#LLAP

Imagine, after decades of your world becoming colder and colder, you are saved. A single Eridian, the only one of twenty three to survive, arrives in an alien ship, accompanied by a creature you can barely conceive.

Everything about the alien is so loud, hinges formed from tissue thumping and stretching in constant movement, even while unconscious. Completely organic, reliant of oxygen and hydrogen. Instead of a protective carapace, it regrows its damaged tissues. It has senses you do not, and technology so unlike your own, both able to utilise a force you have never heard of. The same force that killed almost your entire mission team. Highly adaptable, able to teach itself how to fly its ship in under a week, able to become fluent in the engineer's dialect in less than four years.

And if Erid's best engineer is correct (and there's no reason it wouldn't be), this creature not only managed to breed a predator of the warmth-taker to survive in various atmospheres, including Threeworld's, but also turned around to provide aid when it discovered that the predator could escape xenonite.

And you think: Surely, this creature which protects itself without a carapace, which sleeps so lightly and knows so much and learns so quickly, which saved two planets at the cost of ever returning to its thrum, surely, a creature so extraordinary must have a name to match

And you think: Perhaps it is strength, Mountain-Base or Lonsdaleite-Carapace. Perhaps it is intellect, Diamond-Claw or Lockpick-Mind. Perhaps it is courage, Song-Through-Silence or Path-Carver

And you think: None of these names hold the true weight of what this creature is to them. How do you describe something like that, which aids without expectation of anything in return, which risks its own life for the sake of a species it cannot touch, which performs miracles simply because it was asked.

had to dust off my procreate to sketch this gorgeous face

- filter your searches like you would on a library website or in an online catalogue

- don’t post placeholders, fic searches, or recommendations as fics. DON’T! It’s against ao3 TOS

- there is no algorithm. ao3 sorts by date posted/updated unless you filter with specific search criteria

- ao3 is a non profit. that means it doesn’t sell ads to make money — it only survives on donations. this is why it can show you so many fics without ever flashing an ad or pop up at you!

- report fics that break TOS when you see them (I.e., placeholder fics, searches) to help other users navigate better

- the tag “dead dove, do not eat” doesn’t equate to gore/awfulness automatically. it is a complementary tag that enhances current tags. E.g., if the fic is tagged “gore” and “dead dove, do not eat” the author really wants you to mind the gore tag

- most fandoms have a variation of “no beta, we die like (x character)” and they all link back to the “No beta” tag

- publishing a new fic sometimes means it won’t show up in the fandom/pairing tag for a few minutes

- subscribers receive update emails at different times, depending on when you update/publish your fic. there’s no good way to predict when an e-mail will be sent — it can be in 30 seconds, or two hours later

- some fics are restricted by authors to those with ao3 accounts only. if you see a blue lock in the upper right corner, that fic is only visible to logged in ao3 users

- you can block commenters now! this didn’t use to be a thing

- if your fic includes original character/s or reader insert or y/n or etc, then TAG THOSE IN THE CHARACTER TAGS. Not just in the relationship tags!! They are characters in the story, so include them in the character tags. Failing to do so means people who want to find fics with those tags won’t be able to, and people who want to exclude fics with those tags won’t be able to.

- NEVER EVER EVER ADD A LINK TO A PATREON OR KO-FEE ACCOUNT OR ETC. Ao3’s entire legal protection hinges on the fact that no one is making money from fics. If you start commissioning fics or linking to a monetary platform, you are in breach of the Ao3 terms, risking legal action, and risking ao3 as a whole. There are loads of authors/companies who WILL sue if they think you’re making money off their intellectual property.

there are no best times to post but generally sunday and monday are a good zone for traffic

you must double check and make sure the publication date matches the day a chapter is posted or it won’t show up on the first page of updates. sometimes you have to physically edit the posting date multiple times for this to be fixed.

on that note: artificially editing your publication date so your fic shows up at the top when you haven’t added a chapter is the dickest of moves and will make you a pariah. do not do this. yes everyone will notice.

editing existing chapters doesn’t count as updating a fic and won’t change the publication date.

ao3 usually adds weird spaces after italics if you copy and paste in your writing pre-formatted. it doesn’t add these until after you’ve saved a draft or posted so you have to re-edit.

check the “add space after paragraph” option in your word precessor of choice to avoid having to delete an extra space between all your paragraphs on ao3.

when you add a second chapter to a one chapter fic, your original start/end authors notes will now be appended onto the notes of every chapter unless you move them to the now extant first chapter notes sections. this is confusing, but you’ll see what i mean.

to post on anon: add your fic to the anonymous (anonymous) collection. it’ll take up to fifteen to minutes to show in the tag once posted. it’ll show up (to you) as AUTHOR NAME: fic title. no one else sees it this way. it will never show up on your own dashboard unless you go to your stats page. if you ever de-anon, all your subs will get an email about it as if it were just posted.

if you update multiple fics at once, ao3 will group the updates into one email.

to transfer a fic to a new ao3 account: make a new account, make the new account a co-author, remove the old account as co-author.

you cannot mention money changing hands for fic on ao3, ever. don’t say commissions. say a fic was requested if you must say anything. your fic can get taken down for this.

reply to comments or never complain about engagement in fandom.

per that: EVERY TIME YOU EDIT A COMMENT, THE AUTHOR GETS A NEW COPY OF YOUR COMMENT IN THEIR EMAIL. we can see all the edits. be aware.

tagging is both a warning and an enticement, do so accordingly. you really don’t need to tag things that fall outside that unless you want to.

on that note: please don’t do the “short fics for 300 different fandoms in one fic” thing. no one wants to scroll past that. i mean you can but it just makes it harder for people to find the thing you’ve written that they want to read.

if you are really bad at summaries just think of it as a movie tag line and don’t say you’re bad at summaries. don’t neg your own fic.

Remember the Block and Mute feature. Block means that someone cannot interact with your works. Mute, however, means you will not see the person’s works in the search. If you don’t want to see fics by a specific author, mute them.

Basic html works in comments. If you want to add an image, use <img src=“URL”> with the image url replacing URL. Keep the quotation marks.

Comments are not for critique. Unless the author specifically asks for critique, you are a jerk if you start pointing out everything you dislike. It doesn’t matter how vile you think the content is. If you don’t like it, just back out without saying anything.

If you do not want a work attached to your account at all, you can Orphan it. When you Orphan a fic, you can no longer edit it or delete it. This cannot be undone. If you just want to be anonymous, use the Anonymous feature described above.

If you wish to make a collection of fic that includes all of the fic you have read, consider making a collection of your bookmarks instead. Not every author wants their work to be in a million collections, but you don’t have to ask permission to make a collection of bookmarks.

The “Inspired By” option is great if you draw inspiration from another author’s fic. And it helps give credit to other amazing fanfic writers.

Fic can be downloaded in many different ways. If you want to download a fic and use it like an ebook, go for the EPUB version. But all versions have their merits.

it's well made, well shot, well directed, the music is interesting, the costumes are both thoughtful and subtly period accurate, the sex scenes are intentional and, again, accurate to what hooking up when you're like 18 actually feels like...the actors are of course attractive but they look like real people. the characters are varied and well fleshed out, the acting is really, really strong

so many shows and films shoot and then slot in whatever music kind of fits or could be licenced in the budget after time, but you can tell that the scenes in hr were shot with that specific music in mind. and the same intentional approach runs through the whole thing

word count: 4,002

link: drifting weightless

Second of all, I'm starting to understand why my incessant posting annoys some of you so much.

Nah, fuck that, CRICKET BAT 🏏 🏏🏏🏏*SMACK*

🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏*SMACK*🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏*SMACK*🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏*SMACK*🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏*SMACK*🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏*SMACK*🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏

disclaimer before i start yappin': i have an english literature degree. i took the one statistics class in college over a decade ago. anything i say could actually be deadass wrong (i don't think it is), but i say it with truth in my heart.

i'm SO sorry these graphs are ASS quality bc no matter how much i tried to make them smaller and still legible it just. didn't work! but if you click/tap to expand they do look like 10% better???? i think the graphs might look better on mobile and everything under the break might look better on desktop?? fuck it we ball.

so to get the data i wanted to look at, i went to the 9-1-1 (tv) fandom tag on ao3 and then filtered by each month. the numbers charted below reflect the available* fics when i checked on 7/1/26, and they span from the month the show premiered, jan of 2018, to last month, june of 2026.

*available meaning live on ao3. i do lament this couldn't reflect every fic ever written for the show but hey, people have every right to yank their shit from the internet if they really want to.

in my opinion, and once again i don't do math like that, there are three distinct booms that lead to upward trends: a mini boom when eddie and maddie join the cast of characters, a bigger boom from people joining to watch the tsunami arc, and the biggest boom when buck got canonized as bisexual.

another interesting trend that i noticed is that more often than not (read: most of the time but not always, to be clear), there are spikes the month after each premiere (season premiere, winter/spring premiere) and during the month of each finale (season finale, fall finale). usually the exceptions to this trend were times where the fall finale ended the last week of november or the times where the winter/spring premiere was at the beginning of march instead of the end. (dates pulled from wikipedia)

season 9 is a little bit of a tricky thing with having the premiere beginning of october and two mini hiatuses after the winter premiere, so while it does look like the fandom is losing some numbers, i do think we're just returning to a more-normal average with less fics of a certain other ship being written, and i do imagine we'll have a spike in the fall once again for the whole fandom.

fics with the buddie (buck/eddie) tag made up the strong majority of fics during the fox era (65% being the lowest may 2019, highest being 96% in feb 2019) which you can see as the lines are much closer together during that time, and post bi buck boom they still have the highest number of fics of any ship in any month and make up more than half of all 9-1-1 fics published every month except for may 2024 (47%) and june 2024 (45%), with the highest percentage post-abc being 72% in march of 2026.

the average percentage of buddie fics in the fox era was 77% and the average percentage of buddie fics in the abc era is currently 62% but i do think it's likely on an upwards trajectory. 15% seems like a scary dip, but the highest number of buddie fics in the fox era (856, october 2021) is only 35 fics more than the lowest number of buddie fics in the abc era (821, june 2024).

so the tl;dr version for everything above: no, i don't think 9-1-1 is in a fic drought, i think we're just trending back to a buddie higher majority which would affect the numbers any which way with losing numbers from other ships, and i think we'll be just fine.

under the read more i put all the numbers i pulled from ao3 to make the charts above, as well as the rest of the ships that showed up on the list for the relationship filter.

anyway, thanks for reading!!