The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization,

established by fans in 2007, to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and
preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. We believe
that fanworks are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate.

We are proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from
commercial exploitation and legal challenge. We preserve our fannish economy,
values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our
work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest
possible access to fannish activity for all fans.

The Archive of Our Own offers a noncommercial and nonprofit central hosting place
for fanworks using open-source archiving software.

The Archive of Our Own (AO3) is a noncommercial and nonprofit central hosting site
for transformative fanworks such as fanfiction and, in the future, other
transformative works such as fanart, fan videos, and podfic. (In the meantime non-
text media can be embedded in a work on the Archive.

The AO3 is built on open-source archiving software designed and built by and for
fans. The open-source software for AO3 is currently hosted at GitHub. The servers are
owned by the Organization for Transformative Works ( OTW) and funded entirely by
donations. Users don't pay and there are no advertisements on the site.

The Archive was entirely designed and created by volunteers from fandom working
within the Organization for Transformative Works ( OTW). Many of our volunteers
started out with no knowledge of coding, design, or documentation and learned their
skills on the project.

The logo for the Archive was designed in 2009 by coder volunteer Bingeling with
input from Accessibility, Design, & Technology committee members. Fun fact: it was
originally intended as an interim design until a permanent logo design could be
created, but everyone liked it so much that it stayed.

It combines the characters A, O, and 3 with arms raised in celebration, symbolizing

The images that depict the different relationship category options on the Archive are
based on astronomical symbols:

F/F
The Female/Female relationship category icon is the symbol for Venus on a
pink background. The Venus symbol is commonly used in Western culture to
represent a woman.

F/M
The Female/Male relationship icon contains the symbols for Venus (female)
and Mars (male) with a common circle on a purple background.
 Gen
The General (no romantic or sexual relationships, or relationships which are
not the main focus of the work) icon is the symbol for Sun on a green
background.

M/M
The Male/Male relationship icon is the symbol for Mars on a blue background.
The Mars symbol is commonly used in Western culture to represent a man.

Multi
The Multi (more than one kind of relationship, or a relationship with multiple
partners) icon is a square divided into quarters that are colored, clockwise
from top left, green, purple, blue, and pink. These colors were chosen because
they're the background colors applied to the F/F, F/M, Gen, and M/M symbols
and therefore represent all four.

Other
The Other relationships icon is the symbol for Uranus on a black background.
The Uranus symbol has been used in Western culture to represent concepts
such as non-conformity and flexibility. The design team felt this made it a
good symbol to represent relationships which didn't fit into the other
categories.

This series of documents (Wrangling Guidelines) are intended to help tag wranglers
remain consistent as they go about the business of wrangling tags by providing a set
of formatting guidelines. The idea is to standardize canonical tags and synonym
relationships as much as possible, while keeping in mind that different fandoms (and
people) organize information about their fandoms differently. The aim, then, is not a
perfect tagging scheme, but clarity, differentiation between similar tags with
different concepts, prevention of single tags with different meanings, and ease of
use for as many people as possible.

It is important to keep in mind that these guidelines are specifically for the wranglers
to use when connecting tags together. They are in no way meant to recommend or
promote any particular tags, and while you are welcome to follow these guidelines
when tagging, you are encouraged to use whatever form of tags you prefer. You as a
creator or bookmarker can tag the works you create or bookmark with whatever tags
you think fit best—wranglers can't change the tags you choose for your works and
bookmarks!
These guidelines are an in-progress affair, subject to change. If you have an issue
with a specific guideline, or find a contradiction in the guidelines as posted here,
please contact the Tag Wrangling Committee Supervisors by submitting a Support
ticket or tweeting us at @ao3_wranglers.
Please Note: these guidelines are presently intended for use in the English language
interface of the archive only, and will need to be modified for use when interface
translation is added.
1. No fictional content is forbidden. On, for example, FanFiction,
posting explicit content will get your story removed, and you may
end up banned. Explicit content of all sorts is allowed on ao3.
 2. The filtering/tagging system is phenomenal. The tagging
system is helpful in more ways than one. You can not only search by
ships and characters, but also by the content you do and don’t want
to see. People can avoid content that makes them uncomfortable,
and can make their experience as pleasant as possible.
3. Ao3 works with you. If a content creator breaks one of the (few)
rules, they won’t tear down your fic with no warning. You are given a
chance to correct your mistake without losing your kudos and
comments, unlike some other sites.
There are… other reasons ao3 came into such prominence, and if you’re
interested, you should look up the events of the live journal ‘strikethrough’. I
wasn’t into fandom when it happened, but it’s honestly a terrifying read as
someone who writes things that were targeted and as someone who values
my small fan base.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions about my answer, feel free to
ask!
To add to the other very good answers, AO3 is also more useful than other
sites for reading fic with no internet readily available, as it is the work of a
moment to find a long, many-chaptered fic and to use the button for ‘Entire
Work’ (as opposed to ‘Chapter by Chapter’) so you can read all the chapters
of a story on a single page without needing to maintain wifi to read each
successive chapter.

On the other hand, Ao3 is known for their well written works. I've read
fanfiction on Ao3 that's better written than published books. You'll
undoubtedly get more prestige if you post your fanfiction here on Ao3. But at
the same time, I find that it's exactly that—only well written fics. So,
impeccable writing with a dash of good plot and little plots holes/grammar
mistakes. OC centered stories do not florish here. It all depends on what your
fic is about.

Let's start off with Wattpad, probably the most well known writing app
available. Most (not all) of its writers are teenagers, and tend to focus on
romance with fast plots. The most popular fanfiction stories are not even the
most well written (as in, plot holes, ooc behavior, and poor grammar). But
they're still in the millions for views and likes. Why?

BECAUSE IT'S INTERESTING!

Yes, you read that. I've never read a dull work of fanfiction on Wattpad. The
most popular fics are fast paced, full of drama, and keep the readers on their
toes. And the writing, you ask? Either completely horrible, or merely
adequate. But why does it have so many votes versus other, better written
stories? Because these teen girls make up for what they lack in writing for
possessing amazing story telling abilities.

Unlike other fanfiction websites—like Ao3 and FF.net, Wattpad doesn't focus
on how they write the story, but rather how they tell it. For that, I consider
the writers “true stortellers.” Sure, their plots are campy, told a hundred
times, and always have the same elements in it. But somehow, they make
their stories completely engaging.

This is also likely the best place to post OC stories. There's very little stories
that don't include an OC as a main character. Either that, or you're writing for
a popular ship, such as Jily, Dramione, or Wolfstar. Gen isn't the go to on the
website, rather romance/drama is. So, if your writing isn't the best, but you're
capable of writing a fast paced, engaging story, then Wattpad is the place for
you.

The most popular fics tend to be Male x Male, smut, and Gen. Of course,
that's a broad generalization as it differs from fandom to fandom, but those
are usually sure to be the most popular fics. People tend to veer away from
OC fics on this website.

So that brings me to Fanfiction.Net.

Fanfiction.Net can either have very well written fics, like Ao3, or some with
less than phenomenal writing. OC stories are very popular, but it tends to be
just romance in general that gets the crown. A lot of uncompleted works on
this website from 2008; and fics that have fifteen chapters in the span of
fifteen years.

And so, to shorten it:

Wattpad- Amateur writing okay here. OC or ship centered. Romance/Drama

Ao3– Professional like writing. Gen or ship centered. Can vary from Smut,
Romance, to Gen. One shots to very long works accepted.

Fanfiction.Net- Can vary. OCs and ship centered. Romance popular. Mostly
long stories or short chapters.
AO3 is generally considered in fannish communities to be the home of the most quality fanfiction.
AO3 has a reputation for well-written, mature work. One fan describes AO3 fanworks as: “literally
the most well-written stories you'll ever have the privilege to read. better than most classic
literature. you've read published novels that weren't this beautiful. you feel like a better person after
having read this story” (sparklesmikey 2015). Another fan says in a Tumblr post that “no matter what
happens as long as AO3 exists i will be fine” (Lucy 2015). The site itself is also considered to be high-
quality, from its accessible formatting to its excellent search tools, and for which AO3 has garnered
serious journalistic attention. It earned a place on Time’s 50 Best Websites of 2013, where it was
called “the most carefully curated, sanely organized, easily browsable and searchable nonprofit
collection of fan fiction on the Web” (Grossman 2013)

The fanfiction community is predominantly female, and the creators and runners of OTW/AO3
reflect that. 9 of the 11 members of the Archive’s main development team are female, making AO3
one of a small number of open source web projects run by majority-women (“How Well do You
Know AO3?”). The OTW/AO3 values this genderedness, and the form of community that goes with
it. The friendly, communal nature of AO3 can be compared to other (majority-male) user-generated-
content run websites like Reddit, which has a history and reputation for being problematic,
distasteful, and even misogynistic (Vella 2015). AO3 is a safe place on the Internet for fans in
general, and for women in