ah, thank you for clarifying! i can't say i've noticed this, but i also don't really pay much attention to total numbers of fics; i'm much more likely to filter by ship and pay attention to those numbers, and i haven't seen any decreases there at least. i haven't seen ao3 say anything about fics being deleted by the hack, and i also haven't seen any authors mention their fics being affected by it either, so i'd be skeptical of that as an explanation. but! one of my friends has a fic she loved that was definitely an orphaned work (there's evidence of it existing and being orphaned on the wayback machine), but she noticed it's now deleted, which should be impossible since once an author orphans a work they have no control over it anymore. like it literally CAN'T be deleted once it's orphaned, unless ao3 takes down the page themselves, and i don't know why they'd do that. (the fic is "where the heart is," and it was previously here https://archiveofourown.org/works/7080832, and here's a wayback machine screenshot that proves it was orphaned http://web.archive.org/web/20201124034344/https://archiveofourown.org/works/7080832 if anyone wants to confirm! i wouldn't believe me either, it's a very strange situation. as far as i can tell, it disappeared sometime in early 2023.) so i don't know if that is somehow related? i truly don't have any explanation for how/why that could happen.
also, someone pointed out on twitter that a LOT of authors have archive-locked their fics in the past couple of years to avoid AI scraping and keep out of view of all those apps that keep popping up that just scrape ao3 to republish it for profit. so if you usually view ao3 logged out, that might be why you're seeing total numbers of fics decrease! when fics get archive-locked they're only visible to signed-in users, and they won't show up in search or lists of fandom fics to people who are logged out. so the number of fics that seem to be on ao3 DID decrease very abruptly for anyone who's not logged in around 2022, and i remember seeing that for some fandoms it was like a third of fics got archive locked, so that's a pretty drastic decrease.
re:

thank you so much! i love you describing jk's perspective as juvenile, bc it's so important to me that he... has no idea what he is doing lmao. he's in that phase of young adulthood where he has these grown-up desires but he also still has a lot of childish desires and perspectives, and he wants like, to claim the benefits of adulthood without having to deal with the drawbacks (like the part where you have to... communicate your perspectives and wants to others and like, make compromises!) he wants to be in charge but also he wants baby privileges. he's very special to me! thank you for loving him!
link to fic

i have noticed a lot of people recently looking for older fics they love only to find that they've been deleted or put into private collections by the author to hide them! i think it's a symptom of the fandom getting smaller :( it seems like when fic authors leave a fandom now, frequently they will delete or private all of their fics. while i recognize authors have a right to do whatever they want with their fics and digital footprint, it does make me sad, because those fics and the conversation around them and the comments on them are part of the history and culture of this fandom, and it's sad to feel like that's being lost so quickly.

ohhh anon, i'm so sorry you're dealing with this. first off, i just want to affirm that it's really natural for you to feel bummed out and have your feelings hurt, and that i would probably feel exactly the same way. at the end of the day, how you feel is how you feel, and you're allowed the space to feel it! i think it's really nice and generous of you to recognize that those people probably didn't intend for you to ever see the things that they said, and i think stuff like that is so tricky! on the one hand, it's so normal when talking to a friend about a fic to give your honest thoughts on it and even bond over parts that you found silly or clumsy without having any malicious intent, and i think those conversations are fun and important. BUT, i ALSO think that it's very important to make sure that those thoughts don't reach authors, particularly in a niche amateur community like fanfic is. so while i think it's fine for people to have those conversations, i think the people who were talking like that about your fic definitely shouldn't have done it in a context where they were linking your fic and you could find it. i know not everyone necessarily realizes that some authors will search the urls of their fics, but lots of people do that (i definitely do!!!) and so i think that's something readers should be mindful of. so, PSA to anyone who doesn't know: if you're publicly tweeting a link to a fic, anything you say in that tweet or in the replies to it might be seen by the author one day! we are incorrigible snoops and we want to know what people think!

i think that the fact that you were having fun while writing it is so important and so cool!! you were making choices for the joy of them, and that's the whole point of creative expression: making choices and taking risks and putting yourself out there and hoping that someone else will gain the same kind of joy from those choices that you did! and it sucks that these readers didn't connect with you on that, but i'll bet money that there are lots of other readers out there who did feel your joy come through in that story and found those choices just as fun as you did! that's why i think it's so important to love what you write and love the choices you made rather than writing things that you might not like much but that you think will appeal to others. i think the love that YOU feel for the story does shine through and gives it something special! and it makes the connection you make with people who enjoy reading it feel that much more special too, because you now have something important in common with them! you both think these ideas you had are SO rad!

i do super understand getting in your head about what might be wrong with the thing that you're writing, and it can be really difficult to overcome. LUCKILY, i've never come across anyone saying anything mean about one of my fics, but i am sure that people HAVE said mean things about them, or thought them in the privacy of their own minds, because it's absolutely impossible that everyone who reads a story will like it. and i do sometimes imagine what those people might say in my head! there are a lot of things about my writing that i like (as in, like, i enjoy writing that way) that i am also sort of insecure about and that i worry that other people will dislike. and it sounds to me like maybe these readers hit on some of the insecurities that you have about your writing in that same way, like those things that bring you joy but that you could see someone else not liking! and there's something very embarrassing and very real about like, having someone else say out loud the thing that you fear might be true about you or about something you made. i've experienced it in other situations (i think everyone has!!) and it feels like being Seen, but in the worst way. like you've been found out or something that you hoped you could hide has been revealed. it makes you feel foolish and small, and i'm so sorry it's happened to you here with something so special. i want you to know that you're not alone in feeling that way and that you're not foolish for feeling it! we're social creatures, and being seen in a negative light stings for all of us. it's so normal, and it's so okay for it to stick with you or affect you.

as for how to get past it... i know a lot of people will say "fanfic doesn't have to be good!! we're not getting paid!! you're not entitled to quality!!" etc. and i do think those are all technically true statements, but personally i don't find them particularly comforting, so i'm not really going to go that route! i like reading fanfic because i enjoy it and think it's good, and personally i do want the stuff i read to be good by my standards. i do care about quality and how it's perceived, and i want to feel like i've made something worthwhile that i enjoy. obviously i'm not under any illusions that i'm writing a literary masterpiece or something, but i think "literary masterpiece" and "good" are frankly different metrics! you're aiming for different things!

i think where i land is: sometimes you will find people whose standard of "good" or "enjoyable" does not align with your own! these are the people who hate the cheesy tv show that you love, or who dismiss the musical artist who you agree isn't very Serious but deeply enjoy and find meaningful all the same! and it's also these people who read your fic and thought all those things about it! and like, those people aren't your audience. they're out there, sure, but you're not writing For them. you're writing for the people like you who like the choices that you're making and who kept reading that fic because of those choices rather than in spite of them!!! if you came across someone who was like "actually i think being gay is wrong and it's evil to write stories that glorify it" or "writing fic about real people is creepy and gross and anyone who does it is horrible," you'd be like "wow those people are not for me and will never be for me and i don't want them reading my stuff" lol! and i think while this example is less extreme, it's still in that same ballpark tbh. these are people who just don't like the things that you do! you do not agree and you're not aiming for them! i say lean in to the thing that makes you polarizing, tbh, because that is also going to be the thing that other people connect with the most and find most special!! time and time again, i find that the things i include in my fic where i think "this is so weird, this is literally just for me" are the things that other people will point out as things that they loved or really identified with! and it's definitely not everyone, but it's SOME people, and every time someone DOES point something like that out, i feel like that spidermen pointing meme! like THOSE are my people!! and your people are out there, and they are NOT Those people who said those things! have fun writing the story you're writing!

i find that often when i get really in my head about a fic, the only thing that really helps is to put it on a back burner and work on something else for a while. i find that when i've had some time for those feelings to settle, i'll come back to it and be like "omg actually this slaps and i remember how fun this was to write!!" and the joy will be there again. it sounds like all of this is still pretty fresh for you, and sometimes wounds like that just stay open for a while and take some time to heal! i also think that like, if you do end up feeling like you want to take those criticisms to heart and make some changes based on them, that's not necessarily a bad thing. but it can be hard to do that when you're still in the space where ALL you can hear in your head is those criticisms! where you're constantly second guessing your own choices and impulses because you get worried that all the things you love and enjoy are somehow Bad actually (i've been there 🙃)! and i would caution that if you do make those choices, that you make them out of love for the thing you're making and hope for it to be its best most joyful self, not out of fear of what others will think of it.

because there will always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS (i cannot stress this enough!!!!) be someone out there who doesn't like the thing that you made and worked hard on! it's simply a fact of life! all those fics that you think everyone in the fandom universally loves? there's someone out there, probably LOTS of someones, who hate them and think they're bad lol! think of how many books you read in school that are supposed to be Great Novels where you read them and were like "well that sucked"! tastes are simply different, and nothing is for everyone, and if something WERE for everyone, it would be vaguely liked by everyone and beloved by no one, i think. i think the things that people love the most are the things that are specific and individual and unusual, because they feel the most Human. they feel like they have the fingerprints of the person who made them all over them. and that's what makes things special. YOU are what makes the things you write special, and it's important that no matter what you write or how you write it, you feel like it matters to you and is something you like. that's something you can't fake.

that seems like probably a good place to end this extremely long response lol, a nice positive note to go out on, but i also want to just say that if you like writing and you want to keep doing it, which it sounds like you do, you're going to write a lot of things!! and you'll get better at writing, or at least more comfortable with it, as you go on. the things that you write and like will change, and i have some old fics that i don't like as much anymore, where i feel like my amateurishness and the things that i don't like about my writing were really on display. but i think it's important to keep love for those things, because the only way you get better at writing is by doing it a lot. so i sometimes do actually find it comforting to remember that when i'm writing something and i worry that i'm making a choice that's cringe or bad or stupid or whatever! like, maybe someone will think the choice is bad! maybe I'M gonna think it's bad 3 years from now or whatever! but i am where i am, i'm as good as i am right now, and where i am right now is an okay place to be! this fic is a record of who i am and what i like and how i'm creating things at this very particular point in time, and it's worthwhile to create stuff that preserves that! who you are right now is worthy of creating something. what you like is worthy of being put down in a story, even if you worry that it's silly. and that's all i have to say about that i think.

i've co-written with 3 different people, and we've handled the process a bit differently each time. swellow and i talked a little more in-depth about how we co-write no other homeland a while back here, but i'm gonna answer this one more broadly!

i've always made sure to co-write with people who i really get along with, and importantly with people who i know share a lot of my tastes in terms of tropes and ships we like. i always know that we like reading a lot of the same things, both by talking to each other about fics we like and by seeing that i often like the fic they rec, and i know that they tend to write the kind of fic that i also like to write. i say this just bc i don't necessarily think it's enough to just really like the other person's writing: there are lots of authors whose fics i love who just have very different writing interests from me, and i suspect it might be more difficult to collaborate if we didn't have some overlap of our comfort zones.

as far as like the actual process of writing, it's turned out a bit differently every time. my first co-writing partner was my bff angel and we've written a couple of things together over the years (not on ao3 though, those fics live either only on tumblr or privately in google drive as gifts for friends of ours), and for those we usually write out of order and we'll each take charge of single scenes or even entire chapters, so we work fairly independently. we'll often end up both contributing to each other's sections though bc we just talk to each other a lot throughout and will invite each other to add to certain parts or to take over if we're unsure where to go next. with swellow we alternate writing small chunks within a scene (500-800 words typically), and usually we'd be in our shared google doc writing live at the same time, which i think helped with consistency and flow! though recently our schedules have been more unpredictable so we don't sit in the doc live anymore, but we do still alternate chunks and just let each other know when we've updated. and with beebalm on unfastening we're somewhere in between those two methods! we usually each write fairly long chunks (something like 800-1500 words), still alternating within scenes. sometimes it takes a couple of days for one of us to finish up the section we're in, so if we update it we'll just tell each other like "hey i added some stuff but i wanna come back and finish up later!" so we know to wait for each other to be done before the other takes over. just talk to each other about the process and be willing to make changes until you find something you're both comfortable with!

i think the most important thing to co-writing successfully is being able to communicate with each other honestly, specifically, and kindly, and also getting into a bit of a different mindset where you recognize the fic as Ours, not Mine. like, i think i'd have a terrible time just deciding to have someone guest write a chapter of one of my wips, because i have such a singular vision for those and i feel so much ownership over them, it would be almost impossible for me to feel satisfied with what someone else wrote for it. but with all the fics i've co-written, we've developed the outlines together and begun the writing process together, so i don't think of them as My fics really! they belong to both of us, and so i'm a little looser with them because i have to be open to someone else changing things around or adding to them without getting offended or possessive, y'know?

like, even though we talk about fic trajectory and scene outlines before we start writing, there are always points where one of us will kind of take it in a different direction or do something unplanned, and when we do we'll let each other know and discuss it usually. i think it's important to be able to recognize within yourself how attached you are to something you've written and then to be able to effectively communicate that to the other person. so, for example, if i'd made an unplanned decision in a scene, i might say something like "okay SO i went in a different direction but idk if i like it yet, so let me know if you wanna change it or can't get into it" for a change i'm not too attached to, or "i changed something but i think i actually really like it this way, i was having a hard time with the previous version" if it's something that i really like and want to advocate for. i don't know if i've ever encountered a scenario where i wrote something that is so precious to me that i wouldn't want to change at all, but if i did i'd also let them know that too! that way when we discuss it, we know how gently to treat it if one of us does wanna make some kind of change.

we have to feel comfortable shooting down each other's ideas or changing directions in a scene without walking on eggshells or worrying too much that we'll hurt the other person's feelings, and i also think it's CRUCIAL to be able to communicate in SPECIFICS! rather than just saying "i don't like that," we need to be able to say what we don't like and why, so that it feels like there's room to move forward. for example, in unfastening especially we have SO many ideas for it that both of us have had multiple ideas we've tossed at the other person regarding future story beats where the other person has replied like "i dunno how i feel about that, i don't think they're ready for it" or "but wouldn't that complicate [x]" etc etc. and you have to figure out that right way to say that, bc just responding to someone's ideas with "i don't like that" doesn't give you much room to move forward or compromise! it makes the other person just feel shut down. whereas if you can communicate exactly what you don't like about something, there's room for the other person to propose a fix or to know what kinds of ideas to avoid pitching in the future. usually we will be clear about what we like about the idea and also about which part of it gives us hesitation (e.g. "i love the drama of that, and i like the idea of adding in another angst point later, but it feels like maybe it's too much angst and it might complicate the plot in a way that might be difficult to resolve.")

sorry, i wanted to keep this fairly short but i've made it SO long lmao!!! but the tl;dr of it all is that i don't think it's bad to be really sensitive about your writing or really attached to your specific vision of your fic, but that if you are, you need to recognize that and maybe avoid co-writing!! writing is very personal, and it can be really easy to respond to ANYTHING that isn't 100% positive by getting defensive or hurt. it makes sense! but also, it's not conducive to writing with a partner. and i also think that just brainstorming a scenario with a friend is a bit different from the process of sitting down to write it together! it can get more prickly once you've started actually crafting it and possibly needing to change things, especially when both people need to be entirely on board for something. you need to both be comfortable with saying no AND be comfortable with someone else saying no to you! and honestly, those things are hard for a lot of people! so if they're skills you struggle with, communicate that! e.g., i struggle with transitional scenes and i tend to get down in the dumps about fics once i get past the opening, and i TELL my writing partners those things, so that if i'm unhappy with something i can be like "this might pass, it might not even be the fic itself, it's just me struggling with something i always struggle with" so they know not to take it personally! but i've always had a lot of fun doing it, and i've been lucky in that all my writing partners have been really easy to communicate with and very understanding. i love all of them very much!

thank you so much!! i definitely felt a lot of internal pressure with how long it's taken them to get together lol, i wanted it to feel worth the wait. and it does really feel good to hear how people felt about the chapter! honestly i don't think it necessarily makes anything happen faster as far as me writing it unfortunately, that part is more some weird nebulous metric where i need to internally reach my peace with what i wrote, but i do share my writing bc i want someone to like it and want to hear people's thoughts so it's still important and very appreciated! i was very pleased with the piercing idea, so i'm especially glad you liked it 😌 i've been waiting a while to get to that point in the fic! it's just something i think jk would do~
this ask is re: takedown