Where to Find Fic: Archives New and Old
As long as the internet has been around, people have been posting fanfiction to their own sites. However, if you want to find more than one fic for a certain fandom or ship, you want to go to an archive. In this iteration of Fic History, we'll be exploring an abbreviated history of fanfiction archives from the beginning of the practice to the present day. Let's dive in!
Older Archives
Older fanfiction archives, even the digital ones, had to be compiled by hand. In the days when fanfiction was primarily circulated by zines or by individuals, archives were the personal collections of fans who managed to get ahold of copies of the works they wanted to collect (Jamison 2013). When fanfiction distribution began moving to the digital realm, archives still had to be compiled by hand, but instead of finding copies of zines, authors would email their fics to archivists, who would upload, code, and link each fic to the appropriate webpages by hand. Archives back in the day were more commonly limited to a single fandom or an even smaller subset of a fandom, such as a specific trope or ship. Additionally, archives were most commonly held on websites, FTP sites, and mailing lists. Since archives during this time weren’t self-serve operations like most are currently, getting permission to archive from authors who had posted fics to non-archive pages was a very important part of archiving etiquette.
Newer Archives
For the purposes of this post, I’m classifying “newer archives” as anything from the general time period around the early 2000’s onward. Nowadays, most fic archives are automated, so authors can upload their own fics without someone else having to do a bunch of coding to get it online. Niche archives for specific fandoms, pairings, tropes, etc. still exist, but from what I’ve seen online, most people prefer to archive sites that collect fics of all shapes and sizes in one big searchable pile. I’m going to explore some of these archives below.
FanFiction.net
While FanFiction.net isn’t exactly new (it was created in late 1998), it’s most likely the first automated multifandom fanfic archive according to FanLore, and was the main multifandom archive of the early 2000’s. When searching for fics on FF.net, you can filter by a lot of different attributes such as word count, characters, genre, and pairings, but the site doesn’t have a tagging system like AO3 does. Many fans stopped using the archive after it purged all NC-17 content in 2002 and 2012.
Archive of our Own
The current darling of the fandom world, created and maintained by the Organization for Transformative Works. The idea for this website was created by BNF Astolat in response to the non-fandom archive startup FanLib, which wanted to earn a profit off of fic. She posted An Archive Of One’s Own to her LiveJournal in May of 2007 (which is where the website got its name), and in mid-November of 2009, the site had entered open beta, allowing anyone on the internet to make an account via a first-come-first-serve invitation system. AO3 is probably most well-liked for its highly comprehensive tagging system where authors can select from already-created tags or create their own, but also other features like built-in bookmarking, easy fic orphaning, and the ability to choose to read a work chapter-by-chapter or all at once, among other features listed here.
Wattpad
The kid sibling of the fanfic archive family. This archive is unique to the other two we’ve discussed so far because it allows authors to upload both fanfiction and original fiction. Fanfic and original fic are also treated the same way in regards to contests hosted by the site and popularity ratings. In terms of content rating, Wattpad separates fic into 13+ All Audiences or 17+ Mature. Wattpad’s most unique feature is the fact that they have an in-house production/publishing company that publishes stories professionally, and creates movies and TV shows based off of popular works such as the After series by Anna Todd.
The wonderful thing about fanfiction archives is that there are so many that there’s something out there that will fit every individual’s needs. I hope this post was informative, and that it helps you find the archive for you!
Happy reading,
-KP
