Words and Dreams of Tomorrow

Report em, block em, mute em.

And never trust or believe any account that leaves comments like

"You wrote this so vividly and as an artist with plenty of experience I can help turn your storytelling into visual art and my profile has my socials Discord:whyyymartha or Instagram:whyyymartha"

Note the lack of personalisation related to the story itself. How generic it is.

Note how it asks you to go to secondary websites. (The AO3 profile, also, does not have the socials linked.)

Note how if you go to its account it is empty of activity (bookmarks, stories, etc).

This is twice this month that an account has been a bot leaving scam comments. Locking your fics helps but it isn't enough.

they will now actually take notes of things that really happened in your fic, they make it sound personalised and genuine, but there's a way they talk that feels weirdly artificial, there's always a vague mention of some 'ideas' they have, if it raises your hackles trust those instincts and tread carefully, because ultimately-

they will ALWAYS LEAD YOU TO A SECONDARY LOCATION

suddenly changing up their writing style is a big red flag, wanting to take you off platform to some other site showcasing their 'art' is an even bigger red flag, REAL ARTISTS DO NOT DO THIS

no matter how genuine they sound, trust NOBODY advertising their art in your comment section, trust NOBODY who wants to take you off platform, NEVER go to that secondary location

A. Asking if they can draw fanart of the fic

Or

B. Telling you they drew something for the fic and where to find it

important additions

Just a heads up, there are bots going around on AO3 accusing people of using AI. Considering the timing, this is likely AI bros' retaliation for AO3 users calling them out for scraping their work. Examples of what you might be sent:

Screenshots from here.

The answers are easy and as follows:

1. People who write things you don’t like aren’t hurting you.

2. People who write online don’t owe you anything.

3. Things you don’t like will continue to exist whether you like it or not

I don’t think that tagging with both is actually going to get your fic in front of more readers. People looking for romance often exclude the “&” tag if there are too many gen fics tagged with both. People looking for gen often exclude the “/” tag if there are too many fics with both. So rather than putting your fic in front of twice the people, you are in fact more likely to get your target audience ignoring your fic because it has a tag they don’t want.

Also, by overtagging you are more likely to annoy potential readers away from your fic than entice them. A fic tagged both & and / better have both romance and a ton of platonic interaction between the two characters, like a slow burn romance friends-to-lovers arc. If it isn’t, I’m going to be very unhappy because the author lied to me with the tags to try and trick me into reading a fic with deceptive advertising.

[id: the "How do I tag a romantic or platonic relationship?" section of the tagging FAQ here.]

"But Jo," you may argue, because you're wrong. "There's no way to find that without digging through site FAQ menus, and that's really inaccessible!"

sure

except

that when you go to post a new fic, and you go to put in those relationship tags, you see this

[id: the Relationships field]

and that tooltip, the one THERE TO EXPLAIN HOW THE FIELD WORKS, links to the Relationships segment of the tag FAQ, which explicitly lays this shit out.

I don't care if you don't know fandom history. I don't care if you've never heard a goddamn word about the spirk shippers. I don't care if you've never been exposed to fandom culture in your life. It is, frankly, not fair to expect those things of everyone.

Fanfic is not a fucking numbers game. It's not about getting lots of people to read your mad scribbling. If you think it is you're doing fandom wrong.

FANDOM IS NOT A BOOK CLUB.

FANDOM IS A DRUNKEN PAJAMA PARTY IN WHICH EVERYONE IS TAKING TURNS READING EACHOTHER'S DIARIES AND GOING "OMG JENNIFER! WITH THE LAVA LAMP‽"

FAN READERS AND FAN WRITERS ARE THE SAME CATEGORY.

me, an elder fandom veteran, suddenly having anne rice flashbacks:

no.

NO.

starting to rock back and fourth.

you do not understand.

you were born into an age of peace. i was there Gandalf. i was there three thousand years ago. i remember the cease and desists. i remember authors hunting fanfic writers for sport. i remember when every fic opened with a disclaimer because we genuinely thought it might protect us.

we do not charge money for the copyrighted gay wizard stories.

do not tempt fate youngling.

step away from the paywall.

that is how you summon the ancient evils.

a reminder that ao3 was created as an archive. not a social media.

ao3 is run on fans’ donations. it’s a nonprofit organization, run by fans, for fans. it has no ads. no capitalism or algorithm bullshit.

ao3 allows works that depict all kind of taboo, morally questionable, disgusting, socially unacceptable subjects, no matter how graphic, how explicit it is being portrayed (that’s what tags, warnings and ratings are for!).

Here's some of the language from the new post about AO3's police on commercial promotion:

-

There is a wide variety of things that are not allowed under AO3's non-commercialization rules.

Any other language which one might interpret as requesting or having requested financial contributions, whether for yourself or others. This covers indirect references, euphemisms, or other language intended to get around the TOS. Some examples of this include:

Thanks for the coffee!

My ☕ username is the same as my username here

This chapter is brought to you by my patrons

You know where to find me if you want early or bonus chapters

Check out my Twitter to learn how you can donate to me since I'm not allowed to discuss it here

If you want to hear more about my ideas, talk about fandom, or find more of my stuff for a coin, visit my Tumblr

Everyone who posts or comments on AO3 needs to read this TOS Spotlight.

I reckon I have decent reading comprehension, and I've read the TOS (shocker, I know! What kind of person actually reads TOS!?) and any FAQs or other info I could find about the policy against commercial promotion a couple of times, but I had not grokked just how strict it is.

From my reading of this article, it isn't just that you can't ask your readers to join your Patreon. (That's very obviously forbidden.) Or that you can't sneakily point someone to your Ko-fi by talking around it in a way that makes readers understand what you mean. (You aren't allowed to try to circumvent the rules.)

But you also can't mention or refer to a web site whose purpose is to make people money (eg "I saw x on writer y's Patreon...") or – again, if I read this correctly – so much as link to a paywalled article in the New York Times. And you aren't allowed to say, "this is a commission for my patron x" (you can say the work is for person x and that it is a commission, though, but the word "patron" makes it too clear that money has changed hands). And this all goes for author's notes, user bio, comments, bookmarks; everywhere.

(You're allowed to have characters use Patreon or OnlyFans or whatever in a fic, as long as you don't use that as a way to sneakily get people to a real Patreon/OnlyFans/whatever. Fictional monetisation = okay. Any talk of real monetisation = not okay.)

No, honey, it's not stupid. Imagine being so obsessed with money that you're willing to sacrifiice an entire community to make a quick buck.

Because fanfic is only barely legal and then ONLY WHEN NO MONEY IS MADE OFF IT.

Monetising this hobby puts the hobby at risk of being destroyed. That's why most of AO3's donations are used in a legal fund to protect fan creators from getting sued into oblivion by copyright holders. Because "fair use" - the only legal defense fanfic has - only applies to works that Don't. Make. Money.

honourable mentions

children of any species are very good at being annoying and very cute while doing that

a sphinx child based on this post