Every so often, a familiar kind of story resurfaces: a bestselling novel turns out to have started as fanfiction, or a screen adaptation can be traced back to AO3 or another fan platform.

It is easy to turn that into a fantasy of its own. Someone writes fanfic online, readers recommend it everywhere, a publisher arrives, the names change, the cover changes, the book lands in stores, and then film people come knocking. It sounds like a secret corridor from the comment section to the red carpet.

When reading on AO3, you may come across works whose author is listed as orphan_account, or as a pseud followed by (orphan_account). These works are usually called orphaned works.

The term can sound a little bleak, but it does not mean AO3 has abandoned the work. It means the author has chosen to remove the work from their own account while allowing it to remain on AO3.

What are orphaned works?

AO3’s Orphaning FAQ explains orphaning in a fairly direct way: if you no longer want a work to be associated with your account, but you do not want to delete it from AO3, you can orphan it. The work is then permanently transferred to AO3’s special orphan_account.¹

If you have ever posted a work on AO3, you may have run into something like this: a layout that looked fine locally changes after you paste it into AO3; a color does not show up; a chat-style scene gets squeezed on mobile; or AO3 Preview quietly adds a few <p> and <br> tags for you.

AO3 is not an editor where you can paste arbitrary webpage code and expect it to run as-is. It does allow writers to use some HTML and CSS for formatting, but that code goes through a parser and a sanitizer first. The parser tries to complete and tidy incomplete code. The sanitizer removes code that is not allowed or may be unsafe. AO3’s official HTML FAQ says this directly.¹

If you think of OTW only as “the organization behind AO3,” its annual report may be more complicated than expected. It does include AO3 numbers, page views, tickets, and technical updates. But it also covers Fanlore, Open Doors, legal advocacy, volunteer recruitment, financial statements, and organizational governance.

As of June 7, 2026, the latest Annual Report listed on OTW’s official Reports & Governing Documents page is still the 2024 report.¹ So the latest complete report available to read in full is the 2024 Annual Report.

Why did a meme suddenly become popular? Who first used a ship name? Why do so many people remember an old fan site with such affection? These things rarely make it into the body of a fanwork. They are scattered across forums, comment sections, screenshots, group chats, and many people’s “I think I remember it went like this…”

When platforms close, links break, and people leave fandom, later fans may still be able to read the works. But it becomes much harder to understand what was happening around those works.