*✨endeavoring✨*

Shut up. Shut the hell up. Just because you're not a good enough writer to make them good parents and allow the kids to have an adventure doesn't mean it has to be this way.

You could have the parents kidnapped. Cursed. Separated from their kids in a crowd. You could have the kids kidnapped and the awesome parents going through hell and high water to get them back while they are making their kidnappers' very existence miserable.

Oh, here's a fun one! You could make the parents not want their kids involved in shenanigans, but circumstances mean they have to be, and parents and kids work together to deal with the movie's Big Bad!

my initial reaction on how to proceed:

Like, I’m REALLY glad that collections exist, and I’ve put my work into some collections when I made those things specifically for those collectuons. Collections are a useful tool for things like bangs, where the stories need to be hidden until the reveal….. but that also means that the person in charge has the ability to hide your works from the public. Like, without you agreeing, because you already “agreed” to that by submitting to the collection. Which means works you previously had available suddenly disappear from where people can find them.

What I’m saying is please stop random requests to random people to be in your random collections. I know you probably don’t have ill intentions, but there’s no way to tell. And if you’re getting requests to be part of random collections, please be aware that if you approve them, you won’t be the only one in control of some elements of your posted stories, including whether or not they “exist” to the average reader. If they mark the collection as “unrevealed,” you story stops being accessible to the public. And they have the option to mark the collection “anonymous” which I’m pretty sure turns the author from being You to being Anonymous.

And I say all of this because I have seen this happen to people. I have had friends whose stories “disappeared” because they approved a random collection invite and the collection owner turned everything “unrevealed” (likely without even knowing or understanding that it would hide it for EVERYONE not just hide the collection so no one would see they had it, it’s not like a private bookmark). And while I haven’t seen anyone do this maliciously (at least none I can prove) I can see where it could be USED maliciously. So please, just be careful out there.

Copy and past the following link, and where it says “yourusernamehere” type in your AO3 pseud.

https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourusernamehere/collection_items?approved=true

This should take you to a page where your works that have been approved for collections resides. You can remove your works from collections by selecting “rejected” instead from the drop down menus.

want to add a fic you love to that super-specific collection you made for Fics With Werewolves Set In London? bookmark it and add the bookmark to your collection! 

So please, as readers, this is a MUCH BETTER option!!

And in the notes I have found several other things:

Some people have wondered why this is a thing, or if it’s a bug. This is a FEATURE not a bug. The collections feature is often used for things like big/mini/reverse bangs, fic exchanges, challenges etc where authors and/or artists and/or other fannish content creators submit their work early to the collection and the collection is left unrevealed until the set public reveal date of the event.

This is a GREAT feature. We LIKE this feature A LOT. It’s just that if you aren’t aware of this feature and what it can do, it can negatively affect you outside of those purposeful situations.

Someone confirmed that the “mark collection anonymous” feature does turn the story from being written by you to being written by anonymous.

You can also remove your work from a collection if you go to the “edit” page of the story (not edit chapter, but the main edit), scrolling to where it says “post to collections/challenges” and clicking the (x) by the collection you want to remove the work from. If you only have one or two stories in collections this is fine; if you have a lot, the manage collections page will let you do them all at once.

You can check if your story has been affected by logging out and going to your works page. If your work in the collection is not visible (and you have not marked it as “must be logged in to see”) then it may be that the collection is unrevealed.

Someone suggested that the bookmark collection feature would be a great way to make a private collection, since you can make bookmarks private.

I checked and found that authors cannot remove a bookmarked story from a collection. This makes sense, as bookmarks are not FOR the author, they’re for the reader. They are reader spaces.

You do not have to own a collection to add a bookmark to it.

If you, as a writer, have your story in a collection currently and you would like your story to still be able to be found in that collection without the risk of your story “disappearing” if the collection is made private, you can create a bookmark of your own story, and add it to the collection before removing your actual story from the collection (providing the collection is not closed).

If you do the above, you can link to the collections your story belongs to in the notes of your story (beginning or end notes) if you’d like to foster folks in the community being able to find similar stories easily. Slightly more work on your part, BUT a boon to fandom community as a whole because it will allow for readers and writers to collaborate and maintain networks of stories. Adding your story as a bookmark is also something you can do if someone requests that you add your story to their collection- if you want to reject the request to add the story, you can then add a bookmark for them after, and a link to the collection in your story notes.

Collection owners should get an email when bookmarks are added to your collections that you didn’t add (providing you have selected the option “Send a message to the collection email when a work is added” in the collection settings).

If someone adds a bookmark to your collection that you do not want them to add, you can just go to the manage collection items page and reject it, which will remove it from your collection.

Alternately, you can switch your collection to “moderated” instead, and it will cause your collection to require you to approve additions BEFORE they are added, so you can still monitor what goes into your collection.

Alternately, you can prevent anyone from having the option to add anything to your collection by selecting the “collection is closed” option in the collection settings.

If your works are in collections currently with no problems, there’s no reason to panic. You don’t have to remove your works unless you want to. Most people really are just grouping up works with no ill intent. I just wanted folks to be aware of what it means for you to be in a collection, and give anyone that needs it the tools to fix it if it does become a problem. And also to make folks who DO make collections aware that they should not be marking those collections unrevealed or anon because it screws with the writers.

I was interested in making another one for the Owl House. I’d need programmers (at least two) artists willing to take on a slightly larger workload than last time or, artists very good at parroting other art styles to keep it looking consistent, background artists and route writers. We also managed to have original music last time which really made it special, so musicians who can make some finished pieces inspired by the owl house would be wonderful as well.

So if there is any interest in this project please interact with this post, and if you are an owl house fan who feels they can possibly contribute get in touch via inbox please.

Spread this through the owl house community if you can I don’t have a presence there