The queue has been closed temporarily; see the second most recent news post for details. This won't be for super long. I will change the fact that the closed queue message still says AO3 during scheduled downtime I'll add a banner for later. Thank you!
To ensure I can keep up with things while I work on fixing the ability to add tag wranglers, I will be closing the queue tonight, Oct 04, at 11:00 PM EST. I will reopen it soon, when I feel I have the ability to take on more members. I hope to have it fixed in a few weeks at the most. Existing users will be issued 6 invite codes for now to invite others. thank you everyone for your interest in Sunset, I am touched that people have been so responsive of this even if I didn’t expect it. The harassment has been difficult but most people just want to make Sunset the best place it can be with genuine constructive criticism and I appreciate the response even if the sudden blowup of Sunset was shocking.
Issues reported to me that will be fixed and or addressed soon:
I've been updating this post as more issues are discovered and I plan on fixing them soon.
1) Mail activation codes will still have AO3 branding, this should not be
2) Barring the url which has already been set up and purchased, we may be moving away from the term femslash to the terms F/F, F/NB and NB/NB pairings. I'm honestly not sure about this - I just saw a criticism that the term "femslash" isn't inclusive of for example masculine sapphics or agender characters, and I can completely understand that. So feedback would be great here. For shorthand terminology, I wasn’t honestly sure what word would be most inclusive of the site goal without being exclusionary to people who fit the site theme but do not identify as women or fem OR a man. So if you have any suggestions please let me know. The femslash term will be staying! Thanks for the feedback. I was of the opinion it should stay, but the points raised were valid so I wanted feedback before deciding.
3) we will be elaborating on the incest content warning. When I set it up, the site was still supposed to be smaller and I wasn’t thinking about defining it. My bad! I will be thinking about how an incest CW will be best defined, as in what “counts” and how far relations must be in order to not need the CW. Choose not to warn is still a valid tag but we encourage using incest additional tags in the fic for those who want to avoid it. This is for filtering purposes and not judgemental reasons. It was pointed out to me that the suggestion in the strikethrough was a contradiction of the CNTW tag, which I believe is true but slipped past me. You are free to tag works as you wish and no one will get in trouble or anything. Thank you, if you have any thoughts on this please feel free to comment.
4) Kudos emails are broken
5) Some fandom tags that were supposed to be wrangled didn't get wrangled to their specific categories
6) the first login screen links to a page with no css
7) kudos pic when leaving kudos still is ao3 default
8) Need category "Other Media"
9) Categories don't all show up on homepage or dropdown
10) Elaborate and reword the anti-bigotry stance in TOS to be clearer
Thanks for reading, as always feedback is appreciated :)
Hi, the rules have been updated once more! I realized I made an error with the original rules, and I thank everyone who raised their concerns kindly. New rules are as follows:
Genderswaps/cisswaps/what have you are now allowed. However, we ask that when posting these, you use the freeform tag "Canon Gender Swap". You can also optionally specify what the swap is, e.g. Canon Gender Swap - M/M to F/F, M/M/F to F/F/NB, or whatever applies. (Yes, this also means F/F/M is allowed too - as long as you feel like it fits in with the overall theme of Sunset, and I leave that entirely up to the individual.)
Please inform me of any additional insight you may have. I also want to say that I apologize for the confusion the original rules may have caused. I never wanted to make anyone feel excluded, but I admit I went about it in a rather naive way. However, I do want to take a moment to say this: please do not be rude to me. I do not enjoy that, it's not kind, and it's not in the spirit of the anti-harassment ideals we've formed the site around. I want this to be a good space. Thank you.
Update as of Oct 03, I didn't think this was big enough to get its own news post so I edited it - I have also updated the FAQ to address concerns about treating nonbinary characters as "woman-lite".
Thank you all for the feedback. Later, we will be updating the rule wording:
-The current TOS states that male characters must be in an & relationship with etc. This is something I realized was really silly and also not inclusive of longfic. Sorry! This will be updated on the content policy page later.
The wording will also be updated to reflect changed guidelines on transgender characters. More on that later, as I check in with others about specifics. I do want to say we hear you, and that contrary to what some may assume, the goal of this site is inclusiveness while still remaining a place dedicated to relationships between female and nonbinary characters. There is no moderation involved or “checking process” to “ensure” a fic involves the character being “trans enough”, and any level of attempting to include it is enough. However, I realize the current wording honestly isn’t great and doesn’t reflect that. This rule is here because I felt uncomfortable with a femslash site that does not allow transgender interpretations, and comes from a good place. I ask you to give me the same good faith as this archive is new and still being developed.
I would also like to say a few things. Mainly that this archive was never supposed to be “ao3 for femslash” nor was it supposed to be exclusionary in any way. It was meant to be a small community for F/F, F/NB and NB/NB works. A post was spread before I was told about it; initially I thought it was a good thing but it has brought the site to a level of attention it was not intended to receive.
Finally, I understand concerns about genderswaps. This website was originally intended for a small group of people and I am trying to maintain the focus I think it should have even though I am trying to adjust to the unexpected influx/discussion of the site. So I’m considering some options and will talk it over with some others I know.
Thank you for reading.
There is now a new way to apply to Sunset that does not require sending an email; you can go to this form to do so. Please also add your email to the invite queue on the invites page when doing this. I understand some people may have hesitation with there being an "application process" at all, and I get it - I just like to know who's using my site. Your information will not be released, and your application will not be rejected as long as you affirm the anti-harassment, anti-censorship, and pro-compassion ideals (and are 18+). Thank you!
In addition, invite emails will now look like they're sent by Sunset and not AO3. Every day there is another file I did not know existed that needs changing. WE ALSO WILL NO LONGER GO TO SPAM, WOOHOO!
If anyone would like to help out, please shoot me an email ([email protected]) with the following information:
What you'd want your admin username to be
Email you want it to be under
What fandoms you're most familiar with, and if you'd like to be assigned them
I'm especially looking for Anime & Manga and Video Game-familiar wranglers. I would deeply appreciate this! Thank you.
EDIT AS OF OCT 02: Our backend search appears to be broken and no volunteers can be added until this is fixed. If you reach out, we appreciate it, it may take longer for me to get to you.
The FAQ has been updated with more potential questions on the content policy. Additionally, the OC/Canon etc. category leftover from the original deployment has been removed; please now use Self-insert/Selfshipping or OC/Canon pairing freeform tags depending on preference.
Thank you!
I originally wanted this to be a femslash-only archive, so I've revamped the site. In addition, Sunset will now have a public invite queue!
Copied from our about page:
While the invite queue is open, you must send an email to [email protected] in order to get an approved account. IMPORTANT: Your approved account email will go to your Spam folder because Mailjet hates me. PLEASE check your spam folder. Please include the following information: social media accounts if you have them, a little bit about you, and a statement affirming you agree with anti-harassment and anti-censorship ideals. You can read the FAQ for more about this.
Still some tweaks I have to make, but here we go!
