Reading

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Adventures in Game Development

I've had this idea for a while about creating an incremental/idle game with a web browser interface, like Kittens Game, Theory of Magic or Farm RPG. Something about not having to render the game inside a box or separate environment appeals to me a lot, but also I already have some web development skills so there's bias there.

( blather about the development process )

My idea was to build a Cafe Management Sim that's something of a cross between a Cookie Clicker and Neko Atsume, where instead of cats* you are "collecting" customers, who are attracted by your menu items and other features of your cafe. I want it to be very community-focused - instead of the game deciding on available upgrades based on currency, customers will suggest new menu items or offer to stock you with specialty roasted coffee or cookies or whatever. There are milestone events/upgrades based on number of customers visited in day (upgrades increase your min/max visitors in a day and it chooses a random number of visited customers between those numbers daily).

All that's what I've built so far. I want customers to have dialogue events that would allow me to tell a story on top of the mechanics, and it's at this point I have realised a fatal flaw in my plan:

Now I need to create characters and actually write a story. /o\

(Also a long term goal is a graphical interface but that's far future!)

* Depending on decisions made with the graphical interface the customers may still be cats.

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Intro

What Is Write Every Day?
A roving writing support community, with a bias toward encouraging a daily writing habit. It's a decentralized community, without moderators or a fixed home; hosting duties are passed around among members of the community.

carenejeans hosted the first half of April; I'm hosting the second half, starting on the sixteenth. (By my time-zone: tomorrow.)

zwei_hexen keeps a list of who volunteered to host when.. No one is yet scheduled for May -- it could be you!

( FAQ )

Housekeeping
As host, I'll be publishing daily check-in posts, distributing encouragement in the comments, and keeping a tally of who checked in what day. I'm in Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7), and plan to post the daily check-in during my evening. (About when this post went up.) I know my proposed posting time is very late for many people, so don't feel you have to wait for the new day's post -- just check in on the most recent post whenever is convenient for you. Whatever post you use, please include what day you're checking in for, so I can keep the tally straight.

I'll also be using a consistent tag for these check-in posts ("write every day") so feel free to block or follow that, depending on your interest.

If you have any questions, or wish to check-in ahead of tomorrow's post, the comments are open! Welcome!

RIP (Read in Progress) Wednesday

It's Wednesday! What are you reading?

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Dreadnought, by April Daniels

Danny is a 15-year-old closeted trans girl in a world where superheroes are real. She's across town from her home and her transphobic abusive father, hiding in an alley and painting her toenails with polish bought in a shop as far from her home as she can manage, when America's strongest superhero, Dreadnought, gets in a fight with a supervillain, crashes at her feet, and passes on his powers to her, since she's the only one there to receive them, before dying.

His powers automatically reshape her body into her mental ideal. So now she's physically a very pretty, very strong girl with superpowers... who now has to explain this to her abusive transphobic parents, everyone at her school, and the local superheroes, one of whom is a TERF. Not to mention that the supervillain who killed Dreadnought is still out there...

This is basically exactly what it sounds like: a superhero origin story for persecuted trans teenagers. It's very earnest and has absolutely no subtext. My favorite parts were the bits where Danny gets her gender affirmed by new friends and a sympathetic superhero, which are genuinely very sweet, and when Danny finally proclaims herself the new Dreadnought, which is a great stand up and cheer moment . But overall, I'm too old to be its ideal reader.

Content notes: A LOT of transphobia and transphobic slurs.

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post type: weekly: read-in-progress

Read-in-Progress Wednesday

This is your weekly read-in-progress post.

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

The OTW is Recruiting for Legal Committee Paralegals, Legal Committee Trademark Specialists, and Pol

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34806

OTW recruitment banner

Are you a paralegal interested in helping the Legal Committee carry out its legal advocacy mission? Do you have legal experience, preferably trademark-specific, especially in the EU and US? Would you like to assist AO3 users by resolving complaints? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

Legal Committee Paralegal - closing 22 April 2026 at 23:59 UTC
Legal Committee Trademark Specialist - closing 22 April 2026 at 23:59 UTC
Policy & Abuse Volunteer - closing 22 April 2026 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

Legal Committee Paralegal

The Legal committee is responsible for carrying out the OTW's legal advocacy mission and providing internal legal support and guidance to the OTW as an organization. We provide confidential legal advice to every part of the OTW organization, respond to fans' requests for general assistance and information, and create educational materials. We also file briefs in lawsuits and advise lawmakers about how to take fans’ needs and interests into account in creating and interpreting the law. And we're looking for a few new members!

We are looking for a paralegal to assist with managing standard questions, tracking issues, and ensuring we adhere to deadlines. If this describes you, please click through to the application form. Please note that you must be over 18 years of age to apply for this role. All applicants will be asked to upload their resume.

Applications are due 22 April 2026

Apply to be a Legal Committee Paralegal at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Legal Committee Trademark Specialist

The Legal committee is responsible for carrying out the OTW’s legal advocacy mission and providing internal legal support and guidance to the OTW as an organization.

We are currently looking for a Trademark Specialist, who will be responsible for trademark registration applications and maintenance and trademark enforcement, generally dealing with platforms and attempts to monetize AO3 via apps or merchandise.

If you have legal experience, preferably trademark-specific, especially in the EU or US, and can effectively communicate legal issues to non lawyers, click through for the job description and to apply. Please note that you must be over 18 years of age to apply for this role. All applicants will be asked to upload their resume.

Applications are due 22 April 2026

Apply to be a Legal Committee Trademark Specialist at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Policy & Abuse Volunteer

The Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) is responsible for addressing questions and concerns about potential violations of the AO3 Terms of Service. We determine whether reports are about legitimate violations of the Terms of Service, and what to do about them if they are. PAC volunteers correspond directly with AO3 users and collaborate on projects both within PAC and with other OTW committees.

Our main goals as a committee are:

to adhere to the AO3 Terms of Service
to make our reasoning and processes as clear and transparent as possible
to handle all user reports consistently, no matter which volunteer is doing the work
to keep every case we work on completely confidential

We are seeking people who can:

Commit to working on cases regularly
Be patient with rephrasing explanations
Ask for help when needed
Collaborate both inside the team and with other committees
Act in accordance with established rules, policies, and procedures
Treat confidentiality and user privacy as a priority

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. While English proficiency is required, we welcome applicants who are fluent in other languages, especially Brazilian Portuguese (Português brasileiro), Chinese (中文), French (Français), Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), Japanese (日本語), Polish (Polski), Russian (Русский), Spanish (Español), Turkish (Türkçe), or Ukrainian (Українська).

Applications are due 22 April 2026

Apply to be a Policy & Abuse Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34806

The OTW is Recruiting for Legal Committee Paralegals, Legal Committee Trademark Specialists, and Pol

Posted by Caitlynne

https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otw-is-recruiting-for-legal-committee-paralegals-legal-committee-trademark-specialists-and-policy-abuse-volunteers/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=283197

We’re excited to announce the opening of applications for:

Legal Committee Paralegal – closing 22 April 2026 at 23:59 UTC
Legal Committee Trademark Specialist – closing 22 April 2026 at 23:59 UTC
Policy & Abuse Volunteer – closing 22 April 2026 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don’t see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

Legal Committee Paralegal

The Legal committee is responsible for carrying out the OTW’s legal advocacy mission and providing internal legal support and guidance to the OTW as an organization. We provide confidential legal advice to every part of the OTW organization, respond to fans’ requests for general assistance and information, and create educational materials. We also file briefs in lawsuits and advise lawmakers about how to take fans’ needs and interests into account in creating and interpreting the law. And we’re looking for a few new members!

Applications are due 22 April 2026

Apply to be a Legal Committee Paralegal at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Legal Committee Trademark Specialist

The Legal committee is responsible for carrying out the OTW’s legal advocacy mission and providing internal legal support and guidance to the OTW as an organization.

Applications are due 22 April 2026

Apply to be a Legal Committee Trademark Specialist at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Policy & Abuse Volunteer

ThePolicy & Abuse committee (PAC) is responsible for addressing questions and concerns about potential violations of the AO3 Terms of Service. We determine whether reports are about legitimate violations of the Terms of Service, and what to do about them if they are. PAC volunteers correspond directly with AO3 users and collaborate on projects both within PAC and with other OTW committees.

Our main goals as a committee are:

to adhere to the AO3 Terms of Service
to make our reasoning and processes as clear and transparent as possible
to handle all user reports consistently, no matter which volunteer is doing the work
to keep every case we work on completely confidential

We are seeking people who can:

Commit to working on cases regularly
Be patient with rephrasing explanations
Ask for help when needed
Collaborate both inside the team and with other committees
Act in accordance with established rules, policies, and procedures
Treat confidentiality and user privacy as a priority

Applications are due 22 April 2026

Apply to be a Policy & Abuse Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otw-is-recruiting-for-legal-committee-paralegals-legal-committee-trademark-specialists-and-policy-abuse-volunteers/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=283197

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Book review: The Black Fantastic

Title: The Black Fantastic
Anthologist: Andre M. Carrington
Genre: Short story anthology, science-fiction, futurism

I don’t know how I keep timing these so that I finish my audiobook and my paper book one right after the other. This weekend I also wrapped up The Black Fantastic, an anthology compiled by Andre M. Carrington. Thank you to pauraque for bringing this one to my attention! This is a collection of “Afrofuturist” stories by Black authors. If you want more detail, Pauraque has done individual reviews of each story which you can read here; I won’t get that specific.

With the usual caveat that all anthologies vary in quality, I enjoyed this one. There were a lot of very different stories, from some really fantastical stuff to ones that are just a little bit to the left of the world as it stands. On the high end of things, pieces like A Guide to the Native Fruits of Hawai’i by Alayna Dawn Johnson, where the protagonist grapples with her decision to collaborate with a group of vampire invaders to prey on the locals (and the metaphor of vampirism for the way Hawaii is treated by wealthy Americans is not lost in the shuffle); or The Orb by Tara Campbell, which was both strange and unexplained, choosing to focus not on the “why” or “how” of the situation but again on the moral quandary of its main character.

On the lower end, ones like The Ones Who Stay and Fight by NK Jemisin, which felt…narratively unclear, to say the least. It is either a satire of the kind of utopia writers create where its status as utopia is essentially dependent on eliminating any disagreement or contact with the outside world…or it’s a whole-hearted endorsement of that view. And if I can’t tell which, I tend to think the author’s failed at their purpose; or Ruler of the Rear Guard by Maurice Broaddus, which seemed to end just as it was getting to the plot.

Overall, I had fun with this anthology. SFF short story collections, done well, are such a scintillating showcase of creativity and I felt that here.

Entry tags:

book review

Book Cull Reviews

As you may have guessed, I completely failed to live up to my goal of reviewing everything I read, even in brief. Rather than attempting to catch up to my backlog, I am re-starting from where I am.

Yesterday I did a quick book cull by pulling books off my shelves that have been sitting there for ages, reading the first couple chapters, and deciding if I was likely to continue. I focused on books I'd started before and not gotten very far into. Here are the books that landed in the "move to Paper & Clay's used section" bag.

Trouble and Her Friends, by Melissa Scott

See the new cover? If you've been wanting to read this, it's now available as an ebook!

This is a classic lesbian cyberpunk novel that I have tried to read at least three times, and never managed to get very far into. I kept putting it back on the shelf because it's a classic and probably objectively good, but I'm just not that into cyberpunk. If a lot of the action is taking place online, I tend to lose interest. Also, some books just don't grab me, due to a mismatch between me and the book, rather than being objectively or even subjectively bad. This is clearly one of them. Someone else can be thrilled to find it at Paper & Clay, take it home, and enjoy it.

The Splinter in the Sky, by Kemi Ashling-Garcia

A tea specialist becomes a spy in a far-future colonized world! Unfortunately, this starts with a prologue which reads much like the infamous "trade war" crawl at the top of The Phantom Menace. Yes, I know that turned out to be prescient, but the problem was that it was written in a stultifying manner. The next couple chapters were much more lively, but also had a tendency to clunky exposition - some of which was pretty cool, to be fair. This was the second time I attempted this book, and had essentially the same reaction I did to Trouble and Her Friends - not bad, but not for me.

Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher

This has been described to me as "Pokemon in alternate ancient Rome," which sounds amazing. For at least the third time, it failed to grab me. I got about four chapters in and there's still no Pokemon. Someone else will like it more than me.

The Hum and the Shiver, by Alex Bledsoe

A race of people called the Tufa have lived amongst normal humans in Appalachia since the beginning of time. They can see ghosts, have music-based magic, etc. This opens with a Tufa woman very very clearly based on Jessica Lynch, who was a real-life American soldier who was wounded and captured in the US/Iraq war, returning from Iraq. I found this in poor taste. The general style also got on my nerves.

While doing this, I got sufficiently grabbed by the openings to keep reading and finish Maureen McHugh's Nekropolis, which hopefully I will actually review. I also returned Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies and Tanya Huff's Sing the Four Quarters to the shelf.

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fandom: bts

✨ by BlueSkies_Chin (SFW)

Fandom: BTS
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Jeon Jungkook
Content Notes/Warnings: N/A
Medium: Digital art
Artist on DW/LJ: N/A
Artist Website/Gallery:

BlueSkies_Chin |

blueskies_chin
Why this piece is awesome: It's a simple piece featuring Jungkook during the first part of the Arirang concert. I loooove the coloring as well as how the artist used highlights to indicate the parts of Jungkook's fit that's reflecting the stage lights.

Link: ✨ (on Twitter) | ✨ (on Insta)

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femslash week in review

Femslash week in review: 2026-03-31 - 2026-04-06

High-level stats for week of 2026-03-31 - 2026-04-06

Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 11680 (+648 from last week)

Works I classified F/F: 6275 (+429 from last week) (2817 new, 3458 continued)

0.62% of all 1012712 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week

A few callouts this week:

Life Is Strange, Devil Wears Prada, and Owl House return this week. They replace Coronation Street, Boku no Hero Academia, and Wicked, which falls off the chart after a 70-week run.
I've been surprised by the three recent chart appearances of The Devil Wears Prada, which has had 88 lifetime chart appearances, but hadn't been seen since 2020. It looks like there's a sequel coming out soon, so I'm guessing the recent fic bounce is anticipatory sequel energy, but if anyone knows more, please share!
League of Legends celebrates 230 consecutive weeks on the chart, and Harry Potter reaches 380.
The Paternoster Spring Exchange 2026 revealed with 14 F/F works, all Jenny/Vastra.

( Full top-20 table and description of methodology after the jump )

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daily happiness

Daily Happiness

Today was our last real day in Japan, with tomorrow being just a travel day. Our flight is at 5:30pm, but we don’t really want to do anything before then, so we’re just going to use the morning to pack before checking out and then take the bus to the airport and do a little more shopping there.

Today we had no plans so we ended up going to the Ueno zoo, which was very nice. A little sunnier than I’d hoped, but once we were in the zoo it was pretty shady for most of the time. We also finally made it to a Pokémon Center thanks to

starlady’s suggestion of trying the Skytree one. Skytree’s mall was busy, but a normal level of busy, so we were actually able to get in the shop and buy some stuff.

Then we came back to Ikspiari for dinner before going back to the hotel and had super delicious tonkatsu and got dessert from Ichibiko again. We spent a lot of the day on trains, buses, and subways, but it was a fun day overall.

Entry tags:

crafty cat,
writing

I forgot how much I like making things

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

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Book review: The Tainted Cup

Title: The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan #1)
Author: Robert Jackson Bennett
Genre: Fantasy, murder mystery

On Sunday I finished The Tainted Cup, the first book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series by Robert Jackson Bennett. This is a fantasy murder mystery with an element of political thriller.

The main character is Ana Dolabra, an eccentric but brilliant investigator, and I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen a woman fill this role. The wacky but effective investigator is of course a very well-known stock character, but has always been, in my experience, a man. I found Ana delightful; strange but not off-putting, and without coming off like the author was working to hard to make her quirky.

However, our point-of-view protagonist is Din Kol, Ana’s put-upon assistant, on whose shoulders falls the managing of her many idiosyncrasies. They’re a fun team to watch work, and in this first book we get to see their working relationship unfold, as they’ve only recently teamed up at the start. Din is fine, but mostly I appreciated him as a lens for Ana.

Bennett’s fantasy world is characterized by fantastical use and manipulation of plants and the human body. Din, for instance, has been modified to be an “engraver”—someone with an eidetic memory. For obvious reasons, this serves him well as aid to an investigator.

I think Bennett does a good job of throwing you into the world and letting you use context to figure most of it out. I get bored with SFF novels that feel the need to hold your hand, as if you might be a first-time SFF reader who never encountered a magic system before, so I was relieved when Bennett just started telling the story and letting me figure the world out as it went along. I’d rather be a bit lost at times than be toddled along, but I never felt lost here.

The novel touches on some things that I feel are pretty keenly relevant, like the ability of the wealthy to avoid justice and their willingness to inflict suffering on the rest of society to better their own position (and then justify it to themselves).

I don’t read a ton of murder mysteries, so I may not be the best judge of this, but I also felt that Ana worked well. It’s a tough trick writing a character who’s meant to be much smarter than the rest of the cast (perhaps even than the author!), and it can fail a couple of ways: the supposed “brilliant” deductions are obvious to the average reader, making the rest of the cast look painfully dull for not seeing them; or the machinations are so obtuse with so little evidence the reader simply won’t believe the detective could have figured that out without an ass-pull from the author. I didn’t think Bennett fell into either of these traps and every detail Ana referred to in one of her deductions was something that had been mentioned before.

I only have one real criticism and that is about how unrealistic the sword fight scene was. I simply don't think it was necessary to showcase what the Bennett was trying to show us about Din, and <spoiler>having an untried swordsman defeat three--almost four--trained imperial soldiers on his own (partially because they do him the courtesy of attacking one at a time)</spoiler> was so unrealistic it jarred me right out of the scene. As Milgen points out later in the book--fighting is not just about memorizing the right moves.

I enjoyed this book and I plan to read the next one. Very interested to see where Ana’s adventures take her next!

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Strength within Sorrow: minoanmiss’s Online Memorial

I attended minoanmiss’s online memorial yesterday afternoon. It was strengthening to share our sorrow. Witnessing the depth of our online connections bolstered my resilience. The children she co-raised loved her and knew her. I’ll link to the recording when it’s public.

One mourner has worked in public health for 40 years, and made it very clear that

minoanmiss had asymptomatic COVID which caused her death
that wasn’t documented in the hospital record and there’s almost zero chance to change that
many people are still dying due to COVID, which is systematically not being reported
continuing to mask is a fundamental contribution we can make to the health of our communities

There were lovely stories and slides and recipes — a poem and a song in the cut.

( Every Land and Acts of Creation )

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Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke

Natalie is a wildly successful trad wife influencer. She and her husband Caleb have a farm and six adorable children, and Natalie has parlayed carefully edited clips of her perfect life into a lucrative career. (She leaves out the two nannies, 30 farm hands, and the fact that Sassafras the cow is actually four sequential cows, replaced every time one dies, like goldfish.)

Then Natalie suffers a mysterious fall from grace. And then she finds herself in what appears to be an alternate version of her own life in the 1800s, with a husband very similar but not quite identical to her original husband, and children who claim to be her own. Has she time traveled? Is she delusional? Has she gotten kidnapped into a non-consensual reality show?

This is an extremely interesting novel that makes a good companion to Saratoga Schrader's Trad Wife. The beginning of the book is extremely similar, though Natalie is much more successful than Camille. Burke's version of a trad wife influencer deluding herself and lying to her followers about her supposedly perfect life is much better-written than Schrader's. But that's a double-edged sword, because it makes Natalie much more unlikable. She's an incredibly hatable character and the book is from her POV, and that makes a lot of the book not really enjoyable to read.

But the book turns out to be much more ambitious and clever than it seems at the beginning. When I finished it, I was glad I'd read it and appreciated it a lot. That being said, I enjoyed Trad Wife more on an emotional level.

I highly recommend not clicking on the cut unless you're 100% positive you'll never read the book. I really enjoyed the non-spoiled experience.

( Read more... )

Content notes: Domestic violence, rape (on-page, graphic), child abuse and neglect, farm animal neglect/poor caretaking (just mentioned), gaslighting, non-consensual drugging, current American right-wing stuff.

While attempting to buy Saratoga Schaefer's Trad Wife, I accidentally bought a different novel called Trad Wife by Michelle Brandon. And Sarah Langan is coming out with yet another book called Trad Wife in September. I am now on a mission to read all four trad wife books, to compare and contrast.

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Post-Deadline Goreswap Pinch Hits - Due April 22

goreswap is a multifandom exchange for fic and art, featuring gore. Assignments must be at least 500 words or a sketch on unlined paper, and contain significant gore content.

Rules | AO3 Collection

Current Pinch Hit Post

For details or to claim, see the pinch hit post above. These assignments are due April 22 at 11:59 PM EDT.

Pinch Hit #3: Art, Fic - 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), 镇魂 | Guardian - priest

Pinch Hit #5: Fic - Night Prince - Jeaniene Frost, グノーシア | Gnosia (Visual Novel), Dracula Rising (Cartoon)

~~Pinch Hit #9: Fic - Anne Rice's Talamasca: The Secret Order (TV 2025), Interview with the Vampire (TV 2022), Loki (TV 2021), The Night Manager (TV 2016), D.Gray-man (Anime & Manga), Merlin (TV)~~

Pinch Hit #13: Art, Fic - Stranger Things (TV 2016), 지금 우리 학교는 | All of Us Are Dead (TV), The Walking Dead (TV)

~~Pinch Hit #14: Fic - Bleach (Anime & Manga), Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime & Manga), Original Work~~

~~Pinch Hit #15: Art, Fic - 光が死んだ夏 | Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu | The Summer Hikaru Died (Anime), Death Note (Anime & Manga), Iron Lung (2026), MiSide (Video Game), Outlast (Video Games)~~

Pinch Hit #16: Art, Fic - NoPixel (Web Series), Runescape (Video Games), Iron Lung (2026), Video Blogging RPF, MiSide (Video Game), 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs

~~Pinch Hit #17: Fic - Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)~~

Pinch Hit #18: Fic - 炎の蜃気楼[ミラージュ] | Honoo no Mirage | Mirage of Blaze, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Dexter (TV), Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (TV)

Releases 0.9.457 - 0.9.461: Change Log

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34681

Our February releases included new admin tools for our Support and Policy & Abuse teams, as well as a bunch of challenge and collection fixes and a host of small updates and improvements. We also upgraded to Rails 8 and Elasticsearch 9!

Many thanks to first-time contributor Shel!

Credits

Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, Danaël/Rever, FlyingFalcon, Hunter Ada Smith, james_, Jennifer He (DisappearEagle 无鸢), marcus8448, Richard Hajek, Scott, slavalamp, varram
Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, sarken
Testers: ana, Bilka, choux, hvalrann, Lute, mumble, ömer faruk, pk2317, therealmorticia, Yuca

Details

0.9.457

On February 2, we deployed a major Rails update.

[AO3-7231] - Updated the framework the Archive runs on to Rails 8.0.

0.9.458

On February 9, we introduced a way for our Support team to add information to the support form without disabling the form, and deployed a bunch of miscellaneous fixes and improvements.

[AO3-6983] - It was already possible for our Support team to temporarily close the support form and replace it with a message to users, e.g. about a known site-wide issue the development team was already working to solve. Additionally, they can now add a temporary message to the form without disabling the form entirely.
[AO3-3245] - Trying to open the posting form to add a work to a closed collection (only possible by manually typing in the appropriate URL) would lead to an error message that looked like the form had already been submitted. The URL now redirects to the collection with a more helpful error message.
[AO3-7246] - We added a "Parent" link to comments, so you can quickly jump to the specific comment that is being replied to.
[AO3-7260] - Passwords must now be between 8 and 72 characters long. (The previous minimum was 6 characters.)
[AO3-7274] - Comment previews for Policy & Abuse admins were previously truncated after the first 100 characters, and admins had to click on the preview to access the full comment. Now the preview includes the first 1,000 characters, which is much more useful.
[AO3-7279] - When a collection is set to "revealed" or "non-anonymous", the collection is placed in a queue that runs when resources are available to change the status of potentially thousands of works. This means the moderator often has enough time to quickly change the setting back if a checkbox was ticked in error. We now make sure the process really only runs if the revealed or non-anonymous option is still wanted when the servers are ready to work through the queue.
[AO3-7240] - In our ongoing internationalization efforts, we prepared the text in the help pop-ups for Rating, Warning, and Fandom tags for translation.
[AO3-7047], [AO3-7281], [AO3-7287], [AO3-7288] - Code clean-up, database performance improvements, and system updates.

0.9.459

Our February 17 deploy included various small fixes and updates.

[AO3-4031] - Draft works include a message at the top, warning the creator that unposted drafts will be automatically deleted after a certain time. If you had a draft with multiple chapters, this message would not be displayed! Now it appears everywhere it should.
[AO3-5367] - If someone bookmarked a mystery work, i.e. a work in an unrevealed collection, the bookmark would show up in bookmark searches that matched elements of the mystery work. Since we don't want information about a mystery work to be guessable in this manner, we now make sure searching bookmarks doesn't give away information about unrevealed works.
[AO3-5870] - A blockquote in a comment would awkwardly overlap with the commenter's user icon, so we've taken steps to make sure it stays within its own boundaries.
[AO3-5963] - You can't request an invite with an email address that is already used by an existing account. If an existing account updates their email address to one that's waiting in the request queue, we now make sure that request is deleted.
[AO3-7206] - Downloads of a work in progress with only one chapter posted were missing that chapter's title, summary, and notes, displaying only the information entered for the work as a whole. Now all data is present and accounted for!
[AO3-7254] - We've added a limit to how many times a specific comment can be reported to the Policy & Abuse team for review.
[AO3-7263] - Under certain circumstances, an admin would get a 500 error trying to access a user's preferences page. Now they can access it even under those circumstances.
[AO3-7289] - When a user tried to create a skin with faulty CSS, the parser would just throw an error 500 instead of telling the user which part was stressing it out. It now helpfully points to the problem in the CSS code.
[AO3-7210] - The help pop-up that provides information about creating skins is now prepared for translation.
[AO3-6853], [AO3-7048] - Code clean-up and database performance improvements.

0.9.460

A bunch of gem updates went out on February 21.

[AO3-7036] - When reviewing comments held in moderation, to either approve or reject, there was no "Thread" link to get the URL for a specific comment, e.g. to report it to the Policy & Abuse team. Now there is!
[AO3-7278] - AO3 admins from the Open Doors team can now track invitations in the admin area.
[AO3-7236] - Prepared the text in a couple of skins-related help pop-ups for translation.
[AO3-7265], [AO3-7297], [AO3-7298], [AO3-7299], [AO3-7300] - Code clean-up and database performance improvements.

0.9.461

On February 28, we upgraded to Elasticsearch 9.

[AO3-7282] - Upgraded the search engine that powers, among other things, work searches and filtering from version 8 to 9.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34681

March 2026 Newsletter, Volume 209

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34676

Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works'

I. AO3 IS EXITING OPEN BETA

In early April, we announced that AO3 is exiting open beta!

AO3 has grown and changed a lot since open beta launched in 2009! We've gone from 347 users to over 10 million and from 6,598 works to over 17 million. We've also introduced many features in that time, including the tag system and tag wrangling, additional privacy settings that allow creators to restrict their works or comments to logged-in users, downloads for offline access to fanworks, and more.

Since AO3's software has been stable for a long time, this change is mostly cosmetic and doesn't indicate everything is finalized or perfectly working. Our volunteer coders and community contributors will still be adding to and improving post-beta AO3 every day.

For more information on AO3 exiting open beta, check out the announcement for details.

II. ELSEWHERE AT AO3

In March, we celebrated AO3 reaching 17 million works! \o/

Beyond exiting beta, Accessibility, Design & Technology also performed two important upgrades in March: updating Elasticsearch to version 9 and Ruby on Rails to version 8.1. With these two upgrades, AO3 is on the latest version for two of its most important pieces of software. They also published January’s release notes.

Systems published a postmortem on early March's AO3 downtime.

Open Doors announced the import of SlasHeaven, a Spanish-language slash fanfiction and fanart archive, as part of their Online Archive Rescue Project.

In February, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 5,674 tickets, which is over 2,000 fewer tickets than the previous month and marks the first decrease in PAC's backlog since 2024. PAC also coordinated with Communications on a news post describing various spambots seen on AO3 and how we're combating them. Also in February, Support received 3,031 tickets, and User Response Translation completed 42 requests from PAC and Support.

Tag Wrangling announced 31 new "No Fandom" canonical tags in their March round-up. On the @ao3org Tumblr, they announced changes to Critical Role fandom tags, creating an overarching fandom metatag for the Exandrian Universe and having specific campaigns or other media split into subtags. They hope these changes will help users better tag and filter for the works they want to see.

In February, Tag Wrangling wrangled over 543,000 tags or approximately 1,200 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications has updated the OTW News by Email service! You can now subscribe specifically to recruitment posts. If you're already subscribed to OTW News by Email and would like to change what emails you receive, please contact Communications via their contact form.

In March, Fanlore ran a monthly editing challenge inviting users to archive external links on a page.

Legal answered a number of questions about pending and newly enacted laws around the world, as well as dealing with internal requests from OTW committees.

TWC released No. 47 of Transformative Works and Cultures, a special issue on Gaming Fandom edited by coeditors Hayley McCullough and Ashley P. Jones.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board and Board Assistants Team continued work on ongoing and newer projects, including making progress on the OTW website project with Communications, supporting Accessibility, Design & Technology with their documentation, and supporting Finance with streamlining messaging policies. They also began preparing for the next public Board meeting scheduled for April 18.

In March, Development & Membership caught up on their recurring donation gifts and put in more regular procedures for them going forward. In conjunction with Communications and Translation, they're now preparing for April's Membership Drive by getting graphics and new gifts ready.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for three committees this month: Communications (News Post Moderation), Translation, and User Response Translation.

From February 21 to March 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 160 new requests and completed 159, leaving them with 66 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of March 22, 2026, the OTW has 992 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs/Leads: Becca Bun and Jules Moon (Fanlore), Rebecca Tushnet and Stacey Lantagne (Legal)
New Communications Volunteers: LinnK, Jahnavi, and 3 other Social Media Moderators
New Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin and 1 Social Media & Outreach
New Open Doors Volunteers: Andrea T and 4 other Import Assistants; Kathy and 1 other Technical Volunteer; adyn, Seren, Claire M, and 2 other Administrative Volunteers; and 1 Liaison
New Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
New TWC Volunteers: 1 Symposium Editor
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: miffmiff, PippaLane, and 2 other volunteers

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Open Doors Chair, 2 Fanlore Chairs, and 1 Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Lead
Departing AD&T Volunteers: 1 Senior Volunteer and 1 Liaison
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Social Media & Outreach
Departing Finance Volunteers: 1 Bookkeeper
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 4 Tag Wranglers and Soppon (Tag Wrangling Supervisor)
Departing Translation Volunteers: Ito, Polyxeni Foutsitsi, and 3 other Translators; 1 Chair Trainee; and 1 Volunteer Manager
Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 2 Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34676

Spambot Comments on AO3

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34631

Spotlight on Policy and Abuse

NOTE: This is a living document and will be updated in response to changes and new types of spam as observed by OTW volunteers.

LAST UPDATED: March 30, 2026

As AO3 continues to grow, there has been an increase in the amount and variety of spambots that attempt to harass or scam users. Spambots may try to imitate other users and even AO3/OTW volunteers to appear more realistic. This post shares a brief update on how we're working to combat this issue, what types of spam we've seen, and what you can do if you encounter spam comments on AO3.

What We're Doing

Protecting our users from scammers and bots targeting AO3 is important to us, and we are actively working to combat spam on the site in a variety of ways—both visible and not. We will not share a detailed list of every change we've made (so as to not provide spammers with information about how to circumvent these measures), but some examples include introducing comment rate limits for logged-in users, changing the default comment setting on new works to "Registered users only", spam checking comments and comment edits from new users, and making a variety of improvements to the admin tools used by our Policy & Abuse volunteers to handle reports and remove spam comments.

We continue to consider and undertake additional technical changes to help prevent and improve our response to spambots. However, it is important to us that any anti-spam measures we implement do not substantially harm users who are browsing or attempting to comment normally. Many more aggressive anti-spam measures would make AO3 less accessible, particularly for users using assistive devices such as screen readers.

In addition to taking technical steps to help address the issues, we continue to post updates about spambots and other important changes to AO3 on our Tumblr, Bluesky, and Twitter/X. We encourage you to follow us on these platforms to stay informed about what's going on.

Types of Spam Comments

Below is a list of different types of spam comments that have been posted on AO3 over the last year. We intend to maintain this list and add new types of spam to it as they are identified; however, this list may not include every type of spam comment that could possibly be received. We encourage you to remain vigilant and follow internet safety best practices.

If you're not sure if something is a spam comment, you're welcome to contact Policy & Abuse for assistance. Before doing so, we encourage you to click through the links below to learn more about each type of comment and use your best judgement to determine if a comment appears to be genuine or could be a scam.

Art Commission Spam: These comments come from both guests and registered accounts who pretend to be artists who want to make comics or illustrations for your fanfic. They may ask questions or praise your work to try and get you to reply to them, before convincing you to contact them off AO3 (often via Discord). They will try to scam you into paying for their art, which is either AI-generated or does not exist at all. (First reported August 2024, news post published December 2024)
Deprecated Fandoms Spam: These guest comments claim that AO3 will be "deleting works to conserve server space". There is no such thing as a deprecated fandom and there is no limit on the number of fanworks that can be posted to a specific tag. (First reported May 2025, Tumblr announcement May 2025)
AI Use Accusation Spam: These guest comments will accuse you of using AI in your work. They may mention a particular AI generator or AI detection service, or claim that they "saw you remove the AI prompts from your work". (First reported April 2023, Tumblr announcement November 2025)
Harassing Spam: These guest comments will accuse you or another user of promoting discriminatory beliefs, deceiving fans, or similar behaviors. They often suggest that you "consider adding more diverse characters" to "repair the trust you've lost with your audience". (First reported October 2025, Tumblr announcement November 2025)
Praise and Unsolicited Suggestions Spam: These guest comments will compliment your writing but then offer ridiculous suggestions for how to make your work better. Similar to the harassing spam, they may ask you to add a minority character to your work or threaten to publicly expose you if you don't do what they want. (First reported October 2025)
Special Character/Keysmash Spam: These comments are usually long and consist entirely of emojis or nonsense, keysmash-style sequences of characters from a variety of non-Latin scripts or languages (e.g., Chinese, Cyrillic, Thai, etc). (First reported November 2025)
Reporting To Authorities Spam: These guest comments threaten to report you or your work to the authorities or your employers. They also may allege security concerns like your email being compromised or spyware on your computer. (First reported December 2025, Tumblr announcement December 2025)
Disparaging Spam: These guest comments insult you or your writing, claiming that you "wasted your talents" or "have no life". They may also threaten suicide or tell you to delete your work. (First reported December 2025)
PowerShell Spam: These comments present you with a piece of code to enter into your computer's terminal/command line. While they claim that the purpose of the code is for your protection or security, the code in these comments would actually delete all documents from your hard drive. (First reported January 2026)
Doxxing Threat Spam: These guest comments claim that they know where you live, have seen you in person, and/or threaten to meet you face-to-face. They often say that they have or will post your personal information (name, address, etc.) online or that they are stalking you in real life (e.g. "left a gift in a briefcase near your house"). (First reported January 2026, Tumblr announcement January 2026)
Spam Impersonating OTW Volunteers: These guest comments claim to be AO3/OTW volunteers and say that there has been a data breach or that AO3 and other sites (such as Reddit) have been sending out fraudulent password reset emails. (First reported January 2026, Tumblr announcement February 2026)
Downtime Spam: These guest comments claim that the March 2026 AO3 downtime was caused by hackers and AO3 has a virus that will destroy your device, and encourage reformatting your device or deleting all your works. (First reported March 2026)

None of the accusations these spam comments make are true. The bots are merely spamming false accusations in order to alarm or harass AO3 users. It is generally safe to ignore these comments once you've removed and/or reported them as outlined below.

What You Can Do

Do not engage in conversation with spam commenters. Do not provide your email or social media contact information to a commenter who asks for it. Scammers try to get you to talk to them privately, because it is often easier to deceive or manipulate people in a one-on-one conversation.

Do not click on any links, run any code commands on your computer, or search out and harass any users named in these comments. Scammers often copy the username of a real AO3 user on their guest comments to make them look more real. Pay attention to the "(Guest)" indicator which will appear next to the name of anyone who comments while not logged in.

For spam comments on your own work, the best way to handle them depends on whether they are from registered accounts or guests. Refer to the instructions below on how to handle Spam from a Guest User or Spam from a Registered Account.

If you see a spambot comment on someone else's work, you can report the comment as spam to Policy & Abuse (even if it's a guest comment) as you would a comment on your own work. You can also let the creator know the comment is from a bot and that they should mark it as spam.

Please don't report comments that have already been deleted. As part of handling a report about spam comments (whether from guests or registered accounts), we will remove other comments made by the same bot. If the comments have been deleted, the bot has already been actioned and no further reports are needed.

Spam from a Guest User

If you receive a spambot comment on your work which is posted by a guest:

Go directly to the comment on your work, either by clicking on the link in your email or in your AO3 inbox.

Note: The "Spam" button only appears when viewing a guest comment directly on your work. This is because the AO3 comment inbox is merely a copy of the work's comments—deleting a comment from your AO3 inbox does not delete the comment from the work itself.
Click on the "Spam" button to mark the guest comment as spam, remove it from your work, and help train our automated spam-checker to reject similar spam comments in the future.

Note: Marking guest comments as spam does not submit a report to the Policy & Abuse committee, but unless you are receiving dozens of guest spam comments in a short time period, there is no need to submit a separate report.

To prevent future guest spam comments, you may also want to consider disabling anonymous commenting or restricting your work to registered users only.

If you are reporting multiple guest comments, please submit only one report and include all comment links in your report description. (You can get the direct link to a specific comment by selecting the "Thread" button on the comment and copying the URL of that page.)

If you are receiving dozens of guest spam comments in a short time period, we recommend turning on comment moderation and providing us with a link to the unreviewed comments section of the affected work(s) instead of reporting the comments individually.

Spam from a Registered Account

If the spam comment is posted by a registered AO3 account:

Select the "Thread" button on the spam comment. This will take you to the specific comment page.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Policy Questions & Abuse Reports.
In the "Brief summary of Terms of Service violation" field, enter "Spambot".
In the "Description of the content you are reporting" field, enter "This is a spambot, their username is USERNAME." (replace USERNAME with the account's actual username)
Optionally, you may also choose to block or mute the account.

Please don't report multiple spam accounts in one report. Each account is actioned separately and listing more than one account per report delays our response to you.

Closing

In general, please follow internet safety best practices and be cautious of unsolicited advertisements or harassing comments on your work. For some advice on other ways you can protect your AO3 account, take a look at this internet security guidance from our Policy & Abuse volunteers.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34631