TTFeb: Truly a ramble on AO3

[superborb]

china_shop prompted: Something about AO3?

Just to uh, calibrate expectations: this is an observational ramble, without a thesis.

From my time and experiences in fic fandom, AO3 represents a particularly unique phenomenon: a centralized repository that nearly everyone uses. You might think, oh, but FFN was just as dominant, but no! For at that time, a significant portion of anime fandom resided on private or communal websites; some of those websites may have encapsulated entire canons or ships, or we might count mediaminer, which served as an alternative FFN-like archive for anime fandom. And jpop and kpop fandom was so locked down that I don't think any of it really lived on FFN. Alternatively, you might argue from the other direction: significant portions of fic fandom live on Wattpad or scattered on threadfics on twitter or one offs on tumblr etc etc. True! But the gravity of fic fandom is towards AO3, in a way that no other archive managed /in my experience/.

This has significant upsides: for all the lack of an API, encoding troubles, tagging battles, a centralized interface is so much easier to navigate. You can just reskin everything permanently! You can easily navigate to all the works by an author without having to figure out where their masterlist is, or how they tagged their fics in their LJ. And it's significantly easier for authors to navigate too, having to figure out how to upload once and not fighting html unless they want to.

On the other hand... centralization shoves everyone together and makes it hard to establish norms and boundaries. Having no social media directly attached makes some problems easier (harassment is harder and it's easier to disengage), but some problems harder (really difficult to establish norms when there's no place everyone hangs out hmm). And I say boundaries because it's really clear that different circles of fandom have wildly different norms-- and now we've all been shoved together and those edges are sharp. How much easier would it be to avoid t/b wank if we just had separate websites / comms / mailing lists we hung out on? (Though that's also a tumblr-and-twitter caused problem, not unique to AO3.)

Also we come to the problem with centralization that it makes it hard for alternatives to spring up. If people still regularly posted their fic elsewhere, would those places be more vibrant from the extra foot traffic? Yeah, I know there are AO3 clones running around etc, but would fandom be more flexible from the choices offered? Maybe not, fandom is so big now that it seems that there ought to be enough people who'd try out a new platform and bud off if it offered something better. But are people still interested in trying new ways to post fic? People are dissatisfied with any given social media platform, so move from tumblr to twitter to discord, but every complaint about AO3 and suggestion to 'make something new' tends to be very... AO3 like in structure. Add tags! Add warnings! Change how fandoms are grouped! Get rid of tags!

(OK I am still partial to June's suggestion of getting rid of all stats like things to make AO3 a more pure repository of fic.)

Still, with fandom scattered on social media, it's nice to have one place where people can mingle, such as it is. It used to be (...still is, apparently) that to get on jpop LJ comms, you'd have to submit an essay. With people increasingly turning to more closed social media (private discords, locked twitters) (just in my observation, obviously), AO3 remaining public is nice to serve as a connectivity point between all these different fandom circles, even if it sometimes feels like, once again, you have to submit an essay to join.

Back to masterlist <- Also, there's still space if people want to give prompts! 

Comments

[kilerkki]

I write in a long-running collaborative fic environment that spun off from the old LJ-style RP comms, and for years now (since Insanejournal got shaky) we've been hosted on our own Wordpress-built website. It's a very different environment to AO3--much more maneuverable but also more isolated; we have a tiny fanbase of our own dedicated readers but nothing like the volume we'd probably get on AO3.

Occasionally readers ask why we're not also cross-posting to AO3; I don't know that I have a great answer aside from the difficulty of moving over several million words, but... I like the environment we've built. I like AO3 for what it is, but it's Fandom's Archive, not mine. And some some projects, it really is good to have a place of one's own.

[superborb]

Yeah, and AFAIK, there's a healthy DWRP community still going on, which doesn't usually make its way to AO3 either. (Though your stuff is tilted more heavily towards fic than the more ephemeral styles of RP tend to be.) So there's all sorts of fannishness, even if limited towards fic, that doesn't get captured on AO3 at all.

Still! It's hard to build that community in a separate place from AO3 in the current environment-- and I bet it would be harder now than it was in the past, when AO3 was not quite so central.

[kilerkki]

Oh yes, absolutely. I was writing with these RP friends years before AO3 existed; I don't know that the same sort of environment exists nowadays for folks who get their start in AO3 instead of meeting on FFN and then immediately moving off because that platform is a hellsite!

[superborb]

I do think people still meet on AO3! So there's that at least.

[china_shop]

AO3 represents a particularly unique phenomenon: a centralized repository that nearly everyone uses.

*nodnod* This is my feeling, too. I used to post my fic to LJ and my own privately hosted website, but after the advent of AO3, I just moved everything wholesale over to there. (I don't think I ever posted to FFN? I may be wrong about that, though.) The only thing I really miss is trawling through referral logs for links to recs and mentions. :-)

And I say boundaries because it's really clear that different circles of fandom have wildly different norms-- and now we've all been shoved together and those edges are sharp.

That's such a good point. I do all my fanning on Dreamwidth and in email, so AO3 comments are probably the only place where I interact with people from other sites, and mostly that's great, but occasionally I'm all, "I don't have any idea how to interpret those emoji!" :-)

With people increasingly turning to more closed social media (private discords, locked twitters) (just in my observation, obviously), AO3 remaining public is nice to serve as a connectivity point between all these different fandom circles, even if it sometimes feels like, once again, you have to submit an essay to join.

More great points. *appreciates*

I enjoyed your thoughts on this a lot. Thanks!! :-D

[superborb]

Yeah, the bookmarks aspect of AO3 is quite weak-- and it's so hard to trace back where a rec clearly happened! Because it's not so public anymore, and like, tumblr and twitter are hard to search for that, and discord impossible.

Email! I tried doing fannish stuff via email but I could never make it happen for more than a few months. I think I need the passive aspect (maybe a group email thread would have worked?)

LOL at the emoji though; I haven't ever really figured it out and I know it makes me read as less friendly to some.

[momijizukamori]

I'm not sure there *are* that many ao3 clones, actually - I only know of one using the ao3 codebase. I think maybe one option for a happy medium would be a single big domain but with like, the ability to apply for a standalone archive site, scoped however you want (so like a fandom-specific archive, or a ship-specific archive or whatever), hosted on that larger domain. It'd require a codebase that's easier to stand up than ao3 is currently, though. The big downside to all the personal sites and archives is that they're super-ephemeral - very few people are still paying for to domains they had twenty years ago.

[superborb]

Yeah, I was referring to like, the AO3 clone, FFN, Wattpad, etc etc, just other places that people are posting fic, but are still trying to be central repos in the same way AO3 does?

And a lot of people were on geocities and angelfire etc and those obviously didn't stay up. Definitely one thing AO3 offers is that continuity (or attempts to offer).

[momijizukamori]

Weirdly, I think Angelfire is still up - though apparently you can't get a free account any more. But geocities was always more popular, honestly.

[superborb]

Oooh you're right, those links are still working! But yeah, it's just not reliable.

(But again the argument of being able to control your servers blah blah)

[momijizukamori]

Yup yup :c I think most of the ones I've found vanished were on private hosting - either the person's own or a friend's. And even there like... I've held on to my main domain pretty solidly since.... /checks/ 2002, apparently, but I've shifted hosting providers and moved sites around (or taken them offline because insecure PHP got hacked and attracted spammers), so there are plenty of dead links.

[superborb]

And web archive is great and all, but it's fundamentally not a living website anymore lol.

[chestnut_pod]

I am pretty active in the singular still-running Tolkienfic archive that's not AO3 -- a fandom-specific archive, in this economy?? yes -- and am always amazed by the amount of people actively posting, and the amount of innovation that goes on there. Hosting their own podfic! Built-in podfic streaming! A really different warning/tagging system! Nested reference materials!

But honestly… the community is almost entirely separate from the archive itself these days. The group of people who would call themselves that archive's community interact almost entirely on Discord and Dreamwidth, and everyone, without exception, crossposts to AO3. It's interesting stuff! New members come all the time, but always from AO3-land. It seems really doubtful that it could have kept going without that big pillar.

[superborb]

Oh, that's so interesting that people come in from AO3. I guess supporting my point about AO3 serving to connect communities because of its centralization haha.

It's usually been true that people wouldn't interact directly through the fandom specific fic archives, unless there was a forum attached, so I suppose it's not very different that people are interacting on Discord and DW...

I'm glad it exists and is thriving! That's so cool.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I think you made a good point there! This was a very interesting read and I’m enjoying all the comments :)

[adevyish]

i think the only time i really see new interesting ways to post fic are fics that cannot fit ao3’s format — people were doing interactive novels for saso, for example. (i am fascinated by the streaming podfics mentioned by chestnut_pod!) i’ve also seen image-heavy social media AUs xposted onto ao3 that were originally written for twitter, and although i read them on ao3, they were clearly made for twitter and i suspect would flow better read on twitter.

depending on the fandom sometimes my main interaction with that fandom is commenting on fics on ao3. it’s a bit of a time management thing and a bit of a fourth wall thing; i don’t want to follow fic authors on twitter never mind joining some ship discord. (i don’t even follow celebs i can recite the birthdays of on social media!) in that sense ao3 is nice because i can be very minimally involved and still read fics, but i also find it difficult to get back into watchalong meta fandom because i haven’t done that for years.

[superborb]

That's true, and also I was careful to specify 'fic' fandom because of course podfic and vidders and artists don't have AO3 as as strong a center of gravity.

Sometimes fandom seems so much bigger nowadays, but I wonder if it's just that it's easier to have that mode of interaction-- or even less, just kudosing. Because before, there seemed to be a bigger gap between purely lurking and being at all involved, given the onus of making an account and such.

[issenllo]

I haven't posted to FFN in years and I don't think I even remember my password >_>

Yes, it's pretty nice to have one (mostly?) centralised point for fanfic, but it's so massive and discussion for fandom-ly things feels pretty disjointed. Which takes a bit of getting used to, because it's not as easy to discuss a fic the way it used to be on lj - I just feel like I'm posting into a void, really.

[superborb]

Yeah, a lot of modern socmed seems very-- void like.

[silveredeye]

not fighting html unless they want to.

As an author who does habitually fight html, because I Do Not Trust copy-pasting text into the rich text field and hoping all the html tags will be correct... I have been called out. :D

This was interesting to read, and I definitely feel the centrality of AO3. I... am not sure whether I would be in fandom as we know it without AO3 - I'm old enough that I *should* belong to the LJ-and-FFN generation of fans, but back then I occasionally read fic on FFN and posted absolutely nowhere. I think I only started being active once I discovered fic on AO3 and gifsets on Tumblr.

And yeah, I really like that AO3 is the one place we can all mingle. Most of my current main fandom is on Twitter and in two(?) large Discord servers. I am allergic to the idea of an unlocked Twitter (have seen too many context collapse events). Given that I become an awkward potato when there are more than, like, 15 people in a party... a Discord server of hundreds of people is not a place I know how to socialize in. But we all go to AO3! I see their fic, they see mine, sometimes we comment. I'm not entirely a DW hermit. :D

I wonder whether people would be more open to AO3 alternatives if there were no stats-like things on AO3 - if you don't *know* that you get 10x less hits on Other Archive than you do on AO3, then it feels less pointless to post on Other Archive. But I kind of like stats myself, so this isn't a hypothesis I much want to test. :P

[superborb]

Yeah, large servers are so hard to socialize in. I don't know if it's sampling bias or what, but I really don't know anyone who's said that's how they primarily fandom.

Oh, that's a good point about stats making people not want to move. But I always kind of wonder how accurate hits are, with how many bots are roaming around...

[silveredeye]

I feel like the Discord server is where most of the action is in my (sub)fandom... but given that I'm a very easily overwhelmable lurker they may have mentioned all the other places they do stuff dozens of times and I just didn't notice.

(Some days I open the server, see the speed at which my team's channels are going and just close the server because ohjegusno. How... how do people manage to keep up, let alone chat? o_o)

I feel like the bot swarms tend to be very fandom-dependent? I haven't noticed them much in mine, but of course, that's anecdata.

[superborb]

I guess it's probably more likely that there are just smaller group chats that bud off?

IDK, but it seems enough people /can/ keep up that they still use those main, fast moving chats.

I hide stats by default on AO3, so I have no observational data either haha, just a general "bots on the internet!" and the vague recollection of some rogue kudos-er bot.

[lirazel]

But the gravity of fic fandom is towards AO3, in a way that no other archive managed /in my experience/.

Agreed. Even with ffn, it was a place you started looking for fic, but if you were super into one fandom or another, you would inevitably end up on some other site(s) dedicated to that fandom.

I concur with almost all of your thoughts!

(OK I am still partial to June's suggestion of getting rid of all stats like things to make AO3 a more pure repository of fic.)

YES.

[superborb]

Yeah, that's a good point! I guess that still happens with the AO3 -> smaller communities transition, but I think much less to the point where it's definitely no longer expected!