ffn question

[astridv]

Sorry 'bout the spam. I'll be back at work as of tomorrow, so there'll be much less of that.

Question: Has anyone tried to post images to fanfiction.net? I can't find a FAQ, their posting guidelines don't mention it, and I don't know how to do a test post that won't show up in the archive. It just bugs me that I can't post my fic to the biggest fanfic site. AO3 makes it so easy to post graphic novels.

Comments

[sqbr]

Given that they deliberately break any links posted inside fic I'm inclined to think they'd be against it. I've been posting prose fic there for a while and nothing I've seen has made me feel like posting my comics there would be at all practical. Which, yeah, is annoying, since I write way more comics than prose, but what can you do :/ (Meanwhile, I could post my fanfic to DeviantArt etc in theory, but that just feels wrong)

[astridv]

Yeah, I see fic at DA on occasion and it feels out of place. OTOH I think comics/graphic novels belong in a fic archive since they tell a story.

Which, yeah, is annoying, since I write way more comics than prose, but what can you do :/

Annoying indeed. What I got is all comics, no prose. And now that I posted my comics to AO3 and saw how easy-peasy that was, I would really like to do the same at ffn and reach a wider audience. But yeah, considering that site strips out most html and anything that looks remotely like an url I don't see how it can accept image tags.

[sqbr]

As someone who does a mix of comics, non-sequential art and prose AO3 really does seem to be the only place to post all my stuff, though having to host my art separately is a bit of a pain. The link-breaking at FF.net also makes it really hard to link to illustrations, remixes, other parts of series etc. Alas that AO3 is not more popular!

[ratcreature]

I have never seen a picture there. When people have illustrations for stories not even links work, but they have to use escape characters in the URL and you have to c&p it, and delete those to follow the link.

[astridv]

I never saw any pics there either. OTOH I've seen very few pics on AO3, any those only because I searched for comics so I wasn't totally discarding the possibility. But it sounds like there's really no way. Shame.

[ratcreature]

Well, the problem with allowing people to embed external images is of course that it risks them being broken, or replaced by porn ads after the free webspace expires and stuff like that and would make content control, including the no-adult stuff rule on ff.net much harder than it is now, so I can see why they don't allow external images. I'm fairly sure you can't upload pictures to ff.net itself. (I've an account for subscribing to updates.)

I think that AO3 has so few images is because they don't allow image upload yet either, so for me it makes no sense to use it as a picture archive when I can only use it to tag pictures, not archive them. I hope they'll get around to expanding to non-text media soon though.

[astridv]

Well, the problem with allowing people to embed external images is of course that it risks them being broken, or replaced by porn ads after the free webspace expires and stuff like that

Hm, that I can actually see as a good reason... considering their general stance it makes sense.

As long as I can post my comics, I don't really mind hosting my images offsite like I do now with AO3... I'll always need a space to host art anyway, and LJ's scrapbook is not that bad for that. If AO3 has trouble with the amount of content and traffic they got now, I think hosting images is way off in the future, if it's feasible at all... I dunno.

[ratcreature]

The main reason for me to archive on the AO3 would be to have my fanart stay up even if I couldn't take care of it anymore (eaten by bears, gafiated, whatever), and if I just linked an external image on that archive I'd just end up with a broken image in those cases.

[sqweakie]

I've used FF.net for years and it's become more and more restrictive over time. I don't think that you've ever been able to post images to your stories. At first you could have colored fonts and different sizes but that had to be almost ten years ago (and I cringed when I did the mental math on that one). The way it is now it's a hassle sometimes just posting a story of all text. FF.Net even removes personal page breaks like '********'. Wish I could suggest an alternative to it besides DW and AO3.

[astridv]

Yeah, what is it with the asterisks? (I always want to type asterix...)

[sqweakie]

***Asterisks are pretty!***

Seriously, I used to see a bunch of stories that used asterisks as breaks between sections of stories. Then FF went and wiped them all out in the middle of stories so all of a sudden the scene would change and you're like WTF?

Not so seriously, asterisks***** *which I still can not spell for the life of me*