Thoughts on the Big AO3 Downtime

...Well, I sure picked an eventful month to make my return to DW 😅

I was originally planning for my next post to be about Pillowfort, which announced its impending shutdown in early December just two days after I posted my October update linking to a bunch of stuff I did on PF 🙈 It wasn't totally unprecedented, but I'm still having a lot of emotions about it. And in a way everything that's happening at the moment feels linked together - I'm spending more time on DW and Mastodon because of the influx of Pillowpeeps and associated activity (mostly to Dreamwidth, but I've been paying more attention to fandom social spaces generally) - and so I'm also joining in discussions there/here about the AO3 Situation (as well as on Pillowfort itself, Tumblr, and the fannish Discords I'm a part of). It just feels like there's a Lot Happening.

But I want to give Pillowfort its own space in a separate post and in the meantime, I have more thoughts that are bubbling up about the AO3 situation, so here we go.

As a long-time fan of archiving things and making sure I don't pile all my eggs into one load-bearing basket, I feel like I should have somehow been more "prepared" for AO3 going offline for an extended period - but I wasn't really any less caught out than most of fandom. I've been slowly, slowly adding my works to my personal fanworks archive since 2023, but it's very much a "for fun" endeavour and I'm not sure how much I seriously expected anyone to use my archive as a place for reading fic. I've been doing it more for my own personal satisfaction and in the hopes that this echo of my fannish self, collected together in one place, might survive however long into the future (although that depends on my partner and I continuing to pay the hosting costs, granted xD)

I've been adding my fanfics there oldest-first, so arguably, I'm better prepared for Fanfiction.net going down than AO3 😅 (I mean, up until recently that one always seemed more likely). I'm also on SquidgeWorld - but in a bid to not just treat SquidgeWorld like Second AO3, I've been selective about what I publish there, mostly posting drabbles (because the Small Fandoms Drabblethon had a collection in 2025 and also I knew that I wouldn't spam anyone's notifications if I published as I went, so I posted to SquidgeWorld first and only later to AO3) and works that fit tags SquidgeWorld has that AO3 doesn't, like the nonbinary relationship tags and QPR (queerplatonic relationships). It means that I only have a handful of fics on SqWA as of the time of writing, and most are very short and for obscure fandoms. (I did get a kudos earlier today!)

I had resolved to cross-post more works during AO3's downtime, but there's another snag: for the vast majority of my fic, I didn't save the summaries anywhere except for AO3, because it's AO3-specific metadata (sometimes, when I published to Tumblr, I would do a summary there, but not always) and nor did I save any author's notes. I yak a lot in my notes and so I consider those an important part of the work (sometimes it's a note to the work giftee, other times it might be a meta-ish reflection on the writing process) but I have no record of those for the most part, and reposting without them also feels odd.

I had assumed, naiively, that there would be some kind of within-the-last-year-ish archive of my AO3 Works page on the Wayback Machine, but that was also wrong - the most recent save is from 2024, and before that, only 2015 - that's it. And other pages of my Works aren't saved, so I can't go back past the most recent fics in either snapshot 🙈

So it all feels, oddly, like a vindication of my love of archiving things/crossposting elsewhere (because although AO3 is great, I hold a lot of nostalgia for the days of many fic archives that I don't think is entirely misplaced) and also an indictment of my lack of practicing what I preach x3 I know, I'm just a person with limited free time and there's only so much one can do, but still. It's such a retread of the lessons I wrote about in 'On Keeping Backups' and yet I still keep having to relearn them. You don't realise how much you potentially have to lose until it abruptly disappears. (Some of my drabbles aren't even saved on my PC, just my phone).

I suspect and hope that once AO3 comes back this will just be remembered as a bad blip, but I also hope that it has lasting ramifications on people's fandom practices in terms of giving more support to the likes of SquidgeWorld and other non-AO3 archives that are out there fighting the good fight (there's a good list here, and yes it's on Pillowfort, so here's a Wayback Machine copy) as well as their usage of AO3 alternatives. But I fear that the massive centralisation around AO3 is just inextricable from modern fandom at this point. I'm sure other people have made this point plenty more eloquently, but it's not just that AO3's critical mass/network effect, combined with the tendency users now have to expect and want centralised convenience from their internet experience, has made it intrinsic to fandom. It's that I think a lot of trends would not exist without it, such as the increasing mainstreaming of fandom because it has been so helpfully served up in one place.

Yeah, this point has definitely been made elsewhere, but it bears repeating. And it turns out that chucking increasing amounts of money at the OTW every donation drive wasn't enough to keep AO3 from going under (I know, it's temporary - probably - but whatever caused this could definitely happen again, or happen in some other way) and no-one really has a... plan for what else to do.

I mean, I don't either 🫤 I know what I can do for my own fanwork practices, but it does take a lot of effort, and as much as the personal fanworks archive movement is relatively catching on, there's no turning back the clock on all this.

So yeah. Sorry for the downer note! To be clear, there will probably be - already is - a lot of cool fandom creativity and resourcefulness coming out of this whole situation, which I love to see. I think archives like SquidgeWorld, Ad Astra, superlove and others will definitely see lasting effects in increased usage, recognition and support.

But still.

(...I should probably save this post to my PC, shouldn't I. *has been typing this directly into the DW post window*

Erm, YES, as it turns out - because right after typing that I copy-pasted the rich text version into OpenOffice Writer, switched to HTML mode, and then found that DW had somehow eaten several paragraphs. Jesus Christ. There's a point where it goes beyond "irony" and becomes "the universe hitting you over the head with a mallet". I GET IT I GET IT GEEZ NOTHING IS SAFE DON'T HIT ME)

Current Mood: thoughtful

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

gekidasa

Honestly… I know this is a hot take but more and more my opinion is that while I think AO3 is convenient, overall its effect has not been great in several aspects

From:

enchantedsleeper

With all of this said, I think it's also fair to make a distinction between AO3 and AO3-at-scale, because a lot of the issues that people have with the Archive wouldn't be so much of a problem if not for it being treated as the de facto fandom posting platform. I did argue that there are certain trends that probably wouldn't exist without AO3(-at-scale), but do I think that means that AO3 shouldn't have been created a certain way because of a future 17 years down the line that the founders couldn't have imagined... Easier to critique these things in hindsight, right? It would be interesting to see a timeline in which a few different places got AO3's software up and running from the start to create variants with different ethos...es (what is the plural of ethos xD) and even tweaked the UI, so that it wouldn't just be one place with community-oriented tagging practices and a simplified, reader-friendly design, it would be several that each offered something slightly different for different types of fan to get on board with.

(I mean, it doesn't have to be with AO3's UI, but it has proven pretty popular, and was designed to be used to make more such sites. Otherwise I think we'd see more weight given to FF.net even without the by-fans-for-fans ethos).

Anyway, the fact that we didn't have that doesn't necessarily make it AO3's "fault" for implementing certain choices that have guided fandom in a way that, as I say, I don't think the creators would have ever foreseen. At least we have more equivalents now. Hard to put the AO3-genie back in the bottle, but I did also say that something like this could happen again, so... who knows what's in the cards x3

From:

axolotls

I do wish AO3 were used as an archive, a backup, rather than the main and only place everyone posts. I'm glad it exists, as a place that will never take things down! But it works better with that kind of niche, yeah.

(One day, we'll have the kind of decentralised fanfiction ecosystem I know is possible, just needs to be built...! I think it's starting to happen finally, just gotta see if it'll take the shape I'm hoping for!)

From:

gekidasa

I do hope so. The 2 week shutdown actually gave me the idea of doing a youtube tutorial on how to make the absolute most barebones fanfic site possible for your fic without touching almost any html, and I posted the first video. Because I hope the situation will make writers realize they shouldn't rely JUST on ao3.

And then I saw all the entitlement and started questioning whether to keep going with the tutorial. Although I suppose the people I want to make the tutorial FOR are not the people showing their asses.

From:

axolotls

*hugs*

Don't let the assholes discourage you, definitely. And if you want to chat to other folks doing similar things right now, there's the fancoded and the Fandom Coders Discord server, in case you don't know!

Sending lots of support to anyone doing this kind of work right now.

From:

gekidasa

Oh, I 100% agree. No one could have foreseen this, and at the time it was a great idea, and very inline with the direction of things. That direction being centralization and consolidation. We didn't know at the time what it would lead to. And I did say on mastodon and threads I wish fandom had stuck to using AO3 for its intended purpose (archiving!) and not largely abandoned indie fansites and fic archives for it.

Now, part of that is due to the decision of having comments on the site, but as you said: no one could have foreseen that.

And now the situation is what it is.

From:

enchantedsleeper

Now, part of that is due to the decision of having comments on the site, but as you said: no one could have foreseen that.

It is and it isn't - I mean, I was having this same conversation with some friends earlier, who pointed out that AO3 isn't overloaded with great features for being a social hub and discussion point, for all that it does have feedback mechanisms. It was designed to sit alongside the likes of LJ, forums, mailing lists, all of which were alive and well in 2008. But I don't think *AO3* is the reason that fandom gradually dropped away from those.

The overall internet culture has shifted, and in some ways AO3 is now considered a relic of a bygone age (I'm basing this on the coverage of the shutdown) - it's not media-heavy, it's largely text. No app, of course. And I think that shift and the way that a lot of fandom is kind of fixated on metrics and comments and kudos can be laid at the feet of social media. Plus, y'know, the shift away from internet DIY culture and understanding things like webhosting making it less common for fans to run or maintain their own thing. A lot of sites dropped off and disappeared into oblivion simply because paying hosting costs is expensive, and not everyone wants to keep a project running indefinitely 😮‍💨 I wish it hadn't been that way, but I can see why it happened.

From:

gekidasa

Oh yeah, I’m not saying ao3 is responsible for the shift, what I’m saying is that the fact that you CAN comment contributed to conversation around each specific fic moving from other places to ao3, whicch contributed to it become the mostly single place for fic

From:

duskpeterson

I think your comments on this are well timed, and I appreciate your linking to that list of fanfic sites.

From:

enchantedsleeper

Thank you very much indeed! <3 As I was browsing Tumblr last night, I came across an even more comprehensive list here: Fanfiction on the Wider Web

I considered adding it into the main post, but I like giving CuriouslyOminousRazzlingDazzle's Pillowfort post its kudos, and I think the selection there is still good. This one is so comprehensive that the creator has actually run into the issue of Tumblr's 100-link limit in a single post xD and I also think the bar is just "still online", not so much "still active", but anyway, here it is as bonus content!

Edited Date: 2026-10-31 12:54 pm (UTC)

From:

duskpeterson

Oo, thanks for that link!

One site I don't see anyone mentioning: Fictionpress.com, the originalfic companion to Fanfiction.net. A lot of its stories were originally on Fanfiction.net, before Fanfiction.net jettisoned originalfic. (Both sites seem to be intermittent at the moment, possibly because of heavy demand, but the Wayback Machine has them cached.)

Edited (Formatting error) Date: 2026-10-31 03:29 pm (UTC)

From:

enchantedsleeper

Oh yes, I know FP, and used to upload to it way back in the day! I think that omission is probably because people are focusing on fanfic hosting places and not anywhere for original fic, otherwise you'd see places like Royal Road being mentioned (mind you, I looked it up just now to check the name, and it seems like Royal Road also has fanfic based on its description?)

From:

duskpeterson

"Oh yes, I know FP, and used to upload to it way back in the day!"

Oh, cool! I never delved deeply into the FF.net/FP.com world, but I did find an originalfic series I liked a lot there.

"I think that omission is probably because people are focusing on fanfic hosting places and not anywhere for original fic"

(*Cough* Originalfic is part of fandom too *cough*)

I'm not arguing against your logic at all; originalfic tends to get dumped in discussions of fandom. However, there is online fiction that was written for fandom (it's the fifth largest fandom at AO3, last I checked), and then there's online fiction that isn't written for fandom, which I'm guessing describes most of Royal Road's offerings. Originalfic (which is a fandom term) has been part of fandom for decades; at a fanfic con, I bought a fandom-produced originalfic zine from the 1980s.

From:

yourlibrarian

I think AO3's best days are behind it, frankly. It erred in trying to be too many things to too many people. I found the decision about including original fic mystifying, and my feeds often turn up stuff that doesn't belong there, despite the very broad mandate, but the archive lacks the staff to keep up with ToS violation tickets.

There is also, of course, the unintended effect on fandom as a whole but I find this of less concern than how it's growing increasingly unmanageable at the user level. That's mostly because while some smaller sites have managed to continue, and I firmly believe in diversifying locations and options, the reality is that it's costly and risky to depend on a few individuals to manage a rapidly growing trove of content. That is also the case given that what I'd call the DIY generation of fans are literally dying out, and the sites they'd thanklessly continued to provide access to will mostly go with them.

Ultimately there's no good answer to any of it, because large places phase out sites and projects, smaller sites fail or get bought out, etc. The best option is just a variety of the kind of places where fanworks can be maintained. And I think fandom would have boomed even without AO3, and thus found a way of coalescing, whereas hardly anyone would be standing against commercialization as it does (not to mention all the other things OTW does).

From:

enchantedsleeper

Hmmm, I don't know whether I agree that including ofic on AO3 did anything to change the trajectory of the site or its usage? I haven't looked at the breakdown, admittedly, but I'm pretty sure it's still a minority of what's on AO3. I also don't think it necessarily engenders more TOS-breaking stuff since if ofic weren't allowed, people would definitely still be trying to post it. But I wholeheartedly agree on your point about there not being enough volunteer power to keep on top of the Archive's scale and moderate it 😮‍💨 To say nothing of the coding maintenance demands.

But the only way I can think that we could have avoided this situation is if AO3 were to put some kind of a cap on its own size and go "look, we can practically support this much but no more" and while that might have been rational, it would go against everything that AO3 stands for in terms of providing a home for as many works/users as possible 😮‍💨 Particularly when other sites shut their doors and certain parts of the world are inhospitable to fic. So, I can't really imagine a scenario in which we didn't end up here... Besides which, I think for a while the mindset was that more donations would make everything else that was needed possible, even though in practice it turned out that funds are little help when the biggest bottleneck is people power and time. :/

Anyway, yes, I think you're right that if not AO3, another place would probably have wound up serving as fandom's Big Hub, and not a pro-fandom nonprofit - well, I suppose it would be FF.net, which already was that, but in a way that was always at its core problematic. Maybe more hip commercial challengers would have sprung up and tried to vie for fans' interest and enthusiasm and succeeded because of the lack of an AO3 to offer a solid, writer-friendly alternative. Now that I think about it, we probably only saw off the ones that did pop up over the years because of the OTW existing and the mindset it encouraged of fans banding together to defend their own interests.

From:

yourlibrarian

even though in practice it turned out that funds are little help when the biggest bottleneck is people power and time. :/

Yes and no -- as in, it is absolutely the problem that's existed for some 10 years now. However more money could help that in providing some paid positions (especially for Systems personnel and a managing director). However it would have to be a hugely increased level of donation activity for that to work and I just don't see it happening.

Not that Pillowfort was an equivalent model, but I look at how it was unable to survive on the donation model despite having quite a few devoted users (and not actually being a non-profit, and thus restricted in how it developed revenues). I think OTW could qualify for grants given its forms of cultural activity more than a place like Pillowfort ever could, but those tend to be better for one-time or limited expenses, not salaries.

From:

enchantedsleeper

Oh yes, absolutely - like you said, it would just have to be an exponentially greater amount of funds and be replenishable 😮‍💨

And I think Pillowfort is not a bad comparison in the sense that they *did* have actual salaries to pay, so, that just goes to show how much more difficult it is when you need to cover those kinds of expenses. While AO3 brings in more in its donation drives, that's very much predicated on only having two per year. And who knows how quickly the reserve would get eaten into with multiple salaries to pay 😕 So, yeah. It is remarkable that Pillowfort kept that up for as long as it did. I know that Julia was upset that the site lost momentum with the security issues of 2021, but the flip side of that is that it did keep the site's scale relatively constrained? I think the costs would have been higher otherwise.

You mentioned grants - I actually had a fleeting thought about how the OTW could use its funds to help diversify the options for fandom at large, although it would definitely take some logistical work, but what if there were a centralised fund that were created to allocate support to other archives for hosting costs and hardware? And you could "apply" to it for a grant? Even though peeps who donate to the OTW do want to support the work of the OTW (and specifically, most of the time, AO3), if this were a known initiative and got buy-in from fandom, then I don't think there'd be anything wrong with diverting some donation money towards it so that it could be "paid forward" to non-AO3 archives. Supporting the sustainability of fandom and also taking some of the pressure off AO3! Of course, there'd have to be the will to put it forward and organise it, and I doubt that part would happen, but I like the idea of it.

From:

yourlibrarian

Ah, I meant that the OTW could itself be partially funded with grants. Chances are they'd need to use that for infrastructure or software subscriptions, and then would need to use the fundraising for salaries.

I don't think they could actually do that with their funds, grant it to other entities? I remember there has often been someone suggesting that OTW has gone "over" its fundraising goals and should give that money to other non-profits and had it explained that it's not possible for legal reasons.

From:

enchantedsleeper

Oh, sure, I got that! It was just a related thought that was sparked off. I think that it would need the OTW to establish a fund for that purpose first and make clear that money is going to that - or possibly raise donations specifically for that - in order for it to work, rather than it being about just giving away extra randomly, since on top of the legal issues it would probably annoy people who had donated to support the Org. But anyway, it's not a project I can imagine anyone investing the time into, I just think it would be cool. xD

Edited Date: 2026-11-02 09:52 pm (UTC)

From:

yourlibrarian

I agree, it would be a good thing for the fannish ecosystem 🙂

From:

quillpunk

yeah the internet is far more ephemeral than one thinks and this is a good reminder OTL. more baskets is always a good thing!

From:

enchantedsleeper

More baskets, and hopefully more people using each basket so that other people will also want to keep their stuff in the basket... okay the simile got away from me but I'm sure you feel my point 😆

From:

arimamary

Archiving and crossposting takes WAY more time than it seems. My current pipeline is DW -> AO3 -> website archive.

The woes never end...

From:

enchantedsleeper

Good on you for covering multiple bases! Yes, I find posting up a work in *one* place tiring sometimes, never mind multiple 😅 I'd like to be in the habit of archiving my works as I create them, but then I'm also trying to catch up with older ones, and I tend to work in bursts when I feel motivated.

Clearly the answer is to stop creating new works that add to the backlog 😆

From:

tinkaton

ohhh I didn't even think about summaries/tags/titles not being anywhere... I have like 99% of my actual fic posted or saved elsewhere, but I don't go back and record the metadata in my google docs or whatever... guess when AO3 comes back I should download copies of all my fics.

I wish I had more energy for archiving my stuff elsewhere, I've been posting my current fic to DW but I keep thinking of making like, a neocities for ALL my fic ever posted and then never get around to it. I'm very slowly working on archiving my fanmixes and still am not done yet. 😩

From:

enchantedsleeper

Yeah, I didn't think about it at all! When I've been adding works to my personal archive, I always have the published version on FF.net or AO3 or wherever to copy the summaries and author's notes from, so it's fine 😅 I'm also thinking of making sure I have copies downloaded, yeah ^^;

And absolute mood! I've added a few more to SquidgeWorld, but it's something I have enthusiasm for in bursts xD Having fic in even one non-AO3 place is a good idea, though! I've been thinking about adding mine to DW too after enjoying a number of fics on someone's journal today, but the idea of adding another place to the list is tiring xD Good luck with your fanmix archiving! <3

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Profile

enchantedsleeper

November 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Nov. 11th, 2026 07:20 pm

enchantedsleeper