Archiving: Operation Mustache

[razielim]

I'm trying to figure out the best way to post a bunch of old fanfics on Ao3 without alerting all the people who have subscribed to my account?

I'm finally thinking of reversing my decision to delete all Supernatural fics (and oh god I just remembered I also deleted all the Teen wolf ones. Fine. Supernatural and Teen Wolf, jfc).

Here's the thing - I didn't know you could subscribe to people, so way back when, prior to deleting them, my initial approach was to consolidate them into chapters of a single fic, one fic per ship - a fic with all Wincest ficlets, a fic with all Drowley ficlets, etc.

Cue one of my mutuals sending me an ask on tumblr like "Gabriel, you gave me a heart attack seeing so many update emails."

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

NO.

Not doing that again. I finally figured out how to look it up, and there are 500 people who would get notifications if I simply posted and backdated new fics. I would die. Of guilt or something.

So. I have two options I'm considering.

• One. Create a new account. Post old fics to new account. Add my main account retroactively. Abandon the fics from the new account, leaving only my main. This seems like something a crazy person would do, but it should work. I think.
• Two. Create a false identity. Affix a fake mustach-oijgojgoijg I'm kidding.
• Two. Post them as part of a hidden collection and "reveal" later. Do people get notifications about reveals by people they subscribe to? I don't know. Sounds dangerous, if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyone happen to know the best approach? Because otherwise I'm going to start drafting the weirdest fucking request to Ao3 Support.

Comments

[vriddy]

The fake moustache option is very tempting!!

I was going to suggest doing Drafts and clicking Post at the same time because AO3 batches notifications - but I think the Collection would work a lot better!! That way you get all the time you want to prepare, and then they will all get revealed at the same time so people will only get one email.

If you do the separate account (the only way for people not to get an email), make sure to wait until the notification actually goes out before adding your main account!! Subscription emails only go out once per hour or so, it's not immediate (unless it's a gift, then it's immediate for the giftee).

Did you know you can subscribe to yourself as well? I like doing that because it gives me an idea when the emails come out and what they look like (woo, spotting a typo in the summary only after it's been sent to a bunch of people 😂). Congratulations on writing fics that so many people enjoy btw, that's an impressive number of subscribers :)

[razielim]

Honestly, I wish I'd known about collections and how they work uh.... 8 years ago. When I first started having my little holiday events and posting 10-20 fics in the middle of the night. Would have saved me SO MUCH effort and stress to change one little revealed/unrevealed toggle. What a great feature.

I think I read about subscribing to yourself on reddit while googling my question, and it's honestly blowing my mind as a concept. Especially bc phew you're RIGHT about those summary typos. I usually only catch those five years later. Would be nice to catch them five minutes later if a subscription email could help me with that.

[vriddy]

Might be closer to "one hour later" because of the way the subscription emails are batched but yay, that's the spirit :D I love learning little tips to make my life easier, haha.