the transfer.

Thug Boy is fine. He got into yet another fight and had a facial abscess that needed to not wait an extra 24 hours for the non-emergency vet because of eyesight risks. He had an antibiotic injection and looks much better and is certainly back to normal behaviour, if by normal behaviour we mean roaming at night and eating everything in sight. He weighs 13 lbs - and that's without a tail.