i’ve started to think about ao3 audience interaction as kinda comparable to doing a live reading in an intimate little bookstore, like kudos are everybody who stayed til the end and applauded, comments are everybody who waited to come up to talk to you afterwards, and bookmark comments are the little snatches of conversation you overhear outside.

this helps me feel better/less anxious about responding to comments with some form of thanks, because if someone walked up to me in person and said they liked my work right after reading it, i would compulsively say thanks. it also helps contextualize audience size in a healthy way i think, bc most of us naturally crave more attention on our fic, but if we were actually in the room with even like 20 people applauding and five people waiting after to tell us how awesome we are we’d be fuckin elated.  

This this this this THIS! Thank you so much for conceptualizing it this way!

Ao3 subscriptions are so fucking wild to me. Every time I write my silly fanfictions and post them 124 people get an email just to let them know that this idiot is posting their fanfictions again. I send 124 people an email every time I write smut. Imagine sending 124 physical letters out just to be like “hello everyone, I put some guys we made up in our heads through the horrors again.” Absolutely absurd. I am kissing all of you on the lips.

hate what people did to the dead dove tag

mothers and fuckers of the jury. "Dead dove: do not eat" is a label on a bag in the fridge. It means "the content of this bag is exactly what is labeled". It does not mean "trigger warning uhhh something". In fact, it means the exact opposite of "trigger warning uhhh something", because tou use it with other tags. You write a fucked up fic with extreme violence and gore, you tag it as "extreme violence", "gore" and you tag it with "dead dove: do not eat". You write a fic with emotional abuse, gaslighting and manipulation, you tag it with "emotional abuse", "gaslighting" and "dead dove: do not eat". You write a fic with your extremely niche kink that appeals to like 3 other people and may skeeve out the rest of the fandom, you tag that with your kink and "dead dove: do not eat". It's so people know you're really mean the content warnings.

It's NOT a catch-all term for "uhhh this may be fucked idk". TAG YOUR SHIT GENEROUSLY.

Stop putting DNI on your tags and stop bringing shipping discourse into AO3

AO3 hid the story and asked OP to remove the tag (the fanfic is not even removed) due to the inflammatory tag. That's deserved. AO3 is not a social media for people to fight over ship and chronically online discourse. It's a library. If people keep bringing DNI and discourse into AO3 it'll make the place toxic for writers and reader.

What are you trying to accomplish with putting DNI? Do you think people actually care about DNI? No, it's just making you looking like an asshole doing this

Also AO3 was founded by a Wincest and Thorki shipper. Astolat made AO3 because FF net and other sites keep purging nsfw fanfic. AO3 is literally made for problematique shipper that op don't like.

Then OP doing this? For what? People want to enjoy reading their fanfic not seeing DNI and online discourse on AO3. I hate using the word virtue signaling as it's often used to demean progress but this is what a real virtue signaling looks like 🤦🤦‍♀️

(I bet op wrote more inflammatory tags on their fic other than 'proshitter DNI get a life' because it take a lot to get your story hidden or removed)

Updates to AO3 "Mythology" Fandoms

Hi AO3 users! You may have noticed that recently, fandoms previously canonized as "Mythology" are being updated to "Religion & Lore". This renaming project is part of a wider ongoing process on AO3 about respectful treatment and naming of various religions, spiritual beliefs, faiths, and collections of folklores belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition. This includes both major and minor religions, as well as reconstructionist, ancient, and modern religions.

In the coming months, the term "Mythology" is being phased out of canonical fandom names. This is because of its potential for use as a disparaging term, and the way in which it is used primarily for religions which are already under-represented. Since "mythology" has connotations of being fictional or inferior to the religious beliefs of the speaker or writer, and is unfortunately used in this way by some, the decision has been made to replace this term with something that the Wrangling Committee believes is more inclusive and less derogatory.

After extensive discussion between individuals from varying religious backgrounds and beliefs, including wranglers representing the various fandoms which were being covered, it was felt that "Religion & Lore" was an appropriate and neutral way to describe the bodies of faith, belief, knowledge, and tradition associated with many of these religions which were ancestrally imparted and regional in nature. It is also hoped that this will decrease ambiguous or confused use, allowing people to more accurately describe their works and find works in which they are interested moving forward.

The use of "Ancient" in many of these fandoms' names reflects that these countries still exist but now have different predominant religions or spiritual beliefs. For example, Ancient Greek Religion & Lore (as Greece is now a predominantly Christian country) or Ancient Egyptian Religion (as Egypt is now a predominantly Muslim country). Because "Norse" does not refer to an extant country, region, or culture, it is not necessary to specify that it is historical or ancient in nature.

The names of these fandoms will also have the native language piped, if the English-language demonym is significantly different from the native-language demonym or if there is a culturally specific term based on consultation with individuals who speak these languages as a first language. We hope to give representation to the language of the source culture by doing so.

Each of these changes has been and will continue to be carefully researched and discussed with traditional knowledge keepers and researchers from the cultures represented in the fandoms under discussion.

Many religions face the issue of texts being written long after their events occurred. Unfortunately this is something which is shared across many religious fandoms; AO3 seeks to treat these religious fandoms equally. Care has been taken in researching characters relating to these fandoms, and character tags will be canonized or made a synonym on a case-by-case basis. Fandom tags that are currently synned to the Ancient religious fandoms have been checked as thoroughly as possible to ensure that they are not referring to modern folk tales, and where possible such relatively modern folk tales are canonized as their own fandoms.

(From time to time, ao3org posts announcements of recent or upcoming wrangling changes on behalf of the Tag Wrangling Committee.)

I'm begging y'all, put at least minimum care into how you present your fics to the public.

"idk man you name it im tired" as a title tells me you didn't care.

"This is STUPID" in the tags. Okay, I won't read it then.

"I don't know how to do tags" tells me you didn't bother taking one look at any page in the archive to see how others tag and use it as reference. Or, you know, you could have asked, too.

"idk if this is trash, bc I worte this in the middle of the night bc idrk" in the summary doesn't really encourage me to open the story.

3 lines of tags on a 4k monitor, none of which are actual searchable tags but a stream of consciousness about the author's sleeping habits and music preferences, tell me you don't know what your story is about if you can't give us 2-4 main tropes and themes. Also, this isn't tumblr, come on mate.

"I hate myself for this fic" okay? Why did you write it then if it brought you discomfort? Moreover, why did you post it???

"Why Did I Write This?" well, hobbies are about joy and fun, if writing doesn't make you happy then maybe it's time to look for something else to do in your free time? No point in making yourself miserable.

"The Author Regrets Everything" paired with more self-deprecating tags suggest I better not bother opening the fic because it clearly made the author miserable and why would I be miserable as well?

"killing myself rn" please get help.

0 additional tags is better than that. Writing and sharing fics should be an act of care, not anguish.

Also just adding that if you put “sorry this is disgusting and bad and i’m going to hell for this,” the people who think you are bad for writing it will not forgive you and the people who clicked eager to read the story you advertised think you think they’re nasty.

I used to be really bad about pointing out all the flaws in my work—primarily my visual art, but my writing as well. What some friends clued me into was…basically everything in this post, and more. Trashing your own work does a lot of things, none of them good:

But there was something in me saying that, no, I HAD TO point out the flaws. So I decided to interrogate that. Why did I feel that way?

It’s because in the course of my formal background training in art and writing, I picked up the idea that I should already know what’s wrong with my work so that I can workshop fixes for them—which created an insecurity about being caught unawares, which in turn created the anxious fixation on pointing out the flaws first before anyone else could do so, as if I was owning up to doing something bad.

My art and writing is not a crime. My paintings and stories aren’t dirty deeds. Yes, even the erotic ones. I have no reason to preload shame on someone else’s behalf.

It’s still very difficult for me to post my work, especially art, without pointing out where & how I think it sucks, but this realization made it easier, and I have a better relationship with my work now as a result of just…letting it ride.

Try it out. Might make you happier. Will definitely increase others’ willingness to engage with your creations.

Some users are getting errors when attempting to access the site. We're looking into it!

Date: 22:41 UTC August 30, 2023

Ao3 is down, please start placing your bets to see how long it takes to start trending! My bet is on half an hour to an hour!

barely three minutes after ao3 went down and already so many posts about it

if anyone ever finds a way to legit cheat death then my money's on ao3 authors being the ones who do

Straight up, my sister has instructions and a detailed doc to follow if I die with unfinished works

This is a Moving Forward PSA for everyone using AO3. I am witnessing the results of a culture clash and communication failure. Not a lack of communication, but a misunderstanding caused by changes in fandom culture.

Before fic tagging was common, fics weren’t tagged. You had a pairing, if applicable, an author’s note about genre or general content, and if they were feeling charitable, a vague content warning. There are even a few genres of fic where even vaguely tagging literally spoils the plot and impact (such as horror, psyche thriller, in which the likely content is implicit to the genre). As a result, there is a basic category tag that permits this, as a courtesy to “old-fashioned” writers.

“No Archive Warnings Apply” means the fic is PG13 at worst, probably fluff, totally safe.

“Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings” is the polar opposite. It’s a glaring Enter at Your Own Risk billboard. It means: a shitload of warnings apply but I ain’t telling because this story requires shock value. It’s very important to read the author’s notes for those fics because they might be using that older format from above.

But without the context of fandom culture that generated AO3, it’s understandably easy to conflate the two categories, given their similar wording.

“No Archive Warnings Apply” means there’s no

“Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” =  HERE BE DRAGONS. (implies that one or more of the above exists, but the author doesn’t want to give anything away by tagging)

PSA: bot comments are taking over ao3

The above examples have been provided with the authors' permission to demonstrate what these look like.

Basic rundown:

Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly

There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate

We've temporarily disabled the ability to request a new account invitation as a preventative measure due to a spam attack. If you already have an invitation, you can still use it! However, anyone currently in the queue will not receive an invitation until we turn it back on.

Additionally, we have temporarily disabled the form on the Technical Support & Feedback page and taken the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports page offline. Anyone attempting to access the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports will receive an error page about being blocked from archiveofourown.org, but don't panic -- this is not the case! It's just the default error displayed by Cloudflare. You can continue to access the rest of the site as normal.

Lastly, the Organization for Transformative Works' donation page -- which is hosted by a third party provider -- is currently offline due to a DDoS attack. This is the only donation form the OTW uses, so please be cautious of scammers impersonating AO3 or the OTW to solicit donations. We are unable to take them at this time.

July 11, 2023 - 23:50 UTC

LETS GOOO!!!

if the hackers gave a hurt/comfort fic a chance they would change their minds

AO3 is under a DDoS attack meaning that the servers are purposefully being overwhelmed by an attacker. Please do not refresh ao3 related links because each time you do, another request is sent to the servers meaning you are contributing to the DDoS! Wait for the official announcement from their twitter and then visit the site because the servers will keep crashing otherwise!