I keep seeing the take that authors on AO3 need to stop deleting their fics and instead to orphan them without any explanation of the consequences of orphaning a fic and as an author I really need to say something to this.
Stop telling people to just orphan their fics.
Orphaning a fic means giving up any and all ownership over it. No way to claim it back, edit it or delete it. Yes it's an archive but an author should still have the right to delete their work if they feel like they don't want it to be up anymore.
Readers always scream for authors to orphan their fics instead of deleting because they feel like they have a right to the fanworks that is shared with them for free. If it's so important to you to not lose a fic, download it. Also comment and encourage the authors, instead of telling them to give up all ownership to their work.
To authors, if you think about deleting your fics, there are other options you should employ first. If you don't want it connected to your name, put it into an anonymous collection. As long as it's in there, noone can see you wrote it, you still can edit ot or delete it and moderate comments on it. You can even move it to anther account, just create another one, add it as co author and then take your main account off. Then you can still edit it from your second account but it's no longer connected to your account.
If you don't want it to show anymore put it in a unrevealed collection, that way, the fic won't show up but it's still there, you can still see it, read comments and make it public again.
If you feel the urge to delete your fic, try one of these options first and see how you feel about it after a while, you can still delete or orphan afterwards, but this hopefully makes your decision easier.
Only orphan a fic if you're 100% sure. This is permanent, there is no way back from that, AO3 support will NOT help you if you did it on accident or change your mind. Don't listen to people telling you to just orphan it, make very sure, this is what you want.
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