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amhran_comhrac) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
peopleofthedas2011-03-30 10:21 pm
the unbearable agony of fanfiction.net
No, really!
FFnet seems to be working again. It let me go in and edit the flagged characters on a story I uploaded using the workaround.
However, I'm still waiting on notifications for the new story, and about a dozen review notices (as well as notices for new chapters of fics I follow), so YMMV. I don't know if the errors and issues are unrelated.
To update your existing story:
Proceed as normal, go to “my stories” in the publish section, and click edit next to the fic in question.
You get a horrid error message, yes?
Change “property” to “content” in the URL and you’ll see the familiar update screen. From there you’re all set.
If you want to post a new story things get more complex.
Pick a random category, most have been using “dragon rage” under games since, well, close enough. Get your description exactly how you want it, and try to include any info about the characters involved. You can’t tag them, since you’re in the wrong category.
Upload as normal. Click on edit in the my stories section, and change the category. You’ll see that same ugly error, but within half an hour or so it should be in the Dragon Age section. Once it’s there you can’t edit the description or tag characters since, hey, lookie, another fucking error. (which is why you want to get your description right and name your characters the first go-round).
But it’ll be posted.
There are also alternatives if you want to wash your hands of the mess completely.
Livejournal/Dreamwidth...
pros: easy to update thanks to the rich text editor (you can just paste from your word processor), you're already here, communities for fandoms *yo*
cons: smaller reader base, isn't really set up for a fiction archive
DeviantArt
pros: wickedly easy to update if you've already posted the chapter to your documents section in ffnet. (open it, click the HTML button, copy, and paste into the text section of DeviantArt's update. Boom.). Also, decent sized DA community.
cons: not as big a com as ffnet, more geared towards visual arts, no way to give a written summary/description for the search feature. Wheat to chaff? horrifying.
Archive of Our Own
Pros: you can import from ffnet by pasting your url, additional servers have clearly solved their slow-as-molasses problems, posting new chapters is as easy as ffnet, or easier. Also supports co-authors, tagging stories as part of a series, and a few other nice features
cons: small community, lack of feedback, importing will require you tweak each chapter since notes invariably come out a hot mess, in beta so you need to sign up and wait to get an invite (didn't take long for me, but with ffnet's issues it may be longer now)
note: anyone want an invite? Users can apparently request extra invite codes so I'd be happy to give it a shot.
(FYI, I'm LupusYondergirl over there)
Lunaescence
I admit, I know next to nothing about this, beyond it being 'moderated' for quality. There's only about 50 DA stories on there now. Anyone have an opinion?
Anyone have any opinions on these, or know of any I missed?
I know I left BSN off. There's a reason for that... the DA2 community creation forum allows LINKING to your fan works, as opposed to the posting that was allowed in the DAO forums.
I'm kind of falling in love with AO3 again, now that it's so much faster. I've uploaded EVERYTHING there... and it took me maybe two hours.
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i haven't bothered to post anything at deviant art that wasn't actually visual art. i see a lot of people doing that, but like you said, there's no way to put a summary, so i've been leery of it. i certainly haven't read anything that people have posted there.
i'm very wary of ff.net, and only post there to catch readers who don't go other places, and to have a better idea of how many people are actually reading my stuff. for instance, my last chapter of 'wings' got one - count it, one - review here, however it's had 130 hits on ff.net. if it weren't for that, i'd think jannifer was the last person left reading, and just start emailing her the stories, honestly. it's the ff.net traffic stats that are all that keeps me going sometimes. as long as i know people are interested, i'll keep writing, but the dearth of commentary is sad. i wish there were hit counters here, too. or, ideally, more people who just said 'hey, read this, thumbs up' or 'hey, read this, whatevs' or anything else they might want to chime in with. the silence is heavy.
*ahem*
anyway, i worry about posting at ff.net, because they say that they only go up to 'm' and a lot of my stuff is 'ao'. they say that you can't post sex. >.> uh. and there are these people who like to go around being nazi's about it, and have this program to 'clean' fandoms of the smut, of things written like a script, and of things that are grammatically unfortunate. i've been worried they'll get a wild hair up their asses and purge the da fandom the same way, which would effectively gut us. so i don't treat them as my primary posting arena, i just use them as a ruler for how well my fic is actually going over in the community.
so, to sum up, i post here to be amongst my friends and peers, at ff.net to keep track of my traffic, and at ao3 because i can. i didn't know about that last place... wtf is it? i'll have to check it out. maybe we should all storm it and flood the place with awesomeness.
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But yeah, it's always a worry there in the back of my mind.
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I'd love to put SS up there, but I won't risk endangering my outlet for T&S - not when I have approaching 400 dedicated readers over there and more ploughing through the chapters every month.
If anywhere else could compete with FF on sheer numbers I'd bail in an instant.
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The numbers at ff.net are impossible to beat, even if the feedback doesn't do justice to the hits.
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1.6k unique viewers on T&S for March and 7.3k hits, but the important number is how many people have read a recent chapter. I look at the highest figure for the month amongst the last 3 chapters and take that as my regular readership (as the most recent chapter will only be partially read at this stage). It feels like a more sane way to interpret a rather murky set of stats.
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By that method I'm getting a hair over 200 readers per chapter, which seems to be a fairly consistent figure for each of the last six chapters or so.
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