Illustration by Lexi Forman, Cartoonist.
If you think about your favorite website, you might consider an intuitive interface with seamless features and sleek design. Archive of Our Own is anything but that.
Better-known as AO3, the 2007 fan fiction website only exited its beta stage this past April. The website is filled with jumbled text and tags that can make it difficult to navigate, yet to the 11 million registered users, that’s exactly what makes it appealing.
“I think fan fiction has a certain reputation that makes it seem kind of weird to get into…But for some people, it's their intro to creative writing. I have a few creative writing friends, and that's always a topic that gets brought up in our conversations,” said sophomore graphic design major Emma Salas. “Can (fan fiction) go a little sideways sometimes? Yeah. Can it get a little weird sometimes? Yeah. But that's the internet.”
On Oct. 29, AO3 readers were shocked when they woke up to find that the site was shut down. While this is somewhat common with regular maintenance shutdowns on the site, the AO3 Status page on Twitter announced that the shutdown was due to a security breach and could last two to four weeks.
Since then, fanfic readers have posted countless videos reacting to the shutdown, dramatically responding to not being able to access the site’s 18 million works in the coming weeks. With even the official Democrats TikTok posting about the shutdown to motivate voter turnout, the two to four week security breach response has turned into a re-appraisal of AO3’s importance in online culture.
“There's kind of two sides of it, where part of me is like, ‘I should be able to be okay without fan fiction for a while.’ But it's kind of crazy that it is this long, because I'm worried about what this threat was,” said senior animation and visual effects major Rowan Byrne, who is writing their honors capstone paper on fan fiction communities. “I see people online trading downloaded fan fictions like drug deals, people are going kind of crazy.”
While fan fiction has been popular since the early days of the internet, even longer with the form’s origins in “Star Trek” fan magazines, AO3 has become especially popular in recent years, becoming the 56th most used website in the world. Properties like “Heated Rivalry,” originating as Marvel fan fiction, have created a multitude of pathways towards monetary value for fanfic writers.
However, to many readers, opening the floodgates to monetization of fan fiction is a slippery slope. While other fan fiction websites such as Wattpad have introduced ads onto the website, AO3 has firmly resisted this trend, remaining an ad-free website and relying on user donations to stay running.
“There's this big notion within fan fiction of commerciality and how you're not really supposed to make money off of fan fiction,” said Byrne. “Part of it is like because you don't want to get persecuted by the copyright holders and stuff, but it’s also just this idea that you're (writing) for the love of it and for the community aspect, making money off of it kind of changed that…also with Wattpad since they want to run ads, they have more censorship of things you can and can't post.”
With minimal censorship on AO3, writers are free to let their creativity run free. With a community primarily made up of women and queer people, marginalized groups have claimed fandom spaces as an art form of free expression.
“I just think fan fiction is important in a time like this because there's so much going on in the world, and people want an escape from that,” said Zoe Loschin, a film production major at California State University, Northridge. “There's a lot of marginalization in politics, and I think having that space and using fan fiction as a way to escape from real world issues, and to kind of have your own little fantasy world, I think that's important for people.”
In some countries, the site is a rare space freed from government censorship, as AO3 is one of few websites featuring queer content that remained operational after a 2022 “LGBTQ propaganda” law passed in Russia. As these sites often feature explicit content, fan fiction has been the target of regime censorship, with the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) in the U.S. similarly threatening predominantly queer sites like AO3.
Many have speculated that AO3 is particularly targeted in this cyberattack because of its queer community, although without further information, there is little evidence to support this. The stories on AO3 aren’t always the most accessible, with “smut” writing as a popular subcategory. Yet, this is the freeing nature of writing and reading fan fiction instead of conventionally published works.
“I think with smut, when written by women and queer people in general, there is an inherent (denial) of embedded violence against women, which is not the same in media created by men. There is a different kind of objectification, it's just not as inherently misogynistic,” said senior film and media studies major Lucy Low. “Some smut does lean more into BDSM, but it is much more in the consent and the safety…I had a conversation a while back with a friend (about) why so many women like reading gay smut. I think a large part of that is because there is no risk that a woman is going to be hurt.”
One of the site’s largest fandoms, the Marauders, is based on the “Harry Potter” books, with MsKingBean89’s “All the Young Dudes” receiving over 21 million views. As the queer fanbase of the “Harry Potter” franchise reconciles with author J.K. Rowling’s transphobic rhetoric online, many have migrated to AO3 and fan fiction. Writing stories that take the Wizarding World in drastically new directions, AO3 offers an avenue to continue interacting with the beloved and nostalgic property without the level of political baggage tied to the official books or films.
“I think that there is something about fan fiction itself that feels like a marginalized community, because it's always been this sort of nontraditional form of publishing,” said Byrne. “If you're a person who doesn't see themselves in published work, then you might see yourself or be able to represent yourself in this sort of nontraditional space. You're kind of stealing from the authority of the societal standards of the copyright holders and how media is traditionally engaged with. You're sort of engaging with it in this different rebellious way.”
While the source of the breach is still up for speculation, many have developed theories that AI might be behind the breach. In the aftermath of a month filled with AI security breaches, dubbed “Black October” by pundits, this seems like a likely possibility. On AO3 itself, the past year has seen an influx of AI-generated fan fiction. AO3 users have expressed concern with how technology of a new internet age is interacting with this relic of archaic old-internet fandom.
“AI obviously tries to imitate things that are human, and it's really unfortunate that it's slowly encroaching its way into the fan fiction space, especially because people take the time to sit down and write these stories,” said junior education major Halen Moon. “If you've ever read like a sign off on an AO3 fic where it's like, ‘Hey guys, sorry I've been gone for three months. I've literally been in jail, but I'm still back to write this,’ that’s so deeply human. If they're shutting down for the purpose of making sure AI cannot encroach on that space, I think that's really important.”
Until the end of the two to four week maintenance, it’s unlikely that the source of the shutdown will be discovered, but some users are already fearing the worst, with AO3’s Reddit speculating the site could be down for good. However, as the community bands together in its absence, the importance of AO3 is clearer than ever.
“AO3 exists more like a MySpace or a Tumblr where it does just feel like you can post whatever — and I mean whatever. People might read it, they might not, but there's just no money involved. This isn't for the masses. This is for my community,” said Low. “If Reddit is right and AO3 is shut down for good, I do not think a site can come in and replace it. I think this kind of community will just be lost for quite a while, which is a real bummer.”