Archive of Our Own ^beta

We're getting close to the end of our April Showers importing challenge! We've had a great response, and we've seen a lot of new works in a variety of fandoms - check out the challenge tag for some of those. You have a couple more days to import your existing works... and, of course, we encourage everyone to keep posting through the rest of the year. :D

Here are some of the fandoms that we featured on our @ao3org Twitter account. Read some of the works that people have posted, and see if there's anything you can add to the Fanlore page for any of your fandoms!

GROUP 3

• High School Musical | High School Musical on Fanlore
• X-Men | X-Men on Fanlore
• Backstreet Boys | Backstreet Boys on Fanlore
• Sports Night | Sports Night on Fanlore
• A Song of Ice and Fire | ASOIAF on Fanlore
• Kingdom Hearts | Kingdom Hearts on Fanlore

GROUP 4

• Inception | Inception on Fanlore
• Naruto | Naruto on Fanlore
• Disney RPF | Disney RPF on Fanlore
• Doctor Who | Doctor Who on Fanlore
• JRR Tolkien/The Lord of the Rings | The Lord of the Rings on Fanlore
• Pokemon | Pokemon on Fanlore

We love preserving fannish history, so we're having tons of fun here at the Archive of Our Own and over at our sister project Fanlore with the April Showers Challenge! For those of you just tuning in, April Showers is our month-long challenge dedicated to encouraging people to store old bits of fannish activity - whether it's dredging up a few fics from your first fannish LJ or that old BB Board thread, scanning in your very first fanart which is still languishing in the back of your school exercise book, or documenting the great ship wars of your fandom over on Fanlore, we want to hear from you. And if you don't have anything old to store, but your current fannish activities have yet to be represented on the AO3 or talked about on Fanlore, we want to hear from you too - today's hot new fandom is tomorrow's history!

So far we've had 266 works posted on the AO3 under the April Showers Challenge tag - we've also seen lots more older works being uploaded in various fandoms. If you want to flag up that you're uploading as part of this challenge, then you can use this tag (but we love all your uploaded works regardless!)

All fandoms are welcome in the April Showers Challenge, but to provide a little inspiration we're highlighting a different fandom for love each day on our Twitter @ao3org. You can check out the first six highlighted fandoms in our last round-up post; our second batch is listed below!

The Losers - There are few things in life a liberal application of fandom won't fix. Get your Losers works on the AO3 or spin some stories on Fanlore's Losers page.

Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler - The most beautiful death in the world? Not if fanworks are lost - happily you can get your Black Butler works on the AO3 or document dark and beautiful death on the Kuroshitsuji page of Fanlore.

Johnny’s Entertainment - Love Arashi, Kanjani8, KAT-TUN & the rest of the Johnny's Entertainment boys? Enjoy Johnny's Entertainment works on the AO3, or add to Fanlore's Johnny's Entertainment page.

Xena: Warrior Princess - Making the subtext text: see the many histories of Xena on the AO3 or tell tales of your fannish experience on the Xena Fanlore page.

Jane Austen - It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fanwork must be in search of a home. Austen fans, find an abode of good repute among the Austen works on the AO3, or contribute to the drawing room conversation on the Austen Fanlore page.

Final Fantasy - YOU SPOONY BARDS! Preserve your tales for posterity among the Final Fantasy works on the AO3, or recount epic stories of fannish exploits on Fanlore's Final Fantasy page.

We're halfway through the month - have you told any of your fannish history? Help us make it pour April Showers!

This month, we're all about the history on the Archive of Our Own and sister site Fanlore! During our April Showers challenge, we're encouraging all fans to document their fannish history (recent or long past). Maybe you have zines which have been sitting in a drawer for the past 40 years, or maybe you have a bunch of things you've posted to your LJ in a fannish frenzy over the last few months - either way, if you have yet to upload it to the AO3 we'd love to see you share (and store) it here. While you're at it, why not record some of the awesome community or fannish controversies that have made your fandom what it is on our sister site Fanlore.

April Showers is an open call for folks of all fandoms - if you have unarchived fanworks or untold stories we want to see them! We're highlighting a few fandoms that we think are currently underrepresented and need a little love (you can keep track of our daily picks on our Twitter @ao3org). The daily picks so far:

Star Wars - Use the Force to preserve your fannish history! Check out the Star Wars works on the AO3 and Fanlore's Star Wars page.

Sailor Moon – Fighting evil by moonlight? Share the love by daylight! There are awesome Sailor Moon works on the AO3 and history on the Fanlore Sailor Moon page.

Figure Skating RPF – Preserve your fannish triple axels for posterity! 6.0 for the AO3's Figure Skating works and Fanlore's page.

The X-Files – The fic is out there! See the evidence: X-Files works on the AO3 and X-Philes history on Fanlore.

Diana Wynne Jones - Love the many worlds of Diana Wynne Jones? Celebrate the inspiring influence of this late, great and much-beloved fantasy writer: Diana Wynne Jones works on the AO3 and the DWJ fandom history on Fanlore.

Mass Effect - Game on: check out Mass Effect works on the AO3 and histories on Fanlore.

In addition to contributions in all these awesome fandoms, we're been excited to see people taking the opportunity to dig out other things in their back catalogues during this challenge. Check out the works on the AO3 tagged April Showers challenge - so far c. 30 fandoms are represented!

Have you uploaded works for the challenge or added something to Fanlore? Comment to this post with links!

Happy April! Thanks to everyone who made our March happy with donations to the OTW! We hope we'll have an equally happy April with our April showers challenge!

Here at the Archive of Our Own we love seeing the numbers of works and fandoms grow! Since we entered Open Beta in November 2009 we've added 7567 fandoms and 148,092 works - we love being able to come to the AO3 for a quick fix of all sorts of fannish love! However, there's a whole host of fannish deliciousness which hasn't found a home here yet. There are tons of wonderful Sailor Moon fanworks out there, but only 174 Sailor Moon works on the AO3. The X-Files had a thriving fannish community on Usenet back in the day, but only 1088 X-Files works have made it over to the AO3. Figure skating RPF has a lively presence on Livejournal and elsewhere, but there are only 288 Figure Skating RPF works to be found on the AO3. We love the way fandom has found a home in all sorts of places - each fannish community has its own culture and its own hangouts - but we also want to help ensure that all that fannish awesome doesn't disappear when sites go down.

This is where our April showers promotion comes in! For the month of April, we hope you'll shower the Archive with your old works! If you have works sitting on a harddrive, buried in your old emails, tucked away in a box of zines in your basement, or filed away on your Livejournal, now is the time to upload. You can use our handy import feature to grab them easily from elsewhere on the web (many thanks to coder Rebecca who recently spiffed up the importer to make it work better), backdate them to show when you first wrote them, and use our pseuds feature to post them under your old fannish names (mulder4eva1993, anyone?).

Fandom isn't just about the fanworks, but about the awesome culture surrounding them! If you'd like to document your fandom in other ways, why not add something to our sister project Fanlore? You could create a profile of an awesome fan from your fandom, add details of the great fandom debates you have seen, give details of the major archives and challenges, or just add in a few characters' names. Record your history for fans of the future!

We'll be highlighting a different fandom for importing love every day of April! Follow our Twitter @ao3org to check out the fandom of the day! (You can also add works in fandoms not on our list - the more the merrier!) Tag your uploaded works April Showers Challenge - at the end of the month we'll round up all the works with this tag and post stats on how many were uploaded for each fandom.

We kick off today with an oldie but goodie - Star Wars! Use the force, fandom!

April showers of fannish love! Bring us your history!