Comment Day

A multifandom event celebrating leaving comments on beloved fic. Header by Patrick Fore on Unsplash.

[comment-day]

About This Event

You know when you leave a really long comment on a fic? Something that makes you go 'oh man if only I could bring this energy to my regular deadlines', but you just gotta tell someone how awesome their work is? What if we had a whole day celebrating that?

What is this event? Comment Day is a celebration of leaving comments on beloved fic, both to tell the author what their work means to you, and to appreciate reflecting on the parts of a work you enjoy! We all pick a fic (or maybe several fics, if you wanna go hard) that is our favourite, and work on a really detailed, fun, personalized comment, and on Comment Day we all go out and leave someone a comment that will make their day.

This blog has tips and tricks about crafting a good comment, polls and graphics collecting stats for the event and a general celebration about how fun leaving comments can be. You don't normally get to tell the creator how awesome their work is with things like books or movies, we get to do that with fic, and isn't that fantastic?

Date: 28 September, 2025, whatever time zone that takes place in for you.

Tips on Commenting:

Commenting on Fanfic Themes

Some Resources to help with Commenting

How to Embed an Image in an Ao3 Comment

Comment Day Stats

Here

Collections (so we can bookmark fics you commented on to a big collaborative collection).

Ao3 Collection Here

FF.net Community Here

[comment-day]

Comment Day - After Action

Sunday is over, and Comment Day has come to a close! But that doesn't mean you need to stop commenting— hopefully this just gives even more inspiration to show authors how much you love their works. How did the day go for you?

How did you spend Comment Day?

I left a detailed comment on a single beloved fic.

I commented on a couple different fics I love.

I commented on new things from authors I appreciate.

I read entirely new things, leaving comments where I went!

Something else/Nuance/I'm bald/Tell us in notes

Voting ended onSep 30, 2025

__

Final Stats

And it's time for a final stats breakdown! Let's look at some of the works you all submitted.

It looks like Teen rating was the most popular, but we saw fics from all sorts of ratings! You all love fics for all different ages!

After F/M and M/M being neck and neck for most of the day, it looks like M/M pulled ahead at the end! And Gen made a stronger showing as the day went on!

We got a real assortment of lengths submitted, from drabble to someone commenting on a 100-120k fic. It looks like the most popular was under 1000 words though!

After chaptered being in the lead for most of the day, one-shot pulled ahead at the very last!

All the fics submitted this Comment Day were on Ao3!

And while we had a huge variety of genres submitted, it looks like AU and Fluff were our most popular!

You can see all of the stats including recommended fics here!

Thank you for a wonderful comment day, we hope you had a wonderful time. May this be just the start of commenting on fics we love, wherever we go!

[comment-day]

Stats Update

More of the day has gone by! How has your commenting gone? Have you commented on everything you intend to, or are you still going? Here's a look at some stats for the fics that were submitted!

We're getting a wide variety of ratings now! Showing lots of different types of authors some love!

We have a few more gen fics represented now, but still concentrated mostly in F/M and M/M!

For length, the winner is still 2-5k, but 5-10k and under 1k both have some representation. The longest fic commented on so far was in the 100-120k range!

Chaptered is still taking the crown, edging out one-shots.

We have a variety of fandoms represented, but Katekyou Hitman Reborn is taking the crown!

Looks like everyone is staying on Ao3 so far!

Submit more fics for stats here! What fics come to mind immediately when you go I have GOT to do a comment to tell an author how much their work means to me?

Comment Day 2025 Stats

Fill out this form as many times as you like, for any fic you comment on today! Let's see if we can get some stats about the types of commen

You can see the live stats and the fics people are reccing here!

[comment-day]

Comment Day has been running for a bit, and it's time to see some of the stats for the fics people have submitted!

Looks like we have a split of ratings, but no G-rated fics submitted yet!

Looks like F/M and M/M are neck and neck for categories!

We have a variety of lengths submitted— mostly short, but some people are hitting those longfics!

And it looks like chaptered fics are edging out one-shots for the lead.

And everyone submitting so far has been using Ao3!

Submit more fics for stats here! What fics come to mind immediately when you go I have GOT to do a comment to tell an author how much their work means to me?

Comment Day 2025 Stats

Fill out this form as many times as you like, for any fic you comment on today! Let's see if we can get some stats about the types of commen

You can see the live stats and the fics people are reccing here!

[comment-day]

Comment Day Begins (For Some)

Comment day is Sunday, and for some time zones, Sunday has just begun! Go forward, comment your heart out! Let's make some writers' days!

If it is Sunday in your time zone and you want to start participating, you can access a google form for us to collect some stats here. This lets us make graphs about our favourite fics and collect some big collections at the end of the day. So feel free to start filling this out if you've started your commenting!

Comment Day 2025 Stats

Fill out this form as many times as you like, for any fic you comment on today! Let's see if we can get some stats about the types of commen

[comment-day]

How To Embed An Image In An Ao3 Comment

Sometimes, an image is worth a thousand words. You've read a fic, and the only way to respond to it is with a picture. Maybe this is a scribble you drew in the notes app on your phone, maybe it's art you drew with actual artistic talent, maybe it's a meme you just looked up, maybe it's a meme you just made. But you have your image, and you want to put it in someone's comments. How do you do that?

Ao3 comments support HTML, so to embed an image you need an image link to where the image is hosted somewhere on the web, and you need a bit of HTML code. First thing, the image.

You can use a site like Imgur to host your image, or a private tumblr post, or a fandom image host like Squidge Image Hosting. The important thing is that you want the actual image URL, and not the link to the page that the image is hosted on. Let's say you put your image in a private tumblr post, it would look something like this to get the image link.

You want to right-click (or control-click, whatever works on your screen) to get this dropdown menu, and go down to Copy Image Address. That drops the URL into your clipboard. And then you copy this code:

<img src="YOUR IMAGE URL" alt="DESCRIPTION OF YOUR IMAGE" border="0" width="Max-width 95%" />

In order that's the code that tells the HTML which image to pull off the web, a description that will work for screen readers, telling it that it doesn't need a border, and a bit of code that will keep the image from running off the screen if you grabbed a big image. You put your image URL in that bit of code and write a fast description, and then bingo, you're ready to post your image!

Oh god though, you're on mobile, that all looks awful: quick tip! If you host your image on images.squidge.org, they will do the html for you. It's free fandom image hosting as long as you're over 18. Upload your image, and then scroll down on the page, and there's a convenient button with the HTML just done for you already.

Scroll down to HTML and hit the copy button, and then just paste that into the Ao3 comment box, update the image description (cause it'll just have the title there) and you're good to go!

Go forth and decorate the world with images!

Do you think you'll embed images in a comment now?

No, too complicated 😤

Maybe.... if I know of a good meme 🤔

I'm embedding an image right now 🧑‍🎨

Voting ended onSep 14, 2024

[comment-day]

Ao3 turned off comment images to deal with spam a little while ago, but they are back! You can now link memes, additional kudos buttons, and gifs in your comments!

[comment-day]

for adding fics to the collection, is that just fics we commented on specifically for the event, or should we add any fics we comment on today?

PS thanks for running this! :)

That will be fics you comment on specifically for the event! It's a just-for-the-day collection :D (Thank you for participating!)

[comment-day]

is there going to be a comment day 2025? x

Yes! Mods were a bit buried under work commitments, so we set the date and then didn't post about it— but we are going to be doing it again this year, on the last Sunday in September!

[comment-day]

It's already Comment Day in some time zones, so it's time to release the stats form!

This is just an optional bonus, but if you are commenting on fic today, we thought it would be a fun idea to release a form to collect some basic info about the fics, so we could get some stats!

Comment Day 2024 Stats

Fill out this form as many times as you like, for any fic you comment on today! Let's see if we can get some stats about the types of commen

If you want, once you've commented on a fic, you can fill out this form! All the questions are optional, and should hopefully let us get some fun graphs. There's a place to rec the fic you commented on, too! And you can fill it out as many times as you want, for as many different fics as you comment on!

[comment-day]

Let's look at some of the stats we've collected so far!

The most popular rating of fics to comment on was teen!

The most popular category was M/M, with F/M close behind.

People are mostly commenting on short pics, with 2001-5000 words making up a quarter of the fics commented on.

Our most popular fandom to be submitted is Harry Potter, with a whopping 16.4% of all fics submitted.

We added this question in late after someone submitted a live journal fic, so this graph isn't fully representative, but so far it looks like mostly people are finding fits on Ao3!

It looks like Angst is our most popular genre, with 38.2% of submissions including it, but that's followed by AU at 26.5%, and Canon-Compliant and Hurt/Comfort both at 25%

We've had 42 fics recced in the list so far, you can check them out in the form results or the Ao3 collection!

Hope you're all having a good comment day everybody!

[comment-day]

Comment Day has come to an end (though of course we encourage you to comment every day you read something,) and it's time to look back at our stats form!

We had a total of 226 responses!

Teen is still our most popular rating overall, but Gen took the second place slot from Mature since last time we updated.

The most popular category was still M/M, with F/M close behind.

It looks like short fiction took it, with the most popular length of fic being 2001-5000 words, but it's notable that in the expanded spreadsheet you can still see that fics of over 50k and 100k were recced as well.

We added the one-shot question later, but still got a good response! And you can see that there's a pretty even split between one-shot and chaptered, and this went back and forth several times over the course of the day.

We got too many responses for google forms to do a breakdown of which fandoms people were from, but breaking into the spreadsheet shows that most fandoms were recced once or twice! The exceptions are Harry Potter, with 23 recs, and 일렉시드 | Eleceed (Webcomic), with 18. Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse) also had 8!

The results were pretty heavily slanted towards Ao3, but FF.net made a strong showing as the evening came!

Angst was our lead response for genre for most of the day, but AUs took it in the last few hours, at 29.3% Au and 27.4% Angst! With strong showings also by Fluff (25%), Romance (23.6%), Canon-Divergent (23.6%), and Hurt/Comfort (19.7%).

We've had 93 fics recced, you can check them out in the form results or the Ao3 collection!

Hope you're all having a good comment day everybody!

[comment-day]

It's already Comment Day in some time zones, so it's time to release the stats form!

This is just an optional bonus, but if you are commenting on fic today, we thought it would be a fun idea to release a form to collect some basic info about the fics, so we could get some stats!

Comment Day 2024 Stats

Fill out this form as many times as you like, for any fic you comment on today! Let's see if we can get some stats about the types of commen

If you want, once you've commented on a fic, you can fill out this form! All the questions are optional, and should hopefully let us get some fun graphs. There's a place to rec the fic you commented on, too! And you can fill it out as many times as you want, for as many different pics as you comment on!

[comment-day]

It's already Comment Day in some time zones, so it's time to release the stats form!

This is just an optional bonus, but if you are commenting on fic today, we thought it would be a fun idea to release a form to collect some basic info about the fics, so we could get some stats!

Comment Day 2024 Stats

Fill out this form as many times as you like, for any fic you comment on today! Let's see if we can get some stats about the types of commen

If you want, once you've commented on a fic, you can fill out this form! All the questions are optional, and should hopefully let us get some fun graphs. There's a place to rec the fic you commented on, too! And you can fill it out as many times as you want, for as many different pics as you comment on!

[comment-day]

It's already Comment Day in some time zones, so it's time to release the stats form!

This is just an optional bonus, but if you are commenting on fic today, we thought it would be a fun idea to release a form to collect some basic info about the fics, so we could get some stats!

Comment Day 2024 Stats

Fill out this form as many times as you like, for any fic you comment on today! Let's see if we can get some stats about the types of commen

If you want, once you've commented on a fic, you can fill out this form! All the questions are optional, and should hopefully let us get some fun graphs. There's a place to rec the fic you commented on, too! And you can fill it out as many times as you want, for as many different pics as you comment on!

[comment-day]

About This Event

You know when you leave a really long comment on a fic? Something that makes you go 'oh man if only I could bring this energy to my regular deadlines', but you just gotta tell someone how awesome their work is? What if we had a whole day celebrating that?

What is this event? Comment Day is a celebration of leaving comments on beloved fic, both to tell the author what their work means to you, and to appreciate reflecting on the parts of a work you enjoy! We all pick a fic (or maybe several fics, if you wanna go hard) that is our favourite, and work on a really detailed, fun, personalized comment, and on Comment Day we all go out and leave someone a comment that will make their day.

This blog will have tips and tricks about crafting a good comment, polls and graphics collecting stats for the event and a general celebration about how fun leaving comments can be. You don't normally get to tell the creator how awesome their work is with things like books or movies, we get to do that with fic, and isn't that fantastic?

Date: 15 September, 2024, whatever time zone that takes place in for you.

Tips on Commenting:

How to Embed an Image in an Ao3 Comment

Commenting on Fanfic Themes

Some Resources to help with Commenting

Comment Day Stats

Form

Form Responses

Ao3 Collection (so you can bookmark fics you commented on to a big collaborative collection).

Here

[transformativeworks]

[millinerswings]

Comments are a critical part of the fandom ecosystem. But sometimes it can feel hard to think of what to say and I get all tangled up and just don't write anything.

I have 2 go-to comments when I want to be supportive but my brain won't brain. This could be a strategy that helps you comment more often too!

Mine are:

That was great. Thanks for writing and sharing. ❤️

Second read, second kudos ❤️

[comment-day]

It's already Comment Day in some time zones, so it's time to release the stats form!

This is just an optional bonus, but if you are commenting on fic today, we thought it would be a fun idea to release a form to collect some basic info about the fics, so we could get some stats!

Comment Day 2024 Stats

Fill out this form as many times as you like, for any fic you comment on today! Let's see if we can get some stats about the types of commen

If you want, once you've commented on a fic, you can fill out this form! All the questions are optional, and should hopefully let us get some fun graphs. There's a place to rec the fic you commented on, too! And you can fill it out as many times as you want, for as many different fics as you comment on!

[comment-day]

So far, we've had 140 people fill out the form with fics they've commented on! 15 of them are for fics under 1000 words, and on the other end of the spectrum we've had submissions for 3 fics over 200,000 words: for Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Doctor Who, and it didn't have a listed fandom but it was F/F Darkfic@

[comment-day]

Ooh perhaps next comment day, the form can have one-shot vs multi-chapter fics question. It would also be cool to have a `Drabbles (100/200/300)` option on fic length to differentiate between `Less than 1k` and specifically Drabbles

I know other sites don't seem popular in the form, but perhaps add www.squidgeworld. org? It's a very similar site (visually) to Ao3, which seems dominant

Also, I saw a few complaints about not catering to non-Ao3 sites. Perhaps add some equivalents into the Ratings question next event? For example fanfiction. net K / Gen Audiences T / Teen and Up M / Mature MA / Explicit (although FFN doesn't technically allow MA)

For more non-Ao3 options, consider adding Queerplatonic (~) and Adversarial (vs) relationships to the form! These options come from Squidge and may help with breaking away from Ao3-centric content

Separating the question 'what relationships were in the fic' into different questions for platonic vs romantic might also help differentiate, since probably not all sites have clear Romantic (/) and Platonic (&) tags that someone could copy-paste. So having separate sections may make the question clearer for data usage, while also not relying on Ao3 tag standards to denote the difference

Either way, I love comment-centric events, thanks for hosting <3

Oh these are all lovely thoughts, thank you! I think editing the form now would break the graphs for some of them, and the data would end up muddied if I separated the relationship types at this point (that's a great idea though, we already had someone answer that question as "platonic" because they thought relationships was just for romantic), but I can add Squidge as an option right away, and add the one-shot versus chaptered question, and I'll throw the Drabble length in there and see if we get any takers! Thank you!

[comment-day]

Ao3 Collection!

We decided to take a step further and set up an Ao3 collection to bookmark fics we comment on! If you are on Ao3, you can bookmark to this collection as well!

Comment Day Collection

To bookmark a fic to the collection, when you bookmark a fic just add CommentDay2024 in the collections field of the bookmark!

Go forth and bookmark, if you want!

[comment-day]

We're up to 50 works bookmarked in the collection!

So many lovely comments!

[comment-day]

It's already Comment Day in some time zones, so it's time to release the stats form!

This is just an optional bonus, but if you are commenting on fic today, we thought it would be a fun idea to release a form to collect some basic info about the fics, so we could get some stats!

Comment Day 2024 Stats

Fill out this form as many times as you like, for any fic you comment on today! Let's see if we can get some stats about the types of commen

If you want, once you've commented on a fic, you can fill out this form! All the questions are optional, and should hopefully let us get some fun graphs. There's a place to rec the fic you commented on, too! And you can fill it out as many times as you want, for as many different pics as you comment on!