War — Tag Meaning
A canonical tag for works set in or shaped by warfare, native to fandoms whose canons are wars and imported into AUs everywhere else. It covers front-line combat, home-front waiting, and the long aftermath together.
What to Expect From "War" Fics
Combat, casualties, and wartime separation are all possible; specific intensities are tagged separately. Letters-from-the-front romance is a recurring subgenre.
How to find War 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 "War" works on AO3Popular Fics Tagged "War"
Real examples from AO3's most-kudosed works:
From Wiltshire, With Love
by MistressLynn
Blade of the Sun
by BladeoftheSun
Devil Dog
by Charmander
A Spark to an Inferno, a Snowball to an Avalanche
by cjr2
The Pack Survives
by astolat
Captive Angels; Victorious Demons
by Nadja_Lee
Related 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.
Tag guide →
Survivor Guilt
A canonical tag for characters tormented by having lived when others did not, common in post-war, post-disaster, and post-canon-tragedy stories. Fandoms with battlefield casualties or destroyed homeworlds generate this tag in volume.
Tag guide →
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
AO3's canonical tag for PTSD, heavily used in fandoms full of soldiers, survivors, and heroes whose canons never address the psychological bill. Fics under this tag take seriously the flashbacks, hypervigilance, and avoidance that follow trauma, often giving characters the processing arc canon skipped.
Tag guide →
Character Death
A canonical freeform tag for death in a work, used when the Major Character Death archive warning is too strong or the author wants to flag mortality without specifying whose. It covers a broader territory than the official warning.
Tag guide →
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