(back to ao3-ing)

some thoughts on an ideal fanfiction archive

originally dreamt up on 1 may 2022.

now, i like ao3 as much as the next fan, what with its immaculate tagging and filtering system and all. however, the website isn't perfect: i've had experiences on other fanfiction archives (that aren't ffn!!!!) that do some things better than ao3, and there are just some nuisances that keep hassling me as a long-term regular user of the site. so, a while back i dreamt up this list!!

my ideal fanfiction archive… not all of these are feasible for ao3 to implement, esp at its current size, but hot damn do i think it would be soooooo nice to have them.

tagging system

overall, it would probably be very similar to ao3 (like, who can say no to the tagging system, assuming there are enough wranglers to serve its needs?), but i think these would make for some nice quality of life changes!

• POV indicator as a non-mandatory (but highly encouraged!!) metadata category
• [1st, 2nd, 3rd (and its variants), chatlog, other]
• the "other" would cover forms of storytelling i can't think of / foresee
• maybe also make "reader-insert" into its own pov thing, but idk
• story tense as another optional metadata category
• improve ao3's relationships category through the following:
• adding "x reader", "x nb character", and probably accommodate for queerplatonic relationships with its own particular symbol
• separate "poly" from "multi" (as in "multiple separate types / categories of relevant relationships") so that the "other" category can more clearly specify, like, tentacles and monsterfucking kind of "other", as the founders had apparently indended it.
• a couple options for solving the major/minor pairing issues:
1. add "major", "side", "minor / background" as separate sub-categories (with explanations / examples of the different classifications in correct use). OR
2. make it so that you can mark a tag as able to be filtered out, but unable to be picked up when filtered in as a compromise btwn the people who want to tag even the most minor mentions of fucked up things for the people who might be sensitive to those things; and to appease the people looking to read stories featuring the fucked-up things.
• add "on hiatus" and "cancelled" status categories like on fimfiction.net.
• categorize the freeform tags a bit more?
• [genre (ex. romance, adventure, hurt/comfort, angst, fluff, etc.), tropes, character / world traits (naming / describing the specific au or character's job or whatever), minor warnings, and misc freeform (like author thoughts kind of thing).]
• still let authors type them up however they wish and have them wrangled for searchability, but this would just give them more guidance or prompting for tags, if necessary.
• ability to tag collections with, like, collection tags, so that people can search for particular collections
• i know that some ships, esp. m/f and f/f ships, sometimes rely on collections for fics about their particular ship to be searchable. however, since these collections require active maintenance by users, it can sometimes fall out of use bc the main maintainer moves on, and the collection itself relied on word-of-mouth for people to post into it in the first place. making collections tag-sortable would help mitigate this problem, although there's no way to know if people would also just mistag collections.
• i also want the ability to "see more tags" on the filter dropdown bc sometimes the thing i want to filter out is just out of the top ten range and i'm tire of having to type it in to filter out!!
• also sometimes i'm just curious can you blame me

like on fimfiction.net!

it already happened once in the previous section, and i was just gonna have this one be the "site functionality / layout" section, but then there were so many "(like on fimfiction.net)" asides that i made it its own section here.

this is because the bronies know how to code a damn fanfiction archive okay like. you guys should seriously check the site out; it's pretty much the last active specialty fic archive online these days. i love you mlp fandom.

• have a little scrolly bar at the top of fic text to show reading progress
• put chapter word counts underneath the chapter titles n stuff (currently possible on ao3 with a userscript, but i'd like to have it as native functionality.)
• give authors a space for fic announcements / blog-like updates about their works that are still separate from their works so that they don't end up as like, false updates
• in this kind of situation, i think it'd also be neat if they were able to like, pick a work that some update pertained to so that people subscribing to a fic could also choose to receive non-fic updates related to that work, if that makes sense
• have that little checkmark box next to chapter displays / dropdowns so that people can mark if they've read a chapter before or not
• bookshelves for one's bookmarks!!
• like i know that ao3 has bookmark tags and bookmark collections and stuff, but bookshelves just feels more intuitive here!!

• (view larger version)
• and you can, like, make your own shelves aside from the ones you're given by default (faves, read later, and tracking), and you can like.

• you can't see it in this screenshot, but you can also sort the "tracking" shelf by "view unread chapters" too
• if i were able to not only tag up my bookmarks but also sort n track my ao3 bookmarks like this that would fix me.
• the ability to natively spoiler-mark text would be really nice too
• this is also neither here nor there, but in getting screenshots for this page, i poked through the fimfiction.net user settings and learned that they have a shimeji that you can just. turn on. that's kind of fun

site functionality / layout

all right, so we have covered all the things i miss about what i sometimes affectionately call "the cradle of my fandom life", so now it's time to return to things i'd like out of a fanfiction archive that aren't so much influenced by fimfiction dot net!

• building on the bookmarks/bookshelves thing, it'd be nice if bookmarker's tags could also have categories for relationships, characters, n freeform. for more filter controls again qwq
• again continuing to build on the fimfiction.net bookshelves thing, it'd be really nice for this hypothetical ideal archive to also have like, a following/tracked page for works that you're following, sorted in the order of last updated
• it'd also be super cool if one could sort n filter it the way one can sort n filter works or bookmarks too
• built-in floaty review box :<
• anonymizing works n stuff is good, but i'd also like it if it could be a box a person can tick on their works w/o necessarily putting it in a collection for that sort of thing.
• ability for authors to send out a notice to anyone subscribed/bookmarked that they will be deleting a fic in x amt of time, if they'd like to warn people
• a sector of the site should be set aside for "looking for this fic" type posts that people can then tag n sort n filter for, so that they don't clog up search results n stuff.
• this is more of an html/css issue, but if for Whatever reason i am reading a chatfic, i want the ability to hover over / click on a username to see who the fuck that's meant to be
• ability for authors to pin comments!!
• speaking of comments, fics should also have the number of comment threads listed on them, rather than just the raw number of comments
• and finally, i want this hypothetical ideal archive to allow people to subscribe to collections (goes hand-in-hand w/earlier mention of some ships maintaining collections for works featuring them)
• (this last bullet was also Blaze's idea lol)

(back to ao3-ing)