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I've been thinking a lot about fandom lately. I got into Archive of Our Own earlier in the year, and I will admit that I was completely converted from the first go. I post my fanfiction in a number of different places, and it's a total pain for me to go back and make edits in multiple places. Archive of Our Own seemed like the perfect way to consolidate all of my work in one place. It was made for fic writers BY fic writers, and it really represented many things that I felt were lacking in Livejournal.
Uploading stories and standardizing information about them was absurdly easy. Whatever grievances we have with fanfiction.net, it is admittedly very easy to post and share stories. AO3 took that a step further and allowed fans to go back and change stories instead of having to upload entirely new ones. Livejournal has their stupid word limits and finicky text formatiing, things that drive me absolutely bonkers. I am a coder in real life, and I have spent a lot of free time trying to write up an add-on that could make it easier for people to post stories on LJ. I'm still wondering if LJ will get around to doing something like this, a Story Posting option up there next to Voice Posting and the rest.
The time came when I really couldn't do it any more. I had to break up stories with longer chapters like The Professor's Wife, and I saw how much that changed the flow and style of the story. I said hell with it, and decided to rely solely on AO3 and then link back to LJ. But after experiencing both sites, I'm still torn. AO3 is amazing for storage, but LJ is wonderful for personality. Reading on someone's journal gets you a feel for who they are, and I've noticed that reading on LJ makes people more inclined to leave comments rather than the AO3 Kudos, which are great for letting people know you've read the story, but not so good for constructive feedback and getting to know people. Another plus with LJ is the stability of the system, which is honestly because LJ has been around for longer and ironed out bugs along the way. AO3 is young and still growing in exciting directions (hopefully with ways to track stories, a MAJOR plus with LJ), but that often means site outage. In those circumstances, I usually find myself trying to find the same work on LJ and reading from there. LJ is still my backup, no matter what.
Linking to my AO3 stories on LJ is all well and good, but there's just something about LJ that encourages interactivity with the writer and readers. Maybe because for good or for ill, the different journal layouts show you as a person, someone accessible with personality. Maybe LJ does something with how readers can submit feedback that facilitates the interaction better than AO3. Whatever it is, I hope AO3 captures it too, because as a writer trying to get my stories out there, I really do love AO3 dearly. I don't regret switching over, even if it means now I have to split my attentions between it and LJ. The fans and the people behind AO3 are all wonderful and work tirelessly, and I truly appreciate all they do.
The only difference is that now for shorter stories I try to give readers the option of reading on LJ or AO3. (Posting on AO3 first, pasting into LJ later, because Microsoft fucking Word either strips formatting or dumps in a large amount of code if you save as an HTML, and LJ does not help this along.) In that, I hope I can contribute that much more to the personality reflected in my LJ while still making story posting and edits efficient.
What have been your experiences with these sites? Thoughts?
Uploading stories and standardizing information about them was absurdly easy. Whatever grievances we have with fanfiction.net, it is admittedly very easy to post and share stories. AO3 took that a step further and allowed fans to go back and change stories instead of having to upload entirely new ones. Livejournal has their stupid word limits and finicky text formatiing, things that drive me absolutely bonkers. I am a coder in real life, and I have spent a lot of free time trying to write up an add-on that could make it easier for people to post stories on LJ. I'm still wondering if LJ will get around to doing something like this, a Story Posting option up there next to Voice Posting and the rest.
The time came when I really couldn't do it any more. I had to break up stories with longer chapters like The Professor's Wife, and I saw how much that changed the flow and style of the story. I said hell with it, and decided to rely solely on AO3 and then link back to LJ. But after experiencing both sites, I'm still torn. AO3 is amazing for storage, but LJ is wonderful for personality. Reading on someone's journal gets you a feel for who they are, and I've noticed that reading on LJ makes people more inclined to leave comments rather than the AO3 Kudos, which are great for letting people know you've read the story, but not so good for constructive feedback and getting to know people. Another plus with LJ is the stability of the system, which is honestly because LJ has been around for longer and ironed out bugs along the way. AO3 is young and still growing in exciting directions (hopefully with ways to track stories, a MAJOR plus with LJ), but that often means site outage. In those circumstances, I usually find myself trying to find the same work on LJ and reading from there. LJ is still my backup, no matter what.
Linking to my AO3 stories on LJ is all well and good, but there's just something about LJ that encourages interactivity with the writer and readers. Maybe because for good or for ill, the different journal layouts show you as a person, someone accessible with personality. Maybe LJ does something with how readers can submit feedback that facilitates the interaction better than AO3. Whatever it is, I hope AO3 captures it too, because as a writer trying to get my stories out there, I really do love AO3 dearly. I don't regret switching over, even if it means now I have to split my attentions between it and LJ. The fans and the people behind AO3 are all wonderful and work tirelessly, and I truly appreciate all they do.
The only difference is that now for shorter stories I try to give readers the option of reading on LJ or AO3. (Posting on AO3 first, pasting into LJ later, because Microsoft fucking Word either strips formatting or dumps in a large amount of code if you save as an HTML, and LJ does not help this along.) In that, I hope I can contribute that much more to the personality reflected in my LJ while still making story posting and edits efficient.
What have been your experiences with these sites? Thoughts?
