(no subject)
Hello again everyone! With a little less than a month to go before your gifts are due, I hope everyone's are coming alone smoothly.
First of all, I want to apologize to anyone who might have gotten a spam email from my account. I logged in today to find a big red bar at the top of my inbox telling me that my email had been accessed by someone in China and found my outbox full of spam emails to everyone I've ever contacted. DX I changed my password, so hopefully it won't happen again.
But at least it's kicked my butt into gear to put together a post I've been meaning to make! I know that a few people joined AO3 just for this exchange, and even people who've already been members might never have posted a story to a community before, so I wanted to do a quick tutorial on posting for anyone who needs it.
First of all, you can post at any time (the archive does the work of keeping it anonymous until it's time to be revealed for you), and once you're ready there are two ways that you can do it.
This is the very slightly easier way. Just go to the exchange's collection and hit the "Post To Collection" button. Otherwise you can...
...hit the post new button at the top right off your account (when you're logged in). This one probably doesn't even need an image, but hey, better to over-explain than under-. The only difference is that if you use the "Post To Collection" method the posting form will already have the section where you put in the collection that you're posting in filled out. If you follow the "Post New" link you need to remember to fill in that box with Homestuck_Gift_Exchange_2010 yourself.
Now for a quick rundown of the posting form. Most of this is pretty self-explanatory, but I'll do a quick rundown of points!
First of all, for anyone wondering, I just made up stuff off the top of my head while filling the form out; this is not a sneak peek of my own gift! Now for some details.
1. Like I said in the rules, the only warnings you're required to use are the ones the archive provides in that box there, but I'm trusting you to all use your own good judgment if there's anything in your story or art that might squick someone (or, looking at it the other way around, that might draw in someone who's into kink and might otherwise have passed your gift up!). You can put any further warnings down in the additional tags section at the bottom; you can see from this one that Vriska and Nepeta are in a fairly kinky relationship, but you don't need to worry about Vriska using her powers to get what she wants out of Nepeta.
2. You can also see at the end there that AO3 also allows to to add in goofy fandom-specific tags if you want. So if you can think of some pithy description of some part of your gift that might draw someone in but isn't important enough to mention in the summary, you can go ahead and throw it in.
3. If anyone decided to fulfill a crossover request, all you need to do is separate the different fandoms with a comma, just like you can see I did with the different characters and tags.
4. Speaking of characters, you might wonder why I listed Nepeta and Vriska in both the pairing and characters section when it should be obvious that they're in the story if their relationship is a focus. That's because of the way AO3 handles filtering. You can ask it to list just certain relationships, or certain characters, but it won't separate your listed pairing into individual characters for you. So if I'd listed Nepeta/Vriska as the pairing and only added Equius to the character section as an additional major character aside from the pairing then somebody tried filtering the section to see every story with Nepeta as a character they wouldn't get this one because she's not listed as a character.
Next section!
Even more self-explanatory than the last one! There's only one thing I think I need to cover with this part (although if you can any other questions about it feel free to leave a comment asking about it).
See where I filled in the "Add co-author" section? That there is a tool you can use to have someone else post your gift for you if you absolutely cannot get to the archive before the 22nd but don't want to give up your account password. In this case Mr. Brannigan would be the actual creator of this gift (and every Futurama fan reading this suddenly becomes 2000% more wary of a kinky femslash story featuring an alien catgirl *g*) and I'm the one posting it for him. Once it's up the person posting for you just needs to go to their account page and click the "Edit" button beneath your gift, and right at the top right of that screen is a big old "Orphan Work" button. All they need to do is click it and they can remove themselves as co-creator, leaving you as the only person with credit for your work.
You might notice that this part is missing it's top option, that's just because since you don't need to bother with it for this exchange anyway I thought it would be prettier to just lop off my Yuletide assignment instead of blacking it out. Anyway!
The first box there is the one I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, which will be filled in for you if you post from the collection page but which you need to fill in yourself if you just click "Post New". Make sure you fill this in, it's important enough to need bold italics! If you don't fill it in I'll end up mistakenly marking you down as a defaulter and sending your recipients requests off to the pinch hit list come the 22nd because I check off your name based on your gift being in the collection. If you don't post it there your recipient (and anyone else) will also be able to see it immediately, ruining the surprise. Within the collection everything is set to remain anonymous until the day of reveals.
The second box is the second most important thing on the form, as it's what lets the lucky person that you've done all your work for know that this gift was specially made for them. It also allows you to torment them until the day gifts are revealed, because the moment you post a little notice about it will show up on their account page but all they'll be able to see is that it's a mysterious work by a mysterious person taunting them with its lack of details and the way it's impossible to click it and get their present right then. ;;;;P
Everything else there you can just ignore if you want. Even the chapters section, if you wrote something with multiple chapters or made more than one piece of art and want to keep them separated, doesn't need to be bothered with here if you don't feel like it since you can just add a new chapter from your account page.
(This is where your mod admits that she's only ever added chapters from her account page, so she's not actually sure what happens if you specify a number of chapters here to guide you through that part and doesn't have any multi-chapter stories sitting around in need of posting to test it out on.)
Last bit!
I'm only bothering to post an image of this one to point out that AO3 does not host images on its own site at this point, so for our artists in the exchange you need to host the image you create elsewhere before posting it there. You can use wherever you want; postimage, photobucket, imageshack, your own webspace if you have it, whatever works for you.
And... I think that's it! But if you have any question about anything I've forgotten (or anything that I covered but wasn't clear enough about) go right ahead and ask in the comments, and I'll respond ASAP!
First of all, I want to apologize to anyone who might have gotten a spam email from my account. I logged in today to find a big red bar at the top of my inbox telling me that my email had been accessed by someone in China and found my outbox full of spam emails to everyone I've ever contacted. DX I changed my password, so hopefully it won't happen again.
But at least it's kicked my butt into gear to put together a post I've been meaning to make! I know that a few people joined AO3 just for this exchange, and even people who've already been members might never have posted a story to a community before, so I wanted to do a quick tutorial on posting for anyone who needs it.
First of all, you can post at any time (the archive does the work of keeping it anonymous until it's time to be revealed for you), and once you're ready there are two ways that you can do it.
This is the very slightly easier way. Just go to the exchange's collection and hit the "Post To Collection" button. Otherwise you can...
...hit the post new button at the top right off your account (when you're logged in). This one probably doesn't even need an image, but hey, better to over-explain than under-. The only difference is that if you use the "Post To Collection" method the posting form will already have the section where you put in the collection that you're posting in filled out. If you follow the "Post New" link you need to remember to fill in that box with Homestuck_Gift_Exchange_2010 yourself.
Now for a quick rundown of the posting form. Most of this is pretty self-explanatory, but I'll do a quick rundown of points!
First of all, for anyone wondering, I just made up stuff off the top of my head while filling the form out; this is not a sneak peek of my own gift! Now for some details.
1. Like I said in the rules, the only warnings you're required to use are the ones the archive provides in that box there, but I'm trusting you to all use your own good judgment if there's anything in your story or art that might squick someone (or, looking at it the other way around, that might draw in someone who's into kink and might otherwise have passed your gift up!). You can put any further warnings down in the additional tags section at the bottom; you can see from this one that Vriska and Nepeta are in a fairly kinky relationship, but you don't need to worry about Vriska using her powers to get what she wants out of Nepeta.
2. You can also see at the end there that AO3 also allows to to add in goofy fandom-specific tags if you want. So if you can think of some pithy description of some part of your gift that might draw someone in but isn't important enough to mention in the summary, you can go ahead and throw it in.
3. If anyone decided to fulfill a crossover request, all you need to do is separate the different fandoms with a comma, just like you can see I did with the different characters and tags.
4. Speaking of characters, you might wonder why I listed Nepeta and Vriska in both the pairing and characters section when it should be obvious that they're in the story if their relationship is a focus. That's because of the way AO3 handles filtering. You can ask it to list just certain relationships, or certain characters, but it won't separate your listed pairing into individual characters for you. So if I'd listed Nepeta/Vriska as the pairing and only added Equius to the character section as an additional major character aside from the pairing then somebody tried filtering the section to see every story with Nepeta as a character they wouldn't get this one because she's not listed as a character.
Next section!
Even more self-explanatory than the last one! There's only one thing I think I need to cover with this part (although if you can any other questions about it feel free to leave a comment asking about it).
See where I filled in the "Add co-author" section? That there is a tool you can use to have someone else post your gift for you if you absolutely cannot get to the archive before the 22nd but don't want to give up your account password. In this case Mr. Brannigan would be the actual creator of this gift (and every Futurama fan reading this suddenly becomes 2000% more wary of a kinky femslash story featuring an alien catgirl *g*) and I'm the one posting it for him. Once it's up the person posting for you just needs to go to their account page and click the "Edit" button beneath your gift, and right at the top right of that screen is a big old "Orphan Work" button. All they need to do is click it and they can remove themselves as co-creator, leaving you as the only person with credit for your work.
You might notice that this part is missing it's top option, that's just because since you don't need to bother with it for this exchange anyway I thought it would be prettier to just lop off my Yuletide assignment instead of blacking it out. Anyway!
The first box there is the one I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, which will be filled in for you if you post from the collection page but which you need to fill in yourself if you just click "Post New". Make sure you fill this in, it's important enough to need bold italics! If you don't fill it in I'll end up mistakenly marking you down as a defaulter and sending your recipients requests off to the pinch hit list come the 22nd because I check off your name based on your gift being in the collection. If you don't post it there your recipient (and anyone else) will also be able to see it immediately, ruining the surprise. Within the collection everything is set to remain anonymous until the day of reveals.
The second box is the second most important thing on the form, as it's what lets the lucky person that you've done all your work for know that this gift was specially made for them. It also allows you to torment them until the day gifts are revealed, because the moment you post a little notice about it will show up on their account page but all they'll be able to see is that it's a mysterious work by a mysterious person taunting them with its lack of details and the way it's impossible to click it and get their present right then. ;;;;P
Everything else there you can just ignore if you want. Even the chapters section, if you wrote something with multiple chapters or made more than one piece of art and want to keep them separated, doesn't need to be bothered with here if you don't feel like it since you can just add a new chapter from your account page.
(This is where your mod admits that she's only ever added chapters from her account page, so she's not actually sure what happens if you specify a number of chapters here to guide you through that part and doesn't have any multi-chapter stories sitting around in need of posting to test it out on.)
Last bit!
I'm only bothering to post an image of this one to point out that AO3 does not host images on its own site at this point, so for our artists in the exchange you need to host the image you create elsewhere before posting it there. You can use wherever you want; postimage, photobucket, imageshack, your own webspace if you have it, whatever works for you.
And... I think that's it! But if you have any question about anything I've forgotten (or anything that I covered but wasn't clear enough about) go right ahead and ask in the comments, and I'll respond ASAP!