Archive of Our Own
archiveofourown.org
archiveofourown.org
I also love another of their programs, Fanlore[0], a treasure trove of obscure internet fanfiction works, social groupings, and tropes. Sort of a combination oral history + TVTropes-esque fanfic breakdown.
Fanfiction is a beautiful thing and a great way to stretch creative writing muscles that can be helpful by being a bit less of a blank canvas than needing to invent characters and locations. Of course, a TON of fanfiction does invent, liberally, but I've seen people insist they can't write creatively, then make something beautiful when you ask them to rewrite a scene in their favorite show or book that they were disappointed with and boom, they just wrote their first fix-it fic[1].
Also, praise be for AO3 having no news feed/algorithm, and instead an incredibly intricate tagging system. Makes it easy to find what you want, avoid what you don't (see free speech commitment), and feel liberated from algorithmic exhaustion.
Isn’t there an “original work” category?
Yeah, now you have a worse problem. A few people like the first chapter you posted, now "oh shit I'd better come up with something good".
A curse on the OP. I was trying so hard to stop thinking about this today.
The idea that a company could "own" a story and the characters within is recent. Very recent.
IMO, AO3 continues the human tradition of retelling stories, and we should celebrate that.
By this logic, in 2005 we’d see “scammers” release the original 1985 Super Mario Bros. for modern systems, three years after Sunshine. No consumers would be confused by that. Perhaps a hypothetical Granny gets confused, but a hypothetical Granny also gets confused in that era by buying a used copy of 64.
If the cons that supposedly outweigh the pros of creative freedom and preservation of our culture is old people being slightly confused at Christmas, then I must ask what kind of bizarre gifts did your grandparents confuse at Christmas time?
Confusing. Would even prefer a commented crawl delay that specifies in human language since then I could special-case it.
i worked on a project a long time ago and downloaded a bunch of it
It’s acceptable on AO3 to write a narrative description of a real person’s actual abuse, including their personal information (see II.F.4.a), and it only “may result in a judgment of harassment” if also the author specifically makes it available to the victim.
The policy is unsafe by design.
No matter what AO3 thinks, in many countries this immediately crosses the line into criminal harassment.
As for the rest - the fanfic community has been among the loudest criticising AI writing for 'stealing from real artists', which is... not exactly self-aware.