Fanfiction.lol Tumblr

The official Tumblr account of https://fanfiction.lol a small, independent AO3-fork that prioritizes fun!

[fanfictiondotlol]

What is fanfiction.lol?

meant to be fun! spread joy, be excellent to each other, and express yourself creatively!

hi, i'm Brennan (he/they), i'm Indigenous (Red River Métis) and Queer, and i created fanfiction.lol because i'm a webdev that loves writing. i wanted a website that focuses on the joy and positivity of fandom and transformative works like fanfiction, so i made it!

if you're new to fandom, or writing in general, fanfiction.lol is a great place to start! we're a low-stakes, low-stress website that believe any and all fandoms, ships, and writing quality are valid and deserves a place to call home. we're here to centre marginalized voices and identities that can go underrepresented in fandom, and we will meet you where you are.

this project is a labour of love, and we operate with good faith. if you mess up, that's okay! because we will too—we're new to running a fandom site ourselves! we will always assume the best in people, and try out best in return. you can email me, Brennan, at [email protected] with any comments or concerns.

note: although this website is a fork of Archive of Our Own, we operate differently in several important ways. Our tagging system is different, and we have expanded archive warnings to help readers better filter work and additional relationship types to help writers feel more represented and validated.

please read our Terms of Service, content policy, and privacy policy for more details.

[fanfictiondotlol]

Scheduled Downtime

Hello, fanfiction.lol will be offline for a little while I patch things. Hopefully it will be speedy!

[fanfictiondotlol]

We are back online! What I patched is a serious security vulnerability currently on over 500,000 sites: https://www.herodevs.com/blog-posts/cve-2026-66066-rails-active-storage-arbitrary-file-read-and-rce

[fanfictiondotlol]

Scheduled Downtime

Hello, fanfiction.lol will be offline for a little while I patch things. Hopefully it will be speedy!

[fanfictiondotlol]

The "Import Work" Feature Now Works!

We've just fixed one of our most-requested features: importing works from Archive of Our Own now works properly.

Previously, when you tried to import a fic from AO3, you'd get an error message saying the URL was "for a work on the Archive" which was a leftover from the original AO3 codebase that fanfiction.lol is built on. The code thought it was still running AO3 and blocked you from importing from itself. Whoops.

That's been fixed. Here's how it works now:

To import a work from AO3:

Go to Post → Import Work

Paste the AO3 work URL (e.g. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12345)

Select a language and hit Import

Review the preview: your title, summary, tags, fandom, characters, and relationships will be auto-filled from the original work

Post it!

A few things to know:

The work will be posted under your account, so please only import your own works, or works you have explicit permission to repost

Works that are restricted/login-locked on AO3 can't be imported (AO3 won't serve us the page without a login)

Multi-chapter works need to be imported one chapter at a time for now

The original publication date from AO3 is preserved

If you run into any issues, let us know via the Support.

(Here's the technical write-up if you're curious!)

[fanfictiondotlol]

5 Fandoms We Have

So of you maybe curious about some of the fandoms we have on fanfiction.lol so each week we will chose at random 5 fandoms we have on there already.

This weeks are

The Devil's Hour

Heated Rivalry

Tales of Arcadia

Danganronpa: Survivor's Guilt

Interview with the Vampire

Admin Mela

[fanfictiondotlol]

Has there been an in-depth write up on the archive warnings yet? I would like to use the site but if the warnings are not clearly defined, it may not be the place for me. I also still don't understand the purpose of having CCNTUAW if it's not meant to be used the same as on ao3.

Yes! The full explanations are available here: https://fanfiction.lol/help/tags_warnings

If ff.lol does not seem like an archive that fits your writing, I suggest either AO3 or the other long-running fork, SquidgeWorld! ff.lol is just one of several AO3-based transformative works archives.

[fanfictiondotlol]

Hey! I was wondering about the rationale behind adding an RPF warning. It seems to me like an odd choice to have specifically as a warning, especially next to things like racism and ableism? And I'm not entirely sure why it would be necessary since you would already be able to know from fandom tags whether it's RPF or not. I'm not assuming bad intent at all, I'm just curious of your thoughts since I'm a little confused why it'd be needed in addition to fandom tags and it makes me somewhat hesitant to use the site, as someone who almost exclusively writes RPF. It makes the vibe feel somewhat hostile to RPF, to be quite honest.

RPF is a warning because I've had multiple people ask for it to be a warning. You are certainly allowed to post RPF, just as you are allowed to post fics containing anything that would be covered by any of the other warnings. Warnings are designed to help readers filter, the merit of a fic doesn't change depending on what warnings it has.

In addition, it is to ensure we meet multiple countries' laws on public individuals so the site can remain available worldwide.

[fanfictiondotlol]

To the people who have sent asks about our archive warnings: we appreciate your patience! We will be answering them sometime soon, we're still in the process of figuring out how we can make our warning system work best for our userbase <3

- mod jar

[fanfictiondotlol]

I need to work on a dedicated admin post tmrw but for now, a quick and dirty guide to au tags on the site:

Modified canon - anything that uses canon as a base and makes changes to it. Ex canon divergence, genderbends, a lot of soulmate aus

setting change - canon is not the base that is altered. Instead the characters are adapted to a different context. Ex most pirate aus, modern aus, high school aus, normal ppl aus

alternate universe - we have umbrella tags for any au that can be either but please use the more specific variant so people can filter stuff out!!

Again will have a more in depth post tmrw

-mod jar

[fanfictiondotlol]

if you could add any features to ao3, what would it be? similarly, if you could make any change to the tagging system, what would u pick?

[fanfictiondotlol]

@dragonleighs while we don't have it as an archive warning, we do have most tags for acts that are sexual in nature under a general "sex" tag, which should let you filter out pretty much all of it at once! (or, for anyone who does, should let you see only fics with that stuff)

- mod jar

[fanfictiondotlol]

5 Fandoms We Have

So of you maybe curious about some of the fandoms we have on fanfiction.lol so each week we will chose at random 5 fandoms we have on there already.

This weeks are

Alien Stage

Final Fantasy XV

Red Dwarf

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

The Apothecary Diaries

Admin Mela

[fanfictiondotlol]

will say with all this traction our new post is getting-- the downside of any tagging system putting function first is that you basically have to edit peoples tag sometimes, bc ambiguous tags struggle to be useful for filtering. i dont see this as a big deal-- we still allow talk-style tags, and our stance on tagging is basically 'tag your fic however you want, but we may reformat tags intended for filtering purposes' (usually only reformatting if we're making a new canonical, or adding smth to disambiguate character/ship names)

this is my best attempt at finding a healthy medium between 'tag whatever you want and we'll try to sort it all' and restricting tagging. the former is how you get issues with ambiguous tags and difficulties filtering, the latter can be intimidating. and i would never touch any tags written to talk to the reader-- its usually very obvious if a tag is intended to be 'chatty.' (ex: "no powers au" might get reformatted, but "what if they were just normal kids what then" would not).

But this is still important info to know bc i know its different from ao3, and a little bit of a shock for some people at first. anyway if anyone has questions or concerns, you can always send us an ask! And our tagging policies are all in our FAQ as well as more bite-sized info in admin posts <3 we respond to comments on the site as well :]

- mod jar

[fanfictiondotlol]

if you could add any features to ao3, what would it be? similarly, if you could make any change to the tagging system, what would u pick?

[fanfictiondotlol]

(tags from @sablehaven and @kelssiel)

ooh u two would love it here 🫣 no filterable subscriptions or ways to search collections, but our tagging system is functionality-first and canonization-first (meaning any tag we can see reasonably being used again gets canonized).

also, ive been working thru how to make aus easier to deal with. actually been developing a system a lot over the past couple days lol, bc its such a common frustration. it was right after getting rid of ambiguous tags so that you can actually filter out characters, and next is probably separating ot3s into triads and v-shaped ships

- mod jar

(disclaimer: we r not trying to replace ao3. the goal of indie archives like this is to run a website and provide more fic hosting, and to create communities, not to compete.)

[fanfictiondotlol]

if you could add any features to ao3, what would it be? similarly, if you could make any change to the tagging system, what would u pick?

[fanfictiondotlol]

@dustbowl-es We don't have a specifier for just sexual ships as a relationship tag, but we actually do have casual as a relationship category, for stuff like hate sex, friends with benefits, platonic sex, etc! And we also have a QPR tag 🙂‍↕️ altho a lot of the indie archives have that one lol

- mod jar

[fanfictiondotlol]

Would it make sense to have a separate archive warning for fantasy bigotry/oppression? While it's clearly not comparable to the harm actual people experience, depictions of such do often draw from or mirror the way real-world systems of oppression work.

Oh, that is actually a great idea. I'll add that, thanks!!

[fanfictiondotlol]

if you could add any features to ao3, what would it be? similarly, if you could make any change to the tagging system, what would u pick?

[fanfictiondotlol]

how would you feel about alternate universe being split fully into two categories

good

bad

Vanilla extract

Voting ended onJun 10

The two categories would be ones that alter canon, and ones that are separate from it. Like, canon divergent or most soulmates aus for the former, and most modern aus and fantasy aus for the latter. The categories would each have their owm names, so that smth like vampire could have a form for each.

thoughts?

-mod jar