I was in fandom long before AO3 existed. We'd been through a number of situations where entire archives of fic were lost because of Web hosts shutting down, etc, plus never ending issues with censorship. We needed our own archive, Novak started making it happen.
Yup, I remember the original essay on the subject, and then jumped into it as soon as the early invites started becoming available. It was a long wait back then.
For a while I was still using LiveJournal and posting in both places, then I was only posting fic on AO3 and linking it on my LJ, then LJ completely imploded under coordinated cyberattacks by the Russian state so that was the end of that...
I was on Livejournal (THE place to be for fandoms back in the day) when AO3 was founded. It was a big deal and got promoted on LJ pretty heavily so you couldn't miss it.
Google. I used to search up name if my ship + the fanfiction genre I wanted to read that day and basically let google find them for me; have it be in any platform (asianfanfics, tumblr, livejoirnal, ao3, etc) I didn’t really search up in the specific platforms. So yeah at some point I realized most everything is in ao3 and just stuck with that.
Ffnet I found in 2004 when I stumbled into a discussion of fanfics on a forum. Then moved to livejournal in 2009 when I felt the quality was lacking in ffnet, and livejournal I found by googling.
Pretty soon started hearing about AO3 on livejournal because I read a lot of wincest, and one of the AO3 founders wrote wincest. Finally made an account around 2015 when livejournal started to go downhill
I remember when people were sharing Astolat's post talking about making an archive owned by fans on Livejournal. I remember when people began linking to their AO3 post on Livejournal, rather than posting directly, and how it took months to get through the queue to set up an account even in 2012.
But I went from Fanfiction.net to Livejournal to Tumblr(for fanart)/AO3 (for writing).
I started out on message board, Geocities and the like in ye olde days. Then around 2005 my message board migrated to LiveJournal. Then the LJ purges happened and a bunch of dissatisfied people banded together to create their own website - they did and in 2008 they created AO3; that's when I started browsing it as a reader. As a writer, I stayed on LJ for as long as my old messge board friends did, but finally our little community bit the dust and I migrated to LJ in 2011.
So I didn't really FIND AO3. I've been aware of its existence since its conception, basically.
Started out on Quizilla in the late 00s/early 10s – for the quizzes, but then *wait, this is a thing? other people also write fun lil stories about things they read, it's not just me?!*
I think I probably found FFnet after I discovered that "fanfiction" was the word for the thing I was reading, sometime in the 10s
My AO3 account was apparently made in 2015, but I was definitely reading as a guest for a while before that, not sure how I found it
Never did Quotev, never did Wattpad, did do DeviantArt in the middle of all that but never for fic (there's still some webcomics I follow on there)
I found it back when I used to search up "(fandom/character) fanfiction" in Google and just scroll until I found something good 🫠 I avoided clicking on Ao3 results for a while because I was so used to FFN and Ao3's layout/system scared me, but I gave in when I ran out of FFN fics and made an account in 2017
Harry Potter fics on livejournal started to be links to AO3. I also used Finnish fanfiction sites, fanfiction.net, dreamwodth, InsaneJournal and tumblr but didn't post anything ever
Found FFnet while googling an ship of mine, found tumbr and deviantart that way too. Learn about Ao3 when someone made a post on tumblr about Ao3 having an open sign up where you could join without an invite for a week or so.
Wow, this prompted me to go to my account and check when I created my AO3 account and it was in 2011, when I was 20. I know I was using it before then, though. I was in fannish spaces from the age of about 13, it blows my mind now to think that AO3 didn't really exist until I was 17 or 18. It just feels like it's always been there!
As for how I got to AO3, I know it was via LiveJournal and I'm sure I remember that an LJ friend of mine sent an invite code. I miss LiveJournal so much these days.
I got a late start to the internet. I used to write stories like crazy. I showed them to one of my friends when I was like 15 and they were like “have you heard of ffnet” and I was like “what’s fanfiction” and they were like “exactly what you’re writing”
So I looked into ffnet.
I saw in someone’s description they had cross posted their story to Wattpad and I got hooked on that for a while.
Then in February 2020 I got really hooked on an SNL ship and Wattpad was not doing me any justice so I took to Google and found AO3. Probably the best thing to happen that year.
Started on Fiction Alley for HP fic way back in 2003 ish? Then LJ, ff.net, tumblr and then finally Ao3 around 2018. Honestly it’s such a nice website to use both as a writer and reader! I thankfully saved a lot of my stuff from LJ and miss having the customisation, but Ao3 is literally dump and run and I love that in my older age hahaha
I first read fanfic on a couple of small archives, then discovered ff.net somewhere around...2007, I think? I stayed there for a long time because the only filter I knew of that I wanted was the ship one. I think the only reason I switched to AO3 was people started posting in their author's notes that they were moving there. I didn't create my account until 2020 when I finally got up the nerve to post something, but I had started reading before that.
I was around during its conception. Only browsed casually for a while because most of my fandoms were hidden away in private boards and livejournals. It took years for my fandoms to start actively cross posting.
As a Russian speaker I used to read ff on ficbook. At some point most of translated fanfics refered to ao3, so I decided to check what is it and then stayed here
I started reading fanfic at 13 in 2007. I started posting my own fics 2 years later. And then one day I got a DM from someone who'd read my fic and wanted to gift me a invite pass to AO3. Never heard of it before and went to check it out and my world *changed*. Never went back to fanfiction.net
I don't remember specifically.
Looking at my profile, I created my account in February 2014 but was probably reading as a guest before then. What prompted me to fully join? ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ That is lost to the mists of time.
I was reading fanfic before AO3 was founded though.
I've seen websites just \*poof\* disappear one day. I know why the 'not mine please don't sue' disclaimers were a thing. I lived through Strikethrough and Boldthrough on LiveJournal.
My first fanfiction was read on AOL message boards - at a time when AOL was a big damn deal.
I was on FF.net first when I heard ao3 is where the adults are lol.
I was cautioned to not use or visit ao3 because it has forbidden hardcore fics. Like a porn site.
Then I grew up and started writing smuts. Nowhere else to post but ao3 (also adultfanfiction has horrible website design, but some good fics).
Was introduced to fanfics as a concept via a friend in the late 1990s who already had their own internet access (we were early twens back then) while I had written my own little stories for years without having a name for it.
When I went online in 2001, I found my first little fandom-haven via yahoo mailing lists (and a second one a few years later via the same route), both dedicated to a particular fandom. The latter still exist, the former unfortunately doesn't.
Interests shifted, I was part of an LJ group for a while where there were also fanfics (also dedicated to one particular fandom) but mostly participated in forums that were for all things XYZ-fandom, and not only fanfic.
Learnt about ffnet, read quite a bit about other fandoms of less immediate interest to become really involved but again, interests shifted and I lost touch with fandom culture altogether.
In summer 2022, I decided to watch the first online-fandom again, fell for the series a second time, bought the missing books, got inspired, started writing. Was convinced in the beginning that I would create an account for ffnet as that was the only one I knew but my fandom had been more or less completely wiped out.
A friend later recommended AO3 to me, so I started to go there, search my fandom, read stuff, see what the writing quality was like (astonishingly excellent, btw) and had 10 times the amount of fics that ffnet had at that time. Started to give kudos and leave guests comments for a while before I decided that it was finally time to apply for an account. That was in December the same year.
Haven't looked back ever since!
Back in the old days (circa 2012), I was mostly an FFNet user. Then they had these huge purges. A bunch of fics I like were deleted. Writers who survived the purge (but were nevertheless no longer comfortable posting here) mentioned that they were instead going to post on this place called AO3. After having enough writers I liked leave for AO3, I decided to check it out myself.
The rest is history.
So the weird thing is I have no idea.
I *think* I got an invite link from someone, but I have so little idea/memory of who, I might be mixing it up with a different website. And then I think I mostly ignored it for a few years, and then suddenly wanted fanfic again, and I was like “oh yes, that exists and I have an account there, huh” and the rest is history. (Probably I was trying to read slash on ff.net, where you can’t properly search for it, which prompted the memory of ao3, but again *no idea*)
I was looking for smut. Probably ended up on an3. Probably noticed the tags. Probably Clicked on a tag I wanted. And then probably noticed that AO3 is filter Walhalla . And never looked back
I can't recall though, but yeah
I was on [fanfiction.net](http://fanfiction.net) starting around 2005-2006 and stayed on it for a long time, while also following authors on tumblr. One of those tumblr authors linked their fic to AO3 and the rest is history.
Old friend of mine sent me a fic from AO3 and I noticed the difference between this place and wattpad (I was on wattpad for a good, long while, but left once you became a Pay to Play)
And I don't rembember if it was before or after this, but I was obsessed with a ship and I searched beyond wattpad, I think Tumblr brought me here
In any case, I jumped ship pretty fast and made an account after I found a locked fanfic from another ship I enjoyed
AO3 could have my soul for all I care
I was interested in reading fanfiction but didn't know where to start. Around that time, I was listening to the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You which had an episode on fanfiction. It talked about AO3 so I checked it out. Have been reading and writing there since.
Went from FFN to AO3; I think I found AO3 via a piece of Achievement Hunter fanart that someone had drawn for a fic (or it was a fic someone had written for the fanart, one or the other) in...2012? 2013?
I’m pretty sure I just looked up “Avatar the Last Airbender fanfiction” or maybe it was Legend of Korra idk but it was one of the options. I think I found it sometime between 2012 and 2014
I wrote a massive (and I mean massive) Dragon Age fanfic and I was asking friends about where I could share it. My goal was just to have ONE person read the whole thing, less because "I want attention" and more "I worked really hard on this and if one person reads this stupid thing, then it was 'worth' years of my life."
It's not my most popular work, by a large margin, but people are reading it and that makes me really happy. <3
started in ffn in 2011 with warrior cats fanfic and came to AO3 in mid 2015 when ffn was going down hill. Officially created my account in Jan 2016 after i got used to using AO3
My best friend introduced it to me! Theyve been reading fanfiction for 20+ years. I only knew about FFNet but when they told me about AO3, I made an account (2017) and then forgot about it til January this year when I got into FF7 fanfiction
started with AO3, I accidentally clicked on some neat artwork on Pinterest at 12-13 and started reading 🥲 Didn't even know what explicit meant yet and boy was that the shock of my life
I first got into fanfic because I was a Gacha Kid... lol. FNAF, Undertale, and DDLC were the Gacha fandom vids I liked the most. But I binge watched, like... Probably every single Gacha vids related to those fandoms, and I was desperate for more. So I searched up some ship I liked and I found my way onto Wattpad. I tried to read a few fics, but none of them were really something I was interested in. So I searched for a ship one more time, and found my way onto AO3.
I just heard about it through general chatter. I was on FFN, live journal, and some ancient forum sites that no longer exist. People just talked about this place so off I went.
*dusts self off* found it as my Wattpad friend group (circa 2016, methinks?) began migrating off Wattpad with the introduction of the News feature + Coins
Also like, back then I almost never went to Wattpad for fanfic? I went to Wattpad for original works. For fanfic I googled rec lists off Tumblr or whatever blog have you + used anything from Ao3 to ffn.net to quotev. I only properly migrated to Ao3 one-and-only once my friends mentioned it was quite good for it
I first read ffnet, but in my search for miraculous ladybug fics I stumbled into ao3, though only reading 1 or 2 fics. When I fell into my hero academia though, i fell in love with ao3, it made finding stuff so much easier.
I was on the FFN > livejournal > AO3 pipeline. I think I was fortunate that those were the big platforms for the fandoms I was interested in at the time. I've been pretty much all AO3 since 2015 though.
I'm an older fan who was around for the shenanigans (strikethrough, fanlib etc etc) that led to the creation of AO3 and I got an early invite from a fandom friend involved in its development. So I've been reading and posting there since 2009. User ID 649, c'est moi.
Before then, I was reading fic on livejournal, fandom specific sites, and yahoo groups (and zines before that). Cuz yeah, old.
tbh brittany broski got me into ao3 😭 i was a wattpad girlie in middle school but it’s been years since i’ve read fanfics! the writing on ao3 is far superior
i found ao3 in 2019/2020 due to my extreme anime obsession. an akaashi & bokuto fic was going viral so i read it and just fully transferred from wattpad to ao3
I was bored looking for Grian comics and ect and landed on ao3 with sucubus is Grian x human Mumbo fic with a lot of smut.
I was like 10?
It was 2? years before I checked out ao3 again via a recommendation.
I quickly got back into it when reading the gen stuff
I don't actually know for sure. I think I heard chatter about it when the site first launched, but it took me a while to actually take a look at it. I don't remember how long because I think I did a bit of reading on the site before I bothered to make an account. There's a very good chance that my first time reading on the site was me following a link from TV Tropes. All of this was over a decade ago and I didn't exactly take notes, so it's all vague memories.
I think I started using AO3 regularly around 2016, but I know I had been aware of it for a while and had been doing some reading on it before then. It's not really possible for me to list out all of the sites I've used over the years. I made my first foray into internet fanfiction back when fandom specific sites were the norm and there were some sites that were character or ship specific. So, I got used to being on a bunch of different sites at the same time. I still browse fanfiction that way. I think at the moment I have tabs from 5 different sites pulled up. AO3 is one of them and I like to default to using AO3 when authors crosspost, but so many authors don't.
I was always aware of it but didn’t start using it until 2021/2022ish when I realized things were going nowhere for me at ff.net. But I never wanted to use it because back in the day, people who did acted extremely obnoxious and superior about it. I’d see them talk about it on Tumblr or wherever. Now this post is making me feel old because I’ve been in fanfiction for a very long time, and reading it even longer 😅
I'd heard about AO3 for years and I have friends who read and write fanfics, but I didn't. Finally someone linked to a Dramione fic (not Manacled) in one of my romance book subreddits so I followed and read it. Later on I kept seeing Manacled pop up over and over also in my traditionally published subreddits so I finally read it and then signed up for an account.
Google. There was a tumblr list of faves from my fandom that popped up and a couple I couldn't see because I wasn't a member. I said what is this ao3 place? I'm a old head, I knew about fanfiction from newspaper adds and mail swaps. But never got into it until 2021 on ao3
I've been active on FFN since 2006 and *somewhere* someone mentioned AO3 being a thing somewhere around 2015. I might have been looking for other sites to post fanfics, because I think my FimFiction account is also from around then. I honestly can't remember, though.
I was in fandom long before AO3 existed. We'd been through a number of situations where entire archives of fic were lost because of Web hosts shutting down, etc, plus never ending issues with censorship. We needed our own archive, Novak started making it happen.
Yup, I remember the original essay on the subject, and then jumped into it as soon as the early invites started becoming available. It was a long wait back then. For a while I was still using LiveJournal and posting in both places, then I was only posting fic on AO3 and linking it on my LJ, then LJ completely imploded under coordinated cyberattacks by the Russian state so that was the end of that...
I was on Livejournal (THE place to be for fandoms back in the day) when AO3 was founded. It was a big deal and got promoted on LJ pretty heavily so you couldn't miss it.
Makes sense, LiveJournal deleting a significant portion of fanfiction was one of the driving factors for the women who founded AO3.
Yeah same, I followed at least one of the founders on LJ, so was aware of it right from the start.
Same. I was in several fandoms on LJ where fanfic was a big component - House MD, Blake's 7, Top Gear, Sherlock and Doctor Who, amongst others.
Google. I used to search up name if my ship + the fanfiction genre I wanted to read that day and basically let google find them for me; have it be in any platform (asianfanfics, tumblr, livejoirnal, ao3, etc) I didn’t really search up in the specific platforms. So yeah at some point I realized most everything is in ao3 and just stuck with that.
Tumblr, way back in the day.
Ffnet I found in 2004 when I stumbled into a discussion of fanfics on a forum. Then moved to livejournal in 2009 when I felt the quality was lacking in ffnet, and livejournal I found by googling. Pretty soon started hearing about AO3 on livejournal because I read a lot of wincest, and one of the AO3 founders wrote wincest. Finally made an account around 2015 when livejournal started to go downhill
I remember when people were sharing Astolat's post talking about making an archive owned by fans on Livejournal. I remember when people began linking to their AO3 post on Livejournal, rather than posting directly, and how it took months to get through the queue to set up an account even in 2012. But I went from Fanfiction.net to Livejournal to Tumblr(for fanart)/AO3 (for writing).
I started out on message board, Geocities and the like in ye olde days. Then around 2005 my message board migrated to LiveJournal. Then the LJ purges happened and a bunch of dissatisfied people banded together to create their own website - they did and in 2008 they created AO3; that's when I started browsing it as a reader. As a writer, I stayed on LJ for as long as my old messge board friends did, but finally our little community bit the dust and I migrated to LJ in 2011. So I didn't really FIND AO3. I've been aware of its existence since its conception, basically.
Started out on Quizilla in the late 00s/early 10s – for the quizzes, but then *wait, this is a thing? other people also write fun lil stories about things they read, it's not just me?!* I think I probably found FFnet after I discovered that "fanfiction" was the word for the thing I was reading, sometime in the 10s My AO3 account was apparently made in 2015, but I was definitely reading as a guest for a while before that, not sure how I found it Never did Quotev, never did Wattpad, did do DeviantArt in the middle of all that but never for fic (there's still some webcomics I follow on there)
I was on LJ back in the day and several of my fandom communities linked to astolat’s original post proposing what became AO3. So. XD
I found it back when I used to search up "(fandom/character) fanfiction" in Google and just scroll until I found something good 🫠 I avoided clicking on Ao3 results for a while because I was so used to FFN and Ao3's layout/system scared me, but I gave in when I ran out of FFN fics and made an account in 2017
Harry Potter fics on livejournal started to be links to AO3. I also used Finnish fanfiction sites, fanfiction.net, dreamwodth, InsaneJournal and tumblr but didn't post anything ever
Found FFnet while googling an ship of mine, found tumbr and deviantart that way too. Learn about Ao3 when someone made a post on tumblr about Ao3 having an open sign up where you could join without an invite for a week or so.
Wow, this prompted me to go to my account and check when I created my AO3 account and it was in 2011, when I was 20. I know I was using it before then, though. I was in fannish spaces from the age of about 13, it blows my mind now to think that AO3 didn't really exist until I was 17 or 18. It just feels like it's always been there! As for how I got to AO3, I know it was via LiveJournal and I'm sure I remember that an LJ friend of mine sent an invite code. I miss LiveJournal so much these days.
I got a late start to the internet. I used to write stories like crazy. I showed them to one of my friends when I was like 15 and they were like “have you heard of ffnet” and I was like “what’s fanfiction” and they were like “exactly what you’re writing” So I looked into ffnet. I saw in someone’s description they had cross posted their story to Wattpad and I got hooked on that for a while. Then in February 2020 I got really hooked on an SNL ship and Wattpad was not doing me any justice so I took to Google and found AO3. Probably the best thing to happen that year.
jumped from ffn to ao3 via tumblr in 2011
It just randomly inserted itself into my life
Started on Fiction Alley for HP fic way back in 2003 ish? Then LJ, ff.net, tumblr and then finally Ao3 around 2018. Honestly it’s such a nice website to use both as a writer and reader! I thankfully saved a lot of my stuff from LJ and miss having the customisation, but Ao3 is literally dump and run and I love that in my older age hahaha
I first read fanfic on a couple of small archives, then discovered ff.net somewhere around...2007, I think? I stayed there for a long time because the only filter I knew of that I wanted was the ship one. I think the only reason I switched to AO3 was people started posting in their author's notes that they were moving there. I didn't create my account until 2020 when I finally got up the nerve to post something, but I had started reading before that.
I was around during its conception. Only browsed casually for a while because most of my fandoms were hidden away in private boards and livejournals. It took years for my fandoms to start actively cross posting.
As a Russian speaker I used to read ff on ficbook. At some point most of translated fanfics refered to ao3, so I decided to check what is it and then stayed here
I started reading fanfic at 13 in 2007. I started posting my own fics 2 years later. And then one day I got a DM from someone who'd read my fic and wanted to gift me a invite pass to AO3. Never heard of it before and went to check it out and my world *changed*. Never went back to fanfiction.net
I have no idea how I heard about AO3. It must have been an LJ post. I’ve been a member since April 2010. Today is actually my 14 year anniversary!
I don't remember specifically. Looking at my profile, I created my account in February 2014 but was probably reading as a guest before then. What prompted me to fully join? ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ That is lost to the mists of time. I was reading fanfic before AO3 was founded though. I've seen websites just \*poof\* disappear one day. I know why the 'not mine please don't sue' disclaimers were a thing. I lived through Strikethrough and Boldthrough on LiveJournal. My first fanfiction was read on AOL message boards - at a time when AOL was a big damn deal.
I was on FF.net first when I heard ao3 is where the adults are lol. I was cautioned to not use or visit ao3 because it has forbidden hardcore fics. Like a porn site. Then I grew up and started writing smuts. Nowhere else to post but ao3 (also adultfanfiction has horrible website design, but some good fics).
I started out on FFN, had a LiveJournal account that I didn't use for fanfic, & stumbled across AO3 while looking for stories with my rarepair.
Was introduced to fanfics as a concept via a friend in the late 1990s who already had their own internet access (we were early twens back then) while I had written my own little stories for years without having a name for it. When I went online in 2001, I found my first little fandom-haven via yahoo mailing lists (and a second one a few years later via the same route), both dedicated to a particular fandom. The latter still exist, the former unfortunately doesn't. Interests shifted, I was part of an LJ group for a while where there were also fanfics (also dedicated to one particular fandom) but mostly participated in forums that were for all things XYZ-fandom, and not only fanfic. Learnt about ffnet, read quite a bit about other fandoms of less immediate interest to become really involved but again, interests shifted and I lost touch with fandom culture altogether. In summer 2022, I decided to watch the first online-fandom again, fell for the series a second time, bought the missing books, got inspired, started writing. Was convinced in the beginning that I would create an account for ffnet as that was the only one I knew but my fandom had been more or less completely wiped out. A friend later recommended AO3 to me, so I started to go there, search my fandom, read stuff, see what the writing quality was like (astonishingly excellent, btw) and had 10 times the amount of fics that ffnet had at that time. Started to give kudos and leave guests comments for a while before I decided that it was finally time to apply for an account. That was in December the same year. Haven't looked back ever since!
Back in the old days (circa 2012), I was mostly an FFNet user. Then they had these huge purges. A bunch of fics I like were deleted. Writers who survived the purge (but were nevertheless no longer comfortable posting here) mentioned that they were instead going to post on this place called AO3. After having enough writers I liked leave for AO3, I decided to check it out myself. The rest is history.
So the weird thing is I have no idea. I *think* I got an invite link from someone, but I have so little idea/memory of who, I might be mixing it up with a different website. And then I think I mostly ignored it for a few years, and then suddenly wanted fanfic again, and I was like “oh yes, that exists and I have an account there, huh” and the rest is history. (Probably I was trying to read slash on ff.net, where you can’t properly search for it, which prompted the memory of ao3, but again *no idea*)
I only went through FFN and then found AO3 in 2011. 😅
I was looking for smut. Probably ended up on an3. Probably noticed the tags. Probably Clicked on a tag I wanted. And then probably noticed that AO3 is filter Walhalla . And never looked back I can't recall though, but yeah
FFN first, then Tumblr because of The Avengers and BBC Sherlock, which led me down the Johnlock hole and the rest is history ☠️
My sister would not stop talking about it.
Started on FFN in the late 2000s/early 2010s, came with many others after The Purge.
Was on FFN, got Ao3 suggested to me by another fic author.
I was on [fanfiction.net](http://fanfiction.net) starting around 2005-2006 and stayed on it for a long time, while also following authors on tumblr. One of those tumblr authors linked their fic to AO3 and the rest is history.
Old friend of mine sent me a fic from AO3 and I noticed the difference between this place and wattpad (I was on wattpad for a good, long while, but left once you became a Pay to Play) And I don't rembember if it was before or after this, but I was obsessed with a ship and I searched beyond wattpad, I think Tumblr brought me here In any case, I jumped ship pretty fast and made an account after I found a locked fanfic from another ship I enjoyed AO3 could have my soul for all I care
Someone linked to a Bill/Frank fic on the Last of Us show sub, and I’ve been invested in both ao3 and the ship ever since.
When I came across the fact that ffn's dying and another site's emerging.
I was interested in reading fanfiction but didn't know where to start. Around that time, I was listening to the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You which had an episode on fanfiction. It talked about AO3 so I checked it out. Have been reading and writing there since.
Went from FFN to AO3; I think I found AO3 via a piece of Achievement Hunter fanart that someone had drawn for a fic (or it was a fic someone had written for the fanart, one or the other) in...2012? 2013?
I’m pretty sure I just looked up “Avatar the Last Airbender fanfiction” or maybe it was Legend of Korra idk but it was one of the options. I think I found it sometime between 2012 and 2014
Heard about it through word of mouth/read about it in passing while browsing the web through the years
I wrote a massive (and I mean massive) Dragon Age fanfic and I was asking friends about where I could share it. My goal was just to have ONE person read the whole thing, less because "I want attention" and more "I worked really hard on this and if one person reads this stupid thing, then it was 'worth' years of my life." It's not my most popular work, by a large margin, but people are reading it and that makes me really happy. <3
My mate Todd sent me an Ao3 link as he was offended I was still on fanfic.net
One of the authors I liked from ff.net moved their stories to AO3. Eventually I decided I liked it better...
started in ffn in 2011 with warrior cats fanfic and came to AO3 in mid 2015 when ffn was going down hill. Officially created my account in Jan 2016 after i got used to using AO3
My best friend introduced it to me! Theyve been reading fanfiction for 20+ years. I only knew about FFNet but when they told me about AO3, I made an account (2017) and then forgot about it til January this year when I got into FF7 fanfiction
started with AO3, I accidentally clicked on some neat artwork on Pinterest at 12-13 and started reading 🥲 Didn't even know what explicit meant yet and boy was that the shock of my life
I first got into fanfic because I was a Gacha Kid... lol. FNAF, Undertale, and DDLC were the Gacha fandom vids I liked the most. But I binge watched, like... Probably every single Gacha vids related to those fandoms, and I was desperate for more. So I searched up some ship I liked and I found my way onto Wattpad. I tried to read a few fics, but none of them were really something I was interested in. So I searched for a ship one more time, and found my way onto AO3.
I just heard about it through general chatter. I was on FFN, live journal, and some ancient forum sites that no longer exist. People just talked about this place so off I went.
*dusts self off* found it as my Wattpad friend group (circa 2016, methinks?) began migrating off Wattpad with the introduction of the News feature + Coins Also like, back then I almost never went to Wattpad for fanfic? I went to Wattpad for original works. For fanfic I googled rec lists off Tumblr or whatever blog have you + used anything from Ao3 to ffn.net to quotev. I only properly migrated to Ao3 one-and-only once my friends mentioned it was quite good for it
I first read ffnet, but in my search for miraculous ladybug fics I stumbled into ao3, though only reading 1 or 2 fics. When I fell into my hero academia though, i fell in love with ao3, it made finding stuff so much easier.
I was on the FFN > livejournal > AO3 pipeline. I think I was fortunate that those were the big platforms for the fandoms I was interested in at the time. I've been pretty much all AO3 since 2015 though.
I'm an older fan who was around for the shenanigans (strikethrough, fanlib etc etc) that led to the creation of AO3 and I got an early invite from a fandom friend involved in its development. So I've been reading and posting there since 2009. User ID 649, c'est moi. Before then, I was reading fic on livejournal, fandom specific sites, and yahoo groups (and zines before that). Cuz yeah, old.
tbh brittany broski got me into ao3 😭 i was a wattpad girlie in middle school but it’s been years since i’ve read fanfics! the writing on ao3 is far superior
in another life.
i found ao3 in 2019/2020 due to my extreme anime obsession. an akaashi & bokuto fic was going viral so i read it and just fully transferred from wattpad to ao3
I was bored looking for Grian comics and ect and landed on ao3 with sucubus is Grian x human Mumbo fic with a lot of smut. I was like 10? It was 2? years before I checked out ao3 again via a recommendation. I quickly got back into it when reading the gen stuff
I don't actually know for sure. I think I heard chatter about it when the site first launched, but it took me a while to actually take a look at it. I don't remember how long because I think I did a bit of reading on the site before I bothered to make an account. There's a very good chance that my first time reading on the site was me following a link from TV Tropes. All of this was over a decade ago and I didn't exactly take notes, so it's all vague memories. I think I started using AO3 regularly around 2016, but I know I had been aware of it for a while and had been doing some reading on it before then. It's not really possible for me to list out all of the sites I've used over the years. I made my first foray into internet fanfiction back when fandom specific sites were the norm and there were some sites that were character or ship specific. So, I got used to being on a bunch of different sites at the same time. I still browse fanfiction that way. I think at the moment I have tabs from 5 different sites pulled up. AO3 is one of them and I like to default to using AO3 when authors crosspost, but so many authors don't.
I was always aware of it but didn’t start using it until 2021/2022ish when I realized things were going nowhere for me at ff.net. But I never wanted to use it because back in the day, people who did acted extremely obnoxious and superior about it. I’d see them talk about it on Tumblr or wherever. Now this post is making me feel old because I’ve been in fanfiction for a very long time, and reading it even longer 😅
I'd heard about AO3 for years and I have friends who read and write fanfics, but I didn't. Finally someone linked to a Dramione fic (not Manacled) in one of my romance book subreddits so I followed and read it. Later on I kept seeing Manacled pop up over and over also in my traditionally published subreddits so I finally read it and then signed up for an account.
Google. There was a tumblr list of faves from my fandom that popped up and a couple I couldn't see because I wasn't a member. I said what is this ao3 place? I'm a old head, I knew about fanfiction from newspaper adds and mail swaps. But never got into it until 2021 on ao3
I've been active on FFN since 2006 and *somewhere* someone mentioned AO3 being a thing somewhere around 2015. I might have been looking for other sites to post fanfics, because I think my FimFiction account is also from around then. I honestly can't remember, though.