I like AO3 as much as the next fan...

[ratcreature]

...but it does not currently "archive" fanart (or anything besides text-based fanworks). You can embed and list other fanworks there in an index, but they are *not* preserved.

I want to headdesk every time I see some Tumblr post advising people to back up their "fanworks" to AO3 in the current round of freakouts over Tumblr's corporate overlords and their possible agendas, that pretends as if everything worked like fanfic.

I have fanart on AO3 that will be broken image links if Tumblr goes down, because I embedded some from Tumblr when my own website was particularly glitchy.

Comments

[larissabernstein]

One day in the hopefully not too distant future we will see a hosting option on the AO3 for vids, art, podfics etc. instead a mere embed. I believe in this fervently!

Till then, there's at least Critical Commons or Viddertube as a safe haven for vids, Soundcloud for podfics, and Dropbox for artwork. Fanart is the most difficult to embed imho, as image hosting sites tend to delete images after a while (months or years). Hosting your art on your own Dropbox is the safest option so far.

[ratcreature]

Well, AO3 had been saying fanart would come soon-ish when they opened, then it appeared as a goal in their first AO3 plan iirc and they mentioned it in one of their blog posts, but I never heard anything about the plans in the years since. They seem to have quietly dropped it. Not officially as a goal but as a thing that is actually worked on in any meaningful way. Meanwhile the whole interface that is set up is in this officially still beta phase is geared to fic. So I'm not holding my breath about imsgr capability on AO3.

I don't use Dropbox so I have no experience with that. What happens to embedded stuff when you stop paying them? For my own, I have allowed robots to index and archive, so should my site vanish my art could be found by people following the missing links on the Waybackmachine.