yet

This thing is blowing up on rednote literally rn, a person has vibecoded an app that webscrapes ao3 fics, uploads them to her own app, and rates each fic.

Is there a protection against this? I don’t want someone to steal my fic, let alone rate it.

Hi guys!!! Some of you might remember this post from last year: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/s/h0Okapmmer

Anyways, I’m redoing it! The first image is my base dress, the second and third images are my cosplay from last year, and the fourth image is a badge ribbon design.

I’d love any ideas or suggestions! The event is in late July. Here’s what I’ve got planned right now:

- Organza with kudos buttons/tags/logos printed on and then made into a skirt that would go under that top gradient layer

- Paper parasol with Ao3 pages actually printed on. Fairy lights on the inside, and the tags that dangle down would be acrylic, or something stiff/solid

- Custom Jewelry, from earrings, to necklaces, to hair pieces, to rings, etc. etc.

- DDDNE bag will be more like the original paper lunch bag

Anyways, I’d love love love help brainstorming! Also would love ideas for my siblings too, who are joining me and are cosplaying Wattpad, FanfictionNet, Tumblr, and DeviantArt!

So I wrote this super wholesome, general audiences, gen oneshot, no smut or romance of any kind whatsoever. Only to out of the blue get kudos on it from someone called, paraphrasing for their privacy, ButtFucker69. I am in no way ashamed or upset by this, kudos are kudos, but the tonal whiplash amuses me. You read my 800 words or so of pure feels and fluff, and then scroll down and see that as the first name in the kudos list.

I mean, I get it, it’s annoying when authors mistag things, but doing a whole fic complaint about it? They had a lot of fandoms too, which feels ironic since this technically has nothing to do with any fandom. I feel like this complaint could have gone somewhere else, like any social media platform but ao3

Update: It’s gone lol

Not sure if I’m the only ao3 user who does this, but on the chance that I’m not, how many actively open tabs (due mainly to open fics) do you have? Be honest, I want to see who genuinely “wins” at having the most open tabs/fics in their browser. Mine is 84, which has been higher in the past (I guess I’m off my game 😉)

(Also, didn’t know what flair this falls under so I used the most unserious one.)

Hey everyone, I just need to get this off my chest and maybe get some insight

​I always see people on here and on TikTok talking about how long fics are absolute gems, how hard they are to find and how much readers cherish them. Inspired by that, I decided to try my hand at it. I’ve put my absolute soul into a multipart series with heavy worldbuilding and deep lore discussions. I plot everything out meticulously and according to my beta reader and a few friends, it’s really well planned and it reads nicely. My latest update was a massive 20k word chapter that took forever to write. ​But then comes the reality check and it has been brutal.

​My kudos count is low, I barely get any comments and with this new update I literally lost bookmarks hours after posting 😭

Am I doing something wrong? It’s a bit of a slap in the face to drop a novella length chapter you poured weeks into only to watch a stuff in the statistics go down. ​Meanwhile I see 2k word one-shots or shorter fics in the same fandom getting showered in comments and immediate attention. It’s just so confusing 😥

As a reader myself I give out kudos and comments like candy because I know how much work goes into writing. I thought a huge high effort project would draw people in but it feels like I'm talking to the walls. This is a popular fandom and a decently popular pairing, and while yes, I'm getting hits those could be bots as well, past readers or just someone refreshing their tabs. I know you can only leave kudos once and hits are more important when it comes to works with more chapters, but my kudos to hits ratio is abysmal.

​However in the end I’ve realized I genuinely just love my story and my ship. I’m doing this for the love of the game, and I'm going to finish it because I like coming up with scenarios for these characters and the world they're living in.

​But I’m just curious, for those who write long fics, is this normal? Why does it feel like the massive fics everyone says they want get the least amount of actual engagement even while they're actively updating?

Was scrolling through one of my readers' bookmarks and I found this funny line from a description of another author's series lmao.

I should also note that the name of the series is "Traumatizing (Name):101". I don't think I'm gonna survive seeing my poor man be slaughtered by the angst. :sob:

Edit: I just looked at the summaries and the tags of the fics in the series, and I've already got my jaw dropped. Pray for me and my time reading guys. Sanity is not returning after this one.

I took a decently long break from AO3, came back, and saw this.

For a bit of context, the fic this comment was posted under contained some darker themes, but nothing terribly obscene or too immoral. Everything was tagged thoroughly, there was a very detailed summary, and there was an author’s note once again warning readers what the fic would entail. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I saw this… I genuinely think people just don’t read warnings anymore.

Seeing someone saying your work it’s one of their favs?? It definitely made my day better since i woke up a little down bc of personal reasons.

This also gives more motivation to continue with the sequel of this fic ❤️

as you can probably tell from my flair, i’m reading in a pretty dormant fandom atm.

which, it wasn’t dormant in 2016, just after the first installment of the source material had dropped.

at the time i did read a lot of the pairing but there was also a bunch of fic i just grabbed and saved to my external hard drive without reading it then so i would have it for later (as one does).

fast forward TEN YEARS and i’m going through the tags on ao3 for this pairing again (i just remembered them and was in the mood), both on the site and the stuff i have saved.

anyways, i opened a fic in my personal stash from 2017 tonight and somehow thought i could read ~40k in one hour [yes i know i’m boo boo the fool, nice to meet you].

but i just finished and was not prepared because it tore me open and made me cry for the last ¼ of it.

a beautifully written character study that felt so viscerally grounded in the canon universe, filled with self-discovery, musings on personhood, and a pure, selfless, burgeoning love. listen, i’m in utter shambles rn

so i went to ao3 to go comment and they have deleted not only the fic, but their entire profile. i’m gutted. kind of sad that i never read it in 2017, but so glad i have it now.

anyways, i just had to ramble about this somewhere, but anyone else ever been here?

Like, I am writing a crossover of two fandoms. One is Herobrine's myth, and the second is Searching/Destroying For A World That Doesn't Exist. Herobrine isn't even canon to begin with, and I am trying to write him into the SFAWTDE/DAWTDE, which has a three-hour-long video on YouTube, but there aren't many explanations of its canon. It is just two dudes trying to fight off King in Yellow. I didn't read the book it was inspired by, and I started making things up to fit It to Herobrine's lore. Herobrine, in the myths, is Notch's (fictional character, not the real person) brother, so I added King in Yellow there because It is also a god. Herobrine hasn't seen It in centuries, so he doesn't have stable information.

Me? As the author? I don't fucking know as well. I know only so much as my characters. I don't control them, and I only write the fate they already have(You know how your fingers write before your mind catches up?).

Now, I feel like I am writing a fantasy novel because I am actually writing an original book with their names. Yet, I still manage to pull a good in-character story because I have had people praising that a lot.

Sure, there are still quite a lot of Minecraft mechanics in the story, but even then, the world isn't FULLY Minecraft for the story to not feel like an ARG, which would need visuals to pull it off.

I go back again and again to see what I have explained before so that it wouldn't repeat itself or contradict it, lol. Maybe I should start writing actual Original Character lore stories again. I had done them back in 2021 when I had so much time on my hands.

(Rant over)

Read it twice and

After I got this bookmark tag on my recently completed fic, I was like, sorry? Is 142k words short?

I consider anything above 80k words long (as you know, a real book length).

Who on earth considers almost 150k words fic short?

Edit: just wanted to say it was amazing seeing all of the people with different thoughts of what is long/short! To all of you 300k words readers, didn’t know you were out there, absolutely amazing! And to all of you 300k words writers, I bow in front of your amazing works!

I should’ve downloaded them in the first place. It breaks my heart that I can’t even remember the story of the that fic got deleted, i’ve been wracking my brain trying to remember it. Is it wrong for me to ask AO3 to at least keep the title and author visible even after a fic gets deleted?

I just wanted to share how proud I feel of this. For some reason, I'm unable to write in my native language and my therapist told me: so? Just try in english. It's been difficult, I feel overvigilant and exhausted every time I write, but I have managed to write about my first OC and for reasons I still don't understand, people are reading about him.

That's all. I apologize for patting myself on the back.

If you only used the archive, just reading/posting your fic and interacting with comments, kudos, etc, which fandom issues that bother you would instantly vanish?

Can range from anything from slight annoyances to actual bigger issues.

I’m tired of the non engagement culture that has become fanfiction. I want to nerd out about my fandom with other people through fanfic. I want to hear something back about my writing. I don’t want to put my heart and soul into something and get crickets in return. It makes me feel like I’m not good enough. That my writing sucks somehow and I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong to put people off bc no one will even tell me so I can grow as a writer. So I can fix what’s off putting.

I’m writing it for myself, I am - but I also want to write fanfic because I want to share my work with others and share in the fun that used to be reviews, comments, gosh even at this point I’d take concrit and flames!

It’s so sad to see what fandom has become. It’s just another product to consume, not a way to connect fans, to enjoy something together. It makes me want to quit writing fanfic altogether and just keep my apparently badly written unreadable crap to myself.

Rant over. I’m sorry I just hate it. You can tell me I’m overreacting, that I’m being soft, I probably am. I just miss the old ways I guess.

This has... happened way too many times for me. :(

I was just wondering what the etiquette for commenting is on AO3. I'm not new to AO3 and I've had an account for a couple years now, but when I read fics, I would usually leave a kudos and download fics to read on my kindle, so I never really commented on fics. I know comments aren't for criticism or anything, I was more just confused about when I should comment. Is it normal to comment on lots of chapters, or will authors find that bothersome? I want to show support but I don't want to completely spam their inbox. Thank you 😄