dragonlady7

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magickedteacup replied to your post “I have been loving the comments on Basking this past week, even if I…”

in general you can leave an author’s note about editing if you want I guess, but I personally don’t see any problem with editing published works on Ao3; and I wouldn’t sweat stuff like sentence editing, especially in this context; “sketchy practice…” :’D it’s your fic, it’s ok to go back and touch-up on stuff if you want :)b

I think you’re right. It’s kind of an ingrained old-fashioned blogging thing, though, like, if there’s a discussion gong on, I’ve had it ground into me that if you edit something you’d best note that it was edited and why, and like– yeah! but. stories. that’s different.

And yet. I left a little author’s note, because it seemed disingenuous to not ever acknowledge it happened, but I’m not going into specifics because there’s no point repeating the thing that was hurtful. 

I also admit that part of me is super-dismayed because the thing is, I’m not a particularly popular author (I’m not complaining! I do fine! but.), so the vast majority of hits I get on a story are pretty much right when I post it– I don’t tend to get included in rec lists or roundups or whatever– so the vast majority of people who were going to read that story did so before I even realized that line was Bad and Not What I Meant, so like. Welp! And of course most people are going to see something gross and just back-button or whatever, and so I’m like… embarrassed, I guess. I don’t know, I can’t seem to explain it without having it come across as super-whiny. Maybe it is super-whiny of me so it’s a sign I should give up, LOL.

 So I guess it’s partly so if any of those people come back and are like “was this the story that…” it just seems like good practice to have a note up there, and just in general, I feel like edits post-publication should be acknowledged. I don’t know what I’d advise someone else to do in my situation, though.