Archive of Our Own (archiveofourown.org)
74 points by debo_ 4 days ago
jkingsman 3 hours ago
AO3 rocks, as does the parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works. They do a lot of pro bono legal work around free speech and copyright (which can be especially sticky around transformative works). AO3 has drawn ire and appreciation alike for their fierce free speech stance (which is, essentially, if it's against the law to exhibit in the state of New York (or against their TOS e.g. not a fanwork), it must come down. Everything -- EVERYTHING -- else stays.)
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.
sincerely 3 hours ago
> or against their TOS e.g. not a fanwork
Isn’t there an “original work” category?
robrtsql 3 hours ago
There is. Presumably, they mean you can’t upload the full text of someone else’s book and have it remain up.
scythe 2 hours ago
They're pretty open about it in practice. They don't want people hosting blogs, basically. Original fiction is almost always allowed.
scythe 2 hours ago
>I've seen people insist they can't write creatively, then make something beautiful
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.
causesothere 2 hours ago
AO3 is wonderful. I strongly believe that humans have tens of thousands of years of telling and retelling stories. The Odyssey isn't one book, it's something that was composed and collected and retold.
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.
arjie an hour ago
There's no way to just download all of it, is there? You have to scrape it slowly? I don't mind doing it that way, but flat downloads would be pretty neat. How do mirrors work? Do they run read-through caches?
magicmicah85 an hour ago
I have to imagine that's not available to avoid training by commercial entities. https://www.transformativeworks.org/ai-and-data-scraping-on-...
arjie an hour ago
Makes sense. Somewhat strange (but not too strange since it's not standardized) they don't have a Crawl-Delay except for Slurp. Why not on User-Agent: *
Confusing. Would even prefer a commented crawl delay that specifies in human language since then I could special-case it.
Seattle3503 an hour ago
I feel like I am coming in to the middle of a discussion. Towards what end?
arjie an hour ago
Just data hoarding tendencies, faster and better search, etc.
brokensegue 25 minutes ago
there's some dumps on archive.org
i worked on a project a long time ago and downloaded a bunch of it
arjie 23 minutes ago
Thank you. Do you still have your archive? I'd email you if you had address on profile.
valorzard 3 hours ago
If you all are interested in fanfic, may I direct you to learn about one of my favorite pieces of internet art, my immortal? And, if you want to delve into the history behind this work of art, oh boy: https://youtu.be/0JodBp-r9jM
ballmerpoint 2 hours ago
I disapprove of how much underage material they host. Free speech absolutism runs head-first into its internal contradictions.
letmevoteplease 41 minutes ago
There is no contradiction here. It was founded precisely because LiveJournal started censoring sexually explicit fanfiction involving taboo subjects (particularly incest/rape/minors).
mjd 33 minutes ago
I suppose it won't help to point out to you that it's fiction, none of it actually happened, no person was ever hurt, and this is nowhere close to ”free speech absolutism”.