I Dont Like Wading Into Ao3 Debates, But I Want To Give My Professional Opinion On Ao3 With Regard To

I don’t like wading into Ao3 debates, but I want to give my professional opinion on Ao3 with regard to archives vs. libraries.

I am a professional librarian (MSLS) and I have worked in both archives and public libraries and a lot of the confusion and concern I see surrounding Ao3 is a fundamental misunderstanding of How Archives Work.

An archive is a collection related to a subject. That subject often a person but sometimes a field or concept or project. And the purpose of an archive is to keep everything. And I mean everything. I was going to say “short of biohazards” but since I know there’s a sealed R. Crumb Devil Gal chocolate bar in the UNC Chapel Hill archives, we really do mean everything.

When a collection of materials–which are usually unique and original and can be photos, manuscripts, letters, recordings (audio and/or visual), notes and notebooks, objects, published books, whatever–on and/or from the subject arrive at the archive, they are examined, preserved for longevity, accessioned and cataloged (added to the archive’s records), and added to the archive. You measure collections in linear feet. As in, once it’s all preserved and boxed and secure, you note how many feet of shelf space it takes up. And some of y'all on Ao3 have a lot of linear feet to your name (and I’m proud of you).

This is an archive: it is designed to preserve the original materials related to a subject. That is its purpose. Archives are how we have the original scroll manuscript of On the Road, for example, or the Lomax recordings of American folksongs, or Tijuana Bibles, or James Joyce’s loveletters to Nora.

Now you, a member of the public, can access some archives. Some are easier to access than others. The one I worked in was open to the public; good luck getting into the British Archives without a good reason.

So now apply this to Ao3–which is an archive both in name and in purpose. It is intended to preserve fan-created content long term. And this means everything, whether you personally like the materials or not. It is a repository for as much as possible.

And the “whether you personally like the materials or not” is important, hence why I mentioned Jim’s loveletters and Tijuana Bibles in particular. (RIP Jim, you would have loved pegging.)

If it’s made by fans and it exists, we should keep it to document the history and progression of fandom. That is the point. We have lost enough materials related to the subject of fans of media and we don’t need to lose any more.

The fact of the matter is that Ao3 is only one facet of the OTW, which preserves other fan-related materials (convention booklets and zines, for example). Somehow Ao3, an archive on the subject of fanfiction, has been divorced from the rest of the project, mostly by way of “purity culture” and panic over “dangerous” fiction.

The fact that you can go through an archive and find interesting information is the other side of archives. No, they shouldn’t be like the banker’s box of old letters stuffed in my closet. Yes, they should be organized and as accessible as is appropriate for the state of the materials.

It’s really, really cool to find stuff in an archive, I’m not even going to lie. I have done it before and I will do it again. And yet there are other items in an archive that I might not want or need or be interested in at all–but they’re still there. That’s the cataloging and accessioning: to keep up with what’s there, to stay “on topic” with collecting, and to be able to find things in that archive. Bless the tag wranglers who are doing the cataloging at Ao3.

The pearl clutching seems to come from 1. the creation of “dangerous” fanworks and 2. public access to those “dangerous” fanworks. These are issues of “purity culture” and opinions on censorship and should not involve Ao3.

Ao3, under the umbrella of the OTW, is a documentation and preservation project first and foremost.

This is for the people who didn’t party in their teens and twenties. For the people who didn’t have that “coming of age” movie experience with shenanigans and revelations. This is for the people who mostly keep to themselves. Who maybe prefer things to be quieter and gentler. This is for the people who don’t feel like they belong in a culture that values loud parties and flashing lights. I see you. And you are valid.

5 books I reread a lot that I don't think get talked about enough:

Highfire: grouchy and ancient, the last of the dragons gets beer delivered to his bayou home by a scrappy kid while Bad Guy hunts for him, bonding and shenanigans ensue + side plot mom romance is cute. Not for kids. My favorite line is Bad Guy saying (paraphrased) "Imma bury him so deep, they'll need an archaeologist to find him."

We Are the Ants: depressed baby boy is abducted by aliens and given a choice to press the button that will destroy the world. They'll be back for the answer. He moves through his life looking for advice and wondering if he should push the button, asking people around him, hypothetically of course, what they would do as we begin to understand his hesitation and the countdown to the alien return for his answer approaches.

The Strange and Beautiful Life of Ava Lavender: small-town witch family has a daughter with wings. This makes life hard as she grows up. Content warning for metaphorical SA, but it's about how the resilience of recovery starts long before the traumas, and how hope can look so different from each angle. I did not think the end was tragic or vague, tbh, but I guess some people did. Maybe I read what I needed to hear, either way it sits on the special shelf.

Every Heart A Doorway: when portal fantasy kids (like Alice from wonderland, Wendy from Neverland) return home, they don't always assimilate. The traumatized ones get sent to a special school to wait for their portal doors to reappear, and because some are from nonsense worlds and others are from logic worlds, the kids don't always get along, but they're all there for the same reason, and maybe that's enough. Also then the murders start happening and we may have to reevaluate how the school works.

Lexicon: words can be magic words to the right people, but the right people can become the wrong people if enough shit happens to them because some things can't be expressed in words. Is it sci-fi? Is it Fantasy? Probably both. Our agents hunt for their Bad Guy and we learn what happens when traumas are left unchecked and exploited.

Wade is just like me fr

OUT with “nobody will love you until you love yourself” IN with “everybody deserves to be loved + it’s harder to love yourself if you’ve always felt unloveable + you do also need to do the hard work of learning how to accept love from others so that you don’t keep pushing them away”