thoughts on leaflet for fandom

Historically writers in fandom have thrived on sites like AO3 ( Archive of Our Own ), and previously on Tumblr in the pre-NSFW-ban era. I wanted to point out things these sites "got right" that enabled them to become fandom spaces, so that if Leaflet wanted to become more palatable to fandom, they'd have some new feature ideas!

The first feature that comes to mind that both AO3 and Tumblr have in common is...

Tags

Tags have become a core part of fandom culture in my mind. It's how we find things we love and avoid things we don't love (or could be triggered by). They allow us to sort, search and filter content the way we like. Having a tagging system, even if extremely simple, could go a long way for Leaflet and would also aid discoverability of new pubs.

Bluesky has the handy feature of seeing posts of a certain tag by a specific user when clicking the tag on one of their posts or on their profile. I love the idea of the feature, but my non-committal, afraid-to-use-stickers ass has always struggled to embrace it since I can't edit my posts after the fact. What if I change my mind on what tag I want to use to organize X or Y thing?? Terrifying. With Leaflet, however, implementing something similar has the potential to be very powerful with the ability to edit.

Customization

[ shoutout to krbkevents.leaflet.pub ! ]

Along the same vein of controlling your own online experience, both of these online spaces have wide open customization options. I think Tumblr still technically allows custom themes, but it doesn't seem as accessible as it once was. AO3 let's users choose from numerous site skins, or create their own. You can even create skins unique to specific work and can get pretty creative with HTML and CSS.

I love the theme and customization options for Leaflet so far, but would love to see just a liiittle bit more. Maybe having an additional one or two font color options, and font size options beyond just headers and paragraph. I appreciate the lightweight feel of Leaflet, so I understand if there's hesitancy to get too deep into customization options. I would be content with even just the accent color as an additional option for font color, and maybe one more. Something similar to the highlight color options (which rock, btw) would be great.

I've fiddled with the Canvas a bit and that's where I really wish I had more customization options. Maybe it's the primal urge to immediately scribble on anything canvas-like talking, but I would love a free draw tool, or if that is asking too much, a simple shapes and arrows tool to connect ideas. Font, color and size options would go hard. I do love that y'all have already included the ability to rotate blocks, satisfying another primal urge to Spin Thing upon opening a canvas.

With just a smidge more customization options for Canvas, I can envision folks making cute little moodboards and sharing them! Writers collabing on a Canvas to brainstorm or solve a plothole, then immediately hopping over to their collab doc and typing away. The vibes would be immaculate.

Comments & Community

I love love LOVE that quotes can exist right with the docs. It's like my favorite thing. I would be thrilled to see more with it, like quotes and comments being sort of "anchored" to the quoted text so you can scroll through the doc and the quotes in parallel. Obviously this would be best experienced on a wide screen, but could still be nice to just swipe back and forth on mobile.

Leaflet has already solved one problem AO3 has by having the comment box on the side. AO3 users often complain that with the comment box at the bottom, if they have thoughts while reading it's awkward to note them down, and if they wait until they've finished reading they may lose the thought. So kudos to Leaflet on this! Easier interaction means more interaction, which is the lifeblood of fandom.

Right now it seems comments and quotes are sorted chronologically by post date. It would be nice to see quotes (and comments with quotes) sorted in order of location in doc, or have other sorting options.

My BIG BRAIN idea for comments and quotes is to have a sort of "heat map" within the doc showing where the most discussion is happening. I made a little mock-up of one way I was envisioning it.

This, combined with anchored quotes, would have me simultaneously bouncing off the walls in excitement and on my knees sobbing in gratitude. It's like everything I've ever wanted as an author of fanworks, to be able to see where my readers were like !!!!! and then just pull up the quotes right next to the doc and scroll through and read their reactions alongside the text. I cannot overstate how badly I want this.

When fanwriters post their works on Bluesky (and on Twitter in the Before Times) as threads, you could sort of gauge this scrolling through and seeing a spike in likes or quote posts, but it was clunky having to click through each post and then the quotes to see reactions. Having this feature in Leaflet would be PERFECT.

Comment moderation will also be important I think. AO3 gives authors the ability to delete comments or require comments to be approved before appearing on the fic, as well as the ability to limit comments to registered users.

Another feature I'd love to see is collaborative publications. I know several writers who collab on projects by alternating chapters, so having a shared publication they can both publish to while retaining their individual @ would be great. I imagine this would also be nice for other formats of writing teams, like newsletters and such. [if this already exists, i'm sorry for being an asshole]

I know y'all are already planning on having a sort of home/profile page for folks, which I'm excited to see! In the spirit of the social component of the platform, I thought it would be nice to have a spot on our profiles to recommend or highlight other publications we enjoy. Maybe a place you can see the docs someone has recently commented on or quoted? Every profile can become a mini reading blog! (I heard you like blogs so I put blogs in your blogs)

AO3 has bookmarks and collections which allow folks to keep track of what they've read and share works they've enjoyed. I know Bluesky recently implemented bookmarks, so I wonder if Leaflet could somehow take advantage of this? Or have their own bookmarks that could interface with Bluesky bookmarks in some way? No idea how the backend looks on all that, but just a thought!

Other Potential Sources of Inspiration

Ellipsus

Ellipsus is where many writers I know moved when Google Docs started drowning in the AI Kool-aid. It's lightweight, mobile friendly and already has a few nice themes to choose from. Text customization options are all there and docs are easily shareable for collaboration, with collaborators able to leave comments. The Focus mode is a great tool to help get words down. Ellipsus even has a tool that allows users to export directly to AO3!

Obsidian

I used Ellipsus for a while, but I found myself missing the built-in dictionary and thesaurus of Google Docs. Thus, I turned to Obsidian.

Obsidian is extremely customizable. Like, to the point it's kind of overwhelming. But I dove in since I knew they had user-made plugins for everything you could possibly think of, including dictionary and thesaurus plugins. I'm also able to sort all of my documents how I like, which is handy for more longform writing with multiple chapters.

Other Misc Ideas

A dynamic Table of Contents based on headings

Collapsible headings/blocks

Having a thumbnail view of docs within a pub rather than a list

Inverted chronological order or tag sort within a pub

I'm sure I'll come up with more ideas later, but here's my roughly organized thoughts for now! If any fandom folks are reading, feel free to comment any feature ideas you have. The Leaflet team is small and mighty and very responsive to feedback.

Thanks for reading! - sprout