Wattpad vs AO3: who owns fanfiction?

The genre of fanfiction and its root and stem

The art of fanfiction is long in both history and debate alike. The form of media appreciation, expressed by fans in the form of writing is an integral part of many fandoms, communities and online spaces. Fanfiction constitutes the creation of writing that is based on another, previously created, published and/or screened material, that has been processed, re-created, and/or altered by the fans, with a key feature in the usual lack of monetization for personal profit.

This genre of literature is unjustly considered a “lower” form of art by critics and experts, deeming it a modern trend of the youth. But what if I told you that fanfiction hails as far back as ancient times? While there is no “official” first fanfiction to ever be recorded, we can trace back to The Aeneid by Virgil, all the way from 19BC, as the earliest ancient precursor of the fanfiction genre. The Aeneid is essentially an epic poem that borrows background characters and events from Homer’s Iliad, expanding them from the Trojan perspective, serving as what would structurally be identical to a modern spin-off, or rather, an author’s version of the set universe’s fanfiction.

Furthermore, in the instances where fanfiction did manage to become monetized, we can cite the unauthorized sequels to Don Quixote from 1605 as the first commercial fanfiction. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is a case that oddly mirrors today’s fanfiction debate: given that modern copyright laws did not exist at the time, the enormous popularity of the first volume inspired other writers to publish unauthorized sequels and new adventures for the characters, leading to profit. This is recognized by many historians as the earliest instance of derivative fan works.

If we’re seeking more recent fanfiction attempts becoming famous, there’s Friends and New Fancies in 1913, by Sybil Brinton. As an early admirer of Jane Austen, this author’s novel combined characters from multiple Austen books and has managed to become recognized as the first published work of modern Austen-based fanfiction that would today fall under the multifandom, crossover, and even crack-ship tags, where different characters from various works are brought together to interact in a free-form storyline.

The fanfiction of today, and the Battle Royale of Wattpad and Archive of Our Own

Starting from the time when the internet became widely accessible, many platforms hosted an array of fanfiction-adjacent activities. While some websites ended up lost in digital space and time, others live on and adapt to the demands of today. Wattpad and Archive of Our Own (also known as Ao3) are two websites that have always represented the backbone of fanfiction society, aside from fanfiction.net, with a colorful variety of fandoms and genres decorating their logs that persevere even today.

Open to the public and free of charge, they attracted many people of all ages and interests, inviting them to publish, interact, and foster communities just as active as those of social media, albeit in a different direction. The important takeaway here is that these two websites were completely ad- and fee-free. There was no monetization of fiction, as it would infringe on the copyright of the source material the fanfiction was based on. While other websites could be linked in the instances where a reader liked an author’s work so much they wanted to offer a tip, it was not integrated into these original platforms.

Still, change is inevitable.

Wattpad’s were-wolf of wall street transformation – or is it?

The changes started slowly and minimally. The introduction of ads was the first step that Wattpad noticed, alongside its induction to the app store. Some found it convenient, the ability to use the website in a more smartphone-friendly setup; others questioned what this entailed in the long run, as they sensed the scent of the alarming embers of the flames of their digital library of Alexandria. While understandably, these platforms needed a source of income to sustain them long-term, Wattpad made the choice to commercialize in this way, while Archive of Our Own remained vigilant about its belief that such a platform cannot remain unbiased and unchanged unless the funding comes exclusively from the donations of patrons. The schism already begins.

Intrusive ads and paywalls swiftly became an unskippable part of a Wattpad user’s experience, as reading is now frequently interrupted by ads, and a $9.99 monthly subscription has been integrated, required in order to unlock full access and remove limitations. Archive of Our Own has refused to host ads or paywalls, relying solely on donations, steadfast to its cause of being a fanfiction archive in the same principle as Internet Archive is for all sorts of media.

Where Ao3 remains loyal to its beliefs and system, Wattpad must make concessions to please those that fund it and those that feature it. The app store regulates the apps it hosts through a variety of legal multitudes, many of which we can become privy to, should we choose to go through those pesky terms and conditions we hardly ever skim through. These rules and regulations, amongst many others, slowly and steadily filtered Wattpad, altering little, or perhaps by not so little, censorship, and adding paid content and tiers that wound up turning this fanfiction haven into a mass production of altered fanfiction stories to become something else entirely—new, paid literature.

Wattpad showcased early on a growing corporate shift, where the platform focused heavily on taking popular stories and turning them into published books, TV shows, and movies, leaving casual hobbyist writers feeling unsupported and heavily limited. Still, while some found success and profit in these channels, recently, a large number of users claim they see years upon years of their work get wiped overnight, drafts and published fanfiction get erased without a trace, destroying evidence of gargantuan proportion and significance to the communities of many fandoms that frequented this website and app. Were we to fashion ourselves historians, we would dab this mark in fanfiction history as “The Great Migration" of fanfiction writers and readers.

The infamously controversial Wattpad guidelines – had anyone cared to check

Oddly enough, Wattpad itself begs to differ – claiming that these are all exaggerations of internet rumors, as the internet loves to take one post and inflate it into an Armageddon. It would appear that is also the case of what happened here – a bad game of broken telephone, and for those who are less familiar, it is the instance where someone on TikTok made an unfounded statement that everyone turned blindly into a fact.

So what did change in Wattpad’s policy? It would appear that actually, not much – the content guidelines have not changed, not really. Yes, you read that right. The update everyone is losing their marbles over isn’t actually a change per se; it’s a clarification, or rather an expansion of existing guidelines. As we previously mentioned in this article, the fury of scrolling through without so much as skimming the terms and conditions has come back to bite us. These “new” guidelines were apparently clarified for the sake of the users who kept inquiring about why certain stories were taken down, reported, and so forth.

A shorter, simplified version of these guidelines is the following:

Any described sexual content must be between those aged 18+ ONLY. No sexual relations between minors can be depicted (aside from kissing), no romance or sexual relations between a minor and an adult, and no romance between those in a power imbalance relationship if there is any hint at coercion (such as the infamous storylines of people in positions of power abusing said position to coerce their employee to do something because they are attracted to them, and so forth).
Sexual content must be within the confines of the actual plot. Explicit smut cannot stand alone, in particular, without an extensive storyline backing it up as more than pornographic material. The guideline stipulates that the content is not meant to be sexually stimulating but rather supporting the story.

Essentially, it all comes to the fact that any mature or graphic content must serve a broader storytelling purpose. The new guidelines stipulate that fanfiction cannot be utilizing sexual relations, violence, or other explicit graphic content just for the sake of having it, or for a shock or fear factor. It is impervious that it is supported by a proper storyline, cannot be too graphic, and most definitely not glorified. The consensus of these changes boils down to the concept that Aristotle’s moderation is key.

Noah’s Archive of Our Own flood

Regardless of the truth, the Archive of Our Own platform naturally saw a surge of incoming former Wattpad users. The flood happened over the course of a few days, yet the effects were immediate. To preface this, we must first acknowledge why there had even been a dichotomy in user preference between the two platforms in the first place.

Wattpad, with its moderators and regulations, was always a safer haven for those with a gentler, perhaps even more immature palate: it housed fanfiction that catered to controlled themes, with smaller amounts of controversial/taboo topics compared to Archive of Our Own, a literal archive meant to house essentially unmoderated materials.

Wattpad’s innocence is also a concept up for debate, however, as many fanfics were removed and scourged through time due to their contents not abiding by updated rules and regulations, but they still had dark themes – they simply weren’t tagged anywhere nearly as neatly and coherently as Archive of Our Own required its creators to, not to mention the bad search feature and the time it took moderators to go over and remove such materials, with little to no explanation regarding the graphic nature of the fiction and the guidelines it had crossed.

Archive of Our Own, by comparison, had very clear, simple rules from the beginning until now: all work is to be tagged with clear indicators regarding explicit content and themes so that they can be adequately avoided or found in accordance with each user’s search preferences. This protected minors and sensitive audiences from accidental exposure to unsavory themes, while simultaneously catering to the audiences that openly sought to create and intake such work.

AO3 prides itself on both the efficiency and diversity of this system, as it has housed thousands upon thousands of fanfiction pieces, some of which were infamous and are still quoted in fandom and community circles, as pieces of that fandom’s culture and history, be it related to controversy or not. And yet, the lack of moderators and censorship also serves the concept of the archive – here to preserve, not to police.

As one can imagine, the surge of Wattpad users that had been found distraught at the possibility of being erased overnight sought refuge in Archive of Our Own, whether because they had previously also dabbled there as readers or even authors simultaneously or because they had run out of options and now had no other way but to wade through this infamous platform’s murky waters. Here is where chaos and internet social justice debates unlatched the proverbial gates of hell. Wattpad always faced a poorly set up search feature, as work was hardly ever tagged or featured properly. These issues amplified through more commercialization-focused updates that left the users with a broken search and recommendations system. The search bar and discovery algorithms were known to frequently fail in finding exact titles or display relevant, localized content, essentially barring Wattpad users from a lot of content while also sheltering them from more hardcore themes.

Archive of Our Own is very clear on its search system – it offers a comprehensive and detailed tagging system, through which every user can find their niche and avoid topics they would rather never come across, which is one of the commodities of online research. The system, albeit a little daunting at first, serves well in separating topics, themes, authors, and fandoms in accordance with the user’s preferences, offering a very well-organized system that protects consumers from unwanted content.

The debate starts here. Wattpad users, surging in from a platform with little to no exposure on appropriate filtering, are faced with a daunting amount of new material that, often among other wanted topics, can feature darker themes. These fanfiction pieces are the first to receive a barrage of attacks, reports, and berating bordering harassment, despite being perfectly within their rights and community guidelines.

The infamous clash of internet’s social justice keyboard warriors is a concept meme-ified from both sides of the struggle, but the argument remains: people are always eager to argue, often spewing vile threats and insults they would never use otherwise, as they hide behind a nameless screen. Whether they’re wrong or right is up for debate, usually, but not on Archive of Our Own; the rules are clear, and if the authors have not violated community guidelines by creating and releasing onto the web something that fulfills one’s niche and insults another’s, they are here to stay.

This is not a matter of morality; it is a matter of proper filtering and consumption agency. Freedom of speech exists for both the good and, unfortunately, the bad. Whichever side of the argument we may stand on, we must abide by the same rule – as long as it doesn’t actively harm a community or spread hate speech and other such harmful ideals, it cannot merely be silenced just because we don’t like the content, especially if it has been strictly labeled with warnings and tags that express the contents – the infamous Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, a fanfiction warning tag meant to stop those of feint heart, letting us know that the story contains extreme, dark, or morally taboo themes, and that what is displayed in the tags is precisely what you will receive in the story without any sugarcoating or condemnation, is the core principle of tagging to protect those who do not go looking for such themes.

What does this mean for the future of fanfiction?

The warning sign here does not pertain to the dark themes and corruption of fanfiction and fandom spaces – that has been a part of the cycle of life since the beginning of time, through sanitization, commercialization, and regulated and unregulated scenes alike. The very concept of dark romance, a popular genre often most popular on platforms like TikTok, bloomed in the back yard of Wattpad.

Despite the uprooting changes, this platform paved the way to one of the most popular genres of this era, produced many famous tropes, and covered topics that were just as graphic or taboo as those featured on Archive of Our Own, fanfiction.net, or other such platforms. The issue here is not moral policing, nor regulations and censorship that will penalize and shut down fanfiction that delves into more controversial topics and graphic content; the issue is a combination of controversy only being allowed when someone benefits from it and extreme censorship suffocating the medium through which many find their voice.

Only through thorough and detailed tagging and filtering can a diverse community such as that of fanfiction continue to evolve and bloom the way it's meant to be. The internet is, for better or for worse, a living, breathing organism that constantly expands and evolves alongside us. The best we can do is to learn to navigate it in a way that protects us and offers the most benefits we can reap, while also maintaining respectful coexistence and educating ourselves in not just our interests but also the things that surround them, lest we find ourselves supporting self-serving systems that do not stand for anything other than personal gain.

The rapid commercialization of fanfiction is yet another step capitalism has taken to monetize art and creative liberty – here’s to hoping it will not overtake both the artists and censorship rights in one go. It is important for both artists and consumers to find and support balance in the delicate ecosystem that is production and the need for monetary compensation. While we can put a price on literature, that also tends to come with clauses and stipulations that desecrate and hold back artists from reaching their masterpiece. Art, for all its shadows and light tones, is a piece composed by the human experience. Sometimes it can be volatile, but also, reasonably relatable. Where should the line be drawn, and who is the one to draw it?