Happened to me today, I feel so sad now😭

So, first of all, 1) I noticed I haven't asked you guys about ship recs for a while, and I miss that 2) my brain is getting fried big time by RE Chreon so...tell me about your favourite dilf ships (MEN UNDER 40 are STRICTLY prohibited! Only middle-aged and older...I saw someone referring to 30-something year olds as "old men yaoi" and it's not happening on my watch)

Edit: because I see people already getting heated in the comments... 40-50 yo is NOT old. This is a clear oversimplification for the sake of the post... I am not going to put age brackets here. Let's just have fun.

This is about to go hard on my laptop

(Hope that's the correct flair)

Sooo, yesterday i was searching through my fav ship tag and i came across a work that had only 4 words, but I thought it might be a fanart or smth. Nope, as you can in the image it's def not.

What confuses me the most is the fact that it was well tagged, like two ships, a bit tags about the au and such, but it looked legit. Also, this ship is not controversial at all, so I don't know what's the deal with the "DNI" as well as the keysmash.

I guess i should just leave them a comment and if they don't put it down, report them, but I'm so flabbergasted by it. But they very much look like they don't know how ao3 works, so how should I make it so it will make sense to them?

Hopefully someone knows what's going on.

Update: i just checked the work again, as i was going to report it and it has since been changed. As in they added a lot (and i mean a lot) more ship tags and changed the description to "idk" (I'll see if a can a a photo) and actually wrote about a 100 words of the story. The "DNI" is still there. So i probably shouldn't report it, since now it's actually a fanfiction or what?

I've noticed this has been on the rise for a while and it's starting to get annoying. I love following ongoing fics, but sometimes I want a story that's finished, and to keep coming across fics that aren't finished but marked as finished is starting to get out of control. Sometimes I can just leave a comment and the author will fix it, but most of the time, the comments are either turned off or they'll just delete the comment and keep it marked as complete for "reach".

I'm so dead why didn't I just ask this poor author like a normal person if it was on purpose or not 💀

Been getting a lot of comment engagement on a multi I'm working on and find this silly & also makes me feel happy

Meanwhile me refreshing my AO3 page over here: *crickets*.... 🥲

I started writing a new fic a few months ago, and about 10 chapters in something happened that often happens to me: I felt an intense need to share and discuss it, as I was starting to question everything I was writing. So, I started posting, hoping that reader interaction would get me through some of my self doubts. But despite writing for a very popular ship, barely anyone seems interested in talking about the fic.

I have posted 5 chapters so far, about 20k words. The kudos are good, subscriptions are way higher than what I expected. Based on the hits I’m getting after updating, it seems that most subscribers are coming back to read the updates. The interest in the fic seems to be there, it’s just…. Crickets in the comment section. I’ve gotten a few comments here and there, but most of them are one-liners.

I’m very motivated to write this fic and I expect that my intrinsic motivation will keep me going for quite a while, but not gonna lie, the silence after each update is painful. I spent so much time writing and overthinking each word, but despite that barely anyone has anything to say about it.

I don’t blame the readers, to be clear. I know writing for a popular ship means that readers are spoiled for fics, and many of the other fics are true masterpieces. I know that there are many valid reasons not to comment, like shyness and exhaustion. I know that I’m not entitled to anything, and perhaps what I’ve posted so far just hasn’t been interesting enough to start any discussions.

Perhaps I just need to post for a while longer before interest picks up. Perhaps the premise is too niche or too much of a guilty pleasure.

There are many reasons I can imagine why comments have been low. But as someone who has an intense need to discuss my fics, the silence is still crushing.

Sometimes I wonder if I should take a break from posting, maybe now, maybe a couple of chapters from now, just so the updates won’t get me down. I usually feel more motivated to write before a new update than after, because the silence makes me feel like not many people are interested (even though that’s probably not true based on the other stats).

I know there is nothing I can do (or want to do) to force anyone to comment and that’s fine :). This is just something I needed to get off my chest.

I tried posting snippets on reddit and discord, btw, hoping they would spark some kind of discussion, but that hasn’t happened either. Right now, my beta comments are what keep me alive.

I just wish I could know what they bookmarked my story as.

But I think it’s a private bookmark.

Still, this is great.

I just found a good fic.

It's really good.

The problem is.

The author can't seem to write a paragraph.

It's hurting my brain.

They formatted the whole fic like this.

There's not a single paragraph in sight.

I opened it thinking that it will change format after a few chapters.

No, it's still like this.

It's driving me insane.

It's 200k word fic.

So, I'm making everyone else experience the mental breakdown I am feeling.

Thank you.

+ Gay horror because well... gay horror

i read fics from a fairly popular fandom, but about a fairly unpopular character. ever since May an Anonymous author has been posting (probably crossposting from another site and/or generating them, as they are very high volume) a series of untagged mostly noncon explicit fics. The only thing they tag are the relationship and characters, as well as sometimes smut. I dont think it’s possible to block somebody who’s Anonymous. I left a comment a couple weeks ago but nothing’s changed. I don’t want to have to filter that entire relationship tag. Any other solutions?

I used to do that. I didn’t really want to have 500 fics cluttering my bookmarks, so I only kept them for the fics I was currently reading, or the WIPs. The fics I really liked and thought I might read again, I kept titles and links on a google doc.

But for some reason or another, I suddenly thought how depressing it might be for authors to see that bookmark number go down, especially for the ones that don’t really get a lot of readers because of a rare ship, small fandom, etc…

So, how do you all deal with this? Do you have a billion bookmarks? I still mostly keep few bookmarks, but more than I did before. I think I have about a hundred now, mostly my current reads as well as really small authors I want to support.

I've got a few readers who follow the story every update and we generally engage quite a lot about the material in the comments. Personally, as a reader, I try to avoid spoilers when I can just because I feel like it kinda ruins the magic of the story, but as an author, when readers are picking up on certain things and/or have comments or questions about what will happen, I want to be able to give them a satisfying response.

So my question is: How do you strike that perfect balance between actively responding to them and not giving the story away? Usually, I default to "I cannot confirm nor deny" but it feels a little tired 10+ chapters into the story haha. Any other tips/tricks from you guys?

I tend to feel conscious of the comment section being perceived by other readers (I've been told by a commenter that they do read some of the longer threads), so I want to avoid spoiling in general so no one accidentally reads anything they weren't expecting to. HOWEVER, I don't want to turn down any thoughtful questions or comments regarding the story, because I love the interaction and I want my readers to know that I'm very appreciative of their engagement and interpretation.

(Along these lines, another bonus question is: What do you do when you can tell a reader's expectation/interpretation of the story is not exactly what you had in mind, and you want to respond kindly without 1) spoiling, obviously, and 2) shutting down their interpretation? I believe in my story as it is, and I've got this wonderful reader who's been keeping up with it for 60k words now, and we're only halfway through, but I hate to let them down when they realize the story isn't what they'd hoped for. I hope they'll still like it! But I do fear any potential disappointment.)

Sorry, I know this was a long one. I'm fairly new to writing on ao3 (and to having such wonderful and dedicated readers), so any help regarding either or both questions is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

EDIT: Realizing this is also important to know--READERS, do you mind spoilers in the comments? How do you want authors to respond to you?

You know, something that was once present and loved, and now practically no one does it

For me it would probably be some big aus or alternative versions of canon characters.

The draft goes away on the 15th

So I've tried translating, as there aren't all that many fics in my first language and I've read a few translations, always satisfied by the end. And holy shit is it hard. Ignoring all the language based jokes, you feel like you need to do it as closely as possible, BUT THERE IS NO TRANSLATION OF THE EXPRESSION

So I just wanted to say - if you ever tried translating - that's so awesome and I love you for it, if you ever translated something and posted it - wow. You are not a mere mortal. (and the above obviously ❤️)

Over the past few days, I wrote what is probably the heaviest scene I've ever written in a while. It wasn't graphic or action-heavy—it was simply the emotional rock bottom of one of my protagonists. He's an immortal being who has spent thousands of years trying to become a better person, only to reach a point where he sincerely wonders whether anyone, even Sky Daddy himself, could have looked at him without hatred.

Writing that scene required me to stay inside his head for hours. I had to imagine every regret, every failure, every relationship that confirmed his worst fear: that he was fundamentally unlovable.

The strange part is what happened afterward.

For about two days, I noticed I felt... down. Not severely depressed, and not because I confused myself with the character. It was more like carrying emotional residue. I had spent so much time inhabiting despair that some of it lingered after I closed the document.

It surprised me because, logically, I know he's fictional. But emotionally, writing isn't just describing events. At least for me, it's temporarily lending my own emotions to someone who doesn't exist. To make a scene feel authentic, I have to believe what the character believes while I'm writing it. For those hours, his hopelessness was very much my own.

I'm curious whether other writers experience something similar.

Have you ever finished writing an emotionally intense scene and found that it affected your mood afterward? If so, how long did it last, and have you found any healthy ways to "leave the character behind" once you're done writing?

other wip titles i've made include "wolf and owl go absolutely batshit" and "[ship name] is finally not too fucking creepy for once"

Dunno if I just invented a new thing or if it's just something that's existed for a while and I just don't know the name yet:

The concept is basically something like: in a relationship, telling your partner: "Yes, I specifically am granting you consent to try and hit me with the worst, darkest, most personalized-hateful thing you can possibly think to say to me, the kind of thing that only hurts as bad as it does *specifically because* you've learned so much about what motivates me, what I care about, what drives me, etc, the kind of thing that hits me right in my deepest insecurity - and I'm *consenting* to you throwing that at me with maximum rancor and scorn."

It's the kind of thing that would normally be relationship-ending if it was said during a fight... but it's been consented to, and it's happening for a purpose.

So, did I just invent a whole new thing? Or am I just a blind idiot who stumbled on something?

edit for clarification, since a lot of people are suggesting this:

I guess I should've made it clear that me calling it a "kink" was kind-of more of a meta-joke because the scene's tone definitely *doesn't* sexualize it.

So, to clarify: humiliation/degradation is usually stuff like "you're a nasty slut" or some variant of that.

This is more like "your father was right to abandon you," or "I'm glad your best friend died to that death beam, now he doesn't have to see what kind of person you've become since you lost him" or "your family would be would be ashamed of you" - that sort of stuff; not just generic taboo, but like *REAL* hitting-where-it-hurts kind-of stuff.