Fluff is a warm, low-conflict fic; angst centers on emotional pain; crack is deliberate absurdity played for laughs; hurt/comfort hurts one character so another can care for them. Each tag describes a mood, not a plot.
A ready-made idea to start: «Write a short fluff fanfic about two characters spending a quiet evening together after a hard battle, with gentle humor and a happy ending»
Generate this storyOn AO3 and other archives these tags answer one question: how will this story make me feel? For the full list of genres, see our fanfic genres guide.
| Genre | How it feels | Conflict | Typical ending |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fluff | "my teeth hurt from the sweetness" | little or none | cozy |
| Angst | lump in your throat | central and painful | anything, often bittersweet |
| Crack | laughing and confused | absurd | doesn't matter |
| Hurt/comfort | pain, then relief | physical or emotional | care and closeness |
Fluff means a story where the characters are safe and the main event is a small moment of closeness: breakfast together, a hug, a dumb inside joke, getting caught in the rain. Think of it as a weighted blanket in text form.
How to spot fluff:
Example: Harry and Ginny try to make pancakes for the entire Weasley family at the Burrow, and George swaps the sugar for salt. No drama, just warmth. Browse fluff fics on Fanficia.
Read it when: you have had a long day and want comfort before bed.
Angst (from the German word for dread) builds the story around pain: grief, betrayal, guilt, unrequited love, character death. The goal is to make the reader hurt, and to make that hurt mean something.
Angst is not the same as tragedy. Common flavors:
Example: after another expedition beyond the Walls, Levi from Attack on Titan writes letters to his dead squad and never sends them. Find more in angst.
Read it when: you want a good cry or a deeper look at a character than canon gave you.
Hurt/comfort (h/c) has a two-act shape: first a character is hurt (injury, illness, nightmares, humiliation), then someone takes care of them. The heart of the story is the caretaking, not the pain.
The difference from angst: in angst the pain is the point; in hurt/comfort the pain is the excuse for intimacy. A fic with no "comfort" half is simply angst.
Example: after the fight with Pain, Naruto is stuck in a hospital bed while Sakura changes his bandages all night and scolds him for charging in alone. Browse hurt/comfort fics, or read our deep dive on how to write hurt/comfort.
Read it when: you want drama with a guaranteed soft landing.
A crack fic (crackfic) is deliberately ridiculous. Canon logic gets bent or broken for the joke, and the author is not pretending otherwise.
Signs of crack:
There is also crack treated seriously: an absurd premise written with full dramatic weight, and it ends up surprisingly moving.
Example: Sherlock and John run a full forensic investigation into who ate the last biscuit at 221B, complete with an interrogation of Mrs. Hudson.
Read it when: you need to laugh with zero emotional commitment.
Both are light, so people mix them up. The difference is where the feeling comes from:
Fluff keeps characters in character. Crack happily breaks them. You will also see crack/fluff: a silly premise with a sweet payoff.
Common pairings and what they promise:
A practical rule: two genres per fic is the comfortable maximum. More than that and readers cannot tell what they are getting.
Pick one small moment and stretch it with detail. Don't invent conflict just to have some.
Earn the pain: readers have to love what the character is about to lose. Show grief through action, not paragraphs of tears.
Split the story roughly in half. The comfort is where the payoff lives: how someone hands over a glass of water, what they say, what they leave unsaid.
One absurd idea, played completely straight by the characters. The humor is in the contrast.
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Written by the Fanficia editorial team: drafted with AI assistance, edited and fact-checked by a human. How we write: editorial policy
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A ready-made idea to start: «Write a short fluff fanfic about two characters spending a quiet evening together after a hard battle, with gentle humor and a happy ending»
Generate this story →A scannable glossary of 28 fanfiction genres and categories, from fluff and angst to fix-it and crossover, plus what ratings and pairing labels like gen or slash mean.
AU stands for alternate universe: the same characters in a changed world. Here is how an AU differs from regular fanfic, what Modern AU means, and 15 AU types with fandom examples.
56 concrete fanfic ideas and prompts, sorted by trope (enemies to lovers, fake dating, found family) and by fandom, each with a one-click link to start writing. Plus a five-step method for finding your own.
What Y/N stands for, how reader inserts differ from imagines and preferences, how to write second person well, and which fandoms have the most x Reader fics.
The Fanficia blog is written by the Fanficia editorial team. We draft with AI assistance; a human editor checks the facts and fandom terminology, rewrites the text and signs off on every post. Spotted a mistake? Email support@fanficia.com and we will fix it and update the article date.
How we write: editorial policy →