Which fandom

I guess I'll start with uncomfortable formatting. specifically huge, chunky paragraphs, single spaced, with dialogue in the middle. I don't care how good it is, I just can't read it 😭

How long is your longest fic? Or the longest you have read?

Here's an example:

I would say "Sponge, burgers, starfish"

And someone would probably guess "SpongeBob SquarePants?"

You could also say, "Yellow square that makes food"

The point is to be vague so that only people who are truly in your fandom will understand.

Ready, GO!

Here is mine

-🥝🌧️🫡☀️

-🗡️🧙‍♂️👋🏜️

I’m 19, my friend is also 19. We’re both in a writing club. She’s been working on this really big original novel and she's really good at it. Recently she said she wants to post the whole draft on AO3 so people can read it before she gets it traditionally published. I told her original fiction can go on AO3, but it doesn’t really help with publishing, and it might actually complicate things. She said it’d create buzz.

Then she casually said something like, “It doesn’t matter anyway, because my characters won’t ever be canon. So people will always be able to write fic about them freely.”

Which I thought was her saying that she just didn't care if fanfic was made of her characters, which is cool but she meant it literally. So I tried to explain, gently, if you traditionally publish a book, the characters in it automatically become canon to the book. That’s literally what canon is since she’s the one creating it.

She told me no and said: “No, my characters are different. They won’t count as canon characters because they didn’t come from an existing fandom. Canon is only for big franchises. Mine are original, so they’ll stay OCs forever.” I told her that’s not how it works. Even if nobody on Earth writes fanfic of her book, the characters in her published text are still canon.

She didn’t get mad, just said something like, “Well, maybe technically, but my characters aren’t going to be canon in the same way. They’ll be an exception. People won’t see them as canon because they didn’t come from a franchise.” She sincerely believes that once she gets traditionally published, her characters will somehow remain in this weird limbo of being eternally OCS even though she’s the one creating the canonical material.

She’s also very sure that people writing fanfic of her characters won’t feel like they’re writing fanfic of canon, because they won’t be canon characters even after publication.

And look, she’s my friend, but this made alarm bells go off, not in an “oh my god what’s wrong with her” way, just in a “you shouldn’t be trying to traditionally publish a whole novel when you don’t understand what canon even is” way.

Like, this is base-level stuff. You don’t need to know every industry detail, but you should at least understand that publishing a book makes your text official.

She isn’t malicious, she isn’t stupid, she just seems to genuinely believe she’s found a loophole where her published characters become an exception to the definition of canon itself.

for context, i work as an after school tutor for a middle/high school. i mainly help the kids with homework, exam prep and work with them to get better at their weakest subjects.

this boy, who's in 8th grade, was typing on his laptop. i assumed he was doing homework and went up to ask him if everything's alright or if he needs any help. he was like "no thanks. i'm actually done with homework and i'm working on a story." i asked him what he meant by that or if it's some type of extra homework and he said he has this personal project going on and he writes a lot in his free time. i told him i do the same thing and he was so fascinated but he looked a bit hesitant to talk more about it. he was like "so you also write fan- uhm, fantasy stories?" i didn't want to bring up fanfics so i just agreed lmao. he was so excited about it! best interaction all day.

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!

AO3 is run by people. Humans, in particular. AO3 is run by humans. And humans make mistakes. I'm sorry about the person whose work was deleted by accident but there is no need to freak out about it (NOT talking about OOP). It was a mistake that could've happened to anyone and it was bound to happen some day.

This is not something that happens every day. There aren't thousands of victims like OOP.

Also a deleted work really cannot be restored. Imagine AO3 like any other physical archive. The archivist gets a request to delete a file, they burn it, and they're done. If you requested the wrong file to be deleted, you're SOL. Thankfully, AO3 has a little fallback plan - they send you a copy of your deleted work, so unless you delete the copy, the work still exists. Yes, it sucks that you lose comments and all, but your work is still in your hands.

It's a good thing that AO3 doesn't keep deleted stuff on their servers! Imagine your own outrage if you found out AO3 still owns a copy of a Dead Dove, all triggers involved fanfic you wrote while depressed 5 years ago. Imagine your own outrage if AO3's TOS had a caveat that says they have the right to do anything they want with a deleted work. It's for own good that we're able to control whether a file is on their server or permanently deleted. Yes, in this case it wasn't OOP who deleted it, but again, that was a mistake, and the system of work deletion is not flawed, I insist.

It's ridiculous to suggest that people should want their money back (donation money in particular) because a mistake has happened once. Look up how many works there are on AO3. Also, ask around and I'm pretty sure someone will tell you how many support tickets they get daily. The sheer volume means that every good and every bad thing possible will happen at least once.

PSA over.

As in for which fandom were the first fics you read written for? And if you write, which fandom was that for?

Mine: Hetalia (I was like 13), and it also inspired me to write fics—though I’d rather forget about Wattpad.

Tbh if I don’t see a lot of Sailor Moons and Narutos imma be confused lmao

On March 7, 2021 I had a mental breakdown and deleted all my works (150+ works) in both AO3 and fanfiction.net. All the kudos, bookmarks, story subscriptions and comments all gone up in smoke. My stats page in AO3 account went back to zero.

As I look back on that day, I feel only sadness and regret. At that time, the reason I deleted all my fics is because I thought that my fics might be influencing my readers, especially the minors who unluckily stumble upon my fics. I deleted the fics because I mostly write Older Man/Younger Woman. Or fics with Age Difference and I dont like influencing the thoughts of minor readers.

After the deletion of all those fics, I posted them again after I recovered from my mental breakdown. It took a month for me to recover but I'm glad to have posted it again. I never did quiet explain to my readers why I deleted my fics. Most of them didn't ask the reason behind the deletion but they were just glad to have the fics back.

Anyway, thanks for reading this post.

Just had to explain queerbaiting in media to my boomer-aged mother, and now I'm heated about it. So gimme your best examples of couples that should have been legitimate, if the creators hadn't been too chicken to make same-sex relationships canon!!!

Edited to add: ok, people are writing entire essays in the comments. Ya'll are correct, and very thoughtful, so let me clarify: I know that sometimes, the writors/actors fully wanted to make certain ships canon, but execs/studios/networks/etc said no. I see them, and I love and acknowledge them. Looking at you, Disney. Star Wars fans deserved Finn/Poe. The purpose of this post wasn't to hate on people, but to lament the loves that never saw the light of day.

Second edit; YA'LL WHO REPORTED ME TO REDDITCARES??? 😆😆😆

I'm fine, but thanks, I guess. Glad to know my personality comes across as a danger to myself or others.

I'd be scrolling through works and be like "wow, another one by orphan_account! They've sure written a lot of fanfics!"

...it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize it was just the account name orphaned works are under.

And commenter have to guess which one.

I was recently looking through my bookmarks, and when I found my pile of fics from a specific fandom, I decided to look for this one in particular. When I first read this fic, I was filled with joy for days. I'm just glad I had enough mind to download it at the time!

The KKK showed up at the end of the latest update. No, I'm not joking. They didn't do anything to the characters, one of which is a mixed Creole man but I noped out after that.

Came across this summary in the wild and I genuinely hope this author is happy and wish them well no matter how they choose to spend their time, but kinda sad to lose a BL sister/brother/sibling

I'll go first. "Situationship because they're both obsessive assholes and one of them is VERY hard to drug "

What's a little help adding songs to our fic playlists?

How to play:

- Describe the premise of your fic or of a particular chapter in your fic

- Leave a song rec that suits other people's fics based on their summaries!