In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.
I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!
From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!
I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.
The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.
(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)
If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.
The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.
- insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box
- add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box
- delete -> self explanatory
- on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic
The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.
Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.
HERE'S THAT BITCH IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR
This one that puts the little O in the corner glitches on my computer/browser and will mess up my stories when I go to edit them. I'm not sure if it's bc I'm a Mac or because I'm a Firefox, BUT -
Here's another version if anyone else needs it bc that above version doesn't work for them. Pastebin link. You'll have to "create new script" on tampermonkey/greasemonkey/whatever and paste it in.
In this one, instead of the little O, you get a gray "floaty review box" button amongst the other buttons at the top of the story (bookmarks, mark for later, share, etc.)
This also adds some first/last chapter shortcuts on applicable stories, which I don't personally use much but there ya go.
