What Does Original Work (AO3) Mean?
AO3 PlatformAO3's fandom category for fiction that isn't based on existing media — wholly original stories posted to the archive. It is one of the largest 'fandoms' on the site.
Original Work (AO3) in Practice
Although AO3 is built for fanworks, its policies welcome original fiction, filed under the 'Original Work' fandom tag with generic relationship tags like 'Original Male Character/Original Female Character.' Writers post original fiction there for the same infrastructure fic enjoys — tags, warnings, kudos, comments, and an audience fluent in trope-based browsing. The category hosts everything from literary short stories to long original romance serials that read like fic with the serial numbers never installed. Its existence reflects the archive's founding ethos: a platform owned by its community, hosting what that community wants to write.
Example usage
"She built such a following with fic that thousands of readers followed her to her Original Work serial."
Related Terms
Fandom
The community of fans around a particular work, franchise, or person — and, collectively, the whole culture of organized fan activity. One belongs to a fandom and also to fandom at large.
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Pulled to Publish (P2P)
The practice of removing a fanfic from the internet, filing off the serial numbers — renaming characters, scrubbing canon details — and publishing it commercially as original fiction.
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AO3 (Archive of Our Own)
The largest fanfiction archive on the internet, run by the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works. It is fan-built, donation-funded, ad-free, and famous for its powerful tagging and filtering system.
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