@plainjayne5 @writingpteropod

Title: Every Last Desert Weed

Pteropoda https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentP/pseuds/Pteropoda

Title: Every last desert weed

Rating: Mature

Tags: Alternate Universe - Historical, Wild West, Ahistoric technology, Steampunk-esque, Amnesia, Memory Loss, Angst, Solo Travel, Background Characters, Injury Recovery

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Side characters and pairings: Mei-Ling Zhou, some mentions of Genji Shimada.

Word count: ~25,000

Summary:

When he awakes in Chicago, he has little to claim as his own, not even a name; the only clue Hanzo has is a journal with his name on it and the photograph within, and the note scrawled in a messy hand on the back; ‘H. Shimada and J. McCree, on the purchase of 240 acres of land outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, July 18th, 1866.’

Every time a person goes back and rereads a fic, it increases the hit counter (sometimes multiple times based on how AO3 tracks hits). Why shouldn’t a person who believes the fic deserves another kudos give it another kudos as a guest?  Some people look at kudos as “this many people liked this fic”. but that’s already a flawed statistic unless they are also considering how many people read the fic, and the hit counter is the closest they have to figuring that and it’s not 1:1 for readers. Because of rereaders and the way it will record multiple hits if you stop and go back or whatever.  And it’s not like every single person is doing this. Kudos aren’t going to be double or tripled by people giving a kudos as a guest and while logged in. It’s a few people saying “no really. I liked it then and I still like it now and they deserve two “good job” stickers”.

My reader response: I leave multiple kudos too if I can, or remember to log out. Especially if it’s an amazing fic. And I’ll always like it on whatever social platform I found it on (usually tumblr) as well as ao3.

Author response: omg yes please leave multiple kudos? I get so excited every time I get a notification about kudos and likes on my stuff. It makes me feel happy that people enjoy my writing enough to leave a kudo.

Some people don’t like to comment, so it makes sense if they want to leave multiple kudos on a work they enjoyed.

I've occasionally left multiple kudos, because of the glitch, or accidentally reading logged out, or because I've switched my main pseud. It happens! I don't think anyone would get mad at it, necessarily.

From the author side of things, I'm used to assuming that 1 kudos=1 reader (who hopefully loved the fic). A lot of people do the same thing, if you've seen the posts about imagining your number of kudos as a crowd of that side. It's easy to assume that with logged in kudos because there are names attached, but with guest kudos, I just don't know. Do I have a dedicated audience of five readers who keep coming back, or an audience of twenty who stopped by once each time? if I get a sudden spike in guest kudos, did a bunch of people get to the fic at the same time, or was it one person over and over? Does my fic have broad popular appeal, or is it more of a cult classic? With guest kudos, I just don't know. Some people won't mind the ambiguity, but I know I end up wondering about it.

Personally I don't mind if people use guest kudos as an additional 'read this again, still love it!' feature, if they're going back to the fic every now and then. Honestly that feels kind of sweet to me, especially if you're doing it to older fic that might not get attention otherwise. I don't expect it though, and I don't think I'd want readers to feel that it's necessary, or standard practice. It's nice when it's occasional and unexpected.

I think I'd also feel a little uncomfortable in CotD's position. If the guest kudos start greatly outnumbering the logged in kudos, bookmarks, comments, etc on a fic, I might start wondering what it is about that fic that people don't want to interact with while named. Knowing that it was someone flooding the work with kudos might relieve that a little, but depending how significant it is, I'd still feel uncomfortable-- like I've been entered into some popularity contest I didn't mean to sign up for.

People keep requesting to add my fic to collections and I don’t know if they know this, and I don’t know if people who allow their own stories know this, but once you add your story to a collection, the owner of the collection can perform fuckery with your story.

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.

I wish AO3 had a way to auto decline collection invites- they gave us a way to auto-accept, so I don’t understand why the opposite isn’t true. If I wanted my story to be part of a collection, I’d submit it myself.

Uhh okay, so someone replied to this that they didn’t know how to remove a work from a collection. 

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.

If the direct link doesn’t work: go to your AO3 dashboard, click “collections” on the side bar, click “manage collected items” button at the top right, click “approved” button at the top right, and you’ll be at the right page to remove your works from collections.

hey! so from someone who tried her hand at making a collection to collect fics centered around a specific theme, I found out a super cool thing! you can create collections of bookmarks.

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! 

no fuss, no muss, no permission required from the author (since it’s YOUR bookmark), no chance of fucking up their fic (since it’s YOUR bookmark), presto chango, you have a collection that rocks but doesn’t rock a poor fic writer’s boat!

Thank you for this info, this is very valuable (and relieving) knowledge.

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

So I just recently learned that people are required to write fanfiction in order to apply for localization jobs at Square Enix and I’m pretty much not gonna get over that ever.

@the people asking me what the hell I’m talking about: buckle up.

One of my friends on here decided to apply for this thing a couple of weeks ago, and the first part is just like any normal job. You give your personal info, send your portfolio, try to meet the requirements, etc. All fun and games until you get to the bottom of the list, which says, and I quote:

“When applying, please submit the following task.

There you have it. Square Enix literally asks you to make up an OC and write about them having a face-off with one of the good guys to see if you’re fit to be a translator, and honestly???? Fucking power move right there.

starscream being canonically shorter than his trinemates but like 10 tons heavier is so funny like what could you possibly be hiding in that shitty little body that makes you so heavy

the decepticons are at it again i guess [x]

New Rule

Stop saying “I suck.” 

Seriously, stop it. 

Is that what you want people to think about you? No. You want them to think you’re great! And you are! 

Stop telling people about how crappy your art is or how bad your writing is or how you’re stupid at math. Stop apologizing for not being perfect. No one is. You don’t have to apologize for being human. 

The next time you type, “Sorry this sucks, but-” or “I know it’s not any good, but-” or “You don’t have to look at my stuff because it’s awful but-” delete that part of your sentence and leave whatever’s left. Give people the chance to enjoy what you made or be proud of what you accomplished before you tell them they should be disappointed.

Something I’ve been enforcing on a Discord server I’m on (the r/fanfiction server, it’s really nice) is The Jar™.

Think of it like a swear jar. If you say you “suck”, or anything along those lines (to be interpreted however your friends like), you have to pay the jar.

The payment? One (1) positive thing about your writing, or writing 100 words on your current wip. I tried to bump it down to “a sentence”, coincidentally (hah) after the “should be writing” jar got implemented too and thrown at me, but that got vetoed. >.>

So, either you say something to counter the negativity, or you have to make more stuff (and thus improve).

Also works for art btw, just swap out the 100 words for an art equivalent.

If you feel like you can’t just leave out the ‘I suck’ substitute it for a neutral statement. I often say something about the work process “it took me a long time to come up with this” “this is a quick sketch in class” “this was an idea I had while on the bus”.

It’s an easy “filler” that (for me) takes a bit less courage than immediately jumping to the things I like about it, and it gives me some perspective and helps me appreciate it more. What didn’t I like about this? Was it because it’s a rough sketch? Well I did this in 10mins, so that’s pretty good for that. Did I expect to write more in these 3 hours? Maybe, but that was a lot of work.

And it does the same for people who see your work. Knowing an artists/writers/etc creative process helps me appreciate their art too. Knowing whether something was easy or difficult or took a long time invokes different feelings. If you feel like you need to put yourself down so your audience will be gentle with you, don’t! Do something like this instead

in this house its ALWAYS wheeljack wednesday

How dare you come into my house and shame me to my face

I’m the kind of readers who's this anon’s target audience, because I love longfic. I don’t think a large word count has ever turned me off a story. I love just tearing through a 100k fic over the course of a few days. That said, I’ve also given up on fics where the chapters felt too long/convoluted/slow, regardless of the actual wordcount.

One of the fandoms I briefly jumped into had a fic that I found really frustrating, because the chapters averaged 30k but the plot felt buried and hard to understand, despite the work the author had clearly put into it. One chapter in particular bothered me because it involved the characters trying to solve a mystery, but I couldn’t actually follow along with what the mystery was, what the stakes were, or the steps the characters were taking to solve it. It all got lost amidst the story’s admittedly very beautiful prose, scenic descriptions, and introspection.

I’ve also ended up giving up on longfics where the characters don’t seem to develop. By the third time I’m reading what feels like the same argument happening in a different setting, it can be hard to invest much time when the story only seems to be going in circles.

I don’t think there’s such thing as a simple fix for either of these problems, and some of these things are also going to be a matter of taste. But outlining can definitely help. So can just asking yourself, “what happens in this chapter?” The more thought you put into that, the more you’ll help your readers ignore that word count and stay up until 4am because they just want to see what happens next.

Check out the original post at lofrequency.net →

My friend’s Rodimus swapped his colors a bit, and maybe it’s a bit more pink than what she intended, but I love pank!!