ficfinding

[ficfinding]

I heard that wattpad is doing a purge of NSFW works, so I'm going to be posting some general orientation type videos and some how to's to help folks learn more about Ao3.

If you want to follow (or avoid) those posts, I'm tagging them as welcome wattpad

[ficfinding]

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

[ficfinding]

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

[ficfinding]

Reading amazing fanfiction, then forgetting to bookmark it

[ficfinding]

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

[ficfinding]

why write a story if no one's going to read it?

Sometimes you don't want to share a story with others. Sometimes you do want to share it, but no one clicks on the title. So why bother writing it down if the only person you can guarantee will read it is you?

You need to get it out of your head. It just keeps replaying in your imagination on a loop and the only way to get it unstuck is to pin it down on paper.

You need to figure out what the story is. You have a lot of disjointed scenes or lines that you know are connected but you can't quite figure out how.

There's something in the story that's important to you, and you don't want to lose that thing by forgetting it. Future you might find that thing important too.

You want to be able to go back to the story again and again. Maybe to make adjustments over time. Maybe just to revisit a story that gives you the emotional release you need in that moment.

You want to be able to use text-to-speech to read the story aloud to you. Maybe it's a bedtime story. Maybe it's keeping you company while you do errands and chores.

You want to find out whether you can write a story (because not everyone can).

You want to be able to have almost the same story, but a little bit different, and you want to have it 15 times with slight variations. Then you can go through your own personal menu picking exactly the combination of beats that will satisfy you most on this reading.

You enjoy the process of finding just the right words or phrases or scenes to paint the pictures you want to shape the scene.

You want to find the exact rhythm and syllables and structure to make a sentence really sing.

You don't really have any particular reason, but you know you want to write that story down.

[ficfinding]

[ficfinding]

Happy National Sea Monkey Day! <3

[ficfinding]

Icons for Newbies!

So I made a poll to see if I should draw some profile icons for newbies, and you guys said yes, so I whipped up this little set real quick!

Wasn't sure what to make so just went with some simple monochromatic designs based off the tumblr colors. These are free for anyone to use, but made mostly to help newbies not look like bots (because keeping the default icons and empty blogs make you look like bots, and if you look like a bot you risk your favorite blogs blocking you by mistake!)

Also, here's a free header- mostly because it amuses me, but also because it further helps signal you're not a bot. (So will making a post or reblogging literally anything. Even just making a post saying you're shy and/or just lurking for now helps wonders to keep people from mistaking you for a bot!)

Liking and/or reblogging is appreciated if you use them, and will help other newbies be able to see that they're available if they can't find their own!

I'll probably make more later. Again, I'm not taking individual requests for these, but if you have a theme or fandom in mind you'd like to see, throw me an ask and I might make another set happen.

[ficfinding]

You know what? I believe that you can finish your writing project. I believe you can update your fic. I believe you can work on your WIP. I don't care if you think it's cringy or bad. I don't care if we've never met or interacted in our whole lives. I believe in you. Keep going - you've got this.

[ficfinding]

I have very bad OCD and it really bugs me whenever I click on a tag/work/author (any other link) and it changes color when I go back to another page. Is there a way to fix this? Thank you in advance!

Hey Nonnie!

This is a problem that is solved by using a skin!

I would go through all the materials on how to use them and how to make your own and edit it - and then the specific thing you are looking for is nearish the bottom. In Reversi (the publicly available Dark Mode Skin) it looks like this

a, a:link, a.tag, #header a, #header a:visited, #header .current, #header .primary .open a, #header .primary .dropdown:hover a, #header .primary .dropdown a:focus, #dashboard a, #dashboard .current, .heading, .group .heading, .filters dt a:hover { color: #fff; } a:visited, .actions a:visited, .action a:link, .action a:visited, .listbox .heading a:visited, span.series .divider { color: #999; }

And what you want to do is make both of the "color: #***" things be the same (so if they are both #fff then in this case the text will be white before you click it AND after you click it).

ALSO - anyone who is bugged by the Muted Users notice being on every page? There is a thing you can add to your site skin!

p.muted.notice { display: none; }

I stuck that at the end of my site skin and SHAZAM no more notice on all the pages. Just don't forget that you may have muted users and that it will change your search results.

(in general I am not A Code Person, but there are MANY searchable site skins available. I highly recommend checking them out to optimize your AO3 experience.. and pls don't ask me complex questions about how to write site skins, we have reached the end of my knowledge.)

Hope this helps!

~ModRemi

[ficfinding]

I gotchu

Fanfiction problems:

You want to read the story again. It was well written, and the plot was genius.You remember everything about the story. Except the title and author.

#When the Attention lets me clear out the inbox #Possibly this week

[ficfinding]

For anyone who hasn't seen them before, Hidden Search Operators are handy tricks you can use when you're either searching or filtering AO3.

summary: string is a generic way of explaining that you can search AO3 for a specific word that appears in a summary. You can do this from the search bar in the header, from the Any Field box at the top of the Advanced Search form, or from the Search Within Results box at the bottom of the filter menu.

Examples:

summary: Bruce

summary: "Bruce Banner"

summary: Bruce OR summary: Banner OR summary: Hulk

You need to put quotation marks around your search term if it is more than one word. The quotes make sure that the site searches for those two words together.

The other two operators listed work best in the Search Within Results box.

expected_number_of_chapters: 1 will return results where every fic has only 1 chapter currently posted.

You can use expected_number_of_chapters: -1 if you want results where every fic has more than 1 chapter currently posted.

otp:true will return results where there is only 1 relationship tag on the fic. If you want results where there are 2+ relationship tags (and no fics with only 1 relationship tag) then you can use otp:false

[ficfinding]

I wish that at the end of a fic Ao3 would give you links to similar fics

[ficfinding]

I just saw a story on AO3 tagged "pet p!ay"

TIK TOK MUST BE STOPPED BEFORE IT DESTROYS LANGUAGE

[ficfinding]

hi I'm from your pseudo-medieval fantasy city. yeah. you forgot to put farms around us. we have very impressive walls and stuff but everyone here is starving. the hero showed up here as part of his quest and we killed and ate him

[ficfinding]

Warning for NSFW writers!

This was brought to our attention today. We would ALWAYS recommend keeping your writing in two places, for many reasons, but here is one more!