Archive Of Our Own - Blog Posts

I love how everyone uses the metaphorical comparison of ao3 maintenance to war period

YES MY BABY (ao3) HAS FINALLY RETURNED FROM THE HORRID TRENCHES (maintenance)

me going on ao3 like a dumbass forgetting the maintenance is going on then crying about it on tumblr

actually screaming rn HALF OF AUGUST HAS PASSED AND IVE ONLY FINISHED 7 FICS OUT OF 30 OF SICKTEMBER AAAAAAA

me when im trying to write something original for my sickfics but each one has the same kind of ending

IVE REACHED 50 KUDOS YAYAYAYAYA

funni number on my most popular fic!!

im sure there are so many posts about this already, but dear god. wattpad's tagging system is so infuriating and pathetically inferior to ao3's that it makes me cry

genuinely have no idea how i survived those barren lands before i made the switch to civilization

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Summary: Jude found herself to be allied with Madoc to ensure Balekin didn't end up on the throne—but of course, he had his own demands as Jude had hers.

Fic suggested by @imagaintionlover1234

(PS: The date's messed up and is supposed to be August 2nd, but I made a draft for the fic yesterday, so it states 1st of August. Did you know I'm a dumbass?)

(UPDATE I FIGURED OUT HOW TO FIX THE DATE!! I didn't even know we could manually do that on Ao3??)

update: ive finished day two!! yay me?

me when I've been trying to write fics in advance for sicktember but I've only finished one out of THIRTY in the time period of a few weeks

chat am I cooked

me when I've been trying to write fics in advance for sicktember but I've only finished one out of THIRTY in the time period of a few weeks

chat am I cooked

Well I have a folk of the air idea, what if Cardan made Jude his consort and Madoc his seneschal after he is crowned king, Jude still has power over him, but he makes her his consort and she agrees only so she can secure her brother’s place. Cardan tries to win Jude’s trust but she doesn’t trust him

this is really interesting! although if madoc is made seneschal, I wonder who the general (or whatever it is called) would be. also, the whole reason jude made cardan the king was so madoc wouldn't rule through oak. and, jude being cardan's seneschal allowed her some form of power over the people, but being his consort wouldn't really bring her much benefit? consort directly does mean being cardan's SO (or yk i just can't find the term I'm looking for), which jude would be really against

unless I'm interpreting it wrong, ofc. feel free to provide some clarification! it's a really fun idea but I'm not sure how I would write it practically with explanation

Do you plan to write folk of the air fanfics?

ooo fun question!! honestly I would love to write jude x cardan but thinking of ideas can be a bit difficult if you know what I mean 😅

if you have anything in your mind that you'd like to see, feel free to suggest! no guarantees but I'd like to try :'D

YALLL guess who's running to ao3 after having read the folk of the air trilogy!?

starts to prepare for my first sicktember early since the entire first half of the month is occupied by mid terms

hai everyone! surpriseeee I'm a writer

feel free to check out my kristoph/reader fic (2nd person POV, so the reader is gender ambiguous). just subtle romance :3

*decides to scroll through tumblr's ao3 tag*

AO3, MY DEAR DARLING LOVE OF MY LIFE, UPDATED EARLIER?!?!?!?!

HUH, WHAT, QUOI, WAS, QUE, NANI???

ao3 maintenance shut down has literally given me the perfect opportunity to complete my holiday homework, but knowing my procrastinating ass I'll waste it all reading my downloaded fics *facepalm*

2 HOURS BEFORE SHUTDOWN!! download all your to-read fics, grab a blanket and get snuggly, cuz the rest of the 10 hours will be very difficult

I feel like I'm dreaming

Rare footage of the donation bar on ao3 half full

Rare footage of the donation bar on ao3 half full

OTW donation gift got lost in the mail? Any suggestions appreciated.

Hey, just putting this out there in case someone has a suggestion. So I donated to ao3 during the last donation thing, and I chose a donation gift, and got tracking information not long after. It apparently shipped on the 21st, and was supposed to arrive on the 28th. However, the tracking page has changed to say it's being shipped to another facility and will be arriving late? And it doesn't say what facility it's being sent to. I suspect it may be lost in the mail, maybe? It's only a couple days late, but I don't want to delay checking on the issue. I was wondering if anyone knows if there's someone I could contact about that? I'm pretty sure that if a package gets lost in the mail you are supposed to contact the shipper about that, but I don't know if the otw works like that? Anyone else have an experience like this? Or any suggestions?

For those new to AO3

Authors can see your bookmarks as a default. You have to mark them as private if you don't want authors to see them. There is an argument that bookmarks are a reader's space, but if you don't want authors to see what you are saying, make the bookmark private.

There is no algorithm on AO3. Seriously. It does not exist. Sorting by kudos, comments, length, etc. is the closest thing you will get. It is very much a curate your experience situation. Embrace it because you never know what gems you'll find if you give less popular fics a chance.

Depending on who you ask, kudos are not a good metric to judge a fic on anymore. As to if they ever were is, again, depending on who you ask. There is a spider/web crawler (we call it the kudos bot) who gives a bunch of guest kudos to fics. We cannot summon it and we cannot remove the kudos. At best, we can set our fics to private. So, if you see a fic with way more kudos than views, that's why. Many of us do not want these kudos, but we have to live with them.

Concrit (constructive criticism) is divisive because this is a hobby for many people. There is a culture on AO3 for concrit to be opt-in instead of opt-out, but not everyone subscribes to that. If you do not see an author's note saying concrit is OK, you can ask if it's OK. If they don't say anything, take it as a 'no'. If the author is cool with concrit, great. Concrit away.

Asking for updates is also divisive. Some people want/need that encouragement and some don't. Leaving a polite 'can't wait for the next chapter' is totally fine. If you ask for an update and the author asks you not to, please respect their wishes. You don't know what else is going on behind that screen. We all use fic for our own reasons and it's impossible to tell if that was someone's project to forget about things that they don't want to deal with.

There is a difference between A/B and A&B. A/B is for shipping and A&B is for non-shipping relationships (such as platonic and familial relationships or bullying or work situations). Please tag accordingly and please do not accuse people of writing shippy fic when they tagged it A&B.

Comment totals on AO3 count author responses. It doesn't make a distinction between a response and a new comment thread. Comment thread counts are in the author's stats page only available to them. Authors are not inflating their comment counts by responding to get more views. They are just trying to interact with people who support them.

Not all authors respond to comments. For many older fans, this can be due to years of harassment in fandom, witnessing friends being harassed, not having time, etc. etc. Their reasons are their own and it does not mean you are a bad person or said something wrong if they don't respond to you nor does it say anything about them. Authors do not owe you interaction just as you do not owe them comments. It's your prerogative if you only want to leave comments on fics where the author answers back, but it does not mean the author isn't grateful or doesn't care. You do not know what else is going on.

You cannot take a kudos back. Seriously. It's permanent. If that means you want to wait until a fic is finished to leave a kudos, that's totally fine. To authors, if you see a bunch of comments and views, but few kudos, this is probably the reason. It does not mean your fic is bad; it just means readers are holding kudos back until the fic is finished, which is perfectly legitimate.

Please read author's notes at the beginning and end of chapter updates. This is where authors are The Most Likely to tell you if there has been a change in their update schedule, if they made changes to previous chapters, explained a certain choice they made, etc. Same with checking the tags thoroughly before reading a fic. Most authors take tagging and warning/updating readers very seriously and the spaces they can do it in are the author's notes and the tags.

Because there are so many people from so many cultures on AO3, the categorizing of fics may not be totally even across the board. Tagging might have discrepancies. For instance: some people might view smut as M and not E depending on the level of detail; some might even view it as T. Please exercise caution and look at tags carefully when clicking on a fic. If you come across something you do not like, the back button is always an option.

There is a hard limit of 75 tags on fics, so not all characters that appear in a fic are likely to be tagged. For many of us, we only tag major players, major ships/&-relationships, and background relationships as a courtesy and save the rest of our tags for known triggers and making it easier for people to find our fics by tagging the tropes we use and certain parts of the content (such as 'AU where A loses their voice').

If you hate a character or a ship or a certain trope or have certain triggers, there is nothing wrong with asking a fandom friend for recommendations. If anything, we probably should bring back fic rec lists and you could be doing an amazing service for fandom if you start making one based on your preferences. Don't rely purely on other platforms to lead you to amazing fics; you never know how that person is finding fics and they could be missing out on some really amazing ones.

AO3 currently does not have a messaging system and many users prefer it that way. I am not positive what the future holds, but if any author wants you to get in contact, they will probably leave other socials in their notes or on their profile. They might even tell you to contact them in a comment response. You can absolutely respond to them on other social media platforms and talk fics or art or fandom. The AO3 lack of messaging is a comfort for many people because of previous experiences regarding harassment and, for some, that's the closest thing to a social media that they have. Some fandoms are more than 40 years old and not all of it has been positive for everyone.

Please do not leave 'placeholder' ideas in the fic tags. By this I mean, 'here's an idea I plan to write. Let me know if you like it!' and there's one or two sentences but no actual fic. AO3 is not social media. You can be reported for this and the post taken down as per AO3's guidelines. Fic, meta, and art are welcome on AO3. A plan to write a fic is not.

Lastly, please enjoy your time on AO3. It is an archive that dedicates itself to preserving fandom works, whether we agree with those works or not.

Was too late for the actual poll but holy shit I'm so happy I still saw this

I never looked at the statistics before now and the joy that flooded through me felt tingly

I may cry

46, 364 hits????

Holy shit?? Fucking hell I love each and every one of you that contributed to that, because it's actually even more than that??? Those who end up only reading them here on tumblr instead isn't counted but it's counted in my heart dammit

KISSES AND HUGS TO EVERYONE WHO READ THEM I LOVE YOU💜💜💜

authors! go to your ao3 dashboard, click on statistics, look at your totals and tell me how many hits you have?

This is what it feels like being torn apart LIMB BY LIMB

AO3 Planned Downtime

The Archive of Our Own will be down for about 10 hours of maintenance between 07:00 UTC and 17:00 UTC (check what time that is for you). This downtime will allow our AD&T and Systems teams to prepare our search database for a software update.

Date: 07:00 UTC, June 29, 2024

The “That’s immoral you shouldn’t write that, we need to get that taken down” discourse on tiktok right now is PISSING ME OFFF

Wdym you want censorship for a literal ARCHIVE are you fucking stupid

Ao3 was literally founded to preserve works that were largely getting taken down due to censorship

Censorship is the opposite of what Archive of Our Own stands for

The TAGS and WARNINGS are there for a REASON. Use them and stop complaining

The universal rule—don’t like, don’t read

It’s THAT simple

Hidden Desire

My second contribution to @zolo-san’s 1k ZoSan Community Collab!

Written using @zorosleftankle’s Prompt/Headcanon: Obsessed with Sanji being into Zoro and secretly finding him hot but he only acts on it when he’s drunk but never remembers it so he still acts like it’s a secret

Zoro already knows but goes along with it because if that’s what makes the cook happy and how he can mentally deal with being into the sexiest swordsman then he’s fine with it 😎

Summary:

What happens when Sanji gets drunk?

Certainly a lot of messing around and fun to be had with the crew, that’s a given, but then there’s also Zoro, who Sanji would never, ever, admit his attraction to. Right?

Or;

Sanji has the worst case of denial. Zoro goes along with a lot to keep him happy.

Here’s a little sneak peak!

Excerpt:

His cool, steel grey eyes warming, revealing the flecks of gold in them when he smiles and the sun hits them just right. His teeth — still sharp and dangerous — surrounded by a grin so genuine it makes Sanji’s stomach ache and his toes curl.

This is how he ends up lying in the grass on Sunny’s deck. Zoro is there, leaning back on his elbows as he watches the crew with that warm fondness that seems to slip through the cracks more and more with every day, and Sanji is helplessly drawn to him like a moth to flame.

He groans, overwhelmed by how attractive Zoro is, and promptly begins gently kicking him in the head. It only seems natural that Sanji return the headache thinking about Zoro’s good looks always affords him.

Zoro raises a brow at him, but he doesn’t retaliate beyond grabbing Sanji’s boot to halt his gentle assault. “What do you want, Cook?”

Sanji frowns, makes a weak attempt to pull his leg back, then gives up entirely too easily. Something about the way Zoro is holding him feels nice. “You’re pissing me off.”

Zoro rolls his eye. “And how’s that?”

“Sitting there, smiling, looking all hot and unbothered while you make my insides stir. You’re not even trying. It’s annoying.”

Zoro actually laughs at that. His fingers curl around Sanji’s left ankle, thumbing over the jut of bone there. Sanji shudders, eyes fluttering as he watches that calloused thumb drag soft patterns over his skin.

“Oh, is that all?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Sanji shrugs noncommittally. He’s a little distracted.

Zoro tugs. Sanji goes easily, allowing himself to be yanked into place at Zoro’s side.

Zoro puts his drink down in the grass beside them, then turns so that he’s leaning into Sanji’s space; Sanji’s legs bracketing his hips, Zoro’s head hovering above his chest as those rough, strong fingers curve around his calve in a touch so gentle Sanji actually shivers and arches into it.

“If I didn’t know any better, Curls, I’d think you were hitting on me.” There’s a conspiratorial tug to his lips, like there’s a joke between them that Sanji is forgetting the context to, but he doesn’t care. Not when Zoro’s here, looking hot as all hell, and is halfway atop him.

Let me know what you think so far. The rest can be found here! Hope you enjoy!

ao3 writer: *posts the new chapter they literally wrote*

also ao3 writer in the end notes: what i can’t believe my characters would do that?? thats literally crazy dude