Archive of Our Own

[auronlu]

So, I'm in... thank you renay and owlmoose for tugging me that direction.

--Interface is WORLDS better than ff.net and AFF, and it's still in beta. This is what I hoped ficwad would be, and wasn't: a place to archive all fic in one place.
--I love the fact that if you delete a fic, it emails you a copy, Just to Make Sure.
--Tags system is excellent.
--Giftfic system looks like a great idea.
--Only archive where you can use the tag and include fanart. Or LINKS. Thank you.
--Importer is still a little buggy, but it looks like they're working on it.
--Only downside is that AO3 isn't a place to get lots of comments -- yet. It is truly an archive. This may change as it grows.

Question.
A collection of drabbles and/or responses to a prompt comm:
--Post them as separate Works in a Series? I'm afraid that would spam the fandom index, but that way they'd be easier to find/search for.
--Or post them as chapters of the same work, as I've done until now?


In other news, I think I finally see how to structure the next chapter of LHAD. I got stuck arranging all the pieces on the chessboard for the Big Battle Sequence. I kept having to deal with this bit of character business and that bit of logistics and oh yeah gotta remember to get those guys in position, and it looked like it would take three chapters to sort it all out -- far too long. I think I need to use fast cuts and drabble-like chunks showing where everyone is, leaving out "how did they get there?" (so long as I know the logistics in my own mind, they don't need to be shown). I may miss a few nuggets of character study/development/interaction that way, but I've got to build this back to a frenetic tempo. It's the "Fellowship's quest grinds to a halt in Lothlórien" problem.

Only worse, because the next battle sequence involves 12-13 people, not including machina.

However, I have to use LHAD as a carrot to help me write dissertation. Not before. So. *goes off to work for several hours*

Comments

[samuraiter.livejournal.com]

Evocative 'Fics 'n' Forums Network (http://www.evocativefics.net/)

:-) The staff there may look familiar to you if you need a place to post.

Oho!

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Looks like a nice place!

However, that's slanted more towards adult writing, and isn't so fandom-focused. (For example, AO3 includes a built-in tag specifically for Elma/Lucil stories, whereas ff.net doesn't list them as characters!)

I'm just not sure whether to archive my drabbles all in one work, or as a series of works.

Come to think of it, I've got one other AO3 "filing" question, although I can probably answer it by looking at the fic already archived there -- if you fill in a pairing tag, do you repeat the character names in the character tag? Would someone looking for "Wakka" stories want "Wakka/Rikku" stories to show, or not?

Re: Oho!

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

It's up to you - one of the great things about AO3 is the flexibility of the tagging system - but I always list them in both places. My impression is that the character and pairing tags sort separately.

Personally I would add separate but connected stories individually, then use the related stories feature (which I LOVE btw). I don't know how well the chapter feature would handle that.

Glad you got in to AO3 and are liking it! I'm pretty pleased with it so far, and hopefully more reviews will come along with critcal mass.

Re: Oho!

[samuraiter.livejournal.com]

I discovered AO3 through Porn Battle IX (long story, literally), but it is completely new to me. May yet be the future of fandom, but I have no idea how it works. ... Yet. ^_^

Re: Oho!

[franzeska]

If someone wrangles the fandom (not a guarantee at this point--there are so many, and we don't have that many wranglers yet), they'll take an unambiguous pairing tag like "Auron/Lulu" or "Auron/Lulu (FFX)" or something and connect "Lulu (FFX)" and "Auron (FFX)" to it. After that's done, instead of seeing "Auron/Lulu, Lulu (FFX), Auron (FFX)" in your headers, you'll just see "Auron/Lulu". Fics tagged only with "Auron/Lulu" will behave as though they also had the individual character tags.

At this point, since some of the tag wrangling functionality isn't ready yet, we can't really do anything with tags like "Lulu" that could be a gazillion different characters. People are, of course, welcome to use them, but we can't do that nice characters-pairings connecting thing.

Search and filtering are also still being worked on. We don't yet have nice features for excluding things. In the future, what someone would probably do would be to filter for "Wakka" and then not "Wakka/Rikku", but right now they'd have to either filter for some other pairing or other tag or just scroll through stories.

Re: Oho!

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

It seems like someone knowledgeable has been wrangling the FFX tags at least a bit. I was floored when it filled in Elma/Lucil for me when I started to type their names. They're extremely minor characters, and I thought no one but me had ever written them.

[lassarina]

I'm still trying to make the same decision regarding drabbles for a comm, so let me know what you decide? I am wibbly for, uh, basically the same reasons you listed.

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing others have done what I used to do, namely pack all their drabbles into one work, chapter by chapter.

I'm not sure. That could a) represent people not taking advantage of the tagging system or b) keep the archives from flooding with a zillion 100-500 word pieces so that it's hard to find chewy reading.

I'm thinking maybe b, but I'm still debating.

[lady-susan-lj.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest making them works in a series - there's going to be a feature added later to sort or filter by word count, so people will then be able to find it by searching for drabbles, or will be able to filter out drabbles. It would spam the fandom index for a short while, but as the archive grows, that'll be less of a problem.

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Okay, thanks!

That makes more sense, logically: drabbles are works, not chapters. However, there's never been a good way on any other archive to file them. The series feature is very useful.

I shan't spam the archive with too many drabbles until the word count filter is up and running.

[trekqueen.livejournal.com]

hmmmm sounds promising, I'll have to check i tout!

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Of course the last time I was babbling like this it was for ficwad, and that didn't turn out so well.

However, AO3 is already much less buggy than poor ol' ficwad, which suffered from lack of support (and possibly only one person writing the code for the whole thing).

[trekqueen.livejournal.com]

yea, I put in to be on the waiting list and this morning I now have an approval! :)