FF4TW Fanfiction tips, Reviews and discussions

I give tips on the do's and don'ts of fanfiction writing. I also Beta read (HIATUS) . When I do I give the option of having the link to the story posted on my page with a summary. You can also send me your story to have it reviewed. I also do story requests, (Mail = Ask) Actual e-mail is in about me.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

ao3 turns 16 today oh my god

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

also here's how you can celebrate 🎉🎂

[nikiexe0]

Omg I'm as old as ao3 😭

[shima-draws]

Can't believe I even have to come out and say this but uhhh if you support AI and use AI to make art please unfollow me. Stealing from real life artists is not cool it's not trendy it's just theft no matter how you try to spin it and if you think it's fun to take somebody's hard work and throw it into a machine and claim it as "art" then I don't want you anywhere near me! Okay thanks bye <3

[alanaisalive]

The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

[iguanamouth]

oh shit

[throughshadow-to-the-edgeofnight]

[alanaisalive]

As the OP of this post, I’m going to threaten that if this gets to one million notes by the 10 year anniversary on 1 June 2026, one year from today, I will get a lower back tattoo of the loch ness bear monster.

[docd666]

Y'all know what to do Tumblr.

[earsandtailsarefeet]

@sunspotpony The Loch Ness Bearmonster is one of those things that lives in my head and my heart rent free

[messrsage]

you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me

[burr-ell]

[fanfiction4thewin]

Literally it was so wild,

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

a reminder that ao3 was created as an archive. not a social media.

ao3 is run on fans’ donations. it’s a nonprofit organization, run by fans, for fans. it has no ads. no capitalism or algorithm bullshit.

ao3 allows works that depict all kind of taboo, morally questionable, disgusting, socially unacceptable subjects, no matter how graphic, how explicit it is being portrayed (that’s what tags, warnings and ratings are for!).

ao3 does not have censorship, nor does ao3 allow censorship.

[howtokillavampire]

but what if i read one of your fanfics and then went to your ao3 accounts and read all of your fanfics and left a comment on every single chapter of every single one and you got spam emails from all of my kudos and comments and it made you smile, what then? what if i brighten your day with my words like you did mine, what then???

[idkhowtobenormal]

marrage

[wynnyfryd]

weddning

[steviewashere]

honmoon

[himbosandhardwear]

Babby

[simplyghosting]

Fanfic update

[arcadewizard]

in that order

[gumy-shark]

nothing scarier than being a fan of a fic and then becoming mutuals with the author. like hi shakespeare. big fan of your fake dating au

[thatlittlefangirl-deactivated20]

I will never stress enough over the fact that Snape's only crime was being mean like you got men leaving their pregnant wives, you got abusers, you got fucking RAPISTS in Harry Potter and y'all hate a mean teacher????

[fanfiction4thewin]

People will legit hate him more than they hate Barty Crouch Jr. who held Moody hostage. Tortured the Longbottoms. Killed his own father. Set up harry and helped bring Voldemort back

[fanfiction4thewin]

You're like the ao3 Karen: offended and still refusing to leave just because you enjoy harassing others

wtf is this for? I don’t like harassing others

And sure sometimes if I have a difference of opinion I can be a bit pig headed but I can recognize when I’m out of line and apologize. Unlike a Karen

What is Karen like is sending an ask like this and not even saying what it’s about. Literally proving your bottom comment applies to you

What was the point of your ask? Did you want me to fall to my knees sobbing and delete my account? Bro what?

Also super weird I only got the notification today despite the ask being from weeks ago

[severus-snape-apreciation-blog]

In an argument with someone on Tik Tok about this. Is James and Co. Stripping Severus Snape Sexual Assault?

Is it?

Yes

No

Voting ended onAug 25, 2025

[seren-starlight]

There is literally no circumstance where I support age verification to access a website. As I've said before I'm very much the "there's nuance here" person on almost everything but on this issue there's no nuance for me, it's awful and horrible in and of itself and it also sets an awful and horrible precedent

[traycakes]

I'm fine with "click here to confirm you're an adult" because it keeps people from finding it by accident.

I do not give a shit if the people checking the box are actually adults, and oppose any effort to confirm that they are.

[psuedoscientist-deactivated2022]

the biggest scam of all with the ao3 shit is people genuinely believing we NEED ao3 and ao3 alone.

the entire foundation ao3 is built on is one from past fic archives made to tailor to a certain demographic - harry potter fic authors were infamous for causing drama between fic archives, and this was only in the 90s/2000s. look at livejournal, ff.net, etc etc. ao3 has been lying to y'all for years into thinking there's no better options for storing and sharing fic. we can do better than ao3, and we have before.

[elfwreck]

AO3 has never tried to convince anyone that it's the only archive. There's a lot of people who think it's the best, including most of the active volunteers, but they don't object to other archives.

AO3 hasn't been "lying" to people to convince them there's no better archives. More people post at FF.net and Wattpad than AO3; obviously, a lot of people think those are better. It's likely more people post at Amino apps, although it's hard to track those numbers.

OTW's code is open source. Anyone who likes AO3's structure but not policies, can make their own site. Or they can grab the pieces they like - the tag system, or the warnings structure, or the fandom label setup - and attach those to an entirely different fanwork hosting site.

For the people who do like AO3 - there aren't any better sites. They're the only ad-free fanwork hosting site. The only one that lets you search by tags across the whole archive. The only one that lets you download fic as ebooks to throw onto your ereader so you can read them offline. The only one that provides clear warnings for some kinds of content, and allows authors to tag for not-required content that they want to warn about. And of course, the only one that allows the full range of legal fannish content, rather than "the mods will decide if something is against the rules and throw it out, but not tell people exactly what those rules are, and not enforce it consistently."

I am curious what was "better than AO3" before, and why it's not being used now instead.

[problematicturtle]

AO3: literally just exists

geniuses of the internet: THE AO3 AGENDA

[louff4tw]

For may who do not know. Fanfiction.net was one of the biggest sites. Ao3 isn’t the biggest now cause they lied or manipulated anything

BUT Because FF.net was toxic as fuck. I once read their entire rules and regulations. No NSFW. None. At all. Not even adults. They stated they were a Christian ran site and would like like things that didn’t align with that. I don’t know if it says it anymore but it did when I read it in 2009. Does anyone else remember that?

And another big thing was. One day I was reading on it. And click next chapter. Bam Story can’t be found. Goes to the authors page. Which had 2 dozen stories. All gone. Go to mine. Mine are gone.

THEY DELETED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF STORIES.

In one move. With no warning. Ao3 has NEVER done anything like that ever. EVER. FF.net encouraged you to wright on their site. This was sorta before the time of google docs so one of the few ways to save it easily and store stories. So for TENS OF THOUSANDS of people. It was their only copies.

It is known as the purge of 2012. They purged anything they deemed NC-17. Inappropriate or they felt went against their terms and conditions however. Many materials which didn’t even violate the terms were caught in the sites web

That was when I switched to Ao3

I also tried watt pad and I can say.

Ao3 is just. Genuinely better. Their tagging and anti tagging system is the best I’ve ever seen. Ever. They are the biggest cause they are for the fans. Not just to run a site.

[themurdochmemesteries]

"i'm tired of seeing-" use your filters.

"but there was an icky ship-!" use your filters.

"i don't like that tag-" use your filters.

don't like what you're seeing? use. your. filters.

[must-be-mr-boggins]

The Bean Soup Theory entering fanfiction and fandom spaces has been the bane of my existence.

[fanfiction4thewin]

if you have an issue with the stated official policy of the archive and want to discourage authors from doing what the site specifically allows them to do, then it may be time to consider that ao3 is not the website for you. you've been free with calling other people dicks for even polite explanations, but the call is coming from inside the house. i will be following another anon's example and blocking you across platforms so that your views do not affect me and mine.

I still stand my opinion on the tags and how they should be done. I still don’t agree with it. Even if it is an official tag and still think people should use the archive warnings if they apply. But I’m gonna treat the topic like a to each their own

But I have decided I was in fact a asshole of how I viewed others in the situation and for that I’m sorry

I’m not gonna stop using A03. Been using it for well over a decade,

I will however never forget how I acted in this situation and work to not get so worked up or triggered and act like that again

[fanfiction4thewin]

Sometimes. Just don’t be a ass

[frownyalfred]

gently grabs you by the chin hey. if an author selects “chose not to use archive warnings” on a fic, they’re allowed. even if you don’t like it or disagree.

[fanfiction4thewin]

Eh sometimes when they don’t select it. It can sneak past people trying to filter out certain topics. So actually please use them.

The amount of times I’ve selected to filter out. Under age and rape and they still are there is horrifying.

[frownyalfred]

Nope. “Chose not to warn” is a warning in and of itself. If you are filtering out underage and/or rape, fics tagged “chose not to warn” are adequately warned because they are informing you that those fics could contain either of those.

Your options are

1) to filter those fics out too or

2) proceed with the explicit knowledge that those things could be in the fic.

These fics are NOT inaccurately tagged, nor should they be re-tagged in any way. They are accurately tagged and the reader is informed.

[fanfiction4thewin]

Nope. Cause it’s not warning WHAT it’s about. So if someone is more okay with one thing then another then they can’t properly filter.

That creates an all or nothing situation. Either you get a kids fic or risk coming across child rape cause they didn’t think putting it in the basic archive warnings was important. And the ONLY reason people don’t use the archive warnings is so they can bypass the filters to potentially reach people who had it filtered out when they DONT WANT TO SEE IT. Like what the heck is the point of the filters if the authors don’t bother. Might as well go to a different site that doesn’t have the great tagging system A03 has

In a way it is inaccurately tagging it in the basics

Then if someone wants to not see it they have to go through and go “exclude this tag” for every possibility or wording type. Like instead of using archive warnings their tag is “hehe might have some nonconsensual stuff hehe” so then people who don’t want to see rape. See if.

And how do I know people pull shit like that? IVE SEEN IT. So

To authors. I’m sorry less people might see your stuff. But use the archive warnings. And tag your fics properly

[bowditch]

No? "Chose Not to Warn" isn't authors cheating to get away with jumpscaring people's triggers. It IS a valid tag-- that's why it's part of the tagging system.

Some authors may not want to spoil things in a story, or try to remember to tag everything. So they are choosing to not warn. It is on the reader to proceed accordingly, based on the rating and their own comfort level.

If you personally, as a reader, don't want to risk coming across a fic with upsetting triggers, it is on you to filter out Chose Not to Warn. That category EXISTS to cover a gray area in tagging, and if you aren't comfortable or safe with that gray area it is on YOU the reader to avoid. The author did their job by specifically marking the fic with the category "this may include content upsetting to some but I am choosing to not list specifics for my own reasons."

It's okay to not like those reasons or not like the category. But neither of those things are the author's fault or their job to fix. You might not like that people decide to use that category, but it's not cheating or sneaking or doing intentional harm. You, the reader, are consenting to open a story that MAY have upsetting content. If that isn't a safe or healthy call for you, then filter to exclude that category, even if it feels unfair.

And it's actually really rude and insulting to assume and assert that people are only using Chose Not to Warn to lure people in to harm them, like some kind of fanfic trigger villains? They're using Chose Not to Warn because they chose not to warn. They felt warning for specific things might spoil plot or tension; or maybe they only wanted readers who were ready for ANYTHING to click, regardless of the story's content. If it wasn't a valid decision and category, it wouldn't EXIST. No Archive Warnings Apply also exists for THAT category.

Again: the tags are there to enable you to find what you want to find and exclude what you don't. It is always, always your job to keep yourself safe and protect your fun reading experience by understanding what the different categories are for-- you cannot do that by insisting they mean SOMETHING ELSE just because you'd prefer them to mean something else. That isn't how this social contract works.

[fanfiction4thewin]

Did you literally just ignore everything? It’s to broad of a spectrum. It’s a yes or no. Black or white. Up or down. Left or right. No grey area. No middle ground.

“Choose not to warn” okay about what? Some people may be okay with some things and not others. And this also in a way LIMITS how many people see story’s. cause if people decide no. Don’t want to see all that apply. They can then be missing thousands of story’s that they are okay with.

You know what ? Your right. I apologize in the assumption people may be using it to get around the tagging system. Some may do it. Which people have actually admitted to me. Like no joking. People have. They have also admitted to using

But it makes a ASS out of me to ASSuME all do. (No sarcasm. This is a legit apology on this stance) I’m sorry. My apologies for assuming.

However. I still stand by it. Cause they are tagging the “spoilers” anyway. If it qualifies for a warning. They most likely tag it anyways. The only difference is. People who use the archive warnings to not see those tags are still being hit by them. Making it mute in a way.

The example I used earlier where someone was using evasive language. I have seen it before so they can warn but still have it visible because it’s not using a common tag. And it’s not always on purpose to get around tags or warnings. Just their own personality.

Same thing I’ve seen for

Underage

Rape

Incest

Explicit

And other examples

Some people don’t even want to see them when searching for many reasons and that’s okay.

It literally changes nothing for the author to use the archive warnings except helping readers filter properly.

[lilac-landscapes]

Please please please interact with the archive like an adult. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you curate what you read.

Authors have every right to use tags such as “chose not to use archive warnings”. By opening a fic where the author has specifically tagged it as such and continuing to read anyway, you are taking that onto yourself.

You need to be mature enough to understand the risk and decide whether or not you can handle seeing potentially triggering adult content. If you can’t then you need to close the tab and find something else to read.

That’s it, the author has done their due diligence, because they’ve already used the “chose not to use archive warnings” tag. If the risk of you seeing a potential trigger is too much, then you as the reader need to not continue reading.

Just like this:

If you click on “yes, continue” then you are saying you understand there may be potentially triggering adult material in the fic but are choosing go forward. You make your own choices here.

[fanfiction4thewin]

Firstly

Don’t be a jackass. “Use it like an adult” that’s insanely rude and condescending. “In the nicest way possible” is like “no offence” and then doing the opposite

To be able to properly curate it. I need to be able to properly filter it.

Why are so many people being triggered by being asked to properly use the archive warning system? Most of the warnings are gonna be tagged anyways. Just use it so it can fully filter triggering information. So people can consent to the media they view.

I’m sorry you and many others don’t give a fuck about people. But I 100% will always stand by. Properly tagging fics and using the warning so that people can properly filter rape or underage ect ect. Like why do I have to keep repeating this?

It literally does you no harm to use the warnings. None. I am literally shocked by how many people are against tags and informed consent in what media people interact with

Seriously. Stop treating the choose not to use a warnings tag like. Dead dove. Let people use the warning filters to filter out the warnings like it’s intended.

If I try to filter out rape using the warning filters and it still comes up. Why is that okay? Why do YOU think that is okay? Maybe just maybe those warning filters exist for a reason, cause I don’t even want to scroll past that. And nor do others. Seriously.

Tell me why that’s okay.

Someone doesn’t want to see rape. Yet you think it’s okay to not use the warnings tag system in place so they don’t have to. And they see it. Tell me. Either tell me, or stop this weird argument

I want you to say that instead of not acknowledging anything of what I said and going “well dumbass we don’t use warnings so it doesn’t get spoiled. You get what you get. Either kids story’s. or incest rape. Just scroll past” repeatedly. I already know why people don’t use it. I still don’t agree. Repeatedly coming at me isn’t gonna change my mind when I am dead serious about this.

I always. ALWAYS. use the filters to get out underage. And rape. Always. I never want to read either. However cause someone not using the warnings. And using slightly different tags. You wanna know what disgusting shit appeared? That literally haunts me to know about? I just wanted to read a found family story. Instead I saw something so heinous it feels sick to even write it here so I won’t. But either way. I haven’t been able to even go near that fandom again. It’s been 6 years. And it’s still messing with my head to know it’s out there. That I can look up something that was supposed to be kind and wholesome. And instead get that.

You nor anyone else is changing my mind. You are tagging it anyways. Just use the warnings tag. This is my hill I will fucking die on.

This isn’t an open debate where I will go “oh okay. Yeah it’s cool to not use the filter warning system in place”

[fanfiction4thewin]

This is my last response on this post.

@frownyalfred I’m sorry. Even tho I completely disagree with you. I should not have said anything. It’s your post and you are allowed your views on the topic just as I’m allowed mine. Since I’ve had a chance to cool down I realized it wasn’t fair to push my view onto your post.

If I wanted to say something about the topic I should have made my own post and not jump on yours about it, was not cool to borderline hijack it

I’m sorry, my deepest apologies, if you wish I am willing to delete my reblogs about it

[moondrunklesbian-deactivated202]

You know the problem with reading a book? You get hooked and then it ends and you feel sad

[moondrunklesbian-deactivated202]

This post is cancelled, I have found a new book and everything is all right again

[moondrunklesbian-deactivated202]

By Talos this cannot be happening