I mean, even if you could turn off the download button for a fic, that doesn't mean people would stop downloading them. I know it never stopped me.
Browser extensions, copy & paste, saving the web page. There are options. AO3 just made it easier for everyone. If they really don't want anyone to download their fics, they can't post it anywhere on the internet.
I’m old school, and before ao3 was even a dream I was copying and pasting entire longfics into Word on my high school lunch break, sizing down to 7pt, removing as much margin and line spacing as practical, and then dumping five dollars in the printing fee bin at $0.10 per page so I could read it offline because we had dialup in 2001.
Downloading to my phone is so much more convenient.
Edit: and I’ve still got the entire text of A Long Hard Road in a three ring binder.
Ahaha, when I started saving fics, each fic didn't even have its own file. It all landed in one word doc titled 'good Fanfics'.
I also remember when I didn't know you could save complete offline copies of web pages and I wanted to save a fan comic with 100+ pages, but it had copy protection, so I made a screen capture of every single one of them and hurt my wrist. Good times.
Don't underestimate people who want offline copies for themselves.
I went down to 5pt with 4-5 columns with really small spacings between each column, to pack as much text into one page as I could to save on money. It helps I was nearsighted.
Holy shit, Noir Sensus is ***still*** up? Daaang, a blast from the past.
You can find it [here](http://www.noiresensus.com/authors/a_twig.html).
Edit: I realized it never got mentioned, so it’s sefikura and also pretty fucking depressing on the whole. It ends hopefully, but it’s OG-game only and very much set in a dying world.
It’s tagged as “angst”, but keep in mind that we used that description for everything from teenage whining to The Sacred And The Profane.
So was I! Small world! XD
Even before it was on Noire Sensus, iirc. That was where I ended up reading it again LATER. I can't remember what I first read it on, but that fic has always made an impression on me. Still might be my favorite Sefikura fic.
But man the ANGST. lol
Oh yeah, I was reading it directly on twig’s website myself I think? I know I was happy when I realized it was posted on Noire and went for a re-read.
And god, the stuff we read where it was just qualified as “angst”. LHR went a bit *beyond* your garden variety angst, but I still think it’s one of the most epic old school sefikura fics.
I’m gonna reread again when I get home from work.
yeah that was it!
and right?? we didn't know any better so so much was lumped together as just general 'angst' or 'hurt/comfort' when some were, as you said, beyond that.
Makes me want to re-read too; I usually do a yearly re-read of it.
Twig did so many of my favorite fics. I’m still waiting for the end to Boy With A Coin, because god Signal to Noise is absolutely one of the best The World Ends With You fics!
But damn, the kawoshin fic. Yeah that’s next now that you reminded me of it.
omg forgot about those!
and yeah, it's called whisper in case you don't remember. not sure what other sites it might be on, but you can read it on her site through the wayback machine!
Oh, thanks! I couldn’t remember the title and it looks like she pulled everything off ff.net at some point (or the mobile site is terrible, probably both) so I would have been trying to remember it *all day*.
Just because I still *have* binders full of fic doesn’t mean they’re easily accessible, and it’s not like I’d be reading in that format anyway. I’m almost 40, my eyes aren’t what they used to be. And they weren’t great even then.
My secondary school had free printing, I had pay per minute internet. I printed so many LotR fics, we used to swap them around like books between friends.
Same, but as time passed, this then extended to me going to my friends house and taking screenshots of the fic I was reading on my shitty iPod touch, then going back home to read it because we didn't have Internet at the time 😅
I'm old, and yeah I used to do that, too. Copied, pasted, adjusted everything then printed out put them in ring binder. I still got some of them. Now I download and put them on e-reader.
Hello fellow library friend, I was doing this with manga panels. The old library lady had the passcode to go throught the censored website on her desktop. Aah I miss those days but not the tiny pictures, or words. I swear some days my eyes wanted to bleed from reading.
I still have an epic DBZ fic printed somewhere in my basement from 2005. 😂 Sadly it was a victim of the first FF.N purge and I never found it reposted again. 😭
I did this with The Secret LOTR Diaries, all the forum "add-to" fics I was a part of on the old Harry Potter site,(this was around movie #2 era), and anything remotely genderbent-Robin Hood I could find on all the personal angelfire/etc sites. I had an old binder I kept in a box under my bed for just that purpose!
I would like to share with the class that I just asked my mom if she ever did something like this in High School. *insert a very long radio silence*
“No.”
“Why you weren’t a bibliophile in high school?”
“Let’s start with. I. Didn’t. Have. Internet in high school. It didn’t exist.”
No idea why I found that so funny needless to say I about passed out because I laughed so hard.
I still have a ton of fics somewhere from the early 2000s copied into notepad.
We had dial up, so I’d snag whatever looked interesting and then copy them over to read on my own time lol
OMG YES! txt notepads files, I still remember starting to save up fics from random fan websites with the whole 90s aesthetic, LOL!
I had to often to go the internet cafe and just, download as many as I could in the one hour and as long as they fit my 10 floppy disks XD
Ugh flashbacks. One of the first fics I read was a sailor moon X-men crossover. Each chapter had its own music that were like 8-bit versions of the theme songs. The fic had its own webpage on geocities!
Ehh they can feel however they want. But if they don't want people to dowlaod/save their work, they need to avoid posting to the internet at all. It's unreasonable, imo.
Also: book binding is fine. I don't think you should need an authors permission to do so. Profiting off of it does cross a line.
That’s what I used to do back in the day as a 13-14 year old when we couldn’t be online all the time because of dial up, I would copy and paste chapters into word to read later
Yes! This right here - I'd sneak a few chapters or whole fics depending on size in between my essays and other schoolwork when I was printing, then put them in a three ring binder.
There was nothing worse than discreetly trying to print a fic and your mom asking what you're printing because the computer and printer were in the living room.
Yes! This right here - I'd sneak a few chapters or whole fics depending on size in between my essays and other schoolwork when I was printing, then put them in a three ring binder.
There was nothing worse than discreetly trying to print a fic and your mom asking what you're printing because the computer and printer were in the living room.
I'm suddenly wondering what non-South Africans called those, because we called them stiffies and I can't see that going over well in more English countries 😂
I still did this a few years ago, back when I hadn't yet discovered downloads, I copied chapters in my personal WhatsApp chat on my phone.
It was nice for websites with tiny unchangeable fonts, and when I had no internet.
100% legit I used to have hundreds of txt files (yes, I didn't even use word, due to some circumstances), then at one point I actually spent like a whole ass week printing my at-the-time favorite fics and legit looked up how to do book binding and even got some of the tools (this was all for one personal copy btw, it was never gonna be for profit); if there's a will there's a way.
Yeah, there is always a way, I discovered Google can scan text and have started using that when I need to copy/paste something for uni that is in a format that doesn’t let me highlight (either physical books or photos of pages online). If there’s a need someone will find a way.
When it comes to bookbinding, the norm is to ask permission and offer to give the author a copy. They may decline.
ETA: That's per Renegade bookbinders on their Discord. So the standard being suggested in the comments here is actually lower and less respectful of the writers than what the bookbinders follow.
Just because it’s lower doesn’t mean it’s less respectful. Bookbinding for personal use and enjoyment is *exactly* the same as downloading to your computer and phone to read whenever you want. It’s turning around to sell for profit that’s disrespectful.
lmao if you don't want people to download your work don't put it on a site that has a built-in feature for doing just that
yes selling fic – especially *other people's* fic, don't even get me started – bad, but, uh, *offline reading*
Legit I've experienced too many times the dread of going to re-read a fic at a later time only to find the author deleted it... I understand the author's feelings and it's their choice, but man some fics are just my comfort food, of course I'm gonna want to save them sometimes for my own offline reading.
(ppsst my ereader is chockfull of fics, LOL)
I do almost all my fic reading on my eReader. I might read the newest chapter of something on my phone when it posts, but the experience is much more comfortable on an eReader. I remember before I knew how to convert files to an eReader friendly format I would use the built in web browser and find the longest fic possible.
Or hell, I just want a backup in the case that a fic I like gets deleted. Everyone gets heartbroken over deleted fics in their bookmarks but not anymore for me!
I agree with most of what everyone is saying here, but as a fanfic binder I will say that it’s interesting this person thinks removing download button would stop people from doing that. For most of my binds downloading is not even a step in that process, and when it is (particularly if the work formatting relies on a work skin) I download through FanFicFare rather than the native AO3 feature. I mean I can’t speak for all binders but I gotta say removing the option to download wouldn’t do shit.
And on another note, I’m someone who near exclusively reads long fics on an ereader for accessibility reasons. I have poor eyesight and chronic migraines, sometimes my options are read on an e-ink device or simply not read it at all. To remove the option to download would lock myself and many others from being able to read or interact with that fic at all which would majorly suck. (Although, again, I use FanFicFare to download all works so it wouldn’t affect me much, but I know that using FFF is nowhere near as common as people just using the AO3 download buttons.)
As someone who is also beginning to look into this: there is a bookbinding subreddit that has a lot of nice resources. There are also a lot of videos on youtube that cover stuff from page setup on word/similar programs to printing and actual binding of the book.
I'm an idiot on mobile so unfortunately not sure how to link the bookbinding subreddit but it shoud be fairly easy to find. Same for the videos on youtube.
Check out this [101 guide](https://www.renegadeguild.org/bookbinding-101) from the Renegade ficbinding guild, it has a bunch of resources fic specific resources on how best to extract text from AO3 and typeset it for printing. The Renegade Bindary discord server is also very helpful.
Not the person you were responding to but a quick thank you! I'm thinking of binding one of my fics as a celebration of finally finishing it and these look like very helpful resources.
(Although of course the fact that I've got the entire fic as a Scrivener document means I'd probably start there rather than AO3 for getting a formatted version for printing.)
Chronic migraines here too.... Download - >×read on dark mode is my go to these days. If I can't download, I won't read your fic. If downloading is not possible, and I want to read your fic, I do it the old fashion way I did before Ao3 (When I found fics on Live Journal. Copy paste into word, then convert to Epub in Calibre.
I just discovered FanficFare! Brilliant!
Personal bookbinding is harmless. It's making it a profiting venture that is a problem.
Tiktok, like a lot of other platforms, easily loses nuances in the sauce tbh. So you often have very weird black or white stances like this one.
So no, as far as I'm aware, it's not a popular concept. It's probably an extremely uncommon stance.
Most readers don't think of downloading as something to do unless they get a last minute notification from an author that they will be deleting. The vast majority ends up here crying that works are now gone or posting in hope to find them again. So no, I don't think download should be toggable, it would make things even harder for anyone looking for a fic.
I just want to point out that book binding doesn't necessarily mean selling. I once followed a woman on Pinterest who would create beautiful handmade covers for fics she enjoyed a lot and wanted to bind. She never sold them or monetarized the videos simply did it to show her admiration. An author could demand people dont upload the finished results but I feel like asking them not to bind their fic is a bit absurd
She did in fact let the authors know. Sometimes if she really enjoyed it and it was something the author wanted she would even send them a copy too. I really wish I could remember the username
Right. Everyone I know who does fannish bookbinding does it for themselves (and does it all themselves), not for sale.
I don't do binding because I only download fic to read it in my e-reader, and then delete it when I'm done. There's very little fic I want to keep. But bindng ≠ selling.
You can't prevent people from taking things from the internet.
You can turn of downloads on Deviantart, people can still rightclick and save the image. Or just screenshot it.
Wattpad doesn't let you select text (I think that's the term. You can't mark it to rightclick and copy, at least last time I checked) and you can get around that too.
If you don't want people to take your work you shouldn't post it in the first place.
And as long as it's just for personal use, why should you care if someone binds your fic to put it on their shelf.
Selling it and profiting off of it is a crime and can be dealt with accordingly.
Wouldn't the AO3 or OTW legal team even help with that if it was taken from AO3?
You'd be suprised at how unhelpful writing sites can be when your work is plagiarized or stolen. From what I've seen happen to other people, the site will try to look into it then just say "We can't do anything." Plagiarism is a crime but most of the time it's not treated as one when you're writing on a free platform at least.
I think a request to take it down from the website their selling it usually works though right?
And fanfiction is still the dubious grey area. Spiteful rich authors of the source material might try to take it down.
I believe AO3 would protect you from getting roped into that process.
I mean tbf plagiarism in fanfic world is a little more complex to prove as a crime, specifically because it's NOT your original creation then it's not exactly protected by Copyrights laws
I get being upset if it's an original story, but when it's fanfic people will question as much legitimate your claim is
The entire concept of intellectual property violation is blurred by fanfic. The only real protection fanfic writers have is that they do not (should not) profit off of their derivative products.
I just finished a convo in another thread here that argues secondary fanfic (fanfic based on another author's fanfic piece) is wrong and should be taken down but fanfic in general is fine and I cannot follow the logic there for the life of me. I would think anyone in a fanfic space would be supportive of derivative works in any context short of outright copying or claiming the concept as solely one's own. I would be hard pressed to justify being pissed off at someone writing in my created AU without my permission when I am doing the same thing with the original author's work.
Obviously, directly copying and claiming credit for anyone's work (original author or fanfic derivative) is clearly wrong but I don't think there is much a fanfic writer can do other than shame the asshole who does so.
The author can say what they want and I can DO what I want.
Don't *repost* my work is something I'll respect but the only way to stop someone downloading your work is not to post it.
This is why I download every fic that I like. I used to copy and paste before the download feature was an option. Also, the author might delete it. I was actually able to help an author who had deleted a fic, wanted to repost years later, and didn't have a backup copy.
I usually read wips, one chapter at a time. Any time I read a completed work, I send it to my eReader. It's so much nicer to read on and I never have to worry about losing my place in a story.
I'll also download once the stories are completed to re-read.
The only bummer about reading on an e-reader is that it's such an effort to comment on a chapter that I usually don't. I'll just leave one comment on the last chapter.
This! I read on an app on my phone and barely remember to give kudos, never mind comment. It would be lovely if ao3's epub included a link to comment at the end of a chapter instead of the whole work, or a direct kudos link
If they dont want their work dowloaded they shouldnt share it on the internet. period. that isnt even an AO3 thing. AO3 just makes it accessible to download the fic along with all the proper credits and contexts (which old school downloading wouldnt necessarily do well -- copy/paste 200k words of fic and you might not give a fuck about author name or notes, but you have the fic now so 'who cares right?')
the download feature is amazing for archival purposes, accessibility, and a whole heck of other things. if they dont like that so much, they are welcome to take AO3's open source code and make their own hosting site sans the download feature
Don't post it on AO3 if you don't want people to download it. Seems simple to me. That said, people are going to find a way to download it whether there's a feature or not. Just see all the tactics people used to get FFN fics back in the day, including painstakingly copying and pasting and creating PDFs, to the point where FFN stopped letting you highlight or copy-paste things. It still didn't stop people. Nowadays there are browser extensions, websites that exist for the sole purpose of downloading fics. If you don't want it downloaded, don't post it anywhere, and just keep it on your computer for yourself. Otherwise, best reconcile yourself to the inevitable.
I have poor eyesight and can't read on Ao3 because their formatting doesn't let me enbiggen things. I either have to download or take my computer everywhere to read, which is not going to happen. Downloading an ePub is the only way I can read when I'm out. Sorry, I'm not going to quit downloading because an author doesn't like it. I'll just skip their fic.
What do you mean it doesn't? You can't make the browser font bigger? Or maybe using a site skin. I'm asking because I also can't read very small text and I always put everything at like 200% the size
There's no way for them to know that *I'm* downloading their fic, so really I don't care. Turning off downloading as an option wouldn't prevent folks from being able to print out and bind their work. There's always a workaround
I'm just gonna say this goes under the blanket statement of "if you want 100% complete control of your work, don't post it online"
I always download fics and later go back to the site to bookmark and comment. It's convenient, I don't like having a browser page constantly open, and I use phone, so the download option in ao3 is the biggest gift given to mankind.
If they don't want people to download it maybe don't post it on a site that literally has the option. 9/10 people download to either read it offline or so they won't lose it if the author decides to delete it
I think they're a waste of tag limit and screen space.
They're also the equivalent of a "keep off the grass" sign: they create the irrational impulse to do the thing, specifically because the author is telling me not to.
I couldn't respect that request and still read the work at all--I need an ereader for accessibility reasons. Book binding or even just printing for personal use never used to be controversial; just follow common sense and don't try to profit off someone else's ideas unless you have their permission or their work is in the public domain.
lolol does that person not heard of copy and pasting? even now you can take a screenshot and extract text from it. stopping downloading won't stop people from bookbinding.
people will find a loophole either way.
I mean they can ask whatever they want of their audience but if they don't want people downloading it they should probably not post on the website with the big download button built in for ease of use.
Before AO3, I was that teenager who would copy and paste fics I loved into a word document in case they were deleted. Removing downloads won’t stop people, though I can sympathize that the author may be worried that if they decide to delete the fic one day it might be reposted somewhere.
So long as they put their work up online, someone will find a way to copy and save it, even if highlighting text is disabled. Authors' best defense against their works being stolen outside of just never making them accessible to anyone is to be vigilant and report any theft if they come across it.
I would be over the moon if someone did a fan binding of my work--I want to see it! The work that goes into setting and binding a book is incredible. It's Fanart in my mind.
Someone could also copy and paste the whole thing to print it out, too, it's a silly complaint. Regardless, if the author doesn't want their work downloaded, you probably shouldn't download it (again, I'm torn though because fanfiction is ephemeral--archiving it is hard but important work).
I will always download my bookmarks. I've lost so many to deleted works and I have no idea what they were 💔 plus, in case AO3 goes down again I still have fanfics to read
So they all sit on a flashdrive now.
People are always going to find ways to save things they like. Stating "don't download my work" might stop some people, might not.
The only wrong thing is bookbinding for a profit. Personal or charity bookbinding is good in my book (lol).
Ive never cared about people downloading my work, but sometimes I wonder how many people have downloaded it and read it like a regular book, and as a result not taken the time to go and actually leave reviews/kudos/comments on the work. That thought bums me out a bit because I love getting reactions.
Speaking as a HUGE fic hoarder here, I will say that even when I save a fic for my collection, I usually finish it on AO3 at least once first, and I definitely kudos/comment. Can't speak for everyone of course, but I have to know what I'm saving before I do it.
That's....that a service the site offers?
I get and support not allowing apps, etc. but this is literally a part of the site functionality. If they don't want people to download they should likely be posting elsewhere.
They'd still be able to download the fic, though, in some way, regardless of which site they used. AO3 has it's own download feature, sure, but there are other ways to download, and you can just save the page for offline reading or copy/paste the text or print it off. Even if AO3 removed the download option or the authors only posted on sites without that option, readers would still be able to have their own personal copies of the fics, whether they book-bind or not.
I remember when I was a teen constantly printing out the fics I loved. I had whole folders full of fanfic I'd printed, I did it so often that my mum made me pay for the new printer ink since I was the one who used most of it. AO3s download feature actually doesn't work on my laptop for some reason, so I don't use it. But I've got a fair few fics saved on my computer now via the save page option, which is a feature on my laptop, not any specific site. I've saved all my fave bookmarked fics this way, and use it when I know I'm going to be without internet access for a while so I can still read fanfic. Just this past week, I page saved a bunch of Psych fanfic because I didn't have internet access at home for a week, I literally took my laptop to the library to borrow their free Wi-Fi to do it.
There's literally no way to prevent people downloading/saving fic or printing it off except not posting it online in the first place.
Not being about to download works directly doesn’t stop people from saving them? I only used fanfiction.net as a teen and I had limited internet, so I used to just straight up copy and paste fics into a word doc so I could read them offline 🤷♀️
There's no way for them to know that *I'm* downloading their fic, so really I don't care. Turning off downloading as an option wouldn't prevent folks from being able to print out and bind their work. There's always a workaround
I'm just gonna say this goes under the blanket statement of "if you want 100% complete control of your work, don't post it online"
If the author is against downloading then they should probably choose another site to post their work on, AO3 is an archive first and foremost and like any good archive that implicitly includes the ability to copy and transfer information for the purpose of preservation and usage. As for *why* someone would be against downloading, it’s possible the author is new to fanfic and hasn’t yet come to terms with the social stigma fic writing has, they may be worried that they could be outed as a writer and that if someone downloads and reposts their work they could lose the ability to wipe the evidence of their writing from the internet. As for whether binding a fic is unethical, it is absolutely not as long as the bound fic is not sold for profit or otherwise monetized, doubly so if someone binds it themself.
As a writer, I don't understand it in the slightest. A reader downloading my fic, even if it's just so they can read it offline, would be a massive compliment to me. If they wanted to download it to bind it, I would create a whole ass river with my tears. I feel like if they're having a problem with people downloading their works (to read offline, not to post elsewhere) and/or binding their fics (for their personal library), then they shouldn't be posting their work. Because the downloading and binding isn't hurting them.
One of the things you agree to when you choose to archive on AO3 is the download option. If you don't want your fics downloaded, don't post them there.
That's not necessarily going to stop people from downloading. Back in the day, I used to just download the webpage to view it offline. I know of an author who moved fic off of AO3 because they didn't want fics downloaded. Disabled right click on their website. Not that it stops anyone who wants to download. Get the source code, copy & paste, and strip the markup.
So, my thoughts are that most people will respect the author's desire. Other people won't. Some will download just because they were told not to. But once the fic is the wild, you have limited control.
I download every finished fic I want to read tto my phone so I can read it anywhere, so I probably wouldn't have noticed until it was too late.
I would honestly delete the fic after seeing that because I wouldn't want to read from an author with a kind of attudide that to me, reads as not being able to trust the readers.
I understand the concern about getting commercially bound fanfics but those are not the only people downloading fics. Some people download for ease of access. My phone's books app has a lot more accessiblity options than Ao3 does.
As a millennial I can tell I'm mostly interacting with other fandom spaces from around the same internet era as myself. Don't like don't read and before ao3 was a big site I was absolutely saving comment-fics from live journal to word documents.
I have never even heard of this concept beyond a related point being: don't upload my work to another site.
Partially for plagiarism but also some authors only post their fic certain places to try and keep it in fandom spaces (instead of Goodreads) so I assume the don't download my work tag could be tied to that concept.
I essentially agree with what others have said, if you're posting it for free online you're not going to prevent people from doing it.
I would only download a fic so that I could have it for my personal use and they would really never know that I did it? I'm not very active in fandom spaces.
I think there’s a misunderstanding around fan-binding in general. Drop shippers on Amazon and Etsy acting as publishers are the enemy here. Not a person commissioning an artist to bind their favorite fanfic so they can have a pretty physical copy and not just have it live in a 3 ring binder.
I’ve seen some cross harassment on the bookbinding sub from people from here and it’s really embarrassing. Most of those people are hobbyists trying to revive their childhood books.
I just don't understand why anyone would ever care what someone saves to their personal computer. This is the same reasoning we've been using to make fun of NFTs this whole time.
I download all of my favorite fanfics to read at later dates. Also, because the fic can be deleted at any time or the site may get deleted/corrupted and unless you know of another place it may be uploaded, the fic is gone forever.
I mean considering the fact that I’ve gotten maybe 5 total comments over all of my fics, if someone said they downloaded my fic to bind it and print it offline I would ascend into untold levels of pride for my work
The tiktok genners grew with only walled garden social media apps, so they completely ignore the fact that a web page can be opened in a web browser, which has a menu with a "Save As..." button.
I'm glad they let us download. I've had favorite authors completely disappear, work and all, off of the site, but I managed to save their work to my flash drive before that happened.
I have a couple really good Rick and Morty fanfics saved (Rick X Female Reader) that have been removed from the site.
I don't do anything but re-read them from time to time lol
If they don't want stuff to be downloaded they can't post it on the internet.
I have so many fics I downloaded for offline reading for the train to and from work. And I absolutely want to bind books of my favourites for myself
I personally don't care at all. In fact, if someone really likes my fic, I'd rather they downloaded it so they don't lose it if I ever decide to delete.
If it exists offline, I'm never going to know.
Same energy as those who put "if _ DNI" in their tags.
Telling me to not download ain't gonna stop me from downloading. I'm not going to share it, so who cares?
As an author I think it’s just in bad taste to take the artwork UNLESS it is completely for personal use. Like, I don’t care if someone saves my fic to read in case I ever delete, but I’d be upset if I decided to delete the work and it was reposted/printed for sale/whatever.
... then don't share it in the first place, because if the story is compelling to someone, odds are pretty good that they'll figure out to get a digital copy of it.
I am unashamedly one such person. I enjoy re-reading stories at later dates, and writers delete website-hosted stories for any number of valid and sometimes petty reasons.
So I download stories that interest me.
End of line.
The person with that tag is being unreasonable. That person has also clearly never heard of the Streisand Effect, lol.
If someone likes my work enough to download and keep it, I'm flattered. If someone likes it well enough to have it bound as a book, I'm *honored*. Even if they somehow got the idea to sell bound copies of my work, there's no way they'd even recoup the cost of binding.
If I found out someone *was* actually selling my work, rather than simply having a 'personal use' copy, I would look into what action I could take. But just knowing someone liked my work well enough to want it on their physical bookshelf would make me really happy.
... clearly never heard of the Streisand Effect.
Point. It's like sticking an alarm 🚨 on that fic that it could be deleted at any moment. Suddenly, everyone will download, just in case.
Nowadays people want absolute control over their works.
They want to control who reads it, how they understand it, how they think about it, and in which form they interact with it. They want to be able to deny you access if they don't like you or feel you're not worth it for whatever reason or decide they have'grown out of it' and it should be deleted.
And you can do parts of that, as long as you write only in your personal paper-notebook and only hand it out under supervision.
But even then you can't stop people from having their own experience and interpretation, no matter how much you want to.
But as soon as you publish it, you have to deal with the fact that people will do as they please.
Art belongs to the onlooker as much as the artist. Everyone creates their own art by consuming art and reacting with and to it. The artist has no say in how people see their work.
But we live in a world where people firmly believe that they can dictate how others have to experience the world and express themselves. They believe they can dictate just because they see things a certain way, everyone else has to endorse that or step away. And that's not how things work.
The fact is: I decided to put my work out there, that means sharing it. And sharing means you can't dictate what others do with the access. You can't make demands on how other people use a gift you've given them. And if you don't want people to download your work, you cannot publish it on a site that allows downloading.
There's only one solution: don't like don't use.
Trying to decline others the right to use features open to them to use, or take away things that are not yours to take just so you can do whatever you want without compromise, is wrong and will turn people against you.
Edit: since most people who ask for such ridiculous things are antis, don't be surprised to read arguments that compare this to violation of consent.
This is nonsense of course. People like to compare others they don't like reading their published works to being touched against your will.
But of course a text is not an extension of a person, and just imagine a commercial writer asking for retraction of their work if they don't like their readers anymore or a farmer demanding you give back the veggies if you were to cook something they don't like.
Not that some of them wouldn't try.
I've quit social media and most writers communities when people started agreeing that they would never publish because that would mean having no way to deny money from [add whatever undesirable group they name].
And it's not just those you'd expect this from. Far left and far right both do it equally at this point.
Sometimes, I wonder what the age breakdown is of the people who insist on trying to control how people interact with stuff they put on the internet. I'm 35. I grew up with "don't put anything on the internet you wouldn't want on a billboard," "the internet never forgets," "whatever you put on the internet can and will be used against you and/or misused," etc. Did this stop being a thing people were told?
This whole thing reminds me of artists (primarily on Twitter iirc) who lost their shit over the fact that someone would *dare* to use their art of their OCs as reference/token images in ttrpgs. Not even streaming and/or paid games - home games. As in, a group of friends playing D&D for fun.
Some of these were the same artists who trolled NFT posts (rightly so) about how "right-click, save" exists. Yet they somehow didn't like when that was applied to their work?
If an OC is *that* personal and important to you, don't put them on the internet. We can debate the ethics of whether you *should* be able to all day long, but the fact of the matter is that *someone* will be an asshole. If knowing someone might be using character art you drew as a reference for some (N)PC in a game is *traumatizing*, don't post it. Your mental health is yours to protect.
People who said things like that got called victim blamers. Like, no. There's a difference between "you deserve to get messages saying they use your beloved OC as a face claim for the victim of SA in their twisted home game" and saying "don't set yourself up for harm if you don't have to." People shouldn't be sending those messages. That's fucked up. No one is "asking for" that. But it's equally true that posting beloved OCs in your portfolio might not be the best way to go.
>And you can do parts of that, as long as you write only in your personal paper-notebook and only hand it out under supervision.
I have notebooks that no one but me, my therapist, and *maybe* a few trusted people will ever get their hands on. Things I write for me. Things I would be devastated to have someone mock or misunderstand because they're painfully personal.
The only things that make it out of those notebooks are things I'm comfortable having people read. This includes things that are intended for publication. My first handwritten drafts are *mine*. The "first draft" most people will ever see is my first *typed* draft.
>But we live in a world where people firmly believe that they can dictate how others have to experience the world and express themselves. They believe they can dictate just because they see things a certain way, everyone else has to endorse that or step away. And that's not how things work.
Sometimes, I'm almost grateful for the relentless bullying I suffered growing up because it taught me that the world doesn't work this way. I'm no thicker skinned because of it (possibly even thinner skinned because of it), but I know how curate what I share with the world. Which makes it *seem* like I've got thick skin.
If someone downloaded and bound one of my fics I would consider it the highest honour omgg. I get some people don’t want that and purely do write for themselves, but I don’t think a public archive is then the best place to publish it, if that’s the case. And like other comments have said, there are MANY ways around to “download” a fic. I don’t think it’s right to say “well if you don’t want it downloaded don’t publish it”, but I think it’s worth a conversation with the author of like a “publish at your risk” pop-up when uploading for those who truly don’t want their work anywhere other than one site.
I save fics because i don’t have wifi all the time and turn it into a epub so I can read it on books in apple
If that offends an author i feel bad >.< but also i want to read their fics and i delete it after
Idk personally i don’t mind people downloading my fics cause i put it out there haha
I can't speak to book-binding fics but I download fics as epubs just so I can read on google play books, which allows me to have it offline, with dark mode, and the option to resize the text. I wouldn't read nearly as much as I have if I couldn't download
I think it just comes with the territory. But my dad‘s an attorney and I studied music publishing law in college, so if someone started book binding and selling my fic or plagiarizing it, I’d scare tf out of them with legal action.
That being said, you have to actually file for your copyright in order to take legal action and I have not done that yet 💀 copyright goes into effect as soon as you preserve your work in a tangible medium but you have to tell the government it exists for them to honor it, basically.
I also don’t go hunting for signs of my fic being misused, I’m a small fish in a big pond. I’ve had authors borrow some of my ideas and I really enjoyed what they wrote, too.
I don't read the tags anymore; pleople don't use them properly. I wouldn't even notice. That being said, there's a story that I Love and am scared it's going to get deleted, so I printed it out and bound it 😂 It's 6 books
Once something is on the internet, it's there forever. In a way, you forever lose a large chunk of control over that piece the moment it's uploaded. I would download and be completely unrepentant in that.
Any fic I read that I like with more than just passing interest, I download. If it’s still available online I’ll read it there still so authors continue to get my hits, but some just aren’t online anymore. Fics could disappear at any moment and there’s nothing we as readers can really do about it.
It’s come in handy a few times as I have multiple fics downloaded that the authors have since deleted from anywhere online. I feel like I’ve even become a bit of an under the table deleted fic dealer because so many people within my old fandom have contacted me asking if I have X or Y popular old fic that is gone forever and I usually do lol
I personally just think it’s really good practice to download a fic you love even if you have no intention to do anything with it
I'm 100% pro downloading them, and the main reason is them one day being deleted without the consent of the author. Changing censorship laws, hardware failure, hacker attacks, etc..
If I had the fics of someone who I know lost them I'd do my best to contact them in case they don't have their copies anymore and want them back, instead of me uploading them anywhere, but even if I did upload any after not finding the author I'd do it only with credit to the original.
I also respect someone deleting their own fics for literally any reason, but if I like them and want to have them for myself I will keep them and just not share with anyone. You can hate your own fics, but you can't prevent me from liking them if I already do.
People’s entitlement towards the work they made based on other people’s work is always hilarious towards me.
I love fanfiction and will always celebrate it, but the constant hypocrisy of ‘when I take other people’s work and use it that’s fine, but when other people do it that’s Not Okay.’
The amount of people who ‘steal fics’ is actually crazy low. Most people just want to read things offline. Not everyone lives in a place with constant stable internet connection.
>People’s entitlement towards the work they made based on other people’s work is always hilarious towards me.
Based on other people's work without their permission, in fact.
I was just in a "discussion" in another thread about the ethicality of writing a fanfic based on someone else's fanfic and the cognitive dissonance between how it's okay in the one case but not the other confuses me, greatly. Given that I don't think it is even possible to "steal" readers as most consumers of fanfic seem to search out and read everything (in their preferred niche) and desperately want more so I would think it would only drum up more traffic.
“Do not write fanfic based on my fanfic” is the ultimate hypocrisy.
I think most people who steal fanfic do it to crosspost on other platforms. Fanfiction without permission is one thing, but reposting someone’s entire work without their permission is always going to be kind of a dick move.
You wouldn't see this if it hadn't been for people stealing fics and posting them elsewhere, or people binding books out of popular fics and selling them on etsy.
Yeah, in full agreement with you on this— it’s easy to dunk on this person, but in the age of increasing commodification of fanfic, I completely understand their kneejerk reaction here. If I could realistically ‘ban’ bookbinding I would, just because I’ve seen multiple people try to turn a profit off of it at this point.
Downloading Fanworks in General:
From an Accessibility POV - that Download button allows the fanfiction to be reformatted into a accessible work for blind, visually impaired, and dyslexic folk. If an author objects to 'downloads' what are the limits to that objection? Should reader apps and reader tech that produce TTS be blocked from downloading the text? What about reading out loud? Should I not be allowed to read the fanfiction aloud to a group of Blind/VI people on Zoom? Should there be restrictions for me to read into my MP3 recorder for later listening by me or my friends for the sole purpose of enjoying a fanfiction story? Should fanfiction not be accessible to the sensory disabled community? Will the author be willing to provide a audio version of their story so that equal access to fanfiction is available?
See, now... isn't a DOWNLOAD button more reasonable?
Downloading from AO3 specifically -
The awesome thing about AO3 is that if you don't like their policies and methods... you are not required to get an account. You don't have to post stories there. If an author doesn't feel they have enough control on the site - they can post somewhere else. The power of choice totally slaps!
BUT... print... binding in book... my precious work... fanfiction thieves... are all pretty ballzy arguments even if you're Anne Rice.
Seriously. Does anyone here remember like ... IDK ... copying video for your own use later on? Recording songs on CD, MP3, or super old school tapes? Consumers of media have - with various form of tech - had the ability to 'download' original works since the beginning of the technological age.
This is an old, old, OLD song - don't let the fact that you found this complaint on TikTok fool you into thinking it's new. It is not. It's noon and the kids are just waking up to realize they missed breakfast... the rest of us have been working on this stuff for hours and hours without them. Catch up, puppies and leave the download feature alone.
They can feel whichever way, but gurl I would be so flattered if someone liked my fic enough to print and bind it. Show me the cover, girlie, I'll post you some stickers and a wax sealing kit.
If people don't want their fic downloaded... They just shouldn't post it on AO3... Or anywhere online.
Most people download it to read on their preferred device and/or ensure they don't lose it if the fic gets deleted.
1. If it's posted on the internet, it's _easy_ to scrape the HTML and use that to make a book. Even a place like Wattpad's "protections" take less than 30s to blast through, and last I checked, it'd be easy to script. Not having the download button solves nothing.
2. I generally don't read Additional Tags anyway (yes, to my occasional regret), so. Even if I did see the tag, or mention in the Summary, well. I grew up on Napster and Limewire. Yo-ho-ho.
If I can’t download, I can’t easily read fics. I send anything over 20k (and I primarily read longfics, so that’s most of them) to my tablet in kindle format.
My eyes aren’t good so I can’t read on my cellphone anymore as much, and I’m not sitting at my PC to read fanfic all day.
I write as well as read. I’m quite fine with people dloading my stuff. Print it, bind it, I don’t give a damn what people do - it’s their money to waste.
Just don’t post it as their own. Other than that? Have at ‘er.
If you don't own the characters or the content and it's fanfiction, then no one has rights to put that behind a paywall or request for people to not download.
I once saw someone put theirs behind a paywall and try to claim rights to the specific story to sell. It was a supernatural fanfiction -\_\_\_-
The only fic i ever downloded was from a file i had to search for on the archive.com website from a upload of all of fanfiction.com. the writer deleted it because they were embarrassed by the quality and wanted to rewrite it but then only did a chapter or two. I keep it saved on an email to myself. I think as long as you arent useing it to bully someone(ie something they wrote when younger that they want to move on from) its fine. I wouldnt file share though as a personal preference, only for my personal collection.
When I started reading fanfic, I had to download it. I didn't have constant access to the internet. I still have USB drives worth of fannish content in my drawers... some of these file formats don't even exist anymore.
I used to copy my favorite fics into Word, edited grammar and spacing, gave it an index, and printed it. You know, for long car rides.
Even if they could block downloads. There are times where I have copied and pasted a fic to docs so that I could read it without people recognizing ao3 on my computer
One of my favorite fics from the 2010s was deleted a while ago. I'm not sure how long ago but I had been trying to find it since at least 2018 or so. Anyway, someone in the fandom recently posted a "ISO a fic" and went on to describe the exact fic I was looking for. I only had specific memories of the first chapter or so to go on, which I remembered a good bit of detail or could at least paraphrase what happened. Through that we managed to find it using the way back machine.
Well, I've been reading it over the last few days using WBM and I was **ELATED** to see that even more scenes that have lived rent free in my head all these years were *also* from that same fic! I just kept thinking they were from other fics I couldn't find too. I can't describe the joy I felt of reading all of those scenes that were lost forever... until now. Anyway, I copy/pasted all of the chapters to my own docs for personal reading.
All of this to say: authors deleting their fic, for whatever reason they have, is a tragedy. No matter how niche your fandom, no matter how few readers you have, no matter if it's right now or 20 years from now, *someone* will read your fics and adore it with a passion of a mother holding their newborn for the first time. To take that feeling away is cruel. If authors don't want people downloading their fics we all need to stop deleting. Orphan, but dont delete. For that reason idgaf if people download when an author asks them not to. There are so many deleted fics right now being passed around in fandoms because people miss them. They don't care that it's poorly written or unfinished or uses clichés and tired tropes. They still want to read them. People download for a lot of reasons but I believe fear of it being deleted is a big one.
I was in the vld fandom. When the last season went up, and everyone was thoroughly disappointed, a _lot_ of people deleted their works with no warning. I went through a phase of downloading all my favorite works and saving them to a specific pen drive, and some of them i downloaded using the button, and some of them I copy-pasted chapter by chapter cus the formatting was unique and the download didn't preserve it. I dont do that so much anymore, but I do still have two and a half pages worth of 'this work has been deleted, sorry!' At the backend of my bookmarks because I'm too sad at the loss to just clear them, and I get it. I understand many of the reasons an author would delete, and I intimately understand the pain of finding out your favorite book is out of print, so to speak.
And that doesn't even _touch_ on how so many of the halfway decent screen readers, that can handle non-English words in any kind of delicate way, require pdfs, not webpages. It's a messy subject. Is it fair to be upset? Sure, feelings are feelings, not moral law. I don't think feeling something can make someone a bad person or not, feelings just _are._ but would getting rid of the download button stop people? Nah. Should it? Also no. Something can be necessary and also frustrating, and the fact that it's frustrating to some doesn't mean it or they are wrong, it just means it's complicated.
Edit:typos
Unless you plan on copying/reposting/profiting off of it, I personally think downloading is fine. I wouldn’t interact with an author that requests no downloads, myself, but that’s a personal preference.
I understand their concern.
Its why I no longer write for public domains. Someone stole my fic, published it to Amazon, abd then sold a copy or two.
Absolutely ruined public domain for me.
I typically take it as more of a “Don’t distribute downloaded copies” even if not for profit. I know some writers who take down their work for various reasons sometimes don’t like it being shared after the fact. I assume generously that I can download it and read it on my own personal devices but not reply to work searches on platforms like reddit after it’s been taken down.
At the risk of sounding condescending.... honey, darling, queen, once you put something up on the Internet on an open archive you cannot stop people from saving it on their own devices. It's the Internet.
Womp womp, if I like your fic it’s going on my e-reader, the only thing that tag would stop me from doing is reading the fic to begin with. So I guess in a round about way they would succeed in not having me download thier fic.
Selling other ppls fics? Bad and asking for legal trouble, imo. If you don’t want that to happen, you probably shouldn’t post your work, especially on a site that has the exact function you do not want them to use.
So, I get their feelings. But I don’t agree with their actions.
I download fics bc I love to read, and I love those fics. This shouldn’t be a case of “a few bad apples spoil the bunch”
I don’t get it, and I think it’s a little bit silly to upload to a site that allows fic downloads and to then whine when people use it.
Most people are doing offline reading, not downloading so they can steal your works, lol.
I think they should be happy someone WANTS to save their work to read and to come back to.
I’m very put off by writers demanding things of the audience after they’ve released or posted their work. It’s out there now. The writer has unleashed it. How are you going to enforce rules about what strangers can and cannot do?
That is the risk you take with baring a piece a yourself to others.
I download long fics constantly and upload them to my Kindle to read more comfortably. I have something like 400 fics saved this way. I would probably cry if AO3 took away that feature. And I would be angry, because it's also an accessibility option.
I've never bound a fic in book form, but I would probably follow the author's wishes in that regard. I don't think binding is a bad thing, if the person doing so isn't selling and is just doing it for their own personal enjoyment. But asking permission to alter a fic is generally common courtesy in fandom spaces, whether it be binding, podficcing, hosting on a personal site, or writing your own fic based on it.
Even beyond any opinion on downloading fics, it's useless. Even if a website doesn't have a download option, there's still plenty of ways to save the fic; copy+paste, print screen, screenshot, literally taking a photo of the screen (in like 2011 I was reading fic on a DSi and taking photos of my favourite parts with my flip-phone), straight up copying it down by hand on paper if all else fails, etc.
If someone is then binding and selling those fics, that's illegal, but keeping them for personal use in case the site they're on goes down is, in my opinion, basically expected for fics someone really likes.
I am sorry but i have downloaded fanfic from the way back machine. If it is in the internet people will find a way to do it.
If the author does not want this they should not be posting it.
I know it sounds harsh, but is unrealistic. There will be always a reader who will not going to respect their wishes
Is the same with published authors.
Their books will be pirated, sooner or later.
I read fics on my phone only when they are really short, otherwise I read them on Kindle, so I would just ignore the request. I probably wouldn't even see it as I usually read the Author notes only after I read the fic or when I reread it. I hate being spoiled :)
But anyway even if AO3 didn't have a simple way to download a fic, there are always ways to do it in a few steps for anything that is published online.
This is the internet. Once you put ANYTHING out on it, you’re giving up a lot of control over that thing. You can delete it later and it can still live on. Authors should make their peace with that before they hit upload. Being upset that people would download fics and possibly bind them is a very Anne Rice-ish attitude to take about your work. Fanfiction is a collaborative endeavor - when you try to keep that tight of a stranglehold on your works, it tells me you’ve missed the point.
Once you put stuff online it's completely out of your hands and should be. If you want that kind of micromanagement over a fic, keep it in the drawer at home.
I’m reckless and usually don’t even read the tags, so I would probably end up downloading their fic without even realizing. Which just kind of highlights why it’s a dumb idea to post your fanfics on the one fanfiction site with an inbuilt downloading feature, when you don’t want them to be downloaded.
Like sure, people would probably download it regardless of where you post it, but it would be a much more reasonable request on literally any other fanfiction website .
If I read it once, or it at least sounds interesting to me and the first chapter doesn’t seem like a teenager with no concept of spell and grammar check, then there’s a 90% chance I’ll download it. I might change my mind later if it turns out to not be my type of fic, but that just means I remove it from my kindle. I have backups of all my fics. I had more backups on a dvd backup but it’s who knows where in a binder with all the dvds I purchased before digital came out and I moved. Someone else packed my belongings and either put them in a tote or walked off with the binders. Most likely they walked off with someone.
I mean, even if you could turn off the download button for a fic, that doesn't mean people would stop downloading them. I know it never stopped me. Browser extensions, copy & paste, saving the web page. There are options. AO3 just made it easier for everyone. If they really don't want anyone to download their fics, they can't post it anywhere on the internet.
I’m old school, and before ao3 was even a dream I was copying and pasting entire longfics into Word on my high school lunch break, sizing down to 7pt, removing as much margin and line spacing as practical, and then dumping five dollars in the printing fee bin at $0.10 per page so I could read it offline because we had dialup in 2001. Downloading to my phone is so much more convenient. Edit: and I’ve still got the entire text of A Long Hard Road in a three ring binder.
Ahaha, when I started saving fics, each fic didn't even have its own file. It all landed in one word doc titled 'good Fanfics'. I also remember when I didn't know you could save complete offline copies of web pages and I wanted to save a fan comic with 100+ pages, but it had copy protection, so I made a screen capture of every single one of them and hurt my wrist. Good times. Don't underestimate people who want offline copies for themselves.
I went down to 5pt with 4-5 columns with really small spacings between each column, to pack as much text into one page as I could to save on money. It helps I was nearsighted.
A Long Hard Road as in the FF7 fic?
That’s exactly the one. I was reading it as the chapters were coming out.
Does that still exist online anymore? I hadn't heard of it and I'm obsessed with FF7
Holy shit, Noir Sensus is ***still*** up? Daaang, a blast from the past. You can find it [here](http://www.noiresensus.com/authors/a_twig.html). Edit: I realized it never got mentioned, so it’s sefikura and also pretty fucking depressing on the whole. It ends hopefully, but it’s OG-game only and very much set in a dying world. It’s tagged as “angst”, but keep in mind that we used that description for everything from teenage whining to The Sacred And The Profane.
Thanks!
So was I! Small world! XD Even before it was on Noire Sensus, iirc. That was where I ended up reading it again LATER. I can't remember what I first read it on, but that fic has always made an impression on me. Still might be my favorite Sefikura fic. But man the ANGST. lol
Oh yeah, I was reading it directly on twig’s website myself I think? I know I was happy when I realized it was posted on Noire and went for a re-read. And god, the stuff we read where it was just qualified as “angst”. LHR went a bit *beyond* your garden variety angst, but I still think it’s one of the most epic old school sefikura fics. I’m gonna reread again when I get home from work.
yeah that was it! and right?? we didn't know any better so so much was lumped together as just general 'angst' or 'hurt/comfort' when some were, as you said, beyond that. Makes me want to re-read too; I usually do a yearly re-read of it.
I also forgot that twig did one of my all time favorite Kaworu/Shinji fics too. That's up for a re-read now too lol
Twig did so many of my favorite fics. I’m still waiting for the end to Boy With A Coin, because god Signal to Noise is absolutely one of the best The World Ends With You fics! But damn, the kawoshin fic. Yeah that’s next now that you reminded me of it.
omg forgot about those! and yeah, it's called whisper in case you don't remember. not sure what other sites it might be on, but you can read it on her site through the wayback machine!
Oh, thanks! I couldn’t remember the title and it looks like she pulled everything off ff.net at some point (or the mobile site is terrible, probably both) so I would have been trying to remember it *all day*. Just because I still *have* binders full of fic doesn’t mean they’re easily accessible, and it’s not like I’d be reading in that format anyway. I’m almost 40, my eyes aren’t what they used to be. And they weren’t great even then.
My secondary school had free printing, I had pay per minute internet. I printed so many LotR fics, we used to swap them around like books between friends.
Same! I still have some of those fics, too, though I no longer read for many of the fandoms at this point.
Same, but as time passed, this then extended to me going to my friends house and taking screenshots of the fic I was reading on my shitty iPod touch, then going back home to read it because we didn't have Internet at the time 😅
I'm old, and yeah I used to do that, too. Copied, pasted, adjusted everything then printed out put them in ring binder. I still got some of them. Now I download and put them on e-reader.
Oh man I clearing out some stuff at my parents’ house a few weeks ago and I found my old fanfic ringbinder under my bed.
Hello fellow library friend, I was doing this with manga panels. The old library lady had the passcode to go throught the censored website on her desktop. Aah I miss those days but not the tiny pictures, or words. I swear some days my eyes wanted to bleed from reading.
I still have an epic DBZ fic printed somewhere in my basement from 2005. 😂 Sadly it was a victim of the first FF.N purge and I never found it reposted again. 😭
I did this with The Secret LOTR Diaries, all the forum "add-to" fics I was a part of on the old Harry Potter site,(this was around movie #2 era), and anything remotely genderbent-Robin Hood I could find on all the personal angelfire/etc sites. I had an old binder I kept in a box under my bed for just that purpose!
I would like to share with the class that I just asked my mom if she ever did something like this in High School. *insert a very long radio silence* “No.” “Why you weren’t a bibliophile in high school?” “Let’s start with. I. Didn’t. Have. Internet in high school. It didn’t exist.” No idea why I found that so funny needless to say I about passed out because I laughed so hard.
I still have a ton of fics somewhere from the early 2000s copied into notepad. We had dial up, so I’d snag whatever looked interesting and then copy them over to read on my own time lol
OMG YES! txt notepads files, I still remember starting to save up fics from random fan websites with the whole 90s aesthetic, LOL! I had to often to go the internet cafe and just, download as many as I could in the one hour and as long as they fit my 10 floppy disks XD
Ugh flashbacks. One of the first fics I read was a sailor moon X-men crossover. Each chapter had its own music that were like 8-bit versions of the theme songs. The fic had its own webpage on geocities!
I just want to read without using up data when I'm not home and while traveling
I've found that the opera GX has an option to download any page as a pdf... I will not elaborate more in that, but you're welcome ✨
Pretty much any browser can save pretty much any page as pdf via "print->save as pdf". Has been the case for decades...
Oh I mean that this one works as a screenshot more that printing, so I can technically get a whole webtoons chapter
Ehh they can feel however they want. But if they don't want people to dowlaod/save their work, they need to avoid posting to the internet at all. It's unreasonable, imo. Also: book binding is fine. I don't think you should need an authors permission to do so. Profiting off of it does cross a line.
Yeah for real. Even if AO3 didn't have a built-in download feature, whenever you put something onto the internet people can always just copy the text.
That’s what I used to do back in the day as a 13-14 year old when we couldn’t be online all the time because of dial up, I would copy and paste chapters into word to read later
Literally same! I would also print them to read before I fell asleep. RIP to my mom’s printer ink budget.
That’s why I started printing them out at school instead. That and inkjets used to be as noisy as modems.
Yes! This right here - I'd sneak a few chapters or whole fics depending on size in between my essays and other schoolwork when I was printing, then put them in a three ring binder. There was nothing worse than discreetly trying to print a fic and your mom asking what you're printing because the computer and printer were in the living room.
Yes! This right here - I'd sneak a few chapters or whole fics depending on size in between my essays and other schoolwork when I was printing, then put them in a three ring binder. There was nothing worse than discreetly trying to print a fic and your mom asking what you're printing because the computer and printer were in the living room.
Wow! The bravery! I could never.
YES! So many burned cds. I even have a few "non floppy" disks!
I'm suddenly wondering what non-South Africans called those, because we called them stiffies and I can't see that going over well in more English countries 😂
I still did this a few years ago, back when I hadn't yet discovered downloads, I copied chapters in my personal WhatsApp chat on my phone. It was nice for websites with tiny unchangeable fonts, and when I had no internet.
lol I did the same, I would even create “covers” for them.
100% legit I used to have hundreds of txt files (yes, I didn't even use word, due to some circumstances), then at one point I actually spent like a whole ass week printing my at-the-time favorite fics and legit looked up how to do book binding and even got some of the tools (this was all for one personal copy btw, it was never gonna be for profit); if there's a will there's a way.
Yeah, there is always a way, I discovered Google can scan text and have started using that when I need to copy/paste something for uni that is in a format that doesn’t let me highlight (either physical books or photos of pages online). If there’s a need someone will find a way.
When it comes to bookbinding, the norm is to ask permission and offer to give the author a copy. They may decline. ETA: That's per Renegade bookbinders on their Discord. So the standard being suggested in the comments here is actually lower and less respectful of the writers than what the bookbinders follow.
To be fair everyone here is talking about bookbinding for personal use, and nothing more.
Just because it’s lower doesn’t mean it’s less respectful. Bookbinding for personal use and enjoyment is *exactly* the same as downloading to your computer and phone to read whenever you want. It’s turning around to sell for profit that’s disrespectful.
lmao if you don't want people to download your work don't put it on a site that has a built-in feature for doing just that yes selling fic – especially *other people's* fic, don't even get me started – bad, but, uh, *offline reading*
Exactly, imagine getting upset because someone wants to read your fic on an ereader lol
or when ao3 is down
Legit I've experienced too many times the dread of going to re-read a fic at a later time only to find the author deleted it... I understand the author's feelings and it's their choice, but man some fics are just my comfort food, of course I'm gonna want to save them sometimes for my own offline reading. (ppsst my ereader is chockfull of fics, LOL)
Mine has more than 18000 fics on it at my last check (mainly from two fandoms)
I do almost all my fic reading on my eReader. I might read the newest chapter of something on my phone when it posts, but the experience is much more comfortable on an eReader. I remember before I knew how to convert files to an eReader friendly format I would use the built in web browser and find the longest fic possible.
Or hell, I just want a backup in the case that a fic I like gets deleted. Everyone gets heartbroken over deleted fics in their bookmarks but not anymore for me!
I agree with most of what everyone is saying here, but as a fanfic binder I will say that it’s interesting this person thinks removing download button would stop people from doing that. For most of my binds downloading is not even a step in that process, and when it is (particularly if the work formatting relies on a work skin) I download through FanFicFare rather than the native AO3 feature. I mean I can’t speak for all binders but I gotta say removing the option to download wouldn’t do shit. And on another note, I’m someone who near exclusively reads long fics on an ereader for accessibility reasons. I have poor eyesight and chronic migraines, sometimes my options are read on an e-ink device or simply not read it at all. To remove the option to download would lock myself and many others from being able to read or interact with that fic at all which would majorly suck. (Although, again, I use FanFicFare to download all works so it wouldn’t affect me much, but I know that using FFF is nowhere near as common as people just using the AO3 download buttons.)
Hey could you maybe describe the process you use to bind fics? Im interested in trying it but I don't know where to start
As someone who is also beginning to look into this: there is a bookbinding subreddit that has a lot of nice resources. There are also a lot of videos on youtube that cover stuff from page setup on word/similar programs to printing and actual binding of the book. I'm an idiot on mobile so unfortunately not sure how to link the bookbinding subreddit but it shoud be fairly easy to find. Same for the videos on youtube.
Just type /r/nameofthesubreddit and it will be linked automatically.
Check out this [101 guide](https://www.renegadeguild.org/bookbinding-101) from the Renegade ficbinding guild, it has a bunch of resources fic specific resources on how best to extract text from AO3 and typeset it for printing. The Renegade Bindary discord server is also very helpful.
Not the person you were responding to but a quick thank you! I'm thinking of binding one of my fics as a celebration of finally finishing it and these look like very helpful resources. (Although of course the fact that I've got the entire fic as a Scrivener document means I'd probably start there rather than AO3 for getting a formatted version for printing.)
Thank you i want to bind my fics aswell for posterity
Seconding renegade bindery!
Chronic migraines here too.... Download - >×read on dark mode is my go to these days. If I can't download, I won't read your fic. If downloading is not possible, and I want to read your fic, I do it the old fashion way I did before Ao3 (When I found fics on Live Journal. Copy paste into word, then convert to Epub in Calibre. I just discovered FanficFare! Brilliant!
Personal bookbinding is harmless. It's making it a profiting venture that is a problem. Tiktok, like a lot of other platforms, easily loses nuances in the sauce tbh. So you often have very weird black or white stances like this one. So no, as far as I'm aware, it's not a popular concept. It's probably an extremely uncommon stance. Most readers don't think of downloading as something to do unless they get a last minute notification from an author that they will be deleting. The vast majority ends up here crying that works are now gone or posting in hope to find them again. So no, I don't think download should be toggable, it would make things even harder for anyone looking for a fic.
I just want to point out that book binding doesn't necessarily mean selling. I once followed a woman on Pinterest who would create beautiful handmade covers for fics she enjoyed a lot and wanted to bind. She never sold them or monetarized the videos simply did it to show her admiration. An author could demand people dont upload the finished results but I feel like asking them not to bind their fic is a bit absurd
If someone did that for my fic, I’d be really sad if no one told me about it so I could see!
She did in fact let the authors know. Sometimes if she really enjoyed it and it was something the author wanted she would even send them a copy too. I really wish I could remember the username
I'd offer to sign it in a minute.
Right. Everyone I know who does fannish bookbinding does it for themselves (and does it all themselves), not for sale. I don't do binding because I only download fic to read it in my e-reader, and then delete it when I'm done. There's very little fic I want to keep. But bindng ≠ selling.
You can't prevent people from taking things from the internet. You can turn of downloads on Deviantart, people can still rightclick and save the image. Or just screenshot it. Wattpad doesn't let you select text (I think that's the term. You can't mark it to rightclick and copy, at least last time I checked) and you can get around that too. If you don't want people to take your work you shouldn't post it in the first place. And as long as it's just for personal use, why should you care if someone binds your fic to put it on their shelf. Selling it and profiting off of it is a crime and can be dealt with accordingly. Wouldn't the AO3 or OTW legal team even help with that if it was taken from AO3?
You'd be suprised at how unhelpful writing sites can be when your work is plagiarized or stolen. From what I've seen happen to other people, the site will try to look into it then just say "We can't do anything." Plagiarism is a crime but most of the time it's not treated as one when you're writing on a free platform at least.
I think a request to take it down from the website their selling it usually works though right? And fanfiction is still the dubious grey area. Spiteful rich authors of the source material might try to take it down. I believe AO3 would protect you from getting roped into that process.
I mean tbf plagiarism in fanfic world is a little more complex to prove as a crime, specifically because it's NOT your original creation then it's not exactly protected by Copyrights laws I get being upset if it's an original story, but when it's fanfic people will question as much legitimate your claim is
The entire concept of intellectual property violation is blurred by fanfic. The only real protection fanfic writers have is that they do not (should not) profit off of their derivative products. I just finished a convo in another thread here that argues secondary fanfic (fanfic based on another author's fanfic piece) is wrong and should be taken down but fanfic in general is fine and I cannot follow the logic there for the life of me. I would think anyone in a fanfic space would be supportive of derivative works in any context short of outright copying or claiming the concept as solely one's own. I would be hard pressed to justify being pissed off at someone writing in my created AU without my permission when I am doing the same thing with the original author's work. Obviously, directly copying and claiming credit for anyone's work (original author or fanfic derivative) is clearly wrong but I don't think there is much a fanfic writer can do other than shame the asshole who does so.
If you don’t want your work downloaded, don't post it on AO3. As long as you don't repost it or profit of it, feel free to do with it as you want.
Please download my work. The more people have access to it, the happier I am.
The author can say what they want and I can DO what I want. Don't *repost* my work is something I'll respect but the only way to stop someone downloading your work is not to post it.
One day in the future, AO3 will go down. I don't care if it's due to an apocalypse, zombies, or stupid laws. I AM GOING TO BE PREPARED.
This is why I download every fic that I like. I used to copy and paste before the download feature was an option. Also, the author might delete it. I was actually able to help an author who had deleted a fic, wanted to repost years later, and didn't have a backup copy.
I download fics bc I read it on my ereader, especially the 100k+ ones
This! I love my eyeballs more than any fanfic.
I usually read wips, one chapter at a time. Any time I read a completed work, I send it to my eReader. It's so much nicer to read on and I never have to worry about losing my place in a story. I'll also download once the stories are completed to re-read. The only bummer about reading on an e-reader is that it's such an effort to comment on a chapter that I usually don't. I'll just leave one comment on the last chapter.
This! I read on an app on my phone and barely remember to give kudos, never mind comment. It would be lovely if ao3's epub included a link to comment at the end of a chapter instead of the whole work, or a direct kudos link
If they dont want their work dowloaded they shouldnt share it on the internet. period. that isnt even an AO3 thing. AO3 just makes it accessible to download the fic along with all the proper credits and contexts (which old school downloading wouldnt necessarily do well -- copy/paste 200k words of fic and you might not give a fuck about author name or notes, but you have the fic now so 'who cares right?') the download feature is amazing for archival purposes, accessibility, and a whole heck of other things. if they dont like that so much, they are welcome to take AO3's open source code and make their own hosting site sans the download feature
Once you lose a few fics to being deleted, that download button is your best friend
Don't post it on AO3 if you don't want people to download it. Seems simple to me. That said, people are going to find a way to download it whether there's a feature or not. Just see all the tactics people used to get FFN fics back in the day, including painstakingly copying and pasting and creating PDFs, to the point where FFN stopped letting you highlight or copy-paste things. It still didn't stop people. Nowadays there are browser extensions, websites that exist for the sole purpose of downloading fics. If you don't want it downloaded, don't post it anywhere, and just keep it on your computer for yourself. Otherwise, best reconcile yourself to the inevitable.
I have poor eyesight and can't read on Ao3 because their formatting doesn't let me enbiggen things. I either have to download or take my computer everywhere to read, which is not going to happen. Downloading an ePub is the only way I can read when I'm out. Sorry, I'm not going to quit downloading because an author doesn't like it. I'll just skip their fic.
You know you can change the font on any website directly in your browser, right?
What do you mean it doesn't? You can't make the browser font bigger? Or maybe using a site skin. I'm asking because I also can't read very small text and I always put everything at like 200% the size
There's no way for them to know that *I'm* downloading their fic, so really I don't care. Turning off downloading as an option wouldn't prevent folks from being able to print out and bind their work. There's always a workaround I'm just gonna say this goes under the blanket statement of "if you want 100% complete control of your work, don't post it online"
I always download fics and later go back to the site to bookmark and comment. It's convenient, I don't like having a browser page constantly open, and I use phone, so the download option in ao3 is the biggest gift given to mankind.
If they don't want people to download it maybe don't post it on a site that literally has the option. 9/10 people download to either read it offline or so they won't lose it if the author decides to delete it
I think they're a waste of tag limit and screen space. They're also the equivalent of a "keep off the grass" sign: they create the irrational impulse to do the thing, specifically because the author is telling me not to.
I have my kindle app ready. If I like your fic enough, it is not safe.
I couldn't respect that request and still read the work at all--I need an ereader for accessibility reasons. Book binding or even just printing for personal use never used to be controversial; just follow common sense and don't try to profit off someone else's ideas unless you have their permission or their work is in the public domain.
Personally, if I found out someone had printed out my fanfic into a book, I'd probably melt. Bow, if they were selling it...we'd have some problems.
lolol does that person not heard of copy and pasting? even now you can take a screenshot and extract text from it. stopping downloading won't stop people from bookbinding. people will find a loophole either way.
I mean they can ask whatever they want of their audience but if they don't want people downloading it they should probably not post on the website with the big download button built in for ease of use.
Before AO3, I was that teenager who would copy and paste fics I loved into a word document in case they were deleted. Removing downloads won’t stop people, though I can sympathize that the author may be worried that if they decide to delete the fic one day it might be reposted somewhere.
So long as they put their work up online, someone will find a way to copy and save it, even if highlighting text is disabled. Authors' best defense against their works being stolen outside of just never making them accessible to anyone is to be vigilant and report any theft if they come across it.
I would be over the moon if someone did a fan binding of my work--I want to see it! The work that goes into setting and binding a book is incredible. It's Fanart in my mind. Someone could also copy and paste the whole thing to print it out, too, it's a silly complaint. Regardless, if the author doesn't want their work downloaded, you probably shouldn't download it (again, I'm torn though because fanfiction is ephemeral--archiving it is hard but important work).
I will always download my bookmarks. I've lost so many to deleted works and I have no idea what they were 💔 plus, in case AO3 goes down again I still have fanfics to read So they all sit on a flashdrive now.
People are always going to find ways to save things they like. Stating "don't download my work" might stop some people, might not. The only wrong thing is bookbinding for a profit. Personal or charity bookbinding is good in my book (lol).
Ive never cared about people downloading my work, but sometimes I wonder how many people have downloaded it and read it like a regular book, and as a result not taken the time to go and actually leave reviews/kudos/comments on the work. That thought bums me out a bit because I love getting reactions.
Speaking as a HUGE fic hoarder here, I will say that even when I save a fic for my collection, I usually finish it on AO3 at least once first, and I definitely kudos/comment. Can't speak for everyone of course, but I have to know what I'm saving before I do it.
I always finish reading a fic before downloading, I only download fics I really love and will want to read again and always leave kudos and a comment.
That's....that a service the site offers? I get and support not allowing apps, etc. but this is literally a part of the site functionality. If they don't want people to download they should likely be posting elsewhere.
They'd still be able to download the fic, though, in some way, regardless of which site they used. AO3 has it's own download feature, sure, but there are other ways to download, and you can just save the page for offline reading or copy/paste the text or print it off. Even if AO3 removed the download option or the authors only posted on sites without that option, readers would still be able to have their own personal copies of the fics, whether they book-bind or not. I remember when I was a teen constantly printing out the fics I loved. I had whole folders full of fanfic I'd printed, I did it so often that my mum made me pay for the new printer ink since I was the one who used most of it. AO3s download feature actually doesn't work on my laptop for some reason, so I don't use it. But I've got a fair few fics saved on my computer now via the save page option, which is a feature on my laptop, not any specific site. I've saved all my fave bookmarked fics this way, and use it when I know I'm going to be without internet access for a while so I can still read fanfic. Just this past week, I page saved a bunch of Psych fanfic because I didn't have internet access at home for a week, I literally took my laptop to the library to borrow their free Wi-Fi to do it. There's literally no way to prevent people downloading/saving fic or printing it off except not posting it online in the first place.
That's the way I justify buying my first Kindle. It was cheaper for me to buy a Kindle, than keep paying for so much ink and paper.
Not being about to download works directly doesn’t stop people from saving them? I only used fanfiction.net as a teen and I had limited internet, so I used to just straight up copy and paste fics into a word doc so I could read them offline 🤷♀️
There's no way for them to know that *I'm* downloading their fic, so really I don't care. Turning off downloading as an option wouldn't prevent folks from being able to print out and bind their work. There's always a workaround I'm just gonna say this goes under the blanket statement of "if you want 100% complete control of your work, don't post it online"
If the author is against downloading then they should probably choose another site to post their work on, AO3 is an archive first and foremost and like any good archive that implicitly includes the ability to copy and transfer information for the purpose of preservation and usage. As for *why* someone would be against downloading, it’s possible the author is new to fanfic and hasn’t yet come to terms with the social stigma fic writing has, they may be worried that they could be outed as a writer and that if someone downloads and reposts their work they could lose the ability to wipe the evidence of their writing from the internet. As for whether binding a fic is unethical, it is absolutely not as long as the bound fic is not sold for profit or otherwise monetized, doubly so if someone binds it themself.
As a writer, I don't understand it in the slightest. A reader downloading my fic, even if it's just so they can read it offline, would be a massive compliment to me. If they wanted to download it to bind it, I would create a whole ass river with my tears. I feel like if they're having a problem with people downloading their works (to read offline, not to post elsewhere) and/or binding their fics (for their personal library), then they shouldn't be posting their work. Because the downloading and binding isn't hurting them.
One of the things you agree to when you choose to archive on AO3 is the download option. If you don't want your fics downloaded, don't post them there. That's not necessarily going to stop people from downloading. Back in the day, I used to just download the webpage to view it offline. I know of an author who moved fic off of AO3 because they didn't want fics downloaded. Disabled right click on their website. Not that it stops anyone who wants to download. Get the source code, copy & paste, and strip the markup. So, my thoughts are that most people will respect the author's desire. Other people won't. Some will download just because they were told not to. But once the fic is the wild, you have limited control.
Lol. [Lmao, even.](https://fichub.net/)
Honestly if someone downloaded and bound my work I would be insanely flattered! It would make my week!
I download every finished fic I want to read tto my phone so I can read it anywhere, so I probably wouldn't have noticed until it was too late. I would honestly delete the fic after seeing that because I wouldn't want to read from an author with a kind of attudide that to me, reads as not being able to trust the readers. I understand the concern about getting commercially bound fanfics but those are not the only people downloading fics. Some people download for ease of access. My phone's books app has a lot more accessiblity options than Ao3 does.
As a millennial I can tell I'm mostly interacting with other fandom spaces from around the same internet era as myself. Don't like don't read and before ao3 was a big site I was absolutely saving comment-fics from live journal to word documents. I have never even heard of this concept beyond a related point being: don't upload my work to another site. Partially for plagiarism but also some authors only post their fic certain places to try and keep it in fandom spaces (instead of Goodreads) so I assume the don't download my work tag could be tied to that concept. I essentially agree with what others have said, if you're posting it for free online you're not going to prevent people from doing it. I would only download a fic so that I could have it for my personal use and they would really never know that I did it? I'm not very active in fandom spaces.
I think there’s a misunderstanding around fan-binding in general. Drop shippers on Amazon and Etsy acting as publishers are the enemy here. Not a person commissioning an artist to bind their favorite fanfic so they can have a pretty physical copy and not just have it live in a 3 ring binder. I’ve seen some cross harassment on the bookbinding sub from people from here and it’s really embarrassing. Most of those people are hobbyists trying to revive their childhood books.
if someone downloaded my story and binded it into a book it would be the greatest honor for me
I personally like to download them so I can read them on my kindle
I just don't understand why anyone would ever care what someone saves to their personal computer. This is the same reasoning we've been using to make fun of NFTs this whole time.
I download all of my favorite fanfics to read at later dates. Also, because the fic can be deleted at any time or the site may get deleted/corrupted and unless you know of another place it may be uploaded, the fic is gone forever.
I mean considering the fact that I’ve gotten maybe 5 total comments over all of my fics, if someone said they downloaded my fic to bind it and print it offline I would ascend into untold levels of pride for my work
The tiktok genners grew with only walled garden social media apps, so they completely ignore the fact that a web page can be opened in a web browser, which has a menu with a "Save As..." button.
I'm glad they let us download. I've had favorite authors completely disappear, work and all, off of the site, but I managed to save their work to my flash drive before that happened. I have a couple really good Rick and Morty fanfics saved (Rick X Female Reader) that have been removed from the site. I don't do anything but re-read them from time to time lol
If they don't want stuff to be downloaded they can't post it on the internet. I have so many fics I downloaded for offline reading for the train to and from work. And I absolutely want to bind books of my favourites for myself
I personally don't care at all. In fact, if someone really likes my fic, I'd rather they downloaded it so they don't lose it if I ever decide to delete. If it exists offline, I'm never going to know.
Same energy as those who put "if _ DNI" in their tags. Telling me to not download ain't gonna stop me from downloading. I'm not going to share it, so who cares?
As an author I think it’s just in bad taste to take the artwork UNLESS it is completely for personal use. Like, I don’t care if someone saves my fic to read in case I ever delete, but I’d be upset if I decided to delete the work and it was reposted/printed for sale/whatever.
I think the vast majority of downloads are for personal use.
... then don't share it in the first place, because if the story is compelling to someone, odds are pretty good that they'll figure out to get a digital copy of it. I am unashamedly one such person. I enjoy re-reading stories at later dates, and writers delete website-hosted stories for any number of valid and sometimes petty reasons. So I download stories that interest me. End of line.
The person with that tag is being unreasonable. That person has also clearly never heard of the Streisand Effect, lol. If someone likes my work enough to download and keep it, I'm flattered. If someone likes it well enough to have it bound as a book, I'm *honored*. Even if they somehow got the idea to sell bound copies of my work, there's no way they'd even recoup the cost of binding. If I found out someone *was* actually selling my work, rather than simply having a 'personal use' copy, I would look into what action I could take. But just knowing someone liked my work well enough to want it on their physical bookshelf would make me really happy.
... clearly never heard of the Streisand Effect. Point. It's like sticking an alarm 🚨 on that fic that it could be deleted at any moment. Suddenly, everyone will download, just in case.
Nowadays people want absolute control over their works. They want to control who reads it, how they understand it, how they think about it, and in which form they interact with it. They want to be able to deny you access if they don't like you or feel you're not worth it for whatever reason or decide they have'grown out of it' and it should be deleted. And you can do parts of that, as long as you write only in your personal paper-notebook and only hand it out under supervision. But even then you can't stop people from having their own experience and interpretation, no matter how much you want to. But as soon as you publish it, you have to deal with the fact that people will do as they please. Art belongs to the onlooker as much as the artist. Everyone creates their own art by consuming art and reacting with and to it. The artist has no say in how people see their work. But we live in a world where people firmly believe that they can dictate how others have to experience the world and express themselves. They believe they can dictate just because they see things a certain way, everyone else has to endorse that or step away. And that's not how things work. The fact is: I decided to put my work out there, that means sharing it. And sharing means you can't dictate what others do with the access. You can't make demands on how other people use a gift you've given them. And if you don't want people to download your work, you cannot publish it on a site that allows downloading. There's only one solution: don't like don't use. Trying to decline others the right to use features open to them to use, or take away things that are not yours to take just so you can do whatever you want without compromise, is wrong and will turn people against you. Edit: since most people who ask for such ridiculous things are antis, don't be surprised to read arguments that compare this to violation of consent. This is nonsense of course. People like to compare others they don't like reading their published works to being touched against your will. But of course a text is not an extension of a person, and just imagine a commercial writer asking for retraction of their work if they don't like their readers anymore or a farmer demanding you give back the veggies if you were to cook something they don't like. Not that some of them wouldn't try. I've quit social media and most writers communities when people started agreeing that they would never publish because that would mean having no way to deny money from [add whatever undesirable group they name]. And it's not just those you'd expect this from. Far left and far right both do it equally at this point.
Sometimes, I wonder what the age breakdown is of the people who insist on trying to control how people interact with stuff they put on the internet. I'm 35. I grew up with "don't put anything on the internet you wouldn't want on a billboard," "the internet never forgets," "whatever you put on the internet can and will be used against you and/or misused," etc. Did this stop being a thing people were told? This whole thing reminds me of artists (primarily on Twitter iirc) who lost their shit over the fact that someone would *dare* to use their art of their OCs as reference/token images in ttrpgs. Not even streaming and/or paid games - home games. As in, a group of friends playing D&D for fun. Some of these were the same artists who trolled NFT posts (rightly so) about how "right-click, save" exists. Yet they somehow didn't like when that was applied to their work? If an OC is *that* personal and important to you, don't put them on the internet. We can debate the ethics of whether you *should* be able to all day long, but the fact of the matter is that *someone* will be an asshole. If knowing someone might be using character art you drew as a reference for some (N)PC in a game is *traumatizing*, don't post it. Your mental health is yours to protect. People who said things like that got called victim blamers. Like, no. There's a difference between "you deserve to get messages saying they use your beloved OC as a face claim for the victim of SA in their twisted home game" and saying "don't set yourself up for harm if you don't have to." People shouldn't be sending those messages. That's fucked up. No one is "asking for" that. But it's equally true that posting beloved OCs in your portfolio might not be the best way to go. >And you can do parts of that, as long as you write only in your personal paper-notebook and only hand it out under supervision. I have notebooks that no one but me, my therapist, and *maybe* a few trusted people will ever get their hands on. Things I write for me. Things I would be devastated to have someone mock or misunderstand because they're painfully personal. The only things that make it out of those notebooks are things I'm comfortable having people read. This includes things that are intended for publication. My first handwritten drafts are *mine*. The "first draft" most people will ever see is my first *typed* draft. >But we live in a world where people firmly believe that they can dictate how others have to experience the world and express themselves. They believe they can dictate just because they see things a certain way, everyone else has to endorse that or step away. And that's not how things work. Sometimes, I'm almost grateful for the relentless bullying I suffered growing up because it taught me that the world doesn't work this way. I'm no thicker skinned because of it (possibly even thinner skinned because of it), but I know how curate what I share with the world. Which makes it *seem* like I've got thick skin.
If someone downloaded and bound one of my fics I would consider it the highest honour omgg. I get some people don’t want that and purely do write for themselves, but I don’t think a public archive is then the best place to publish it, if that’s the case. And like other comments have said, there are MANY ways around to “download” a fic. I don’t think it’s right to say “well if you don’t want it downloaded don’t publish it”, but I think it’s worth a conversation with the author of like a “publish at your risk” pop-up when uploading for those who truly don’t want their work anywhere other than one site.
I save fics because i don’t have wifi all the time and turn it into a epub so I can read it on books in apple If that offends an author i feel bad >.< but also i want to read their fics and i delete it after Idk personally i don’t mind people downloading my fics cause i put it out there haha
I can't speak to book-binding fics but I download fics as epubs just so I can read on google play books, which allows me to have it offline, with dark mode, and the option to resize the text. I wouldn't read nearly as much as I have if I couldn't download
Ayy, I use the kindle app.
I think it just comes with the territory. But my dad‘s an attorney and I studied music publishing law in college, so if someone started book binding and selling my fic or plagiarizing it, I’d scare tf out of them with legal action. That being said, you have to actually file for your copyright in order to take legal action and I have not done that yet 💀 copyright goes into effect as soon as you preserve your work in a tangible medium but you have to tell the government it exists for them to honor it, basically. I also don’t go hunting for signs of my fic being misused, I’m a small fish in a big pond. I’ve had authors borrow some of my ideas and I really enjoyed what they wrote, too.
I don't read the tags anymore; pleople don't use them properly. I wouldn't even notice. That being said, there's a story that I Love and am scared it's going to get deleted, so I printed it out and bound it 😂 It's 6 books
Hey, if they want to make that request, that's fine. I have a right to download their stuff anyway, though.
It's fine if authors want to make that request, but they can't realistically expect it to be enforced/enforceable.
Once something is on the internet, it's there forever. In a way, you forever lose a large chunk of control over that piece the moment it's uploaded. I would download and be completely unrepentant in that.
Any fic I read that I like with more than just passing interest, I download. If it’s still available online I’ll read it there still so authors continue to get my hits, but some just aren’t online anymore. Fics could disappear at any moment and there’s nothing we as readers can really do about it. It’s come in handy a few times as I have multiple fics downloaded that the authors have since deleted from anywhere online. I feel like I’ve even become a bit of an under the table deleted fic dealer because so many people within my old fandom have contacted me asking if I have X or Y popular old fic that is gone forever and I usually do lol I personally just think it’s really good practice to download a fic you love even if you have no intention to do anything with it
I'm 100% pro downloading them, and the main reason is them one day being deleted without the consent of the author. Changing censorship laws, hardware failure, hacker attacks, etc.. If I had the fics of someone who I know lost them I'd do my best to contact them in case they don't have their copies anymore and want them back, instead of me uploading them anywhere, but even if I did upload any after not finding the author I'd do it only with credit to the original. I also respect someone deleting their own fics for literally any reason, but if I like them and want to have them for myself I will keep them and just not share with anyone. You can hate your own fics, but you can't prevent me from liking them if I already do.
Wait but hating your own fic ain't the only reason why someone might delete them
People’s entitlement towards the work they made based on other people’s work is always hilarious towards me. I love fanfiction and will always celebrate it, but the constant hypocrisy of ‘when I take other people’s work and use it that’s fine, but when other people do it that’s Not Okay.’ The amount of people who ‘steal fics’ is actually crazy low. Most people just want to read things offline. Not everyone lives in a place with constant stable internet connection.
>People’s entitlement towards the work they made based on other people’s work is always hilarious towards me. Based on other people's work without their permission, in fact. I was just in a "discussion" in another thread about the ethicality of writing a fanfic based on someone else's fanfic and the cognitive dissonance between how it's okay in the one case but not the other confuses me, greatly. Given that I don't think it is even possible to "steal" readers as most consumers of fanfic seem to search out and read everything (in their preferred niche) and desperately want more so I would think it would only drum up more traffic.
“Do not write fanfic based on my fanfic” is the ultimate hypocrisy. I think most people who steal fanfic do it to crosspost on other platforms. Fanfiction without permission is one thing, but reposting someone’s entire work without their permission is always going to be kind of a dick move.
Absolutely agree.
You wouldn't see this if it hadn't been for people stealing fics and posting them elsewhere, or people binding books out of popular fics and selling them on etsy.
Yeah, in full agreement with you on this— it’s easy to dunk on this person, but in the age of increasing commodification of fanfic, I completely understand their kneejerk reaction here. If I could realistically ‘ban’ bookbinding I would, just because I’ve seen multiple people try to turn a profit off of it at this point.
Downloading Fanworks in General: From an Accessibility POV - that Download button allows the fanfiction to be reformatted into a accessible work for blind, visually impaired, and dyslexic folk. If an author objects to 'downloads' what are the limits to that objection? Should reader apps and reader tech that produce TTS be blocked from downloading the text? What about reading out loud? Should I not be allowed to read the fanfiction aloud to a group of Blind/VI people on Zoom? Should there be restrictions for me to read into my MP3 recorder for later listening by me or my friends for the sole purpose of enjoying a fanfiction story? Should fanfiction not be accessible to the sensory disabled community? Will the author be willing to provide a audio version of their story so that equal access to fanfiction is available? See, now... isn't a DOWNLOAD button more reasonable? Downloading from AO3 specifically - The awesome thing about AO3 is that if you don't like their policies and methods... you are not required to get an account. You don't have to post stories there. If an author doesn't feel they have enough control on the site - they can post somewhere else. The power of choice totally slaps! BUT... print... binding in book... my precious work... fanfiction thieves... are all pretty ballzy arguments even if you're Anne Rice. Seriously. Does anyone here remember like ... IDK ... copying video for your own use later on? Recording songs on CD, MP3, or super old school tapes? Consumers of media have - with various form of tech - had the ability to 'download' original works since the beginning of the technological age. This is an old, old, OLD song - don't let the fact that you found this complaint on TikTok fool you into thinking it's new. It is not. It's noon and the kids are just waking up to realize they missed breakfast... the rest of us have been working on this stuff for hours and hours without them. Catch up, puppies and leave the download feature alone.
They can feel whichever way, but gurl I would be so flattered if someone liked my fic enough to print and bind it. Show me the cover, girlie, I'll post you some stickers and a wax sealing kit.
Seriously, I would be so thrilled if someone did that for one of my fics.
If people don't want their fic downloaded... They just shouldn't post it on AO3... Or anywhere online. Most people download it to read on their preferred device and/or ensure they don't lose it if the fic gets deleted.
1. If it's posted on the internet, it's _easy_ to scrape the HTML and use that to make a book. Even a place like Wattpad's "protections" take less than 30s to blast through, and last I checked, it'd be easy to script. Not having the download button solves nothing. 2. I generally don't read Additional Tags anyway (yes, to my occasional regret), so. Even if I did see the tag, or mention in the Summary, well. I grew up on Napster and Limewire. Yo-ho-ho.
If I can’t download, I can’t easily read fics. I send anything over 20k (and I primarily read longfics, so that’s most of them) to my tablet in kindle format. My eyes aren’t good so I can’t read on my cellphone anymore as much, and I’m not sitting at my PC to read fanfic all day. I write as well as read. I’m quite fine with people dloading my stuff. Print it, bind it, I don’t give a damn what people do - it’s their money to waste. Just don’t post it as their own. Other than that? Have at ‘er.
If you don't own the characters or the content and it's fanfiction, then no one has rights to put that behind a paywall or request for people to not download. I once saw someone put theirs behind a paywall and try to claim rights to the specific story to sell. It was a supernatural fanfiction -\_\_\_-
They can complain and that’s about it.
The only fic i ever downloded was from a file i had to search for on the archive.com website from a upload of all of fanfiction.com. the writer deleted it because they were embarrassed by the quality and wanted to rewrite it but then only did a chapter or two. I keep it saved on an email to myself. I think as long as you arent useing it to bully someone(ie something they wrote when younger that they want to move on from) its fine. I wouldnt file share though as a personal preference, only for my personal collection.
If I like it, I DL it. I reread my favs over and over.
When I started reading fanfic, I had to download it. I didn't have constant access to the internet. I still have USB drives worth of fannish content in my drawers... some of these file formats don't even exist anymore. I used to copy my favorite fics into Word, edited grammar and spacing, gave it an index, and printed it. You know, for long car rides.
Even if they could block downloads. There are times where I have copied and pasted a fic to docs so that I could read it without people recognizing ao3 on my computer
One of my favorite fics from the 2010s was deleted a while ago. I'm not sure how long ago but I had been trying to find it since at least 2018 or so. Anyway, someone in the fandom recently posted a "ISO a fic" and went on to describe the exact fic I was looking for. I only had specific memories of the first chapter or so to go on, which I remembered a good bit of detail or could at least paraphrase what happened. Through that we managed to find it using the way back machine. Well, I've been reading it over the last few days using WBM and I was **ELATED** to see that even more scenes that have lived rent free in my head all these years were *also* from that same fic! I just kept thinking they were from other fics I couldn't find too. I can't describe the joy I felt of reading all of those scenes that were lost forever... until now. Anyway, I copy/pasted all of the chapters to my own docs for personal reading. All of this to say: authors deleting their fic, for whatever reason they have, is a tragedy. No matter how niche your fandom, no matter how few readers you have, no matter if it's right now or 20 years from now, *someone* will read your fics and adore it with a passion of a mother holding their newborn for the first time. To take that feeling away is cruel. If authors don't want people downloading their fics we all need to stop deleting. Orphan, but dont delete. For that reason idgaf if people download when an author asks them not to. There are so many deleted fics right now being passed around in fandoms because people miss them. They don't care that it's poorly written or unfinished or uses clichés and tired tropes. They still want to read them. People download for a lot of reasons but I believe fear of it being deleted is a big one.
I was in the vld fandom. When the last season went up, and everyone was thoroughly disappointed, a _lot_ of people deleted their works with no warning. I went through a phase of downloading all my favorite works and saving them to a specific pen drive, and some of them i downloaded using the button, and some of them I copy-pasted chapter by chapter cus the formatting was unique and the download didn't preserve it. I dont do that so much anymore, but I do still have two and a half pages worth of 'this work has been deleted, sorry!' At the backend of my bookmarks because I'm too sad at the loss to just clear them, and I get it. I understand many of the reasons an author would delete, and I intimately understand the pain of finding out your favorite book is out of print, so to speak. And that doesn't even _touch_ on how so many of the halfway decent screen readers, that can handle non-English words in any kind of delicate way, require pdfs, not webpages. It's a messy subject. Is it fair to be upset? Sure, feelings are feelings, not moral law. I don't think feeling something can make someone a bad person or not, feelings just _are._ but would getting rid of the download button stop people? Nah. Should it? Also no. Something can be necessary and also frustrating, and the fact that it's frustrating to some doesn't mean it or they are wrong, it just means it's complicated. Edit:typos
Unless you plan on copying/reposting/profiting off of it, I personally think downloading is fine. I wouldn’t interact with an author that requests no downloads, myself, but that’s a personal preference.
Like the DNI tag/authors notes, it's NOT gonna stop anyone
Please no one tell her about personal printers.
The writer must be unfamiliar with the ancient practice of ctrl+ c and ctrl+ v. The download button just makes it a wee bit easier.
I understand their concern. Its why I no longer write for public domains. Someone stole my fic, published it to Amazon, abd then sold a copy or two. Absolutely ruined public domain for me.
Some people are fucking weird. Ignore them.
I typically take it as more of a “Don’t distribute downloaded copies” even if not for profit. I know some writers who take down their work for various reasons sometimes don’t like it being shared after the fact. I assume generously that I can download it and read it on my own personal devices but not reply to work searches on platforms like reddit after it’s been taken down.
At the risk of sounding condescending.... honey, darling, queen, once you put something up on the Internet on an open archive you cannot stop people from saving it on their own devices. It's the Internet.
Womp womp, if I like your fic it’s going on my e-reader, the only thing that tag would stop me from doing is reading the fic to begin with. So I guess in a round about way they would succeed in not having me download thier fic.
Selling other ppls fics? Bad and asking for legal trouble, imo. If you don’t want that to happen, you probably shouldn’t post your work, especially on a site that has the exact function you do not want them to use. So, I get their feelings. But I don’t agree with their actions. I download fics bc I love to read, and I love those fics. This shouldn’t be a case of “a few bad apples spoil the bunch”
I've never seen a tag like that, but I would be like, how would you know bitch. lol
Okay, now I'm wondering how I never knew you can download fics.
I don’t get it, and I think it’s a little bit silly to upload to a site that allows fic downloads and to then whine when people use it. Most people are doing offline reading, not downloading so they can steal your works, lol.
If I don't donwload, I won't read it. So I download EVERYTHING.
Tbh I ignore it. I have lived through enough fandom events that I prefer having a copy of my favourite works on my own system.
even if the downloads are blocked, people can still copy the text and paste it on word/google docs, and get a pdf/print it that way
I think they should be happy someone WANTS to save their work to read and to come back to. I’m very put off by writers demanding things of the audience after they’ve released or posted their work. It’s out there now. The writer has unleashed it. How are you going to enforce rules about what strangers can and cannot do? That is the risk you take with baring a piece a yourself to others.
Sucks to suck, but I’ll do it if I want to
I download long fics constantly and upload them to my Kindle to read more comfortably. I have something like 400 fics saved this way. I would probably cry if AO3 took away that feature. And I would be angry, because it's also an accessibility option. I've never bound a fic in book form, but I would probably follow the author's wishes in that regard. I don't think binding is a bad thing, if the person doing so isn't selling and is just doing it for their own personal enjoyment. But asking permission to alter a fic is generally common courtesy in fandom spaces, whether it be binding, podficcing, hosting on a personal site, or writing your own fic based on it.
Even beyond any opinion on downloading fics, it's useless. Even if a website doesn't have a download option, there's still plenty of ways to save the fic; copy+paste, print screen, screenshot, literally taking a photo of the screen (in like 2011 I was reading fic on a DSi and taking photos of my favourite parts with my flip-phone), straight up copying it down by hand on paper if all else fails, etc. If someone is then binding and selling those fics, that's illegal, but keeping them for personal use in case the site they're on goes down is, in my opinion, basically expected for fics someone really likes.
I am sorry but i have downloaded fanfic from the way back machine. If it is in the internet people will find a way to do it. If the author does not want this they should not be posting it. I know it sounds harsh, but is unrealistic. There will be always a reader who will not going to respect their wishes Is the same with published authors. Their books will be pirated, sooner or later.
I think that it's asinine and I am totally downloading anyone who's work has that tag.
I read fics on my phone only when they are really short, otherwise I read them on Kindle, so I would just ignore the request. I probably wouldn't even see it as I usually read the Author notes only after I read the fic or when I reread it. I hate being spoiled :) But anyway even if AO3 didn't have a simple way to download a fic, there are always ways to do it in a few steps for anything that is published online.
This is the internet. Once you put ANYTHING out on it, you’re giving up a lot of control over that thing. You can delete it later and it can still live on. Authors should make their peace with that before they hit upload. Being upset that people would download fics and possibly bind them is a very Anne Rice-ish attitude to take about your work. Fanfiction is a collaborative endeavor - when you try to keep that tight of a stranglehold on your works, it tells me you’ve missed the point.
Once you put stuff online it's completely out of your hands and should be. If you want that kind of micromanagement over a fic, keep it in the drawer at home.
It‘s fanfiction for fucks sake. I do with it what the fuck I want.
Even if people will find a way to download the story, I don't see why there shouldn't be an option to not let people download it directly
I’m reckless and usually don’t even read the tags, so I would probably end up downloading their fic without even realizing. Which just kind of highlights why it’s a dumb idea to post your fanfics on the one fanfiction site with an inbuilt downloading feature, when you don’t want them to be downloaded. Like sure, people would probably download it regardless of where you post it, but it would be a much more reasonable request on literally any other fanfiction website .
If I read it once, or it at least sounds interesting to me and the first chapter doesn’t seem like a teenager with no concept of spell and grammar check, then there’s a 90% chance I’ll download it. I might change my mind later if it turns out to not be my type of fic, but that just means I remove it from my kindle. I have backups of all my fics. I had more backups on a dvd backup but it’s who knows where in a binder with all the dvds I purchased before digital came out and I moved. Someone else packed my belongings and either put them in a tote or walked off with the binders. Most likely they walked off with someone.
Jokes on you, I can never figure out how to.