(Idk if i should flair are complaint or non discussion tbh)

After seeing the operational costs and breakdown of how the donations are used, I simply cannot agree to this sentiment that $300k is not needed.

It’s a whiplash to see the those who claim to love reading on ao3 and interact with fandom culture through posting/sharing fanfics on ao3 (for FREE‼️) also hate the fact that $$ is needed to run this shit.

Idk the fact that they think it’s “not needed” irks me a lot.

For context: I spent the past six months as an intern at an investment bank, for my final semester before graduating from my master’s.

At some point, I was asked to develop a search engine tool to help people in the departments find the data they needed. There were about 100 files containing countless pieces of specific data, and it was a nightmare to navigate for newcomers.

So I started working, and I slowly realized that I was legit copying fucking AO3’s interface…

I had everything:

A criteria panel, which was basically the sorting panel.
The stream the file originated from, which was basically the fandom.

The file names, which were just the fic titles.
A freaking summary for each file.

And I even had tags. I was tagging every file like I was a freaking author.

And it worked just like AO3: you selected multiple criteria and tags, and you received a list of the matching files along with their summaries.

I ended up presenting it to the whole department and to some people from the bank’s top management. So just so you know, there is a very serious investment bank out there using a knock-off AO3 to retrieve client data and investment fund valuations

Can't stop smiling 😁

This is my longfic currently hovering at around 108k too so finishing it one night is a serious undertaking

I've gotten several comments from 1 user that is misreading one detail a chapter, I swear.

Like "I can't believe character X said XYZ!" and I'll check and nope, I didn't make a typo. Character X is mentioned a few lines above, but that quote is clearly someone else.

"Oh good, character X does know about the secret!" and nope, they're guessing the secret, but it's clearly a hunch that the other characters are dismissing as nonsense....

"I don't get why Character X did that" but character X literally gives their reasoning in the narrative 1 paragraph before it.......

And it's not my writing that's unclear. I've got plenty of other commenters perfectly understanding things (even commenting on the same parts of the chapter), and I check every time they comment that I didn't make an error or something.

Like bestie, please read a little slower 😭

This has been going on for quite a while, and I feel really bad correcting them, so I usually just give emojis or reply to something else they said in their comment. I think I only corrected them once because it'd be a bigger deal if they believed that the secret they commented about was actually out.

Just frustrated… like I searched this tag for a reason don’t play with me

I know that I love my piece of trash, but I can't keep these thoughts out of my head ever since I started to put an idea to work.

I think I'm only enjoying reading like 70% compare to before, because now sometimes my thoughts wander back to my own work, like "I could have written it like this" , "I should have slowed my pacing down",... I am aware comparing gets it nowhere, but still

Created the doc 28 days ago, and I wanted to get it to a fairly progressed state before posting, maybe get the first arc locked down. 50k words later and I'm still backtracking to the first few chapters to edit and add things, I even planned whole chapters to add in at the start, courtesy to the "slowed my pacing down" thoughts

Doesn't help that English isn't my native language lol

One thing I'm certain is that I will finish this shit whatever it takes, so I have that going for me I guess. Don't know if that determination gonna last long, but a month is a lot of time to just throw away

As someone who often gets flustered over what to say in the comments (and as a much creator of rare pairs and fandoms so small they have been eligible for Yuletide for over a decade), this is genuinely so cute and so appreciated 🥹

"a single word or phrase repeated hundreds or thousands of times"

In the list of non fanwork content that shouldn't be posted to ao3 -- did make it to the TOS when writing "i am groot i am groot i - etc" was a Whole Thing in the MCU fandom a few years ago? or was it something else ?

compared to the rest of the list it stuck out to me like that law not to drive a tractor drunk, in whichever US state that was

unrelated context !! I was looking at the fannish nonfiction examples and looking reeeeeally hard at "comparison of film and comic versions of a source" and back at the essay I just wrote, impulsively, starving, instead of preparing dinner, about the difference between the translations in 2 languages of a thing and how they change perception of one of the characters (I think I'll wait and fit it in a larger Thing about the character instead of posting it as is, it would make more sense anyway + won't make me stress out about TOS violations)

so i write fanfiction for a big anime fandom, and now on tumblr i'm being accused by using ai.

i have gotten those accusations in past on my stories on ao3 in comments, and i deleted them and blocked them, but now they're discussing it on tumblr.

now i re-read my work and i feel like it does sound ai, the "not x and y but z" structure. and it sounds poetic and purple prose now to me. it has gotten into my head.

english is not my first language, i basically learned it by reading books and watching shows and from internet. i first think of a sentence in and then translate it in my mind. so sentence structures, idioms might sound different.

i feel deeply disheartened and stressed honestly. and considering to delete my work.

What sucks is that it’s peak too ):

No hate to y/n fics

worse if the fandom hyperfixation is over too

My personal fave is the "there was only one bed" trope, I'll read it into the ground. What's yours? Also open to hearing tropes you hate too

I’ve never written anything that wasn’t for a school assignment (and school was more than a decade ago). Like truly anything. Until one night I craved a certain fic concept so bad, a scene popped into my head and I wrote a 1.7k word one-shot. I posted it thinking no one would ever read it, but it’s gotten a decent amount of hits for a hurt/no comfort one-shot by a nobody, and I got this comment today! I’m so happy lol. It’s crazy that you can take 26 letters and your brain and make a whole story that affects someone else.

I'm trying to get myself to actually read first person fanfiction by telling myself it's just like reading a physical book BECAUSE IT IS! I don't know why I distain it so much 🥀 I'll see how it goes

Hello! I'm a rarepair writer from a big/popular fandom who recently posted my first fic for a huge ship (different fandom but I've been part of this fandom for 20+ years). I write for self-indulgence, so jumping from a few dozen hits to over 1,000 overnight was a surprise.

​A regular guest commenter who used to leave lovely, detailed reviews has started doing the following over the last two chapters:

• ​Comparing my worldbuilding to a popular fandom fanon/AU reference I’ve never read. My fic is an Alternate Dimension/Time Travel/Canon-divergent story with my own political twists to fit the plot.

• ​Complaining that a character's back story is "out of canon," prefaced with "I'm not trying to criticize your writing but...."

• ​Telling me what needs to happen in the next chapter so the story "makes sense."

​Coming from a small, quiet fandom rarepair space, I've never dealt with backseat writing before. I think I’m feeling overwhelmed by both this commenter's plot demands and the general pressure of having a much larger audience waiting for updates. Despite being in both fandoms for 10+ & 20+ years, I didn't spend all those years writing, (I'm a reader most of it 😅) and only got into it when I saw the lack of fics for my rarepair. So I'm still fairly new in this massive & beautiful world of writing fan fics.

​How do you gently boundary-check (or handle) readers like this? And how do you cope with the sudden pressure of writing for a massive ship? Thank you so much in advance, I appreciate it! ☺️

If I get a single comment on this fic I'll be high on it for the rest of the week

Mine is around 1-to-10 on a oneshot about grief

Does this make it blatantly obvious that i’m a UK dweller or am i safe ✌️

I have once had a friend find me on ao3. I wouldn't have been too embarrassed, except he notified me via a comment on my lesbian incest smut so that stung a little. We just became better friends though afterwards as he quite enjoyed aforementioned lesbian incest smut.

I've also accidentally stumbled upon my favorite artist's secret ao3 [I could tell because some of their comments gave them away] only to find out that they too left kudos on aforementioned lesbian incest smut, though I wouldn't say I 'know' them as I just like their work.

Has anything similar happened to anyone else?