Hi everyone! I hope you're all doing well and we're in for a better 2021. I for one got my first vax shot and getting the 2nd one in two weeks. I'm probably going to a yakitori place as soon as I'm all set to go.

So over the past few months, I've gotten messages from people who think there are too many ads on the site. I don't actually manage the ads myself so each time I get a message like this, I send a reply asking about which ads they find the most annoying so I can ask for them to be removed but no one ever responded back (weird...). I finally talked to the ad manager anyway and just asked them to remove the interstitial ad ("in-between pages" ad) and asked them to reduce the frequency of ads. Hopefully this reduces the number of ads you all see over the next few days -- but hopefully not by so much that the site dies instead lol =/ If you do find an ad placement you find particularly annoying, let me know (better yet, send me a screenshot).

I mean I get it. I really wish I didn't have to place ads at all but without them, the servers can't be paid for, though I wish there was a better way. If you'd like to support the site in some other way and get rid of the ads in the process (plus more benefits!), maybe consider getting an AFF Gold membership! I really try to give you added value for that membership so it's worth it for you and if you have any other ideas for what you'd like to have under the AFF Gold program, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Another option is to use the Asianfanfics: Material app if you have Android. It has fewer ads than the site by default since I have complete control over ad placement there plus it has some cool stuff like better and more secure read offline features for both authors and readers and more screen space when scrolling while reading a story. The app is still under development though so it doesn't have everything yet.

As for what I've been doing for AFF lately, I've been trying to improve the search feature. Right now, search is mostly focused on tags but eventually, I want search to be able to just do a general search for anything -- so one search box where you can type anything you want and it looks through title, tags, descriptions, and forewords. I think that will make it easier for both site and app searches and hopefully cuts down on the "Please HALP me find this story" posts. Speaking of which, please post those as a blog please! They're not stories and the more the stories have non-stories in them, the harder it is to find anything. Thanks!

Happy Thursday and hope we all make it to the weekend soon!