yuletide_coal | The summer isn't over, but Yuletide Season has begun

a ayrt rt
I don't care about the story in question, won't be requesting it, I'm just aware that it's not fanfic because I'm not a moron who thinks ~tropes are automatically fanfiction, or whatever the case being made is.

No, but the AOOO says, "We presume that, by posting the work to the Archive, the creator is making a statement that they believe it's a fanwork. " So if it's posted there, it's a fanwork.

Well you know what they say about assumptions...

In seriousness, though, that does not seem to be how Original Works on AO3 work in practice.

As a wrangler who has had to look at a lot of them, that is how nearly every single Original Work works.

That's interesting, care to say more?

What more do you need? If you check out the tag and read 20 random works it essentially speaks for itself.

I tend to see original works in exchanges.

What exactly do you mean? How are they treating their work so that it obviously is a fanwork in their mind?

You can't explain telepathy to someone who doesn't have it, coalie.

It's disenguous, though, to act like something is fanfic, so you can post it there and then turn around and say it's not fanfic so it can be in yuletide.

There are a million places online to post original fiction that isn't a fanwork, if the AO3 T&Cs state that original works posted there are fanworks then presumably the writers who posted there agree with that - if they don't think their works are fanworks then they don't belong on AO3.

Original works were only allowed on the archive in the first place because and lot of people argued that original fics written around fannish tropes and for the fandom community were fanworks - you can't have it both ways, posting to AO3 means claiming it's a fanwork in order to qualify for posting there, so you can't then turn around and claim it's not a fanwork in order to make it qualify for a fandom fest.

That seems solid.

In fairness, though I don't think it's the author pushing for the inclusion of the work here. It's people who have read it.

That only makes sense if the integrity of the AO3 mission is directly tied to the exchange parameters. If the only thing stopping it from being considered original is what site it's on, that's a line to draw for no real reason other than the power trip of getting out an unrelated and overall vaguely defined rule book.

And it would be ironic since exchanges are one of the things that makes site modding pretty lenient towards posting original fiction; yuletide doesn't include OW, but many exchanges do in order to encourage more sign-ups and AFAIK this is never officially discouraged.

I think you've got cart and horse mixed up there. Original Works started appearing in exchanges as a category well after they were allowed on the site as a whole (under the idea of "fannish" original works).

If the only thing stopping it from being considered original is what site it's on

yes, that's precisely what's being said in the TOS. That if you post it to AO3 you are making a statement that the work is a fanwork - derivative of, or in dialogue with, the fannish community in a way that makes it distinct from other works that are not published there.

I wasn't implying causality.

And if you understood my comment you'd realize I don't give a shit about how the AO3 TOS (which is by the way, on this particular topic, too fucking philosophically worded, in the grand tradition of AO3's dicking around, to be taken seriously as a hard and fast rule) would supposedly command the policies of a related but separate set of rules.

"That only makes sense if the integrity of the AO3 mission is directly tied to the exchange parameters. If the only thing stopping it from being considered original is what site it's on, that's a line to draw for no real reason other than the power trip of getting out an unrelated and overall vaguely defined rule book."

If an author posts an original work on AO3 they are explicitly claiming it's a fanwork. It's the author's right to choose to do that or to post in places that won't class their work as a fanwork. It's not up to exchange mods to make the call that the writer is wrong about their work being a fanwork just because a participant in a fest wants to nominate it.

It's nothing to do with power-tripping, and the rule about what works are allowed on AO3 isn't in any way vague. Original fanworks are allowed, straight up original fics aren't
- and the rule is the person who writes the fic gets to decide whether or not it's a fanwork, and if they post to the archive they've made the decision to classify their work as a fanwork; and shouldn't that be the writer's call, not random fest mods and participants.

It has nothing to do with the integrity of AO3's mission statements, it's about the writer's choice to write and post original fanworks, which are a part of fandom and are distinct from other original work. People wouldn't have fought so hard to have original fics included in the archive if they didn't believe they were fanworks, and so why should other people be allowed to push those works out of fandom and reclassify them as not being fanworks against the writer's wishes. And if any writer who has work impacted by this says their story isn't a fanwork, then that is their call, but in that circumstance the work shouldn't be on AO3.

Some fests allow and encourage the use of all original works, and it works well for those fests who want to do that, but that certainly hasn't automatically led to fanworks being allowed into those fests, and that's the point of contention here. If a fest specifically says "no fanworks" allowed as source material, and all works posted to AO3 are fanworks as described by the archive and authors who choose to post there under those rules, then a no fanworks rule includes all fic on AO3.

In any case where the mods aren't aware of whether the work is considered original for the sake of transformative work by its author, falling back on that policy makes perfect sense. And the mods obviously don't have to expect or look for any ambiguity if no evidence is presented to them. But there is an evidence post for exceptions or borderline cases and this is definitely one that might as well be considered, because the writer has seemingly given permission to treat it like original fic and it is explicitly NOT against their wishes.

If you think every writer who's posted original work is "explicitly stating" it's a fanwork just because the terms of use make a less than rigid statement about it...I'm not gonna finish the statement because I highly doubt you actually believe that. Pounding on this rule because "too bad for them, not understanding or respecting the policy" is one thing, but own up to it. In many cases I'm sure people became aware that they can post original stuff on the site because they saw other people doing it.

I'm not saying this out of disrespect for people who don't want anyone writing fanfic of their work, because the possibility of mods okaying a work like that for the tag set is still probably zero even if they might make an exception for this story.

I will totally respect the decision if it's rejected on the grounds of like, "We can't be expected to verify the author's attitude on their work even when links to evidence are presented because we suspect it would allow an overwhelming influx of original work nominations from fan-centered platforms that need the same evidence," and I can easily understand why this sounds like flexibility at the experimental stage.

"If you think every writer who's posted original work is "explicitly stating" it's a fanwork just because the terms of use make a less than rigid statement about it...I'm not gonna finish the statement because I highly doubt you actually believe that."

And you'd be wrong, as someone who has written original fanworks since long before AO3 existed, I was one of the writers who argued that our work belonged on the archive because our works were fanworks, and are part of the fannish community. It's not a less than rigid statement, it's a very simple rule - the AO3 is for fanworks, if your work isn't a fanwork it shouldn't be on the archive.

Have some people not read the rules and therefore posted things that don't belong - almost certainly, but you can't operate on the assumption that the majority of the people posting works to the original section were too lazy to read the rules. Unless a writer specifically says their work is not a fanwork, then the presumption should be that they followed the rules of the archive, and that they think their work is a fanwork.

what the fuck is an original fanwork

""I'm not saying this out of disrespect for people who don't want anyone writing fanfic of their work, because the possibility of mods okaying a work like that for the tag set is still probably zero even if they might make an exception for this story. ""

Kind of confused why you're bringing this up - nobody has said anything about people wanting or not wanting fanfic of their fanworks, the issue is whether or not stories posted to AO3 are fanworks or not.

So... what if I post my original work on AO3 and some non-fannish site? Is it a fanwork or not? Is it Schroedinger's fanwork?

It's not fanwork in that it's based on anyone's intellectual property, but TBH a lot of it reads like a lot of fanfic for fandoms I'm not in - it has the same "the author's primary interest here is the tropes/kinks" feel, the same missing characterization... essentially, the same focus on what the author gets off on and lack of content that readers who don't get off on that might find interesting.

That's relatively rare in published work, presumably because the odds of the author, editor, and other involved parties all sharing a fetish for e.g. obese female submissive with steampunk sex machines in a body-positive AU of the Victorian era (it exists, it's on AO3, I've never read it but it has a couple hundred kudos so apparently it's got a pretty good audience) such that they'll let it go to print without having anything else interesting is minimal. On AO3, there's no such filtration. If you want to post your idfic that has nothing for anyone who doesn't share your exact id, nobody's stopping you. And there's no financial factor - Amazon self-published authors tend to self-filter to make sure people will be willing to read what they publish, which tends to mean that you get some very specific subgenres and very little crossover. It's less of a kitchen-sink approach.

DA

Thanks, that's an interesting analysis that rings truer to me than just "it's obviously a fanwork".

I think that's one of the reasons Course of Honour gained popularity - dedication to fannish tropes that were very much in keeping with prominent preferences on the platform where it originated (ffa) + enough worldbuilding around the edges and accessibility that its fans could recommend it generally. I think you're right that the characterization and themes - beyond the tropes - are light enough that it wouldn't have got through trad publishing without looking quite different, but there's still *enough* there for it to gain traction. It's a really, really good fit for people who read fanfic and also read romance & light sci-fi.

A lot of the sorts of fans who used to write "original slash" now self-publish ebook erotica. I've been reading a lot of it lately, and it's exactly like the longer original works posted to AO3.

The only difference is whether someone thinks of their feels-y idfic as for-profit erotica or as a fanwork that belongs on a fic archive.

The summer isn't over, but Yuletide Season has begun

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