What is AO3?
Archive Of Our Own, shortened to AO3, is a fanfiction hosting website created in 2008. It is under the parent The Organization for Transformative Works, which is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving fanworks. AO3's tagging system is iconic. The 4 squares that indicate the content rating, orientation of relationship, warnings, and whether or not it is finished. Apart from these main categories, each author is able to add additional tags to indicate the content of the fic and the pairings and characters. An author can additional tag to their heart's content (to a maximum of 75...). Volunteers manage these additional tags to "manually connect synonymous tags to bolster the site's search system".
I would say AO3 is its most popular child. OTW is so important to the conservation of not only millions of fanworks but of the ethos of the old internet. The lack of advertisements and of algorithym is very important to me. I sometimes find fics through Tumblr recommendations, through searching a ship (always with completed work checked, I don't want to be saddened by a forever incomplete fic), or looking at an author's page. Similarly, the forms of interations are limited. You can leave a Kudos, like the fic, or you can comment. These two ways of showing appreciation are very different. It is easy to Kudos, it takes effort to comment. Yet that effort is necessary! Like all interactions with artists, you should comment on artists' work! Directly thanking someone for there work is vital to the continued production of art. I could write a whole essay on why people should be active internet users...
My Fanfiction History
I started reading fanfiction when I was 11 and had entered the Phandom (Dan and Phil fandom). I hate to say that RPF (real person fiction) was my introduction to the world of fanfiction, but we all start somewhere. In those days, RPF didn't have the in-fandom stigma it does now. The fics by @phanci on Wattpad were instrumental to my brain development. Bad Boys Don't Smile made me cry. It was the first fic that I was emotional over due to the ending and it being one of the first fics I ever read, I was spoiled by such good writing (I don't know if it holds up, but it's popularity in the phandom is a good sign). Her other fic Moods has really strong visuals I remember. I appreciate these early fics and the AUs (alternate universes) I was able to escape to.
The biggest thing these early readings introduced me to was smut... and mpreg which I didn't know what it was until I was balls deep into a kidnapping mpreg phanfic that was crazy to read as a child. I feel grateful to that the largest amount of erotic content I've consumed has been smut. Honestly, there is a lot of creative stories out there and a few of which have helped enlighten me. Smut, and erotic content in general, gets such a bad reputation but we should be all be thankful that there are people who are willing to spend so much time to create such compelling or simply smutty stories. I've read a lot of kinds of smut. ABO being a big one. I don't want to divulge too much about my person tastes but iykyk.
My Favourites
The titles are links to the fic, and the ✓ or ✗ indicates whether or not the fic is complete! Ordered by Fandom, Rating, Length. Apologies that the grid is not quite mobile compatible.
This list is pretty short for now, but I will update when I read another great fic!
| Title |
Summary |
Fandom |
Rating |
Length |
| dragonfly year |
Caduceus navigates college and meets the M9, modern au. |
Critical Role |
Teen |
53K / ✗ |
| no end cause you're timeless |
Series where "Daniel learns how to be a vampire, with a little help from his friends." |
IWTV |
Multi |
81K / ✗ |
| Our Gentle Sin |
Armand and Daniel go clubbing. |
IWTV |
Explicit |
3K / ✓ |
| young |
Armand can feel like a child with Daniel. |
IWTV |
Explicit |
7K / ✓ |
| triangulation is when there's three of something |
Loumandaniel with "Daniel, out of cash and out of options, [he] takes up an offer to be a vampire blood bag." |
IWTV |
Explicit |
8K / ✓ |
| Camboy Molloy |
Old Daniel meets Armand via his camboy work. |
IWTV |
Explicit |
59K / ✓ |
| visions of the hereafter |
Young Daniel investigates some suspicious deaths in the mountains. |
IWTV |
Explicit |
68K / ✓ |
Dead Doves
I love Dead Doves, not as in all the fics (some of them truly are vile), but the category that is Dead Doves. As a tag it is applied to fics that have distrurbing or "traditioanlly" morally-reprehensible themes. It comes from a joke in Arrested Development where Michael sees a bag in the fridge that says DEAD DOVE Do Not Eat! on it and when he opens it he says "I don't know what I expected." The Tumblr user @mostlyvalid proposed it in 2015 as a way to communicate that the reader should expect the other tags used which will be explitictly present.
I don't read tags before reading a fic and so having the Dead Dove tag prominent and early in the list allows me to be aware that there might be some batshit content ahead without spoiling the fic for myself. I want authors to tag excessively so that I can find fics by browsing tags but I don't want to read a tag list and have the fic spoiled for me. I love the way the fandom creates in this way that then becomes fandom-culture wide.
Credits
Thanks to Fonts in Use for the sites breakdown I used to style this page. The background is a screenshot from the Browse>Tags page.
Information about AO3 has been sourced from their website, Wikipedia, and vibes sent by God.
