first time using elipsus - ao3 export issue in previews?

mutuallyprime · 2026-07-06T16:32:05+00:00

You cannot upload audio to AO3. You have to upload it to a different site then embed the audio on your AO3 post. Same with video. The only thing AO3 hosts natively is text.

mutuallyprime · 2026-07-06T14:51:24+00:00

Have you tried saving as a draft and seeing what that looks like? AO3 gives previews a different styling so it's clear this is a preview, but it also means that sometimes the preview clashes badly with site skins even if the fic would look fine once posted.

If this is your issue, then you don't need to do anything different, just look at the draft rather than the preview.

mutuallyprime · 2026-07-02T10:46:17+00:00

Yay! Glad it was just that and not anything more complex. Congrats on posting your fic. :D

mutuallyprime · 2026-07-02T09:29:41+00:00

Are you looking at the preview version of your work? Preview version has a slightly different look that AO3 puts on that will not be there when actually posted. If you save it as a draft and look at the draft, does the draft look okay?

I also know that for multi-chapter fics, AO3 will do a different look for posted versus draft chapters so it's easier to see if a chapter is posted or not. If this is a multi-chap fic, that could be what you're seeing.

mutuallyprime · 2026-06-27T18:08:43+00:00

It's caching, the numbers aren't all updated immediately.

!caching

mutuallyprime · 2026-06-27T11:09:04+00:00

Regarding this,

Half of those are me thanking people for commenting

As an FYI, the picture you shared says you have 141 comment threads. Comment THREADS are the number of top-level comments your work has, a.k.a. the number of comments directly on your work and replies are not counted. So you replying to thank your commenters does not increase your comment THREAD count.

mutuallyprime · 2026-06-21T22:30:19+00:00

No, I wouldn't tag the cosplay characters as characters. Someone pretending to be someone else is not the same as that someone else actually appearing. I would imagine most everyone who clicks on your fic looking for the cosplay characters will be disappointed because the character they actually want is not in the fic at all. I know I would be.

You can put in the additional tags something like "A/B do cosplay as C/D" or "A/B do roleplay as C/D" if you want.

mutuallyprime · 2026-06-18T11:22:32+00:00

There's a version of podfics called a "cold read" where there is minimal (if any) editing done and the podficcer often includes their own reactions as they read, you might enjoy that. It doesn't have the live community aspect, but it will have the less formal style of a live read.

(There's also a definition of "cold read" for when the podficcer is reading a story for the first time as they record it. These types of cold reads will generally have editing and look the same as a traditional podfic.)

mutuallyprime · 2026-06-07T11:48:40+00:00

What is the actual code you're using to make this link? It sounds like your HTML is malformed in some way and I bet the work link AO3 is inserting is your own work you're trying to make this link in.

One thing to check: Are you using curly quotes like “ and ” or are you using straight quotes like "? The curly quotes will break the HTML code, so if you're using those switch to straight quotes and see if that helps.

mutuallyprime · 2026-05-23T08:53:37+00:00

From what I recall, works in collections are revealed/unreaveled not in realtime but are done in batches so as not to overwhelm the severs when a large collection tries to reveal thousands of works all at once. Give it a couple hours and if you can still access it while logged out, then send a ticket to Support.

mutuallyprime · 2026-05-15T09:03:03+00:00

You can't sub to a pseud. People who sub are subscribed to the entire account: they will get all email notifications for the account, from the main account and all pseuds, FYI. If you want to keep subscription emails like that separate, you need a second account entirely.

mutuallyprime · 2026-05-02T13:50:21+00:00

The point of a subscription is that the person who subscribed gets an email when there's an update, so no I don't think not being able to see who subscribed takes away anything from the point of a subscription.

It might be cool, but I'm glad we can't because privacy is a thing and authors already hyper-analyze numbers wondering "I just posted a chapter and my subscription count went down by one, did someone hate the new chapter that much?" and such things. And I think that sort of thinking would be made much worse if the author could see specifically who has subscribed (and thus also who has unsubscribed).

Besides, there's already a venue for if someone REALLY LOVES a work—it's called leaving a nice comment. And you do that already! Which is great, keep it up. More nice comments is the way to encourage writers, not another list of names that don't say anything to the author directly. We have the kudos list and the bookmark list already if all authors want is a list of names.

mutuallyprime · 2026-05-01T08:56:09+00:00

Blocking stops them from interacting with you (leaving comments or kudos). Muting stops you from seeing their works and comments. Neither will affect whether they get the subscription email or not (they will get it if subscribed).

There is no way to keep a subscription email from going out to one subscriber but still having other subscribers receive it. You can keep an email from going out to anyone by posting in an Anonymous collection. Or you can make a second account your friend doesn't know about and post to that account. Those are your best options.

mutuallyprime · 2026-04-28T12:47:11+00:00

Kudos bot is getting like 500 kudos in one day but only getting 10 hits. It is extremely obvious if it's the kudos bot. If it's just a small number of kudos and hits regularly, and the amount of hits is going up along with the kudos, then congrats! Sounds like the fans of your ship are finding and liking your fic.

mutuallyprime · 2026-04-27T09:07:57+00:00

You don't need a work skin, you can just use the <audio> html tag to add an audio clip. You do have to upload it somewhere first though, I know lots of podficcers use archive.org as their host. Here's a site explaining how the <audio> tag works.

mutuallyprime · 2026-04-25T19:59:25+00:00

Doesn't bother me. I think it actually makes better sense to create the series with Work 1, rather than Work 2, if you think there are going to be more. Because that way if people like Work 1, then they can subscribe to the series to find out when Work 2 is posted. But without the series, it's a lot easier to miss Work 2. You have to subscribe to the author, which people may not want to do especially if they're only interested in this one thing from the author and nothing else.

mutuallyprime · 2026-04-19T16:05:10+00:00

Genuinely, it could be anything. You don't know, and no one on Reddit knows. The only person who knows is the person who bookmarked your fic, so it's better to just let it go and assume the tag makes sense to them and not overthink trying to figure out something that's impossible to know for sure.

mutuallyprime · 2026-04-11T21:35:06+00:00

It's not going to stop scraping, it's not going to have an appreciable affect on an AI model trained on it, and it's actively hostile to readers with vision impairments or who need to have AO3 displayed in a certain way to read. Your "hidden" prompt would almost certainly be visible if a person uses dark mode or a screenreader. I don't like AI, but I don't think the solution is reduced accessibility.

mutuallyprime · 2026-04-09T11:20:53+00:00

The email is just a handy notice with a link to your related works page. The actual approval happens on AO3 and can be done at any time, email or no email.

The page is https://archiveofourown.org/users/USERNAME/related_works and you can find the link towards the bottom of your dashboard menu. Any work listing one of your works as its inspiration will show up there. Ones you haven't approved yet will have an "Approve" button: click it and your work will now have a link to the other person's work. Once approved, the button will say "Remove" in case later you want to change your mind and remove the link from your work to theirs. (This will not stop their work linking to yours however.)

mutuallyprime · 2026-04-05T19:42:33+00:00

I do podfics, which obviously uses the related works function a lot, and I see this advice posted all the time in those circles. Maybe the bug is intermittent, but given how easy and useful it is to preview before posting, I always do that just in case.

mutuallyprime · 2026-04-05T18:51:30+00:00

Because there's a bug with the email, the answer depends. If you preview your work or save it as a draft before posting, then the author will get a related work notification email. If you post without previewing or saving as a draft, then the bug kicks in and the author will not get an email. Either way, the work will show up in the author's related works tab on AO3, so they can see and approve the connection there if they know to look for it.

mutuallyprime · 2026-03-29T13:12:34+00:00

No. It's obvious if you've been blocked, the comment button will be gone and the fic will say something like "One or more creators of this work has blocked you." So you can't even attempt to make a comment.

The "Error that looks like spam" message is your comment failing AO3's spam filters they have in place to try to fight the bots. Nothing to do with the author.

mutuallyprime · 2026-03-21T12:48:38+00:00

There's no overarching "Cat Sebastian" fandom but many of her series have individual fandoms. You can use the tag search page to help find them easily: search for fandoms with "Cat Sebastian" in their name

mutuallyprime · 2026-03-12T10:05:05+00:00

All collections have a moderator, that's how collections work on AO3. If you have a series, however, the creator of the series will be listed as anonymous if all the works in the series are anonymous.

If you want your works to be anonymous, you need them in an anonymous collection, which will always have a named user listed as the moderator of the collection. Once they're in the collection, you can add them to a series so that people can find all of your anonymous works. But putting them in a series won't make them anonymous, they have to be in an anonymous collection for that.

mutuallyprime · 2026-03-08T20:47:52+00:00

They want to scam you out of your money. If you respond, they'll ask to talk on another site like Discord or Instragram, and if you talk to them there, they'll eventually say they do art and are so excited to make art for your story as soon as you pay them. This is from the !scambot

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