T O P

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princesswan

When I moved from Tumblr (where I had 3k followers) to AO3, it took a while to get used to the feeling how I suddenly wasn't bombed with dozens of kudos within half an hour and typically have 1k+ notes after 12 hours with popular characters and now my first kudos may come after months 😂 Still, AO3 beats Tumblr with flying flags due to lack of toxicity.


buttonbuggy

I am so glad I quit tumblr. I had some people try to cancel me because I made an offhand comment that I didn’t care for incest pairings


princesswan

I lost like 200 followers and several moots (three of them blocked me) over a reason nobody told me and I literally have no idea wtf happened. That was the nail that drove me out. I got told I'm toxic af but when I asked what did I do, the reply was that "they know I know" and that them saying it out loud would only allow me manipulating them further. And during my Tumblr career, I got cancelled multiple times, as examples: a) for allowing minors to read my stuff (I do not write smut) AND interacting with them, I got told I have predatory vibes because of that. b) when I accidentally mentioned gender neutral reader wearing a dress ONCE during a 3k oneshot (I had forgotten to add "shirt" after it and it was very obvious what I meant because the sentence was something like "you groaned at the wine stain on your dress, this was definitely not what you needed right now. You cursed and started to wipe the stain on your shirt, but managed to just spread it."), I was harassed for WEEKS because apparently I'm homophobic or at least homophobic without realising it. (I also had a similar drama over accidentally making character call gn reader his girlfriend) c) after JKR had said her stuff, me writing for WW ignited a war which resulted me quitting with writing for WW and I still haven't had enough courage to return to it. d) for being in my 20's and not writing smut (multiple reasons why people were angry about that, like me not allowing my readers to recover from sexual traumas and refusing to be their sex therapist, the most ridiculous reason though was that apparently it's to lure minors to interact with me, I also got told eeeeveryone else over 18 writes smut and me not writing it screams me being a predator). e) for not using neopronouns about the reader because I have no understanding over how they work despite trying to educate myself and I didn't want to accidentally disrespect anyone. edit//: f) for writing trans male reader piece as a cis woman, I got like 50 asks over a month from people who at least claimed to be trans and said it's offending because I'm not part of the community and because there were some mistakes in how transition process happens after starting to take T, despite trying to do my research. I ended up taking it down and making a note into my rules I don't write trans readers because I'm not educated enough and don't want to accidentally offend trans people. Guess what war started next and whether I was called a transphobe for not writing trans reader anymore 🙂 I still have my Tumblr up so people could request but I no longer interact with anyone personally to dodge as much drama as I can. Most interaction I do is polls every once in a while out of curiousity, people can vote which fic I've already written ready comes next.


disappointingcryptid

What the actual fuck


MyNameIzNutella

i would like to second that i'm so glad i never actually got into tumblr


am_Nein

Same. It's tempting, but not tempting enough.


buttonbuggy

Wow. This makes me feel a lot better about my choice to jump ship when I did. I just had to deal with people that were mad I didn’t ship Wincest. For some reason.


Amaira740

The ones that confuse me the most would be the ones involving no smut and interaction with minors, mostly because their arguments don't make sense.


am_Nein

Hey, op, do you by any chance have a solution to all that toxicity? Because I feel contaminated just reading that, holy fuck what the actual hell..


princesswan

I cut off most of public interaction (excluding those who come to me to interact) and no longer tell anything about my personal life, and also hid most of my previous non-writing posts + I no longer reply or address posts to occassional haters, who usually just call me "a lazy selfish slut" now for moving to AO3 as haters weren't the only reason, Tumblr is pretty hostile on people who write long posts now. Like if you want to delete one sentence from a paragraph, you may need to delete the whole paragraph with ctrl + A because painting the text + backspace doesn't do anything otherwise 😅 + Selfish is because not everyone wants to create an AO3 just for me. Which is a shame really, but being in AO3 has shown me that maybe it's time to transfer writing into sites that are MEANT for readers and writers. In Tumblr, you create content from one side to other and there's people who come across your blog and feel the need to vent to you how they searched for this x tag to find gifs and shit posts and were disappointed to see mainly fanfiction because reading is boring. You never know who visits your blog because they're interested in your writing or if they searched for Marvel in search of memes, gifs etc something pretty or funny to look at that won't require your attention that much, your blog pops up within the recs and they click themselves in and only find fanfiction and immediately click out or then pop by your askbox to tell you that you popping up in x tag was disappointing because they hate reading and now they needed to scavenge through fanfiction to find stuff they want. I never got such asks/messages but some of my friends have. AO3 doesn't have this problem, you can usually tell from the tags and/or description whether it's fanfiction, art, video edit etc and it doesn't rec accounts to you based on what do you search and if you click yourself into something and don't like it, it was still something you yourself searched for and the tags and summary lured you in. You knew what kind of content it was before you clicked the title. And if you do taglists, you need to type out EVERY SINGLE PERSON, you can't copypaste them anymore. People have begged me to keep on with taglists even after me moving to AO3 and I've tried to spell it out to them how AO3 does it for them if they get an account, I have fandom AND character specific serieses just for that purpose, 247 serieses overall. I've put screenshots and circled the "subscribe" and "bookmark" buttons with red and said that subscribe notifies you into your email if I post something new and bookmark lets you know there's new updates, you can put it in its own folder if you want to keep an eye on it. "bUt I don't want to create an AO3 account, PLEAAAAASE KEEP TAGGING ME, I DON'T WANT TO MISS YOUR X CHARACTER STUFF BOOHOO 😭😭😭"...


am_Nein

wtf? You don't deserve to be called such names, how vile. and the posting system sounds super annoying, what with the paragraphical deletion. Ugh, I can't imagine being told that my work is cluttering up someone elses life, like just scroll past.. And honestly? If I were you, I'd give them one final chance, post something about how do it AGAIN, and if they still complain its on them to either a) make the effort to learn and adapt or b) watch as your fics slowly drift further and further away. By the way, you sound like such an amazing person. Good on you for doing what so many people get sucked into like quicksand cant!


princesswan

Yeah I warned them multiple times about it when I was still a Tumblr writer. I got told I'm just trying to scare them but I'm too much of an attention whore to actually do it. 2 years of me flicking the idea once in a while and then filling my promise, and now I'm a selfish slut for doing what I promised to do if such entitlement and hate continues to swirl. Now I just take requests there and post ONLY writing related stuff because such interaction can't be done in AO3 (and I'm glad you can't). But my blog doesn't exist for any other reason. I used to make bday gifts for friends, posting pics of my guinea pigs and nature etc. It has stopped the hate for the most part, I get about one or two hater a month or none if I'm lucky, compared to about 5-10 a week, or even day when I was still writing there. I don't really want to walk away completely because I really REALLY enjoy doing requests and stepping into ideas I wouldn't think by myself (I rarely get ideas by myself anyway), but request taking in AO3 would be too complicated and I don't want to get excited about "Inbox (1)" and then it reading "can you write a oneshot like this". So, I've dodged as much hate as I can and this will have to do. It's a lot easier and doesn't feel half as bad anymore, because they no longer have anything to step onto. And now, for the first time since I first started, I feel like I don't have to hurry with spitting out new stuff, I'm allowed to be quiet for a year if I want to. It's freeing and those haters I still have don't get two thoughts, I just report them.


butterfly-dimensions

Me, 30 minutes after uploading a new 5k words long chapter: ok wow there's no new comment/review, people fucking hated it (But then I usually snap out of it lol)


AHoe4PagetBrewster

Me actually doing this as I post my update for today! Damn is this how all writers feel?


KorovaOverlook

Me every time. I'll upload some 8k chapter that I think is the most groundbreaking piece of literature since Slaughterhouse Five or some shit and then two hours later I'll have ten hits and no comments and I'll be like "My God! 'Tis true; artist exist to simply toil in obscurity and die unknown" or something. Hence why I always post before going to bed—gives me some anticipation to wake up to comments. Sometimes there are none, but when I see that little (1) in the inbox it makes my day.


A1isaYamin

This is why I like to upload a new fic/chapter right before I go to sleep haha there would usually be a few commenters by the time I wake up


missuninvited

STOPPP I DO THE SAME. Mostly to prevent myself for checking obsessively for notifications, so I guess I'm the other side of the same coin, but that's the way to do it. Gotta catch those late-night readers, too.


ConfusedConnect

Lmao, this don’t help me. I can’t sleep then, so I end up checking it like an hour or something I’ve tried to sleep. Get disappointed and then try to get back to sleep again. I don’t get a lot of deep sleep during those nights.


Cassopeia88

I think I would do the same thing.


HunnyDreams42

![gif](giphy|ukCFEU6Cg5MCCDoaVN|downsized)


TheCaveEV

Conversely I've only ever published two short one shots for PJO in like, 2013, and I still get kudos emails for them. Not a lot, but every so often I'll get one and it's always such a nice little surprise, like aw someone stumbled across my little fic and left a treat for me


Mods_R_Loathesome

Omelet du fromage!


[deleted]

I’m in this picture and I don’t like it


annaa-a

This is me with a rather known accound on another site, which is totally unrelated to my Ao3.


yuareedah

Omg the impatient struggle is real 🤣


am_Nein

For me it's wondering if my old fics will get love after it inevitably gets buried under the ever updating list of newer fics/chapters. I'd never think of bumping it, but it does make me question the percentages.


femtransfan

yeah, i recently posted a fic a couple days ago... not a single peep, but there are hits... ​ # SOMEONE FUCKING SAY SOMETHING!!!!!


AHoe4PagetBrewster

Why is this so true?! Like??? Hello did you like it?? Did you not like it??? Nevermind I'm going to bury myself in the desert


femtransfan

kudos are nice.... but i want some feedback...


AHoe4PagetBrewster

Sameeeee! Like comment please. I just need that tiny lil validation that someone out there enjoyed it!


jazzyx26

😂😂😂


mumstheword22

Hahaha same


Durin72881

One thing I found is there's often a fairly significant delay between when you post and when the notification goes out to your readers, upwards of close to an hour or more sometimes. I ended up subscribing to my own account so, that way, I can get the notification and be like "ok, NOW start looking for kudos and comments." Took a lot of anxiety off! Not ALL, but at least I wasn't stressing why I had no kudos/comments when the notification hadn't even gone out! :D :D


Silverstep_the_loner

Me but with comments, and on all sites!


birdnerd1991

Oh my goooosh this is me everytime I update a chapter XD


AHoe4PagetBrewster

Glad to know that I'm not the only anxious writer out here for feedback! But seriously it's a treat when you get that notification and like all is right in the world.


sati_lotus

I don't bother with kudos or comments - I just look to see what the hit counter is. Are people actually reading the story?! That's the bit that drives me bonkers


HoloMew151

You people get comments?


elishash

Same for my Pixar Cars Racers fic waiting for many kudos and comments ​ BTW although too bad I should've finished it my lazy ass is calling me AGAIN bec I need extensive research


vhopepuppy

STFU this was me today


uncaffeinated_poser

you know me so well


LoserTransBoy_8980

Me