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I think both sides are getting so heated that the actual point is getting lost. Downloading a fanfic for personal reading, sharing it privately with a friend, and publicly reuploading someone's work to Google Drive or another website are NOT the same thing. As someone who's written both fanfiction and original works, I personally don't mind people sharing my writing. But that's MY preference. Other authors have every right to decide where their work is publicly distributed, and respecting that shouldn't be such a controversial idea. At the same time, I don't think it's fair to call everyone who wants to preserve or share fanfiction a "looter," or suggest that someone isn't a "real fanfic writer" just because they care about comments and kudos. I understand why authors want readers to engage with them. They spend hours creating entire worlds and want to share that experience with fellow fans. There's nothing wrong with hoping for appreciation. But here's the thing: some readers simply aren't talkative. They might genuinely love your work without ever leaving a comment or a kudos. That doesn't mean they don't appreciate it, and readers don't owe anyone engagement. And if someone shares a fic during an AO3 outage, their intention might genuinely be to help other readers, not steal from the author. That doesn't automatically make public redistribution okay without permission, but it doesn't mean we need to assume the worst about their intentions either. Authors have a right to control where their works are published. Readers have a right to enjoy, download, and privately preserve what they read. Neither side needs to turn the other into a villain. Can we please distinguish between preserving fanfiction and publicly redistributing someone else's work without consent, instead of treating everything as the same damn thing? And no, I'm not trying to play the "I'll say something nice about both sides so nobody comes after me" game. I genuinely understand where both sides are coming from, and the world isn't fucking binary. I just find it sad that, at the end of the day, everyone involved cares about the same thing. The writers love creating these stories, and the readers love reading them. Yet somehow, people who share that same love end up fighting each other over it.