Because you totally needed a stream-of-consciousness as I import fic.

[lirillith]

I got an AO3 account a while back, and I finally decided to tackle putting things on it.  Which is a lot more daunting than it probably ought to be. 

For a couple of reasons.  For one, I have to figure out what I can do with formatting.  I have to either find and reupload the original html files I put up at the Pit, or import things directly from the Pit.  If I choose the latter, I have to go through excising all the jury-rigged formatting I used in an attempt to get things looking right at the Pit of Voles.  I have to tag, and sort out what the rules are, and THERE'S NOT EVEN A LOCKE/TERRA TAG THERE RIGHT NOW.  Obviously I must remedy this forthwith, but will the tag even show right away?  

And then there's the fact that I don't even know if I want to upload all the stuff from the Pit.  A lot of it's old, and embarrassing.  I won't take it down from the Pit, because that feels like trying to erase history, but should I post it over again? 

I started importing Good Enough, because you can do an auto-import from the Pit, but... jury-rigged formatting, uuuuuugh.  I'm afraid to push any buttons lest stories go up before I'm done with the editing, and I was never totally sure about the ending; should I rewrite it?  Is that cheating?  I wrote that thing over the course of seven years, four homes, and three jobs, not to mention graduating college and entering grad school.  I've since married and gotten closer to sane than I'd ever been prior.  Would a new ending be yet further off from what I started writing?  If it was, would that be wrong?

Well, I hit upload, and now I'm scurrying through all twenty-two chapters trying to fix the chapter headings.

And now I'm compulsively attempting to divine the days I updated with each chapter, because I'm still not all that sane.  

And now, to commence worrying over other tags that aren't there yet; how do I mark a fic as being about Setzer's relationships with Daryl, Maria, and Celes?  Neither Daryl nor Maria has a last name; Daryl doesn't even have a consistent spelling for her first name!  Resolved!  "Maria (Final Fantasy VI)" is a tag, huzzah, and just plain Daryl seems to be in use in FF6 tags.

The current tags have name order as Celes/Setzer, and while I never thought of it this way, I do care about name order a tad.  To me, the first name means the partner who's... more interested, I guess?  It doesn't mean anything about who's the dominant partner or even who makes the first move; but if things are going to be unrequited, or slow to get requited, the person who's doing more pining or is more certain of their feelings is the one whose name should be first.  (Hence Homura/Madoka, not Madoka/Homura.  And if I were writing that ship I don't write, it'd be Celes/Locke.)  In "Flight," Setzer's got a thing for Celes but she doesn't return it.  omg the names are backwards.  Obviously this isn't a huge deal, but it feels off to me.  I did like that the Pit let you choose the order for the two primary characters, but AO3 lets you tag multiple relationships (and ships of more than two characters) so on balance, it's preferable.  Also it's not a pit of ravening voles. 

So my account, which will be acquiring more fics as time goes by, is lirillith , which I just announced because I wanted to see the neat little AO3 icon.  

Comments

[wallwalker]

*nod* I like AO3's layout and tagging system enough to keep using it - and I'm not terribly fond of the craziness that FF.Net keeps doing to my browser, even with Adblock. So I'm doing my best to be more active on AO3 and to comment/like people's stuff, whenever I have time.

Fair warning - new tags won't actually show up in the fliterable main list right away. A mod has to somehow confirm the tags - and I think that they have someone editing tags for FFVI? Not a hundred percent sure. (Likewise, if you want to tag a fic with "Setzer Gabbiani/Celes Chere," then once the mod finishes with it, it'll automatically associate with the other fics tagged with that relationship, and the tag will show up as Setzer/Celes even if you click on the Celes/Setzer link on the side of the page to search for it, if that makes sense? So what I'm saying is, feel free to tag it using Setzer/Celes if you would like.)

...I do wonder why it's entered that way. More "major" character first? Alphabetical order? Just the way the first person who used it happened to type it in?

For what it's worth you're not the only person to whom it matters (I actually pushed for the option to label a story as M/F instead of F/M, when it's applicable. Apparently it's more difficult than it sounds.)

[saharasnow]

I've uploaded a Locke/Terra fic on AO3, I'm surprised the tag doesn't appear? The tag was in their full names though.

[lirillith]

Hmm, the full-name Locke/Terra tag (I entered it that way too, since it seemed to be standard practice at AO3) appears for me now - I just concluded it wasn't there since it didn't auto-suggest. I may also have been uploading to the wrong section, since it seems FF6 has its own at AO3, but mine are in "Final Fantasy I-VI," ff.net style.

[lirillith]

I'd expected there was some moderation of tags, just based on my experience over at Minitokyo, and the various additional Setzer 'ships I added don't seem to have shown up yet. I really like the tagging system now that I've had some time to mess with it, though - my mis-classified FF6 fics were much easier to get into the right category than they would have been on FF.net, where I probably would have had to delete and reupload.

[quicksilver_ink]

Your tags should be showing up as descriptors on your 'fic, at least, right when you post. Unless you're running into my problem, which is that previewing things seems to erase all of my tag and rating settings.

[wallwalker]

Are there any particular ones that you think you'll want for your fics? (Besides, of course, the various permutations of Locke/Terra. And Setzer/Daryl, perhaps.) I could talk to someone, try to get them marked as common, so that people would see them on the sidebar.

[lirillith]

Setzer/Daryl was the big one that surprised me with its absence. Greater Locke/Terra visibility would be nice, but it's still a pretty rare pairing. I guess I might single-handedly change that once I start uploading ficlets. Tifa/Rude is already there, which is the other I needed to check on.

[quicksilver_ink]

Okay, I have to admit, now that you've spelled it out... using order to indicate degree of requitedness is something that makes sense and doesn't leave me going "what is this I don't even" the way uke-seme stuff does. And I do see people use "Onesided A/B" as a pairing descriptor on the Pit of Voles and sometimes on Eljay.

[lirillith]

I've also seen it used to indicate POV, like in this PMMM fic. (Okay, that's both POV and requitedness, really.)