Ok, so I was a bit embarrassed to post this, but if it made me laugh in the end, I thought I should share it with you all.

This isn’t even about AI. I’ve been posting fics for years, using mostly Google Docs as my writing tool. Now here’s the “me being dumb” part. When I uploaded my first chapter years ago, it didn’t have any paragraphs or italicized words. Why? Because I used the HTML tab, and me, being a programmer who’s used to HTML, was like, “Sure, makes sense.” (It did not. I’m just dumb.)

I found a script on Reddit that you can run in Google Docs to convert your document into HTML, and I edited it a bit so it would format everything the way I wanted.

I posted like that for literally years. To the point where I couldn’t post while I was on vacation because Google Docs scripts don’t work on your phone.

Then the whole Claude AI thing happened, and I was like, “What? How are you guys posting from Claude to AO3? There’s no HTML!” The next thing I assumed was, “Oh, some people use it to generate the HTML. I think it’s wrong when the script exist, but I get it.”

Then I read about Rich Text and was like… “What do you mean?”
I went back to AO3, looked around, found it…
Just posted a chapter of my fic without turning it to HTML for the first time after literally years, and it’s so much easier! 

Anyway, I’m an idiot, and at least something good came out of this Claude drama. You learn something new every day.

And then you forget that other people will naturally have different headcanons than you, and you’ll go, “why’s he acting so out of chara— oh, right. Yeah he might do that… I guessss 🤨”

Repost because I forgot to blur the name sorry!!

Feeling soo stupid right now. I got no sleep last night and I'm a day behind my deadline for this chapter. (I need to write at least 2.5k words for each chapter, so I'm very behind). And apparently, Felix's anxiety makes him anxious.

Not pressuring people to reply to comments if they truly don't want to but I got this reply to a comment I left **6 years ago** and I was thrilled. I even went back and reread the fic! It's never too late

Has this ever happened to you? 😭

Like I get it, if you want something and you can’t find it, write it yourself obviously but sometimes I don’t want to read my own writing.

I want to read other peoples takes and writing styles on a particular ship or character. I do write stuff I want but reading is fun, and it introduces me to new dynamics I myself wouldn’t have thought of.

I realize this is kind of a non issue, I just wanted to share it.

PLEASE someone tell me I'm not reading this wrong.. Did someone ACTUALLY took my fic and got.. inspired by it to write something???

I INSPIRED SOMEONE?!

Was probably an accidental upload, but man I got so excited when I got the email 💔💔💔

Suffered a robbery attempt today, someone snatched my bag (with my laptop in it) as I took it off to pass the turnstile to enter the bus station. The guy was caught like 90 seconds later cause there was a cop car literally parked on the other side of the road (I honestly don’t know what he was thinking), but a couple minutes later, as I was sitting on the bus (hugging my bag tightly this time), a thought came to my mind unbidden: “damn, I forgot to save last night’s chapter on the hard drive, good thing I got my computer back”. And yes, there were probably like a billion more important work and uni stuff on the laptop, and I write on google docs so I wouldn’t have actually lost the chapter, but still.

Anyway, always make sure to save your work in multiple places, authors!

When a fic takes place over Reddit, I always have little giggle. Been a Redditor for ages so seeing these “Redditisms” are so fun.

Half the chapters pick up where the last one left off 😭😭 i’m rereading some of them rn trying to imagine what they would be like to read with no context and it’s endless amusement I love this commenter lol

Mine is " Let's do fauxcest with your coworker because you were both abandoned by your attending papa"

So, last night I received a hate comment and I don't think it was from a bot, mainly because after I replied they replied back, but then not even an hour later, after she says "so many ppl agree with me", someone else commented on the same chapter about the same thing.

And then!!! After that, a third account decided to hop under the comment of one of my dedicated readers who expressed her dissatisfaction in the scene in a NORMAL, TASTEFUL way, and start suggesting a widely known fic on the site (which I didn't redact just because I feel like it's so widely known she's like a celeb in the DR reddit lol.) but, I'm sorry, but isn't that rude as fuck?!

I just am not having a good time with the sudden pile-up, and wondering why it's even happening. Also, I understand that having the "sharing" and "dp" tags doesn't mean he'd kiss a guy, but I truly didn't think it was worth tagging since, as I said, it's a small working part in the greater scheme. Anyway, I'm newer to this site...has anyone dealt with this before? What do you do?

ETA: I've frozen the comment threads to make an example outta them and then added comment moderation on top of it. Thank y'all for your help!! I was getting a bit discouraged there, I knew the reddit community would have my back!!

I’ve been writing a fic for LADs for two years and finally decided to post it. It’s not complete, but I was getting close and started to lose steam so I thought actually posting it might give me the inspiration to keep going.
And it did. It hasn’t gotten a whole lot of attention but there were a couple people that commented pretty consistently. Suddenly I was pumping out chapters like crazy and feeling more confident in my writing.
And then the fandom took a massive shit. There’s so much drama. People are boycotting the game. My hits are still going up pretty consistently but the comments and kudos came to a halt. And now I’m stuck wondering if the last few chapters I’ve posted are ass or if it’s just getting caught up in the drama.

Only took that bitch bc my program required at least one computer science course , but thank god it wasn’t entirely useless 🙏

I also took creative writing in college and pretty much only use that for fic now so. Yipeee

I was literally 2 chapters into finishing - AND IT WAS A CROSSOVER CRACKSHIP FANFICTION AS WELL, GOD. I WISH I DIDN’T PROCRASTINATE ON FINISHING IT, AGH - NOW ILL NEVER SEE THE END…

Edit: I FOUND IT, THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR HELPING! Hats off to all of you!

What the hell do I do? 😭 I'm going to talk to my other friend about it, but I thought I'd ask here because maybe someone else has accidentally been in this exact situation or at least a similar one and can tell me how badly I'm screwed.

I've noticed that Ao3 fiction often has a distinct style of writing that's markedly different than written works outside of it. I notice how different things are when I read normal books.

The thing is I can't quite put my finger on it and it's driving me kind of crazy. Obviously the differences would never be concrete, definable features, but I think it's there. There are trends, and a self-reinforcing culture as fanfiction authors read other fanfiction and learn to incorporate stuff they like into their own work.

Obviously the main thing is that most Ao3 fics are fanfiction, which has inherent differences from original fiction. The big one being that fanfiction does not need exposition, since its audience is mostly people who are already familiar with the characters and setting. Another one is that fanfiction builds on original fiction, so fanfictions often can explore concepts that an original work could only explore to a limited extent within the confines of the story it was telling.

Aside from that though, I notice that Ao3 fics are much more likely to get deep into a character's internal world, and focus on their feelings. This is a trait I think they share with a lot of the YA novels that have big fandoms, like Percy Jackson and Hunger Games (and Warrior Cats, which does not have as big a fandom as those two, but it's one I'm in, so). I find Ao3 fics tend to get more creative in trying to communicate a character's emotions as well.

Some of the original works I've read recently don't get as poetic or in depth about the inner world of their protagonists. Those books in question I'm referring to include Red Widow by Alma Katsu, Steel Frame by Andrew Skinner, and Shadow State by M. P. Woodward, and a few others. These works feel much more focused on what the characters are doing and what the people around them are doing, rather than how any of them are feeling, emotionally.

I'll throw in some that I feel fit that category that I read less recently. PRESS ENTER ■ by John Varley, Neuromancer by William Gibson, and I didn't finish it but Assassins Anonymous by Rob Hart probably also fits "doesn't feel like Ao3 fiction by dint of being more outside of a character's head".

If I had to guess, the writing style influences detectable in Ao3 fiction come from some particular genre and through self-replication has formed Ao3's "in-house style". It's definitely not a style broadly inherited from fiction in general, since a ton of fanfic are from fandoms of media that use very few words to convey a character's emotions, such as any movie, video game, comic, or show. Also, as far as I can tell Warhammer 40k fanfiction on Ao3 does not really match the writing style of official Warhammer 40k novels. Nor does Starcraft Ao3 fanfic emulate Starcraft official novels. I've noticed the same with Halo novels, Dungeons & Dragons novels, & Dishonored Novels.

I think Ao3 fanfiction style is also distinct from fanfiction from other platforms, like Sufficient Velocity, but I don't read much fanfiction from Sufficient Velocity so I'm not sure, and I couldn't say what the differences are. (Though I would be extremely interested in hearing about it.)

Original fiction that is not from Ao3 that I've noticed feel similar to the Ao3 style include, again, YA fiction like Percy Jackson, Hunger Games, Warrior Cats. Also: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury does focus on the main characters' emotions in very beautiful prose, but it also doesn't feel like the Ao3 style to me. It's got some other sort of difference going on.

(Ignore the fandom)

LMFAO SORRY IF I SHIP CHARACTERS AND WRITE ABOUT IT????? 😭

The ship wasn't even the main topic of the work lmfao

When I was younger I loved hanahaki disease and love triangles (especially the love square in miraculous ladybug) but now I can’t stand either.

It wasn’t even conscious switch in my brain or anything, one day I just remember coming to the realisation ‘this is stupid’ and now I avoid them like the plague. Especially the miraculous one. I stopped watching the show years ago, but whenever I see anything new about it literally infuriates me😭

Not to say there’s anything wrong with liking these tropes of course, but I’m interested to hear what other tropes people have grown out of.