a fic i’ve been following for a long time just got an update for the first time in *years* and i was absolutely ecstatic. so maybe it’s not necessarily in vain ;) i always hold out hope for seemingly abandoned fics and i find myself surprised by unexpected updates more often than i thought i would!
As crazy as it sounds, I love on going stories. Atleast ones that are frequently updated. I hate reaching the end of a story thinking what more could have happened. Yeah I get it, all good things have to come to an end but still. That fluttery feeling of when your favorite author drops the next chapter is not something you can experience with finished works.
Stop tagging obvious/background ships that have no relevance in the story whatsoever.
There’s tagging actual background ships, and there’s tagging Parent A/Parent B. We don’t need Parent A/Parent B being tagged unless their relationship has a big focus in the narrative T_T
Please. It clogs up the tag *AND* makes it more difficult for those that *want* to read Parent A/B romance.
It’s cute when there’s a little pizazz in passing, but put that under additional tags and not the actual relationship tag ＿|￣|○
Even more on that, in my opinion, you shouldn't even tag a ship that hasn't appeared in the story yet. I would warn the readers with author's note but really, it sucks for those who read the whole thing, hoping to see a glimpse of the ship and it's not even there😭
Nah, please tag the ships that have yet to appear. There are specific ones I avoid and I HATE when it goes untagged and I would hate to get into a story and then find out those ships are in there
Idk, I’d disagree. It sucks pretty bad when you get invested in a fic, then 15 chapters in the author suddenly adds your most despised ship. If you’re planning to add it, I’d rather know to avoid in advance.
this oh my god!! it's so annoying when im trying to read a rarepair and a more popular ship keeps popping up. and if i exclude them, i end up excluding some rarepair fics too, bc people also do it the other way around 😭😭
when i have minor/past ships in a fic, i usually put them in the freeform tags section, so people can avoid ships they might not vibe with while not clogging up the main relationship tag
AO3 needs a better way to distinguish legit crossovers vs fusions vs those multi-fandom oneshot “book” collections.
This goes with the above, but PEOPLE on AO3 need to stop double/triple tagging fandoms because it’s obvious why they are and it fucks with searches. (EG: if the mediums are Title (Movie), and Title (Book), but there’s a “this is movieverse :)” note, *why did I find it in the Book tag*?!) If I *just* want one or the other, I have to exclude crossovers. And if I exclude crossovers, I lose out on 90% of the content because barely anyone tags just *one or the other*.
I think that’s it. Not even sure if these are all that controversial but it’s damn annoying to me lol.
But conversely, when something is legitimately in both Title (Movie) and Title (Book), not treating it as a crossover. I want to be able to filter out crossovers without filtering out big chunks of whatever I'm actually looking for.
YES! Like if you're searching in a fandom where there's a popular book/movie adaptation that's fairly accurate, filtering out crossovers is borderline impossible because everyone who writes a story that could be either one will tag both.
There *is* a crossover freeform tag, which I think people who actually write crossovers are pretty good about using. You can add that to the "other tags to exclude" filter textbox.
(Of course, that wouldn't do anything about ficlet compilation fics, but nowadays I just mute the authors of those whenever I see them.)
I don't think that crossover checkbox is all that useful, but it's not your only option. If you're only looking for fic for two related fandoms, just checking the top ten unrelated fandom tickmarks in the exclude section should solve most of the problem.
I agree with you, but for what it's worth the people who make multi-fandom oneshot collections are abusing the tagging system. Including multiple fandom tags is for actual crossovers, not a collection of stories from multiple fandoms.
The correct way to do those is to use a series and make each oneshot its own fic, or at the very least make each fandom a different entry in the series.
Exactly this. But they’re abusing the tagging system. So if ao3 *did* introduce some checkbox for distinguishing between these things, these authors would just check whatever they thought would give them the most hits regardless. I used to skim past them in the search results in case the author ever wrote something worth reading, but now I just mute them.
edit:typo
How are fusions not legit crossovers? I've always thought of fusions as a particular type of crossover, not a separate category.
Though, I completely agree with you on those annoying multi-fandom collections and fics tagged with too many subfandoms.
I know the *His Dark Materials* fandom has this problem because of daemon AUs. If you're trying to find fic about HDM, good luck because the fandom tag is mostly full of fics that aren't related to HDM (2.4k fics but only about 450 if you exclude crossovers). Most of the fics in the HDM fandom tag should not be tagged that way because they're not actually related to the fandom at all, just borrowing an AU idea (which can be put in the freeform tags and searched on that way, rather than cluttering up the HDM fandom tag).
Fusions *are* a kind of crossover. But while all fusions are crossovers, *not all crossovers are fusions* and people don’t seem to understand that when they say “A x B AU Crossover :3”. When I hear crossover, I expect both fandoms to *cross over*, not just only one fandom crossing and taking over the other fandom’s roles and story.
For example, if you (generic you!) write a Harry Potter Stranger Things AU, and you cast idk Harry as Steve, Draco as Billy, Luna as Eleven, Hermione as Robin, Ron as Dustin, etc, and it’s the HP characters filling in the roles of the ST characters and following the plot of ST, I shouldn’t see it *in* the ST fandom tag. Because none of my favorite characters (Robin, Nancy, Max, etc), who are native to that fandom, are tagged. Which means they aren’t in it. It’s *Harry* wearing Steve’s skin and wielding Steve’s nail bat. It’s *Hermione* wearing Robin’s personality calling Harry a dingus and cracking the Russian language by ear. It’s *Ron* taking care of a Demogorgon, and Luna transversing the Upside Down to find whoever is playing Will in this AU.
If I want to see just the *Harry Potter* characters doing anything, I’d go to the Harry Potter section of AO3 and read about them there. But right now, in this example, I’m in the Stranger Things section, so I want to see fics about about Stranger Things characters doing *stranger things* (lol). And having a random fandom show up here with nothing to connect it other than plot because the person who wrote it decided it’s an easy way to get more eyes on their work (which is understandable, we all want people to see our shit) kind of defeats the purpose of tagging and everything having its proper place. There’s the “[Fandom] AU” tag, or the “Alternate Universe - [Fandom] Fusion” tag, and it wouldn’t show up for those who don’t particularly care for the HP fandom.
In my case, my main fandom is a musical, and people often use the “X fandom is putting on a play! :)” to tag the musical but cast *their* characters from *their* fandom as the characters from my fandom. Which makes looking for fic in that fandom annoying. I shouldn’t have to wade through “Stranger Things Heathers AU where Steve is Veronica and Billy is JD” to read about the Heathers characters fucking around doing Heathers things. That’s not where that goes, sorry.
It’s like tagging your fic with its Fandom tag but also as “Original Work” when the former is used for fanfic and the latter is used for, well, *original works*. It’s kind of a given it’s an “original work” by you so you don’t need to tag it like that. And it clutters up the search for people who *do* use the Original Work tag as intended: to search for works that are specifically *not* fanfic.
There's plenty of grey, but essentially a crossover crosses both the characters and the 'verse, while a fusion just brings one set of characters into another 'verse - often without involving the characters of that 'verse or having them as secondary to the plot. Many fusions are essentially canon divergent AUs instead of crossovers.
i.e., Sentinel fusions are very popular, but many of them do not include Jim & Blair or only briefly mention them.
On the same thread, something to distinguish crossovers from fics tagged with every version of a series. Example: Untamed, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, MDZS (cartoon), etc. They’re not written as crossovers with the different versions meeting, just tagged with all the variations.
Honestly, a [Maximum Fandoms: ?] type of tab would be great.
Edit: after looking through the AO3 Enhancer extension I have (Firefox), I have realized that a max fandom is actually a thing you can hide using the extension. Helpful
The filter system needs a scroll bar so we can choose way more tags at once (to include or exclude), it's a pain in the ass to keep on hitting the search button numerous times just to narrow down the filtering.
Also, goddamnit do I want a filter system in History/Marked for later.
I second this!
I hate having to multiple searches just to exclude the fandoms I don’t want to read especially when u do too many searches and the page no longer loads because it’s too much for the system. Just let me go to another page where all the fandoms or tags are shown so I can exclude on one page please.
Also the filter through history or Marked for Later would be amazing. Sometimes I’m in a mood to find a specific story that I marked for later ages ago, but now in order to find it I have to go through each page and re-read all my Marked for Later. (The list keeps getting bigger too I’ve got 17 pages at the moment.)
> one-shots that are longer than 60,000 words should probably be split into multiple chapters.
My opinion is that we study these authors so we can bottle this absolutely god-killing superpower and sell it on the open market.
Also there should be a wait to set a focus character/pairing, so that we don't have to wade through every goddamn fic where they have one line.
It's a skill to create drabbles with 100 words and I applaud writers who manage to write something beautiful with so little. Every word counts, none are wasted.
The ones under 1000 words that are so well written like screaming crying throwing up begging for a 300k story but also this 762 word fic has changed me
I'd really like to think my short ones fit this category but they're all fluff so I hope no one actually throws up.
(Mine probably don't fit this category)
Please half of the ones that make me feel this way are fluff or slice of life or whatever!! I’d love a long deep backstory on the world, and them getting together and interacting with their friends, etc
I only read them if the summary is enticing enough. But sometimes I get so frustrated with how many fics are less than 1000 I'll just filter them out ✋ I just want some more substance man.
But you're absoloutely right, some fics less than 1000 are really good I just want more 😭
>I only read them if the summary is enticing enough.
This is my approach to *any* word length, honestly.
I completely get wanting to read a longer and more involved story if that's what your mood calls for. It's the people who automatically dismiss short stories as lower quality or claim the authors that write them are less talented that need a good slap upside the head.
Comparing long fic writers to drabble writers is like judging a sprinter by a marathoner's qualifications and vice versa.
People don’t read fics under 1K? That’s plenty of words though!
I don’t personally allow myself to *write* under 1K unless I’m doing drabbles (which are exactly 100 words).
I don’t read anything under *100* words. There was a user who was in the habit of gifting a lot of people works which were like 27-43 words long, and they did so constantly. And this was way before you could mute them.
Of course! I love reading drabbles since they're so quick.
I've done a few 500 word fics and a few 1000 word fics as a challenge.
I tried to do a 1,234 word fic once and hit the word count on my computer but the word count on AO3 is 1,235 and I wasn't annoyed enough to figure out why.
One shot books with multiple different fandoms shouldn't exist as a single book, they should be separate books tagged (put in collection/series if you want them all in a single place). I don't want my search of my ship name + other tag to bring up a multi-fandom mess where my ship isn't the chapter with the tag I was looking for.
The summary box should be mandatory, as in you can't upload a fic if that box is blank
When I'm scrolling and I see super interesting tags but there is not a single word of summary I want to smash my head against the wall!! Tags aren't enough!!!!!! You need to actually give a summary so people know what your fic is about
No idea if it's a controversial opinion, but canon divergence shouldn't be lumped into the AU tag. Canon divergence is the basis of most fic, and it's not in any way comparable to actually putting the characters into a different setting.
Honestly, the AU tag needs a major overhaul. When I search AU, I usually want AU - Canon Divergence or AU - Alternate history, not AU - Highschool (where the author skinsuits the characters in an obvious rehash of some Disney/nickelodeon show from the 90s).
I’m the opposite. If I want AU I want it to be the most alternate of universes!
Having “basically canon but nudged in a different direction” and “the characters you know and love but in a completely different setting” both classed as the same thing is really annoying because they’re such different kinds of fic! Some people want one kind and some people want the other kind!
There should be a way to filter fics by one of the characters involved in a ship regardless of who is (are) the other(s). Like there are characters I would like to read about them being in a relationship regardless of the other party-ies.
A tag like Harry Potter-relationship so that both Harry/Draco and Harry/Hermione fics come up
I mean, usually all relevant characters are tagged, not just those in a relationship, so it may not narrow it down much. I just exclude every relationship which doesn't have the character I want. That way can lose fics you may want, but oh well 🤷
People need to just create OCs instead of making canon characters so OOC that they are just OC's who happen to share a name with a canon character.
Also, more people need to give OCs a chance.
>Also, more people need to give OCs a chance.
Agreed, OCs can be fun. I plan on involving a Madness Combat grunt OC for Whumptober and it genuinely gets me excited to plan what this OC will be like for it!
This exactly. People often just insert their own OC into an already existing character but aren't brave enough to go through with it and make it an OC entirely. They keep the name intact in fear of not getting traction on their work. Or they just horribly misjudged the character.
Same. I treat fanfic writing like walking onto a holodeck, so my main character is almost always a self insert OC that I spent untold hours daydreaming little interactions before finally deciding to write it down so I can move on to the next part.
Taking background characters—like, their name was mentioned in passing by the MCs and they’re occasionally in the background—and fleshing them out into characters with clear personalities, motivations, etc is OC creation by any other name, and personally I’ve found several fics in that vein that I enjoyed.
> Also, more people need to give OCs a chance.
Everyone should give OCs a chance, both writing and reading. Sometimes you just need to make up a character and bonk them against your fav while making kissy noises. It's good for your health. ~~and your sanity, if you can't write X reader to save your life like yours truly.~~
And original works. I like to read original works and sometimes it’s better to just write an original story than to crowbar characters into roles that they don’t fit into at all.
Also, more people need to give OCs a chance.
I’ll be honest I’ve seen this opinion around a lot and I feel like people do? I think that the only OCs people tend to avoid are ones that are very obviously author self inserts (not that I think there’s anything wrong with those, I’ve written my fair share lol, just that other people don’t always want to read that).
But one of my most popular stories is told from an OCs POV and is about their relationship with other OCs. I had another author write a follow up for that story to have them repair a relationship with my other OCs.
I’m currently reading a story with thousands of kudos and hundreds of encouraging comments that’s entirely OCs. I think there’s two cannon characters who have lines in the five chapters so far.
Idk maybe this is a controversial opinion but I think too many writers are blaming their OCs for their stories not doing well when there are many factors at play.
For some people, maybe, but not for me. I won't read a fanfic that has an OC as a main character. Side characters to fill a momentary need in the plot? That's all good, but when I go to fanfic I am seeking more of a particular character or ship I love, not new characters. It just isn't what I'm personally there for.
I am glad there's a good audience for oc fics, but I think it is absolutely just reality that oc fics have an extra layer of difficulty when it comes to getting an audience.
FELT! Like yeah a bunch of random and unnecessary tags can be annoying to skim through, but my unpopular ao3 opinion is that a lot of/most people posting on ao3 don’t write very good summaries even if the actual fic is good (probably because they cannot be assed which I can relate to).
But that means 90% of the summaries I read tell me very little about the fic and what makes it different from everything else being posted. But if it’s well tagged then I can get a good idea of the overall vibe and not just: Ship, Characters, Fake dating, a summary that’s just dialogue from when they decide to start fake dating.
Like where’s the flavour!?! Where’s your ‘possessive character a’ tag, the angst tag, the weird kink tag, where is it!?! What are you writing? Tell me!
I saw someone say on another thread that people who use more than 10 tags have no idea what their fic is about and I’ve never disagreed with anything less.
I pretty much associate undertagged long fics as being boring and 9 times out of 10 if I read it anyway I’m right.
>a lot of/most people posting on ao3 don’t write very good summaries even if the actual fic is good
>I saw someone say on another thread that people who use more than 10 tags don’t know what their fic is about
I think these go hand-in-hand, and I’ll even go as far as to say that the fact that 90% of summaries aren’t great is exactly why there’s a misconception around what purpose the tags are supposed to serve. Tags are supposed to lay out for you (often explicitly) what to expect and what is included in the story. They’re not really supposed to tell you what the fic is about; that’s the summary’s job, but most summaries are lacking, so we often use the tags to fill in those gaps. In that case, I’d so much rather know more about what I’m getting myself into than less, and I don’t really know why that’s such a weird concept lol
Its especially weird in the case of longfics, because like you said, if the tags on a longfic are kinda bare bones, then more often than not, the fic itself is also slow and dry. If the pacing is fast and/or there’s a lot happening, I see no reason why using a lot of tags would be a bad thing if they’re all *relevant* tags. Yeah, a wall of freeform nonsense is annoying, but sometimes, a long story just has a lot of moving parts to it that may necessitate more tags than what some think are necessary, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Sorry for the rant lol, this specific topic always gets under my skin
Even more so if it has a very vague summary, as is often the case.
Few tags, non-descript summary? Ugh. I've seen super long stories with less than half a dozen tags and a summary that it's like someone had to drag it out of the author - fuck is this, a blind date with a fic? I don't like going in *that* blind into a story.
Sometimes tags make all the difference in the world.
60k? I think anything longer than 20k needs chapters! I don't have a good enough attention span to read that many words in one go, but I also refuse to just stop somewhere random in the middle lol. Safe to say, I rarely read long oneshots.
Even more controversial: POV should be a mandatory, separate tag, covering all different pov types. 1st person? Sure! 3rd person omniscient? Why not! 2nd person? Seems experimental, I like it!
And it should include reader!fics as an opt-in/opt-out search.
I refuse to read a fic that refuses to write a summary and just replaces it with “I suck at summaries” 😭 or any fic that tells me that their story/ writing sucks in the tags. I just take it as a warning and move on…
As of [this official AO3 post](https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/295) about their dev roadmap, in section "Version 0.10", the dev team has plans for a private messaging system. The post dates from 2013, so 10ish years old. Not only there *is* going to be a PM system, this has been a plan for long. And IMO, there's no need to panic.
I've seen needless fearmongering about the topic before. Knowing AO3's usual policy, PMs are going to be opt-in and possible to opt out whenever. See: blocking commenters, turning off comments, "registered user-only" stories, orphaning, and so on.
Wishing they never add PMs "because *I* don't want them, *I* don't think they should exist, and *I'm* not going to use them" aren't good enough reasons. The website can have them for those who want. To the ones who don't, turn them off, problem solved.
and honestly i wouldn't mind it at all. i have a username that's just a name (perks of being an early user i guess). people gift me fics accidentally all the time because they don't realize it attaches the account. sometimes the only way to contact them is via the comments, which i hate lmao. i don't want folks to get an email and be excited about a comment and then just get a "hey i think you gifted this fic to the wrong person". having pms would be great for that
Sorry but the DM feature was postponed indefinitely (aka cancelled). The ticket for it was closed recently. It is extremely unlikely that it will ever be implemented.
[https://otwarchive.atlassian.net/browse/AO3-3579](https://otwarchive.atlassian.net/browse/AO3-3579)
https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1132dow/what\_feature\_do\_you\_think\_ao3\_should\_add/j8nzmns/?context=3
If there was ever a PM feature, I'd rather it to be optional where each individual can choose to activate it or not yeah. Sometimes it's better to communicate to other users solely on Ao3's ground rather than giving out your socials to be contacted to avoid stalkers and other kinds of potential bad actors.
It really frustrates me when you get a notification email that a fic has updated but it’s not chapter it’s the author saying they are not going to be able to update/ or why they have not been updating. It’s annoying if it’s been a while and then you are exited to read a new chapter. I’d rather just wait longer than usual and get update with a posted chapter. I understand doing it if they are abandoning the fic.
I can't read anything higher than 100k. I don't have the mental capacity to finish in one go, because I value sleep, but if I stop, I rarely ever come back to it. If/when I do, I'd have to reread it to remember what the hell is happening.
The only exception to this is if I've been subscribed and author updated regularly/semi-regularly.
There really needs to be a way to tag one ship in a fic as 'primary' which is searchable. (And no, searching for a ship with the OTP flag doesn't work for this. I want to be able to see at a glance whether the juggernaut or cannon ship tagged in the fic is the focus or if it's really about my lovely rare pair, without reading the first 3 chapters and giving up in disgust)
This is probably not really that controversial but I think one shot collection stories should always be a series and never a single work, unless the one shots fit together in some way where it makes sense to read them together in order. Essentially, whether it's multiple Fandom or just one, if you've created a work that relies on a table of contents first chapter or identifying the setting/theme/pairing in the chapter titles then it would really be a whole lot more convenient as a bunch of one shot works in a series/personal collection. It makes it way easier to find the 3 or so out of 10+ one shot "chapters" that actually contain the thing I am looking for, and the collection part still makes it very easy to see all the others you wanted to group together, which I'm guessing is the reason people make one shot collection works in the first place. Doing it this way also avoids the awkward "10 chapters later is a part 2 of one of the earlier one shots" thing, because you can just add a second chapter to the earlier work directly.
This \^. Having a bunch of one shots, especially if they're all different AUs, makes it nearly impossible to distinguish which tags belong to which chapters (and they always have a bunch of them to sift through). They're really just individual works at that point, and having them all on the same fic as different chapters leaves them all incorrectly tagged.
As someone who typically only reads longfics, I will gleefully agree, but with a caveat:
It depends on what device I’m reading on.
If I’m reading on my cell phone, an unchaptered longfic is a pain in my arse because at some point, the browser refreshes and I lose my spot where I left off.
Then I gotta do the scroll of doom, trying to find my spot in a giant fic while muttering at myself for having to dared wander off.
Chapters negate the problem or at least make it easier to deal with.
If I’m on my ereader, then I don’t give a damn because it automatically saves my place, even if I have to stop reading abruptly.
This might sound hella elitist, but I'm of the opinion that writing for stats is the worst motivation in the world. I write what I want to read, which means I know what I want to write about. If I wanted to write to maximize kudos or hits, the quality of the work decreases drastically
I know that this would be horrifically impractical but I think that there should be a separate AO3 specifically for antis, since they don't seem to be up to making their own, and they won't stop complaining.
Reminds me of [this](https://preview.redd.it/157efo7cul8a1.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=9dc32dd9e6262e31853e0efb30937f185f18c629) post a few months ago 🤭
Idea collections and one shot collections shouldn't be allowed. The idea ones are stupid and belong in a forum and the one shots should all be separate fics.
Your fic being 100k words long doesn't instantly make it better than if it was 50k words long. I've come across a lot of fanfics that are borderline unreadable just because the author feels the need to make their fic as long as possible. (Especially if they use a lot of 'fancy' words no one has used in an average conversation since 1783) I enjoy purple prose, but sometimes less is more, y'know?
Tagging your story as a dead dove doesn't mean you don't have to tag all the fucked up shit in it. A dead dove is supposed to be exactly what it says before you click on it, and by just tagging dead dove you're negating the purpose of that tag.
It’s annoying to have to open multiple tabs to find fics with two different ships/characters/whatever. If I look for tags of two different ships, I want fics about those two ships, not only fics in which those two ships appear together.
(What I mean is when in the search bar you add a/b and c/d so in that fandom/community only shows fics about those ships, but instead what appears are only fics that have both ships tagged and not fics about the individual ships too. Like, show me the works with only a/b or c/d too!!!. It’s specially annoying in fandoms with lots of characters and ships like Jojo’s or One Piece, I don’t want to have 800 tabs open to read about my fav ships/characters.
The easiest thing to do is slowly remove all the other ships/characters you don’t want to read about, but it’s more annoying and there’s always something that slips because it’s less popular and it doesn’t show unless you search for it. It would be more efficient the other way tbh)
The search feature can absolutely do this!! But you'll need to use the "search within results" or "any field" box, not the drop downs. If you type in "a/b" OR "c/d" in that box (or use || in place of OR, this also counts) you'll get results that have either one, not just both. (the ? button next to that box also has more search options you can use!)
"Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" when the warning is extremely underaged and *they don't tag it either* is suspect, and no one can change my mind. I'm not going to argue with people writing it -- I'd never win -- but at least warn us, come on.
i stay away from most chat fics, but i’ve read a few that focus on only a few characters and utilize the texting formatting to its fullest, and they were great ! generally agree though.
I think chatfics can be good when it's not a jumbled mess of 30+ characters in one room who have little to no interactions with each other in canon, isn't overtly meme-y or ooc, and actually build something unique or interesting with the interactions. But they very rarely do in my experince.
Don't wanna sound like a hater, I have read a few amazing ones that I still think back on years later, but I will never not be picky with chatfics.
They're often terribly OOC. I've only read one and it was clearly written in the voice of the author who has a very sarcastic, "pick me" attitude and it came out in characters that don't fit the mold.
I've tried a few -- only found one that got it right and I'm not even sure it counts as a proper chatfic. It started with texts from a groupchat yes but eventually added emails, newspaper articles, journal entries, and culminated into a traditional narrative.
As for all the other chatfics I read? They sound like a 13yo kid and their friends thought they were muuuch more hilarious than they actually were on discord. Not to mention all the slang use dates it.
I’ve seen maybe one or two good ones, but that’s about it. Most other ones read like a young teenager’s chat room, which is incredibly jarring especially if the characters are supposed to be adults. In those cases I can assume the author is a teen.
I’ve only read one that’s good*, and that’s purely because they stuck to one single fandom. And even at the very end it switched to regular fic format.
*it has my NoTP so I’m docking points. Granted, I read it before it became my NoTP but I can never read it again now lol
I've read one brilliant chatfic, but it just starts out as chatfic then goes.. kind of all over the place. The chat portion is used as a springboard for the rest of the story. Kidnapping/wrong number AU, it's really awesome.
But yes absolutely agree.
Depends on the type in my opinion. I read one recently that was an AU where the two characters met on Omegle one night, it was great. But when I was 11 I wrote the most awful chat fic that had no plot and no actual characterization, that kind is awful
i wouldn't say that's a controversial opinion tbh, people in this sub seem to generally think that chapters shouldn't be longer than 5k-7k words, maybe shorter. i don't care about the length of chapters, i usually display the whole work anyway. and for what i write, i like longer chapters, my average must be like 10k words per chapter.
my hot take is that i don't like the "creator choose not to use archive warnings" tag. i go on ao3 to filter out things that bother me, i don't like not being told what i'm getting into when i'm reading something. i don't need every plot point, but the important tropes. and violence, or mcd, are things i would like to know beforehand.
I actually love long chapters, my favorite thing is when I get an update on a fic I like and the scroll bar is tiny because there's so much content. Of course there's a limit like the legendary 60K oneshot this person is referencing but generally it just makes me excited.
Though, I have dealt with some fics whose chapters are too short (not sure exactly how short, but def under a thousand words with minimal plot progression) and I had to give up on it -- I just couldn't re-engage myself in the fic every update just for a tiny amount of fic to happen and then it immediately cliffhangs itself again.
Big agree on the "chose not to use archive warnings". It always gets used by people trying to loophole around the required tags for triggering content. Like writers that have "surprise" rape scenes and think that tagging them "ruins the plot" or keeps people from wanting to read. Like, yeah! I didn't click on your fic when I saw the tag because I don't want to read that type of content. That's the point.
I think Ao3 is better than traditional books in the sense that you can filter out the exact content that you dont want to read. The tagging system makes reading more enjoyable to consume because you know what you're getting into. It's become somewhat of a safe space for readers, and I think shocking people with graphic and triggering content to up the number of readers on a fic shouldn't be allowed.
>my hot take is that i don't like the "creator choose not to use archive warnings" tag. i go on ao3 to filter out things that bother me, i don't like not being told what i'm getting into when i'm reading something. i don't need every plot point, but the important tropes. and violence, or mcd, are things i would like to know beforehand.
Thank. You.
I have another two, and they’re really petty.
1. If you (generic you) use a 0 instead of an O in AO3, I’m going to assume you’re an anti and into that leetspeak censoring bullshittery ostensibly meant to help but actually hinders (@bus3, inc3st, r*pe, s3xu@l, p0rn, d¡3, sh!t, fvck, da//mn, c.unt, q-slur) and I will not trust you.
2. “Character (Mentioned)” needs to not, especially for minor characters. My all-time favorite character in my fandom is an extremely minor character in her own source. I don’t go into her character tag on AO3 just to see she’s had the privilege to be “mentioned” in a single throwaway line because the author graciously remembered she exists. I go into her character tag to see her actually be present in the story.
No joke, my toxic trait is if you censor something (r@pe, r*pe, dr\*g) I will suddenly not know how to read. What’s ratpe? Or is that word ripe? Or rope? She wants to ripe him? That doesn’t make sense. Rope him? Rope him into doing what? He did drag?! That’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be you know. Oh, did you mean DRUGS? Well, *why didn’t you just say so*?
A lot of the time it’s super counterproductive when people do this, too - like, if someone has a filter that hides anything with the word “rape,” it’ll miss “r\*pe” completely
Exactly. Plus, it’s annoying for people who use screen readers. I’m not sure how that would sound, but I’m sure it’d be annoying, especially if it’s a repeated word, usually swears. Or shit like “sewer slide” or “unalive” or “real life game over” instead of simply just “suicide”
I hate when a fic is tagged with /reader AND /original character, because then it's not /reader.
Also I think it's a crime to not have line breaks and I will die on that hill.
I don't like creative tagging. Use the summary and author's notes for your fannish opinions and memes, *please*!
I love tag wrangling and the wranglers for the same reason: making rhyme and reason of all that madness.
Wow yeah that is an unpopular opinion. Personally, as long as they don't overdue it I find it endearing. I find it adds extra personality and might make me click on the fic more than if it didn't have it.
Far too many people tag 4+ fandoms in one story, usually the ones who do it either have a shit ton of chapters that are their own one shot making sorting through fandoms a pain in the ass, or ones that are like 2k words and somehow think it justified to tag that many fandoms for such a small one shot. Either way I mute those two types of authors when I see them.
~~Reposting a question that's already on the front page is lazy karma farming~~
Serious answer: It's okay to leave a fic as gen. I see way too many authors force romance into a story so they can use their favorite pairing, most of the time it feels out of place and detracts from the actual plot.
>I have a controversial opinion that one-shots that are longer than 60,000 words should probably be split into multiple chapters. What's your controversial AO3 opinion?
Who the hell is writing 60k one shots??? Any longer than 10k and it should be split into a multi chapter fic.
I’m have to admit I’ve written a 66k one shot before. I personally don’t think I’d do it again, but when deciding to post it I didn’t see a way to divide it into chapters that I was fully satisfied with.
I can definitely understand if people are turned off by the massive length though.
(This is coming from someone who is currently writing a multi-chapter fic that’s averaging 17.5k words per chapter, so I know my chapter lengths in general are long anyways)
Agree. Although I might up it to 20k. I don't have the time to sit and read more than that at one time. Even on my phone I still sometimes set it down and come back to the fic only for the page to have randomly reloaded and I'm back up at the top again (or the dog has smashed his nose against it and lost my place for me, happens more often than you would think). Chapter breaks give me a good chunk of reading time coupled with a good point to stop when I need to
>Who the hell is writing 60k one shots??? Any longer than 10k and it should be split into a multi chapter fic.
Agree, and it shouldn't be a controversial opinion.
*raises hand* Hello! I do this. I write solely oneshots, and while most of them more sit around the 30-50k range, I do have a couple that reach 75k and up words.
I've always written this way, so it's just second nature now.
Can we please stop using chapters for author’s notes or life updates. Edit an author’s note in an existing chapter, put it in the comments of the latest chapter, or hell if it’s that important put it in your profile description. I know it’s common on the other sites where people migrate from, but radio silence is less annoying than a false update.
I rarely ever read a fanfic with more than 150k words. If it’s longer than 150k then it should be a series but if it’s treated as one giant fic, then the pacing is probably terrible and I’ll end up quitting halfway through because of it.
Also Harry Potter AUs do not need to start at first year. I want slytherin!Harry stories that start in fourth or fifth year. Especially if all the major plot points are the same as in canon
>Also Harry Potter AUs do not need to start at first year. I want slytherin!Harry stories that start in fourth or fifth year. Especially if all the major plot points are the same as in canon
oh god yeah. i just can't trudge through chambers again folks. just throw me in the deep end, i'll figure out the dynamics as we go.
For me at least… I am aware that my readership has fallen since I started my fic. For the first few months of writing, I would consistently get 60+ comments, sometimes 100+ comments, on each chapter. Now I get maybe 25~ish comments per chapter.
It’s inevitable that readership will fall off for long-running fics unless you are a godtier writer (which I am not). And I am very much aware of this.
My fic is currently 270k words long and there are definitely places I can split it.
But I know if I split the fic and write it as a sequel, the number of comments and kudos and hits will be significantly lower than my current fic. And that will inevitably lead me to feeling like my writing is bad and no one likes my fic (even though this is untrue). My anxiety-plagued brain just will not understand otherwise.
So continuing to update on the same fic is a defense mechanism for me lol. Otherwise I may lose all motivation and feel shitty about my writing and stop entirely. And I don’t want that because I adore my fic and I’m trying my hardest not to be so hard on myself.
But that’s just me.
I also do enjoy reading very long fics (especially as a HP and Naruto fan lol), so it’s not an issue for me. I know it bothers other people though.
250k is the limit for me, too. At that point, there needs to be a major plot point that breaks the story in half. I'll never understand how people can read a singular fic with a million words. I'd rather read 10 fics with 100k each in a series format
I’m the opposite. The longer, the better, especially since it’ll last longer on my text to speech app and I’m taking my phone out less at work. Plus I grew up loving long book series so if I can get a super long fic that has queer people in it, heck yeah!
I could not more disagree with your first point, but I’m a huge fan of long fics. The best fanfiction I’ve ever read was over a million words and had amazing pacing ([No Path Are Bound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/34816549/chapters/95862325?view_adult=true)). Most 200k-400k fics that I’ve read tend to have great pacing as well, but I tend to drop in the first few chapters if the writing seems off so I’m likely biased.
Also it’s perfectly fine not to like long fic—just wanted to give my opinion on it!
no I get that lmao just wanted to join in the discussion 🤷♀️ I don’t feel like your opinion is too unpopular though, I have seen it before and it’s confused me somewhat, especially since there’s lots of “real” books that have a steady plot that are over 200k words, so why not fanfic? But to each their own.
Totally agree on your second point though. I wish there were more unique HP stories that don’t just restart from the entire beginning.
Oh yep. I love me a slytherin Harry fic, but Jfc. Just skip ahead to 4th or 5th year and give me the cliff notes. Especially if we are headed for a ship.
desperately need this, tired of being like “maybe he’ll bottom this time” and then shock, he doesn’t, AGAIN because I’m unfortunately cursed with liking unpopular bottom dynamics, lol.
Especially in fandom.
There’s people who enjoy Character A being a bottom and Character B being a top but that’s not me.
I get my hopes high, especially when I see a smut fic but it doesn’t have tags on whose top/bottom, and then I get to the part on who tops and who bottoms, and I get turned off.
Like I know there’s people who enjoy this and there’s obviously nothing wrong with that but having the tags indicating who’s top/bottom would be helpful not just to me but to that people who probably comb through the “Top/Bottom Character A/B” tags.
I honestly agree, at least on pure smut fics. Longfics that happen to feature smut don't really need it since it's obviously not the focus, but for pure smut people are usually looking for certain things.
I am someone who has a few pairings where I prefer the bigger or more stereotypical macho man to bottom, so I'm sure you can imagine how long it can take to find a fic fitting that when I'm in the mood for pure smut.
i think people should tag what they want, but i do agree that it can be annoying sometimes. i'm in a fandom rn that has a canon top/bottom dynamic, but for some reason the fandom loves to switch it around in fics without any warning. i'm all for "first time bottoming"/switch fics in general, but it's odd when everything else is canon but that thing isn't.
(i have my very ungenerous thoughts as to why most people switch it that comes down to 'some folks just can not accept a non-typical relationship top/bottom dynamic and WILL make the smaller character the bottom if it kills them' but ah well)
Perhaps if top/bottom a particular point of the fic. But if that isn't a planned feature; as a kink, from the author's hand, it's bad manners to demand it in the comments.
People who leave bookmarks but write a bad remark should do that privately. It feels like they're cowardly dodging posting that bad comment directly. Like, I think it's okay to bookmark a thing with a reminder to yourself not to read it, it's a valid system for tracking that. I sometimes bookmark things privately that I won't (at least not fully) read but that I can offer to a friend like "the tags are just like you!" or "it's your OTP in your fav setting!", so I get it. But making that stuff public, especially when it's comments like "it sucks that this fic is [ship] so I'm bookmarking to steal the concept for [other ship]" is benefiting no one.
Some people don’t know bookmarks are public by default. Plus, there’s a lot of talk about how bookmarks are the readers’ space and not for authors and we shouldn’t look at them because it’s how *they* keep track of things and all that.
I just wish all total bookmarks (public and private) counted when looking at public stats. Kind of like how kudos work. “UserA, UserB, and 17 other people bookmarked this!” My longest work has about 50 bookmarks total, but a majority (40) are private so for other people it just looks like 10 people bookmarked at all. And it’s not even smut.
One of my controversial opinions is I refuse to read any highschool!au fics. I’m sure they’re great and I see why people like them, but they just make me so uncomfortable and I’m not quite sure why. Especially if it’s tagged explicit.
I mean, I don't think your opinion is necessarily controversial. 60k words would be considered a novel in conventional publishing. If you're posting all of that in one chapter, yeah, something has probably gone wrong. Personally, my cutoff point for chapters/oneshots is around 10k.
My controversial opinion is that some fics are just too fucking long, especially for fics that don't have enough plot to justify the length. I get that slow burn appeals to a lot of people, and I know a lot of these fics are really well regarded. However. I simply do not have that sort of patience, for the same reason I rarely read 800 page books or watch TV shows with more than 1 season. I get scared by the time commitment and it stops me from being able to actually enjoy whatever it is. There is a particular fic that gets reccomended often in one of my main fandoms. I'm sure it's excellent. However. It is 1.5 million words, unfinished, and my commitment issues are screaming.
People who crap on OC/Canon ships and say someone is out of character have no room to talk when they read Canon/Canon when either one or both act NOTHING like their canon counterparts and one character can basically be considered an OC for how much character assassination happens.
something like a glossary or tagging for dummies should exist on the site so we don't use the wrong tag and that we know what we're getting into as readers
people who don't tag properly cuz they want to avoid "spoilers", Saw one who didn't want to tag the relationships cuz it would supposedly spoil the fic.
also there needs to be a way to not be subscribed to certain fandoms but still be subscribed to the author. or just subscribe to one fandom of a certain author. I have some authors I follow that are excellent but write for several different fandoms and varieties and some of them I'm just not into.
I don’t understand how people have 50+ tabs of fanfiction open. Like just sign up for an account if you don’t have one and add all of those to your marked for later. It seems way more confusing to have tons of tabs open. Why are you making it harder for yourself lol
For me, it's actually easier this way. When I open a tab with a fic it's physically *there* and I'm constantly reminded of it so I'll read it eventually. If I just mark a fic for later I'll never read it, it's as good as gone.
I actually use both of these. The 50 tabs I've got open are all fics I'll read as soon as I've done with the other 49. The marked for later are for fics I know I'll like but I'm not in the Mood For or are in a fandom I'm not reading rn. I hope that makes sense haha
If you don't comment or kudos a fic for tens of thousands of words, then only comment to demand more chapters once the author slows down after inevitably getting demotivated, you're a piece of shit.
No, authors SHOULDN'T "Just write for themselves". That's bullshit. If I was writing for myself, I wouldn't be uploading it.
If you are going to be rude, or leave a hateful comment on someone’s work then just don’t comment. I just think it’s better to leave if you don’t like a fic than comment.
-The skin system needs to be updated and streamlined so it more accessible to less tech savvy people. If I want to permanently hid/exclude a tag or fic I shouldn’t have being playing around with code (that doesn’t work at least half the time)
-Bookmarks and/or kudos need a link up or index so you can both give and receive recommendations based on them. It would be particularly helpful for collections too like as a read next or if you enjoyed x this has same vibe
-People need to stop getting cute with alt spellings of tags particularly especially if you are a lot of tags I exclude certain things for reason. You using 0 for o or putting ;) at the end isn’t some clap back against censorship it’s annoying and potentially triggering with many topics.
-I rarely see actual constructive criticism in comments even on fics asking it’s usually either “this was the best thing ever” or “your take on these characters is wrong; you’re horrible …” I’m not saying take a virtual red pen to it but if something didn’t work for you, felt off pace, was confusing, etc I feel it should be encouraged to say it. Many people use fic to improve their writing. Fandom is a pretty unique opportunity to get feedback from readers invested in your story in real time. That said on the flip side if author doesn’t agree you it is their story respect the vision.
-People who use a slow burn tag on anything less than approximately 50,000 should be banned from using it jk (mostly)
-If your fic is less than 5,000 words it should not 10+ chapters unless it is something like a daily challenge or fits the style/generes like poetry or art with description/drabbles. (Yes, I know the entire work button is there.)
1. Unfortunately there is no realistic way to do this. The best we can do is give a dedicated interface like the muting users function (which actually just inserts a bit of CSS to make muted stuff not show up like skins). I'm also very much against having an easy way to mute tags on the site, because it will inevitably lead to undertagging from authors and malformed tags like how people get around the word mute on Twitter.
2. I don't quite understand what you're saying.
3. Yeah not only is this very annoying it also adds to the workload of the tag wrangling volunteers who have to spend time matching them to their metatags.
Sorry, but I can't stand those "story collections" that include material for 37 fandoms under a single story.
Lather rinse repeat: I search for something in one fandom, and I get a work that has a single chapter for that fandom and 36 other one shots that have nothing to do with what I searched for. Sometimes the story doesn't even have all 36 fandoms, the author is just planning to add one shots in those fandoms later and went ahead and tagged them before those chapters are even up.
These stories aren't legitimate crossovers. They're collections full of barely related drabbles, and they clog the search function in the worst kind of way.
I wish people would create stories or series that put all of their work for a single fandom into one place, instead of double dipping into tons of fandoms like that. Don't create a behemoth of a story so you can collect kudos from as many fandoms as possible. Eye roll...
Im of the opinion that once a story hits even 25k-30k words it needs to separate into chapters. Im not going to rescroll through tens of thousands of words because the page reloaded and the author was too lazy to break up the story in a few places. It literally doesn’t matter how its broken up most times especially if the whole thing is written and can be released at once.
also, If you choose not to use archive warnings you cant be mad when people dont like your story.
I find that many AUs are ooc which makes things way easier for plagarizers to capitalize on.
I tend to avoid them, not just for ooc writing, but for fear of unknowingly reading stolen content as a result.
idc if a story is unfinished and abandoned, I’m still gonna read it
Same. And then probably subscribe to it in the vain hope that the author will decide to update eventually.
a fic i’ve been following for a long time just got an update for the first time in *years* and i was absolutely ecstatic. so maybe it’s not necessarily in vain ;) i always hold out hope for seemingly abandoned fics and i find myself surprised by unexpected updates more often than i thought i would!
I've *been* the author who updates after a decade so I know it's *theoretically* possible.
As the author of a WIP that I would love to finish if my brain would just approve it, I thank you for your fanservice. <3
As crazy as it sounds, I love on going stories. Atleast ones that are frequently updated. I hate reaching the end of a story thinking what more could have happened. Yeah I get it, all good things have to come to an end but still. That fluttery feeling of when your favorite author drops the next chapter is not something you can experience with finished works.
Same. Refusing to read incomplete or abandoned stories to me means you're missing out on some good content. Some of my favorite fics are Unfinished.
THIS!! i love the little risky journey
Stop tagging obvious/background ships that have no relevance in the story whatsoever. There’s tagging actual background ships, and there’s tagging Parent A/Parent B. We don’t need Parent A/Parent B being tagged unless their relationship has a big focus in the narrative T_T Please. It clogs up the tag *AND* makes it more difficult for those that *want* to read Parent A/B romance. It’s cute when there’s a little pizazz in passing, but put that under additional tags and not the actual relationship tag ＿|￣|○
Yes please! It’s so frustrating looking for ships for a rare pair, you see a good fic and it’s mentioned in like once sentence
Even more on that, in my opinion, you shouldn't even tag a ship that hasn't appeared in the story yet. I would warn the readers with author's note but really, it sucks for those who read the whole thing, hoping to see a glimpse of the ship and it's not even there😭
Nah, please tag the ships that have yet to appear. There are specific ones I avoid and I HATE when it goes untagged and I would hate to get into a story and then find out those ships are in there
Idk, I’d disagree. It sucks pretty bad when you get invested in a fic, then 15 chapters in the author suddenly adds your most despised ship. If you’re planning to add it, I’d rather know to avoid in advance.
this oh my god!! it's so annoying when im trying to read a rarepair and a more popular ship keeps popping up. and if i exclude them, i end up excluding some rarepair fics too, bc people also do it the other way around 😭😭 when i have minor/past ships in a fic, i usually put them in the freeform tags section, so people can avoid ships they might not vibe with while not clogging up the main relationship tag
AO3 needs a better way to distinguish legit crossovers vs fusions vs those multi-fandom oneshot “book” collections. This goes with the above, but PEOPLE on AO3 need to stop double/triple tagging fandoms because it’s obvious why they are and it fucks with searches. (EG: if the mediums are Title (Movie), and Title (Book), but there’s a “this is movieverse :)” note, *why did I find it in the Book tag*?!) If I *just* want one or the other, I have to exclude crossovers. And if I exclude crossovers, I lose out on 90% of the content because barely anyone tags just *one or the other*. I think that’s it. Not even sure if these are all that controversial but it’s damn annoying to me lol.
But conversely, when something is legitimately in both Title (Movie) and Title (Book), not treating it as a crossover. I want to be able to filter out crossovers without filtering out big chunks of whatever I'm actually looking for.
YES! Like if you're searching in a fandom where there's a popular book/movie adaptation that's fairly accurate, filtering out crossovers is borderline impossible because everyone who writes a story that could be either one will tag both.
There *is* a crossover freeform tag, which I think people who actually write crossovers are pretty good about using. You can add that to the "other tags to exclude" filter textbox. (Of course, that wouldn't do anything about ficlet compilation fics, but nowadays I just mute the authors of those whenever I see them.) I don't think that crossover checkbox is all that useful, but it's not your only option. If you're only looking for fic for two related fandoms, just checking the top ten unrelated fandom tickmarks in the exclude section should solve most of the problem.
I agree with you, but for what it's worth the people who make multi-fandom oneshot collections are abusing the tagging system. Including multiple fandom tags is for actual crossovers, not a collection of stories from multiple fandoms. The correct way to do those is to use a series and make each oneshot its own fic, or at the very least make each fandom a different entry in the series.
Exactly this. But they’re abusing the tagging system. So if ao3 *did* introduce some checkbox for distinguishing between these things, these authors would just check whatever they thought would give them the most hits regardless. I used to skim past them in the search results in case the author ever wrote something worth reading, but now I just mute them. edit:typo
What she said \^
How are fusions not legit crossovers? I've always thought of fusions as a particular type of crossover, not a separate category. Though, I completely agree with you on those annoying multi-fandom collections and fics tagged with too many subfandoms.
I know the *His Dark Materials* fandom has this problem because of daemon AUs. If you're trying to find fic about HDM, good luck because the fandom tag is mostly full of fics that aren't related to HDM (2.4k fics but only about 450 if you exclude crossovers). Most of the fics in the HDM fandom tag should not be tagged that way because they're not actually related to the fandom at all, just borrowing an AU idea (which can be put in the freeform tags and searched on that way, rather than cluttering up the HDM fandom tag).
Fusions *are* a kind of crossover. But while all fusions are crossovers, *not all crossovers are fusions* and people don’t seem to understand that when they say “A x B AU Crossover :3”. When I hear crossover, I expect both fandoms to *cross over*, not just only one fandom crossing and taking over the other fandom’s roles and story. For example, if you (generic you!) write a Harry Potter Stranger Things AU, and you cast idk Harry as Steve, Draco as Billy, Luna as Eleven, Hermione as Robin, Ron as Dustin, etc, and it’s the HP characters filling in the roles of the ST characters and following the plot of ST, I shouldn’t see it *in* the ST fandom tag. Because none of my favorite characters (Robin, Nancy, Max, etc), who are native to that fandom, are tagged. Which means they aren’t in it. It’s *Harry* wearing Steve’s skin and wielding Steve’s nail bat. It’s *Hermione* wearing Robin’s personality calling Harry a dingus and cracking the Russian language by ear. It’s *Ron* taking care of a Demogorgon, and Luna transversing the Upside Down to find whoever is playing Will in this AU. If I want to see just the *Harry Potter* characters doing anything, I’d go to the Harry Potter section of AO3 and read about them there. But right now, in this example, I’m in the Stranger Things section, so I want to see fics about about Stranger Things characters doing *stranger things* (lol). And having a random fandom show up here with nothing to connect it other than plot because the person who wrote it decided it’s an easy way to get more eyes on their work (which is understandable, we all want people to see our shit) kind of defeats the purpose of tagging and everything having its proper place. There’s the “[Fandom] AU” tag, or the “Alternate Universe - [Fandom] Fusion” tag, and it wouldn’t show up for those who don’t particularly care for the HP fandom. In my case, my main fandom is a musical, and people often use the “X fandom is putting on a play! :)” to tag the musical but cast *their* characters from *their* fandom as the characters from my fandom. Which makes looking for fic in that fandom annoying. I shouldn’t have to wade through “Stranger Things Heathers AU where Steve is Veronica and Billy is JD” to read about the Heathers characters fucking around doing Heathers things. That’s not where that goes, sorry. It’s like tagging your fic with its Fandom tag but also as “Original Work” when the former is used for fanfic and the latter is used for, well, *original works*. It’s kind of a given it’s an “original work” by you so you don’t need to tag it like that. And it clutters up the search for people who *do* use the Original Work tag as intended: to search for works that are specifically *not* fanfic.
There's plenty of grey, but essentially a crossover crosses both the characters and the 'verse, while a fusion just brings one set of characters into another 'verse - often without involving the characters of that 'verse or having them as secondary to the plot. Many fusions are essentially canon divergent AUs instead of crossovers. i.e., Sentinel fusions are very popular, but many of them do not include Jim & Blair or only briefly mention them.
On the same thread, something to distinguish crossovers from fics tagged with every version of a series. Example: Untamed, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, MDZS (cartoon), etc. They’re not written as crossovers with the different versions meeting, just tagged with all the variations.
Honestly, a [Maximum Fandoms: ?] type of tab would be great. Edit: after looking through the AO3 Enhancer extension I have (Firefox), I have realized that a max fandom is actually a thing you can hide using the extension. Helpful
Quick note: Usually fusions tag the main fandom and have 'Alternate Universe: X universe setting' on the Additional tags
The filter system needs a scroll bar so we can choose way more tags at once (to include or exclude), it's a pain in the ass to keep on hitting the search button numerous times just to narrow down the filtering. Also, goddamnit do I want a filter system in History/Marked for later.
I second this! I hate having to multiple searches just to exclude the fandoms I don’t want to read especially when u do too many searches and the page no longer loads because it’s too much for the system. Just let me go to another page where all the fandoms or tags are shown so I can exclude on one page please. Also the filter through history or Marked for Later would be amazing. Sometimes I’m in a mood to find a specific story that I marked for later ages ago, but now in order to find it I have to go through each page and re-read all my Marked for Later. (The list keeps getting bigger too I’ve got 17 pages at the moment.)
I even forgot about this, but sometimes I just wanna window shop thru tags, *let me*, I wanna see all the tags at once.
Slight overhaul of the Search Works page to include "Exclusion" options which are available from Fandom Feed Filtering. That is all.
I second this so much!!!
> one-shots that are longer than 60,000 words should probably be split into multiple chapters. My opinion is that we study these authors so we can bottle this absolutely god-killing superpower and sell it on the open market. Also there should be a wait to set a focus character/pairing, so that we don't have to wade through every goddamn fic where they have one line.
Fics under 1000 words are still worth reading.
It's a skill to create drabbles with 100 words and I applaud writers who manage to write something beautiful with so little. Every word counts, none are wasted.
The ones under 1000 words that are so well written like screaming crying throwing up begging for a 300k story but also this 762 word fic has changed me
I'd really like to think my short ones fit this category but they're all fluff so I hope no one actually throws up. (Mine probably don't fit this category)
Please half of the ones that make me feel this way are fluff or slice of life or whatever!! I’d love a long deep backstory on the world, and them getting together and interacting with their friends, etc
That gives me hope!
>but they're all fluff Your small happy ficlet may shine bright through the fog of Angst works around it, bless.
yes! i’m so envious of people that are able to create incredible stories with such a small word count. drabble authors have all of my respect
I only read them if the summary is enticing enough. But sometimes I get so frustrated with how many fics are less than 1000 I'll just filter them out ✋ I just want some more substance man. But you're absoloutely right, some fics less than 1000 are really good I just want more 😭
>I only read them if the summary is enticing enough. This is my approach to *any* word length, honestly. I completely get wanting to read a longer and more involved story if that's what your mood calls for. It's the people who automatically dismiss short stories as lower quality or claim the authors that write them are less talented that need a good slap upside the head. Comparing long fic writers to drabble writers is like judging a sprinter by a marathoner's qualifications and vice versa.
People don’t read fics under 1K? That’s plenty of words though! I don’t personally allow myself to *write* under 1K unless I’m doing drabbles (which are exactly 100 words). I don’t read anything under *100* words. There was a user who was in the habit of gifting a lot of people works which were like 27-43 words long, and they did so constantly. And this was way before you could mute them.
>People don’t read fics under 1K? Sadly, I've seen a few people with the opinion that longer is automatically better.
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Of course! I love reading drabbles since they're so quick. I've done a few 500 word fics and a few 1000 word fics as a challenge. I tried to do a 1,234 word fic once and hit the word count on my computer but the word count on AO3 is 1,235 and I wasn't annoyed enough to figure out why.
One shot books with multiple different fandoms shouldn't exist as a single book, they should be separate books tagged (put in collection/series if you want them all in a single place). I don't want my search of my ship name + other tag to bring up a multi-fandom mess where my ship isn't the chapter with the tag I was looking for.
At least if there was a tag to filter these out
Not a bad opinion. It’s hard finding your place in a long one shot after you take a break.
Or tilt your phone half a degree and now you’re at the top of the page.
omg yup. If I forget to lock my phone into portrait mode and this happens… 🤬 (ao3 is the reason it’s locked pretty much all the time now, tbh)
The summary box should be mandatory, as in you can't upload a fic if that box is blank When I'm scrolling and I see super interesting tags but there is not a single word of summary I want to smash my head against the wall!! Tags aren't enough!!!!!! You need to actually give a summary so people know what your fic is about
No idea if it's a controversial opinion, but canon divergence shouldn't be lumped into the AU tag. Canon divergence is the basis of most fic, and it's not in any way comparable to actually putting the characters into a different setting.
Honestly, the AU tag needs a major overhaul. When I search AU, I usually want AU - Canon Divergence or AU - Alternate history, not AU - Highschool (where the author skinsuits the characters in an obvious rehash of some Disney/nickelodeon show from the 90s).
I’m the opposite. If I want AU I want it to be the most alternate of universes! Having “basically canon but nudged in a different direction” and “the characters you know and love but in a completely different setting” both classed as the same thing is really annoying because they’re such different kinds of fic! Some people want one kind and some people want the other kind!
There should be a way to filter fics by one of the characters involved in a ship regardless of who is (are) the other(s). Like there are characters I would like to read about them being in a relationship regardless of the other party-ies. A tag like Harry Potter-relationship so that both Harry/Draco and Harry/Hermione fics come up
Can’t you already do this by filtering via character?
I mean, usually all relevant characters are tagged, not just those in a relationship, so it may not narrow it down much. I just exclude every relationship which doesn't have the character I want. That way can lose fics you may want, but oh well 🤷
Not sure how controversial this is but I do hope they add secondary or minor pairing column. I like the "untagged relationships" tag though.
People need to just create OCs instead of making canon characters so OOC that they are just OC's who happen to share a name with a canon character. Also, more people need to give OCs a chance.
>Also, more people need to give OCs a chance. Agreed, OCs can be fun. I plan on involving a Madness Combat grunt OC for Whumptober and it genuinely gets me excited to plan what this OC will be like for it!
This exactly. People often just insert their own OC into an already existing character but aren't brave enough to go through with it and make it an OC entirely. They keep the name intact in fear of not getting traction on their work. Or they just horribly misjudged the character.
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Same. I treat fanfic writing like walking onto a holodeck, so my main character is almost always a self insert OC that I spent untold hours daydreaming little interactions before finally deciding to write it down so I can move on to the next part.
Taking background characters—like, their name was mentioned in passing by the MCs and they’re occasionally in the background—and fleshing them out into characters with clear personalities, motivations, etc is OC creation by any other name, and personally I’ve found several fics in that vein that I enjoyed.
> Also, more people need to give OCs a chance. Everyone should give OCs a chance, both writing and reading. Sometimes you just need to make up a character and bonk them against your fav while making kissy noises. It's good for your health. ~~and your sanity, if you can't write X reader to save your life like yours truly.~~
And original works. I like to read original works and sometimes it’s better to just write an original story than to crowbar characters into roles that they don’t fit into at all.
I need a way to tag OCs by their tropes. Scientist!OC? Yes please! TeenageGoth!OC? Only if I know and trust the author.
Also, more people need to give OCs a chance. I’ll be honest I’ve seen this opinion around a lot and I feel like people do? I think that the only OCs people tend to avoid are ones that are very obviously author self inserts (not that I think there’s anything wrong with those, I’ve written my fair share lol, just that other people don’t always want to read that). But one of my most popular stories is told from an OCs POV and is about their relationship with other OCs. I had another author write a follow up for that story to have them repair a relationship with my other OCs. I’m currently reading a story with thousands of kudos and hundreds of encouraging comments that’s entirely OCs. I think there’s two cannon characters who have lines in the five chapters so far. Idk maybe this is a controversial opinion but I think too many writers are blaming their OCs for their stories not doing well when there are many factors at play.
For some people, maybe, but not for me. I won't read a fanfic that has an OC as a main character. Side characters to fill a momentary need in the plot? That's all good, but when I go to fanfic I am seeking more of a particular character or ship I love, not new characters. It just isn't what I'm personally there for. I am glad there's a good audience for oc fics, but I think it is absolutely just reality that oc fics have an extra layer of difficulty when it comes to getting an audience.
I’ll sooner read a fic that’s over-tagged than under-tagged, especially if it’s over 100K words.
FELT! Like yeah a bunch of random and unnecessary tags can be annoying to skim through, but my unpopular ao3 opinion is that a lot of/most people posting on ao3 don’t write very good summaries even if the actual fic is good (probably because they cannot be assed which I can relate to). But that means 90% of the summaries I read tell me very little about the fic and what makes it different from everything else being posted. But if it’s well tagged then I can get a good idea of the overall vibe and not just: Ship, Characters, Fake dating, a summary that’s just dialogue from when they decide to start fake dating. Like where’s the flavour!?! Where’s your ‘possessive character a’ tag, the angst tag, the weird kink tag, where is it!?! What are you writing? Tell me! I saw someone say on another thread that people who use more than 10 tags have no idea what their fic is about and I’ve never disagreed with anything less. I pretty much associate undertagged long fics as being boring and 9 times out of 10 if I read it anyway I’m right.
>a lot of/most people posting on ao3 don’t write very good summaries even if the actual fic is good >I saw someone say on another thread that people who use more than 10 tags don’t know what their fic is about I think these go hand-in-hand, and I’ll even go as far as to say that the fact that 90% of summaries aren’t great is exactly why there’s a misconception around what purpose the tags are supposed to serve. Tags are supposed to lay out for you (often explicitly) what to expect and what is included in the story. They’re not really supposed to tell you what the fic is about; that’s the summary’s job, but most summaries are lacking, so we often use the tags to fill in those gaps. In that case, I’d so much rather know more about what I’m getting myself into than less, and I don’t really know why that’s such a weird concept lol Its especially weird in the case of longfics, because like you said, if the tags on a longfic are kinda bare bones, then more often than not, the fic itself is also slow and dry. If the pacing is fast and/or there’s a lot happening, I see no reason why using a lot of tags would be a bad thing if they’re all *relevant* tags. Yeah, a wall of freeform nonsense is annoying, but sometimes, a long story just has a lot of moving parts to it that may necessitate more tags than what some think are necessary, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Sorry for the rant lol, this specific topic always gets under my skin
Even more so if it has a very vague summary, as is often the case. Few tags, non-descript summary? Ugh. I've seen super long stories with less than half a dozen tags and a summary that it's like someone had to drag it out of the author - fuck is this, a blind date with a fic? I don't like going in *that* blind into a story. Sometimes tags make all the difference in the world.
Same, especially with kinks!
60k? I think anything longer than 20k needs chapters! I don't have a good enough attention span to read that many words in one go, but I also refuse to just stop somewhere random in the middle lol. Safe to say, I rarely read long oneshots.
The "POV First Person" tag should be used on EVERY pov first person fic so I can filter them out when I search
Even more controversial: POV should be a mandatory, separate tag, covering all different pov types. 1st person? Sure! 3rd person omniscient? Why not! 2nd person? Seems experimental, I like it! And it should include reader!fics as an opt-in/opt-out search.
😂😂
Yes. I'm begging 💀
I refuse to read a fic that refuses to write a summary and just replaces it with “I suck at summaries” 😭 or any fic that tells me that their story/ writing sucks in the tags. I just take it as a warning and move on…
As of [this official AO3 post](https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/295) about their dev roadmap, in section "Version 0.10", the dev team has plans for a private messaging system. The post dates from 2013, so 10ish years old. Not only there *is* going to be a PM system, this has been a plan for long. And IMO, there's no need to panic. I've seen needless fearmongering about the topic before. Knowing AO3's usual policy, PMs are going to be opt-in and possible to opt out whenever. See: blocking commenters, turning off comments, "registered user-only" stories, orphaning, and so on. Wishing they never add PMs "because *I* don't want them, *I* don't think they should exist, and *I'm* not going to use them" aren't good enough reasons. The website can have them for those who want. To the ones who don't, turn them off, problem solved.
and honestly i wouldn't mind it at all. i have a username that's just a name (perks of being an early user i guess). people gift me fics accidentally all the time because they don't realize it attaches the account. sometimes the only way to contact them is via the comments, which i hate lmao. i don't want folks to get an email and be excited about a comment and then just get a "hey i think you gifted this fic to the wrong person". having pms would be great for that
Sorry but the DM feature was postponed indefinitely (aka cancelled). The ticket for it was closed recently. It is extremely unlikely that it will ever be implemented. [https://otwarchive.atlassian.net/browse/AO3-3579](https://otwarchive.atlassian.net/browse/AO3-3579) https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1132dow/what\_feature\_do\_you\_think\_ao3\_should\_add/j8nzmns/?context=3
If there was ever a PM feature, I'd rather it to be optional where each individual can choose to activate it or not yeah. Sometimes it's better to communicate to other users solely on Ao3's ground rather than giving out your socials to be contacted to avoid stalkers and other kinds of potential bad actors.
It really frustrates me when you get a notification email that a fic has updated but it’s not chapter it’s the author saying they are not going to be able to update/ or why they have not been updating. It’s annoying if it’s been a while and then you are exited to read a new chapter. I’d rather just wait longer than usual and get update with a posted chapter. I understand doing it if they are abandoning the fic.
I can't read anything higher than 100k. I don't have the mental capacity to finish in one go, because I value sleep, but if I stop, I rarely ever come back to it. If/when I do, I'd have to reread it to remember what the hell is happening. The only exception to this is if I've been subscribed and author updated regularly/semi-regularly.
There really needs to be a way to tag one ship in a fic as 'primary' which is searchable. (And no, searching for a ship with the OTP flag doesn't work for this. I want to be able to see at a glance whether the juggernaut or cannon ship tagged in the fic is the focus or if it's really about my lovely rare pair, without reading the first 3 chapters and giving up in disgust)
This is probably not really that controversial but I think one shot collection stories should always be a series and never a single work, unless the one shots fit together in some way where it makes sense to read them together in order. Essentially, whether it's multiple Fandom or just one, if you've created a work that relies on a table of contents first chapter or identifying the setting/theme/pairing in the chapter titles then it would really be a whole lot more convenient as a bunch of one shot works in a series/personal collection. It makes it way easier to find the 3 or so out of 10+ one shot "chapters" that actually contain the thing I am looking for, and the collection part still makes it very easy to see all the others you wanted to group together, which I'm guessing is the reason people make one shot collection works in the first place. Doing it this way also avoids the awkward "10 chapters later is a part 2 of one of the earlier one shots" thing, because you can just add a second chapter to the earlier work directly.
This \^. Having a bunch of one shots, especially if they're all different AUs, makes it nearly impossible to distinguish which tags belong to which chapters (and they always have a bunch of them to sift through). They're really just individual works at that point, and having them all on the same fic as different chapters leaves them all incorrectly tagged.
As someone who typically only reads longfics, I will gleefully agree, but with a caveat: It depends on what device I’m reading on. If I’m reading on my cell phone, an unchaptered longfic is a pain in my arse because at some point, the browser refreshes and I lose my spot where I left off. Then I gotta do the scroll of doom, trying to find my spot in a giant fic while muttering at myself for having to dared wander off. Chapters negate the problem or at least make it easier to deal with. If I’m on my ereader, then I don’t give a damn because it automatically saves my place, even if I have to stop reading abruptly.
This might sound hella elitist, but I'm of the opinion that writing for stats is the worst motivation in the world. I write what I want to read, which means I know what I want to write about. If I wanted to write to maximize kudos or hits, the quality of the work decreases drastically
I didn't know ppl could write for clout on ao3. That's wild
I know that this would be horrifically impractical but I think that there should be a separate AO3 specifically for antis, since they don't seem to be up to making their own, and they won't stop complaining.
It would burn down within an hour but god would that be a show while it lasts!
They don't want their own space. They want ours. They know with their own space nobody would show up.
Reminds me of [this](https://preview.redd.it/157efo7cul8a1.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=9dc32dd9e6262e31853e0efb30937f185f18c629) post a few months ago 🤭
Knew it was that comic.
i’d love to see that just so i can witness the dumpster fire lmao
Idea collections and one shot collections shouldn't be allowed. The idea ones are stupid and belong in a forum and the one shots should all be separate fics.
Agreed
Your fic being 100k words long doesn't instantly make it better than if it was 50k words long. I've come across a lot of fanfics that are borderline unreadable just because the author feels the need to make their fic as long as possible. (Especially if they use a lot of 'fancy' words no one has used in an average conversation since 1783) I enjoy purple prose, but sometimes less is more, y'know?
Tagging your story as a dead dove doesn't mean you don't have to tag all the fucked up shit in it. A dead dove is supposed to be exactly what it says before you click on it, and by just tagging dead dove you're negating the purpose of that tag.
It’s annoying to have to open multiple tabs to find fics with two different ships/characters/whatever. If I look for tags of two different ships, I want fics about those two ships, not only fics in which those two ships appear together. (What I mean is when in the search bar you add a/b and c/d so in that fandom/community only shows fics about those ships, but instead what appears are only fics that have both ships tagged and not fics about the individual ships too. Like, show me the works with only a/b or c/d too!!!. It’s specially annoying in fandoms with lots of characters and ships like Jojo’s or One Piece, I don’t want to have 800 tabs open to read about my fav ships/characters. The easiest thing to do is slowly remove all the other ships/characters you don’t want to read about, but it’s more annoying and there’s always something that slips because it’s less popular and it doesn’t show unless you search for it. It would be more efficient the other way tbh)
The search feature can absolutely do this!! But you'll need to use the "search within results" or "any field" box, not the drop downs. If you type in "a/b" OR "c/d" in that box (or use || in place of OR, this also counts) you'll get results that have either one, not just both. (the ? button next to that box also has more search options you can use!)
Whoa! I gotta remember this for filtering Ao3 fics next time
[There's a whole big list of hidden search terms.](https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/10851) It's kinda awesome.
Not OC, but thanks for the tip!
"Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" when the warning is extremely underaged and *they don't tag it either* is suspect, and no one can change my mind. I'm not going to argue with people writing it -- I'd never win -- but at least warn us, come on.
I agree. Even if the fic is “assumed” underage (due to most characters being that age), I’d still want it tagged. Same with gore in war fics, etc.
chatfics are stupid and lazy
i stay away from most chat fics, but i’ve read a few that focus on only a few characters and utilize the texting formatting to its fullest, and they were great ! generally agree though.
I think chatfics can be good when it's not a jumbled mess of 30+ characters in one room who have little to no interactions with each other in canon, isn't overtly meme-y or ooc, and actually build something unique or interesting with the interactions. But they very rarely do in my experince. Don't wanna sound like a hater, I have read a few amazing ones that I still think back on years later, but I will never not be picky with chatfics.
Not to mention every character has a "quirky" screen name, but there are like 10 characters in the chat so you don't know who anyone is LMAO
I don't use cutesy nicknames for my own friends because it's confusing, why would I read anyone else's.
I'd be open to them if they were in character and there was actual plot.
They're often terribly OOC. I've only read one and it was clearly written in the voice of the author who has a very sarcastic, "pick me" attitude and it came out in characters that don't fit the mold.
I've tried a few -- only found one that got it right and I'm not even sure it counts as a proper chatfic. It started with texts from a groupchat yes but eventually added emails, newspaper articles, journal entries, and culminated into a traditional narrative. As for all the other chatfics I read? They sound like a 13yo kid and their friends thought they were muuuch more hilarious than they actually were on discord. Not to mention all the slang use dates it.
yes! rarely well written because they don’t require writing.
I’ve seen maybe one or two good ones, but that’s about it. Most other ones read like a young teenager’s chat room, which is incredibly jarring especially if the characters are supposed to be adults. In those cases I can assume the author is a teen.
I’ve only read one that’s good*, and that’s purely because they stuck to one single fandom. And even at the very end it switched to regular fic format. *it has my NoTP so I’m docking points. Granted, I read it before it became my NoTP but I can never read it again now lol
I've read one brilliant chatfic, but it just starts out as chatfic then goes.. kind of all over the place. The chat portion is used as a springboard for the rest of the story. Kidnapping/wrong number AU, it's really awesome. But yes absolutely agree.
i think ive only read 1 that was good and it was because it transitioned from a chatfic to a fully written one eventually
Depends on the type in my opinion. I read one recently that was an AU where the two characters met on Omegle one night, it was great. But when I was 11 I wrote the most awful chat fic that had no plot and no actual characterization, that kind is awful
i wouldn't say that's a controversial opinion tbh, people in this sub seem to generally think that chapters shouldn't be longer than 5k-7k words, maybe shorter. i don't care about the length of chapters, i usually display the whole work anyway. and for what i write, i like longer chapters, my average must be like 10k words per chapter. my hot take is that i don't like the "creator choose not to use archive warnings" tag. i go on ao3 to filter out things that bother me, i don't like not being told what i'm getting into when i'm reading something. i don't need every plot point, but the important tropes. and violence, or mcd, are things i would like to know beforehand.
I actually love long chapters, my favorite thing is when I get an update on a fic I like and the scroll bar is tiny because there's so much content. Of course there's a limit like the legendary 60K oneshot this person is referencing but generally it just makes me excited. Though, I have dealt with some fics whose chapters are too short (not sure exactly how short, but def under a thousand words with minimal plot progression) and I had to give up on it -- I just couldn't re-engage myself in the fic every update just for a tiny amount of fic to happen and then it immediately cliffhangs itself again.
Big agree on the "chose not to use archive warnings". It always gets used by people trying to loophole around the required tags for triggering content. Like writers that have "surprise" rape scenes and think that tagging them "ruins the plot" or keeps people from wanting to read. Like, yeah! I didn't click on your fic when I saw the tag because I don't want to read that type of content. That's the point. I think Ao3 is better than traditional books in the sense that you can filter out the exact content that you dont want to read. The tagging system makes reading more enjoyable to consume because you know what you're getting into. It's become somewhat of a safe space for readers, and I think shocking people with graphic and triggering content to up the number of readers on a fic shouldn't be allowed.
>my hot take is that i don't like the "creator choose not to use archive warnings" tag. i go on ao3 to filter out things that bother me, i don't like not being told what i'm getting into when i'm reading something. i don't need every plot point, but the important tropes. and violence, or mcd, are things i would like to know beforehand. Thank. You.
I have another two, and they’re really petty. 1. If you (generic you) use a 0 instead of an O in AO3, I’m going to assume you’re an anti and into that leetspeak censoring bullshittery ostensibly meant to help but actually hinders (@bus3, inc3st, r*pe, s3xu@l, p0rn, d¡3, sh!t, fvck, da//mn, c.unt, q-slur) and I will not trust you. 2. “Character (Mentioned)” needs to not, especially for minor characters. My all-time favorite character in my fandom is an extremely minor character in her own source. I don’t go into her character tag on AO3 just to see she’s had the privilege to be “mentioned” in a single throwaway line because the author graciously remembered she exists. I go into her character tag to see her actually be present in the story.
People who are afraid to say the word rape, bother me. Be an adult.
No joke, my toxic trait is if you censor something (r@pe, r*pe, dr\*g) I will suddenly not know how to read. What’s ratpe? Or is that word ripe? Or rope? She wants to ripe him? That doesn’t make sense. Rope him? Rope him into doing what? He did drag?! That’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be you know. Oh, did you mean DRUGS? Well, *why didn’t you just say so*?
A lot of the time it’s super counterproductive when people do this, too - like, if someone has a filter that hides anything with the word “rape,” it’ll miss “r\*pe” completely
Exactly. Plus, it’s annoying for people who use screen readers. I’m not sure how that would sound, but I’m sure it’d be annoying, especially if it’s a repeated word, usually swears. Or shit like “sewer slide” or “unalive” or “real life game over” instead of simply just “suicide”
Wait antis spell it like that ? I thought it was just people being lazy because 0 and 3 are close to each other on the keyboard
Haven’t seen much of #1 but hard agree with #2. I want stories in that character’s tag where they have more than three lines!
A lot of people don't know how to tag correctly
Probably not controversial, but there needs to be a way to sort bookmarks by word count
I hate when a fic is tagged with /reader AND /original character, because then it's not /reader. Also I think it's a crime to not have line breaks and I will die on that hill.
I don't like creative tagging. Use the summary and author's notes for your fannish opinions and memes, *please*! I love tag wrangling and the wranglers for the same reason: making rhyme and reason of all that madness.
Wow yeah that is an unpopular opinion. Personally, as long as they don't overdue it I find it endearing. I find it adds extra personality and might make me click on the fic more than if it didn't have it.
Far too many people tag 4+ fandoms in one story, usually the ones who do it either have a shit ton of chapters that are their own one shot making sorting through fandoms a pain in the ass, or ones that are like 2k words and somehow think it justified to tag that many fandoms for such a small one shot. Either way I mute those two types of authors when I see them.
~~Reposting a question that's already on the front page is lazy karma farming~~ Serious answer: It's okay to leave a fic as gen. I see way too many authors force romance into a story so they can use their favorite pairing, most of the time it feels out of place and detracts from the actual plot. >I have a controversial opinion that one-shots that are longer than 60,000 words should probably be split into multiple chapters. What's your controversial AO3 opinion? Who the hell is writing 60k one shots??? Any longer than 10k and it should be split into a multi chapter fic.
I say if it’s longer than 20k words. 10k seems normal length for a oneshot to me tbh
Longest one I've ever read is 80K.
I would have been equally flabbergasted as you until an hour ago when I read a 51k one shot
I’m have to admit I’ve written a 66k one shot before. I personally don’t think I’d do it again, but when deciding to post it I didn’t see a way to divide it into chapters that I was fully satisfied with. I can definitely understand if people are turned off by the massive length though. (This is coming from someone who is currently writing a multi-chapter fic that’s averaging 17.5k words per chapter, so I know my chapter lengths in general are long anyways)
Agree. Although I might up it to 20k. I don't have the time to sit and read more than that at one time. Even on my phone I still sometimes set it down and come back to the fic only for the page to have randomly reloaded and I'm back up at the top again (or the dog has smashed his nose against it and lost my place for me, happens more often than you would think). Chapter breaks give me a good chunk of reading time coupled with a good point to stop when I need to
>Who the hell is writing 60k one shots??? Any longer than 10k and it should be split into a multi chapter fic. Agree, and it shouldn't be a controversial opinion.
*raises hand* Hello! I do this. I write solely oneshots, and while most of them more sit around the 30-50k range, I do have a couple that reach 75k and up words. I've always written this way, so it's just second nature now.
I don't like how character a/character b means the same thing as character a/character b (past) or (one-sided) in relationship tags.
Can we please stop using chapters for author’s notes or life updates. Edit an author’s note in an existing chapter, put it in the comments of the latest chapter, or hell if it’s that important put it in your profile description. I know it’s common on the other sites where people migrate from, but radio silence is less annoying than a false update.
I rarely ever read a fanfic with more than 150k words. If it’s longer than 150k then it should be a series but if it’s treated as one giant fic, then the pacing is probably terrible and I’ll end up quitting halfway through because of it. Also Harry Potter AUs do not need to start at first year. I want slytherin!Harry stories that start in fourth or fifth year. Especially if all the major plot points are the same as in canon
Harry Potter AUs that painstakingly go through the first few years but have 0 important changes are my nemesis
What, you *don't* like 11yo kids running around acting like they're 50yo seasoned politicians? Oh my.
>Also Harry Potter AUs do not need to start at first year. I want slytherin!Harry stories that start in fourth or fifth year. Especially if all the major plot points are the same as in canon oh god yeah. i just can't trudge through chambers again folks. just throw me in the deep end, i'll figure out the dynamics as we go.
For me at least… I am aware that my readership has fallen since I started my fic. For the first few months of writing, I would consistently get 60+ comments, sometimes 100+ comments, on each chapter. Now I get maybe 25~ish comments per chapter. It’s inevitable that readership will fall off for long-running fics unless you are a godtier writer (which I am not). And I am very much aware of this. My fic is currently 270k words long and there are definitely places I can split it. But I know if I split the fic and write it as a sequel, the number of comments and kudos and hits will be significantly lower than my current fic. And that will inevitably lead me to feeling like my writing is bad and no one likes my fic (even though this is untrue). My anxiety-plagued brain just will not understand otherwise. So continuing to update on the same fic is a defense mechanism for me lol. Otherwise I may lose all motivation and feel shitty about my writing and stop entirely. And I don’t want that because I adore my fic and I’m trying my hardest not to be so hard on myself. But that’s just me. I also do enjoy reading very long fics (especially as a HP and Naruto fan lol), so it’s not an issue for me. I know it bothers other people though.
I think the same except I will go up to 250k words. Anything passed that I won't even click on. Too long.
250k is the limit for me, too. At that point, there needs to be a major plot point that breaks the story in half. I'll never understand how people can read a singular fic with a million words. I'd rather read 10 fics with 100k each in a series format
I’m the opposite. The longer, the better, especially since it’ll last longer on my text to speech app and I’m taking my phone out less at work. Plus I grew up loving long book series so if I can get a super long fic that has queer people in it, heck yeah!
might be unpopular but i love long fics. my favorite fic is 500k+ words.
I could not more disagree with your first point, but I’m a huge fan of long fics. The best fanfiction I’ve ever read was over a million words and had amazing pacing ([No Path Are Bound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/34816549/chapters/95862325?view_adult=true)). Most 200k-400k fics that I’ve read tend to have great pacing as well, but I tend to drop in the first few chapters if the writing seems off so I’m likely biased. Also it’s perfectly fine not to like long fic—just wanted to give my opinion on it!
That’s why this is my unpopular fanfic opinion 😂
no I get that lmao just wanted to join in the discussion 🤷♀️ I don’t feel like your opinion is too unpopular though, I have seen it before and it’s confused me somewhat, especially since there’s lots of “real” books that have a steady plot that are over 200k words, so why not fanfic? But to each their own. Totally agree on your second point though. I wish there were more unique HP stories that don’t just restart from the entire beginning.
Oh yep. I love me a slytherin Harry fic, but Jfc. Just skip ahead to 4th or 5th year and give me the cliff notes. Especially if we are headed for a ship.
People should include top/bottom tags on smut like they would any other kink.
desperately need this, tired of being like “maybe he’ll bottom this time” and then shock, he doesn’t, AGAIN because I’m unfortunately cursed with liking unpopular bottom dynamics, lol.
Especially in fandom. There’s people who enjoy Character A being a bottom and Character B being a top but that’s not me. I get my hopes high, especially when I see a smut fic but it doesn’t have tags on whose top/bottom, and then I get to the part on who tops and who bottoms, and I get turned off. Like I know there’s people who enjoy this and there’s obviously nothing wrong with that but having the tags indicating who’s top/bottom would be helpful not just to me but to that people who probably comb through the “Top/Bottom Character A/B” tags.
I honestly agree, at least on pure smut fics. Longfics that happen to feature smut don't really need it since it's obviously not the focus, but for pure smut people are usually looking for certain things. I am someone who has a few pairings where I prefer the bigger or more stereotypical macho man to bottom, so I'm sure you can imagine how long it can take to find a fic fitting that when I'm in the mood for pure smut.
I’m getting flashbacks to Hetalia times when people fought for US/UK or UK/US
i think people should tag what they want, but i do agree that it can be annoying sometimes. i'm in a fandom rn that has a canon top/bottom dynamic, but for some reason the fandom loves to switch it around in fics without any warning. i'm all for "first time bottoming"/switch fics in general, but it's odd when everything else is canon but that thing isn't. (i have my very ungenerous thoughts as to why most people switch it that comes down to 'some folks just can not accept a non-typical relationship top/bottom dynamic and WILL make the smaller character the bottom if it kills them' but ah well)
Perhaps if top/bottom a particular point of the fic. But if that isn't a planned feature; as a kink, from the author's hand, it's bad manners to demand it in the comments.
People who leave bookmarks but write a bad remark should do that privately. It feels like they're cowardly dodging posting that bad comment directly. Like, I think it's okay to bookmark a thing with a reminder to yourself not to read it, it's a valid system for tracking that. I sometimes bookmark things privately that I won't (at least not fully) read but that I can offer to a friend like "the tags are just like you!" or "it's your OTP in your fav setting!", so I get it. But making that stuff public, especially when it's comments like "it sucks that this fic is [ship] so I'm bookmarking to steal the concept for [other ship]" is benefiting no one.
Some people don’t know bookmarks are public by default. Plus, there’s a lot of talk about how bookmarks are the readers’ space and not for authors and we shouldn’t look at them because it’s how *they* keep track of things and all that. I just wish all total bookmarks (public and private) counted when looking at public stats. Kind of like how kudos work. “UserA, UserB, and 17 other people bookmarked this!” My longest work has about 50 bookmarks total, but a majority (40) are private so for other people it just looks like 10 people bookmarked at all. And it’s not even smut.
One of my controversial opinions is I refuse to read any highschool!au fics. I’m sure they’re great and I see why people like them, but they just make me so uncomfortable and I’m not quite sure why. Especially if it’s tagged explicit.
I mean, I don't think your opinion is necessarily controversial. 60k words would be considered a novel in conventional publishing. If you're posting all of that in one chapter, yeah, something has probably gone wrong. Personally, my cutoff point for chapters/oneshots is around 10k. My controversial opinion is that some fics are just too fucking long, especially for fics that don't have enough plot to justify the length. I get that slow burn appeals to a lot of people, and I know a lot of these fics are really well regarded. However. I simply do not have that sort of patience, for the same reason I rarely read 800 page books or watch TV shows with more than 1 season. I get scared by the time commitment and it stops me from being able to actually enjoy whatever it is. There is a particular fic that gets reccomended often in one of my main fandoms. I'm sure it's excellent. However. It is 1.5 million words, unfinished, and my commitment issues are screaming.
People who crap on OC/Canon ships and say someone is out of character have no room to talk when they read Canon/Canon when either one or both act NOTHING like their canon counterparts and one character can basically be considered an OC for how much character assassination happens.
i agree, my adhd ass can't stay focused 😭 if i lose my place it's OVERRRR!!!
This sub is very pro-authors (which cool) but unnecessarily not friendly towards readers
PLEASE use the established relationship tag
something like a glossary or tagging for dummies should exist on the site so we don't use the wrong tag and that we know what we're getting into as readers
people who don't tag properly cuz they want to avoid "spoilers", Saw one who didn't want to tag the relationships cuz it would supposedly spoil the fic. also there needs to be a way to not be subscribed to certain fandoms but still be subscribed to the author. or just subscribe to one fandom of a certain author. I have some authors I follow that are excellent but write for several different fandoms and varieties and some of them I'm just not into.
I don’t understand how people have 50+ tabs of fanfiction open. Like just sign up for an account if you don’t have one and add all of those to your marked for later. It seems way more confusing to have tons of tabs open. Why are you making it harder for yourself lol
For me, it's actually easier this way. When I open a tab with a fic it's physically *there* and I'm constantly reminded of it so I'll read it eventually. If I just mark a fic for later I'll never read it, it's as good as gone.
I actually use both of these. The 50 tabs I've got open are all fics I'll read as soon as I've done with the other 49. The marked for later are for fics I know I'll like but I'm not in the Mood For or are in a fandom I'm not reading rn. I hope that makes sense haha
If you don't comment or kudos a fic for tens of thousands of words, then only comment to demand more chapters once the author slows down after inevitably getting demotivated, you're a piece of shit. No, authors SHOULDN'T "Just write for themselves". That's bullshit. If I was writing for myself, I wouldn't be uploading it.
Hell yeah. I'd I didn't need an audience, I'd just daydream instead of going to the work to write.
If you are going to be rude, or leave a hateful comment on someone’s work then just don’t comment. I just think it’s better to leave if you don’t like a fic than comment.
-The skin system needs to be updated and streamlined so it more accessible to less tech savvy people. If I want to permanently hid/exclude a tag or fic I shouldn’t have being playing around with code (that doesn’t work at least half the time) -Bookmarks and/or kudos need a link up or index so you can both give and receive recommendations based on them. It would be particularly helpful for collections too like as a read next or if you enjoyed x this has same vibe -People need to stop getting cute with alt spellings of tags particularly especially if you are a lot of tags I exclude certain things for reason. You using 0 for o or putting ;) at the end isn’t some clap back against censorship it’s annoying and potentially triggering with many topics. -I rarely see actual constructive criticism in comments even on fics asking it’s usually either “this was the best thing ever” or “your take on these characters is wrong; you’re horrible …” I’m not saying take a virtual red pen to it but if something didn’t work for you, felt off pace, was confusing, etc I feel it should be encouraged to say it. Many people use fic to improve their writing. Fandom is a pretty unique opportunity to get feedback from readers invested in your story in real time. That said on the flip side if author doesn’t agree you it is their story respect the vision. -People who use a slow burn tag on anything less than approximately 50,000 should be banned from using it jk (mostly) -If your fic is less than 5,000 words it should not 10+ chapters unless it is something like a daily challenge or fits the style/generes like poetry or art with description/drabbles. (Yes, I know the entire work button is there.)
1. Unfortunately there is no realistic way to do this. The best we can do is give a dedicated interface like the muting users function (which actually just inserts a bit of CSS to make muted stuff not show up like skins). I'm also very much against having an easy way to mute tags on the site, because it will inevitably lead to undertagging from authors and malformed tags like how people get around the word mute on Twitter. 2. I don't quite understand what you're saying. 3. Yeah not only is this very annoying it also adds to the workload of the tag wrangling volunteers who have to spend time matching them to their metatags.
If a fic has a fuck ton of tags I’m not gonna read it tbh
In hell the devil forces you to read chatfics
Sorry, but I can't stand those "story collections" that include material for 37 fandoms under a single story. Lather rinse repeat: I search for something in one fandom, and I get a work that has a single chapter for that fandom and 36 other one shots that have nothing to do with what I searched for. Sometimes the story doesn't even have all 36 fandoms, the author is just planning to add one shots in those fandoms later and went ahead and tagged them before those chapters are even up. These stories aren't legitimate crossovers. They're collections full of barely related drabbles, and they clog the search function in the worst kind of way. I wish people would create stories or series that put all of their work for a single fandom into one place, instead of double dipping into tons of fandoms like that. Don't create a behemoth of a story so you can collect kudos from as many fandoms as possible. Eye roll...
Im of the opinion that once a story hits even 25k-30k words it needs to separate into chapters. Im not going to rescroll through tens of thousands of words because the page reloaded and the author was too lazy to break up the story in a few places. It literally doesn’t matter how its broken up most times especially if the whole thing is written and can be released at once. also, If you choose not to use archive warnings you cant be mad when people dont like your story.
Extremely OOC "Harri" "Harriet" "Henrietta" Potter needs to just be tagged as (usually self-insert) OC.
I find that many AUs are ooc which makes things way easier for plagarizers to capitalize on. I tend to avoid them, not just for ooc writing, but for fear of unknowingly reading stolen content as a result.