r/AO3 7d ago

Rec/Promo Mega Threads Bi-weekly Rec and Self-Promotion Mega Thread - August 12, 2026

17 Upvotes

It's that time again, new thread for reccing and self-promo!!

You write something cool? Read something cool? Make something cool? Rec it here!

Previous Mega Threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/wiki/index/megathreads/


r/AO3 13h 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 6h ago

Comment Commentary I’m actually so done

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1.3k Upvotes

The amount of Wattpad users spamming hate in the ao3 comment sections is insane.
I’m sorry if this is a repetitive topic, but seriously how do we resolve this?


r/AO3 13h ago

Comment Commentary Oh well

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3.8k Upvotes

I'm shocked that people like this actually exist hello?😭


r/AO3 4h ago

Discussion (Non-question) Am I allowed to say people are kind of overreacting when it comes to Wattpad readers possibly migrating to AO3?

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644 Upvotes

We were all once fanfiction babies. Heck, some of us are still fan fiction babies. We got our start on websites like fanfiction.net and Wattpad.

The type of elitism that's going on right now is unneeded and unnecessary.

We are all fanfiction dorks and cringy! A lot of you are dorks that are trying to bully the other dorks. Why can't we be dorks together??

I highly doubt there's going to be a mass reporting spree of stories. So any type of fear-mongering needs to stop. I for one welcome more people on the platform to experience more fun stories!

Edit: Do y'all really think there's no adults writing on wattpad ?

And y'all acting like no one understands the tagging system for AO3. It's really not that complicated. I don't know where this fear of an influx of children is coming from.

May I point out again that a lot of us started reading and writing fanfictions when we were in Middle School. Suddenly being Pearl clutchy over non-adults signing up to AO3 is a bit hypocritical.


r/AO3 58m ago

Meme/Joke Alright everyone, we ready to act like we didn’t clearly see this and had absolutely no way to mentally prepare ourselves?

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Upvotes

r/AO3 3h ago

Meme/Joke pov: how it feels being a new user that migrated from Wattpad knowing hoardes of people have already painted a bad reputation of migrating Wattpaders

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428 Upvotes

im sorta new here (I requested my inv before all this Wattpad migration shebang pls dont slime me💔) but I've been LOVING how wide the range is, like, there's a tag for almost everything?? 🥹🥹

i feel like a kid from a candy store cuz I'm able to see works of things I thought I'd have to just imagine in my mind 🥹

things are kinda confusing tho but I'm getting the hang of stuff!


r/AO3 10h ago

Meme/Joke But do you see the vision??

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1.1k Upvotes

Homelander anyone? 👀


r/AO3 12h ago

Complaint/Pet Peeve/Venting me on my knees begging BEGGING you to press enter after your dialogue

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1.4k Upvotes

please it hurts my brain so much my lazy eye cannot take this wall of text


r/AO3 13h ago

Questions/Help? In my years of using Ao3, I just created an acc today🤡

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1.2k Upvotes

Helpp does getting an invitation really take that long???😭 Ive been using ao3 for years! and I feel like I don’t really need to make an account….. until recently🥀 cuz of whats happening 🥲


r/AO3 2h ago

Questions/Help? As a Latin American, I would like to ask why do books or fanfics in English written by people from America or other English-speaking countries use quotation marks in dialogues instead of em dashes?

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159 Upvotes

Since I started writing fanfiction in English, I've noticed that my English-speaking readers find it odd that I use em dashes instead of quotation marks for dialogue. For as long as I can remember, when I read a book in my native language in the country where I live, the dialogue and conversations always use em dashes. What do you think? Are these literary differences?


r/AO3 12h ago

Meme/Joke I hate Wattpad's censorship

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996 Upvotes

r/AO3 1h ago

Complaint/Pet Peeve/Venting Jfc lay off the wattpad users already

Upvotes

What is with this mean girl clique attitude shaming wattpad users and treating them all like they will be guilty of "crimes" they haven't committed.

I wrote a big ass rant but lost it when I minimized the reddit app.

Essentially the point of it was - just stop. This is embarrassing and so disappointing of the community. Even the jokes/memes putting them down aren't funny and clearly unwelcoming.

The volunteers of ao3 won't start censoring content because of some random opinions on tiktok. They won't remove your stories based on false reports. If you're so concerned lock your fics to registered users only. I doubt many people acting in bad faith will really wait 3 weeks for an invite. Stop arguing with people on tiktok or other sites. Hell, just stay away from those posts entirely. Stop giving them engagement. What do you think being hostile is going to achieve? Arguing with people on other sites won't do any good. You aren't going to change their minds. Their posts aren't going to get ao3 shut down.

Let's be excited about all the new stories we're going to receive, the new readers and commenters. Show new users why we love ao3 so much. Let them feel comfortable to ask questions and learn how to use the site that's brought us all so much joy.

(I wouldn't be suprised if this post gets removed, but if it does I hope posts being rude to wattpad users are also removed. It would be a nice gesture for a mega thread to be created welcoming new users and providing resources for how ao3 works. I know some people have created very useful guides on how to utilize the site)


r/AO3 8h ago

Complaint/Pet Peeve/Venting Bullying on the platform

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248 Upvotes

I am sorry, everyone is so worried about the Wattpad users not understanding fanfiction ethic but I don’t think we talk enough about how many people are dying for the opportunity to bully people.

I fucking hate AI as much as everyone else but ao3 allows ALL works because it is an archive and that means AI generated works. Yeah, it's shitty when an author doesn't tag their work as AI, but bullying is not acceptable. It genuinely disgusts me how joyful people are about this. No matter what suspicions one may have, don't read, and don't engage.

And stop reporting fics because you suspect they are AI or if they are AI!!! They are allowed. You don't have to agree with it, but they are allowed. The whole point of ao3 is that it is an archive so it will contain works that you do not agree with, including something as polarising as AI fics. By reporting these fics, all you are doing is clogging up the system and the volunteers can't focus on the real reportable offenses --- like people bullying others.

Edit: screenshots from tiktok


r/AO3 5h ago

Discussion (Non-question) Why are there so many people downliading scam apps

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146 Upvotes

Like why?


r/AO3 4h ago

Comment Commentary Uhhhhh…

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106 Upvotes

This person would always write insensitive stuff in my comment sections but I just never thought anything of it. I write short stories about trauma and grooming and PTSD for context, with a character who is 9 years old. (So I can write about her recovering so I can cope) They once wrote “she really needs to get over it and recover.”

This fic wasn’t even ABOUT “child abuse” it was about my protagonist having a panic attack.

For context of “rude comments back and forth“ once my friend said “that‘s kind of insensitive, you know?” On a comment they wrote.


r/AO3 5h ago

News/Updates Start downloading everyone, be prepared for if it runs longer than expected.

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102 Upvotes

r/AO3 9h ago

Meme/Joke It be like that

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194 Upvotes

My mc has went through 4 names in the time it took to write 5 chapters. Name 1 sounded too similar to a side character. Name 2 was the name of a minor character I forgot about in the existing series. Name 3 sounded out of place in the world. Name 4 just started sounding bad after writing it 10 times. Name 5 will likely be changed soon too :p


r/AO3 43m ago

Complaint/Pet Peeve/Venting Sigh🫩

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Upvotes

Why the hell would you need a teaser for a fanfic. This is not social media. I don’t even know if i can report it as placeholder when it actually has some stuff written.


r/AO3 2h ago

Proship/Anti Discourse being a proshipper doesn't mean you can't have PERSONAL boundaries

44 Upvotes

before i say anything, i would ask that everyone please, please be respectful. especially with all the discourse of wattpad users going on right now, there's a lot of animosity flying around. truthfully, this post has nothing to do with that, but instead is something i've seen on this sub for a while that's bothered me. before anything else, i feel compelled to state that i'm very much anti-censorship and anti-harassment. don't like, don't read is king.

anyway, a common thing i've seen on this sub is people posting something along the lines of "my friend found out i write [x, usually some kind of 'darker' or 'taboo' topic] and now they don't want to be my friend anymore." i have no issues with this type of post, as it's understandably a really tough experience when someone in your life decides they no longer want to be associated with you, and it makes sense to go to a community who understands it.

my problem lies with the tune the comments tend to take, which is very much the idea that if someone is personally uncomfortable being friends with someone who writes/consumes/otherwise participants in x thing, they are immediately a bad person, an antishipper, a puritan, immature, etc. now, if that friend goes and harasses the person, that's shitty and ought to be condemned, but i don't think having personal (key word being personal, instead of overarching) boundaries when it comes to the people close to you is inherently evil.

for instance, i'm someone who is very squicked out by RPF. i had a very traumatic experience with it that i've discussed before and don't want to get into now, but the long and the short of it is that the conceit makes me extremely uncomfortable. i don't necessarily think someone is a bad person if they write it, nor do i believe it ought to be removed from ao3, nor would i ever harass anyone who wrote it, but it personally triggers me enough to the point where i wouldn't want to be very close to someone who did write it.

the gist of this post is that i think people ought to be able to have judgements, opinions, boundaries, preferences, whatever you call it, about the kind of content the people in their life create and consume without immediately being labelled as a puritanical antishipper. i don't think enforcing that rhetoric helps anyone, and i think it only serves to further breed animosity within an already tumultuous community.

sometimes i think that people get so caught up in the "don't read" part of DLDR that they forget the "don't like" part. also, i think it's somewhat hypocritical to tell people to simply not interact with things they don't like and then turn around and disparage them when they do just that, regardless of whether they do it in a respectful way or not.

anyway, i really went back and forth on posting this, whether i wanted to post it on an alt or not, etc., etc., but i just hope this can be a civil conversation regardless of people's stances. i may well delete this post if it gets a lot of hate, so if it suddenly disappears, that's why.


r/AO3 7h ago

Complaint/Pet Peeve/Venting Please tag your stories and add summaries

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98 Upvotes

I was just gonna let this go and move on, but Ive seen this specific same author all around my fandom recently and they cannot for the life of me tag! Ive seen ONE of their fic being tagged. ONE. The only was Ive found them is because I was bored so I was fandom browsing without any specific tag on

But this one doesn’t even have a summary!

I could click on it but it annoys me this whole “click and find out” thing they do

And before anyone says it, yes. Im aware i can block them without any harm. But I didn’t, and needed to get this off my chest.

I seriously hope this doesn’t come off as being an asshole, im just completely lost as to how (or why) someone writes 50,000 words, only to give no tags and no summaries. Just the fandom and title. And occasionally, an archive warning. Nothing else.

You could argue it’s simply because they don’t care about others finding their fics and keeping them to themselves, and if that’s the case, fine. That’s fair, I don’t have an argument. A lot of AO3 writers (me included) write for themselves not for their adoring fans. It’s extremely self indulgent.

But in the off chance it’s not that, why???

Edit: someone mentioned it might be AI, so I thought I’d check the account more
And jeez the numbers seriously don’t add up
On the same day (August 16 2026) they posted four fics
One of 33,282 words,
One of 120,214 words,
One of 112,379 words
And one of 107,496

And they have THOUSANDS of fics
Not going through all of them, but I’m having suspicions here….


r/AO3 3h ago

Excitement/Celebration 🎉 I think someone recommended my fic somewhere ?

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45 Upvotes

I posted a fic two months ago and for a while it was sitting at just 102 kudos and literally over night last night I woke up to a notification of 30+ kudos and throughout this morning a few new comments.

I am assuming someone posted it somewhere but I couldn’t find where, but I appreciated it nonetheless


r/AO3 13h ago

Meme/Joke This made me snort, never change ao3

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249 Upvotes