I’m in the middle of reading one of these lol, there’s the context.
Happens to be the anticipation and intensity was really well done and I almost couldn’t believe the tag but lol, shocker she’s pregnant.

As long as you don't go in the comments and voice this.

Of course, "don't like, don't read" is the standard practice. But sometimes you do start reading a fic and end up not liking it part of the way through, and that's fine. Back button still works.

Many times through the writing process, I had second thoughts about whether I should even continue. My fic hadn't been getting a lot of hits/kudos compared to others in my fandom, so it was very disheartening.

But I'm so glad I stuck through to the end, because comments like this are exactly why I kept going: hoping that it resonates with at least one reader out there. And this gave me such a major boost in confidence and satisfaction as a writer!

Because mine is getting pretty weird.

Sauce: Asumi-chan wa Les Fuuzoku ni Kyoumi ga Arimasu! (Ch. 22)

Mine was Shadouge (Shadow x Rouge from Sonic the hedgehog). It’s not that I hate the ship, I just never really cared about it. But recently, I’ve found myself defending it because some haters have gone insane and started calling it incest simply because they see Shadow and Rouge as “sibling-coded.” I never thought I’d one day be defending this ship, but some people keep making such ridiculous arguments about ships that I feel the need to speak up.

And Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus) is another one. I don’t like her, but for different reasons. I dislike her because of her personality and the way she treats the people around her. However, I’ve seen some haters take it way too far and act like she deserves to be abstracted because of it. So yeah, I ended up defending a character I don’t even like.

Been reading fics for years but lately I'm just getting so annoyed by people tagging every relationship even mentioned in a work.

When I filter for relationship tags, I'm obviously going to be looking for stories about that relationship. I presume Authors know that the filters and tags work this way here, so why are they tagging irrelevant ships?

If the relationship is not central to the plot, like friends of the MCs relationships (a huge offender for ships I want to read lately), I would rather it not get tagged at all. I don't give a fuck who their friends are dating the vast majority of the time. A secondary ship has NEVER been what I'm looking for in the tags.

Anyone who may have been around longer know WHY authors do this??

okay these might be two different guests but… i only have two fanfics posted at the moment and they left kudos on both, which makes me think they found one of my fics, enjoyed it, left kudos and then went to my profile for more!! i’m probably delusional but either way i got kudos on two separate fics which i’m extremely happy about

AO3 is an archive, not social media. If you’re constantly looking at kudos, hits, comments, etc., at what point does it stop being about writing because you love writing and start being about the engagement?
And personally, I really don't think readers should be dragged into that.

A very popular author in my fandom is questionable in my eyes. For instance, I don't really read their work but I once clicked on one of their ongoing fics and saw this in the author's note:

“20 comments for next chapter.”

Excuse me??? I'm sorry but that sounds insane to me. Isn't writing supposed to be something you do because you enjoy it? Obviously people can write for whatever reason they want, and nobody owes anyone an update, but why make your readers work for the next chapter? On an archive site??

And the way they write their author's notes is so dismissive too. They rarely reply to comments, barely interact with their readers, but constantly seem to emphasize engagement. I don't know. What you'd call an “AO3 celeb,” I guess?

The funniest part is that it's been MONTHS. There are definitely over 50 comments by now and they still haven't updated. And it's not just that one fic either. All of their fics are like this.

And apparently their readers don't even mind, which honestly surprises me.

Because if I had to spam comments for you to update your fic, I would genuinely feel like a beggar.

Personally, if I came across a fic with an author's note like that, I'd click off. Immediately. It just gives me the ick.

Anyway. Sorry for the long-ass rant. I'd probably get the downvotes but I just couldn't hold it in anymore <( ˘︹˘ )>

EDIT: As an author myself, I understand so much how much engagement matters to an author. Human nature is, It motivates me to write and helps me improve. AO3 is bound to have social-media equivalent features as a fan concentrated space, but for some, the lines between writing for yourself and writing for fame blur. There's nothing wrong with wanting engagement. But when it just turns extreme, and that's what really disturbs me.

Really short - like, between on sentence and maybe one screenshot at maximum (not editing font size 😝).

The thing that came out of you and when you look at it you just smile and feel proud/special.

Gonna post this response the next time someone tries to tell me how and what I should write.

It was one very popular fandom and one very quiet fandom that I craved to read fics on, but there's only 1 crossover fic on them.

After 2 years of thinking about it... I've written something! It's going to be feel very different with the engagement and I'm half-prepared for it because the other fandom is Yu-Gi-Oh, so it's very old. Aaah. I just have a lot of series because my brain wanted to write things.

It happened, at last. I ran into it. It was absolutely insane when I found out people were using "proshipping" as in problematic shipping and not "hey, I am PRO us shipping the characters we like!!!!" which is literally what is had always meant???? Was I lobotomized at some point during the pandemic??

CHILDREN, please GROW UP. Where your parents????

I mean, no offense to children, they are the future and everything, but seriously, how did this happen? I was busy reading stories I liked, and then at some point this was a thing? What? How? Where? Who????

It was a discord fan server for AO3 fics (again, NOT OFFICIAL) that I had been lurking in because I kept forgetting to socialize. Hilarious considering they were advertising the server during International Fanworks Day and the mods quickly shut down people going "uhh actually proshipping is evil" and similar discourse because AO3 is NOT A FAN OF CENSORSHIP.

There was a second message: "those of you who reacted with a thumbs down, are you pro shippers?" and I assume they started banning people left and right. Unhinged.

Apologies for the rant, but genuinely what the fuck.

I guess more people can read multiple short stories that read longer ones

Idk if this take is hot or not but I want to talk about it regardless.

Like, writing about serial killers doesn’t make someone a serial killer. Obviously. And that goes for every dark topic out there. I write darkfic myself so it would make me quite the hypocrite to claim otherwise. But writing can also sometimes be a reflection of people’s biases.

For example, writing a bigoted character is no issue, that’s just a flaw and could make for an interesting character exploration. But when every character regardless of personality is throwing out casual sexism/racism/transphobia/etc and it’s not explained by the setting or otherwise, if every minority in the story is a stereotype and/or bashed by the narrative, I do start to wonder how the author views those groups irl, whether they’re doing this consciously or not. I’ve also seen cases of people writing about abusive relationships and tagging them as healthy, then getting confused when commenters pointed out the mis-tagging. Turns out some of these folks were trapped in abusive relationships in real life and didn’t see anything wrong with them until someone pointed it out.

Much lighter example; I once read a story where, no joke, three different scenes had separate characters mention how abhorrent they thought pineapple on pizza was. Like it would be brought up and everybody in the room would cringe. Idk I found it safe to assume the author didn’t fw pineapple on pizza.

This is of course a very case by case thing and I would never encourage people to accuse anyone of anything, because if does turn out to be a reflection of the author, it is that author’s job to figure themselves out. But when reading fic, it can sometimes really feel like the characters are being mouthpieces for the author and I don’t think it’s ridiculous to click off a fic about it.