Comment on Five Things AuroraT Said

  1. MalcontentCatboy Fri 05 Dec 2025 04:31AM UTC

    I don't want to be off-topic, but this has come up to an extent in the past, specifically in this news article's comments: /admin_posts/31732

    /comments/916741417
    "Every work on AO3 must contain some fanwork content. A work consisting solely of a request for prompts would not be a fanwork, as the request itself does not contain any story, art, or other fanwork content. However, if the request book contains oneshots, then the work would not be in violation of our Terms of Service because there is fanwork content in at least one chapter of the work."

    /comments/920892226
    "if a work contains fanwork then it is permissible to add requests or prompts for future fanworks to the notes or separate chapters of that work. This would not be a violation of our Terms of Service, because the work contains fanwork content."

    /comments/916019395
    "Headcanons are also permitted, as they fall under meta. That said, all works—including headcanon dumps, or idea outlines—still need to contain some kind of narrative, descriptive, analytical, or otherwise substantial fan content. A list of undeveloped prompts or one-word bullet points wouldn’t meet that bar, but something that contains detailed or meaningful engagement with the source material may."

    My reading of this would suggest that the presence of "scenes or excerpts" would likely be enough to make this acceptable, as that is legitimate fan content. Sufficiently detailed prompts might also be acceptable if they have actual content. I imagine something more like a synopsis/summary/outline than a "prompt" in such a case. I think there was further discussion on the matter of how much detail would be acceptable for the prompts to be works in themselves, but there's a lot of replies to that news article.

    Probably the easiest way to make sure you are good would be for prompt "work" to also contain at least one story written to the prompt within it. Another alternative would be to write a story instead of a prompt and invite people to rewrite/remix it.

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    1. happysugarlife (Daezy) Fri 05 Dec 2025 04:49AM UTC

      ok Im following the rules then, thank you

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