The Beginner's Guide to Finding Clean Fanfiction

Hola, I know it's been a while.  I have finally come through on my promise to make this post, though!  I can rest easy now.   ( ^.^)  This next school year's going to be chaotic, so I feel obligated to  say there might only be one more post coming out this year.  My family's moving again, but I think once I adjust, we'll be back to a monthly post schedule.

Anyway, we watched the new Transformers: Rise of the Beasts movie yesterday.  It was really good--not necessarily clean, but I think it fits the PG-13 rating.  We convinced my dad to go even though he doesn't like Transformers, and he enjoyed it too.  I just wanted to comment on it, since I've made a habit of reviewing movies we've watched in this section.  (o^▽^o)  Now, on to the real stuff.  >>

Step 1: Archive of Our Own

Guys, this is the site I’m most experienced with, so I’ll be giving the most tips for it.  My BEST advice is to not browse the site yourself.  That’s what I’m here for, you don’t have to put yourself through that.  You might think browsing is safe, but fics can still include descriptive tags of explicit things (tags often describe what happens in the fic, which may be super inappropriate) and explicit summaries of what occurs.  What’s great about the tags and summaries is that they can give you an idea of whether you’d want to read the fic.  The downside, however, is that just wading through all the tags and summaries on fics can be an inappropriate and traumatizing experience (and I’m not speaking from inexperience here).

With that said, if you’re on AO3, the first thing you want to do is select the search option.  I like to search tags and input whatever fandom I want to read fics of.  It’s not too difficult to navigate this part by yourself.  The hard part is going to be properly filtering the fics to find clean ones.

Select Search and Then Tags

Once you’ve got your fics filtered by the tag you’ve chosen, you can use the vertical rectangle on the right-hand side of your screen to filter fics to be cleaner.  You’re going to want to customize the tags you exclude based on the fandom you’re going through, but you won’t be able to do that perfectly until you’ve gone through enough fics in the fandom.

The Categories dropdown refers to the relationships in fics.  F/F references a romance between two females, M/M for romance between two males, M/F is between a male and a female, and Gen stands for General Relationships (not romantic).  Depending on the fandom, I’ll sometimes exclude the M/F because the romances are too sexual.  Fics under the General category are not meant to include romance as a focus, and most of them won’t have any type of romantic relationships included at all.

The Ratings dropdown will allow you to control the age rating of fics.  Almost always, fics under the General Audiences tag will be PG.  Fics rated Mature or Explicit are rarely worth reading if you’re looking for something clean and wholesome.

Under the Warnings dropdown, I like to filter out the Major Character Death, Underage, and R**e/Non-Con tags.  Y’all can debate with me about the merits of reading fanfiction with major character death, but the other two are generally never worth reading.

There’s a space where you can input a tag you personally want to avoid, but I rarely use that.  If you were, for example, to type ‘kissing' into the space to exclude any fics with the ‘kissing’ tag, that will not exclude every tag with the word ‘kissing’ in it.  It will only exclude tags that say exactly what you typed in.  That’s why I find the dropdowns to work better, since they are applied more generally.

The Ratings, Warnings, and Categories Dropdowns

This is Where You Can Input & Select a Specific Tag

AO3 Tutorial

Step 2: Fanfiction.net & Wattpad

These are the other two fanfic sites I use.  On Wattpad, I try not to scroll through fics but just search up a specific tag for a fic I want.  When I find fics that look interesting, I go through the tags on them to check that they’re clean.  Sometimes some still get past my radar so I prefer AO3.

Fanfiction.net tends to have fics that are more clean, in my experience.  I don’t know much about how to filter fics on this site, but under the “Narrow Results” section of the screen, you can control the age rating.  “K” applies to fics suitable for all ages, “K+” is suitable for kids nine years old and up, “T” encompasses both the 13+ and 16+ age ratings, and “M” is equivalent to an R rating for TV.

Click "Filters" and then the "Narrow Results" Option Will Appear

Fanfiction.net & Wattpad Tutorial

Step 3: Find Trustworthy Nerds

Rather than browsing on your own, it can be really enjoyable to read something that was recommended to you by someone you trust to have good taste.  In my YouTube guide post, I think I used the term "friends" to refer to who you'd ask for recommendations, but in this case I figured "nerds" would be more all-encompassing.   I've made some friends by finding common interests with someone I barely knew, so you can do the same.  Look for a fellow nerd who could share your interest, and maybe you'll make a new friend in the process.（*＾ワ＾*）

Step 4: Read My Posts (⌐▨_▨)

  Need I say more?  As a (self-proclaimed) expert on various topics, I can be your one stop shop.  I've already got a post recommending clean fanfiction on here, and if you subscribe for notifications from my blog, you can stay updated on anything new that comes out.

Index

Fanfiction

BTS

• hyyh_13: Are We All Lost Stars  (122k words, Completed)

Rise of the Guardians

• Thisisentertaining: Frost Collar  (110k words, Completed)

• DrowningOstrich: Winter's Time  (141k words, Uncompleted)

Star Trek (2009 Movie)

• KanaeYuna: Ingenious Idiot  (268k words, Completed)

Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

• Thisisentertaining: Adopting Identities  (147k words, Completed)

White Collar

• Thisisentertaining: Frost Collar  (110k words, Completed)

Posts

Lengthy Fanfiction

• 5 Clean Fanfiction Over 100k Words

According to my post line-up, the next one's going to be about books.  Everyone who knows about this blog keeps telling me I need to make a post under that section.  (^▽^)ゞ  I've got a lot of it pre-written, but it's kind of dense, so it might take a while to finish.  I'm also currently working on a post about songs for the summer, because I really liked the one I did last summer.