Archive of Our Own
Archive of Our Own, or AO3 for short, is a nonprofit website where people can post fanfiction and other fanworks and have it sorted by different series, all in a collective database. The website operates on open source code programming, meaning that anyone can post to it and the people behind the website are actually volunteers. Stories featured on Archive of Our Own can be placed into categories and appropriately tagged according to features or elements of the stories, including various characters from different series and ships involved between these characters, as well as other more specific tags. 300 volunteers, give or take a few, called “tag wranglers” are the ones who manually connect tags of synonymous nature to strengthen the site’s search system, allowing it to understand “mermaids”, “mermen”, and “merfolk” as constituents of the “merpeople” tag, as just an example. Based on numbers from December of 2020, the website has over 7 million different works by a wide variety of authors, spanning over 40,000 fandoms. Many people use the site as an outlet for their imaginations when they can’t quite get enough from a particular book, TV series, or other form of entertainment. This is their way of engaging with the series on an even deeper level, while also forming connections with other individuals that share similar interests to them.
Going into specifics, the site allows users to rate the stories they’ve written and published onto the website targeted to the intended age of their readers. So if the story they’ve written is geared towards more of an adult audience, the writer is able to slap the story with a “Mature” or “Explicit” tag, warning underage users or other individuals who aren’t trying to read such stories to steer clear. In terms of the entire spectrum of ratings, users can choose between labeling their story’s audience as “General audience”, “Teens and up audience”, “Mature”, and “Explicit”, as well as the genders or sexual orientations of the characters featured in the story, such as “F/M”, “M/M”, “F/F”, “Other”, and so on. The website also requests the writers of these stories to give content warnings for any type of themes that might be present in their works, like “Graphic Depictions of Violence”, “Underage” or “Rape”, just to name a few. So there’s virtually no chance a user of the website will stumble upon a story that completely blindsides them and upsets them so much without them being aware of what’s present because of the numerous amounts of tags and warnings that are featured on a story’s cover page. Not all fanfic might include these tags, because it really depends on the person writing the fanfic in question and what demographic the source material is originally intended for. For example, a gritty, made-for-adult series like Game of Thrones will likely include some more mature tags like the ones listed above simply because those are already common themes present throughout the material so it only makes sense that fanfic of GoT would also revolve around that. It isn’t a guarantee though, because there might be some author out there who wants to touch upon a less mature and more family friendly aspect of the series, like a platonic father-daughter relationship, so that could potentially be for younger fans. On the other hand, something made for kids and not as serious like SpongeBob would likely have fanfic of it be more geared towards children, simply since the themes found throughout the series aren’t too mature in nature in general, so that’d go along better with the source material. Again though, it really just depends on what the author wants to do and what their writing style is like. Maybe an author will only write stories featuring mature themes, no matter what the series is, so that they’re known as a more adult-content producer. This means that they know they constantly have to have those mature tags attached to their stories because that’s what their writing is centered around. If they wanted to reach a wider, broader audience, they might tone down on the mature content so they wouldn’t have so many content warning tags. The great thing about fanfic is that so many different fandoms can be involved and writers are given a lot of room for what they want their stories to be about, so there’s never a short supply of fanfics that appeal to everyone’s tastes.
AO3 grew out of a nonprofit organization known as the Organization for Transformative Works that was created in May of 2007, with the intent behind the organization’s creation being to have a place where individuals could record and archive different works of art from fans and the cultures that went along with those fans. Keeping all of this in mind, OTW created AO3 a year later and made it available to the public as a beta in 2009, which would only continue to expand and garner more attention over the years. More than anything, AO3 defines itself as an archive rather than an online community, so while there is room to respond to other people and voice your opinion on different stories, it’s clear that the intent behind the website is to be a place where writers can write and readers can read those uniquely crafted stories.
Aside from the major aspect of creating stories that will be featured on the website for others to read, users can also positively respond to stories they encounter along the way in the form of giving kudos, which is comparable to hearts or likes on other social media outlets like Instagram or Facebook. This allows writers to see how many people have actually taken the time to send some well-wishes their way, but there’s even more. Rather than simply being able to read the stories without giving any sort of feedback or criticism, AO3 has given readers the ability to leave comments on any story they run into, so they can voice their opinions and connect to the reader on a deeper level. If there’s some advice a reader might have for the writer of a specific story, the reader can leave it in the form of a comment that the writer and anybody else who stumbles the story will be able to see and this will hopefully allow the writer to improve any future works. If a story is particularly endearing to an individual, they also have the option to either publicly or privately bookmark the work, allowing them to come back whenever they want and potentially refer the story to another friend of theirs. So even if you don’t want to write anything yourself and simply wish to read a story from a specific fandom, AO3 still gives you a fairly significant amount of input that can influence others, instead of just having to lurk in the background while keeping your thoughts to yourself.
While all of this may make it seem like AO3 is without flaws, currently the website still has issues in all realms of interaction, some belonging to posting while others revolve around simply viewing. It’s said that older devices are unable to access the site because they’re hit with a message like “could not establish a secure connection the server.” It’s at this point that the moderators say you’re welcome to proceed on this unsecure connection, but there is the chance your personal information like password or browsing history could be intercepted by someone. Not only that, but sometimes works are unable to be deleted, prompting a message like “We can’t delete that right now, sorry!” You then have to contact the support page for assistance but it’s a hassle having to do that every so often just to delete a story. More issues exist but those are some of the most prevalent ones users are facing at the moment. Even while these issues exist, people still choose to always be a part of AO3 simply because they understand that every interface of this magnitude will have problems, but the positive characteristics outweigh the bad ones. The absolute ease of navigating the website and finding exactly what you’re in the mood for without things getting to complicated is why AO3 thrives so much. Users almost always report positively about the tagging system and how it makes it that much clearer what audience a fanfic they might have their eye on is geared towards, in addition to potential themes that might be featured. This kind of writing on this type of collaborative website is meant to spread ideas of creativity and brings groups of people together, united under one common interest. Fanfic has been around since the 1960s and doesn’t show any signs of slowing anytime soon, which in turn means AO3 is also here to stay for quite a long time.