Archive of Our Own ^beta

A lot has been going on at the Archive of Our Own (AO3) lately! In January, we celebrated 10 million registered users on AO3. February was all about International Fanworks Day, which we celebrated with several events, culminating in our 30-hour chat and games party over on Discord. And now, we've hit another milestone: 17 million fanworks on AO3!

With this many amazing fanworks, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to remember your favorites. This is why we have bookmarks on AO3! Bookmarks are a useful tool to save fanworks for re-reading whenever the mood strikes, or to recommend a work to other users.

And did you know that not only can you bookmark works posted on AO3, but also external fanworks you want to remember? To bookmark an external work, go to your Dashboard, and then to the "Bookmarks" section. In the upper right corner, there should be a button called "Bookmark External Work". For more information on bookmarks, check out our Bookmarks FAQ!

As always, we are beyond grateful for each and every one of you who contributes their free time, love, and effort to AO3, and helps us grow and flourish! We're excited to see what other achievements we'll celebrate together this year.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. INTERNATIONAL FANWORKS DAY

On February 15, Communications coordinated many International Fanworks Day (IFD) activities, including a Feedback Fest highlighting fanwork recommendations, an editing challenge in conjunction with Fanlore, and an IFD Discord server with games and chatting. Additionally, Translation helped make IFD materials available in 22 languages. Thank you to everyone who joined us in celebrating!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In February, we celebrated AO3 reaching 10 million registered users! \o/

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) focused on some important upgrades and bug fixes, including upgrading to Ruby on Rails 8 and improving the collection revealing process. They also published release notes for December's code changes.

AO3 Documentation began their biannual review of user-facing documentation.

In the past month, Open Doors signed five new agreements with moderators to import their archives to AO3! Fandoms include Highlander, The Magnificent Seven, My Chemical Romance, and others. They also completed the import of Slashknot, a Slipknot (band) fanfiction and fanart archive.

In January, Support received 3,811 tickets, while Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 7,972 tickets. User Response Translation completed 12 requests from PAC and 37 requests from Support. PAC continues to work closely with AD&T and Systems to combat spam that users have been experiencing across the site.

Tag Wrangling announced 28 new "No Fandom" canonical tags for February. In January, they wrangled over 648,000 tags, or around 1,400 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore ran a Femslash February monthly editing challenge! Systems also helped upgrade Fanlore to a new version of MediaWiki.

In February, Legal had one of their volunteers participate in a briefing for staffers in the U.S. Legislature to gain a deeper understanding of copyright fair use. Elsewhere, Legal answered a number of questions internally and from users.

TWC is preparing their March 2026 issue on "Gaming Fandom" for publication. They also completed an update of TWC's editorial board as part of their ongoing work to expand TWC's scope, diversify their discipline in terms of historically marginalized fans and scholars, make the journal more international in scope, and increase multimodal approaches.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board has concluded all Board-committee check-ins and is reviewing key themes across the organization. They also voted to approve an interpretative rule of one bylaw to better accommodate any future Board members with hearing disabilities.

Board Assistants Team continued work on various projects, including revamping the OTW Board Discord and researching projects on volunteer retention, public meeting best practices, and volunteer mental health.

Organizational Culture Roadmap continued work on the OTW Code of Conduct update project by finishing a summary of internal survey results and adjusting Code of Conduct drafts based on recommendations from an external HR firm. The OTW Crisis Management Plan has been finalised and approved by the Board.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In February, Volunteers & Recruiting ran recruitment for seven roles across four committees and one workgroup.

From January 23 to February 21, Volunteers & Recruiting received 182 new requests and completed 295, leaving them with 61 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of February 21, 2026, the OTW has 985 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: 3 Social Media Moderators
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager and 1 Translator
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: corr and peaandsea (Chair Assistants) and 1 Volunteer

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Elizabeth Wiltshire (Organizational Culture Roadmap Head) and 1 Elections Chair
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing Communications Volunteers: Abby (Social Media Moderator) and 2 Weibo Moderators
Departing Elections Volunteers: 1 Voting Process Architect
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Mei and 2 other Import Assistants, and 1 Chair Assistant
Departing Support Volunteers: Mily and RRHand (Volunteers)
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Indes, lifeisyetfair, PinkBrain, plantpun, and 14 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Idiosincrasy (Volunteer Manager and Translator), 3 Volunteer Managers, and 1 Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: corr, peaandsea, and 1 other Senior Volunteer; and 2 Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

We released several batches of bug fixes and code updates in December, focusing on error handling, improvements to the posting and browsing of works, and largely invisible code optimization. Many thanks to our coders, code reviewers, and testers!

Credits

• Coders: anna; Bilka; Brian Austin; Danaël / Rever; Edgar San Martin, Jr.; marcus8448; warlockmel; WelpThatWorked; Zooms; ömer faruk
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, ceithir, lydia-theda, marcus8448, Sarken
• Testers: Brian Austin, calamario, Deniz, Dre, Lute, megidola, slavalamp, Teyris, Bilka, therealmorticia, marcus8448, Yuca, pk2317

Details

0.9.447

On December 3, we made some improvements to how we index information for admin user search.

• [AO3-7216] - Updates to the admin-facing user search feature were getting stuck due to their size, so we've reduced the amount of data we index.
• [AO3-7217] - We originally put updates for our admin-facing user search feature in the same queue as updates to user-facing search features (like work search). This meant that slowdowns in updating user search would also slow down updates to work search, so we've moved the admin search updates to a separate queue to prevent that.

0.9.449

On December 11, we deployed a batch of miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements. (We skipped version 0.9.448.)

• [AO3-7151] - Some buttons would become unreadable on hover and focus in the Low Vision Default skin, so we made sure all buttons have the correct border and text color to make them readable again.
• [AO3-7186] - In rare cases, trying to create a skin with the same title as an existing skin would throw an error 500 instead of telling you what's wrong. Now you should always get the proper error message.
• [AO3-6851] - We removed a column from the challenge assignments table that is no longer used after some code changes.
• [AO3-7218] - We updated one of the utilities we use to deploy AO3 to its testing environment.
• [AO3-5871] - Renamed an ambiguously named method in the Works model code.
• [AO3-6738] - We improved the performance of the page that lists pseuds for a creator.
• [AO3-7084] - In several places, we disallow embedded images and will instead turn the <img> HTML into a plain link. We have now updated our help text to reflect this practice where it applies.
• [AO3-7152] - In work downloads (such as epub or HTML files), links would use the http protocol instead of https. We now make sure that all links start with https.
• [AO3-7209] - We optimized our code to prepare the help text pop-ups for translated versions once language options become available on the Archive.

0.9.450

We deployed another batch of improvements on December 15, including some small fixes to the work form in particular.

• [AO3-6797] - Trying to post a work with invalid comment permissions (which can sometimes happen due to browser translation tools affecting parts of the Archive code) would throw an error 500. Now a proper error message is displayed in that case.
• [AO3-7177] - Trying to add a new first chapter before the part that was already posted, without previewing first, would result in two second chapters. Now, when you add a new chapter and assign the first position to it, the database will actually respect your artistic process.
• [AO3-7228] - Optimized the code used to put together work headers.
• [AO3-7044] - Migrated the tagging table (not to be confused with the tags table) to the BIGINT format, to allow for a BIG integer number of records to be added in the future.
• [AO3-7049] - Restricted the ability to manage users invite requests to Policy and Abuse volunteers (and superadmins).

0.9.451

December 18 saw another release of a few fixes and updates. The Open Challenges page will now show all challenges that currently accept sign-ups, even if they aren't allowing new works to be added yet.

• [AO3-4666] - The Open Challenges page wasn't including closed collections, even if the gift exchange or prompt meme in question was open to sign-ups. This has been fixed!
• [AO3-7224] - Some places in the AO3 code relied on an old feature in Ruby, our programming language of choice. They were not made better by doing that, so we stopped in order to make ourselves ready for new Ruby versions.
• [AO3-7203] - The mailer preview for a deleted work notification now allows for a work ID to be specified for the preview.
• [AO3-7232] - Some elements of our Terms of Service were missing the proper CSS list styles. Now everything that should be a lowercase alphabetical list, is.
• [AO3-7230] - Before upgrading Ruby on Rails, the framework that powers AO3, we took a snapshot of the current database structure for historical purposes.
• [AO3-7233], [AO3-7234] - Updated a couple of dependencies.

0.9.452

On December 29, another small batch of fixes went out to ring in the new year!

• [AO3-6944] - There's no option to sort a list of prompts by prompter if the list includes anonymous prompts. However, if you tried to do it manually by editing the URL, or refreshed a tab you had open from before anonymous prompts were added, it would cause an error 500. Now it just reverts to the default sort order.
• [AO3-7184] - If someone tried to access the related works page of a non-existent user (due to a misspelled link, for example), they would be redirected to the user search. Since the desired page does not exist, we now properly serve an error 404, like others for pages that don't exist.
• [AO3-7245] - We made the help text explaining the locale preference translatable, matching the code changes included in release 0.9.449.
• [AO3-7225], [AO3-7235] - Updated a couple of dependencies.

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• Accidental Sibling Acquisition
• Balls & Galas
• Banquets & Feasts
• Charity Balls & Galas
• Royal Balls & Galas
• Balls | Testicles
• Hyper Balls | Testicles
• Large Balls | Testicles
• Bonding Over Trauma
• Characters Being Bad at Feelings
• Everyone is Bad at Feelings
• Characters Whimpering
• Chase and Capture Kink
• Child Trafficking
• Sex Trafficking
• Claws
• Female Characters Orgasming
• Generational Trauma
• Head Pats
• Hiding an Illness
• Hiding Injuries
• Intrusive Thoughts
• Long One Shot
• Past Bullying
• Simp Characters
• Subtitles Available
• Tentacle Bondage
• Thigh Riding

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse is now a subtag of Post-Apocalypse
• Post-Zombie Apocalypse is now a subtag of Post-Apocalypse
• Babies is now a subtag of Children
• Survival Horror is now a subtag of Horror
• Radio has been removed as a subtag from Technology

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you're intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you've never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here's a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month's new canonical tags:

• Apocalypse AU
• One Shot
• Royalty AU
• Subtitles (Captioning)

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven’t gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Are you a developer who has submitted pull requests to the otwarchive GitHub repository? Want to help shape the future of the OTW in a flexible, collaborative role? Are you interested in following checklists to administer personnel related tasks? Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Can you read and translate from Portuguese to English? Can you read and translate from Chinese to English? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Communications Social Media Moderator - closing 25 February 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applications
• Organizational Culture Roadmap Volunteer - closing 25 February 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applications
• Accessibility, Design, & Technology Software Developer - closing 25 February 2026 at 23:59 UTC
• Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteer - closing 25 February 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer - closing 25 February 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 125 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Portuguese) - closing 25 February 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) - closing 25 February 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 45 applications

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

Communications Social Media Moderator

Are you familiar with Instagram or Facebook? Do you want to help connect the public with the OTW?

The Communications committee is recruiting for Social Media Moderators to help us manage our Facebook and Instagram. Social Media Moderators will help the OTW maintain an active presence on their platform, creating or reblogging a range of posts of relevance and interest to the OTW's userbase, and doing outreach to fan groups and individuals on the site. Moderators are also responsible for handling user questions and managing responses to the OTW's news content. You will be working as part of a team, and you must be able to dedicate at least 3-4 hours each week to the OTW.

For this position, we are seeking people who are familiar with the conventions of one of these platforms and who ideally have experience moderating a social media page. We are also interested in hearing from those with customer service experience, especially in an online environment. We expect you to have an interest in fandom at large and an understanding of the concerns and activities of the OTW (although we will, of course, provide you with training once you start).

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. If you're a frequent Facebook or Instagram user who enjoys helping others, have wide-ranging interests across the fandom space, and are curious and willing to learn, we'd love to hear from you!

Applications will close 25 February 2026 or after 60 applications

Apply for Communications Social Media Moderator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Organizational Culture Roadmap Volunteer

Want to help shape the future of the OTW in a flexible, collaborative role? Organizational Culture Roadmap (OCR) Volunteers support the implementation of OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap goals by assisting with planning, documentation, and team coordination. Whether you prefer jumping into projects, offering behind-the-scenes support, or helping teams stay on track, there's space to contribute in a way that works for you.

This role is great for those with clear communication skills who enjoy collaborative work. Time commitment is 1-5 hours per week. As an OCR Volunteer, you'll play a key role in ensuring smooth operations by:

• Writing and editing OCR project plans, goal documentation, statements, surveys, replies to public questions, policies, minutes, and reports
• Assisting in the research, development, management, and delivery of internal projects
• Working as part of a team to support specific goals to reaching completion

We're looking for volunteers who are proactive, driven, and committed to the OTW's long-term success.

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. In addition to the initial application, you will be required to complete an assessment to help us understand how well you understand and can complete the committee's tasks. This will be emailed to you after you complete the application form.

Applications will close 25 February 2026 or after 60 applications

Apply for Organizational Culture Roadmap Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Accessibility, Design, & Technology Software Developer

The Accessibility, Design, & Technology (AD&T) committee coordinates design and development of the software that powers the Archive of Our Own. It is currently seeking Ruby on Rails developers to enhance features, fix bugs, review code, and test new changes in line with the priorities established by AD&T committee chairs and senior developers.

Please note: applicants must have submitted a minimum of two pull requests – at least one for an issue with medium or higher difficulty – to the otwarchive GitHub repository that have been deployed to production prior to applying for the software developer position.

If you don't have the time to commit to formally volunteering for the OTW, we gratefully accept bug fixes from anyone on GitHub! Please check out our contributing guidelines before submitting a pull request.

Applications are due 25 February 2026

Apply for Accessibility, Design, & Technology Software Developer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteer

Are you great at admin and enjoy the satisfaction of completing short tasks and ticking them off to-do lists? Or do you have experience in CRM or database software, data privacy, managing software access, or other related areas? Volunteers & Recruiting is looking for additional volunteers to help our busy team!

Volunteers & Recruiting supports the Organization for Transformative Works as a volunteer-driven organization by ensuring that volunteers are in the right roles, at the right time, with the right tools.

We recruit and manage incoming volunteers, handle exiting volunteers, and handle all committee setup as well as chair and board turnover. We help answer volunteers’ questions about the OTW or the tools we use, or direct volunteers to the right places. We set up tools for committees and subcommittees, mentor volunteers in their work, and track the service of each and every volunteer throughout their time with the organization. We ensure that every volunteer in the organization has the resources they need to complete their work efficiently and effectively.

This recruitment round we’d especially love hearing from applicants who are interested in regularly helping with our day-to-day work! This includes following checklists to answer tickets related to personnel changes, software access, recruitment setup, and general queries. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to a live text-based chat interview.

Applications will close 25 February 2026 or after 30 applications

Apply for Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive. If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role. Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we’re currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are in need. Wranglers need to be fluent in English, but we welcome applicants who are also fluent in other languages, especially Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Čeština (Czech), Español (Spanish), isiZulu (Zulu), Italiano (Italian), Polski (Polish), Suomi (Finnish), Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese), Türkçe (Turkish), Українська (Ukrainian), ไทย (Thai), Русский (Russian), беларуская (Belarusian) and 한국어 (Korean) — but help with other languages would be much appreciated!

Applications will close 25 February 2026 or after 125 applications

Apply for Tag Wrangling Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Portuguese)

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive. If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy Tag Wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role. Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role we’re currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Portuguese. We welcome all Portuguese dialects! The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Portuguese into English.

Applications will close 25 February 2026 or after 30 applications

Apply for Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Portuguese) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese)

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.

If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy Tag Wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role we’re currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Chinese. We welcome all Chinese dialects! The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Chinese into English.

Applications will close 25 February 2026 or after 45 applications

Apply for Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

For International Fanworks Day (IFD) 2026, we once again came together from all corners of the fandom cosmos, and celebrated an Alternate Universe-themed IFD! First, we ran our annual Feedback Fest, where we asked you all to recommend to each other fanworks around your favorite AUs. Fanlore hosted their annual IFD editing event from February 14-20, and we signal boosted several community events along with our own. Some of these are still on-going, so make sure to check out the post!

We also hosted chatrooms and games on our once-a-year IFD Discord server for 30 hours. Thanks to everyone who came by! You can check out the fruits of our collective labor–several fandom-themed poems, song lyrics, and stories–by visiting our collected IFD works on AO3.

We'd like to thank everyone who participated in our IFD activities and events, and give a huge shoutout to our OTW volunteers who modded chats and games! We hope to see you all again for IFD 2027!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

For anyone who’s missed our earlier posts, you can find all of our activities for this year’s International Fanworks Day in our "What We're Doing For #IFD2026" post.

The OTW’s chatrooms and games session is a 30-hour party that lasts from February 14th, 21:00 UTC until February 16th, 03:00 UTC. The game times listed below are all in UTC, but you can click the links to find out how that converts to your own timezone.

The games will be hosted on our dedicated Discord server and moderated by OTW volunteers throughout the day. Every two hours you will be able to participate in a different fandom-themed game! The timetable and game descriptions are posted below; join us on Discord for the games you’d like to play!

NOTE: The games will be played and moderated in English.

Games Schedule:

February 14th

• 21:00 - 20 Questions (What time is that for me?)
• 23:00 - Storytime (What time is that for me?)

February 15th

• 01:00 - List Builder (What time is that for me?)
• 03:00 - Poetry Round Robin (What time is that for me?)
• 05:00 - 20 Questions (What time is that for me?)
• 07:00 - 5 Things (What time is that for me?)
• 09:00 - 2 Truths and a Lie (What time is that for me?)
• 11:00 - Lyrics Round Robin (What time is that for me?)
• 13:00 - List Builder (What time is that for me?)
• 15:00 - Storytime (What time is that for me?)
• 17:00 - 20 Questions (What time is that for me?)
• 19:00 - 2 Truths and a Lie (What time is that for me?)
• 21:00 - OTW Trivia (What time is that for me?)
• 23:00 - Poetry Round Robin (What time is that for me?)

February 16th

• 01:00 - 5 Things (What time is that for me?)

Game Guidelines

5 Things

How to Play: During this game, the host will name a topic and players in the room will call out examples from their favorite fandoms. This will repeat for at least 5 rounds. Be prepared to explain why your answer counts (maybe you’ll recruit someone new to your fandom!)

20 Questions

How to Play: During this game, the host will think of a person, place, or object. Players have exactly 20 yes-or-no questions they can ask the host to determine what the correct answer is.

Storytime

How to Play: The host will paste a starting sentence into the chat. Players take turns coming up with the next sentence–the host calling out whose turn it is–until everyone has gone once, and the story is complete!

List Builder

How to Play: List Builder is a collaborative game in which players work together to come up with a list of fandom characters or items belonging to a particular genre, starting with consecutive letters of the alphabet. Start at A and work your way through to Z (you can be as flexible as required on the difficult letters!)

Lyrics Round Robin

How to Play: During this game, we’ll collectively write FANDOM lyrics to replace those of a familiar song. The host will choose the song and type out an alternate first two lines. Then those in the room will write the next lines until the song is finished.

Poetry Round Robin

How to Play: During this game, we’ll collectively write FANDOM poetry! The host posts a poem as an example of a specific poetic form (like sonnet, haiku, etc.), as well as a title. The players then write one (or more) original poems of that form together, one line at a time.

OTW Trivia

How to Play: Like most trivia games, the host will ask a question and the first person to answer correctly wins that round. Because we’re online and you’re free to do searches we’re going to add another factor, which is time — you must answer within 2 minutes. But you can call out your answer as soon as you think you know. If you’re the first to have the correct answer, the host will type your name and award you a point. At the end of the game, whoever has gotten the most points will be named the winner!

Two Truths and a Lie

How to Play: The host will paste into the chat 3 statements. Because we’re online and you’re free to do searches we’re going to add another factor, which is time — you must answer within 30 seconds after the third statement!

We also want to hear from you about other celebrations taking place today. Leave us a comment here to tell us about what your fandom communities are doing!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Welcome to International Fanworks Day (IFD) Feedback Fest 2026! Feedback Fest is when we celebrate fanworks that creators have made on AO3 or elsewhere by recommending them to others and leaving comments for the creators as well.

Our theme for IFD 2026 is Alternate Universes (AUs), where we celebrate all the fun and exciting AUs that fans have created!

Want to participate in this year's Feedback Fest? Here’s how to do it!

Leave a comment under this post recommending your favorite fanworks that involve an AU. Tell everyone why you love these works and why they should check them out. You can also link to a recommendation post you've made elsewhere, or create a new recommendation post on your social media accounts using the #FeedbackFest2026 tag. Keep the diversity of fanworks in mind when making recommendations—you can share fics, podfics, fanart, zines, archives, collections, newsletters, and anything that sparks joy in you about fandom. There's many wonderful fanworks out there and we want to hear about all of them!

While going through the recommendations, it’s nice to leave feedback—comments, kudos, likes—for the creators as well! Feel free to boost the recommendations from other people that you enjoyed. This year’s Feedback Fest is all about the universes and worlds people have enjoyed placing their favorite characters in, so try and think of your favorite AU fanworks to recommend!

Start your reccing, and we’ll see you on the other side—and once again we wish you a happy #IFD2026!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.