What Does Crossposting Mean?
Fandom CulturePublishing the same work on multiple platforms — AO3 and FanFiction.Net, or fic excerpts on Tumblr linking to the archive. Done by the author; unauthorized crossposting by others is reposting, a serious faux pas.
Crossposting in Practice
Authors crosspost to meet readers where they are: different platforms have different audiences, and older fandoms especially maintain populations who never migrated from FanFiction.Net or Wattpad. The practice has logistics — keeping chapters in sync, deciding which platform gets updates first — and history, as waves of platform decay (LiveJournal's decline, FFN purges) taught fandom to keep work mirrored rather than trust any single host. The crucial distinction is consent: crossposting is the author's choice, while uploading someone else's fic elsewhere, even with credit, violates a core fandom norm and AO3 authors regularly battle scraper sites that mass-repost the archive for ad revenue.
Example usage
"I crosspost everything to both archives, but AO3 gets the chapters first because the formatting does not fight me."
Related Terms
Do Not Repost
A creator's instruction forbidding uploading their work elsewhere — re-uploading art to other sites, copying fics to other platforms, or feeding work into apps. Reposting without permission is one of fandom's firmest taboos.
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FanFiction.Net (FFN)
The veteran mega-archive of fanfiction, launched in 1998 and dominant through the 2000s. Abbreviated FFN or FF.net, and remembered as the formative home of a fandom generation.
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Archive-Locked
Describes an AO3 work restricted to logged-in users only, indicated by a small lock icon. Guests without accounts cannot read it, and it is hidden from search engines.
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Crossover
A fic that combines two or more separate canons, bringing their characters and worlds into contact — the detective meets the wizard, the starship picks up the time traveler. Distinct from a fusion, where one cast is placed inside another's world.
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More Fandom Culture Terms
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