Archive of our own is going to be down for 2 weeks for maintenance.https://www.otwstatus.org/incidents/g12jnxck9g6hI don't really use the site personally, but it's surprising they need that much time to fix it.
genuinely what do people read on this site that it is so popular?is it all just fan fiction and smut?is it easy to get a readership?do people make money out of writing on there?
Perhaps the php vulnerability allowed someone to swap all the stories for dick pill ads and they need to restore from back ups. And as such decided to do hardware and software at the same time.
>>25620974It's almost all smut. There's occasionally good stuff but mostly, smut. To get rid of the smut your tags look like a lovecraftian monster and even then it's often got untagged stuff slipping through. 'All the young dudes', for example, is a group of teenage boys who live in a soap opera in an alternate 70s hogwarts reimagined by tumblr. There's probably a fascinating anthropological study on the evolution of harry potter gay sex 70s stories through the site. Mostly seems to be young women writing.I don't think they're allowed patreon but that might be ffn.
>>25620980i don't think i've ever actually read smut on ao3. or if i have its a very small portion of what I've seen.but im not really a heavy user of the site
>>25620974AO3 gives you the option to post original work. You can find anything. The tagging system is good.
>>25620959Hope they clean out all the CP.
>>25620974>is it all just fan fiction and smut?FF and smut are always popular, and ye olde sites sites like fanfiction.net and many more are beyond old fashioned compared to AO3>is it easy to get a readership?Post popular ships or content, you will have subscribers>do people make money out of writing on there?Advertising seems to be allowed
>>25620974>genuinely what do people read on this site that it is so popular?Yaoi smut by women for women.>is it all just fan fiction and smut?Yes.>is it easy to get a readership?Depends what you write.>do people make money out of writing on there?You can advertise your patreon. The site doesn't pay you to write and soliciting money on the site is against TOS.
>>25621037fanfiction.net's interface is awful. The webdevs called it a day in 2002 and it's barely been updated since.Maybe that makes it easier to maintain, but something tells me it isn't, and they'll be hit with one of those new exploitable bugs soon.
>>25620974When you finish a show or movie, sometimes you just need MORE, y'know?
>>25621074Even worse; before AO3, I had to use FF, and I remember the day when they removed page jumping. Infuriating. Maybe they put it back at some point, but it doesn't matter. AO3 has way better stuff, and a way better UI.
>>25621000Yeah, "original work" is a tag you can use.This makes me curious about >>25621065 though. If you tag "original work" then you'd think it would absolve AO3 from responsibility if you want money for it. AO3 has mods and can delete illegal shit like >>25621006 notes, which should expand to copyright infringment. If some knob-end does a bad fanfic of, I dunno, Joe Abercrombie and claims it's original, Abercrombie's lawyer (or the man himself) should be able to righteously send a letter to AO3 and get that shit taken down.The problem I always had with sites like this was from artists. Some faggot from India who probably uses AI, sending me emails wanting a commission. No. Fuck off. Fuck off and die in a river of Ganges shit.
>>25621099Text containing underage sex is not illegal per the first amendment.
>>25620959They were begging for donations a week ago, can absolutely guarantee everyone's credit cards were leaked. Literally nothing else of value there to hack or exploit. I think they asked for card numbers to avoid paying fees to third party fundraising services.Fuck them and their retarded pay to jump the queue invite system.
>>25620959I'll echo that it was probably some kind of brutal security risk (following the whole PHP thing). I think the people that run it don't work on it full time, so maybe the lengthly downtime is because they have to work on it between other obligations. Kind of a pain in the dick, since it's the one site of it's kind that actually has a decent tagging system
>>25621103>They were begging for donations a week agoThey are always having fundraisers to keep server costs, and honestly they deserve every cent since it's probably the only site that allows loli without putting a billion roadblocks or outright banning it
I report them for CSAM every week like clockwork.
>>25620976https://github.com/otwcode/otwarchiveI don't think it was PHP related. They use Ruby on Rails.
>>25621207Then you are wasting your time cuz there is tons of fucked up stuff in that site>>25621198Also the fact that the site doesn't have adsGod bless its tagging systemIt helps me find stuff I like and filter out stuff I don't
>>25621207are you a retard it’s words just close your eyes
I hope they can get their work done within the week.>>25621207how do you manage to have a life with all that wasted time?
>>25621224>Also the fact that the site doesn't have adsConsidering the stories they host, asking for advertisers is already a no-go
Amusing that the main concern itt seems to be continued access to stories about fucking 6 year olds.
>>25621258better than yaoi shit or malfoid slop written by AI
>>25620959where am I gonna get my harry potter fanfics now
>>25621292Might I interest you in some jp fanficshttps://syosetu.org/search/?mode=search&word=%E3%83%8F%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9D%E3%83%83%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BCSort it by ratings and it'a probably closest to text to those AI gen malfoid anime shorts. You'll either have to translate it with AI or get the stomach of it from google translate. Fanfics aren't high literature so most words translate just fine, jp names have a habit of being translated literally if they have double meanings. There's more in pixiv/novels section and X if you dig through
>>25620974Surprisingly well written Zootopia fanfics
Since AO3 is down I am Looking for a link or downloaded EPUB/PDF copy of Points of Authority by M_Niche (RBU Sandbox) up to Ch 51+
November's coming up, maybe they just don't want it up during NaNoWriMo?
>>25621209fair enough but everyone is getting fucked by some exploit or other this week or two, so maybe Ao3 found something even worse.
apparently was a security issue: https://x.com/AO3_Status/status/2115982211765748184
>>25620974>Do people make money writing out of there Not sure if you're aware of the state of YA publishing but it's become industry standard for agents to scout the most popular fanfictions, offer the users 7 figure book deals, and reskin the fanfiction into original work. I shit you not, last time I was in Barnes and Noble, I browsed the YA section. By the covers alone, you could tell the books were originally AUs of Harry Potter, Star Wars, Heated Rivalry, etc. but bastardized into cheap original knockoffs to avoid copyright claims. After the author gets their book and movie deal, they nuke their AO3 accounts to remove traces of their fan work. Its frustrating for up and coming authors trying to present their manuscripts but getting dismissed by publishing houses for not being popular straight out of the gate.
>>25620974It's a last bastion of free expression
>>25621633
>>25621207The content is often disgusting, yes, but it's simply writing. It's fiction. If you ban AO3 then you should start banning Nabokov and King next, but as we're not in Nazi Germany we don't do that here.
>>25620959>>25621617
>>25621633so if I want money and readership... I should be writing fanfiction for garbage media that's popular with teenagers?
Honestly struggling to figure out what motive there is for attacking AO3.>>25621617AO3 collects minimal info for any accounts created, and passwords are stored as hashes. What info can an attacker gain from this data?>>25621696If the attacker's goal was to limit what is created, the website being down doesn't prevent anyone from creating.The attack rallied the AO3 community together. Assuming the website isn't left in read-only mode forever, the number of works under each tag is going to absolutely fucking explode when the site goes back up.
>>25621720Nah man, write your version of Infinite Jest that everyone will pretend they read.
>>25620980>>I don't think they're allowed patreonYou're technically not supposed to mention having pay accounts, but some still do.
>>25621198Qq allows it too
>>25621720That's the viable pathway for a career in literature. The other is writing 'racial/sexual grievances' and get propped by mainstream reviewers.
>>25621720If your heart isn't in it the girls will be able to tell.Find a story which has aesthetics and vague themes which you actually enjoy (even if you do not enjoy the story itself) and write fanfiction based upon that.You must have something that you actually enjoy toying with in your head.
There's no point to written erotica unless it's about little girls and boys.
>>25620974in fact, of course
>>25621696Amazes me how lenient their policy is. I don't know how much they enforce it nowadays, but I remember the deletion waves on sites like FFnet back in the day. So popular but no "explicit content" LMAO what do you think is gonna happenWhich contributed to creation of "archive of our own", IIRC posted by user astolat on some platform (fucking livejournal or dreamwidth, maybe?)I understand Royal Road is popular too but the moderation is stupid tight.
>>25621209>They use Ruby on Rails.https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2026/q4/360Possibly related?
>>25622052>>25621696>>25621953The "Underage Sex" tag includes Teenage Harry with Teenage Draco or Teenage Naruto with Teenage Sasuke and that's literally MILLIONS of smut and female users who love yaoi like that. That's why the "Underage Sex" tag exists at all. You should be grateful women are so into teenage boys having sex with each other.
>>25620974There's a lot of decent HP adventure and slice of life stuff (some I wrote)
>>25621617>>25621709What kind of 'security incident' warrants a downtime for fucking 2-4 weeks?Unless someone physically crawled in and bashed all the hardware with a sledgehammer, I fail to see how that's even possible.
>>25622167Wiping hardware, restoring software, patching, and testing, WITHOUT overtime pay because they're funded by patrons
>>25622167The fact that they said>We'll probably be back in a degraded state with disabled servicestells me that they're looking into properly securing their shit for the first time in a while, only now that they were hacked. Just like what happened to another site you might know about.
>>25622138Damn 4 vulnerabilities disclosed a few days before AO3 was attacked, and the most recent ROR commit was vulnerable to all of these. So yeah keep an eye out for AO3 updating their status including mention of any of the following:CVE-2026-89078,CVE-2026-93577,CVE-2026-97229,CVE-2026-110264.One of them might have been used.
Good thing my beast (straight women x animals) archive is safe.
>>25620974If you can scrounge together the 1.5 braincells required to browser MTL, the chinese works on there can be genuinely amazing and profound.The smut is also pretty good.
>>25623331Post it
>>25623331
Did they finally get raided by the feds?
>>25623508Merlin's beard
>>25623415https://gofile.io/d/t9nOiQDJ
>>25623508>99,562 words
>>25621099You're a fucking retard on multiple counts. The big one for me is thinking entities having the power to censor fan creations is good.
>>25623508Unironically they might have been because the Pope endorsed them
>>25621633Heated Rivalry itself is a Harry/Draco fanfic with the Quidditch reskinned to hockey
>>25623608Keep in mind that's only Part 1.
damn so the ai hype about security wasn't bullshit lotta big hacks lately lmao
>>25623903LLM's are game-changing. You can automate the learning of the cracking and then have it learn the other hundred methods and you got this kind of thing happening all around
>>25623993So glad we built all these datacenters nobody wants so we could get our fanfic websites taken down randomly. Now I'll have nothing to read when I lose my email job.
Was reading this posthogwarts femdraco with auror harry fic and it was supposed to be updated yesterday, and I came across the fic the day before. Was a crime procedural but was just getting good and yesterday was when the author was supposed to upload the next chapter based off their uploading history, normally I would've just shelved the thing and come back when it was complete but there was a pretty decent mystery going for it and the writing was up to pass and I don't think I've ever really cared for a fic getting updated until I read this before yesterday. Then they shutdown the fucking site for 2 weeks, and a part of me believes it's going to be for at least a few months. Fuck is this timing, it's like god is telling me to do better things with my life.
>>25624009Funny thing is that these are probably run locally and isn't connected to those things. Imagine what those centers can do
>>25624015>Anon needs divine intervention to tell him to stop reading AO3Not even two Dostos can cure this level of illness, perhaps not even three
>>25621207puritanGOD
>Using only one site>Not crossposting ficslol kids are fucking retarded. Imagine using only one site.
>>25623508This cp shit appeared the second the author said Dumbles was gay
>>25624737Deep Chud post, and accurate.
>>25624588What are the alternatives? Fanfiction.net is outdated and desperately needs maintenance. Wattpad is complete shit.
>>25624588>>25625126To be fair, ao3 has been incredibly reliable for pretty much the entire time it has existed. Nobody could have really seen this coming, it's pretty unprecedented. And the 'alternatives' that are out there like ff.net are so completely shit by comparison to ao3's ui design not outright hating it's users at every step of the way.Personally I think I'm just going to keep a copy of my stories up on Rentry as well as ao3 from now on. Rentry of course you can't be naturally discovered on there, but I figure it'd be a fine backup. I post my story links to 4chan and such directly so including a rentry link as well doesn't seem so bad, and keeping ao3 as the primary one for natural discovery on the site seems like the best way to go about it.
>>25621720The era where you make new shit and it's valuable because it's new is over. It's been over for decadesNow the public knows what they want, and what they want is to jack off. Everything needs to be about stimulating the dopamine centers so the ideal successful work made in current year has these elements:>it's fanfiction with the serial number filed off so that mongoloid zoomers and millennial zombies don't have to absorb new ideas before they can start jacking off to the porn>everyone is young and acts young and a bit slutty but no sex cause they're all minors and that's a nono>pornable character designs that are easy to turn into porn, because only porn in 2026 can make you go viral and spread your faggot story to every jackoff normalnigger on the planet>everyone is set up for shipping with everyone else and everyone has ambiguous relationships you can easily turn into porn with your 2 nigger braincells>queer characters either explicitly or not, they need to at least feel a bit gay so you can porn the male characters with the other male characters>easy to make "OC" in a modular worldbuilding where nothing is tied down too hard. if you add your OC and make porn of that OC with the main character nothing will have to change in the world>act like a zoomer on twitter even though you're 40>throw some niggers and people that look like trannies in (say they're trans on twitter) to get asspats from the DEI mafia>make it PEGI13 in every nigger nation in the world, make sure it doesn't offend anyoneand voilà you've got a fucking product
>>25625155I really like that you can run AO3 without javascript. Probably the only site I use that doesn't demand it.
Good riddance, the tag system was pure dogshit
>>25625199There was no website with a better one.Therefore it was, by definition, the best in the world
it's afraid
>>25626294I must admit I'm impressed at Malfoid's staying power.
