A sufficiently close long-term relationship with someone can cause both parties to develop, like, extremely specific and ridiculous telepathy, and I think that's awesome.
Which is to say that I just turned to my partner and said, "Hey, which dead rock musician do you think would be most fond of the modern usage of 'based'?" and they said, immediately, "Frank Zappa," and I was pleased, because I'd come to that same conclusion several minutes prior.
There are no hard rules here. There is no wrong way to do Kinktober!
General FAQs
What is Kinktober?
Kinktober is a multifandom prompt challenge that takes place during October. Check out the Fanlore page for more information.
How does this Kinktober work?
In our prompt list, three prompts are given for each day in October. The idea is to use one or more of these prompts to create something which you can post on that day (or before, or after). This could be artwork, a one-shot, a chapter of a longer fic, etc. You can use one, two or all three prompts, or none at all. You can aim for just completing one day, or, if you're ambitious, all 31! No matter what you accomplish, you're a participant in Kinktober.
Do I have to do all 31 days?
No. You can if you want to, but you can do as many or as few as you'd like.
Do I have to do all three prompts in a day?
No. We've written three prompts for variety, so hopefully there will be something for everyone on every day. (But if not, you can always swap in a bonus prompt.) Of course, if you'd like to, you can include all three prompts in your work - we've tried to combine prompts in ways that would get you thinking.
Do I need to wait to start creating in October or can I start early?
You can start whenever you like!
Is there a minimum word count?
Nope! You can write as little or as much as you like.
What mediums do you accept?
Any. You can submit fanart, fanfic, [insert other medium here] - anything you can think of.
Posting
When can I post?
You can post your fics before, during, or after October. Our AO3 collection will remain open indefinitely. Early and late submissions are welcome.
Where can I post?
You can post on AO3 if you have an account there (if you're reading this ahead of time and you think you'd like to do that, we suggest signing up for an invite now so it'll be ready by October!). If you do, you have the option of adding it to our collection - see the next bullet point for more details. You can also post on other platforms, like Tumblr or Squidge.
How do I add works to your AO3 collection?
You'll need to post your work to the collection called Kinktober2026. AO3 has detailed instructions for adding a work to a collection.
I plan to make several unconnected one-shots. How should I post them?
The general fandom etiquette is to post your one-shots in a series, rather than one single chaptered work. This allows people to filter for content they want to see more easily. See AO3's guide on adding works to a series for more detail. It isn't possible to add a series directly to a collection - you'll need to add each individual work to the collection separately.
Can I combine Kinktober with another event, adding the same work to multiple collections?
Absolutely!
Can I post on the 'wrong' day or change the order of the days?
Yes, you can post whenever you like. Use the prompts however works best for you!
Prompt lists
If I use your prompt list, should I credit you?
If you're reposting the whole list then including a link to this Tumblr page is helpful so that other people can find us if they'd like to take part. If you're reusing some of our graphics and would like to credit the designer, latte-cucumber, please put a slash between the @ and the username.
I've found another prompt list that I like the look of. Can I use that instead of/as well as your prompt list? Can I still include my works in your AO3 collection?
Yes and yes. We provide a prompt list in case you need one, but you could also use one you've found elsewhere, one from a previous year, one you've made up… the possibilities are endless!
Content
Are there content restrictions?
No. Our AO3 collection is unmoderated. Anything that is allowed on AO3, or wherever you're posting your fanwork, is allowed in Kinktober.
Are original works/crossovers/x-readers/works in other languages allowed?
Yes, absolutely! You can create anything you like. Everything is welcome in the collection.
Does my work have to be kinky or sexual?
Not at all. We welcome non-sexual kink works and vanilla smut. Or, if one of the prompts really speaks to you in a nonsexual, non-kinky way, that's also fine! You can absolutely submit your G-rated fluff or angst fic to our collection.
Prompts
Do prompts have to be taken literally? I have an idea for a prompt but I don't think it's really what you meant by it.
Go for it! The prompt list is just to give you ideas. You can remix the prompts, interpret them figuratively, or just create something that the prompt vaguely made you think of.
I don't like the look of some of the prompts - what should I do?
We've included a range of prompts to appeal to a wide variety of people. If you don't like any of the three daily prompts provided, consider swapping in a bonus prompt (from the list at the bottom), or switching for one of the options on another day.
I don't know what one of the prompts means. How can I find out?
You might find it helpful to look at the BDSM Wiki, which doesn't contain explicit images, or to look up tags relating to the prompt on AO3.
Can I ask you a question about Kinktober?
Unfortunately, due to personal commitments, we won't be opening our askbox for questions this year. We've made it as rules-light as possible, though, so if your question is "Can I do this?", the answer is almost certainly yes!
I totally get where you're coming from. It's beautiful to see a story where the ugly/monstrous person is shown they're actually beautiful in their own way and they don't need to change, like in Shrek. I love those stories too.
But if the message is that Belle loves Beast no matter what he looks like, it also shouldn't matter if he looks like a normal dude.
Which means the "better" appearance and identity comes down to the identity that the Prince himself wants to have.
He changes to human because that's what he wants to look like.
He has become good and thus deserves to have the body he wants, not the body that Belle wants, or the audience wants, or anyone else. He didn't like being a beast. He wants to be a man. That's his true identity. That's his happy ending that he has earned.
I'm sure that most of us on here, with all we know about body-related dysphoria, would never suggest that he should be stuck in a body that doesn't feel like himself just because the rest of us think that other body is hotter.
When he was beautiful on the outside, he acted beastly, and was cursed to have his appearance match his behavior. When he changes his behavior to be beautiful, the magic again makes his exterior match that.
This is different than the point Shrek is trying to make. Shrek is a story about accepting yourself as you are, not about changing yourself. Fiona doesn't need to change her behavior, just her mindset, because she is already good and deserving of love.
Self-acceptance is not what Beauty and the Beast is about, nor is it about Belle learning to accept him. Beast doesn't need to accept himself—he needs to change himself. The ending reflects this symbolically. The story wouldn't work without his appearance changing to reflect his internal change.
So on one hand, Beauty and the Beast is the complete opposite message of Shrek: change, don't accept. That's why it has a completely opposite ending. They both perfectly encapsulate the opposite points they're trying to make.
On the other hand, they're both about the same point: become who you truly are. Fiona stays an ogre because that is who she truly is—even in her princess form, she acted like an ogre. Her body matches her true identity. Same thing with Beast changing into the Prince. He's acting princely in his beast body and so his body changes to match his true identity.
So I have to disagree that him changing into a man undermines the story. It seals the story.
you can kinda tell when a writer has spent a lot of time around kids bc they avoid most of the pitfalls that come with writing children. namely, not giving them a too cutesy or twee voice but making them sound more like extremely weird little adults. kids playing pretend will almost never cutely slot into some romantic scenario for the adults' benefit bc the adults are usually too busy cleaning up or wondering what the fuck is wrong with their child. kids also have surprisingly stringent hangups ranging from very petty grievances to downright chauvinist gender roles, more often than not the result of a tragic education but sometimes far surpassing what they were taught in intensity. what im saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with treating fictional kids as stock characters but it's always quite nice to see when they aren't
It's extremely common for very young children to suddenly say something extremely cogent and articulate, that's jarringly inconsistent with their normal speech. This is usually something that they heard an adult say recently. A kid will spend ten minutes telling you a story about how they fought a wolf yesterday using simple sentences of fifty cent words, then nibble a snack, wrinkle their nose and say something like "I feel like Mum was overenthusiastic with the salt today, and not for the first time either" before going back to their clumsy story. (They do understand what they're saying when they do this. Kids' communication is usually held back by their vocabulary and pronunciation, not their understanding.)
Young kids are also a lot more socially aware than people give them credit for. Young children are perfectly aware that adults don't take them seriously. They know when their parents don't actually like them. They listen and remember when adults talk about them while they're in the room. Kids will develop basic abilities to charm etc. from babyhood and will begin experimenting with social norms and concepts of deception, appropriate information, and acceptable language and attitudes in toddlerhood. By the time a kid is five or six, they have solid social strategies for relating to adults and separate ones fr relating to their peers, that they'll continue to refine for the rest of their lives. They will also say completely off the wall shit because they don't have the context to know what is and isn't considered super fucked up yet.
By the time a kid is eight or nine, their main difference from adults is in experience, interests, and ability for long-term focus. An eight year old can think as intelligently and coherently as a thirty year old, they just have less experience and information to draw from, and are likely interested in very different things. They're also likely still slightly hamstrung by vocabulary and literacy, though much less so than a younger kid.
Teens will behave like adults who have little power (a teen is often at the mercy of their parents and the state and rarely taken seriously, which is extremely frustrating) and who are high stress and mid-crisis, because they're going through a transitory period where their bodies and moods are changing and are having to constantly learn and adjust; a fourteen year old in a stable situation will act pretty much like a thirty year old with an oppressive boss who's just left a tumultuous relationship.
has anyone noticed that after the porn ban of 2018 tumblr was essentially killed from the mainstream and everyone flocked to other social media sites like twitter and meta. then those sites got enshittified to where twitter became Nazi Central and meta sites had an entire meme around getting “zucced” aka mark zuckerberg himself would ban you for saying a no-no word like fuck. and then the mainstream shifted to tiktok where infamous toddlerspeak sentences like “he got unalived by a pew pew” were born because if you once again say a no-no word like kill or gun or any other word that isn’t corporate i mean kid friendly then the algorithm will bury your post into the ground. and somehow we’ve come full circle and tumblr is now the most bearable social media site because although we can’t have female presenting nipples we can at least talk to each other like adults. has anyone noticed that at all or is it just me and the flaming skull
Read Project Hail Mary cause you said it had the most influence on TTOU. I've never read anything like it (except your story, of course.) Would you ever make a book rec list? Doesn't have to be sci fi exclusively.
The best thing you can do for yourself as a reader of genre fiction is go to whatever used bookstores you can find and search specifically for books from this series:
and purchase and read any of them that you can find. It's called the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and every issue will contain at least one story that permanently alters your brain chemistry.
Aside from that, I'd recommend The Martian by Andy Weir (the Project Hail Mary guy), the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, and anything you can find by Philip K Dick or Neal Stephenson. I'd also recommend a couple of CJ Cherryh's works: 40,000 in Gehenna, and Serpent's Reach. Probably worth reading Serpent's Reach first if you can, but it's not that important, they're not sequels of each other although they are in the same universe.
The series that's had the most influence on me as a writer is of course Animorphs by KA Applegate, but I'm not sure how interesting it would be for an adult reader who doesn't have nostalgia to rely on. Also Tamora Pierce's books, all of them, it's worth picking up those if you like fantasy.
(via (99+) Clare Victor Dwiggins, 1908 I was amused by this rather “freaky” bit of Edwardiana, especially since I always got the feeling… – @cyclesofmystery on Tumblr)
I don't know which of you needs to hear this but "narc" is not short for "narcissist" when someone calls you a "narc" for snitching they are calling you a "narcotics officer"
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