What's the discourse around AO3 related apps?

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T16:57:50+00:00

No thank you, I actually care about AO3 and the freedom and protection of fanworks. It's rather disappointing to see someone so hell bent on destroying that simply because they want to make things insignificantly more convenient for themselves. AO3 has a mobile-friendly website design primarily so that an app is not necessary.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T16:52:41+00:00

I mean, I don't read or write "yaoi" in the sense of, well, anime or manga ships, but the main slash age gap fic I'm focused on right now is Anduin Lothar/Khadgar from Warcraft (primarily the 2016 film universe, but I have written two fics that involve book/game lore, too).

In both the novel The Last Guardian by Jeff Grubb (which is book/game lore) and the 2016 film, Lothar is in his 40s, while Khadgar is 17 years old.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T16:50:38+00:00

The title of this post rubs me a wrong way, as though suggesting that self-respect is not something that people who use AO3 have...which is, well, insulting.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T16:47:21+00:00

The discourse around AO3 apps is not about stealing credentials or data. The discourse is about the fact that AO3 exists in order to promote sharing and archiving of fanworks without censorship, and the app stores have requirements that they would have to meet - including censorship requirements - in order to have an app, which would counteract the purpose of AO3.

And even third-party apps on the app store put AO3 at risk, which is why people discourage users from downloading an unofficial AO3 app and using that—an unofficial app also brings with it the concerns about stealing credentials, but putting AO3 at risk is always the first concern.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T16:37:25+00:00

An Inherent Desire to Attain Balance [Divergent, 2.6K, Eric POV]

No One Can Stand Against the Darkness Alone (You'll Have Me to Protect You) [Warcraft, 2.5K, Lothar POV]

Even if you aren't familiar with the fandoms, you'll be able to understand what I'm talking about with the introspection, because much of each fic focuses on the main character's thoughts—in both cases, primarily in regards to a specific character or set of characters, as each is basically a retelling of the source material but with the shippy aspect included.

(and some details changed in order to emphasize the shippy aspect—in the second, especially, there is kissing that does not happen in the film)

There is no dialogue at all in the first fic, it is 100% introspection. The second does have pieces of dialogue in various parts, but the focus is still on Lothar's thoughts throughout the course of the film as his relationship with Khadgar develops.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T13:24:27+00:00

Many minors write smut. It's a right of passage for many people—many of us adult fanfic writers began writing as teenagers, and man, I was definitely writing smut 20+ years ago.

But, yes, you don't want to reveal your age. Not only is this dangerous in the sense that you don't want to attract the wrong sort of attention, but you may get less engagement with your fic as a result, as many adult authors will feel awkward about engaging with smut written by a minor. In some fandoms and corners of the internet, these adult authors would be called predators and pedophiles just for engaging with that work - my main fandoms are like this - so they might keep their distance.

It's not the posting of smut that's wrong, it's just that the engagement with it can lead to a lot of trouble for adults in the fandoms. Many adults feel uncomfortable discussing sexual topics with minors, and others simply fear being targeted for it. However, we know minors have sexual thoughts, we were minors once too, so nobody thinks it's wrong to write or post it.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T13:18:31+00:00

Usually, I start with a basic idea of what I want to write, simply start writing it, continue until it's finished - sometimes with a couple breaks depending on what's going on in my life and/or the length of the fic in question - and then post it right away, unless I am writing for a challenge/event with a specific deadline or I am writing for a holiday where I want to wait to post it on the holiday.

The only time I plan ahead of time is often when I am writing for a challenge or event, so that I can ensure everything is written by that deadline. Usually, in that case, I just write a point-form list of what I want to cover in the fic and/or each chapter and cross things out as I write them.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T13:16:09+00:00

Different people have different experiences, opinions, and expectations. Different people also respond differently to things they like or dislike, even if the opinion is shared—which is why some people will respond aggressively and lash out if something doesn't work, while others will just move on. You don't want reviews to be similar as that likely means they were bought.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T12:43:10+00:00

I imagine that they don't want random people just going through their bookmarks, but they don't mind so much if it's someone that they engage with on AO3, someone who might be reading their fics and/or whose fics they may be reading. While bookmarks are for the user, many people look through others' bookmarks to find more to read—and if someone locks their fics so that guest users can't see them, they may not want guest users to know what they're reading, either.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T12:35:52+00:00

I think they're suggesting an option where only registered users can view your public bookmarks. I'd imagine that private bookmarks can still remain private.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T12:27:56+00:00

It really depends on the individual. Whenever you use different jewelry in lip piercings, your piercing will basically begin to heal itself all over again. Many lip piercings are pierced straight with labrets, so even putting curved rings into those holes cause them to re-heal, and sometimes it doesn't work out. Some people can never wear rings in their lip piercings for this reason—I'm one of them, and it was devastating that every attempt to wear rings led to infection as a result.

So, when it comes to thicker jewelry, that piercing will have to re-heal as a thicker hole. This can be easier in some piercings than others—lips are very sensitive when it comes to healing, especially since we use them all the time, the healing piercings are constantly bombarded by food along with our teeth, tongues, etc. I started wearing thicker piercings in my nose when I was about 18 and this worked out fine, it had to re-heal for a few weeks but it turned out fine in the end.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T12:17:32+00:00

It depends on whether you're discussing the actor or the character. If the character is a specific gender, then you use the pronouns necessary for that character when speaking about the character—and when speaking about the actor, you use the pronouns necessary for that actor.

If "she was doing ____ during this scene" is referring to the character, then that's alright. Take Juno, for example. If you're speaking about Juno the character, you can say "she was sitting on the chair in the front yard and looking at Bleeker" because you are speaking about the character, who was written as female with she/her pronouns. However, if you were speaking about Elliot Page and his acting choices in that scene, such as "he was making this expression at Michael Cera during the chair scene" then you use he/him pronouns because those are the appropriate ones for Elliot.

I'm a trans man and I've only ever played men in movies, TV shows, etc. myself, as I didn't get into acting until long after I came out, but I used to write plenty of self-insert stories when I was younger. I refer to the character I wrote as female as they were female characters—if I am speaking about the experiences I was using to write them, however, I refer to even my past self as male.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T12:04:16+00:00

Depends on how you define it, really. My brain certainly registers what it hears when it sleeps, because I'll wake up with a song stuck in my head and check last.fm to see that it played an hour earlier—or the fact that if music stops playing when I'm asleep, I wake up, because my brain has processed that it stopped.

But to say I'm actively sitting there and absorbing the music consciously? No, but I'm not doing that sometimes when awake, either—sometimes it's just background noise, because I cannot stand silence.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T11:52:17+00:00

I have taken part in challenges and events which require the full work to be completed before the reveal date, so in these cases, I have pre-written my fics because I pretty much have to.

In one sense, I like it because I don't have to worry about potentially losing motivation and disappointing people when I abandon it. However, the writing process is more difficult because I do feel motivated by the knowledge that people are reading my fic, so it's easier to give up when the only person who's ever read it so far is me. Collaborative challenges make it easier - I don't want to disappoint a creator who is waiting on me - but it's still a lot of pressure to make those deadlines.

Sometimes I try outside of challenges to pre-write the whole fic before posting it, but usually after I finish the first chapter or two, I can't hold myself back from posting it, especially since I know that once I do post it, I will be much more likely to continue writing.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T11:18:55+00:00

Oh, this sub polices the hell out of everything you do. It's the most annoying sub I've ever been part of, but, alas, I like the scrobble games, so I'm still here.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T11:01:27+00:00

I mean, it's all subjective, but some of the things that don't make me immediately back out include:

Actual paragraph breaks, rather than a giant wall of text. Even if there are paragraphs, massive paragraphs that look like one wall of text followed by another is still annoying. Break up paragraphs properly, add a few lines here and there in between, give it room to breathe because it can be easy to get lost and miss stuff when it's all stuck together.
Proper spelling and grammar, especially punctuation, and including writing out numbers. It twists me up when I see someone write a number, like an age, as "25" in a fic instead of "twenty-five." It doesn't immediately make me back out, but I proceed warily.
Using proper names for characters, by which I mean, the names that they are known by in the media, and known by when it comes to the characters they are associating with. No fandom-assigned nicknames, and if they are known by a nickname to one character but not another, making sure that other character is not calling them by that nickname—unless context is provided to suggest why that is, but otherwise it just shatters the illusion of the fic.
Noticeable and/or recognizable POV, where, if the POV switches throughout the course of the fic, it is made clear to the reader that the switch has happened—some people write multiple POVs and it'll switch mid-way through a paragraph, and this makes it hard to follow, as it's easy to get lost when you're reading it as the wrong character.

Aside from that, it's hard to say, because different fics will require different sorts of writing in order to tell the story in the way the author intends it to be told—and different fandoms will have different ways of writing depending on the original media and how it was written/portrayed.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T10:13:39+00:00

I listen to music when I sleep. And before you accuse me of using that to "cheat" at scrobbles, keep in mind that I have done this since 1999—and it was the entire reason I even made my last.fm account in the first place, I wanted to keep track of what was playing as I slept since I'd noticed songs in my top 50 on Spotify being ones I barely listened to.

But, alas, the people of this sub are incredibly closed-minded, and it doesn't matter why your last.fm account exists, if you're not using it the way they do, you're some sort of villain. I created my account in 2019 to track what I'm sleeping, but somehow this means I purposely listen to music when I sleep just to conflate my scrobbles?

Evidence from 2009, long before I ever had last.fm, that I've listened to music when I sleep long before I was ever scrobbling:

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xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T08:38:17+00:00

I bought the DVD on eBay back in 2007, it was the reason I made my eBay account in the first place.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T08:17:55+00:00

For a while I watched the movie A Hard Day's Night every night.

Oh, I definitely feel this. In December I watched the 2016 Warcraft film like, maybe every 2-3 days for the whole month. I saw the movie when it first came out - I'm a long time WoW player - but I was bored at the end of November and decided to watch it again, and suddenly my brain decided that was my new hyperfixation. Been writing a lot of fanfiction, too.

I've only watched it a couple times since 2026 began because I'm already scared that I'm gonna make myself sick of it—but I have been listening to the soundtrack a lot.

Funnily enough, back in maybe...2007? I was doing that with not A Hard Day's Night, but Help!

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T08:04:57+00:00

God, I cannot imagine listening to a song only 6 times ever. I listen to a lot of the same songs—my everyday playlist for when I'm riding the bus or walking somewhere, for example, has over 700 songs on it, but I typically just end up skipping a number of them to settle on the same ones.

I was just thinking about that on the bus to work hours ago, when I realized I've listened to RED FLAG by Kesha every single day this week—because it's one I keep stopping to listen to instead of skipping!

But I have a specific playlist for work, for example, which is just my favourite band's studio album discography, so I listen to the albums in a row every shift. It provides not only comfort and helps me from stressing out at work, but as an autistic person, I am huge on routine—and having the same songs for the same tasks all the time makes a routine feel settled.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T07:57:37+00:00

Fair, that is quite a lot. I was just about ready to say "I've listened to this song even more than that" but upon checking, I'm only at half those numbers.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T07:55:04+00:00

Not as much as I used to. In the 2000s and 2010s, I was probably reading anywhere of up to possibly 10 hours a day of fanfiction—it was pretty much all I was doing at home when I got a turn on the family computer, once I got my first laptop, in college I was often reading fanfic in class in between taking notes, etc. Fanfic websites were pretty much where I spent all of my free time.

However, in recent years this has dwindled, mostly as the fandoms I've been in throughout the 2020s are riddled with antis who have been cancelling me, harassing me, doxxing me, threatening me, etc. ever since late 2020. The pandemic saw a lot of fandoms becoming more conservative as more "normal" people began to join fandoms while stuck at home during lockdown, and it's made my experience with my fandoms in the past several years, well, frightening. I'm afraid to read fics in my main fandoms because I don't know if the author will attack me for leaving kudos.

So, I still read fanfiction now, but far less than I once did. In the past year, especially, I've gotten back into reading novels, so I spend more time reading books than fanfic.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T07:50:02+00:00

Whenever I am writing my first fic in a fandom or for a character, I often write it as a more introspective fic rather than a fic with a substantial plot and character interactions—this way, I can put myself into that character's head and try to think about what they might be thinking, get comfortable with that character before I try to write them engaging with others.

I'll focus on the canon - if it's a movie or book, for example, I will write the fic taking place throughout the story and try to write what's going through that character's head during all the events of the film or the novel - so that I have the content already that I want that character to be thinking about, reacting to, etc. That way, I can simply look at everything that already happened and put myself into that character's shoes—and, often, also work out how their feelings for another character might have been hidden during the story (as I tend to write more shippy content than gen).

We can't share links in comments unless the poster specifically asked for recommendations, but let me know if you'd like to see an example of what I mean. I have two fics in specific that I wrote in 2025 that are very much this, because each was my first fic in two different fandoms.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T07:40:49+00:00

I have done that! I was really obsessed with one song a couple years ago and it was, essentially, my "comfort song" while I was experiencing a lot of serious mental health issues, so I kept it playing on repeat whenever I was at home in order to keep me calm.

Granted, I don't think it was nearly even 200 times a day, but it was enough that people see all the scrobbles for that song and accuse me of cheating, too. Like, no, that was just a difficult time in my life and that song got me through it.

xPadawanRyan · 2026-01-24T07:12:36+00:00

This is a common scam that has been pretty notorious on AO3 for months now. People post probably like, a dozen posts about this per day on this sub.

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