i speak (occasionally)

queer mess and general fanfiction enthusiast

[cactusringed]

I think fanfiction as a medium is different enough from mainstream literature in the tools it offers writers that it's a shame that it's not talked about more often. And it's not me saying "fanfic is better than books xD" because that sort of mindset is a symptom of people who aren't particularly well read in either medium. I'm just speaking of like... The little things you get to do with a fanfic that you genuinely can't really do in an original story.

I had a big fanfic in a previous fandom where one of the big reveals was the involvement of a kind of infamous villain, whose presence was built up to and foreshadowed through the whole fic until his reveal without ever mentioning his name, so that the name drop would be a gut punch. It worked especially well because of who the villain was and his presence in that fandom space specifically (it's very complicated) and if it was an original story this reveal wouldn't work at all the way it was written in the fic. Because if you don't have a predisposition to think about that character and his relationship to the hero in a very specific way, then just seeing their name won't do much to you; the reveal and the recontextualisation it pushes upon you hinges on your previous knowledge of the source material.

I think it's an interesting tool fanfic authors are given. One of my favorite fanfic of all time is partially a re-imagining of its source material's canon, and something it does is introduce antagonists much earlier in the story or deepen npcs' stories. It then works to evoke a tragic irony that again wouldn't work if you didn't know the source material, and it's something the author obviously has a lot of fun with.

You could call it cheap or a crutch and I mean, yeah, sure, it is a little bit: the fanfic relies on previously established emotional bonds and stakes to achieve its goal, and in some cases it saves the author from having to 'properly' build up its stakes. But I think it's INTERESTING that it has that tool at its disposal. I think it's a fun thing to play with and I think these built in expectations and emotional bonds are especially why I find story driven aus in particular to be fascinating in the amount of ways you can play with them. You know??

[firefly464]

Is this anything

[rainfallsuphere]

I propose an addition

[parchmentengineer]

Been thinking about this graph a little (actually been thinking about it a lot)

[firefly464]

OH THIS IS BEAUTIFUL THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ

[feminist-space]

[johanna-swann]

[everydayconman]

The ancient texts were true… They DO have a reaction image for everything…

[chimaerakitten]

So we all talk about being in fandoms for things that are charmingly bad, and being able to acknowledge that they’re charmingly bad. But of course some people are in fandoms for things that are Actually Amazing. There are people out there who write fanfiction for The Best Science Fiction Novel Of The Twentieth Century. Or who draw fanart exclusively of The Best Movie of All Time. And there are even more people who are in fandoms for things that are Actually Pretty Good, which is not quite amazing but is closer to it than to Charmingly Bad.

And sometimes, you have a string of fandoms that are Actually Pretty Good. And the danger of this—the very great danger—is that when you have a string of Actually Pretty Good and even Actually Amazing obsessions, you start to believe that maybe you have taste. Perhaps you are now immune to the indignities of losing it over something mostly bad.

And then it is shattering to discover that no, bad things can still stick a fork in your brain. 😔

[chimaerakitten]

So I understand why the “transformative fandom gathers around things that are not good because there being a problem makes people desire to fix it” model is popular. I even agree that it’s accurate in many if not most cases. However it is not what this post is about. Plenty of people do transformative and creative fandom activities for things that are very, very good. Simplified models do not encompass everything.

And frankly, it’s starting to really get on my nerves when people read “I think this thing is good. I wouldn’t change a thing about it and frankly I don’t even think there should be more canon added to it, but I am still going to write thousands of words of fic, make a cosplay, and draw fanart” and then completely misunderstand and respond with “yes I agree—I like things that are good too. But I never feel the transformative/creative fandom instinct for them because they are too good.”

Some people do not feel it. Other people do. Stop misreading me to avoid having to adjust your mental model of how fandom works.

[blessphemy]

one of the ways a Canon work can be fandom bait is by missing something that fans want to fix, i.e. "it's bad", but i think this is only one way out of multiple that something can be fandom bait.

compelling worldbuilding (invites interaction with the setting)

interesting gimmick (see: daemons, drift compatibility. subcategory of compelling worldbuilding)

shipping bait (duh)

original character bait (in-universe categories/factions and design elements that make it fun for people to create their own characters)

compelling narrative (invites interaction and tweaks to the storyline: AUs and fixits and so on)

basically anything that invites interaction and recombination. but fandom also has a sort of multiplying effect: the larger the interactive audience of fandom is, the more likely it is to generate ideas and works that draw in more participants. so:

network effect (the larger the established fandom, the more likely it has subfandoms and infrastructure that appeals to niche audiences)

[chimaerakitten]

Yes this exactly, thank you bless.

Things that have space to play in are fandom bait, but space to play in does not equal holes.

[ao3commentoftheday]

user scripts for AO3 relationships

If you're someone who wants to be able to find (or avoid) ships while reading on AO3, odds are good that a fan coder out there has created a user script that could help you out.

User scripts are similar to extensions. You add them to your browser to automatically adjust web pages for you. User scripts allow you the opportunity to personalize them, however, which is wonderful for things like AO3 filters.

Here are a few that might be worth a look:

AO3 multishipper saviour - if you want to read about a particular character in a relationship without specifying any other person. The relationships can be specified to be romantic or platonic or both.

AO3: Reorder Ship Tags - Automatically reorders relationship tags on work blurbs so romantic ships (/) always appear before platonic ships (&).

AO3 Relationship/Character Highlighter - highlights the ship/character you’re looking for if they appear in the first two relationship/character tags.

AO3 romantic relationship savior - hides all romantic relationships in sort & filter page that has "/"

AO3 First Relationship Tag Filter - toggle on the script if you're browsing a relationship tag and all the works that don't have that tag as their first tag will be hidden. Works on both romantic (/) and platonic (&) relationships.

AO3 relationship savior - hides works that have too many relationships in them.

AO3 Only Show Primary Pairing - will hide fics that don't have the designated pairing listed first in the tags.

AO3 Only Show Primary Pairing (Auto) - The difference between this and Neeve's script is that it automatically detects the primary pairing, little to no configuration needed.

AO3 Show every pairing except THAT one - Remove relationship tags from script which you do not want to read.

Feel free to add more in the notes!

[philliwolf5]

I needed this. The filtering is a PAIN on AO3, and you can't save it. 😮‍💨

[ao3commentoftheday]

If you want to save your filters, there are two ways to go about it.

If you do the same search/filter every time, just bookmark the results page with your browser. The URL contains all of your filters, so every time to visit that URL, you'll get the pre-filtered, updated results.

If you use the same filters on different searches (e.g. always filter out Character Death in every fandom), then you can use a bookmarklet to run your filters for you. Instructions on how to set it up can be found here.

[ao3commentoftheday]

hi! You're response to my reblog with Ao3 coding resources doc and general promoting of cool html things makes me want to highlight some of the other cool things that the folks that use workskins do on ao3.

Interactive games: I have a whole post here about the various games on ao3, but pokemon, dating sims, minesweeper, cardgame mimics, character creators and an animated point and click adventure game are some real highlights!

The (currently non-canon) HTML Tryhard tag. Filled with many many cool fics that utilize workskins to tell stories or fics that have tutorials with them. (If you'd prefer to search with filters, a good chunk of fics are in the 2025 or 2026 HTML Tryhards Event collections)

Generators -- When I was starting out, workskins were intimidating, but some folks have made generators that allow you to input your text and get the HTML and CSS to just copy and paste. Including Twitter posts, Simple Texting, Minecraft Chats, iOS texting (instr.), Tool Tips & Footnotes (instr.) and Choose Your Own Adventure (instr.)

Anyway, I hope my ramblings can show off some of the REALLY cool things Ao3 allows us fans to do and maybe inspire more to try making things with workskins.

I am in awe! Truly! And I actually poke around and look for these things sometimes!

Thank you so much for sharing this wealth of resources! It's much appreciated 💗

[kosmogrl]

[lunarriviera]

[transfemmbeatrice]

thought of this immediately and was delighted to discover it’s the same op

[batsandboba]

happy birthday gay people happy birthday technoblade

[batsandboba]

happy birthday gay people happy birthday technoblade

[batsandboba]

happy birthday gay people happy birthday technoblade

[batsandboba]

happy birthday gay people happy birthday technoblade

[batsandboba]

happy birthday gay people happy birthday technoblade

[ao3commentoftheday]

What constitutes a good Fic Rec list?

I’ll tell you what I look for in a fic rec list and then we’ll see what everyone else thinks is good :)

all one fandom, and if it’s shippy then all the same ship

titles of the fic link over to AO3

include the rating of the fics and a brief description (or the reason why you like it)

tag the authors so they know they’ve been rec’d

I’ve definitely seen fic rec lists with a specific theme to them as well, for example “[ship] hurt/comfort recs” but I’m personally good with just the description and picking from there. 

Do any of you make rec lists? Do you appreciate them? What makes a good list?

[sarking]

Ooh, I love rec lists, but I have fairly different preferences for them:

All one fandom is good, but it doesn’t need to be all one ship. I don’t have anything against multifandom rec lists, but the odds of me being familiar with multiple fandoms on them are slim. The important thing is to be clear about the rec list’s theme before you actually list the recs themselves (e.g. random works I liked, coffee shop AUs in small fandoms, m/m slash in Specific Fandom, etc).

The reason you like it, or the reason you think other people should read it, is absolutely 100% necessary, and ideally it consists of at least a couple sentences (unless it’s a 100-word drabble you’re reccing). Without this, and especially if I don’t know anything about your taste in fic, it’s not any different than skimming a work listing.

If there’s something that you had to overlook while reading the fic, or something that made you hesitate to rec it, mention it! If I know the reccer would usually consider a lack of empty space between paragraphs a dealbreaker, I might be willing to give the fic a go despite the fact bad paragraph spacing is usually also a dealbreaker for me. But if I just click on a link and find a wall of text, I’ll probably back button from not just the work, but possibly the rec list as well.

I think of recs as being for potential readers, not authors, so if I were making a rec list, I wouldn’t tag them. (But I would try to comment on the fic!)

[thecorvidhoard]

Hello! I recently started a fic rec blog so I have some thoughts:

I agree that single-fandom (or theme) blogs are more preferable to find, but think about what you want to run also. I wanted a place to archive all my favourite works, and I definitely don't have the energy for multiple blogs so this blog is multifandom. It's not for you (random folk on tumblr) it's for me (person having fun making the blog)

similarly, think about the maximum amount of effort you can spend on the task and still complete it. It would be nice to create a highly polished blog with a written summary and full tags and clear themeing, but that is actually a lot of work!

I've gone with a bullet point summary of author, rating, fandom, ship and then my own thoughts. You can check out the about pages for more information on how I'm organized.

I disagree strongly on tagging the author for a couple reasons - for one, you then have to go through the effort of finding the author (do yourself a favour and avoid giving yourself additional work)

also because as sarking mentioned, it's good to bring up both flaws and personal taste in a rec that may end up being very rude to mention to an author. If I'm reccing you something with the caveat that I really don't like how [important side character] was handled, it would be super rude to tag the author!

Additionally:

Think about longevity! I publish one rec a day through my queue, which means I don't have a lot published yet, but also means my queue is very full and I can chillax between doing a few recs in a row

if you are doing a specific fandom or ship rec blog, it is entirely possible to actually run out of good fic. Don't rush to publish a whole bunch of works just to keep your blog from looking empty! it'll fill up!

tags are your friend, but they can also be your enemy. Don't go overboard on keeping things organized - again! keep your work manageable!

it's very easy to absolutely burn out on a long term project, set yourself up for success at the start!

[ao3skin]

Pride flags Ao3 skins! :D

Happy pride month everyone!

Code, instructions on how to install them and previews HERE 

The specific flags are separated in various chapters, and there are quite a few more than those shown in this tumblr post! (I had to cut down the previews or the post would have been SO LONG). 

Of course I couldn’t make THEM ALL they are so many, and I had technical problems for flags with more than 6 colors and I still haven’t found a way to handle chevrons….

The ones I’ve made (you’ll find them all in the link above) are these: the Rainbow Flag, the Trans Flag, the NonBinary Flag, the Agender Flag, the Bigender Flag, the Genderfluid Flag, the Genderqueer Flag, the Greygender Flag, the Lesbian Flag, the Gay Man Flag, the Pansexual Flag, the Bisexual Flag, the Aromantic Flag, the Asexual Flag and the Polysexual Flag. 

The header, the menu and the footer all have flags in it. 

The buttons have flags when you hover them 

The tags are colored by type (relationships, characters and freeform) each having a different flag color!

Each flag was made to work decently well both on light mode and dark mode (reversi).

Have fun! 

here the link again. the skins are separated by chapters, different flag for different chapter.

[ao3commentoftheday]

Large Text and Rainbow Borders AO3 site skins (light and dark)

I discovered how to put gradients in borders and that was pretty much the whole idea behind this pair of skins.

As I was building them, I recalled the number of people who were sad that custom skins often don't work because they need the text to be larger, so I built these two to have the text set at 120% bigger than normal in the fic blurbs, the fic body, and the comments.

Light mode has some comments to help guide you if you want to modify this to suit your own needs.

You can find both skins, and instructions for how to apply them to your account, over here on github.

[ao3commentoftheday]

dark mode rainbow skin (aka be gay do crimes)

if you like this site skin, you can grab the code from github. I included instructions for how to use it in the readme file.

I'm not sure how obvious it is in the screenshots, but the background for the site is now a dark rainbow gradient. It's most visible here in the Work Search screenshot. All images are described in the alt text.

[ao3commentoftheday]

Made a dark mode skin to go with the light mode version of this one.

[ao3commentoftheday]

You can find the code for both of these skins, as well as an improved dark mode version over here on github.

[common-toad]

How to Read Fics Offline

Inspired by the recent AO3 outages, I'd like to encourage people to download more fics, and I think some people might overestimate its complexity. It's good for preservation and for times like these! This is how I do it:

Get an E-Book Reader Software

Technically optional, but makes the reading experience and organization much nicer. I recommend Readest, it's the best one I've come across so far. It's open source (ad free), available for basically every device, and has great customization options.

Download Your Fics

At the top of every work on AO3 is a "Download" button. The best option (if you have an e-book reader) is EPUB.

Open Them on the App

On Readest, click the plus sign and "From Local File".

Choose the file(s) from your storage.

And that's it! There's a lot of organization options. I have the fics grouped by fandom, and then have a "tbr" subfolder under each of those.

This is how the reading experience looks for me on mobile, as an example:

play the goddamn part by hardscrabble

[bamsara]

A quick tutorial on how to Download Fics from AO3

After making this poll about the panic that comes when Archive of Our Own goes down, there seems to be a chunk of folks who didn't know they could download fics for offline use, or don't know how to go about it. Here's a quick tutorial for that.

You do not need an AO3 account (unless the fic you are trying to download is restricted to AO3 users only) you only need an internet connection and a device to download to, whether it's PC or a phone.

These instructions work for both desktop and mobile. At the top of the fic, where the chapter index is, there will be the download option on the right side, and an 'Entire Work' button the left side.

For One-Shots: Go ahead and click the download button.

For multiple chapter fics: In order to have the fic download all together instead of downloading each chapter individually, make sure you select the 'Entire Work' button. Like the names says, it displays the entire work on the webpage, and will download the entire fic with all it's chapters in the correct order when you go to download.

Archive of our Own will automatically download the entire fic work now instead of chapters.

Click the download button. You've got a couple of options:

What these options mean:

AZW3 - Amazon-developed ebook format that is designed for Kindles and Amazon's systems. Good if you want to read off of a kindle.

EPUB - Standard file format for Ebooks and is basically used as the default for pretty much most ebook readers. This is what I prefer to use when downloading to my phone.

MOBI - An older version of the AZW3. Older but standard as well.

PDF - Downloads the fics as a PDF. Can be read anywhere you can open a PDF.

HTML - Downloads an offline version of the exact webpage you are looking at. Fine if you want to keep the 'look' of AO3 but you can't change the text size or reading style like you can with ebook formats.

Not sure which one to download? Use EPUB since it's standard and readable by pretty much everything, retains images too.

You now have your fic downloaded to your device and can read it on whatever reading app you have. YAY!

Do keep in mind that these are offline files that do not synch with Archive. So if you download an ongoing fic that updates or is edited since you last downloaded, you will need to download it again to have the updated version.

I highly encourage you download your fics if you are able. Worst case scenario, if AO3 goes down for an indefinite amount of time or the author deletes or hides it, you still have it. (Only download, not distribute.) Best case scenario, you have saved yourself an inconvenience for later.

Happy Reading!

[butchemizel]

pride month. guards!!! fetch me the tubbo gay ptide tweet

[butchemizel]

i have to do fucking everything myself around here

[ao3commentoftheday]

Hiya, was wondering if you know if it's possible to sort of save a set of filters on Ao3's search?

Im a picky picky person who knows what they like and I use the filters liberally. But it's a pain to put it in every time I accidentally close my Ao3 tab or I wander into a new fandom. I'm well aware you can favourite a single tag, but I'm talking multiple tags included and excluded.

Thanks for your time and thoughts!

If you want to look up the same filtered tag again and again, the easiest way is to bookmark the results page. The URL has all of the filters in it, so reloading that URL will give you the latest results with all of the filters applied.

sidenote: it's possible to throw an error by applying too many filters just because it hits the max length of URL allowable by the browser

If you want to apply the same filters to lots of different tags, then you might be better off using the Saved Filters Bookmarklet creatied by reisling on AO3.