#bro how tf is it that we all went from hugo award winners to staring down oblivion in the span of 5 years

[josiebelladonna]

ehhhh, I wouldn’t recommend wattpad, tbh. it’s a pain in the ass to navigate now and the userbase over there clutches at themselves at even the mere mention of kissing or drinking—it’s also one of the most vulnerable sites in existence. i’m sure you remember (or not) the huge cyberattack from 4 years ago whereby people over there had their personal information stolen and sold on the dark web. plus, look into wattpad’s record of repeatedly screwing authors over, from deleting things they don’t like to letting users bully each other without there being a decent blocking mechanism.

and how do we know the orange isn’t going to go after that, too? pol pot executed people who wore glasses because they seemed educated (i believe stalin did, too); history has shown again and again that dictatorships always go after the written word, no matter how terrible or cliché it may seem.

and ff.net is on its last legs—at least i think it is. i dunno, everything i read about it is that it’s a dead site walking, especially when its domain is set to expire in 2028 (iirc?)

i say, just save what you have and then go underground, and protect those fics like you’re guarding fort knox until the heat’s off, whenever that may be.

Project 2025 makes it very possible that we could lose AO3. It features same sex relationships and smut and could be something that the new administration sees as an enemy. It’s possible that it would simply be banned in the US and other countries can still use it, but since I’m pretty sure it’s an American website the whole thing might just be destroyed instead. So everyone might lose it.

Here’s what we should all do just in case.

1. Download your favorite works as a PDF and back them up on multiple devices so you don’t lose them.

2. If you are a writer, try to publish your works on multiple different platforms like fanfiction.net and wattpad. I’m a Doctor Who writer so I know about whofic, but do research on your fandom to see if there’s fandom specific sites available.

Edit: I want to be extra clear that readers should download works that aren’t about same sex love or don’t have smut too. I think it goes without saying but I want to be very clear that the Trump administration is more likely to ban or delete the whole archive than it is to sort through what content it deems “appropriate���.