In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.
I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!
From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!
I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.
The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.
(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)
If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.
The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.
insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box
add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box
delete -> self explanatory
on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic
The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.
Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.
You are responsible for curating your own online experience.
If something upsets you, makes you angry or queasy or triggers you, stop reading/looking at it. Avoid things that might make you feel that way.
Learn to use the Sort and Filter function on AO3, especially the Exclude tools.
On social media, block and mute accounts / tags / words when necessary.
If you hated something, you don’t need to tell that to the creator or start pointing fingers at them publicly.
The Back button is free. Use it.
Addendum:
Yes, for this to work, creators need to tag their works accordingly, so that people know what sort of content they are about to engage with and can nope out if necessary.
I will probably make another PSA about the importance of proper tagging later.
Ship And Let Ship
or SALS
You are allowed to ship whatever you want.
Everyone else is also allowed to ship whatever they want.
You are entitled to dislike or even hate a ship. If you want to do this online, in public, don’t use the ship tags for hate posts.
If you see someone posting about a ship they like and you don’t, there is no need for you to start arguing with them in their replies / comments / QRTs / reblogs. Don’t throw your hate in their face.
Do not harass fan creators or fans for shipping something you disapprove.
All of this also applies to liking / disliking an individual character.
Addendum:
”I agree with this, except when…”
No, then you are NOT agreeing with this.
Let me make this VERY clear. There are NO exceptions. None.
You don’t EVER harass real people over pixels.
If you disagree with this, kindly block and move on.
Your Kink Is Not My Kink
or YKINMK / YKINMKATO
The longer version is ”Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That’s Okay”.
People have different tastes. Not everything is for everybody.
Even if you don’t like a specific kink, other people are still allowed to use it in their creations.
You are entitled to dislike kinky content and think that it’s ”weird”.
Don’t kink shame or judge people based on their kinks.
This goes both ways: your kink is not someone else’s kink, so don’t push it onto those who are not into it.
Be Kind
or Don’t Be An Asshole
Focus on the things you like instead of the things you hate.
Create and unite instead of destroying and dividing.
Don’t harass real people over fictional things.
Stop stirring up petty drama just to get some attention on social media.
Stop trying to ”win”. Fandom is not a competition.
Remember that your own experiences aren’t universally shared. Your perception of things can differ from someone else’s, but that doesn’t mean either of you is necessarily wrong.
Hey rarepair shippers, I'm about to change your lives.
The AO3 Primary Ship Search add-on for Firefox (it's called AO3 First Tag Search for Chrome) adds this little checkbox to the AO3 advanced search page
And if you check the box, the search only returns fics where the pairing you entered is the first one tagged. This is better than the otp:true operator imo because it will show fics with secondary/background pairings too as long as your preferred ship is the main one.
You can even use the add-on in Firefox or Kiwi browser on Android mobile.
It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:
Kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished - you kudos.
If you liked it, you should comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.
No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it. Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity. Don't ruin that for them.
Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.
There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.
For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.
Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLANTONIC, like friendship or family.
Nothing is banned. This is an implicit rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.
People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.
Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.
Avoid deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - orphan it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to you anymore.
This is a creative fanfiction archive. No essays on your insights or theories please. There are other places for that.
I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.
I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.
To the people in the notes who are insisting that they have the right to leave negative feedback on AO3:
What you’re not understanding is that fandom is not a service, it’s a community. I saw someone compare leaving a comment on AO3 to reviewing a product on Amazon - if you didn’t like the product, you’re going to say so. But fanworks are not products and you didn’t pay money for them. They were shared with you.
Leaving un-asked-for criticism in AO3 comments isn’t like reviewing a product you were disappointed with. It’s like going to a friend’s house when they’ve cooked a meal and telling them all the things that are wrong with the food. Sure, you can do it, but it’s rude as hell and they are probably not going to invite you to dinner again.
("Can you leave crit in comments” has been a debate as long as I’ve been in fandom, but 20 years ago the argument was “I’m helping the writer improve!” and not “I am a consumer with a right to complain.” Fandom has gotten more creepily capitalistic over the decades but jerks are evergreen, I guess.)
Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol
a short selection of concepts and phrases that used to be commonplace in fandom and we’d really benefit from making that a thing again:
NOTP: the opposite of an OTP (One True Pairing). It is a ship a fan strongly dislikes. The word is a portmanteau of ‘no’ and ‘OTP’ and thus is not a contraction of any particular phrase.
Squick: anything that is a deep-seated, visceral turn-off. Squicks may be shared by many fans or be specific to one; one person’s kink may be another person’s squick.
YKINMKATO, or kink-tomato: Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That’s Okay: used to indicate support for fannish diversity and to distinguish between disapproval or kink shaming and simply having different taste.
DLDR: Don’t Like, Don’t Read: a phrase used to warn against complaints about an aspect of fic or meta. A “live and let live” philosophy of fandom, which places the responsability for avoiding content one doesn’t want to see on the side of the fanwork consumer, rather that on the creator’s.
SALS: Ship And Let Ship: similar to the above specifically about shipping tastes.
YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary: a phrase used to acknowledge that any given individual’s personal opinion on the topic at hand may differ due to their own tastes, standards, values, experiences, etc.
As the OP points out, all of these crucially imply no moral judgment of what they’re designing.
(definitions lifted more or less wholesale from fanlore’s relevant pages)
btw guys, you can do spoiler text on AO3! here’s the html:
<details><summary>the text you want people to see</summary>The text you want to spoiler or hide</details>
it turns it into a little toggleable drop down that shows things and then hides them. it’s great for content warnings in ao3 notes if you’re worried about spoiling your fic–people who feel like they can proceed without any specific warnings can do so but people who want to see a warning or spoiler can choose to.
i tried it on firewatch au chapter three, it works:
if that html doesn’t work, then here’s the reddit comment i got it from by an r/ao3 moderator and former ao3 staff memeber. I copied it from here and it worked perfectly, but it didn’t paste into tumblr so I manually typed it.
Please, don't use the tag Read by the Author to say that you proofread your work!
Read by the Author is a subtag of Podfic. It's meant to be used for tagging audio works read by the author of the text.
If you wrote something, and then recorded yourself reading it out loud and posted that to AO3, you can tag it Read by the Author. That's what that tag is for. Please don't use it on written works to say "oh yeah, I read it before I posted it". It will make your work show up in the Podfic tag and confuse/annoy people looking specifically for audio works.
woodsgotweird said: man i just jumped on the bandwagon because i am a sheep. i have no idea where it came from and i ask myself this question all the time
Maybe someone made a typo and it just got out of hand?
I kinda feel like panic!at the disco started the whole exclamation point thing and then it caught on around the internet, but maybe they got it from somewhere else, IDK.
It’s a way of referring to particular variations of (usually) a character — dark!Will, junkie!Sherlock, et cetera. I have suspected for a while that it originated from some archive system that didn’t accommodate spaces in its tags, so to make common interpretations/versions of the characters searchable, people started jamming the words together with an infix.
(Lately I’ve seen people use the ! notation when the suffix isn’t the full name, but is actually the second part of a common fandom portmanteau. This bothers me a lot but it happens, so it’s worth being aware of.)
“Bang paths” (! is called a “bang"when not used for emphasis) were the first addressing scheme for email, before modern automatic routing was set up. If you wanted to write a mail to the Steve here in Engineering, you just wrote “Steve” in the to: field and the computer sent it to the local account named Steve. But if it was Steve over in the physics department you wrote it to phys!Steve; the computer sent it to the “phys” computer, which sent it in turn to the Steve account. To get Steve in the Art department over at NYU, you wrote NYU!art!Steve- your computer sends it to the NYU gateway computer sends it to the “art” computer sends it to the Steve account. Etc. (“Bang"s were just chosen because they were on the keyboard, not too visually noisy, and not used for a huge lot already).
It became pretty standard jargon, as I understand, to disambiguate when writing to other humans. First phys!Steve vs the Steve right next to you, just like you were taking to the machine, then getting looser (as jargon does) to reference, say, bearded!Steve vs bald!Steve.
So I’m guessing alternate character version tags probably came from that.
Yes, and, this? This is actually what an “if you liked that, maybe you’ll like this!” algorithm is trying to replicate, in its own clumsy way. The basic idea is that, if you like Thing X, then you may like other things that people who liked Thing X also liked.
Only the algorithm has no actual reasoning ability, or understanding of what it’s doing--it’s just wandering around bumping into things, looking for patterns that sorta match. Like a sack of ferrets tracking a scent trail through a department store, and the store is trying to tell you that the ferrets are highly skilled personal shoppers.
AO3, on the other hand, is set up so that you can find out directly from other human beings who like Thing X, what else they liked. It probably wouldn’t work in a department store--hence the sack-of-ferrets system--but fandom is a gift economy, so it does.
A further variant on this is to see who bookmarked the stories you love, and investigate their bookmarks. If they seem reliably appealing to you and they're being actively updated, you can also periodically check in on their bookmarks to see what's new.
[Image description: A Twitter thread by sen
(@SenLinYuWrites) that reads “I have been reading fanfic for decades. I am going to tell you the secret to finding good stuff without an algorithm.
Find a fic you fucking love, like everything about it hits your buttons, writing, characterization, tropes, kinks, ending, etc.
Read everything written by that author regardless of the stats, since they've already proven themselves to write stories you like.
When you've read all of their stories, go to their bookmarks. They probably read the same quality and kinds stuff they like to write.
Find a story in the bookmarks you fucking love, like everything about it hits your buttons, writing, characterization, tropes, kinks, ending, etc.
This is a Moving Forward PSA for everyone using AO3. I am witnessing the results of a culture clash and communication failure. Not a lack of communication, but a misunderstanding caused by changes in fandom culture.
Before fic tagging was common, fics weren’t tagged. You had a pairing, if applicable, an author’s note about genre or general content, and if they were feeling charitable, a vague content warning. There are even a few genres of fic where even vaguely tagging literally spoils the plot and impact (such as horror, psyche thriller, in which the likely content is implicit to the genre). As a result, there is a basic category tag that permits this, as a courtesy to “old-fashioned” writers.
“No Archive Warnings Apply” means the fic is PG13 at worst, probably fluff, totally safe.
“Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings” is the polar opposite. It’s a glaring Enter at Your Own Risk billboard. It means: a shitload of warnings apply but I ain’t telling because this story requires shock value. It’s very important to read the author’s notes for those fics because they might be using that older format from above.
But without the context of fandom culture that generated AO3, it’s understandably easy to conflate the two categories, given their similar wording.
“Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” = HERE BE DRAGONS. (implies that one or more of the above exists, but the author doesn’t want to give anything away by tagging)
we now have muting on ao3 which has made searching so much more delightful that you don’t have to see the authors that bug you
and now this:
Previously, a collection moderator could invite any work on the Archive to their collection, which would send an email to the creator asking them to approve or reject the invitation. Work creators could also choose to bypass the invitation process and allow mods to add their works to collections without needing to approve individual invitations.
This system was prone to abuse, so we have now removed the “Automatically agree to your work being collected by others in the Archive” preference and replaced it with a way to opt into or out of having your works invited to collections.
By default, no one will be allowed to invite your work to their collection. If you’d like to change this, please go to your preferences page and choose “Allow others to invite my works to collections.”
The reason 1st Person POV is so derided in fanfic is because of characterization. In 3rd Person POV, you just have to convince us that the character would say or do that thing, and if not we’re sometimes willing to overlook it for the sake of the plot. In 1st Person, every single line of the story needs to feel In-Character, and OOC moments become grating faster because by sheer statistics they feel like they happen more often.
You basically have to find an author who perfectly vibes with your interpretation of that character and who’s a good enough writer that it doesn’t feel clunky. Original fiction doesn’t have this problem nearly so much, because there’s no pre-built expectations. “Ah, so this is what this character thinks when confronted with this thing? Good to know.” As opposed to fanfic, where the reader will often find themselves going, “No, that’s not what they’d think if they saw that. No, that’s not how they’d feel if someone said that. No, this narration is incorrect.”
After being burned like that a certain number of times, lots of readers end up with a Pavlovian response. They see 1st Person POV, they see that first “I,” and they’re immediately annoyed because 1st Person POV stories have so often annoyed them in the past. They start avoiding them out of principle.
(This is not dissimilar to the problem with 2nd Person POV in any format, outside of maybe Choose Your Own Adventure novels. The author directly tells you, the reader, how you think/feel/react, and you, the reader, go, “WTF, no I don’t!” Which then jerks you out of the immersion & makes the story less enjoyable.)
None of which is to say don’t use those formats if you enjoy them. Just… I saw some people expressing frustration over the general distaste fandom culture seems to have for 1st Person POV, and while I don’t want to get involved in that argument, I did want to explain. For general information, I guess.
This is a really good insight, and I’m wondering now if this is why I’m so much more tolerant of 1st person pov in fanfic for novels written in 1st person - if you can convincingly mimic the author’s voice, most of the characterization will pass.
I suspect this is also why Self Insert/Original Character fics can get away with 1st person so easily, because there’s no established character to contradict. If anything, this makes it a superior tool for the purpose of connecting the reader with this character who’s new to the canon.
The Archive of Our Own Reaches 11 Million Fanworks!
The OTW is pleased to announce that the 11 millionth fanwork has been posted to the Archive of Our Own. From fic to fanart to podfic, every fanwork on AO3 is the result of someone’s love for and dedication to transformative fandom, and we’re grateful for each and every one of your contributions. AO3 wouldn’t be what it is without you!
We’ve hit 11 million fanworks just six months after reaching 10 million fanworks last October. In those six months, Accessibility, Design & Technology has rolled out the ability to mute works, bookmarks, and comments from specific users; Open Doors has imported over 16,000 fanworks from at-risk and offline archives; Tag Wrangling has wrangled over two million tags; and Policy & Abuse and Support have answered approximately 10,000 tickets each. We’re excited to continue to grow and support fans in the coming months, and we look forward to seeing what you create as we do!
Do you want to be more involved in online fandom spaces, but don’t understand all of the crazy words fans use? Here are a few posts that explain online fan language*, particularly in the context of fanfiction on the website An Archive Of Our Own (AO3).
General Fandom Terminology - Here are some common words used in online fandom spaces!
AO3 Features - Here are the meanings behind buttons and warnings on AO3!
Fanfiction Tags - Here are some common tags used for fics on AO3!
Not sure how tags work or what they mean on An Archive Of Our Own? Here’s a quick guide to common tags used on AO3!
Tags, or descriptive labels, on AO3 fics allow people to search for specific fic content in the archive. It is good etiquette to know how to tag your fic properly and to always tag fic according to its content.
General Tags
Relationship Tags - these tags denote a platonic or romantic relationship between two or more characters. When placed between character names, the & symbol is used to denote a platonic or familial relationship, while the / symbol is used to denote a romantic or sexual relationship. If a relationship exists but is not a main focus of the fic, the word “Minor” is placed in front of the first name in the relationship tag. Ship names are not used because there are often multiple fandom ship names for a single relationship; instead, relationship tags use the full given names of both characters. If a character is tagged in a relationship, they should also be tagged individually to assist the search function.
Character Tags - Tags that indicate which characters are present in the fic. The narrator(s) and major characters are tagged first. Vertical lines in character tags denote an alias. For example, “Yagi Toshinori | All Might” means that the character is Yagi Toshinori, who also goes by the alias All Might.
Descriptive Tags
One-shot - a fanfic, typically 10,000 words or less, that is a single chapter long, or a multi-chapter fic released all at once.
Longfic - a multi-chapter fic, typically over 10,000 words, in which chapters are released periodically at subsequent dates.
Darkfic - a fic that contains dark themes.
Songfic - a fic organized around the lyrics to a song.
Podfic - a recording of a fic read out loud, typically by another fan and not the original author; a portmanteau of podcast + fanfic.
Crossover - when characters from two or more different pieces of media interact, or when characters from one are placed into the setting of another.
Genre Tags
Angst - this fic will make characters, and often readers by proxy, feel negative emotions, like pain, fear, anxiety. Level of angst may be denoted by the words “light” or “heavy.”
Fluff - characters, and readers by proxy, will feel lighthearted, joyful emotions. It may be described as “warm and fuzzy.” Fics with lots of sappiness are often tagged “tooth-rotting fluff.”
Schmoop - this fic is lighthearted, sappy, or affectionate. Similar to fluff.
Smut - this fic contains explicit sexual content.
Whump - characters in this fic will be physically hurt, often repetitively.
Hurt/Comfort - characters will be physically or emotionally hurt, but there will be a focus on their recovery at the end, often through comfort provided by other characters.
Hurt No Comfort - the characters will be physically or emotionally hurt, and they will not recover. These fics usually have an unhappy ending.
Slow burn - characters in the main romantic relationship will take a long time to get together, often not until the end or near end of the story.
Other Common Tags
AU (Alternate Universe) - describes a fic in which a major plot element, setting, or worldbuilding element differs from the original (canon) media.
Canon-Compliant - a fic or idea that fits into the original text without changing any major elements of the original media.
Canon-Typical Violence - the violence described in this fic is about as intense as the violence shown in the original media.
OOC (Out Of Character) - a character behaving in a way that they probably wouldn’t behave based on the canon text. The tag is typically “OOC [Character Name]”.
OC (Original Character) - a new character created by the author of the fic, rather than one taken from the canon work.
! (as in [adjective]![Character Name]) - the character has this specific attribute, which differs from canon. For example, “trans![Character Name]” is a character who is portrayed as cisgender in the original work but is depicted as transgender in this fanfiction. The adjective can range from personal identity to descriptors of a magic system to career titles.
PWP (Plot What Plot?/Porn Without Plot) - this fic is only smut without any plot development.
Lemon/Lime - outdated terms for fic containing sexual content. Lemon is explicit, lime is non-explicit. These terms are no longer used by most fandoms, but remain on the archive.
Character bashing - a fan of a work hating on a particular character, or an author making a character suffer in a fic (often through other characters hating that character) because they personally dislike the character. It is good etiquette to tag character bashing because many people want to avoid seeing it.
Good Parent [Character] - a sincere tag indicating that this character is a good parent in the fic.
[Character]’s A+ Parenting - a sarcastic tag indicating that this character is a terrible parent in the fic.
No Beta We Die Like Men - this fanfic was not proofread by a beta reader. This tag is also often written as: “No Beta We Die Like [name of dead character from fandom]”.
Dead Dove: Do Not Eat - this is a warning to pay attention to the tags. The phrase comes from a line in the show “Arrested Development,” where Michael Bluth opens a paper bag labeled "DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT.” Upon seeing a dead dove in the bag, he says, "I don't know what I expected." Basically this tag means “read the label.” It is also used to indicate that the fic may not explicitly condemn problematic material. The tag is commonly misused by younger fans as a trigger warning catch-all for dark themes; instead, it should always be used in combination with more specific content tags.
There are many more tags used on AO3; this is only a small sample of the most common. Feel free to reblog with your own additions!
areudirty
gummygunk
germansingergirl
dailybridgerton
tangentwithtanner
ellievsbear
amandla
theartofmadeline
gamechangershow
