Damn seems like an author called blackpensils deleted all their SM (remember them going by colourful pencils or something on some platforms) as well as their ao3 fics, i was subscribed to one fic & have a backup of the first 29 chapters as an epub but checking my emails seems like there was at least 53 chapters and possibly a series 😭
The fic title is The Consequences of Accidentally Creating Life with your Arch-Enemy & was megop seems to be part of a series as far as i can tell from the emails I have
I remember reading the first few chapters then adding it to my read later pile because of fanart i saw & lots of ppl discussing the fic on twt like @pricklyjim so sucks I'm probably not gonna be able to read the rest of it or enjoy the author's other work unless someone else has a more up to date backup 😔
I really can't understand why someone would delete their fics instead of orphaning them, i know authors in other fandoms who have deleted all their SM but just change their ao3's username or orphaned their fics
I need to figure out a way to automate making archives of fics I'm subscribed to because there's simply too many emails in my deleted fics folder 😭
I am absolutely delighted to announce that the wonderful @vash-in-the-void has done the impossible and formatted Becoming Eden [it's me I'm trees] for PDF! I am forever in your debt!!
What these pdf documents are for?
1. Your personal downloading and archiving desires!
As you may be aware the ao3 download for the fic is mostly illegible due to the amount of formatting involved. I intend to keep this document archived on google drive for as long as that is possible. The pdf marked with an e is best suited for ereaders and computer reading, it has links intact.
2. For your personal printing and archiving desires!
The pdfs marked with a P are for printing and you have my full permission and blessing to bind this fic if you so choose. Please remember that selling bound fic is a copyright no no under the law, both against me and the parent IP. Gifts and trades are always okay tho!
Accessibility note:
I do not believe that this pdf is screen reader friendly, however please catch @neosatsuma 's terrific pod fic for all your audiobook needs!
This pdf version also includes some of my sketches as well as amazing art by: @maz737 @bumblingdragon @frogenthusiasttsist @ghostiezone @snakegentleman @neosatsuma @needle-noggins @vash-in-the-voidoid THANK YOU SO MUCH <3
There is further Becoming Eden fic art not included here as I did not want to give too many spoilers for the whole damn forest...
Special thanks to @valorsometimes who made the HTML of this story possible at all, thank you for enabling me!
If you're seeing 525 errors while trying to download fics off of Ao3 using Fanficfare + Calibre, I suggest turning on using the browser and browser cache only options for ao3 in the personal.ini - commenting out your login and password at the same time since the browser should be logged in already and it can potentially cause conflicts that prevent fic download or meta-data updates.
It'll take over your browser to download but should have fewer failures than having it run headless. It does mean that if something gets borked in the cache that you may need to clear your cache for Ao3 or potentially go as far as restarting your computer. Though usually one fic being held hostage by bad cache data won't affect other fics so you could also make a list of 'revisit these later' urls for after a reboot.
It is a bit of a nuclear option to have it take over your browser (admittedly if this were ffnet I was talking about it'd be the only way to be sure), but usually Ao3 settles down pretty quick when cloudflare gets cranky so hopefully this is a temporary work around or something I'll find a better option for later.
Hey, if you follow for fic and also use or are thinking about using Dreamwidth—
I'm gradually backing up my fic and fixing typos on a Dreamwidth community (moirharad.dreamwidth.org—you can subscribe but not join, and in any case, there's only one fic up currently, but it's where you'll be able to find them). I made it to function entirely as a fic archive. I've meant to back up my fic for awhile, but it seemed a good time to have it posted somewhere other than AO3, and specifically more reliable/less corporate than Tumblr. I also wanted to be able to f-lock specific fics should I so desire, which DW can do.
Also, it's nice to have some pre-established structure, but with the freedom to choose my own format and tagging system, with the bonus that they won't go into some common site tag. And communities allow for multiple people to post fic to it, should I ever want to do that. And I can use all the icons and perks of my personal account. So if you use/at least know Dreamwidth, I'd recommend doing something similar unless you'd rather build your own site or something like that.
Creating a community is very simple, btw; go to the main dreamwidth.org page and drag your mouse over "Create." The last option is "Create Community."
Some more details:
Once you have a community, you can run your mouse over "Organize" and select "Settings" under your community. Click on the "Privacy" tab. This lets you choose things like if you want to enable comments, only logged-in comments, if you want them to go into a moderation queue, log the IP address, ban specific users from commenting, be indexed by search engines, etc. I chose to put anonymous comments into a queue while allowing all logged-in Dreamwidth accounts to comment should they wish, and to not log IP addresses.
When it comes to choosing the aesthetic of the archive, some styles are pretty dire, but here are some that I like:
Dark Blue by ninetydegrees—the one on my personal blog and the fic community; I've used it forever and find it very soothing.
Simplicity by timeismymeasure—nice and clean.
Too Much Wine by ninetydegrees—mostly for the convenient sidebar.
Atlantic by ninetydegrees—similar design, but more "writerly" in some ways, if you want that vibe.
Prose by timeismymeasure for Five AM—pleasant and elegant. I almost used it, but wanted more contrast.
Právda by rising for Five AM—similar design IIRC, but more vivid. I considered it for Pride month (the coloring looks kind of rainbow-y), but the orange was just a bit much. Fun if you go for that, though.
Pigeon Blue by dancing_serpent for Blanket—I prefer dark text on a light background, but I liked the look of this for the reverse.
Marble IV by dancing_serpent—same issue with the light text/dark background, but I like the design.
Neutral Good by timeasmymeasure for Practicality—another no-frills but pleasant one.
If you have an account and want to post to a community you've made, it's also pretty straightforward. Just go to "Post" from either the Dreamwidth main page or your logged-in header from most anywhere on Dreamwidth. It's the second link under your username.
From the "Post" page, you should see a drop-down list that contains your main blog and all communities you're a member of. You just click on the fic archive community you made and that means your post will go to the community instead of your main blog.
My standard format for fic posts, incidentally, lists the title, the verse (if it's in a series or shared continuity), the story's length, major warnings, the characters, the relationships, a chapter or fic summary, links to previous chapters/sections if any, and a link to any podfic. e.g.:
This is overly detailed for some, and that's fine! But I like to be upfront.
Anyway, if you're thinking of using Dreamwidth to back up fic, I hope that helps!
so does anyone with more experience with the wayback machine and crawler blockers know how to get around FFN's block on backing up ANYTHING to the web archive? because i've been trying to save my faves but only just realized FFN has been blocking it all along (on both the desktop AND the mobile versions of the FFN website) and none of the fics I wasn't worried about anymore are actually saved and now i'm filled with rage.
which means that I, a programmer, am now incensed and willing to code something to back up the entire fucking site - which I was planning on doing at some point, but this really moved it up the priority list since there are no other viable backups for it - and if anyone has a starting point for getting around that little piece of shittiness, I'd appreciate it.
Attn. Past, Present, and Future Doctor/Rose Authors
With all the uncertainty about Tumblr changes going on, we would like to put out a word encouraging everyone to to post your fics that currently only exist on Tumblr to AO3. We know there are many great fics: askbox, drabbles, ficlets, submissions, and multichapters out there in blog archives that we would love to read and rec!
(Without getting into the technical weeds, we had already started avoiding adding Tumblr fics to our lists because Tumblr’s frequent code changes and link-breakage cause trouble for our database.)
If you prefer Teaspoon, that’s great too! And if you don’t have an AO3 account and need an invitation, please let us know and we should be able to hook you up with one! (We can also help with posting questions.)
Every bit of fandom history is important and we look forward to continuing to share it! To be clear, this blog is not going anywhere, but platforms may change while our fandom marches on, so we’d love to have all our stories in a safe and accessible place. (And please feel free to shoot us an ask to let us know if you do post older fics.)
Thank you, fandom!
PS. We’d appreciate signal-boosting so this message can get out to people no longer active in DW
I don't know if you know about it or not but Calibre's FanFicFare plugin has a "Get Story URLs from Webpage" option that I use all the time. That option also has a "For Anthology Epub" that will collect all the stories from your specified URL and I use that to keep all of an author's stories in a series collected together in order. Calibre really is the gift that keeps on giving.
i did know about that! i use it a lot with smaller ships/fandoms where i only need to pull links for a handful of pages - it's very convenient. a reason i enjoy the ao3downloader alongside fanficfare is for when i want to collect sometimes dozens of pages of fic (look, sometimes it's easier to just download a whole ship tag than remember to note the good ones) and i end up not having to feed each page's url into fanficfare. but you're right - calibre is the hero we need but don't deserve
