You keep talking about the origins of AO3 as this group effort by an actual group of people who were friends and who spent time discussing this with each other in person. It's kind of blowing my mind. Is there a post or a journal somewhere that specifically keeps record of this?
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I'm dying.
Nonnie, seriously?
No, that's mean, I know you're serious. It's just flabbergasting how much fandom has expanded and how much there isn't a direct link to the past.
Astolat and Cesperanza floated the idea at Vividcon and various places, I think, though I wasn't going to cons in that era. We were all on LJ in those days, and Astolat made a big post nailing her theses to the door. Discussion in the comments was instant and prolonged.
A LJ com was set up to discuss. It was later renamed to otw_news, but if you go all the way back to the beginning, you can see brainstorming mess instead of official news posts.
Fanlore page linking to Astolat's post and giving a little context.
Early brainstorming: https://otw-news.livejournal.com/2007/05/
For example, here I am collecting links to older archives to look at for research when designing AO3.
Fun fact, we never intended to call it AO3. There was a whole call for name suggestions, but nothing was as evocative as astolat's original post title referencing Virginia Woolf. (For those who haven't thought about it, AO3's name is a reference to A Room of One's Own.)
Here's the name discussion
Here's the poll that came out of it
But also notice how many people voted: 562.
That's how many people cared at the time: a few hundred. Maybe a thousand if you count lurkers, but frankly, that community was not as lurkery as now. It wasn't just ten friends. It was a community effort. But what "our" community looked like at the time was vastly different. It was six degrees of Kevin Bacon astolat, not a vast sea of strangers like fic fandom on AO3 is now.
Here's an early post suggesting we ban the under 18s from the site entirely. Pity we didn't do so, given the rise of antis.
Here's the invite to a fundraising party at astolat's in NYC that following Halloween. I dressed as Amanda from Highlander, not very well.
You can tell we knew each other by looking at those comments on astolat's initial post. You can also tell how discussion-based that part of fandom was back in 2007.
The way my tumblr is now with a ton of text, back and forth, and hopping around between threads of conversation, all featuring a consistent set of faces, is very much like LJ. Most of tumblr is not.
chris hemsworth is like a DnD character whose class 100% does notย require a high charisma stat but he put it as his highest stat anyways likeย โhmm I think it will be useful (:โ so he just walks around as a muscle-bound brawler who can also inexplicably get anything he wants from anyone by smiling at themย
some sketches of little jing yuan โก
This fic is good enough to haul my ass out of creative retirement. 10/10 would recommend.
(T, (for now!))
hawks | takami keigo x reader
ao3
You serve Hawks a lavender, oat milk latte. Not only is he hooked on your drinks, but heโs hooked on you as well.
coffee shop au, slow burn, fluff, mutual pining, eventual smut, & cliches baby
chapter iย ย |||ย ย chapter iiย ย |||ย ย chapter iiiย ย |||ย ย chapter ivย ย |||ย ย chapter vย ย |||ย ย chapter viย ย |||ย
(During In Your Heart Shall Burn)
Cullen: If we are to have a chance, let that thing hear you.
The Inquisitor, standing on the roof of the chantry: HEY FUCKFACE
The 3 important Bโs
@pickulohsmash This feels kind of familiar...
Head-canon: The rest of the party was killed and eaten. Turning to the last remaining member, something about the healerโs peaceful slumber softens the hearts of the wolves. They adopt the healer into their pack and have many fantastic adventures in the deep woods. Later, the wolves are attacked in the middle of the night by an adventuring party, and the healer sleeps through the whole battle.
30+. Professional nerd. D&D trash. Hibernating fic writer.
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