Knives — Tag Meaning
A canonical tag for blades as weapons or threats, covering knife fights, stabbings, and menace. Its specificity serves readers for whom edged-weapon violence lands differently than other kinds.
What to Expect From "Knives" Fics
Knife-related violence or threat appears; stab wounds and their treatment may follow. Severity rides on the surrounding tags.
How to find Knives fics on AO3
On AO3, click any tag to see every work that uses it, then refine with the "Filters" sidebar — combine it with your fandom or ship, set a rating, or exclude tags you don't want. See our AO3 filtering guide for the full walkthrough.
Browse "Knives" works on AO3Related Tags
Violence
A general-purpose flag for violent content that exceeds the incidental but may not warrant the archive's Graphic Depictions warning. Authors use it to cover fights, assaults, and brutality, trusting readers to combine it with the fic's rating to judge intensity.
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Blood and Injury
The canonical AO3 pairing of blood with bodily harm, used when injuries are depicted with some vividness rather than mentioned in passing. It functions as a mid-level warning — more graphic than a scraped knee, less than gore — common in action, whump, and battle fic.
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Injury
A straightforward content tag flagging that a character gets physically hurt. It covers everything from sprained ankles to battlefield wounds, and authors typically add it for reader awareness even when the injury is brief, since some readers seek out injury fic and others avoid it.
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Threats of Violence
A canonical tag for menace without (necessarily) execution: intimidation, ultimatums, the promise of harm hanging over a scene. It lets authors warn for an atmosphere of danger even when no blow lands.
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