Author's Note
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You may be looking for Author's Notes, the LOTR slash story.
| Synonyms: | A/N |
| See also: | headers, reader's note |
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"Author's note" generally refers to a line in headers used to provide additional information about a fanfic. Author notes are not always put on top, though; some authors put it in as a postscript, or on LiveJournal as a first comment posted below the story. An author's note may commonly be used to:
- Tell why the work was created (for instance, for a particular challenge or community).
- Explain what readers may need to know to understand the work. Oftentimes this information, particularly in old fanfics, was to provide content warnings for a given story. This is often relegated to the tags when posted on AO3, but there will occasionally be notes explaining the tags as well.
- Thank betas.
- Give credit to the sources of material used in the work (for instance, song lyrics or quotations used in fan fiction, video clips or music used in vids, or photo references used in fanart). The credit given can also be to the copyright owner in the form of disclaimers where the fanfic author will explain they do not have rights to the characters. This was particularly common in the early 2000s.
- Give credit to the authors of works that inspired or influenced the work (for instance, another piece of fan fiction from which characters or details have been borrowed).
- Indicate what kind of feedback the creator of the work is interested in receiving.
In some fan communities, "author's note(s)" is shortened to A/N or a/n.
Other Fanwork Notes
Other fanwork creators can include notes in their headers. Depending on the type of fanwork, these might be called "vidder's notes", reader's notes, etc. rather than "author's notes".
AO3 works have a "Notes" field that is work-type agnostic.