Frequently Asked Questions

Getting Started

What is Fanprose?

Fanprose is a platform for reading and writing fan fiction. It’s built around features that matter to fan fiction readers and writers: ratings, trigger warnings, inline comments, bookmarks, reading lists, flexible reading settings, letters, flowers, polls, and a personalized feed.

Do I need an account to read?

You can browse stories and read a preview of each chapter without an account. To read full chapters, you’ll need to sign in. An account also unlocks writing, commenting, bookmarking, reading lists, letters, flowers, and more.

Reading

How do I pick up where I left off?

Bookmarks save your exact position within a chapter. When you bookmark a paragraph, Fanprose remembers where you stopped so you can return to it later. Your bookmarks are accessible from your Library.

What does the Mature tag mean?

A story tagged Mature contains graphic violence, sexual themes, strong language, or dark subject matter. You can hide mature stories from your feed in Settings → Content.

Mature stories are not visible to logged-out visitors. You’ll need to sign in to browse or read mature content.

What are trigger warnings?

Trigger warnings are free-form labels set by the author — for example, violence, grief, or major character death. They appear on the story and chapter pages so you can make an informed choice before reading.

Can I customize how I read?

Yes. The reading settings panel lets you adjust font size, indentation, text justification, chapter width, and dark mode. Your preferences are saved across sessions.

What are inline comments?

Inline comments let readers highlight a specific paragraph and leave a note on it. They’re separate from the main story comment thread, so authors and readers can discuss individual moments without cluttering the general discussion.

Writing

How do I publish a story?

Sign in, click the Write button, fill in your story details (title, fandom, rating, tags), and publish your first chapter. You can continue adding chapters at any time.

What’s the difference between a Story and a Blog?

When creating a new work, you can choose between a Story (fan fiction) and a Blog (a personal essay, commentary, or author note). Both support the same format options, but blogs are labeled distinctly and filtered separately on feeds and profiles.

What’s the difference between a One Shot, a Series, and an Anthology?

A One Shot is a single, complete chapter — the whole story in one piece. A Series supports multiple chapters and tracks a status (Ongoing, Complete, Hiatus, etc.) so readers know what to expect. An Anthology is a multi-chapter work where each chapter stands alone — collected poems, drabbles, or independent short stories under one title.

Can I save a draft before publishing?

Yes. Chapters can be saved as drafts at any time. Only published chapters are visible to readers — drafts are private to you and any co-authors.

What are unlisted stories?

An unlisted story is hidden from all public listings — search results, feeds, and profile pages — but remains accessible to anyone with the direct link. Individual chapters can also be unlisted, which hides them from the table of contents and chapter navigation while keeping the rest of the story visible. Only the primary author can change the unlisted setting for a story or its chapters.

Can I co-author a story?

Yes. The primary author can invite co-authors from the people they follow. Invitees receive a notification and can accept or decline. Once accepted, co-authors can edit chapters and manage most story details. Co-authors cannot change the unlisted or mature settings — those remain under the primary author’s control. Co-authored stories appear on every author’s profile.

Account & Settings

How do I change my display name?

Go to Settings → Profile to update your display name.

How do I hide mature content?

Go to Settings → Content and uncheck Show mature stories. Mature stories will no longer appear in your feed or search results.

How do I block certain tags or themes from my feed?

Go to Settings → Content → Blocked Keywords. Stories tagged with any blocked keyword will be hidden from your feed. You can add up to 50 keywords.

Can I exclude certain photocard collections or groups from dropping?

Yes. In Settings → Content you can choose collections and groups to exclude from your photocard drop pool. Cards from excluded collections or groups will not appear when you earn rolls through normal activity. This setting does not affect the Shrine.

How do I sign in?

You can sign in with an email address and password, or use Google OAuth for one-click sign-in.

Premium

What is Premium?

Premium is an optional paid membership that unlocks additional features across reading, writing, and photocard collecting. Everything that's free on Fanprose today stays free — premium just adds more headroom for power users and helps support the platform.

What do I get with Premium?

Premium has two tiers. The first focuses on reader and writer perks: more favorite authors and featured bookmarks, reduced flower cooldown, the ability to host challenges, an extra Treehouse membership, and Treehouse voting rights. The second tier includes everything in the first plus collector perks: additional featured photocards, an increased daily photocard limit, reduced roll and shrine cooldowns, two more Treehouse memberships, the ability to submit Treehouse proposals, and a daily free photocard delivered automatically.

New features are continually added to both tiers, and existing subscribers receive them automatically as they ship.

How much does it cost?

Pricing is shown on the premium page. Both tiers can be billed monthly or annually, and annual billing is discounted.

How do I subscribe?

Visit the premium page, choose a tier and billing interval, and you’ll be redirected to Stripe’s secure checkout to enter payment details. Your benefits activate as soon as the payment is confirmed.

How do I manage or cancel my subscription?

Go to Settings → Premiumto open the customer portal, where you can update your payment method, switch tiers, change your billing interval, or cancel. If you cancel, you keep your benefits until the end of the current billing period — no prorated refund, but no immediate loss either.

Can I switch between monthly and annual?

Yes. Use the customer portal from Settings → Premium to change your billing interval at any time.

What payment methods are accepted?

Payments are handled by Stripe, which accepts major credit and debit cards along with locally available payment methods depending on your region.

Is Premium required?

No. Fanprose’s core reading, writing, and community features remain free for everyone. Premium is purely additive.

Social & Community

What are Letters?

Letters are a way to send private messages to other users. You can include up to four images and up to 2,000 characters per letter. If you prefer to stay anonymous, you can send a letter without revealing your identity. The recipient can reply publicly (which creates a thought) or privately.

Who can send me Letters?

You control who can send you letters in your settings. Options include anyone, only your followers, only mutuals (people you follow who also follow you), or nobody at all.

What are Flowers?

Flowers are a way to show appreciation for another user. Each user can send one flower per day. Flowers come in different colors with varying rarity — some are much harder to find than others. Occasionally, a bouquet may be triggered, sending multiple flowers at once as a special surprise.

What are Thoughts?

Thoughts are short updates you can share on your profile. Each thought supports up to 2,000 characters and up to four images. You can also link a thought to one of your stories, and embed YouTube or Spotify content. Thoughts appear on your profile and in the feeds of people who follow you.

How does Following work?

Follow other users to see their stories and thoughts in your home feed. Your followers can see your activity in theirs. Following is one-directional — you don’t need someone’s permission to follow them.

What are verified users?

A verified badge means Fanprose has extra confidence that the account is not impersonating someone else and that the person behind it is a trusted member of the community who follows our content guidelines.

To receive a verified badge, an author who is already verified must vouch for you. Before you vouch for someone, be sure you know and trust them: vouching is a serious endorsement. If someone you vouched for breaks the rules or has their account actioned for violations, you can both lose your verified badges, so only vouch for people you believe will stay in good standing.

Your Feed

What are the different feed tabs?

Your home feed has six tabs: For You surfaces stories based on your favorite characters and fandoms; Followingshows stories from people you follow, including content they’ve Recommended; Recommended shows recommendations from your close friends list; Trending ranks stories, idols, and groups by engagement (filtered by Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly); Thoughts shows only thoughts from people you follow; and Newest shows the most recently published stories and chapters across the platform.

What is Recommend?

Recommend lets you broadcast a story or chapter to your followers’ Following feed, and to your close friends’ Recommended feed. Think of it as a public recommendation — a signal to the people who follow you that a piece of writing is worth their time.

A few things to know:

• You can only Recommend a given story or chapter once. There’s no way to Recommend the same work twice.
• When multiple users Recommend the same work, it does not create duplicate entries in the feed. The single entry is renewed and updated to reflect all recommendations, keeping the feed clean.
• Recommendation count is tracked on stories and chapters alongside likes, comments, and bookmarks.
• A Recommendedtab on your profile lets others see which stories you’ve publicly recommended.

What is Trending?

The Trending tab ranks stories, idols, and groups by overall engagement. Trending score is calculated from a weighted combination of likes, comments, bookmarks, and recommendations over a given period. You can filter by Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly. Trending is currently experimental and may be adjusted over time.

Polls

What are Polls?

Authors can add polls to their chapters and teasers to gather reader feedback. Polls support multiple choices and can be set to expire after one, three, or seven days — or stay open indefinitely. Each reader can vote once per poll.

Photocards

What are Photocards?

Photocards are collectible cards you can earn by using Fanprose. When you interact with stories — liking, commenting, bookmarking, sending flowers or letters, posting wall comments, or sharing thoughts — there’s a chance a photocard will drop as a reward. Each card features an idol and belongs to a group and collection.

How do I earn Photocards?

Photocards drop by chance whenever you interact with content on the platform. You don’t need to do anything special — just use Fanprose as you normally would. Reading stories can also trigger photocard roll checkpoints when the system detects active reading, with multiple checkpoints on longer stories. Cards that match the characters or fandoms of the story you’re interacting with are more likely to drop, so engaging with your favorite fandoms helps you collect cards you care about.

Can I get duplicates?

Yes. Like real trading cards, you can earn the same photocard more than once. Your profile shows a count for each card you own.

Where do my Photocards appear?

Your profile has a dedicated Photocardstab that shows your full collection organized by collection, with progress tracking for each. You can also feature up to six cards on your profile’s Overview tab for other users to see.

What is the Binder page?

The Binder page is a dedicated space for managing your photocard collection. From there you can drag and drop your featured cards to rearrange them, and lock individual cards to protect them from being used in shrine offerings, trades, or gifts. Locked cards still appear in your gallery and can be featured normally.

Can I trade Photocards?

Yes! You can trade photocards with other users. List a card for trade with an optional description of what you’re looking for, then browse other users’ listings and filter by collection or tier. To propose a trade, offer one to five of your own cards. The listing owner can accept, decline, or let the offer expire after seven days. Accepted trades swap cards instantly. There’s a 30-minute cooldown between completed trades. You can also comment on and heart other users’ listings.

You can also use the Wishlistpage for reverse trades: choose a card you want, optionally list cards you’re willing to give up, and users who have your desired card can initiate the trade directly. They can also choose to gift the card without taking anything in return.

Shrine

What is the Shrine?

The Shrine lets you sacrifice photocards for a chance at a new one. Select one to five cards to offer, and receive a random card in return. Higher-value sacrifices improve your chances of earning a higher-tier card. Cards matching your favorite characters and fandoms are weighted more heavily. Aside from Beauty and Wisdom, shrine wishes cannot return a card above Epic.

What are wishes?

When making a shrine offering you can choose a wish to shape what you receive. Each wish has different rules, risks, and rewards. The eight wish types are:

Health

A standard offering with no target. Your cards are sacrificed and the shrine returns a random card based on the value of what you put in.

Love

Choose a specific idol. Love wishes carry a high failure risk — if the wish fails, your cards are lost and you receive nothing. If all the cards you sacrifice belong to the same group as your chosen idol, the failure chance is reduced.

Fame

Choose a specific group. Fame wishes carry a medium failure risk. If all the cards you sacrifice belong to the requested group, the failure chance is reduced.

Fortune

Fortune is a high-risk, high-reward wish with a very high failure chance. If the wish fails, your cards are lost as usual. But if it succeeds, the shrine adds a new card to your collection without consuming your sacrificed cards — you keep both.

Wisdom

Wisdom is a riddle-based wish. Each player has their own secret target number, and you must sacrifice cards whose quality values sum to exactly that number. The reward for solving your riddle is a guaranteed Secret tier card.

Once you solve your combination, the shrine gives you a new riddle to work toward after a cooldown period.

Power

A Power wish doesn’t give you a card right away. Instead, the shrine shows a demanded photocard — the same for everyone, changing on a timer — and you sacrifice exactly one card of equal type, quality, or both. In return, you receive a Power buff on your account.

The buff strength depends on how closely your sacrifice matches:

• Quality match only — small buff: 33% failure reduction on your next offering.
• Card match (exact demanded card, any quality) — large buff: 66% failure reduction.
• Card + quality match — full buff: 100% failure removal.

The buff applies automatically to your next Health, Love, Fame, or Fortune offering. Wisdom and Success wishes do not consume your Power buff. A successful Power wish does not start the normal shrine cooldown, so you can use your buff immediately.

Beauty

Beauty is a transmutationwish — you sacrifice exactly one card and receive a transformed version of it. It never fails, so you won't lose any cards, but remember—beauty is pain.

• Quality 10 cards (Path A — tier transmutation): The shrine returns a different card featuring the same idol(s), potentially at a higher, lower, or equal tier. Quality is re-rolled fresh.
• Quality 1–9 cards (Path B — quality transmutation): The card type stays the same, but its quality shifts up or down by 3–8 points — smaller shifts are more common than big ones — and never moves past 1 or 10. Whether it rises or falls depends on the card's tier.

If you have an active Power buff, it will be consumed to boost the upgrade chance instead of reducing failure.

Beauty wishes trigger the normal shrine cooldown.

Unlike other wishes, Beauty can return cards above Epic.

Success

Success is a global jackpot wish. Your offered cards are always consumed and converted into jackpot points, with rarer cards contributing more.

The shrine tracks a hidden target for each round. If your offering pushes the shared counter over that target, you win the jackpot reward card for that round. If not, your points still advance the global counter for everyone.

The shrine displays a Success Jackpot panel showing the current points offered and the reward card preview.

How often can I use the Shrine?

Shrine offerings go by a charge system that replenishes over time. The total charges and charge time depends on your membership plan. Occasionally, the shrine may waive the cooldown after a successful offering — a rare blessing that lets you go again immediately. Recent offerings appear in a public feed where others can comment and react.

What is Pray?

Pray is a daily ritual available from the Shrine page. Once per cooldown period (the length varies by plan), you can offer a prayer for a chance to receive a free photocard. Prayers also have a small chance to trigger a bouquet. Cards earned from prayer count toward your daily photocard limit.

Treehouses

What are Treehouses?

Treehouses are fan clubs that form automatically around each fandom once enough stories exist for it. Each treehouse has its own feed, member roster, discussion posts, proposals, and exclusive photocard activities.

How do I join a Treehouse?

Browse treehouses at /treehouses for any that interest you. The number of treehouses you can belong to depends on your plan: free users can join one, Tier 1 can join three, and Tier 2 can join five.

What can I do inside a Treehouse?

Members can post to the treehouse’s discussion board, react to posts, vote on proposals and join requests, and participate in all treehouse photocard activities. Treehouses also have an alliance system — allied treehouses can view each other’s photocard collections and collaborate on certain events.

What are Treehouse Proposals?

Proposals let members suggest changes or initiatives for their treehouse. Members vote to approve or reject each proposal. Submitting proposals requires Fan+ membership; voting rights require Prose+ or higher.

What are Auctions?

When an auction is live, treehouses compete against each other by sacrificing photocards to earn points. The treehouse with the most points at the end of the auction wins an exclusive frame card for their collection. The Auctions tab is only visible to treehouse members.

What are Harvests?

Harvests are cooperative events where all treehouses work together toward a shared community goal by sacrificing photocards. Individual treehouses also track their own contributions toward milestone rewards. Reaching milestones earns your treehouse exclusive blank-frame cards. The Harvests tab is only visible to members.

What is Minting?

Each treehouse has its own photocard collection that is minted once per season. When a season opens, the collection for your treehouse is generated from cards across eligible tiers. Members of the treehouse can earn cards from their house’s minted collection through daily rewards and other activities.

What are Fruits?

Each day, treehouse members are eligible for a card drawn from their house’s own minted collection. Members who have been in the treehouse longer are weighted more heavily in the draw. A countdown timer in the header shows when the next daily reward is available.

Surveys

What are Surveys?

Surveys are question sets created by the Fanprose team. You can find open surveys at /surveys. Completing a survey gives you a chance to earn a bonus photocard as a thank-you reward.

Challenges

What are Challenges?

Challenges are community writing events hosted by other users. A host creates a challenge, sets a theme or focus, and opens it for sign-ups. Once the host approves participants and assigns writing prompts, everyone writes a story based on their prompt.

How do I join a Challenge?

Browse open challenges at /challenges and sign up for any that interest you. The host reviews sign-up requests and, if approved, assigns you a writing prompt. Once you receive your prompt, you can submit a story before the challenge deadline.

When can I read the submissions?

Submissions are hidden until the host marks the challenge as complete — everyone’s work is revealed at the same time. Once a challenge is complete, all submissions are visible on the challenge page.

Reading lists & Library

What’s a reading list?

A reading list is a named list of stories you curate. Reading lists can be public (shareable with anyone) or private (visible only to you). Use them to organize stories by theme, fandom, mood, or anything else.

What’s the Library?

Your Library is your personal hub on Fanprose. It brings together your bookmarked stories, favorited works, all of your reading lists, stories and chapters you’ve liked, and content you’ve Recommended — all in one place.

Can I feature reading lists on my profile?

Yes. You can pin up to a few reading lists to your profile’s Overview tab so visitors can browse your curated picks directly. The cap on featured lists depends on your plan.