#and idk why people would prefer other websites over ao3 when you know English

[brazilian-whalien52]

I saw the discussion about Brazil and yeah, every country will have different culture. I mean, I would say that in this case ao3 is more like Tumblr where people from different cultural background meet and interact with English as main language so anyone that does not know the language is kinda left out of this space. That's fair! You are not going to be looking into fanfics in places that 90% of the content is something you do not understand. Normally, people also know that ao3 isn't popular in their own country so they will publish it in ao3 and other websites.

Also the discussion over difference in the goal of fanfic in each website. In Brazil a lot of people use fanfic as a commercial way to attract fans and get attention, the market is really competitive and unfortunately consumers prefer US books over Brazilians one. You know when that is not the case? When they know an artist from fanfics. In fact, a lot of writers managed to attract audience by transforming their BTS fanfic into books. There are published companys made by fans build just to do that! Plus even if people enjoy writing for fun, Brazil is relatively a poor country, meaning that when you get the chance to make some extra moneys you will take it (literally every single hobby in Brazil is monetized nowadays, it's a terrible mentality that took everyone with social media).

That being said, I do think it's sad that fanfic culture in Brazil is focus on US fanfics sites like Wattpad. Wattpad mostly gain the market by being an app that made possible for people to read fanfic offline when they don't have Internet data (since this is expensive in brazil and most people did not have it). However, we used to have such great fanfic websites like nyah, that had a terrible search engine but an amazing project called "league of betas" where you could easily find someone to beta our fic, or fanfic obsession, that was years ahead of it's time because their system allowed interactive fanfics where you could choose the name of the main characters. Unfortunately, this websites were fan made and could not compete with big companies.

Twitter users’ distinct hatred for ao3 will never cease to amaze me. Like they’re missing out on so many amazing fics just because they… wish there was an algorithm? I don’t get it.

[five-wow]

Author Asks

Rules: answer these questions and tag five other fic writers to do the same.

I was tagged by the wonderful @novemberhush. Thank you, omg, because I love rambling about writing and this is the best kind of opportunity to do so, handed on a silver platter, ahh. 😊

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Author Name: Square / Squares / SquaresAreNotCircles

Fandoms You Write For: I’m a fandom hopper! In the past year or so it’s been Hawaii Five-0 (a truly ridiculous amount), Shadowhunters, Venom, Harry Potter, due South and Stargate Atlantis. Other fandoms I’ve written at least one fic for are Twilight, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Glee, BBC Merlin, BBC Atlantis, Teen Wolf, In The Flesh, Star Wars, Supernatural, the MCU and High School Musical. And uh, Alexander the Great/Voltaire fic (which would be... history fandom? RPF?) and one (1) Judas/Jesus Biblefic. If we’re getting really technical, also a tiny little bit of One Direction fic.

It should be noted that all of this is about fic that ended up getting posted somewhere on the interwebs - there are multiple Star Trek (TOS/AOS and DS9) fics lingering in my drafts (!! one day I will finish one of them), as well as some How To Train Your Dragon, The Good Place and Deadpool stuff, and definitely more I’ve forgotten.

Where You Post: Since I made the switch to writing in English everything has landed on ao3, but I used to write mostly in Dutch, so there’s still close to a million words, I think, under my name on quizlet.nl (not to be confused with quizlet.com, which is a very different website).

Most Popular One-Shot: That depends on how you’re measuring popularity! Going by kudos, it’s Tell me I’m perfect (but tell me the truth), a Magnus/Alec Shadowhunters fic. It’s the truth is a really old fic about Percy Weasley/Oliver Wood from Harry Potter that has the most hits out of all my works, and That time Steve kissed every single Avenger (and also Bucky), an MCU Steve/Bucky fic, has the greatest number of comment threads.

Also, since this is an h50 blog: for my fic in this fandom Wanted: partner (in crime) has the most kudos and hits; You had me at meow has the most comments.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: I’m working on one for h50 (going slowly, so slowly), but I don’t have any posted to ao3. I used to write a lot of multi-chaptered work in my quizlet.nl days, and I think my most popular fic there was probably the second fic I ever wrote, when I was fourteen or fifteen, which was a next-gen Harry Potter fic with shifting and overlapping POVs from the three Potter kids. It was kind of, well, not great, but it’s probably what really cemented my writing habit, it’s still my longest fic ever (over a 100k!) and I got my first fandom friends out of it, including one I’m still in contact with to this day, even though neither of us writes much if anything for Harry Potter anymore.

Favourite Story You Wrote: Ohhh, that’s such an impossible question, especially because I’ve been churning out one-shots like I might actually be getting paid for it, so there’s so much to choose from, which is a thing I have difficulty doing at the best of times, holy shit. Uh, I once wrote a 70k Remus/Sirius (Harry Potter) modern college-ish AU in Dutch that I still like; weirdly, I think that Biblefic holds up (also Dutch), and the HSM fic is fun to reread once in a while because of the fourth wall break, as is That escalated quickly, a Percy/Oliver fic. Ooh, and the fic about Shuri and Stucky and a goat!

For h50, it’s even harder to choose, because my preferences change pretty much weekly (a combination of newer fic being shinier, looking back at fic from even just a few months ago and finding things I would have done differently now, and comments influencing the way I personally look at my own fic), but right now, I’d say I still really like the fic where Steve adopts some guinea pigs, the one with the slightly tipsy team bonding by talking about mutual crushes and this 9.11 coda fix fluff getting together thing.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: That Biblefic, haha, because it’s a very complicated topic and my aim was definitely not to offend. People were really sweet about it, though! Mostly, they were kind of shocked it wasn’t crack, but that’s fair, because so was I.

Also pretty much anything I post in a new fandom, really, and low key just... anything at all. I’m always a little scared I tagged something super badly or accidentally copy-pasted the wrong text or unknowingly wrote something super offensive or whatever, despite my double- and triplechecking of the posting form. (I’m also still kind of scared people on ao3 will randomly decide they hate my fic and my writing and me personally (ao3 is really big and very anonymous and coming from the small town that was quizlet.nl even in its heyday, that’s scary), but that fear has abated as I’ve posted more, just because the data is showing pretty conclusively that thought is as irrational as it sounds. Everyone is always so nice, gosh.)

How Do You Pick Your Titles: Mostly, I steal lines from random songs. I have a small pile of song lyrics to use as potential titles, because going on a seperate hunt for every new fic would take most of my waking hours. Sometimes, I’ll use a pun (like You had me at meow or Retail Therapy) or something else that I think sounds good, especially if the fic is mostly comedy and/or has a specific premise that would do well in a title (like Five times the Governor of Hawaii suspects his taskforce leaders are violating fraternization policies (and one time they tell him they are)).

Do You Outline: I’m mostly writing fic of (sometimes much) less than 5k at the moment, so not really. I do sometimes write tiny bits of a bunch of scenes and then fill in the rest around that, which is a kind of outline, in a way. For longer works, I usually make a one page bullet point list of things that need to happen and work from there, because I can’t do really extensive outlining or I’ll just get caught up in the details and lose all of the oversight a tool like that is supposed to give you, as well as most of my enthusiasm for the project.

How Many Of Your Stories Are Complete: Of the ones posted? On ao3, all of them, because unfinished posted one-shot works would require some strange bending of those concepts. On quizlet.nl, I do have some abandoned works, but I think 80% is finished.

In-Progress: SO MUCH. Seriously, just, so much, oh god. I’d really like to write another Stargate Atlantis fic (and I have 30% of one done), and something more for due South, too, and maybe a small Percy/Oliver thing again some time because they were my very first OTP and I kind of miss them, but mostly I have, like, 100+ half written things for h50. I really wish that number was an exaggeration. There’s no way they’ll all get finished, but maybe... a third? Mayhaps?

That One Truly Long H50 Fic that I was already talking about way back in October last year is also eternally “in progress”. The thing is that it has about 25k now, after a year, and I think it needs... at least four times that. Probably. So either I’ll have to stick with this fandom and my slow progress for another three years to have a shot at getting it finished, or I’ll need to find a way to up the speed a little. Maybe I could try working on it for NaNo this November? That would be pretty awesome, but honestly, part of why it’s moving this slowly is because NaNo-style fast and messy writing for this scares me a little, because I might end up writing a lot, decide it’s not what I wanted for it, and become too intimidated to ever edit and/or rewrite the entire thing. But idk, I probably just need to get over my own fears, because I really do want to write Longer Fic again. Short stuff is fun and feels really productive and that’s great, but I miss the actual slow burn and build-up that only 50k+ words can give you.

Coming Soon: Hopefully a lot? For h50, that is. I have no idea what’s getting posted next, because I’m never entirely sure what’s going to be finished next and something really random might come jumping in, but at the moment I’m trying to direct most of my energies at a slightly longer fic I’ve been working on for months (not The Long Fic, a different one), a fic labeled “9.01 memory loss fic”, another one temporarly entitled “Perfect Kauai beach house vacation”, and maybe an ace!Steve fic I’ve been working on, if I ever manage to uh, actually finish that, instead of rewriting three sentences during every round of editing and never actually adding anything to fill in the gaps it still has. There will also be more season 10 codas, in all likelihood.

Do You Accept Prompts: I’ve never done that before in the traditional way, but I’m thinking about it! I’d love to try (and it would be a breath of fresh air, in some ways!), but the main thing holding me back is that I have way too much on my plate with just my own ideas to work off of, and I don’t want to disappoint people. Maybe if I do drabble-ish prompt fills? It’s definitely been on my mind.

Upcoming Story You’re the Most Excited For: I’m excited for a lot of stuff, but honestly, the top spot right now probably goes to the ace!Steve fic. I’m not even sure it’s that good, necessarily, but it’s, idk, really cathartic, I suppose. Seriously self-indulgent in strange but very good ways. I really like writing it. (Second spot goes to the beach vacation fic, because I haven’t actually written that much for it, but it’s been my go-to easy happy place for the last few weeks.)

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I’m tagging @love2hulksmash @thekristen999 @stephmcx @girlonastring @flowerfan2 and @pterawaters, which is six people because I can’t count, but I’m about to make it seven because I’m also tagging you, the person reading this (hi there!). Say I tagged you and tag me so I can read it! I know that kind of thing can feel awkward, but it won’t be, because I’m cheering you on. Go for it, if you want to do it. :D