AO3 Update

[lolmac]

I have been living up to my pledge and getting more stuff up on my AO3 page.  Aren't you proud of me?

I am not, however, simply importing everything.  You see, the 'definitive' version of any of my longer works isn't usually what's posted on ff.net, or anywhere else.  The ff.net's shite interface guarantees that.  In most cases, I've caught typos,

Comments

[jackwabbit]

I really need to do something like this, but, um...yeah. Too much to even think about in general, and certainly right now. But I know for a fact that I have fics on ff.net and other places that are by no means the "definitive versions," as I, like you, have not edited things online, etc.

[lolmac]

Yowza. With a total opus the size of yours (which sounds vaguely obscene. Hey, baby, what a massive opus you got there!), it's a monumental project. But you could tackle it a little bit at a time once you're settled in your new digs . . .

I'm trying to figure out if there's some way I can consolidate a bunch of the drabbles into a collection or something. I mean, I can; it's a case of whether it would be a good approach.

[campylobacter]

I like un-consolidated drabbles if they're unrelated, because it's easier to leave feedback; I don't have to feel guilty for skipping "Drabble #2" if I'm all flaily over Drabbles 1 & 3.

[lolmac]

Does AO3 allow separate comments on individual 'chapters' of a 'work'? Two of the works I have there now are 'drabble suites', which I set up in this manner. In those cases, the drabbles were written to be part of a single overall whole (as distinct from items in a series of whole units, which AO3 also supports easily).

[lothithil]

Ooo! It all looks nice and neat. I'm glad that you have a place to put your fic where they won't steal your spacers and graphics!

I will have to more actively ponder moving my own stuff there.

[campylobacter]

Doooo eeet! At the very least, cyber-squat your pseudonyms on AO3.

[lolmac]

Hell, yes, lassie -- we can post The Matriphobia Affair there, and actually put both names on it!

And then everyone will know we had an affair! Our reputations will be ruined! Eeek!

[lothithil]

Oh noes! Will we ever be able to show our faces on the innertubz again?

LOL! :D

[pepper_field]

It was ff.net's coding revisions that eventually caused me to stop posting there, because oyyyyyyy. And while getting comments is nice, I... am a snob, I admit it, and a bit of a special snowflake: I don't like some of the naggy comments I've received on ff.net, and a lot of the rest are just so badly spelled... I'm a bad person. *g* But I prefer the kind of dialogue I can have on LJ.

That's the only issue I have with AO3: that if I posted solely to there, I wouldn't get to talk about my fic afterwards - not as much, at least. But it's not a glitch so much as a different design - fic storage rather than blogging - and it's incredibly useful for uploading fic that people can download, and an excellent place for storing and indexing (the downside of LJ being that I find the various ways to index are not as complex or searchable or organisable as I'd like, and as it is on AO3).

Yeah, the 'Angus MacGyver' tag kind of threw me, too. *g* I used it anyway - poor Mac.

Yay for the Director's Cut versions! Keep up the good work. ;)

[campylobacter]

Agreed.

FFN: good for readership traffic, bad for story discussion
LJ: excellent for story discussion, bad for searching for fanfic
AO3: excellent for searchability, bad for... well, not really bad at all! AO3's steadily improving on author/reader interaction, especially with the Kudos feature.

[lolmac]

The only quibble I might have, other than not being able to TOTALLY CONTROL EVERY FORMATTING DETAIL OMG LIKE A MAD CONTROL FREAK ahem, is that the site is rather slow. I can live with that.

[campylobacter]

LOL I gave up controlling formatting details over 10 years ago. Shit gets user over-rides by browser quirks/monitor settings/surfing defaults anyway.

If donating to OTW would make AO3 faster, I'd give them $50, honestly. But they've been using donations to upgrade the stability of their older servers & to buy new ones, so I can live with the slowness until they focus on throughput.

[campylobacter]

I, too, have been frustrated at (and a little confounded by) FFN's text filters. Had certain formatting markup tags been abused by wankers to the point FFN admins sacrificed stories in which they were used properly? So weird. Plus, looking for older stories to re-read/rec on FFN is nearly impossible to search for because of the lack of tags and advanced sortation.

So stoked you're availing yourself of AO3's power & flexibility! It makes crossovers, pairings, themes, kinks, graphics, and ratings effortless for the author/artist, and searchable for readers/viewers. I can't wait to see how The Cat Came Back Again looks like on AO3, because specifying MULTIPLE authors is extremely easy there.

PS: By not using the "Angus MacGyver" tag, will your stories get overlooked by readers who are looking for the character?

[lolmac]

Re the tag: not when the fandom is also 'MacGyver'. If you can envision a scenario in which someone looking for a MacGyver story would look for a character tag only and not look for the fandom at all -- ? It makes the character tag essentially redundant; but it would be a little silly not to include the character tag at all.

I'm toying with the notion of using 'macgyverisms' as an additional tag as well. There's a regrettable stratum of Macfic that doesn't have any. (They're hard to write, apparently.)

As for ff.net: I have yet to see any signs that the site owners give a rat's ass about wankers or abuse, or ever have, so I can't see that as a motivation. "Easier/cheaper for us to maintain" and "Easier to sell ads" are, as to my mind, the only likely reasons for pretty much anything. (Cynical? Moi?)

And the multiple authorship is a big reason why I want to get TCCBA up ASAP, PDQ! There's also a Man from Uncle story that Lothi and I co-wrote.

[campylobacter]

I can envision looking for Stargate or Sanctuary fic where "Angus MacGyver" is a crossover character, because I've come across a couple smutbiscuits stories like that.

If you can get a few other AO3 authors to use "macgyverisms" as a tag, then it becomes officially clickable. :D

FFN Truth! Although I don't know why filtering "--------" as a section separator would be profitable (or cheaper in maintenance), it makes more sense than assuming FFN gives a fark about improving the "user experience".

[lolmac]

I basically assumed it was a side-effect of some other change that they made for their own convenience. It sure as hell had nothing to do with 'user experience'.

[idlewild_]

I still haven't moved my butt on over to LJ let alone AO3... something about figuring all the pieces of identity I have where, and which I want to be findable by whom. I make my life so much more complex than it needs to be.

Also, not only do I write mostly in a small fandom (...branching out into other tiny fandoms, apparently) but I don't play with the heavy hitters in that fandom which makes me feel oddly like an outsider and less inclined to try to penetrate the depths of fandom.

[lolmac]

But you are on LJ -- or do you mean having your fic here?

I suppose even the small fandoms have heavy hitters. Do smaller fandoms have heavier hitters, or does the scale just make them seem larger?

[idlewild_]

Yeah... I mean I don't have my fic or the identity responsible for my fic here... which means either starting another account for Niente or combining the two identities and both have issues.

I think small pond, big fish... from what I have heard from a con I didn't attend, one such was wandering about announcing herself (including to some bemused fans who don't read much fic they just like the show darn it.) The heaviest hitters are writing slash (and romance bores me to tears to write, it turns out.) Or were; it's also all a bit moribund at this point I think.

Sigh. I should find a nice lively small fandom to populate. But I hate writing for shows that are in progress, because I get contradicted by canon and have to get cranky about it.

[lolmac]

I suppose you're stuck with writing what you love, huh?

I sometimes think I was lucky, not getting into Stargate until the end; I missed all the wangst that surrounds a show in production, including the cancellation grief.