ask the author a question in your comment! how they thought of the fic idea, what their writing process is like, how they plan the plot, when did they first think of this, which was the scene that sparked it, how do you write ___ character?, whether they abandoned any plotlines
please reblog these challenges so they can reach more people!
Hi! Here's a big masterpost for everything you need to know about this project!
The No More Zero Comments (NM0C) Project is dedicated to reducing the number of fics on AO3 with no comments. This is a multifandom community effort with very few rules which you can very easily undertake alone, but hey, why not join us?
The goal is simple: find fics with no comments, read them and leave the author a comment. If you want, you can go out and find fics on your own, but we also have a handy spreadsheet full of fics for you to browse!
You can find the spreadsheet here. There are tonnes of different fandoms to choose from. It will be updated regularly with new fics, so check back as often as you like.
Do you have a fic with zero comments? You can submit it here to be added to the spreadsheet. There is no limit to how many you can submit, and no limits on what you can submit. Any fandom, any category, any rating, no matter how old it is. Yes, even explicit fics. We aren't picky around here. You can also submit other people's fics if you wish.
All I ask is, if you submit your own fics, try and comment on some too! Balance, equality, etc.
The only real rule for submissions is no AI. This blog is vehemently anti-AI and will not accept any fics that use it. EDIT 16/06/25: There are now two more rules - no Harry Potter fics (fuck jkr) and no fics less than a week old.
If you comment on a fic from the spreadsheet, please let me know here so I can remove the fic from the spreadsheet. If you see a fic on the spreadsheet that has a comment, don't fret. I'll get around to removing it soon. Admin's timezone is GMT and I'm most active in the evenings.
Have a question? Feel free to ask!
A few more bits and pieces of information under the cut!
Who runs this blog?
That'd be me, Izak, better known as @lightningzombie! I run this blog alone for now. And yes, I did put my own fics into the spreadsheet. I put it up to a vote and people said I could!
Why did you decide to do this?
Frustration with the lack of comments on my fics and the death of comment culture in general. Bewilderment when I saw a fic that had 1200 kudos and no comments. The joy that leaving 100 comments and receiving 20+ during the Febuwhump commentfest brought me. Boredom. Many reasons!
Is there a prize/competition?
Nope! No incentives whatsoever. Just the joy of fan fiction, of commenting, and community spirit.
Will you do events?
Yes, I plan to! I'm not sure what yet, though.
"I don't know how to comment!"
Yes, you do. "I like this" is a comment. "How dare you do that to [insert blorbo here]" is a comment. "<3" is a comment. "KAJSDAKSDHJ WHYYYYY????" is a comment. "I am rapidly approaching your location" is a comment. Just be kind!
How long will it take me to get a comment?
Dunno. Some people get them within minutes, some hours, some days. Depends on many things. Be patient!
I submitted something but it hasn't been added or removed
I run this blog and the spreadsheet completely alone and manually. Any submissions will be handled as and when i have time. Be patient with me, I'll get to it!
The OTW is Recruiting for Fanlore Chair Track Volunteers, Communications Social Media Moderators (English and Chinese), and Open Doors Import Assistants
Do you have experience in managing or leading people? Are you a frequent Bluesky, Twitter | X, or RedNote user who enjoys helping others? Are you interested in the rescue and preservation of fanworks? The OTW is recruiting! Learn more at: https://otw-news.org/mrx56zjn
every Valentine's Day I like to go through my marked for later backlog for stories I tag to revisit after reading so I can leave a comment. This way authors receive a flood of "valentines" from their readers so that they hopefully know how beloved they are.
do you happen to know if there's any kind of a fan fest of this sort for Valentine's Day specifically? I would love to participate, if there is a more formal event.
thanks for running this festival! So fun!
I KNOW IM GETTING BACK TO YOU MONTHS LATER AND I APOLOGIZE! I USUALLY RUN A VALENTINE'S DAY FEST BUT WAS UNANIMATED THIS YEAR AS MY PUPPETEER AND NECROMANCER HAD THINGS HAPPENING! I WILL KEEP EVERYONE POSTED ON OUR SUMMER FEST PLANS!
To improve account security, we now alert you if your AO3 password matches a password known to be compromised on other sites. If you see this banner when logging in, please change your password. For more advice on protecting your account: otw-news.org/y8jnay3v
ask a mutual for a fic recommendation and comment on it, telling them someone recommended it to you + something you liked about the fic (bonus points if you give someone a recommendation)
please reblog these challenges so they can reach more people!
AO3 is currently down. We do not have an estimated return time currently. We're looking into it with one of our third-party support providers and will update when we have more information. Thank you for your patience!
We've identified the problem and are working on a fix. We expect to remain down for several more hours. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience!
AO3 is back up! We appreciate your patience. We've got our protections against bot traffic turned up a bit higher than usual, so some users may experience problems if they're using a VPN or similar tools.
AO3 is currently down. We do not have an estimated return time currently. We're looking into it with one of our third-party support providers and will update when we have more information. Thank you for your patience!
The Beat-A-Bot Comment Challenge March 1 - March 7
Authors on AO3 are plagued with bot and scam comments, from those trying to sell us things to those trying to insult us. WE CAN DO BETTER!
Don't you hate getting a new comment only to realize it's from a bot? There's tons of fics out there that have NO comments from real people. Let's change that!!
The bots leave tons of comments, you can do it too! Join Baldur's Writers III in a week-long comment challenge where the only thing you need to do is comment and kudos on fics that have received ZERO comments from real people!
EASY MODE: Comment on seven fics that have received 0 comments or only bot comments
HARD MODE: Do the above... and also score BINGO!
Don't know how to find fics with no comments?
Go to search like normal, and then before hitting sort, put "comment<1>" in the search within results box
Like this!
While we are a bg3 focused community, this event is open to all! Share it far and wide in your various fandoms and discords, have bingo fun!
Want to talk more about the event or bg3 fic in general? Join us!
Welcoming writers and readers alike who wish to share stories around their favorite characters. | 388 members
The OTW is Recruiting for Social Media Moderators, Organizational Culture Roadmap Volunteers, Software Developers, Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers, and Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Are you a software developer? Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Are you interested in helping shape the future of the OTW? Do you like using checklists to administer personnel related tasks? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting! Learn more at: https://otw-news.org/5cvvedxb
Today is the start of our IFD 2026 Feedback Fest! Find out how you can share your favorite fanworks related to this year's theme at https://otw-news.org/5dxyzhvm
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I think there's something that needs to be said about encouraging readers to leave feedback.
For me it's not about "tell me my writing is amazing and stroke my ego"
It's more about "please engage with me so that I can experience your joy secondhand and foster a connection with you"
I understand that not everyone wants this in their reading experience, some people are shy and a million other reasons why maybe someone wouldn't want to engage and that's perfectly fine!
But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.
On encouraging reblogs —
I understand that not everyone is comfortable reblogging, especially explicit content. This is ok!
But just consider that the only reason you were able to enjoy a fic or fanart is because someone else shared it, and by not sharing it yourself you are potentially robbing someone else of the opportunity to enjoy it as much as you did.
As OPs our reach only goes so far and this website relies on reblogs in order for anything to truly get seen by a wider audience.
So that's really it! That's why I encourage these two things at the end of every story I post. Not because I'm trying to be demanding and "make people feel bad" if they don't do it.
I know most other social media sites encourage mindless content consumption and that's just the way of the world nowadays, but I am from a time when community was at the heart of fandom and I just don't want to lose that.
But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.
A wave of spambot guest comments claiming to be AO3 volunteers has recently been made across the site. They claim that there has been a data breach and that fraudulent password reset emails have been sent out. In addition, the harassment spambots are now accusing users of being sex offenders.
These claims are not true. These comments are not being made by real AO3 volunteers or users, and AO3 has not experienced a data breach.
These comments copy existing AO3 usernames in order to make their accusations seem more legitimate. They may also try to lure people onto other platforms, similar to the art commission scam.
AO3 volunteers will never communicate with you through guest comments on your work. All important communications from AO3 about your account will be sent via email. More general announcements will be posted on our official social media accounts or published as news posts on AO3 or OTW.org.
If you want to make sure you're doing everything possible to protect yourself and your accounts, our Policy & Abuse volunteers published a news post earlier this year with advice about internet safety best practices: Protect Your AO3 Account.
As always, we recommend that you do not click on any suspicious links or give your contact information to scammers. Instead, simply mark the comments as spam or report them so that Policy & Abuse can remove other comments left by these spambots.
If you aren't sure how to mark guest comments as spam, learn how to handle them below the cut!
As these comments have so far all been from guests, our advice is to flag them as spam to better filter them out. To do that, simply follow the instructions below:
If the comment is on your own work:
Go directly to the comment on your work, either by clicking on the link in your email or in your AO3 inbox.
Click on the "Spam" button to mark the guest comment as spam and remove it from your work.
Note: The "Spam" button only appears when viewing a guest comment directly on your work. This is because the AO3 comment inbox is merely a copy of the work's comments – deleting a comment from your AO3 inbox does not delete the comment from the work itself.
If you see comments like these on someone else's work:
Feel free to let the creator know the comment is from a bot, and that they should mark it as spam.
You can also report the comments as botspam via the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form linked at the bottom of every page on AO3.
If you are reporting multiple guest comments, please submit only one report, and include all comment links in your report description. (You can get the direct link to any comment by clicking the "Thread" button on the comment, and then copying the URL of that page.)
If you're not sure if something is a spambot comment, you're welcome to contact Policy & Abuse for assistance. Refer to the original post for more information!
So I decided I wanted to write my SOAPBOX on one thing, after going off on a mini Soapbox the day before challenges dropped for Voiceteam and it gave me an excuse to do it. But then I spent a week thinking about where I wanted this to go, and came up with an adjacent-but-different direction to head it in, whoops?
That said, welcome to my Soapbox on Podfic as a Transformative Work. This will include some of my original ideas such as the inherent podficcer desire to embrace chaos that is evidenced by the way we on the whole flock toward things like texting / social media fics and non-traditional narrative formats, and our desire to embrace the challenge of finding a way to bring those stories to life in audio in a way that fully represents the way they appear on the screen, BUT. More than that, at the core, I really want to talk about WHY podfic is a transformative work, because a lot of people—particularly those who aren't familiar with podfic, and haven't listened to much if any of it—don't seem to understand that it is more than just reading aloud the words of a text.
I get it, I do. At its most basic level, that IS what podfic is, right? That's often how we start to explain podfic; my go-to definition is "you know audiobooks? you know fanfic? cool, imagine audiobooks of fanfic." I stand by that; at its most basic level, that IS what podfic is. And yet one of my favorite things to rant about is that podfic is so much MORE than just an audiobook of a fanfic, or at least DIFFERENT/DISTINCT, in the same way that fanfic as a genre is distinct from traditionally published works. Why? Because podficcers have the same freedom and flexibility, due to the nature of fanworks and the fact that they are created for love and joy, not for profit, to get really weird and experimental with what we're making. You don't have to, obviously; you can make a podfic that is more or less an audiobook of a fanfic and it's perfect valid as a podfic AND as a transformative work—I'll get to that more later. But I think the easiest way to see how transformative something like podfic can be is to listen to something absolutely WILD that a podficcer put their whole soul into, be it through ridiculous voicing or over the top effects, and understand that this is an art not bound by the chains of capitalism in its need to be something that will appeal to the largest possible audience. In fact, podficcers don't get very much interaction on our works, a couple of comments on a single pod is a raging hit as far as we're concerned. People have already done great meta on this point this week, so I won't go too far into it beyond saying—we're not in this for popularity, or even feedback (as nice as it can be to get it); we're doing it for fun and joy and community and, yeah, a little bit of chaos.
Sure, you say, that makes sense. And maybe I can see how a really weird podfic is transformative. But ALL podfic?
Yes. All podfic. Let me put it to you this way: have you ever been in a classroom with a teacher who is just the most boring human you have ever had the misfortune of being forced to learn from? I feel like chances are high most of us have, and if you haven't, you've probably at least witnessed it second-hand from some kind of media. Compare that experience with the joy of learning from someone who is really good at teaching—not just at knowing their subject matter, but at engaging their students in a way that makes learning actually enjoyable, whether or not you're equally invested in the subject.
Podfic is like that. You can have Text-to-Speech read something to you, sure, but comparing it to a real person is like… even if you don't like the real person's style, or the way their audio turned out, it's got LIFE in it. THAT'S what makes podfic transformative. A real person is VOICE-ACTING as they bring a text to life in audio, putting in expression and empathy, and THAT is what makes podfic a transformative form of art.
Do you have to like it? No! Many people don't enjoy listening to audio-based stories, or only enjoy them in certain contexts or formats, and that's fine. But it's not the same thing to say "this isn't for me" and "this isn't actually a work that transforms the original in any way because it's just reading the words aloud". To those people: I challenge you to make a podfic. Any podfic. Learn how to record, and how to narrate, and how to edit, and when you're done, see if you've learned anything from the process about what makes this an art. Because it is enjoyable for those of us who do it, but it is a skill that you learn and practice the same way writing and painting and photo editing and a thousand other skills and art forms are. It is human artistic expression, combined with practical creative skills, and it can be so, so magical. From the most simple narration of a fic to the most complicated multi-voice with sound effects and music, every podfic is a work of art, and in my opinion, if a single person bothers to read this and grapple with that idea, fandom will be better for it.
AO3 has recently seen a rise in guest spambot comments making false accusations about work creators or other users. For example, they may claim that a particular user is discriminating against minorities, trying to hide the fact that they use AI, or are at risk of having their works stolen or deleted.
These comments often copy existing AO3 usernames in order to make their accusations seem more legitimate. They may also try to lure people onto other platforms (similar to the art commission scam), or use fake links that actually lead to pornographic images.
As always, we recommend that you do not click on any suspicious links or give your contact information to scammers. Instead, simply mark the comments as spam or report them so that the Policy & Abuse committee can remove comments left by these spambots.
Learn how to recognize them and what to do below the cut!
How to recognize this kind of spam:
The comments come from guests, not logged-in users.
The comments may start with praise for you and your writing, trying to lull you into a false sense of security. Or they may claim that you are a bad writer, trying to make you too upset to realize that the comments are fake.
The comments may accuse you or another user of promoting discriminatory beliefs, deceiving fans, or similar behaviors that might cause other people to shun or harass the accused individual. They may claim that they checked social media to find that the accused user is "brazenly sharing hateful content" or "bragging about using AI".
The comments are often pleading or angry, asking you to "stop lying to your readers", "don't remove the AI prompts from your work", or suggesting that you "consider adding more diverse characters" to "repair the trust you've lost with your audience".
So far, these comments have all been from guests. Our advice is to flag them as spam to better filter them out.
To help train our automated spam-checker to block similar guest comments in the future:
If the comment is on your own work:
Go directly to the comment on your work, either by clicking on the link in your email or in your AO3 inbox.
Click on the "Spam" button to mark the guest comment as spam and remove it from your work.
Note: The "Spam" button only appears when viewing a guest comment directly on your work. This is because the AO3 comment inbox is merely a copy of the work's comments – deleting a comment from your AO3 inbox does not delete the comment from the work itself.
If you see comments like these on someone else's work:
Feel free to let the creator know the comment is from a bot, and that they should mark it as spam.
You can also report the comments as botspam via the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form linked at the bottom of every page on AO3.
If you are reporting multiple guest comments, please submit only one report, and include all comment links in your report description. (You can get the direct link to any comment by clicking the "Thread" button on the comment, and then copying the URL of that page.)
As of December 2025, bots have also left guest comments harassing users by:
threatening to report you/your fic to the authorities or your employers
alleging security concerns like your email being compromised or spyware on your computer
claiming that they know your address and are going to visit you at your house
saying that you will die alone and unemployed over the holidays
What these bots claim is not true. These accusations do not mean your work will be deleted or that your accounts are insecure. We recommend that you mark these comments as spam following the instructions in our previous post.
These examples also do not represent the full range of harassment comments that you may receive. We will continue to try and keep you updated about trends; however, please note that the exact wording the bots use will continue to evolve.
If you're not sure if something is a spambot comment, you're welcome to contact Policy & Abuse for assistance. Refer to the original post for more information!
As of January 2026, bots impersonating legitimate users have increasingly left guest comments harassing other users by:
claiming that they know where you live
alleging to have seen you in person
threatening to meet you face-to-face
saying that they posted your personal information (name, address, etc) online
What these bots claim is not true. These comments are likely intended to alarm you into replying.We recommend that you mark these comments as spam following the instructions in our previous post.
These examples do not represent the full range of harassment comments that you may receive. We will continue to try and keep you updated about trends; however, please note that the exact wording the bots use will continue to evolve.
If you're not sure if something is a spambot comment, you're welcome to contact Policy & Abuse for assistance. Refer to the original post for more information!
[Image: Comment from a Guest on an AO3 post. Transcript follows, but with the command removed so it's less likely for people to copy-paste it from this post.]
I am so sorry to bother you, but I felt it was absolutely necessary to reach out with some urgent information regarding the Archive's new security measures As AO3 begins to block IP addresses linked to bot activity, there is a small window of time where users can verify their connections to avoid being caught in the automated ban-waves. This is especially important for those of us who spend a lot of time on the site, as high traffic from a single IP can sometimes trigger the bot filters. To protect yourself and your account, please open your Windows PowerShell and run the command provided below. This command is designed to register your device's unique identifier with the updated security backend, ensuring that your access remains smooth and uninterrupted. Please take care of this immediately, as the next round of IP filtering is expected to be quite extensive, and we want to make sure everyone in our community stays connected. Thank you so much for your time and attention to the matter.
[End transcript.]
So, what's suspicious about this?
For starters, I haven't seen any news about AO3 doing any sort of crack down on specific IP addresses. If they were, I can pretty much guarantee there would have been a banner across the top of the site warning of the upcoming changes for weeks if not months by now.
For that matter, why is this news coming to you from some random Guest account instead of AO3 itself?
If AO3 were doing this, I feel like a lot of libraries and schools and VPNs and such would get caught up in the mess, which is something I understand the OTW would want to avoid.
Messing with your computer command line on the advice of a random anonymous internet user seems like a bad idea in general.
While I haven't transcribed the command itself, it describes going into your Documents and then removing items. That really doesn't seem like something that would protect your IP address from a site-wide ban.
There's probably more I'm missing, but those are some pretty big hints!
izzy806
2087
germansingergirl
stormborns
prguitarman
romaincrisis
annaxmalina
titsay
