There are a bunch of stories in this world.

Masterlist AO3

[forfawkssake]

I hate it when you’re reading smut and you can’t figure out what position they’re in.

[jonmoxleys]

sometimes it just ends up being something like

[onlyhereforthedrama]

ITS BACK

[dontleavemydreams-deactivated20]

lord 

[uhmgilinsky]

Y’ALL NEED JESUS

[forfawkssake]

Please stop reblogging this post

[myterribletwenties]

This post made my water break

[myterribletwenties]

In honor of my daughter’s first birthday next week, I’m sharing the post that made me laugh so hard that it broke my water.

[forfawkssake]

WHAT

[hotchstuff]

God, I love this accursed website.

[myterribletwenties]

Hey internet, the girl that was born from this post is 4 years old today (July 2 2021) also, the gif still makes me laugh. Happy Birthday, Marceline!!

[twomanyfandomshelp]

Happy July 2nd, 2024, guess Marceline is 7 now

[insufferable-yapper]

Happy July 2nd, 2025; she’s 8 now (5am for me)

[myterriblethirties]

Happy Birthday to my Marceline, 8 years ago today (July 2, 2025) she came into this world five days before her due date to see wtf was so funny 🤣 this post, like many other things, are on a long list of topics to discuss when she’s older lol

[brokenteardrops]

Happy 9th Birthday Little Marceline!!! (July 2 2026)

[myterriblethirties]

It’s July 2 2026 internet, help me wish a Happy Birthday to my brilliant and beautiful 9 year old, Marceline! I’ve shown her (most of) the comments and she says “thank u internet 😁😁”

[badwolfkaily]

This.

[strongwomenunited]

I don’t know about others but the only reason I put both is so that whichever someone clicks on, they will find my fic. So if there is supposed to be rules, I guarantee you that no writer knows these ones. We can barely get people to comment, you think we’re going to specifically choose & or / ? Hell no.

[beatrice-otter]

I’ve been in fandom for twenty years, and “/” means romance and “&” means no romance was literally one of the first things I learned. It dates back to Star Trek fanfiction of the 70s. I’m boggled by the fact that anyone who’s been reading fic on AO3 for more than like five minutes wouldn’t know that, and I’m curious as to what fanfic community you come out of.

I don’t think that tagging with both is actually going to get your fic in front of more readers. People looking for romance often exclude the “&” tag if there are too many gen fics tagged with both. People looking for gen often exclude the “/” tag if there are too many fics with both. So rather than putting your fic in front of twice the people, you are in fact more likely to get your target audience ignoring your fic because it has a tag they don’t want.

Also, by overtagging you are more likely to annoy potential readers away from your fic than entice them. A fic tagged both & and / better have both romance and a ton of platonic interaction between the two characters, like a slow burn romance friends-to-lovers arc. If it isn’t, I’m going to be very unhappy because the author lied to me with the tags to try and trick me into reading a fic with deceptive advertising.

When I’m in a fandom and see tagging where some of the tags don’t really apply and are just there to get it in front of more eyes, I’m going to assume one of two things. Either the author is a newb who doesn’t know anything, or the author is purposefully spamming the tags because they don’t care about lying to their potential audience and think that “spray and pray” is an effective tactic. In the first case, their writing probably will not be very good, so why bother reading their fic. In the second case, the fact that I can’t trust the tags to be accurate means I’m not going to read it to see if it’s interesting even if it has a tag I like. Chances are, that tag isn’t actually in the fic anyway, and even if it is, by spam-tagging the author is making the archive harder to use for everybody. Why would I reward bad behavior with attention? No. Far better to mute the author and move on.

[mylordshesacactus]

More to the point--and no, I will never stop harping on this, because we have GOT to stop leaving our strongest points in the drawer--it doesn't matter if you heard of this convention before joining AO3 or not, because it's in AO3's tagging FAQ.

[id: the "How do I tag a romantic or platonic relationship?" section of the tagging FAQ here.]

"But Jo," you may argue, because you're wrong. "There's no way to find that without digging through site FAQ menus, and that's really inaccessible!"

sure

except

that when you go to post a new fic, and you go to put in those relationship tags, you see this

[id: the Relationships field]

and that tooltip, the one THERE TO EXPLAIN HOW THE FIELD WORKS, links to the Relationships segment of the tag FAQ, which explicitly lays this shit out.

I don't care if you don't know fandom history. I don't care if you've never heard a goddamn word about the spirk shippers. I don't care if you've never been exposed to fandom culture in your life. It is, frankly, not fair to expect those things of everyone.

What is entirely fair to expect is that you will READ THE INSTRUCTIONS PRINTED NEXT TO THE FUCKING BOX, actually. Forget fandom conventions. It genuinely doesn't matter whether you agree with or respect fandom conventions. This is a site policy. This is explicitly how tagging on AO3, specifically, works.

[dayntee]

I didn't always know this myself, so you know what I did?

Went through all my fics and fixed my tags.

Even if you didn't know it before, you know it now from this post, so take a sec to go make AO3 easier to navigate for everyone, okay?

Good talk.

[hypotenussy]

the number 1 rule of fanfic is have fun and be yourself. the number 2 rule is the average healthy adult male can lose roughly 2 liters of blood before dying.

[thecharmingquirksofothers]

incredible prev tags

[mari-monsta]

why is it that when im reading fanfic i feel like i have a fairly good metric for if something is characterized accurately but when im trying to write suddenly its like ive never seen this character in my life. would he say that. would he fucking say that. suddenly i have no idea

[salmonella-warrior]

1k words with inspiration: literally 10 minutes or less of writing. a breeze

1k words without inspiration: i will do it. i will take the ring to mordor

[dreadwedge]

[writingdose]

insane to me how, to some people, this is not a common sense

[twirlingfreckles]

the very concept of writing an mcu fanfiction in which the winter soldier is a mild mannered smoothie barista

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

reblog if you love ao3 exactly how it is and you don’t want it to “update” or change in any way♡

[valend]

The greatest minds of this generation are putting all their creative energy into writing pornography for 50 hits on ao3

[skyline-sunset-in-my-veins]

So make sure to thank them!!!!!!!

[jeeyonshim]

an editor's job is to keep you humble

[paranormal-taters]

"i feel besquintled", said no one ever. because that's not a word.

[paranormal-taters]

okay nevermind it IS a word now and this is exactly what it means.

[paranormal-taters]

EVERYONE SHUT UP AND LOOK AT THIS NEW AND BETTER WORD

[musicalmelody001]

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

aftercare for posting on ao3

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

your fic was good you did grammar good you’re the kind of freak people like everything’s cool dude :^)

[hypotenussy]

the number 1 rule of fanfic is have fun and be yourself. the number 2 rule is the average healthy adult male can lose roughly 2 liters of blood before dying.

[thecharmingquirksofothers]

incredible prev tags

[dear-ao3]

[animentality]