[solarsthoughts]

There are only 2 rules when it comes to writing fanfics:

Write whatever you want.

Have fun doing it.

That’s literally it. There is no “show and don’t tell”. There is no “make it realistic”. There is no “fit in with the trends”. And of course, there is no “write as fast as possible to keep up engagement and please others”.

No.

Most fanfiction writers are not professional writers. This isn’t a job, we’re literally writing for shits and giggles. We don’t have a team of editors behind us to make our story perfect. Fanfiction isn’t about creating the most perfect plot with the most perfect prose and the most perfect pacing.

Fanfiction writing is for you first. To make your heart happy. Other people just get the benefit to also enjoy it if they wish.

That’s it.

Write whatever makes you happy, with whatever writing style you want, whenever you want.

[eeriansadowtwopointoh]

Write whatever makes you happy, even if it's weird, experimental, or something ONLY you love. You deserve it.

[ritshoe]

Kudos to fanfiction writers for writing about all the trauma and emotional and mental turmoil that the original content creators dont acknowledge when putting characters through hell

[saltoftheao3]

This has evolved to one of fanfiction’s major assets in my eyes. To every author that cares enough about the characters in their stories to examine trauma, but also the slow, tedious processes of healing and recovery: your stories mean so much to me and other persons with mental health problems. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[liveandletcry23]

Society: We don’t talk about how anger is Often just masking grief

A 17 year old with a blorbo and a laptop: Don’t mind if I do tho

[fanfiction-psas]

Fanfiction PSA:

New AO3 comment scam just dropped.

Remember: if it's vague, a solicitation, and could plausibly be commented on virtually any other fic, it's no good.

[recurringwriter]

literally just got another one of these, remember to follow AO3's guidelines here to report them

[fanfiction-psas]

[jeanritchie]

its so awesome that you can straight up write fanfiction in your head to help yourself fall asleep and it doesnt even have to be good or something anyone would ever want to read. even yourself

[the-forest-library]

kill the imposter syndrome in your head because not only is there someone out there doing it worse than you, they’re also using chat gpt to do it

[hostilecandle]

If ANY of yall EVER do this shit to me, im deleting every single fic out of spite.

If I ever catch one of yall doing this to another author and I know youre a follower of my work I will block you personally on every platform

None of yall are the fic police. I DESPISE genai. I think its an insult to art, humanity, and the planet itself. But aint not a single fucking person here qualified to pick apart a strangers fic looking for a gotcha moment to make yourselves feel superior. If you think something is ai you can ask the author (most are proud of the ai use and will just tell you straight up) if they say yes you have your answer and can warn people. If they say no and you dont believe them you block and quietly keep it between you and maybe a close group of friends. Spreading misinformation is DANGEROUS. And NONE of you doing this shit are anywhere near qualified to do it.

THIS GOES DOUBLY FOR ARTISTS.

[ekingston]

sometimes i say things on twitter and then make a little graph about it

[np-444]

The real horseshoe theory.

[glorious-spoon]

anyway the thing about fanfic is that it's not essentially bad or good; it's essentially amateur. some people are absolutely out there writing award-worthy prose (some fic writers ARE award-winning writers IRL!), but that's not the point. the point is that we're all telling campfire stories. it's a community, and it's a way to spend some more time in the worlds and stories that we love.

[badwolfkaily]

This.

[strongwomenunited]

I don’t know about others but the only reason I put both is so that whichever someone clicks on, they will find my fic. So if there is supposed to be rules, I guarantee you that no writer knows these ones. We can barely get people to comment, you think we’re going to specifically choose & or / ? Hell no.

[beatrice-otter]

I’ve been in fandom for twenty years, and “/” means romance and “&” means no romance was literally one of the first things I learned. It dates back to Star Trek fanfiction of the 70s. I’m boggled by the fact that anyone who’s been reading fic on AO3 for more than like five minutes wouldn’t know that, and I’m curious as to what fanfic community you come out of.

I don’t think that tagging with both is actually going to get your fic in front of more readers. People looking for romance often exclude the “&” tag if there are too many gen fics tagged with both. People looking for gen often exclude the “/” tag if there are too many fics with both. So rather than putting your fic in front of twice the people, you are in fact more likely to get your target audience ignoring your fic because it has a tag they don’t want.

Also, by overtagging you are more likely to annoy potential readers away from your fic than entice them. A fic tagged both & and / better have both romance and a ton of platonic interaction between the two characters, like a slow burn romance friends-to-lovers arc. If it isn’t, I’m going to be very unhappy because the author lied to me with the tags to try and trick me into reading a fic with deceptive advertising.

When I’m in a fandom and see tagging where some of the tags don’t really apply and are just there to get it in front of more eyes, I’m going to assume one of two things. Either the author is a newb who doesn’t know anything, or the author is purposefully spamming the tags because they don’t care about lying to their potential audience and think that “spray and pray” is an effective tactic. In the first case, their writing probably will not be very good, so why bother reading their fic. In the second case, the fact that I can’t trust the tags to be accurate means I’m not going to read it to see if it’s interesting even if it has a tag I like. Chances are, that tag isn’t actually in the fic anyway, and even if it is, by spam-tagging the author is making the archive harder to use for everybody. Why would I reward bad behavior with attention? No. Far better to mute the author and move on.

[mylordshesacactus]

More to the point--and no, I will never stop harping on this, because we have GOT to stop leaving our strongest points in the drawer--it doesn't matter if you heard of this convention before joining AO3 or not, because it's in AO3's tagging FAQ.

[id: the "How do I tag a romantic or platonic relationship?" section of the tagging FAQ here.]

"But Jo," you may argue, because you're wrong. "There's no way to find that without digging through site FAQ menus, and that's really inaccessible!"

sure

except

that when you go to post a new fic, and you go to put in those relationship tags, you see this

[id: the Relationships field]

and that tooltip, the one THERE TO EXPLAIN HOW THE FIELD WORKS, links to the Relationships segment of the tag FAQ, which explicitly lays this shit out.

I don't care if you don't know fandom history. I don't care if you've never heard a goddamn word about the spirk shippers. I don't care if you've never been exposed to fandom culture in your life. It is, frankly, not fair to expect those things of everyone.

What is entirely fair to expect is that you will READ THE INSTRUCTIONS PRINTED NEXT TO THE FUCKING BOX, actually. Forget fandom conventions. It genuinely doesn't matter whether you agree with or respect fandom conventions. This is a site policy. This is explicitly how tagging on AO3, specifically, works.

[shaydh]

"WHY ARE YOU SHIPPING A VAMPIRE WITH THEIR VICTIM 🤮🤮" is. is that not the point of vampires.

[marshemillow]

Still really hating those posts that are like "not anti or proship but a secret third thing; an adult with a job" Like??? I'm sorry I had to be the one to tell you this, but most adults with jobs still care about people getting harassed until they kill themselves. 😭😭

[dovebane]

Chiming in because as of late this is something that's been really bothering me.

The big problem is that the people who claim to be the Enlightened Neutral Party in pro/anti discourse:

Have been acquainted with the discourse for no more than three collective minutes, so they have no idea what it's about or what kind of behavior has been surging in frequency in the last decade or so --- and because of that, they are unable to process the real-world ramifications of these talking points becoming popular (parallels to real-world hate groups who push for censorship, for example)

Have been fortunate enough to not be harassed over their ships (or watch someone they care about be harassed) to the extent that others have been, if at all

Assuming we're talking about people who are clueless and not people who are antis who don't want to be loud and proud about it, they have no actual experiences to go off of when it comes to this debate, so to them it's just "online discourse". They believe there are no real-world consequences, being either willfully or unintentionally ignorant of the fact that people do get doxxed and stalked in real life over petty fandom morality bullshit.

No halfway decent person is going to watch somebody beat the tar out of another person, and when the person getting beat finally punches back, try to "both sides" the situation and insist they're both in the wrong because "it's just a stupid fight. Just stop fighting, idiots!" Meanwhile, the person who is getting beaten up on very much agrees! They would LOVE for the fight to stop! But they did not start the fight, and the person who did has no intention of stopping. The victim is blamed for the aggressor's refusal to stop being an aggressor.

Pro-ship and pro-fiction folks also think fandom discourse is fucking stupid! We agree! But as long as antis keep causing issues instead of just blocking shit they don't like, the pro/anti discourse is going to continue.

And again, all of this is caused by the fact that neutrals are either antis who won't admit it, or people who have not seen the full scope of the problem. They try to speak on the subject, trying to sound enlightened and "above it all", despite not knowing anything about it. They do not see, or pretend to not see, people being doxxed over ships. They do not see, or pretend not to see, cases like IAmLunaSol where artists are stalked IN REAL LIFE over fictional characters. They do not see, or pretend not to see, the people who have attempted and/or successfully committed suicide as a result of witch-hunts led by antis ever since the early days of modern fancop activity in the Steven Universe fandom.

TL;DR if you're "neutral", you're either an anti and trying to hide it, or you have no idea what you're talking about and should either take the time to talk to us to learn what's been going on, or you should keep your pseudo-philosophical faux-enlightenment to yourself.

[marshemillow]

Pro-ship and pro-fiction folks also think fandom discourse is fucking stupid! We agree! But as long as antis keep causing issues instead of just blocking shit they don't like, the pro/anti discourse is going to continue.

[sidhewrites]

Being kink positive makes it really hard to be a hater of media rip. I used to love watching “the WORST book I’ve read this year” booktube videos but now its like I hear them ask, “Who is this werewolf smut even for?” Omegaverse fans, next question. “Why would you write this?” Because they find it sexy, can we stop focusing on the ewie yucky kink part and focus on the fact that the author used the word knot five times in a single scene? It’s bad werewolf erotica, but it’s not bad because it’s werewolf erotica like come on

[sizhens-deactivated20250610]

I think "fuck you, I hate your work and I will do it myself and I will do it better" is a really funny and epic sentiment. i started publishing poetry because an ex boyfriend of mine was publishing really ass poetry in a bunch of journals and I was like "Jesus christ, this is garbage, I could do that, and I could do it better." now I have a page in the Academy of American Poets and I've published a full length collection and his website says "former poet." You should win by succeeding way harder than they do. Spite is a legitimate energy source.

[sweetvinegar]

[spatialheather]

"i saw your name in the kudos list of the devil's sacrament"

[sage-nebula]

Okay, but what were YOU doing in the kudos list of the devil's sacrament? 👀

[alexaloraetheris]

Bitch, I'm the author

[akiragatr]

Tumblr is super big on the "I didn't say it was good, I said I liked it" but really need to discover the value in its opposite of "I didn't say it was bad, I said I hated it".

You can acknowledge that something is good, great, a masterpiece even, and just straight-up not enjoy it.

[the-real-nikki19]

a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted

their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"

"Every writer"?

come on

[rose-of-pollux]

Reblog if you're a writer who doesn't use AI.

[thatsthewrongwallcraig]

Write it shitty, write it scared, write it without a clue but don't you be so spineless and have an AI write fanfic for you.