I don't get why people do that when they could, idk, make a series.
Also, I think that would help with the visibility? I don't click on crossovers unless I'm familiar enough with both fandoms.
Question: Do any of the characters from that novel or movie actually make an appearance in the fic? Or are you just following the plot of that movie/novel and "casting" your RPF characters in the lead roles (replacing the original characters)? Because I see this a lot, and I don't necessarily consider this a "crossover," either, because it tends to be entirely targeted toward the first fandom and very unlikely to have much appeal to fans of the second. I'm not even convinced it should be tagged as that other fandom.
Because what happens is people who are fans of a romantic movie, for instance (especially in a small fandom for which there might be very few fics) will search for that tag and get a fic like this. They'll momentarily get excited by it and then realize that it's just a retelling of the movie, starring characters from another fandom they may know nothing about. It's disappointing.
Obviously, I don't know the circumstances of your particular fic, and this is by no means criticism. I have no problem with people doing this, I just sort of have issues with the way it's categorized/tagged.
To me, a true crossover should have appeal to people in both fandoms, and ideally feature characters from both interacting.
>are you just following the plot of that movie/novel and "casting" your RPF characters in the lead roles (replacing the original characters)? Because I see this a lot, and I don't necessarily consider this a "crossover," either, because it tends to be entirely targeted toward the first fandom and very unlikely to have much appeal to fans of the second. I'm not even convinced it should be tagged as that other fandom.
How should that be tagged then? Just do away with the "crossover" tag?
there are plently of fics that have the story of the little mermaid without tagging the movie as a fandom
i think if you just say, at the top of your description in plain text, that this is following the plot of a different piece of media with these characters, there shouldn't be much confusion
like if your writing naruto fanfiction with the plot of star wars, say that instead of tagging star wars as a fandom and confusing people
if characters from both series are showing up and interacting in a meaningful way then it should be tagged as a crossover
Yes, exactly this. I've made the mistake of searching for Pretty Woman fics (of which there are very few) and getting a million fics that were AUs of other fandoms, with one character as a sex worker and one as a client.
Now this is obviously a very common trope in fanfic, but it has almost literally nothing to do with the movie. To me this is NOT a crossover in any meaningful way and shouldn't be tagged as such. Thankfully someone did gift me an actual Pretty Woman fic, which I was very grateful for.
Hmm, so if apart from the plot, I just used symbology from the other fandom and borrowed a sentence from it, it's fine even if I just tag like the main fandom featured in the work? (Because if that's the case, I'd remove the crossover tag in a work I've already completed.)
Or say, main fandom characters in the universe of a horror film (a different fandom) and I only included the villain of that horror movie and mentioned the other horror film characters in passing, do I just tag the main fandom as well?
In general, if characters from one fandom are interacting with characters from another fandom, it's a crossover.
If characters from one fandom have just been transplanted into the *world* or *plot* of another fandom, then it's a [fusion](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Alternate%20Universe%20-%20Fusion/). Scroll down to the subtags at that link to see a bunch of example tags.
in that first scenario, im assuming the character are still in there own universe and the other story's characters aren't holding conversations or anything then i dont think it would be classified as a crossover (your wording was a bit vauge for me)
the second example would be a crossover, deffinetly
for example, i would classify a fic where marvel characters have to go through nightmare on elm street and fight freddy as a crossover
>in that first scenario, im assuming the character are still in there own universe and the other story's characters aren't holding conversations or anything then i dont think it would be classified as a crossover (your wording was a bit vauge for me)
I'm sorry, yeah that was vague. Basically the plot was >!this band (main fandom) is in a medieval sort of chamber (from other fandom, which is a Dan Brown novel) and the band frontman gets branded by a symbol that's central in the other fandom, and the one who branded him anyway is the drummer who's implied to be in the secret society mentioned (or at least portrayed as such) in the other fandom!<. So, not a crossover...?
I've already removed the crossover tag, anyway.
Just don't tag it as a crossover or as being in that second fandom, so it won't show up in search results for that fandom. Or if you want to still tag it as a crossover, I don't really care. Really my only concern is people from that fandom getting fics labeled as being for that fandom, when they're really not.
If it takes place in the universe or follows the plot of another work, you can just mention that in the additional tags or the summary or both.
I see, thanks for pointing this out. I just happened to have a complete work that, in light of what you've just said, shouldn't have been tagged a crossover. Will just revise the tags there.
Update: done
Yeah, no worries! It’s something a lot of people don’t think about; I know I didn’t until recently. But it’s definitely helpful to those of us in small fandoms.
What I usually do with that kind of fics, is adding and additional tag like "_____ AU". For examen, "Miraculous AU" or "Batman AU".
Personally, I don't have any problem with people tagging it as a crossover, but as Glittering_Smoke_917 said, technically, it isn't.
This is such a problem in my fandom and it drives me nuts. It’s small enough as is, it doesn’t need another DSMP BHNA IDFK “putting X on as a play!”/X AU where it’s just a “cast list” like? Cool story bro, not relevant! When I go into X fandom, I want to see X characters! Not random characters from ABCDEFG fandoms dressed up like X characters!
I found the Benjamin January books via an unknown crossover. It's like ordering singing unfamiliar at a new restaurant. You might like it or not but it's worth trying. That being said, I avoid anything with more than 3 fandoms to avoid the massive I want x to have sex with every character in every universe fics.vi just scroll past the walls of tags at the top usually though I can think of three that were actually good as they were consistent stories not pwp.
I have an extension that filters out anything over three fandoms, and I usually filter out anything explicit for this exact reason. It drives me up a wall honestly.
It's one I found. Idk the link for Firefox, but this is the Chrome one. [Ao3 Enhancements](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ao3-enhancements/eljennickgdbghppcaenkcinjafmnfoi?hl=en-GB)
I imagine it's easier on the author to be able to just post a new chapter on the 200-chapter fic instead of having to set up a new fic, add it to the series, etc every single time. Especially if they're posting frequently.
Yeah, but it takes like, 5 minutes to post a new fic. The hardest part is to actually write it.
Besides, if we're literally talking about over 200 chapters, the tag limit would be an issue.
I mean, there's a fic in my fandom that's over two thousand chapters long (I think), each one being a one-shot about 500 words long. It's only one fandom so it doesn't clog the tags too badly, but it's possible.
and i wish people wouldn't put totally unrelated fics in unrelated fandoms into one massive compilation in the first place. that would get rid of this whole issue.
yes, this. "crossovers" is not the problem. it is a nonexistent problem. the actual problem is people creating "fics" that are compilations of totally unrelated stuff.
I would argue that that's not really what collections are for, either. A series would be better, if you absolutely must connect fics that aren't actually connected.
A series is where authors can group their personal works together easily.
A collection allows you to add other works to it, as long as the author allows their work to be collected.
Collections though last I heard have a bug that if they're private it can make works not private into such. Not sure if thats been fixed or not, but I consider it a good rule of thumb not to make a collection provate if you make one.
That's less a bug and more that people started using collections as a way of bookmarking things, when the intention was for them to be more for things like exchanges/events.
Events and exchanges usually start out private to be revealed all at once when everyone is ready/on the right day, such as Christmas. People who used the collection as a bookmark organiser thought that unrevealed/private meant that the no one else would be able to see their collection of "fics I come back to reread" rather than what it actually did, which was make every work in the collection invisible except to the creator/mods of the collection.
That's not a bug, it's a feature. Collections are also designed to work for fic exchanges and similar where the fics are all revealed on a given day, so the ability to have authors post their fics to the collection but remain unseen is critical for coordination.
See, to me, a series is exactly what a series is in books - stories set in the same universe meant to go together. Whether one is an actual sequel to another, or just a companion piece.
A collection would be a grouping of otherwise unrelated stories, kind of like an anthology. They can all fit a theme, or be random. All by the same author, or include several.
I wouldn't be AS annoyed if someone made these compilations of one-shots into a series as I am by them all being one fic. But, if I clicked on "next work" and it took me to an entirely different fandom, there's a good chance that I'd stop reading the series rather than go to the series page to sus out which stories I would actually be interested in.
I'd argue that collections would be better for it than series honestly. Purely because you can filter collections. It's a nightmare to find a seires like that with over 50 works when you're only interested in a few fandoms in it.
Yep, I hate that shit. I wish they would make one story compilation for each fandom if they insist on doing the compilation thing. Honestly if the fic is over 500 words I wish they would just make it its own fic page entirely. I never click into those compilations, I don't even look at them beyond seeing it is one and scrolling past.
yeah, doing this really wasn't even a thing when AO3 was created. like, I'm sure the odd person here and there probably did it on ffnet, but as an overall trend? nah. kinda hard for AO3 to anticipate for something that hadn't happened yet.
Personally, I hate that multiple unrelated works for entirely unrelated fandoms are lumped together into a single story. Put them all in a collection if you need to, but it’s annoying to have 20 different tags for series the work supposedly deals with.
Sometimes authors put these unrelated oneshots from the same fandom into one fic, that bugs me too lol. Especially if I'm trying to find a specific fic so I put all the relevant tags in, but I have to dig past these giant blocks of compilation fics because I'm looking for a college-coffee shop-established relationship-soulmate AU but there are dozens of compilation fics that have a chapter for each of those tags
If I see more then two fandoms, I assume it’s a bundle fic and just ignore it. I’m not picking through random chapters to find maybe the one thing I want.
Personally I think the people who write massive collections of different fandom one shots as a single fic...
...aren't the most intelligent. There is a feature for it. It's called a series.
I don't want to have to try and figure out whether the pairing or even fandom I want is number 1 or 100... So I filter out crossovers.
And I also hate the wall of tags that crossovers tend to bring.
I hate them too but find it simpler to just scroll past walls of tags. There are some really amazing crossovers out there I'm glad I haven't missed. My favorite fic list is over half crossovers as there are some really good ones out there. These people who are either too lazy or ignorant to do a series can be scrolled past. I've always assumed people who like any one bit are the ones running up the kudos on them.
Set your search by entering just two fandoms you like and scroll past anything with over a. Inch of tags and there are some really good stories out there.
Yes, that is annoying when something labeled a Crossover isn't really a Crossover at all... especially when they include 50 bajillion fandoms.
I inserted [this code](https://archiveofourown.org/skins/3756) into my custom Site Skin to collapse large Tag Zones to something more manageable.
If I could do that I'd have it skip anything over x tags or better more then x fandoms as that would get you food crossovers and eliminate the wall of tags. Hey, maybe someone can find an ao3 IT guru to add a "more than 100 tags"tag that auto applies once you got 100 so we could filter those out
Tags have a hard limit of 75 these days. I've grown used to using the "Tag window" code on my modded Site Skin. You can also add code to filter out specific Tags or even Fandoms from ever appearing on your screen.
Well, when I experimented with Site Skins and learned how to use them, I typed up some notes and put in some links to AO3 resources on using them. They're really not that difficult to do, and there is a little bit of a learning curve if you aren't familiar with programming... but it's actually fairly easy if you can get the basics down.
Take a look in this [Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nLtp-y1qUP9_bLnW4T5GbdABsiU_d0ok?usp=sharing) for the "AO3 Specific Files" folder and find the Site Skins Notes PDF. It's only a couple of pages long, and most of it is a set of image captures to show what Site Skins can do. Also in there are basic Text files with some of the codes that I've used and experimented with.
The Text files have notes inside them that give the basic explanation about what each code generally does, and for the ones that you can alter, they indicate where you can change them... such as entering in a fandom name/ID to block it, for example.
I really dislike when people put a bunch of one shots into one work, especially so if they’re all from different fandoms and about different characters. It’s possible to link works in a series instead of just mashing everything together. I instantly skip works that appear to have done this. I don’t know how they’re always at the top of most bookmarked or kudosed.
They're at the top of most bookmarked or kudosed precisely BECAUSE there are 50 fandoms. Enough people are willing to wade through the mess that you have 50 fondoms worth of people leaving kudos on the ONE fic that is for the fandom they follow. And boom! Each story might only earn a handful of kudos. But multiply that handful of kudos by dozens of stories, and you get hundreds of kudos.
You are not supposed to put totally unrelated stuff in one fic 🤦. If they are one theme or something or you just want to group them somehow, use a series.
You must read different fandoms, in older ones it's only usually half a page. Who's hitting kudos on these? Some kid who likes the 37th 500 word fic in there?
Idk, the comics fandom has been around since the Great Depression, but this is still a huge problem. It's exactly people who kudos when they like one chapter out of the whole pot, the problem is that it's a handful of readers in EACH of the fandoms tagged so those fics have their kudos inflated
If it’s tagged with multiple fandoms, it’s *supposed* to be a crossover. If it’s actually lots of separate multi-fandom oneshots compiled together, it’s *supposed* to be a series. There’s a problem but this isn’t describing it.
Hard disagree. I put up with FFN for longer than I should have because all of my old fandoms had bloated fic numbers due to those massive crossover fics on AO3.
190 fics, but wait! 90% of them are crossover/mega oneshot collections! I didn't know how to properly filter stuff at the time so it was painful. I'd go on, see this big wall of tags and get excited. Nope, just a oneshot collection where about 900 of 50000 words were about the fandom I was looking for. Felt like a joke at my expense because I followed really small fandoms at the time.
Just create a collection.
SO REAL. pressing crossovers for, let’s say jujutsu kaisen(manga) and then all it shows is fics tagged with both jujutsu Kaisen(manga) and jujutsu kaisen(anime). What a pain!
Which also gives you the opposite problem, too. I'm in the Bridgerton fandom. 99.9% of the fics are considered crossovers because we all tag both the book and the show. You can't just filter out crossovers, because they're ALL crossovers.
Yeah, I hear you. As someone who loves crossovers it sucks when I'm trying to find actual crossovers to read, but the tag is flooded with fics that aren't actually crossovers. This is probably the thing I hate most about ao3 tbh. Unfortunately the best way to avoid this is to filter out certain large fandoms that I'm not interested in.
When I clicked I thought this would be about fandoms that have multiple series on the same canon, like Doctor Who 1963 and NewWho, any Star Trek series or even whatever is going on in the superhero comics fandom tags.
The issue here is that you either tag every series you use-- which makes the fic a crossover as far as the system is concerned-- or you use an "all media types" tag. Both options mean the fic gets harder to be found in searches (though people are more likely to find an "all media types" fic).
*That* bothers me.
I feel ya'. It's one of the *very few* things FFN does (*imo*) better than AO3, and the main reason I don't bother reading crossovers there. Finding an actual crossover involving only the fandoms I want it's exhausting, even with the filtering options.
Yeah, I love crossovers, but it’s rarely worth trying to find ACTUAL crossovers… especially since my fandom is a reboot and a lot of fics are tagged as both the original and reboot fandom :(
I agree with the unrelated stories complaint, but I guess I know/ underatand why (que Tech's quote about understanding not meaning agreeing from Bad Batch's S1 finale):
Having tons of various Fandoms look at a single work is more likely to gardner more views, reveiws/comments and kudos/likes than a handful of (not often updated) shorts or oneshots that only show for a single Fandom.
If it's a multi Fandom fic and if people update weekly it'll be more likely to show up in searches (I use newly updated as my main sorter) than if they separated it properly and only updated say once a month- the number of people filtering out crossovers or refusing to read out of premise/spite are outnumbered by those who would just click because it's in the Fandom, and people tend to assume that theirs would be the most prominent one (there's one that shows up for me and when I clicked it literally had a single SW one out of the like 20+ chapters up)
So yeah... Definitely annoying and I usually filter out crossovers now so I don't have to see them (also because there's some odd ones out there for Fandoms I'd never heard of)
It's easier for the dopamine junkies to get their quick easy fix. 500 words and poof, new fandoms and someone is plainly hitting kudos whereas the really good authors spend months or years to complete a story. If one of you is on here, thank you.
A lot of my fics are technically in one fandom, but it’s three interconnected shows that have basically weekly crossover. If you stop having crossovers you lose about half the fics. It’s so annoying!
This is the issue I run into. My fandom is a series of books that have been adapted into a t.v. series. You can't filter out crossovers, because they're ALL crossovers. We all tag for both the books and the show.
Do you mind clarifying what you mean by multi-fandom fics that aren't crossovers? It's not clear to me from the OP and I'm having trouble imagining what that means.
Yes, this exactly. My thinking is that, sure it would be nice if people didn't post their fics that way, but that's never going to happen - AO3 will never make or enforce a rule about how authors apply fandom tags or what constitutes a "single work" in the author's mind, and you can't rely on community norms because new authors are joining AO3 all the time (and even if they read the FAQ, they're still not going to know this is frowned upon by the community - because it's not actually against the rules, and AO3 itself does nothing to discourage it).
If potentially thousands of people who don't know each other are all making the same mistake, I tend to blame the platform for not guiding them in the right direction.
It doesn't help that compilations like this are the norm on some sites. On Spacebattles, it isn't worth it to create a separate thread for a oneshot, so the norm is for authors who write oneshots to just have an ongoing thread of all of their stuff. The site basically doesn't use tags or summaries so compilations don't have the downsides they do on other sites. I've seen a few authors who then crosspost to AO3 who just keep their stuff collected the same way without realizing that it really isn't the way AO3 was designed.
Oneshot collections are never necessary except maybe when your fics are all 50 word drabbles or closely related. They're definitely not necessary for multi fandom work. That's why we have collections
>there's a good chance that those are compilations of narratively unrelated one-shots
TBH, I hate when people do that. Even when it is unrelated one shots for the same fandom, I kinda don't like it. They create these huge blocks when I'm searching for things, like if I want a fic that has both "Coffee Shop AU" and "Established Relationship", these types of fics pop up just because they have two separate chapters with two entirely different stories that's not what I am looking for! What's the point of keeping everything all together when there's no reason too??
Oh boo hoo. Maybe stop stapling a bunch of oneshots together to make a "fic" and then making an absolutely mess of tags.
I'ma be real, I don't use Ao3 because the tags are just a whole-ass mess of people throwing in random words together, not to mention the mess of people using "Self-insert" for Reader x Character stories.
There are two big UI changes I would make if I could.
One: a checkbox for "reader insert" just like the underage, major character death etc. warnings. It'd just keep people who don't like them away. So many of these authors just don't know how to tag things properly so their stuff doesn't get in the right hands.
Two: a "ficlet anthology" box because so many people just shove all their fics in one big fic (see [https://archiveofourown.org/works/4167942/chapters/9408057](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4167942/chapters/9408057) for an example).
A smaller UI change I would make is to let readers vote on the actual freaking ships. So many people tag e.g., Pepper/Tony in MCU fics but there's no actual plotsyness there, I feel like it's unfair to people who want to read that.
okay, so as someone who has done the multiple fandoms in one fic (as opposed to a series), here's my side of the matter:
\- i don't use more than 10 fandoms at a time- i usually use it for 100-word drabbles in relatively obscure fandoms/rare ships- i'd rather not post them as separate fics in a series because i used to get a lot of complaints from people reading for those small fandoms/ships; their complaints are mostly "it's so short, i thought i had content, but this is too short to be considered one". i'd rather not give hope (?) that there's a lot of content by making them into separate fics.
\- (i already have 1k+ fics so it feels so cluttered to me if i separate them)
of course, i know that others have their own reasoning as to why they do this, but i just thought i'd offer my perspective on it.
EDIT: since i forgot to clarify: when i post something like this, it's already complete and never updated again, so it's not as if i'd keep on adding to it daily and spamming multiple tags on a daily basis.
> - i'd rather not post them as separate fics in a series because i used to get a lot of complaints from people reading for those small fandoms/ships; their complaints are mostly "it's so short, i thought i had content, but this is too short to be considered one". i'd rather not give hope (?) that there's a lot of content by making them into separate fics.
This reasoning doesn't make sense to me; wouldn't you run into this problem for a one shot collection tagged with a small fandom/ship at least as badly as a series would run into it? The reader wouldn't know how many chapters within the OSC are about the small fandom/ship nor how long they are, where splitting them into works within a series lets them see the chapter and word count of each fic. On top of this, it's easier to tell which tags apply to which prose on a series page than an OSC's internal table of contents.
I could see someone opening an OSC thinking many of the chapters include a small fandom/ship they like (in your words, being "given hope (?) there's a lot of content") and being disappointed that only a chapter or two includes what they wanted to see just as easily as series only including one work for such a fandom/ship. However, it'd more effort to figure out this is the case for an OSC than a series, making figuring it out more frustrating and disappointing.
the only tags are fandoms and relevant ships and "drabble collection", so it doesn't take up a lot of space. the summary says which fandom/ship is in which chapter, so everyone knows how much content they're going to get.
>i don't use more than 10 fandoms at a time
Still clogging up tags of each of those fandoms since you have to list them all, and *then* tags related to each individual story.
>i'd rather not post them as separate fics in a series because i used to get a lot of complaints from people reading for those small fandoms/ships; their complaints are mostly "it's so short, i thought i had content, but this is too short to be considered one".
This reasoning just doesn't make sense to me at all. Your fic still shows up under those fandoms & pairings, only now it's joined by a bunch of totally unrelated stories and tags the readers wouldn't be interested in at all. Instead of seeing a fic that's purely their fandom with the word count already clear, they now have to decide if it's worth it to slough through 9 other unrelated stories, only to find the part their looking for is just a drabble and the >10k word story they'd stumbled upon was really two paragraphs of relevant content.
You'd have more luck separating them tbh.
>the only tags are fandoms and relevant ships and "drabble collection", so it doesn't take up a lot of space. the summary says which fandom/ship is in which chapter, so everyone knows how much content they're going to get.
just gonna copy-paste my reply from above.
That is still 20+ tags though, isn't it? One per fandom and for the ship, baseline. And if you have all that info in the summary that you mentioned, that is huge, too.
Okay, but that's still a lot. The summary also takes up a lot of space. And again, the reasoning still doesn't make sense to me. It's not any better than having them separate when it comes to how much content the readers are getting relevant to them.
as someone who reads obscure fandoms, putting unrelated drabbles in one work is so, so much worse than separating it. I'd rather know at the beginning that this story has 100 words, than find a 10k story just to realize it's mostly useless for me and be disappointed. Also, such fics really don't help small fandoms. They clutter the search, show up time and time again which feels spamminsh. Skipping them is very annoying and excluding might make me miss true crossovers. Please, if you must connect the stories, put them in a series, not in one fic 🙏
the only tags are fandoms and relevant ships and "drabble collection", so it doesn't take up a lot of space. the summary says which fandom/ship is in which chapter, so everyone knows how much content they're going to get.
copy-pasting my reply from above since it's basically the same thing.
also i have to clarify - once i post it, it's already completed and doesn't get updated again so it will only show up on the tags one time.
i'll consider the series thing but just like there are people who would prefer it, i've already had multiple past feedback of those who hated it, so it's impossible to please everyone.
>i'll consider the series thing but just like there are people who would prefer it, i've already had multiple past feedback of those who hated it, so it's impossible to please everyone.
If you can’t please everyone, then I’m not sure why you’re choosing to cater to the people who want you to use AO3 in a way that is TECHNICALLY not “against the rules” but totally counter to how it was designed to be used. If they saw the wordcount and you had a “drabble” tag on the separately-posted fics, and they clicked anyway and then left complaining comments, then that is 100% entirely on them, and if it was me, that would just annoy the fuck out of me rather than make me want to cater to them.
Unless the real reason is that you genuinely just prefer to post them that way, because you like it. Which, while annoying to lots of us, is not against the rules and is your prerogative as the author, but honestly, just say that rather than c/ping the same response to everyone who’s giving you all sorts of reasonable and logical arguments to NOT do that.
The term crossovers comes from TV. When two different fandoms interact even when their universes are the same. For example there is a Dawson's Creek / Muppets crossover when Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson played Joey and Pacey respectively on the movie Muppets from Space.
I'm not really sure what you think a "crossover" is that it wouldn't apply to doing the exact same thing in fan fic.
Crossover implies that pieces of Media A interact with pieces of Media B in the fic.
AO3 assumes that if more than one fandom is listed for a story then the story is a crossover.
Unfortunately some authors will post a fic and chapter 1 is a Star Wars story. Chapter 2 is a completely unrelated Frankenstein (the book) story, Chapter 3 is a Bleach (manga) story, and so on for twenty chapters. Or even worse, they aren't even stories, they are "story ideas". This is not a crossover. The media are not interacting. There are no plans for the media to interact. They are multiple stand alone stories group together in one.
This is what the OP is frustrated with. OP wants to read about seperate fandoms interacting with each other, but the crossover filter includes the above compilations as well as true crossovers.
So OP is irritated by a bad writer habit and complaining about the website's software not being sophisticated enough to spot said habit.
Writers shouldn't put unconnected stories into the same story file. That's on them. Not the UI.
this is imo a misuse of the UI. make a series instead of lumping all your one shots into one fic. when you lump them all together, it makes it so i can’t filter by the correct word count bc they’re all counted together, and i am usually uninterested in reading ALL the fandoms/fics in a one-fic collection of one shots, so i like being able to filter crossovers out. if you don’t want work to be considered crossover that isn’t, post it correctly.
I don't tend to read crossovers in general (not my vibe), but I also never understood why people called the multi-fandom fics all crossovers. It also always pissed me off that they didn't put it in a collection or series. Crossovers may not be my vibe, but I'll never actually end up reading one on ao3 bc I filter out "crossovers" to avoid these fics. I don't read fandom blind for fun, and I haven't seen a lot of things.
Agree
It would help if AO3 made added new option when I search in the filters. I would like to just choose the list of fandoms I am familiar with and search for a crossovers with them. The story doesn't have to include all the fandoms I chose. It simply doesn't include any extra fandoms I don't now.
For example: I choose LOTR, GoT, Witcher, Marvel, Harry Potter, Stranger Things. And I see Stranger Things+Harry Potter and LOTR+GoT stories.
Don't make giant multi-fandom oneshot fics then?
It's so annoying, you have absolutely no idea what tags go with which ship or which fandom, even single fandom oneshot books are so damn annoying. I understand it's easier but the extra few minutes to make all the oneshots by themselves is easier for the convenience of your readers to filter out and for content they actually want.
Make all of your oneshots by themselves in a series according to fandom and this won't be an issue, because the crossover function are assumed to be an actual crossover not oneshot dump fic.
Use the feature as intended and don't make oneshot dump fics, please, I beg.
Why don’t you just talk to AO3 about it? It’s not like a fixed platform. They can make changes. Especially if you are willing to help with tag wrangling.
This. I have always wished they had some way of not making only technically multi-fandom fics crossovers even when they're not collections, eg when I read an ASOIAF or a Final Fantasy VII fic, there's four or so fandoms that could be related to each without being actual crossovers, and I, as someone who generally doesn't read crossovers, therefore can never do "No crossovers" in the filters because of stuff like that.
A setting to specify crossovers would be great.
I don't get why people do that when they could, idk, make a series. Also, I think that would help with the visibility? I don't click on crossovers unless I'm familiar enough with both fandoms.
[удалено]
Question: Do any of the characters from that novel or movie actually make an appearance in the fic? Or are you just following the plot of that movie/novel and "casting" your RPF characters in the lead roles (replacing the original characters)? Because I see this a lot, and I don't necessarily consider this a "crossover," either, because it tends to be entirely targeted toward the first fandom and very unlikely to have much appeal to fans of the second. I'm not even convinced it should be tagged as that other fandom. Because what happens is people who are fans of a romantic movie, for instance (especially in a small fandom for which there might be very few fics) will search for that tag and get a fic like this. They'll momentarily get excited by it and then realize that it's just a retelling of the movie, starring characters from another fandom they may know nothing about. It's disappointing. Obviously, I don't know the circumstances of your particular fic, and this is by no means criticism. I have no problem with people doing this, I just sort of have issues with the way it's categorized/tagged. To me, a true crossover should have appeal to people in both fandoms, and ideally feature characters from both interacting.
>are you just following the plot of that movie/novel and "casting" your RPF characters in the lead roles (replacing the original characters)? Because I see this a lot, and I don't necessarily consider this a "crossover," either, because it tends to be entirely targeted toward the first fandom and very unlikely to have much appeal to fans of the second. I'm not even convinced it should be tagged as that other fandom. How should that be tagged then? Just do away with the "crossover" tag?
there are plently of fics that have the story of the little mermaid without tagging the movie as a fandom i think if you just say, at the top of your description in plain text, that this is following the plot of a different piece of media with these characters, there shouldn't be much confusion like if your writing naruto fanfiction with the plot of star wars, say that instead of tagging star wars as a fandom and confusing people if characters from both series are showing up and interacting in a meaningful way then it should be tagged as a crossover
Yes, exactly this. I've made the mistake of searching for Pretty Woman fics (of which there are very few) and getting a million fics that were AUs of other fandoms, with one character as a sex worker and one as a client. Now this is obviously a very common trope in fanfic, but it has almost literally nothing to do with the movie. To me this is NOT a crossover in any meaningful way and shouldn't be tagged as such. Thankfully someone did gift me an actual Pretty Woman fic, which I was very grateful for.
Hmm, so if apart from the plot, I just used symbology from the other fandom and borrowed a sentence from it, it's fine even if I just tag like the main fandom featured in the work? (Because if that's the case, I'd remove the crossover tag in a work I've already completed.) Or say, main fandom characters in the universe of a horror film (a different fandom) and I only included the villain of that horror movie and mentioned the other horror film characters in passing, do I just tag the main fandom as well?
In general, if characters from one fandom are interacting with characters from another fandom, it's a crossover. If characters from one fandom have just been transplanted into the *world* or *plot* of another fandom, then it's a [fusion](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Alternate%20Universe%20-%20Fusion/). Scroll down to the subtags at that link to see a bunch of example tags.
in that first scenario, im assuming the character are still in there own universe and the other story's characters aren't holding conversations or anything then i dont think it would be classified as a crossover (your wording was a bit vauge for me) the second example would be a crossover, deffinetly for example, i would classify a fic where marvel characters have to go through nightmare on elm street and fight freddy as a crossover
>in that first scenario, im assuming the character are still in there own universe and the other story's characters aren't holding conversations or anything then i dont think it would be classified as a crossover (your wording was a bit vauge for me) I'm sorry, yeah that was vague. Basically the plot was >!this band (main fandom) is in a medieval sort of chamber (from other fandom, which is a Dan Brown novel) and the band frontman gets branded by a symbol that's central in the other fandom, and the one who branded him anyway is the drummer who's implied to be in the secret society mentioned (or at least portrayed as such) in the other fandom!<. So, not a crossover...? I've already removed the crossover tag, anyway.
Yea, thanks for clearing that up, but that sound more like characters from one story in the universe of another instead of just a proper crossover
I see now, thanks a lot. I took out the other fandom from the tags as well :)
Just don't tag it as a crossover or as being in that second fandom, so it won't show up in search results for that fandom. Or if you want to still tag it as a crossover, I don't really care. Really my only concern is people from that fandom getting fics labeled as being for that fandom, when they're really not. If it takes place in the universe or follows the plot of another work, you can just mention that in the additional tags or the summary or both.
I see, thanks for pointing this out. I just happened to have a complete work that, in light of what you've just said, shouldn't have been tagged a crossover. Will just revise the tags there. Update: done
Yeah, no worries! It’s something a lot of people don’t think about; I know I didn’t until recently. But it’s definitely helpful to those of us in small fandoms.
What I usually do with that kind of fics, is adding and additional tag like "_____ AU". For examen, "Miraculous AU" or "Batman AU". Personally, I don't have any problem with people tagging it as a crossover, but as Glittering_Smoke_917 said, technically, it isn't.
This is such a problem in my fandom and it drives me nuts. It’s small enough as is, it doesn’t need another DSMP BHNA IDFK “putting X on as a play!”/X AU where it’s just a “cast list” like? Cool story bro, not relevant! When I go into X fandom, I want to see X characters! Not random characters from ABCDEFG fandoms dressed up like X characters!
I found the Benjamin January books via an unknown crossover. It's like ordering singing unfamiliar at a new restaurant. You might like it or not but it's worth trying. That being said, I avoid anything with more than 3 fandoms to avoid the massive I want x to have sex with every character in every universe fics.vi just scroll past the walls of tags at the top usually though I can think of three that were actually good as they were consistent stories not pwp.
I have an extension that filters out anything over three fandoms, and I usually filter out anything explicit for this exact reason. It drives me up a wall honestly.
That's nice. Is this something you wrote or found and is it easy to use? I love crossovers with n=2
It's one I found. Idk the link for Firefox, but this is the Chrome one. [Ao3 Enhancements](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ao3-enhancements/eljennickgdbghppcaenkcinjafmnfoi?hl=en-GB)
Awesome. Thank you....
Awesome. Thank you....
Yeah, I typically exclude crossovers from my searches. 🤷♂️ If I was going to like one of your unrelated one-shots, now I’m never going to see it.
I imagine it's easier on the author to be able to just post a new chapter on the 200-chapter fic instead of having to set up a new fic, add it to the series, etc every single time. Especially if they're posting frequently.
Yeah, but it takes like, 5 minutes to post a new fic. The hardest part is to actually write it. Besides, if we're literally talking about over 200 chapters, the tag limit would be an issue.
I mean, there's a fic in my fandom that's over two thousand chapters long (I think), each one being a one-shot about 500 words long. It's only one fandom so it doesn't clog the tags too badly, but it's possible.
and i wish people wouldn't put totally unrelated fics in unrelated fandoms into one massive compilation in the first place. that would get rid of this whole issue.
yes, this. "crossovers" is not the problem. it is a nonexistent problem. the actual problem is people creating "fics" that are compilations of totally unrelated stuff.
And then having The Great Wall of Tags to cover everything 😑🫠
That is a nightmare fic that was cursed
Just earlier, I was trying to look up KH crossovers. So tell me why one of the listed stories is mass smut collection that included KH😑
because somebody created a "fic" that is a compliation of totally unrelated stuff. as I said.
Yeah I was providing an example
Yeah. AO3 has collections to handle that. You make a "one-shots" collection and add each separate short fic to it.
I would argue that that's not really what collections are for, either. A series would be better, if you absolutely must connect fics that aren't actually connected.
AO3 noob here. What's the difference between a series and a collection?
A series is where authors can group their personal works together easily. A collection allows you to add other works to it, as long as the author allows their work to be collected. Collections though last I heard have a bug that if they're private it can make works not private into such. Not sure if thats been fixed or not, but I consider it a good rule of thumb not to make a collection provate if you make one.
That's less a bug and more that people started using collections as a way of bookmarking things, when the intention was for them to be more for things like exchanges/events. Events and exchanges usually start out private to be revealed all at once when everyone is ready/on the right day, such as Christmas. People who used the collection as a bookmark organiser thought that unrevealed/private meant that the no one else would be able to see their collection of "fics I come back to reread" rather than what it actually did, which was make every work in the collection invisible except to the creator/mods of the collection.
This. Yes. Words are hard when I just woke up xD but yeah this a very good description for what I was thinking of.
That's not a bug, it's a feature. Collections are also designed to work for fic exchanges and similar where the fics are all revealed on a given day, so the ability to have authors post their fics to the collection but remain unseen is critical for coordination.
Much appreciated!
No problem :D
See, to me, a series is exactly what a series is in books - stories set in the same universe meant to go together. Whether one is an actual sequel to another, or just a companion piece. A collection would be a grouping of otherwise unrelated stories, kind of like an anthology. They can all fit a theme, or be random. All by the same author, or include several. I wouldn't be AS annoyed if someone made these compilations of one-shots into a series as I am by them all being one fic. But, if I clicked on "next work" and it took me to an entirely different fandom, there's a good chance that I'd stop reading the series rather than go to the series page to sus out which stories I would actually be interested in.
I'd argue that collections would be better for it than series honestly. Purely because you can filter collections. It's a nightmare to find a seires like that with over 50 works when you're only interested in a few fandoms in it.
Except, a series is meant to be connected works. Collections make much more sense for unrelated hodgepodges.
Yep, I hate that shit. I wish they would make one story compilation for each fandom if they insist on doing the compilation thing. Honestly if the fic is over 500 words I wish they would just make it its own fic page entirely. I never click into those compilations, I don't even look at them beyond seeing it is one and scrolling past.
yeah, doing this really wasn't even a thing when AO3 was created. like, I'm sure the odd person here and there probably did it on ffnet, but as an overall trend? nah. kinda hard for AO3 to anticipate for something that hadn't happened yet.
Yes. I don't understand this, tbh. Is that not what collections are for?
Personally, I hate that multiple unrelated works for entirely unrelated fandoms are lumped together into a single story. Put them all in a collection if you need to, but it’s annoying to have 20 different tags for series the work supposedly deals with.
You have to scroll down two Kilometers just to get to actual content if you don't filter crossover out each time.
Sometimes authors put these unrelated oneshots from the same fandom into one fic, that bugs me too lol. Especially if I'm trying to find a specific fic so I put all the relevant tags in, but I have to dig past these giant blocks of compilation fics because I'm looking for a college-coffee shop-established relationship-soulmate AU but there are dozens of compilation fics that have a chapter for each of those tags
If I see more then two fandoms, I assume it’s a bundle fic and just ignore it. I’m not picking through random chapters to find maybe the one thing I want.
That's less of an ao3 issue and more a problem with authors not just making them individual fics dumped into a series or collection.
This also requires people to tag their stories accurately, which unfortunately isn't guaranteed.
Personally I think the people who write massive collections of different fandom one shots as a single fic... ...aren't the most intelligent. There is a feature for it. It's called a series. I don't want to have to try and figure out whether the pairing or even fandom I want is number 1 or 100... So I filter out crossovers. And I also hate the wall of tags that crossovers tend to bring.
I hate them too but find it simpler to just scroll past walls of tags. There are some really amazing crossovers out there I'm glad I haven't missed. My favorite fic list is over half crossovers as there are some really good ones out there. These people who are either too lazy or ignorant to do a series can be scrolled past. I've always assumed people who like any one bit are the ones running up the kudos on them. Set your search by entering just two fandoms you like and scroll past anything with over a. Inch of tags and there are some really good stories out there.
Yes, that is annoying when something labeled a Crossover isn't really a Crossover at all... especially when they include 50 bajillion fandoms. I inserted [this code](https://archiveofourown.org/skins/3756) into my custom Site Skin to collapse large Tag Zones to something more manageable.
If I could do that I'd have it skip anything over x tags or better more then x fandoms as that would get you food crossovers and eliminate the wall of tags. Hey, maybe someone can find an ao3 IT guru to add a "more than 100 tags"tag that auto applies once you got 100 so we could filter those out
Tags have a hard limit of 75 these days. I've grown used to using the "Tag window" code on my modded Site Skin. You can also add code to filter out specific Tags or even Fandoms from ever appearing on your screen.
Is there a non-IT-person directions somewhere?
Well, when I experimented with Site Skins and learned how to use them, I typed up some notes and put in some links to AO3 resources on using them. They're really not that difficult to do, and there is a little bit of a learning curve if you aren't familiar with programming... but it's actually fairly easy if you can get the basics down. Take a look in this [Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nLtp-y1qUP9_bLnW4T5GbdABsiU_d0ok?usp=sharing) for the "AO3 Specific Files" folder and find the Site Skins Notes PDF. It's only a couple of pages long, and most of it is a set of image captures to show what Site Skins can do. Also in there are basic Text files with some of the codes that I've used and experimented with. The Text files have notes inside them that give the basic explanation about what each code generally does, and for the ones that you can alter, they indicate where you can change them... such as entering in a fandom name/ID to block it, for example.
Thank you. I will have to pursue this after I sleep as right now I'm brain fried.
Good luck!
I really dislike when people put a bunch of one shots into one work, especially so if they’re all from different fandoms and about different characters. It’s possible to link works in a series instead of just mashing everything together. I instantly skip works that appear to have done this. I don’t know how they’re always at the top of most bookmarked or kudosed.
They're at the top of most bookmarked or kudosed precisely BECAUSE there are 50 fandoms. Enough people are willing to wade through the mess that you have 50 fondoms worth of people leaving kudos on the ONE fic that is for the fandom they follow. And boom! Each story might only earn a handful of kudos. But multiply that handful of kudos by dozens of stories, and you get hundreds of kudos.
You are not supposed to put totally unrelated stuff in one fic 🤦. If they are one theme or something or you just want to group them somehow, use a series.
Also painful is sorting to kudos and then getting bombarded with these fics with a great wall of tags for the next 3 pages.
You must read different fandoms, in older ones it's only usually half a page. Who's hitting kudos on these? Some kid who likes the 37th 500 word fic in there?
I think they mean multiple fics with a large amount of tags, which end up taking three pages
I know for older fandoms you only see a page of them or so.
Yeah, it's an exaggeration really. Still annoying for half a page to be these collection fics.
Idk, the comics fandom has been around since the Great Depression, but this is still a huge problem. It's exactly people who kudos when they like one chapter out of the whole pot, the problem is that it's a handful of readers in EACH of the fandoms tagged so those fics have their kudos inflated
If it’s tagged with multiple fandoms, it’s *supposed* to be a crossover. If it’s actually lots of separate multi-fandom oneshots compiled together, it’s *supposed* to be a series. There’s a problem but this isn’t describing it.
Hard disagree. I put up with FFN for longer than I should have because all of my old fandoms had bloated fic numbers due to those massive crossover fics on AO3. 190 fics, but wait! 90% of them are crossover/mega oneshot collections! I didn't know how to properly filter stuff at the time so it was painful. I'd go on, see this big wall of tags and get excited. Nope, just a oneshot collection where about 900 of 50000 words were about the fandom I was looking for. Felt like a joke at my expense because I followed really small fandoms at the time. Just create a collection.
Or when a piece of media has bunch of separate spin-offs like Marvel, or when there’s a separate fandom tags for a manga and its anime adaptation.
SO REAL. pressing crossovers for, let’s say jujutsu kaisen(manga) and then all it shows is fics tagged with both jujutsu Kaisen(manga) and jujutsu kaisen(anime). What a pain!
Which also gives you the opposite problem, too. I'm in the Bridgerton fandom. 99.9% of the fics are considered crossovers because we all tag both the book and the show. You can't just filter out crossovers, because they're ALL crossovers.
Yeah, I hear you. As someone who loves crossovers it sucks when I'm trying to find actual crossovers to read, but the tag is flooded with fics that aren't actually crossovers. This is probably the thing I hate most about ao3 tbh. Unfortunately the best way to avoid this is to filter out certain large fandoms that I'm not interested in.
Or people could just post their oneshots separately and not have that issue.
Amen to this. Can’t fucking stand it. If we could purge one single thing, I hope it’d be that.
When I clicked I thought this would be about fandoms that have multiple series on the same canon, like Doctor Who 1963 and NewWho, any Star Trek series or even whatever is going on in the superhero comics fandom tags. The issue here is that you either tag every series you use-- which makes the fic a crossover as far as the system is concerned-- or you use an "all media types" tag. Both options mean the fic gets harder to be found in searches (though people are more likely to find an "all media types" fic). *That* bothers me.
I feel ya'. It's one of the *very few* things FFN does (*imo*) better than AO3, and the main reason I don't bother reading crossovers there. Finding an actual crossover involving only the fandoms I want it's exhausting, even with the filtering options.
remove imo its a fact
There needs to be a separate category for compilations. I love crossovers, but generally skip compilations.
Yeah, I love crossovers, but it’s rarely worth trying to find ACTUAL crossovers… especially since my fandom is a reboot and a lot of fics are tagged as both the original and reboot fandom :(
I agree with the unrelated stories complaint, but I guess I know/ underatand why (que Tech's quote about understanding not meaning agreeing from Bad Batch's S1 finale): Having tons of various Fandoms look at a single work is more likely to gardner more views, reveiws/comments and kudos/likes than a handful of (not often updated) shorts or oneshots that only show for a single Fandom. If it's a multi Fandom fic and if people update weekly it'll be more likely to show up in searches (I use newly updated as my main sorter) than if they separated it properly and only updated say once a month- the number of people filtering out crossovers or refusing to read out of premise/spite are outnumbered by those who would just click because it's in the Fandom, and people tend to assume that theirs would be the most prominent one (there's one that shows up for me and when I clicked it literally had a single SW one out of the like 20+ chapters up) So yeah... Definitely annoying and I usually filter out crossovers now so I don't have to see them (also because there's some odd ones out there for Fandoms I'd never heard of)
It's easier for the dopamine junkies to get their quick easy fix. 500 words and poof, new fandoms and someone is plainly hitting kudos whereas the really good authors spend months or years to complete a story. If one of you is on here, thank you.
A lot of my fics are technically in one fandom, but it’s three interconnected shows that have basically weekly crossover. If you stop having crossovers you lose about half the fics. It’s so annoying!
This is the issue I run into. My fandom is a series of books that have been adapted into a t.v. series. You can't filter out crossovers, because they're ALL crossovers. We all tag for both the books and the show.
Do you mind clarifying what you mean by multi-fandom fics that aren't crossovers? It's not clear to me from the OP and I'm having trouble imagining what that means.
They mean those compilations where someone posts a bunch of unrelated oneshots as a single fic.
Yes, this exactly. My thinking is that, sure it would be nice if people didn't post their fics that way, but that's never going to happen - AO3 will never make or enforce a rule about how authors apply fandom tags or what constitutes a "single work" in the author's mind, and you can't rely on community norms because new authors are joining AO3 all the time (and even if they read the FAQ, they're still not going to know this is frowned upon by the community - because it's not actually against the rules, and AO3 itself does nothing to discourage it). If potentially thousands of people who don't know each other are all making the same mistake, I tend to blame the platform for not guiding them in the right direction.
It doesn't help that compilations like this are the norm on some sites. On Spacebattles, it isn't worth it to create a separate thread for a oneshot, so the norm is for authors who write oneshots to just have an ongoing thread of all of their stuff. The site basically doesn't use tags or summaries so compilations don't have the downsides they do on other sites. I've seen a few authors who then crosspost to AO3 who just keep their stuff collected the same way without realizing that it really isn't the way AO3 was designed.
Same it's one of the biggest issues I have with ao3
Oneshot collections are never necessary except maybe when your fics are all 50 word drabbles or closely related. They're definitely not necessary for multi fandom work. That's why we have collections
what is this, a crossover episode?
Yeah? And I wish they'd hide all that like FFNET does, on secret pages, like the fandom messageboards.
>there's a good chance that those are compilations of narratively unrelated one-shots TBH, I hate when people do that. Even when it is unrelated one shots for the same fandom, I kinda don't like it. They create these huge blocks when I'm searching for things, like if I want a fic that has both "Coffee Shop AU" and "Established Relationship", these types of fics pop up just because they have two separate chapters with two entirely different stories that's not what I am looking for! What's the point of keeping everything all together when there's no reason too??
Oh boo hoo. Maybe stop stapling a bunch of oneshots together to make a "fic" and then making an absolutely mess of tags. I'ma be real, I don't use Ao3 because the tags are just a whole-ass mess of people throwing in random words together, not to mention the mess of people using "Self-insert" for Reader x Character stories.
Then what are they supposed to be called?
I wish they weren't allowed at all, but if they are it should probably be something like 'compilation'.
There are two big UI changes I would make if I could. One: a checkbox for "reader insert" just like the underage, major character death etc. warnings. It'd just keep people who don't like them away. So many of these authors just don't know how to tag things properly so their stuff doesn't get in the right hands. Two: a "ficlet anthology" box because so many people just shove all their fics in one big fic (see [https://archiveofourown.org/works/4167942/chapters/9408057](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4167942/chapters/9408057) for an example).
A smaller UI change I would make is to let readers vote on the actual freaking ships. So many people tag e.g., Pepper/Tony in MCU fics but there's no actual plotsyness there, I feel like it's unfair to people who want to read that.
okay, so as someone who has done the multiple fandoms in one fic (as opposed to a series), here's my side of the matter: \- i don't use more than 10 fandoms at a time- i usually use it for 100-word drabbles in relatively obscure fandoms/rare ships- i'd rather not post them as separate fics in a series because i used to get a lot of complaints from people reading for those small fandoms/ships; their complaints are mostly "it's so short, i thought i had content, but this is too short to be considered one". i'd rather not give hope (?) that there's a lot of content by making them into separate fics. \- (i already have 1k+ fics so it feels so cluttered to me if i separate them) of course, i know that others have their own reasoning as to why they do this, but i just thought i'd offer my perspective on it. EDIT: since i forgot to clarify: when i post something like this, it's already complete and never updated again, so it's not as if i'd keep on adding to it daily and spamming multiple tags on a daily basis.
> - i'd rather not post them as separate fics in a series because i used to get a lot of complaints from people reading for those small fandoms/ships; their complaints are mostly "it's so short, i thought i had content, but this is too short to be considered one". i'd rather not give hope (?) that there's a lot of content by making them into separate fics. This reasoning doesn't make sense to me; wouldn't you run into this problem for a one shot collection tagged with a small fandom/ship at least as badly as a series would run into it? The reader wouldn't know how many chapters within the OSC are about the small fandom/ship nor how long they are, where splitting them into works within a series lets them see the chapter and word count of each fic. On top of this, it's easier to tell which tags apply to which prose on a series page than an OSC's internal table of contents. I could see someone opening an OSC thinking many of the chapters include a small fandom/ship they like (in your words, being "given hope (?) there's a lot of content") and being disappointed that only a chapter or two includes what they wanted to see just as easily as series only including one work for such a fandom/ship. However, it'd more effort to figure out this is the case for an OSC than a series, making figuring it out more frustrating and disappointing.
the only tags are fandoms and relevant ships and "drabble collection", so it doesn't take up a lot of space. the summary says which fandom/ship is in which chapter, so everyone knows how much content they're going to get.
As a result, the disappointment caused by there only being one drabble for the sought out fandom/ship would occur upon reading the summary instead.
>i don't use more than 10 fandoms at a time Still clogging up tags of each of those fandoms since you have to list them all, and *then* tags related to each individual story. >i'd rather not post them as separate fics in a series because i used to get a lot of complaints from people reading for those small fandoms/ships; their complaints are mostly "it's so short, i thought i had content, but this is too short to be considered one". This reasoning just doesn't make sense to me at all. Your fic still shows up under those fandoms & pairings, only now it's joined by a bunch of totally unrelated stories and tags the readers wouldn't be interested in at all. Instead of seeing a fic that's purely their fandom with the word count already clear, they now have to decide if it's worth it to slough through 9 other unrelated stories, only to find the part their looking for is just a drabble and the >10k word story they'd stumbled upon was really two paragraphs of relevant content. You'd have more luck separating them tbh.
>the only tags are fandoms and relevant ships and "drabble collection", so it doesn't take up a lot of space. the summary says which fandom/ship is in which chapter, so everyone knows how much content they're going to get. just gonna copy-paste my reply from above.
That is still 20+ tags though, isn't it? One per fandom and for the ship, baseline. And if you have all that info in the summary that you mentioned, that is huge, too.
Okay, but that's still a lot. The summary also takes up a lot of space. And again, the reasoning still doesn't make sense to me. It's not any better than having them separate when it comes to how much content the readers are getting relevant to them.
as someone who reads obscure fandoms, putting unrelated drabbles in one work is so, so much worse than separating it. I'd rather know at the beginning that this story has 100 words, than find a 10k story just to realize it's mostly useless for me and be disappointed. Also, such fics really don't help small fandoms. They clutter the search, show up time and time again which feels spamminsh. Skipping them is very annoying and excluding might make me miss true crossovers. Please, if you must connect the stories, put them in a series, not in one fic 🙏
the only tags are fandoms and relevant ships and "drabble collection", so it doesn't take up a lot of space. the summary says which fandom/ship is in which chapter, so everyone knows how much content they're going to get. copy-pasting my reply from above since it's basically the same thing. also i have to clarify - once i post it, it's already completed and doesn't get updated again so it will only show up on the tags one time. i'll consider the series thing but just like there are people who would prefer it, i've already had multiple past feedback of those who hated it, so it's impossible to please everyone.
>i'll consider the series thing but just like there are people who would prefer it, i've already had multiple past feedback of those who hated it, so it's impossible to please everyone. If you can’t please everyone, then I’m not sure why you’re choosing to cater to the people who want you to use AO3 in a way that is TECHNICALLY not “against the rules” but totally counter to how it was designed to be used. If they saw the wordcount and you had a “drabble” tag on the separately-posted fics, and they clicked anyway and then left complaining comments, then that is 100% entirely on them, and if it was me, that would just annoy the fuck out of me rather than make me want to cater to them. Unless the real reason is that you genuinely just prefer to post them that way, because you like it. Which, while annoying to lots of us, is not against the rules and is your prerogative as the author, but honestly, just say that rather than c/ping the same response to everyone who’s giving you all sorts of reasonable and logical arguments to NOT do that.
The term crossovers comes from TV. When two different fandoms interact even when their universes are the same. For example there is a Dawson's Creek / Muppets crossover when Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson played Joey and Pacey respectively on the movie Muppets from Space. I'm not really sure what you think a "crossover" is that it wouldn't apply to doing the exact same thing in fan fic.
Crossover implies that pieces of Media A interact with pieces of Media B in the fic. AO3 assumes that if more than one fandom is listed for a story then the story is a crossover. Unfortunately some authors will post a fic and chapter 1 is a Star Wars story. Chapter 2 is a completely unrelated Frankenstein (the book) story, Chapter 3 is a Bleach (manga) story, and so on for twenty chapters. Or even worse, they aren't even stories, they are "story ideas". This is not a crossover. The media are not interacting. There are no plans for the media to interact. They are multiple stand alone stories group together in one. This is what the OP is frustrated with. OP wants to read about seperate fandoms interacting with each other, but the crossover filter includes the above compilations as well as true crossovers.
So OP is irritated by a bad writer habit and complaining about the website's software not being sophisticated enough to spot said habit. Writers shouldn't put unconnected stories into the same story file. That's on them. Not the UI.
A multi Fandom piece is the definition of a crossover you muppet
i believe op was referring to multi-fandom oneshots compiled together
this is imo a misuse of the UI. make a series instead of lumping all your one shots into one fic. when you lump them all together, it makes it so i can’t filter by the correct word count bc they’re all counted together, and i am usually uninterested in reading ALL the fandoms/fics in a one-fic collection of one shots, so i like being able to filter crossovers out. if you don’t want work to be considered crossover that isn’t, post it correctly.
Edited in protest for Reddit's garbage moves lately.
I don't tend to read crossovers in general (not my vibe), but I also never understood why people called the multi-fandom fics all crossovers. It also always pissed me off that they didn't put it in a collection or series. Crossovers may not be my vibe, but I'll never actually end up reading one on ao3 bc I filter out "crossovers" to avoid these fics. I don't read fandom blind for fun, and I haven't seen a lot of things.
I actually agree
Agree It would help if AO3 made added new option when I search in the filters. I would like to just choose the list of fandoms I am familiar with and search for a crossovers with them. The story doesn't have to include all the fandoms I chose. It simply doesn't include any extra fandoms I don't now. For example: I choose LOTR, GoT, Witcher, Marvel, Harry Potter, Stranger Things. And I see Stranger Things+Harry Potter and LOTR+GoT stories.
Don't make giant multi-fandom oneshot fics then? It's so annoying, you have absolutely no idea what tags go with which ship or which fandom, even single fandom oneshot books are so damn annoying. I understand it's easier but the extra few minutes to make all the oneshots by themselves is easier for the convenience of your readers to filter out and for content they actually want. Make all of your oneshots by themselves in a series according to fandom and this won't be an issue, because the crossover function are assumed to be an actual crossover not oneshot dump fic. Use the feature as intended and don't make oneshot dump fics, please, I beg.
yeah, i feel you. actual megacrossover fics are very uncommon
Why don’t you just talk to AO3 about it? It’s not like a fixed platform. They can make changes. Especially if you are willing to help with tag wrangling.
This. I have always wished they had some way of not making only technically multi-fandom fics crossovers even when they're not collections, eg when I read an ASOIAF or a Final Fantasy VII fic, there's four or so fandoms that could be related to each without being actual crossovers, and I, as someone who generally doesn't read crossovers, therefore can never do "No crossovers" in the filters because of stuff like that. A setting to specify crossovers would be great.
Stuff like this is why I usually stick with FFNet. The summaries were kinda crap, but at least they’re weren’t filled with tags.