Despite the recent board resignations, the Archive of Our Own will live on. If anything, the 2016 directors’ long history of hands-on involvement with the Archive will give more support to the volunteer staff who manages the Archive day-to-day, ensuring our success and longevity.
Board certainly plays an important role in the management of the OTW, but their role is more focused on oversight and administration – it’s truly our volunteers who keep the Archive going, and we’re all eternally grateful for their continued dedication and hard work!
Petition to the AO3 to change the ‘You have already left kudos here’ button to say ‘You have already left kudos here, why not leave a comment?’
signed, fic writers
AO3 Gothic.
You have already left kudos here.
You have already reached into the well of ideas and thoughts, of yearning and romance, of sweat and angst and laughter, and pulled out this particular variant. You have already allowed these words to dip inside, to touch you in that insatiable place where your id resides. The OTP has already murmured their words of love and devotion, their commitment and passion like a comforting, calming wave of clarity washing over you. They are sure, so you can be sure. They have found love, so love exists. They are the sun and the moon and stars to one another, so the universe is not infinite, after all; it is a known entity, soft and reassuring as the look on your fave’s face when he hands his soulmate that first cup of espresso during their first coffeeshop meetcute.
Except.
You have already left kudos here, haven’t you.
Haven’t you.
Haven’t you returned to this place, desperate for confirmation, eager to feel what you felt the first time, eager to feel something, anything, to feast on the belief that love is real and you are safe? Anything to reassure yourself that there is only one pairing, and it is true, it is truthful, and you can trust it, it would never lie to you, never make you cry and laugh and wring you out of emotion only to build you back up and promise you happy endings, endings that never come because *you have already left kudos here,* you have already tasted the pain and exuberance of this story, already let it settle over you like a blanket, and yet now look at you, back for more, you starving, insatiable, useless creature, clicking the kudos button like Pavlov’s dog, click, click, click, as if the click can save you, can fill the emptiness that descends the moment you stop reading.
How many times have you read the fic? How many times have you come to it begging for validation, only to go away unsatisfied, always craving more? Do you remember it? When was the last time you read it—was it a day, a year, an hour ago?
Or have you always been reading the fic?
Have you always been returning and returning, grasping at tropes, wearing your carefully cultivated “reading slashfic in public” mask, drawn over you, so that no one will see?—
So that no one will realize that you have never been reading the fic.
The fic has been reading you.
You have already left kudos here.
You have already left kudos here.
You have already left kudos here.
See bookmarks of your works (for AO3 creators)
I like to look at the bookmarks people have made of my works – especially then notes they leave. Anyone can do this – just replace YOURNAME with your AO3 username in the following URLs (note that there are two things to replace per URL) and paste into your browser:
Note: Creators, please don’t feel bad if you do this and don’t get any results. Most AO3 fanworks have 0 or 1 bookmarks, and the rate of recs is far lower – even when bookmarkers leave kudos or comments, or leave a nice note in a bookmark, they often don’t click the rec box.
Warm fuzzies (recs with notes):
ao3.org/bookmarks/search?bookmark_search%5Bbookmarker%5D=-YOURNAME&bookmark_search%5Bquery%5D=YOURNAME&bookmark_search%5Brec%5D=1&bookmark_search%5Bsort_column%5D=created_at&bookmark_search%5Bwith_notes%5D=1All bookmarks with notes:
ao3.org/bookmarks/search?bookmark_search%5Bbookmarker%5D=-YOURNAME&bookmark_search%5Bquery%5D=YOURNAME&bookmark_search%5Bsort_column%5D=created_at&bookmark_search%5Bwith_notes%5D=1(Keep reading for more options, and to tell me whether I should build a bookmark viewer tool.)
This was amazingly useful – scroll down for more general bookmarks/recs!
Various folks (including the lovely Besina, above) have written to me with good suggestions for how an AO3 bookmarks tool should work… I’ll try to put together a webpage soon (or a browser extension, maybe) where you can view your bookmarks sorted by date or by work!
(I got distracted by writing a script that goes through your Gmail – if you have Gmail – and tallies all the kudos, comments, etc. notifications from AO3 and FFN so you can make a timeline graph. And/or so you can share your stats with me so I can make aggregate graphs of when people tend to get kudos. 🙂 )
OOOOH! This is cool. I totes need to try this. 😀
Oh god, this is the best ego boost. I’m going through and reading all the bookmarks with comments, and they’re so sweet and funny!
Creating an AO3 account like
If AO3 had an “if you liked this story, you’ll probably like this one” recommend feature, I would probably never leave my house again.
i can’t believe how much I have accomplished in one year. Really as far as I’m concerned I have two anniversary’s with AO3. May 5 is when I posted my first fic, July 31 is when I started in earnest (only two between today and then). Still this is the one year mark, so I just want to post numbers:
I mean HOLY CRAP. And that’s mostly since August, like I said. You guys are amazing. You’ve quite literally changed my life.
type40consultingdetective ran some numbers for me. With those low early months I’m averaging 14 fics a month, about 22k words and my average fic length is aroung 1500 words. And 182 works.
I’m overwhelmed by the support you guys give me. I know my writing is improving. I changed my college major because of you guys. If anyone wants to know if fic makes a difference, here you go.
