r/AO3 • • 4d ago

Activities & Events Promptober 2026 Week 3

14 Upvotes

Hey everybody!

It's October and that means it's Promptober time! Week 3 is almost over so it's time to post this week's fics that you've made!

If you need a reminder of the general rules, please see the original announcement post.

Here is a reminder of the prompts:

Daily Themes: Sunday - Quotes, Monday - Ritualistic, Tuesday - Tourmaline, Wednesday - Weird Wednesday, Thursday - Marigolds as Food, Friday - Phobia , Saturday - Random Spooky Words; Week 1 (10/4-10/10): "One.... more...", Pentagram, Schorl, Wing Oil, Dumplings, Masklophobia, Costumes; Week 2 (10/11-10/17): "You have a choice", Cultist, Paraiba, Slime, Oatmeal, Chronophobia, Deranged; Week 3 (10/18-10/24): "Come here", Sacrifices, Liddicoatite, Void, Pudding, Nyctophobia, Gloom; Week 4 (10/25-10/31): "Hold the line", Summoning, Elbaite, Nightmare Fuel, Wine, Haemophobia, Grisly
Bonus & Alts Prompts: "Think about the implications", Athame, Rubellite, Just a tasteful amount of blood, Tea, Arachnophobia, Vile

Please follow the following format and post 1 work per comment maximum:

Title:
Prompt(s) Used:
AI Used: [Yes/No. Please don't reword this. We find it funny too but our spreadsheets disagree :( ]
Link: [link to the work]
Fandom:
Rating:
Relationships:
Additional tags & warnings:
Summary:

And don't forget to add your works to the collection on AO3!

Have a spooky time!

~TGotAReddit (and the rest of the mod team)


r/AO3 • • 7h ago

Weekly Check In Wellness Wednesday: Weekly Check In

1 Upvotes

Welcome back everyone!

Time for our Wellness Wednesday check in. We know this community means a lot to most of our members and that Tuesdays have been harder on some users than others, but we are at our core a community and we are here to support each other.

Now that the sub is open once again we’d like to hear all about your (mis)adventures on Tuesday. Did you go on grand adventures? Get into mischief? Get some writing done?

Maybe you just binged a few more fics on the archive itself. Tell us all about it! Break out that purple prose and tell us as cheesy of a story as you feel like.

Or just talk about your day.

~The Mod Team


r/AO3 • • 2h ago

Meme/Joke What to do when you don't life a fic: a step by step guide

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403 Upvotes

I saw a post earlier in which a comment said "quitting this story rn" and I was like "you could also just... click off?"

hope this helps. digital technology is very difficult in these dark, dark days.


r/AO3 • • 1h ago

Meme/Joke My heart goes out to the poor, starved gen readers

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• Upvotes

r/AO3 • • 6h ago

Comment Commentary This comment was completely unnecessary

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470 Upvotes

I know why they bailed here; it's where the dove dies. That being said the fic is heavily tagged and there's plenty of warning so. Just a rude ass person


r/AO3 • • 28m ago

Discussion (Non-question) "Then you should just write... instead" things?

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• Upvotes

What is something you like that you've seen people just really misunderstand? And where the answer to "why not just write Other Thing then?" is simply "because... I wanted This Thing??"

Like au's, where people ask why not just write original characters. Or reader insert, when they ask why not make it an OC if you write it a certain way.


r/AO3 • • 6h ago

Meme/Joke The grass is always greener on the other side...

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150 Upvotes

I SWEAR 2027 will be my year, this can't go wrong in any way!


r/AO3 • • 3h ago

Questions/Help? Is this true boys?

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99 Upvotes

On a side note. Who wins in terms of writing?
Kellhus or Fang Yuan?


r/AO3 • • 6h ago

Discussion (Non-question) Lukewarm take I guess, but I've never got the "they wouldn't say that" debate. Isn't the point of fanfiction that they are doing something they didn't in canon?

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110 Upvotes

I guess it is annoying when it is like random slander irelevant for the "main story" (like random slander of the canon partner), but it's fanfic, the summary and tags usually tells you in what way will the characters be different. What I care about is if they sound like themselves on the 1% chance they are doing this.


r/AO3 • • 7h ago

Complaint/Pet Peeve/Venting Someone send for a lawyer, the fun police are here

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99 Upvotes

I will admit my guilt, indeed the characters are nothing like canon. In my defense I can only say… IT’S FUCKING FANFIC!

I’m probably just getting rage baited by some asshole kid with too much time in their hands, but this is the fifth comment along those lines I’ve gotten from guest accounts in the last 2 weeks since I started posting this fic. It’s just annoying the hell out of me.

Also, can I just say that, in the unlikely case this isn’t ragebait but actually serious, clicking on a fic that contains the tags ‘eventual smut’ and ‘shame kink’ and then complaining about “Motherfucker!” and “Fuck off, asshole.” (the literal only two instances of cursing in this particular chapter) is probably not the smartest decision? It’s gonna get a whole lot worse if you are this guy.


r/AO3 • • 4h ago

Meme/Joke Every Goddamn time.

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41 Upvotes

r/AO3 • • 1h ago

Fun & Games Do you guys ever wonder how your works have affected your readers?

• Upvotes

Yesterday I was thinking about the smut I've written and I had a thought that's been rolling around in my head. Im pretty sure Im a decent smut writer? I struggle being nice to myself but I'm pretty sure lol. All three ive written had very positive reception and by hits are definitely my most popular works. Anyhow I started to wonder how many indirect climaxs my climaxs have caused lol. Like I never considered it but its bound to have happened right? Am I crazy?

Besides that I wonder how many people have rolled their eyes at my puns. Laughed at my better jokes. Smiled and were happier for reading my fics. Im suddenly like so curious. All together my works have 12,165 hits and 434 kudos. I need to know how many people out there where touched by my work (literally or not lmao)


r/AO3 • • 4h ago

Excitement/Celebration 🎉 This makes me so happy

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23 Upvotes

I have no one to share this with, even if I did they wouldn’t get how much this means to me and it’s genuinely my first fic.


r/AO3 • • 6h ago

Comment Commentary Comments like this are never expected, but I tear up a little when I get this kind of engagement

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37 Upvotes

Idk if they are in Reddit, and I love all the comments I get even the little “love this chapter” or sometimes just a “<3” they are special to me, but got this before going to bed and I felt that little sting of happy tears. Nothing better for a writer than when your reader feels your writing to the degree where they start theorizing and “breaking down” the plot.

Love to ALL the commenters out there on any story, no matter how big or small. And love to the lurkers in the shadows


r/AO3 • • 2h ago

Stats/Hit Counts/Word Counts I did it! I got to 2 million!

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12 Upvotes

I had a mega chapter because I liked the way the story was going so I hit 2 mil! My goal after passing 100 chapters was to do 2 million by 200 but now I'm just gonna keep going!

I'd like to thank my friends for making me watch the show that made me a writer. I wanna thank Netflix for shoving ads of the show in my face cause' it got me to watch. I'd like to thank an American game company for making a toxic video game which spawned an awesome show and a French animation company for making a show that blended 3D animation and a comic book feel.

I got like 4 other fics that need updates but I'm hoping to pass 2,200,000 to make my fic the biggest fic of my fandom!!!


r/AO3 • • 2h ago

Questions/Help? Update frequency - What is too much and too often?

7 Upvotes

Hello, I am relatively new to writing fanfics, and I was curious about something: How often do you guys recommend updating? I enjoy writing, and can end up with several thousand words per day, so I thought of posting the chapters as I finish each one, but would that be too frequent? Having a chapter update every 2-3 days?

It honestly does not matter really, as I am writing rare pairings, or even outright dead pairings, so it's not like scores of people will read those, it is more of a theoretical questions I suppose for the future, as I do have some more mainstream fandom/pairings planned out?


r/AO3 • • 1h ago

Questions/Help? Questions about gifts.

• Upvotes

I have a fic I want to gift, but I have some questions first, because I've never actually gifted someone a fic before.

  1. Do subscribers still get notified if I post a gift fic?

  2. Can I still add a gift fic to one of my series?

  3. Can I still go back and edit grammar mistakes if I see them later? Like... I still own the fic, right?


r/AO3 • • 7m ago

Comment Commentary the comment and my response

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• Upvotes

Is it just me who doesn't appreciate this type of comment and am I a jerk for that? I mean, I would've appreciated it if I’d mentioned that I was hitting dead end and needed help with an idea(which I didn’t)

I’m guessing the next thing they’d do had I agreed with them, it'd be discord name dropping and them offering to turn my fanfic into art/comic 😒

I tried my best not to come off as standoffish or arrogant and retain my friendliness and politeness


r/AO3 • • 24m ago

Questions/Help? Has This Happened To You?

• Upvotes

Idrk if this is the right flair but nvm that. Say, I've seen people who get demotivated after seeing harsh comments on their fics and not want to write anymore. But in my situation, it's kind of the opposite. I got a regular commenter who keeps praising my fic. I get really scared that the next chapter I write would be horrible and the commenter wouldn't like it anymore, so I kind of get demotivated in writing a little. [No hate to the commenter, I know their well-meaninged.] Has this type of thing happened to anyone else or is it just me?


r/AO3 • • 5h ago

Questions/Help? So which is better, one fic thats a collection of drabbles or multiple fics that are just drabbles

10 Upvotes

I write multi-chaptered fics, one-shots, and drabbles. I was told that drabble collections aren't good because it makes it harder to filter and to make them as separate fics. However, I've seen people say that drabbles clog up the feed and makes an author's account look bigger than it actually is.

For people that are mainly reader's which one would you prefer?


r/AO3 • • 5h ago

Writing help/Beta Tengo un dilema

7 Upvotes

Es mi primera vez escribiendo fanfics y publicando en plataformas, pero mi primer lenguaje es el español y no hablo muy bien inglés. Primero pensé en escribir normal y después usar un traductor, pero muchas veces tienen errores, y leí por ahí que alguien usaba IA para traducir sus historias pero no me gustaría usar mi fic para entrenar una IA

Ustedes que harían: traducir con Google o publicar en español y que los lectores lo resuelvan jaja


r/AO3 • • 4h ago

Questions/Help? Is this allowed/considered a valid fanwork?

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7 Upvotes

It's listed as 1/? chapters. The blurred sections are the username of the author and their friend. Does this technically count as fannish enough to stay up? I'm on the fence.

The entire work as it is right now is pictured in image 1, totalling 80 words, so I think this is rather under the same blanket as prompt requests with no real chapters yet, yes?

So sorry if this has a really obvious answer either way, I've been intermittently lurking on Ao3 for years but only recently started engaging with it a lot.


r/AO3 • • 1d ago

Meme/Joke Why is this so rare? It really shouldn’t be.

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1.8k Upvotes

r/AO3 • • 1d ago

Meme/Joke THEY KEEP FADING TO BLAAAAAAAAACK

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1.5k Upvotes

(I still love the fic. The author is just so good at writing build up to smut then cutting to black that's it's making me go AHEHFHAHFBRUSJ. Still love the fic. Still gonna read it. God author, you're making me EXPLODE. GOD THE BUILD UP IS SO GOOD I RAH RAH RAH RAH)

Edit: I knew the scenes were gonna fade to black, I was fully aware going in. I just think the build up is sooooo good and I keep forgetting hence this meme.


r/AO3 • • 2m left

Stats/Hit Counts/Word Counts have other people expiriented this?

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• Upvotes

this two fics of mine have similar- ish hits and completely different stats counts, i admit the one below is very niche but i had never hear of of a 1:3 kudos to bookmarks ratio lmao.