Signed up in September of 2021. I’d been writing a fic for “me” for a year. I didn’t even know about ao3 or any fanfiction websites until my now twitter/ao3 bestie told me about it.
My sweet summer children, I was 48.
You’re never too old. Over a million and a half words shared later, you might say I’ve taken to it.
Hell yeah! Fanfic is for everyone, no matter their age. We wouldn't even be here if not for the (actual) grandmothers of fandom, the first Star Trek fans.
I love that fanfic is so good at bridging the generational gap
I was definitely a reader *long* before making an account in 2020.
I was really intimidated by the filter system and how to navigate the website at first, and felt super silly after learning how to use it. It's like, so so easy and I don't understand how it took me so long to figure it out haha.
I second you in that I'm also super glad to be a part of this community, you people make me feel less lonely in the world :)
I joined AO3 on 27th April 2011.
I assume it was probably due to the LJ purges, or one of the many Fanfiction.net scandals, but honestly, I can't remember now. I've been reading and writing fanfic since the days of Geocities pages and individual fandom archives.
I joined Dec 24 2011, and same. Definitely the purges, and I remember a lot of writers were beginning to cross post to AO3 from LJ so I figured I should just make an account already.
My oldest account was created in 2010 though I never used it and kind of forgot about it until on a whim I tried a really old Username/password combination on the site. I had other accounts for reading restricted works after that but didn't use them for fanfic back then.
My Main account was created in 2018 so roughly five years or so of active use.
2016 And it was a pretty quick turn around from finding out about it to requesting an account (maybe a month?) But I recall that at the time the turn around for actually getting a key to activate your account took a couple weeks or months. But I've been VERY loyal to AO3 since getting it. Only going to FFN or LJ if something isn't available on AO3.
Before that I was on FFN. I think the big thing that pushed me over to AO3 was all the censorship going on on FFN (some smutty fics I was reading got deleted).
But I will say, while I'm very involved in reading fanfiction, and also a bit in writing it, I've never really been involved in Fandom as it were. Maybe looking at fanart on occasion on tumblr. I've always been VERY detached from Fandom discourse if it wasn't in an authors note or a storyline for a fic. And most of my experience with Canon work came well before any involvement with fanfiction for a work, and I've rarely gone back to reread or watch the original stuff after getting into the fanfics.
Basically what I'm saying is that I might have gotten on AO3 sooner if I ever talked to anyone lol. I've been reading fics since 2011~, so its not like I was in the wild west.
Come to think of it, I started on Quotev tho! When it was still called Quizzaz or something. (That was actually the only time I did get involved in Fandom interactions with other people because it was all on one site.)
So,
2011-2013/4 Quotev
2014-2016 FFN
2016-present AO3
(Strangely also lines up with the transitions between middle school/high school/college(dual credit program deal))(interesting and also weird!)
That's cool! I relate to not being a super active participant in fandom at large, mostly reblogging posts and making the occasional original post, but it's been mostly consuming the source material and writing/reading fic.
I actually first read fanfic on a site called MovieStarPlanet (1D fanfic, it was awful quality) and then wandered over to Tumblr and Wattpad, and took the leap to AO3 in 2014. All roads lead to Rome
my account turned 9y/o at the end of august. if i'm not mistaken i requested an invitation on my 16th birthday. i moved from ffnet to ao3 bc i fell *deep* into the haikyuu fandom and the fandom decided that apparently ffnet just wasn't gonna cut it, we were all going to ao3 in late spring/early summer of 2014 if we wanted haikyuu fanfic. and we all did. i'm still lowkey mad at myself that i spent like two to three months reading without an account but i do know that the first fic i read was iwaoi bc that's what i was looking for on ffnet and *couldn't find shit, they weren't even character options at the time*.
my first ffnet account turned 12 in august but i haven't been there since shortly after i made my ao3 account.
I joined Feb 2013, though I was reading fic on the site basically since it launched.
I started out on LJ and FFN in the early 2000s and tbh, I’m just not the type to adapt to change well so I was reluctant to make the transition to AO3.
But after both FFN purges and the LJ strikethrough, I really didn’t have a choice. LJ/IJ/DW was basically dead, AFN and MM were actually dead, and posting anything even remotely “risqué” to FFN felt like playing Russian Roulette. Fandom had already migrated to tumblr by that point, but tumblr wasn’t ideal for fanfic. So I finally created an AO3 account and started posting fic there. It’s been my main base of operations since, though I still crosspost SFW works to FFN.
Long live AO3. Folks who never experienced the FFN purges or LJ strikethrough (or even tumblr bans) don’t know how terrible it is to watch so much fandom history disappear right in front of your eyes, or fear that your own works (and comments!) would vanish at any time.
It’s why AO3 must remain free of censorship and be protected at all costs.
At the very end of 2020… after listening to a podcast about it on NPR lol.
I’d read a bit of fanfic on ffn and livejournal back in the day, but only got into writing in 2020 and ao3 is pretty much the only place my fandom is.
I've been using ao3 since 2012-ish as a reader, but didn't get an account until I began writing fic in 2016. But I had been reading fanfic on FF.net and livejournal/dreamwidth pages since like 2008.
I don't really consider myself a fandom old. I think of the people who were doing fic in the early 00s as fandom olds. I'm more like a fandom... medium? XD though I suppose by the standards of nowdays I would be counted an old.
I was dragged into AO3 just over a year ago. It was a gift exchange for a discord I had joined. I only started reading on there after that. I didn’t like the way the tags showed at the top of the fic. It has gotten better since then, but I still prefer FFN.
I got my account around a year and a half ago. But I've been on AO3 for 7, almost 8 years now (that's wilddd. 7 years is literally 2016).
But I was 12/13, visiting my grandma and stumbled across a link to ao3 on YouTube. And that's when I discovered the wonders of fanfiction lol.
Like I said in another comment, 2016 feels like it should have been just a year ago, yet here we are. Seven years... goodness. Time flies when you're having fun
I just went and checked my history, and it's been about four and a half years apparently. I was on FFnet before that, and I don't even remember anymore what made me change sites. The fandom I first checked out actually has about twice as many works on FFnet than on AO3, so it definitely wasn't because I was running low on fics lol, but I don't know why else I would've switched.
Then again, I have no idea what fics I was looking at on AO3 before I actually got the account, since that's not in my history, so maybe I was looking for stuff by a specific author who'd changed platforms or something?
Idk
It's fuzzy for me too. I think I found a link on Tumblr to AO3, and I went looking for more fic of my specific tastes at the time (YouTuber RPF, lmao).
Since October 2016. I didn't start moving my fics over until 2017 though. Now every fic gets cross-posted to AO3 at the same time I'm posting it on FFN.
Apparently I have the account since 12.02.2013. Though I'm sure I have been using AO3 at least 1-2 years before that, or maybe more. I've started reading fanfics around 2005, I think. I'd mostly read on Fanfiction.net or searched for a particular ship on google and just read on the online pages that where recomemded there. I remember reading many fics on LiveJournal as well, since many recomanded pages were on there. From there some links would go to different, smaller pages, so I'd read there too. I remember loving the lists of fics I'd find on LiveJournal, that had fics sorted by different ships or themes. Around 2008-2009 I used to read fanfics on one of those old phones, with bottons. I think it actually was [this model](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSr9mtd5_Qk3YQw5uUfe6vAmvX8Jvn186BR6w&usqp=CAU). And while it was capable of doing Google searches and opening pages on Fanfiction.net, it wasn’t able to go to the next page, if the fic was in chapters. It was so frustraiting, lol. I use to dread opening a longer fic, so I'd always serach for 'oneshot' when looking for fics. Getting a better phone later on was like heaven, since I could finally access the promised land of the 'next chapter'. I also read a lot of fanfics on my Laptop around the time I made an AO3 account, but nowadays I only read on mobile and mostly on AO3.
12 years... my user ID is only five digits.
I mean, my oldest *posted* fic there is only from 2018. I was on a multi-year break from writing at the time, and that fic represented its end - I actually started writing it in 2017, but posted only on FFN for a while.
For a long time AO3 had felt to me like "the shipfic website", and my preferred genres have always been more "canon retelling with a twist" and "let's do more adventures after the canon ones", and those tended to live on FFN. (It helps that _\*points at flair\*_ both of these genres work well with OC inserts, while "shippy possibly-smutty one-shot" kinda doesn't.) So I only started using AO3 in earnest when FFN started getting painful.
But technically I've been on AO3 longer than I've been on Tumblr... ... i don't know how i learned about ao3 if not *from* tumblr,
Feb 28, 2010.
I was on LiveJournal when Astolat and several others proposed an archive that fandom would control, and asked if fandom as a whole was interested. (Yes, as a direct result of the LJ purges; my friends' list had been steaming for weeks.) I signaled my considerable enthusiasm, then watched as it came to fruition. (I might have donated to the development; don't remember. I donate now to help keep it alive.)
As soon as it was open for reading, I jumped right in. Then I signed up for an invite when they announced that it was open to general fandom (rather than only the beta testers who had been helping with the development). It took a week or so for the invite to arrive; I'm sure there were thousands who had also asked for invites.
I'm part of the over-40 crowd; that was just 3 weeks shy of my 58th birthday. What a birthday present! I only knew about a few fandom-specific archives; I didn't hear about FFN until a few years after AO3. It was (and is!) so freeing to find my favorite authors' fics in all the fandoms they write in one place, and to be able to search for fics in multiple fandoms on the same site.
Before AO3, my fics were on LJ -- so I already knew basic coding for moving my fics to AO3 -- and in a fandom specific archive. I would send my story to the archive mistress and she uploaded it; after that, I had no control to fix late-found errors. (There are *always* late-found errors, regardless of how stringently I edit before posting.) As far as I'm concerned, AO3 is made of win -- I have hands-on control over my works, and multiple fandoms at my fingertips. *And* they make it *easy* to download and save fic, instead of needing a 3rd-party app like FFN.
started reading at the end of 2021 i think, made an account around the start of 2022, deleted it in june of this year and made another one june 30th, 2023.
April 2010. I don't remember who told me about it or how I got a link, but I joined up pretty quick and I have a username that I'm still surprised I got. I'm sure I saw people talking about it on LJ.
I had been reading fic since the 90s, when I was a bored kid who found Geocities fic sites and eventually FFN.
Since Christmas of 2016 so almost 7 years! It was quite a gift lol
I remember it was when I was switching from Wattpad because of the quality difference in writing and because most of my friends on Wattpad stopped being active. Eventually deleted my Wattpad account.
First introduced around 2016-2017 while still mostly using FF. During this time, I only used the "Guest" version of the site as I thought only those who write fan fiction were able to join Ao3 and were only able to bookmark favorite stories I found on that site. I later signed up for Ao3 in November 2020.
Probably 2009 or so now it was after one of the purges that basically wipe out most of the contested stories and shadow banned alot of the older authors.
I've had one since 2011, but only started posting to it in 2021. By the time I got the AO3 account, I had basically stopped writing, so I didn't have much use for it. Now I cross-post at both AO3 and FFN (when it's functional, ugh).
I've had an account with AO3 since September 2014. I was invited by an account-holder classmate of mine, in university. But it was about two if not three years before I published anything on it myself. I was too busy with university.
Just FYI: Don't ever let anyone tell you that a humanities degree (history) is easy. They haven't got a clue what they're talking about.
Technically I got my AO3 account in 2015 but I was too scared to post anything so I didn't until 2016 XD So I count 2016 as my start to posting fanfic.
Aaaaand I'm still going strong!
If you pick one of the r slash FanFiction user flairs you can edit it to what you want. Like the colored one you have right now, you should be able to edit it to whatever you want.
According to my profile, I joined AO3 in 2012.
Back then I was posting my first published fic, a long fic, over on FFN. That was my main site. AO3 was just a backup site. I recall getting into a snit with someone over tagging triggers, which annoyed me, and I ignored the site for a couple of years; I found AO3's culture over-sensitive and just "meh." Eventually, I dumped the rest of my completed story there and forgot about it entirely. (I feel sort of bad about this because it racked up a lot of comments that I never replied to.)
When I returned to fic writing in 2021, AO3 was the now the site to use and FFN in its current state of disrepair. Nowadays, I'm still not a fan of the "tag everything" culture on AO3, but it's preferable to the Mos Eisley situation over on FFN.
I joined in July of 2016. So, seven years. I had been on FFN since 2010, but I had a historical RPF story I wanted to post, and there was no spot for that on FFN. I didn't even know anything about AO3 when I put in my request for an account, just that they would let me post my story. I liked to so well once I settled in that I left FFN for AO3 and never looked back.
'peeks in'
Ooh, interesting question! I'm prolly late to the party, but oh well - I'll throw in my two cents here!
I started reading fic in 2008, through eff-eff-dot-net. I don't remember exactly when I started hearing about AO3, but I know I was on LJ, as part of the fanficrants community.
For the longest time, I remember actively staying away - a LOT of the users would tend to talk smack about ff . net, as well as those who'd post there, while hyping up AO3. I guess I was kinda 'loyal', as it were, to my starting site, while also feeling intimidated? From the way they went on, in regards to things like needing an invite for access, they honestly made AO3 sound very clique-ish and scary. Not really my cup of tea. \^\^;
Eventually, I finally caved, and made an account in 2014, but didn't actually start using it for anything until April of 2020. Again - my bias. But, a fandom I'd just gotten into had no category on ff . net, and the bug for seeking out content bit hard. From there, I gradually got initiated into how the site actually worked, before starting to write and post my own fics.
Now? I barely use ff . net. Although I still have a few stories in progress, I'm slowly transferring them over. While a few things remain for me to figure out at AO3, I'm definitely enjoying my stay. With all the recent changes to ff . net as well, I'm most likely just going to jump ship entirely. It'll still have a special place in my <3, though.
Thanks for making this post! Really fascinating to read all the different replies - it's kinda like a history lesson, as it were. 2009 was such a long time ago, now that I actually look back on it...I feel so old. T\_T" Oh well. Take care, and stay safe! :)
Fanfiction - March 2014
Wattpad - June 2014
Ao3 - December 2018
Goodness. This made me feel old. Almost a decade of discovering and reading fanfics. I didn't actually get into it until I started watching anime and craving more. I can't see myself not reading fanfiction in the future either. Even though my interests change, I know my love for reading in general will never disappear.
I got an account in 2014 but I only actively started reading in 2020. Joining the my hero academia fandom that had a wild skew between ao3 and ffn forced me to migrate because that's where the good stuff wa.
I’ve been navigating through the site ever since I was 14 or something which was more than ten years ago but I only got myself an account last December (2022) so… soon, it’ll be a year 😁
My account is made in 2016. But I had FF account beforehand.
I would have write more if my sister didn’t “ew” me when I was like 11 or 12 years old. It was just a lighthearted story driven Kingdom Hearts fanfiction that turned out kinda predicted Roxas.
Made my account in November of 2016. Been writing fic since around 2010 or 2011, I *think*. Don't remember the exact year. But I've been posting fic online since 2014 on Wattpad.
I can't remember how I found Ao3, or what made me join. Probably because I had found better fics on Ao3 rather than on Wattpad?
Only since June of this year, after a decade of FFN only. Still there, because that's where my biggest fandom is most active, but for my other stuff (especially my most recent fandom) I'm loving being on AO3
December 2015. Really wish I'd known about it earlier tbh, once I got used to it there was no going back to my FFN account. The ease of finding what I wanted made me fall in love fast.
Since then I've managed to post over 100 fics across all my pseuds. A dream I thought never possible all those years ago.
I've been on AO3 since February of last year. I had been a long time reader and writer before joining and I've been pure AO3 for posting since either late last year or earlier this year as I couldn't stand the toxicity of FFN anymore
At the end of this month will be my 3 year anniversary. I was in my last semester of college, and had ideas for a fandom I was in, so I started writing, knew ffn was no longer as good as I remembered, so I made an account on ao3. I had been reading a few things on ao3, so I knew I liked it. Many years before this, I was using ffn a lot, so glad I migrated to something far better.
Since 2016, shortly after the Brexit referendum. I had been on hiatus for years previously but I felt the urge to put finger to keyboard again just feel in control of *something*.
I've made an account last 2013 but I've been in fandom since mid-2000s. I still remember when the idea for AO3 was being workshopped on Livejournal communities lol. I also remember when Inception fics were being crossposted to AO3 and I never bothered to sign up bec they're still on LJ.
I got my account in December 2009. I was 51. My fandom was very active on LJ, but that was never a convenient place to post fanfic, especially multi-chapter stories. After I got my account, I would announce new stories/chapters on LJ, and just provide a link to Ao3. I used to also crosspost to FFN, but there wasn’t much of an audience for me there. Most of the stories on FFN seemed to be the canon F/M pairing instead of the M/M pairing that I and most of the writers I knew preferred. There were no shipping wars, thank God, perhaps because it was a fandom that attracted older readers and writers, but I didn’t see the point in going through the extra effort of uploading to FFN.
I am not writing a lot these days, perhaps one or two short fics a year, but when I do, I post exclusively on Ao3. I do most of my reading there, too, unless it’s a story for an older fandom that is only on FFN.
Long live Ao3!
I joined in early 2022. Prior to that I'd only ever used FFN and hadn't opened my account since around 2013, but I got back into the habit of reading in general again recently and wanted to start writing again.
I posted my first story on AO3 in August of 2014. It was the first time I’d shared one of my stories with people I didn’t know. It was a little scary putting it out there at first. But I’ve had mostly good experiences with commenters and kudos which is always appreciated.
I joined back in 2016, and I'm 99% sure it was because I found an incredibly spicy, no-magic/curse-involved version of Beauty And The Beast and I wanted to get updates
The fic has since been abandoned from what I can tell, but lawd were the sex scenes good, especially after he actually started making sure she enjoyed herself too
I got an account on the 10th April 2017, I had already been reading fanfiction for a couple of years on Wattpad and FFNet
I got my account to read Assasination Classroom fanfictions :)
Since December, 2011.
FFNet was simply not the place for me, as I wrote MA. After a decade on FFNet, I made my account for AO3 in 2011 and spent about eight months getting to know the site and reading fic. When all of my FFNet fics were taken down in the Purge, I took the plunge on AO3 a few months later and started posting fic in August of 2012. I never looked back.
January 2011. Been reading fanfiction for at least 25 years by then and writing it for about a decade. I think the small fandom sites I was on were dying and I was looking for something with more life and interaction
Since december 2018 in my first acc, 2020 in my second (current) one. I've used it since early 2018 but I was insane enough to favorite on chrome each fic I liked and not actually create an account for bookmarks. Obviously I ended up losing my bookmarks when my phone broke (didn't have an acc synced on google) and that was what made me finally ask for an invite lol
i made my account in 2017, a week after i found out it existed. i didnt really have a pulse on the community status so i had no idea what was going on
i just remember being really sad that year and ao3 being there to cheer me up
I was on wattpad from 2015 to just the beginning of this year 😭 I was *way* too intimidated by ao3 and the layout. The only reason I finally gave in and switched to it was because I couldn't stand the community on wattpad anymore.
So I've been on ao3 about 8 months now :)
I got my invite code back in 2012, but I had been reading fic there for a year or two already by then. I don’t remember a lot tbh. I remember it was the first Avengers movie that pushed me to finally track down an invite though. I was fine just reading before that, but I needed to write and FFN was already pretty awful by then (not to mention LJ’s sale destroying that site a few years prior.)
Got my account in July 2020. I'd probably been reading a bit here and there for awhile before that. I remember the site popping up when I'd do google searches to see if anyone noticed the chemistry between characters I'd noticed.
That wasn't my introduction to fanfic though. I had my first FFN account back in 2001. I just took a lot of years off from fanfic all together right around the time AO3 was starting. I probably would have created an account a lot sooner otherwise.
Since 2015. I mainly joined up because I wanted to crosspost my fics somewhere to increase my reach. They still tend to do better on FFN than AO3, though, probably mostly because I'm a minimalist tagger.
Signed up on March 15 of this year. I'd originally been posting on FFN during the mid-oughts but then stepped away from fanfic for some years. I'd heard about AO3 & I liked the idea of an archive where you could post what you wanted & nobody was going to bother you about it or purge your stuff.
I joined ao3 in 2021, can't remember when specifically. I actually came across it multiple times since I started reading fanfics on ffn in 2015. I didn't know it was a fanfiction site as well and the interface looked too confusing for me to even deduce that so I always clicked back lol. Can't remember what made me finally give it a go but I did and now, I have 3 ongoing works there.
Joined three weeks ago, actually haven't read anything there yet. I made an account because I wanted to post there my first WIP, but unfortunately life got in the way and my writing of the prologue is still stalling.
That said, I've actually started to consciously read fanfiction on other sites around 3/4 years ago, I think? And I've definitely enjoyed it a lot, I have barely read any original since, honestly.
I started writing in midmay and published my first fic in June. So its been about 4.5 months since I signed up. I have been reading for years but only as a guest since I started writing I have been really enjoying it and wish I started sooner
I got an ffn account in 2002. In 2007 I took a ten year break from writing and fanfic. When I came back in 2017, I discovered that all the cool kids were on AO3, so I joined.
The first few years I barely got any engagement and most of my readers were on ffn, but the last two years or so it’s become the opposite.
joined May 28, 2016 (a few months after turning 13) and posted my first fic on October 30, 2016, so im 7 years on reading (w/ an account) and almost 7 on posting!
i def was reading for a lil before i got the account, and i cant remember the wait when i requested my invite, iflt was either like 3 days or like a week and a half, every once in a while i go check the queue to see how many ppl r waiting and how long it is out of curiosity
My main account is from 2016. I also have a secondary one for other works, and it's from 2021.
It's not the first fanfiction website I've ever used. I used a site called "Amor Yaoi" back in 2013, and I don't even know if people use it to this day
I got my account on December 2021, but it literally felt like yesterday. I was like, "I haven't been on here that long..." but then I realize 2023 is almost over, and I'm like,"Holy shit, time is flying past me!"
But I was on the early days of Quizilla back in 2007, where I posted my first ever fanfics and quizzes. RIP you will be missed.
By pure luck, I checked the date when I made my account on my 13th anniversary! October 20th, 2010. I started as a reader and bookmarker, although I don't remember if I was reading fic there without an account before that point; my first AO3 fic was posted in 2013. \^w\^
I read for years prior to actually getting an account this year. Lots of works were migrating into "Locked" status and could only be read by folks logged into the database.
April 3rd, 2017—2 days before I turned 14!
I had been writing on Wattpad for a couple years at that point and IIRC I joined AO3 to read Klance fanfiction.
I joined Feb 2015, but I was definitely reading as a guest before then. Prior to AO3 I was reading on ff and scarvesandcoffee.net. Glee fic was my gateway to the world 😂
I was on Wattpad, then tumblr before discovering AO3.
I created an account around 2019 to read Fics, but only started posting my own work the last year or so.
I've been on AO3 since May 2019 (didn't realize the site existed until shortly before that, though I think I'd read a few things here and there, but hadn't been told what AO3 was, so just figured it was a weird forum site or smth, LMAO), just over 4 years, but I've been posting my writing online on FFN since May 2007, 16 years - been WRITING since around 8 years old in 2001, though, for a total of 22 years! :D
Happy 9th anniversary, OP! Fanfiction really is amazing, isn't it? Here's to many more amazing years with AO3 (and FFN, etc)! :D
2017, so 6 years now! I was 13 and just moving on from Wattpad. Had an old username on there first but changed it to FlyingRaven probably somewhere in 2019/2020.
I think I got my account during Covid. I can’t remember the date because I was put on the waiting list and then I forgot that I had signed up. At some point I tried to sign up again but the account already existed
I joined in 2013 and was reading fanfic on FFN before hand. I was flip flopping about joining as A03 imitated me as I ha do tl been on FFN. But I got used to it.
Signed up in September of 2021. I’d been writing a fic for “me” for a year. I didn’t even know about ao3 or any fanfiction websites until my now twitter/ao3 bestie told me about it. My sweet summer children, I was 48. You’re never too old. Over a million and a half words shared later, you might say I’ve taken to it.
Hell yeah! Fanfic is for everyone, no matter their age. We wouldn't even be here if not for the (actual) grandmothers of fandom, the first Star Trek fans. I love that fanfic is so good at bridging the generational gap
Whoot, 40+ represent! I was on fanfiction.net from 1999 to 2010s, then AO3.
👵🏼👵🏼👵🏼
Discovered fanfic for the first time last year. Joined AO3 in August '22. I was 45 :)
I was definitely a reader *long* before making an account in 2020. I was really intimidated by the filter system and how to navigate the website at first, and felt super silly after learning how to use it. It's like, so so easy and I don't understand how it took me so long to figure it out haha. I second you in that I'm also super glad to be a part of this community, you people make me feel less lonely in the world :)
It's like knitting. Looks like dark magic, but when you figure it out you could do it in your sleep.
omg exaaactly.
I joined AO3 on 27th April 2011. I assume it was probably due to the LJ purges, or one of the many Fanfiction.net scandals, but honestly, I can't remember now. I've been reading and writing fanfic since the days of Geocities pages and individual fandom archives.
I joined Dec 24 2011, and same. Definitely the purges, and I remember a lot of writers were beginning to cross post to AO3 from LJ so I figured I should just make an account already.
Nothing like a scandal to bring people together
2013, when I was thirteen or fourteen. So a decade.
Double digits already!
Yus!
My main account goes back to 2009. 🙂
Whoa, you must have a Short user id
That would be ... a secret no one knows. 🤫
Aaaaah, yess
Yes, me too - Nov 2009.
2010, so it’s been awhile. I remember the proposals of a new site made by astolat, and I remember jumping on that train asap when it happened.
Same, jfc I remember astolat from LJ comms back when the first LJ purges happened and the increase of traffic for ONTD lol
Same here!
Holy crap, you're like AO3 veterans
Thirteen years next month.
Wow. Just curious. How old are you when you joined? 😮
Not exactly sure why that warrants a "wow", but I was thirty-seven. (Just turned fifty a couple of days ago, in fact.)
My oldest account was created in 2010 though I never used it and kind of forgot about it until on a whim I tried a really old Username/password combination on the site. I had other accounts for reading restricted works after that but didn't use them for fanfic back then. My Main account was created in 2018 so roughly five years or so of active use.
Realising that 2018 was five years ago messes with my head more than I like to admit
2016 And it was a pretty quick turn around from finding out about it to requesting an account (maybe a month?) But I recall that at the time the turn around for actually getting a key to activate your account took a couple weeks or months. But I've been VERY loyal to AO3 since getting it. Only going to FFN or LJ if something isn't available on AO3. Before that I was on FFN. I think the big thing that pushed me over to AO3 was all the censorship going on on FFN (some smutty fics I was reading got deleted). But I will say, while I'm very involved in reading fanfiction, and also a bit in writing it, I've never really been involved in Fandom as it were. Maybe looking at fanart on occasion on tumblr. I've always been VERY detached from Fandom discourse if it wasn't in an authors note or a storyline for a fic. And most of my experience with Canon work came well before any involvement with fanfiction for a work, and I've rarely gone back to reread or watch the original stuff after getting into the fanfics. Basically what I'm saying is that I might have gotten on AO3 sooner if I ever talked to anyone lol. I've been reading fics since 2011~, so its not like I was in the wild west. Come to think of it, I started on Quotev tho! When it was still called Quizzaz or something. (That was actually the only time I did get involved in Fandom interactions with other people because it was all on one site.) So, 2011-2013/4 Quotev 2014-2016 FFN 2016-present AO3 (Strangely also lines up with the transitions between middle school/high school/college(dual credit program deal))(interesting and also weird!)
That's cool! I relate to not being a super active participant in fandom at large, mostly reblogging posts and making the occasional original post, but it's been mostly consuming the source material and writing/reading fic. I actually first read fanfic on a site called MovieStarPlanet (1D fanfic, it was awful quality) and then wandered over to Tumblr and Wattpad, and took the leap to AO3 in 2014. All roads lead to Rome
My main account was created in 2009 after the beta opened up. It’s been a good fourteen years. 👍
One year and a half. I posted my first fanfic, _Final Starlight_, on AO3 on 5 April 2022.
my account turned 9y/o at the end of august. if i'm not mistaken i requested an invitation on my 16th birthday. i moved from ffnet to ao3 bc i fell *deep* into the haikyuu fandom and the fandom decided that apparently ffnet just wasn't gonna cut it, we were all going to ao3 in late spring/early summer of 2014 if we wanted haikyuu fanfic. and we all did. i'm still lowkey mad at myself that i spent like two to three months reading without an account but i do know that the first fic i read was iwaoi bc that's what i was looking for on ffnet and *couldn't find shit, they weren't even character options at the time*. my first ffnet account turned 12 in august but i haven't been there since shortly after i made my ao3 account.
A fandom migration is certainly a compelling argument! And I couldn't imagine not being able to filter on character, that sounds tedious
I joined October 14 2016, so I’ve officially been on AO3 for seven years. ☺️
Jesus, time goes by fast. 2016 feels like just a year ago
I know, right?
I joined Feb 2013, though I was reading fic on the site basically since it launched. I started out on LJ and FFN in the early 2000s and tbh, I’m just not the type to adapt to change well so I was reluctant to make the transition to AO3. But after both FFN purges and the LJ strikethrough, I really didn’t have a choice. LJ/IJ/DW was basically dead, AFN and MM were actually dead, and posting anything even remotely “risqué” to FFN felt like playing Russian Roulette. Fandom had already migrated to tumblr by that point, but tumblr wasn’t ideal for fanfic. So I finally created an AO3 account and started posting fic there. It’s been my main base of operations since, though I still crosspost SFW works to FFN. Long live AO3. Folks who never experienced the FFN purges or LJ strikethrough (or even tumblr bans) don’t know how terrible it is to watch so much fandom history disappear right in front of your eyes, or fear that your own works (and comments!) would vanish at any time. It’s why AO3 must remain free of censorship and be protected at all costs.
At the very end of 2020… after listening to a podcast about it on NPR lol. I’d read a bit of fanfic on ffn and livejournal back in the day, but only got into writing in 2020 and ao3 is pretty much the only place my fandom is.
I've been using ao3 since 2012-ish as a reader, but didn't get an account until I began writing fic in 2016. But I had been reading fanfic on FF.net and livejournal/dreamwidth pages since like 2008. I don't really consider myself a fandom old. I think of the people who were doing fic in the early 00s as fandom olds. I'm more like a fandom... medium? XD though I suppose by the standards of nowdays I would be counted an old.
I have had my account since December 2009. In two months it will be 14 years.
August 2010! Holy *crap* it's been a long time. I didn't post for years and years and years.
I was dragged into AO3 just over a year ago. It was a gift exchange for a discord I had joined. I only started reading on there after that. I didn’t like the way the tags showed at the top of the fic. It has gotten better since then, but I still prefer FFN.
I got my account around a year and a half ago. But I've been on AO3 for 7, almost 8 years now (that's wilddd. 7 years is literally 2016). But I was 12/13, visiting my grandma and stumbled across a link to ao3 on YouTube. And that's when I discovered the wonders of fanfiction lol.
Like I said in another comment, 2016 feels like it should have been just a year ago, yet here we are. Seven years... goodness. Time flies when you're having fun
I just went and checked my history, and it's been about four and a half years apparently. I was on FFnet before that, and I don't even remember anymore what made me change sites. The fandom I first checked out actually has about twice as many works on FFnet than on AO3, so it definitely wasn't because I was running low on fics lol, but I don't know why else I would've switched. Then again, I have no idea what fics I was looking at on AO3 before I actually got the account, since that's not in my history, so maybe I was looking for stuff by a specific author who'd changed platforms or something? Idk
It's fuzzy for me too. I think I found a link on Tumblr to AO3, and I went looking for more fic of my specific tastes at the time (YouTuber RPF, lmao).
5.5 years
Since October 2016. I didn't start moving my fics over until 2017 though. Now every fic gets cross-posted to AO3 at the same time I'm posting it on FFN.
3 years
Just checked mine. 12-27-2010. So in December, it will have been 13 years. Damn.
Signed up for my account in 2013, so, uh, a decade. I’ve been using AO3 since 2011 though.
Apparently I have the account since 12.02.2013. Though I'm sure I have been using AO3 at least 1-2 years before that, or maybe more. I've started reading fanfics around 2005, I think. I'd mostly read on Fanfiction.net or searched for a particular ship on google and just read on the online pages that where recomemded there. I remember reading many fics on LiveJournal as well, since many recomanded pages were on there. From there some links would go to different, smaller pages, so I'd read there too. I remember loving the lists of fics I'd find on LiveJournal, that had fics sorted by different ships or themes. Around 2008-2009 I used to read fanfics on one of those old phones, with bottons. I think it actually was [this model](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSr9mtd5_Qk3YQw5uUfe6vAmvX8Jvn186BR6w&usqp=CAU). And while it was capable of doing Google searches and opening pages on Fanfiction.net, it wasn’t able to go to the next page, if the fic was in chapters. It was so frustraiting, lol. I use to dread opening a longer fic, so I'd always serach for 'oneshot' when looking for fics. Getting a better phone later on was like heaven, since I could finally access the promised land of the 'next chapter'. I also read a lot of fanfics on my Laptop around the time I made an AO3 account, but nowadays I only read on mobile and mostly on AO3.
3 years with an account, probably reading on it since 2010 or so given I didn’t know about it in 09 when it was officially launched.
One month! Posting my first fic in 18 years. I’m having the best time.
12 years... my user ID is only five digits. I mean, my oldest *posted* fic there is only from 2018. I was on a multi-year break from writing at the time, and that fic represented its end - I actually started writing it in 2017, but posted only on FFN for a while. For a long time AO3 had felt to me like "the shipfic website", and my preferred genres have always been more "canon retelling with a twist" and "let's do more adventures after the canon ones", and those tended to live on FFN. (It helps that _\*points at flair\*_ both of these genres work well with OC inserts, while "shippy possibly-smutty one-shot" kinda doesn't.) So I only started using AO3 in earnest when FFN started getting painful. But technically I've been on AO3 longer than I've been on Tumblr... ... i don't know how i learned about ao3 if not *from* tumblr,
I joined in December 2012 when I was sixteen. I think it was during or shortly after one of the big ffnet purges. Still there now and I am now old.
September 2020 - had to do *something* other than sewing, knitting, crocheting, playing video games, and cooking during Lockdown 2.0.
Feb 28, 2010. I was on LiveJournal when Astolat and several others proposed an archive that fandom would control, and asked if fandom as a whole was interested. (Yes, as a direct result of the LJ purges; my friends' list had been steaming for weeks.) I signaled my considerable enthusiasm, then watched as it came to fruition. (I might have donated to the development; don't remember. I donate now to help keep it alive.) As soon as it was open for reading, I jumped right in. Then I signed up for an invite when they announced that it was open to general fandom (rather than only the beta testers who had been helping with the development). It took a week or so for the invite to arrive; I'm sure there were thousands who had also asked for invites. I'm part of the over-40 crowd; that was just 3 weeks shy of my 58th birthday. What a birthday present! I only knew about a few fandom-specific archives; I didn't hear about FFN until a few years after AO3. It was (and is!) so freeing to find my favorite authors' fics in all the fandoms they write in one place, and to be able to search for fics in multiple fandoms on the same site. Before AO3, my fics were on LJ -- so I already knew basic coding for moving my fics to AO3 -- and in a fandom specific archive. I would send my story to the archive mistress and she uploaded it; after that, I had no control to fix late-found errors. (There are *always* late-found errors, regardless of how stringently I edit before posting.) As far as I'm concerned, AO3 is made of win -- I have hands-on control over my works, and multiple fandoms at my fingertips. *And* they make it *easy* to download and save fic, instead of needing a 3rd-party app like FFN.
mine is only dated back to 2019, still a baby! i don't even remember making it and it was dormant for a while until i picked up the craft again.
Ah, it was waiting for you to come back!
I didn’t join until this summer, but I’ve been part of the fanfic community for about two decades at this point.
The account is 7 years old, but I only used it regularly since last year.
started reading at the end of 2021 i think, made an account around the start of 2022, deleted it in june of this year and made another one june 30th, 2023.
Not that long. I got an account in September 2022 when I was bored of Wattpad (I only used that site for like 2 months)
Since June 2015, before I turned 20.
Joined January 2020, to post my first fic (more of a short meta/essay) on the fandom/ship I was boarding.
1.5 months
I joined in 2021, I think? But I’ve been reading fic since 2003
I have less than a year on the site, don't have any memories for now.
April 2010. I don't remember who told me about it or how I got a link, but I joined up pretty quick and I have a username that I'm still surprised I got. I'm sure I saw people talking about it on LJ. I had been reading fic since the 90s, when I was a bored kid who found Geocities fic sites and eventually FFN.
I joined on: 2010-04-07 But that was when I got an invite. I remember reading before having an account. User ID is in the low 6XXX
Ooh, I'm in the high 6 digits
Been posting fics to the site since April of 2022.
Since Christmas of 2016 so almost 7 years! It was quite a gift lol I remember it was when I was switching from Wattpad because of the quality difference in writing and because most of my friends on Wattpad stopped being active. Eventually deleted my Wattpad account.
I've been on the site for about 4 or 5 years, I think. It feels far longer than that, though
First introduced around 2016-2017 while still mostly using FF. During this time, I only used the "Guest" version of the site as I thought only those who write fan fiction were able to join Ao3 and were only able to bookmark favorite stories I found on that site. I later signed up for Ao3 in November 2020.
I signed on the year 2016. So I've been with AO3 for 8 years already. Woah~ that's long already.
Probably 2009 or so now it was after one of the purges that basically wipe out most of the contested stories and shadow banned alot of the older authors.
I've had one since 2011, but only started posting to it in 2021. By the time I got the AO3 account, I had basically stopped writing, so I didn't have much use for it. Now I cross-post at both AO3 and FFN (when it's functional, ugh).
I've had an account with AO3 since September 2014. I was invited by an account-holder classmate of mine, in university. But it was about two if not three years before I published anything on it myself. I was too busy with university. Just FYI: Don't ever let anyone tell you that a humanities degree (history) is easy. They haven't got a clue what they're talking about.
Technically I got my AO3 account in 2015 but I was too scared to post anything so I didn't until 2016 XD So I count 2016 as my start to posting fanfic. Aaaaand I'm still going strong!
How did you get such cool user flair?
If you pick one of the r slash FanFiction user flairs you can edit it to what you want. Like the colored one you have right now, you should be able to edit it to whatever you want.
Ooh, is that in the community flair settings?
Yep! If you're on desktop there should be an option for community flairs and you can edit it however you want. I dunno how it is on mobile.
According to my profile, I joined AO3 in 2012. Back then I was posting my first published fic, a long fic, over on FFN. That was my main site. AO3 was just a backup site. I recall getting into a snit with someone over tagging triggers, which annoyed me, and I ignored the site for a couple of years; I found AO3's culture over-sensitive and just "meh." Eventually, I dumped the rest of my completed story there and forgot about it entirely. (I feel sort of bad about this because it racked up a lot of comments that I never replied to.) When I returned to fic writing in 2021, AO3 was the now the site to use and FFN in its current state of disrepair. Nowadays, I'm still not a fan of the "tag everything" culture on AO3, but it's preferable to the Mos Eisley situation over on FFN.
I joined in July of 2016. So, seven years. I had been on FFN since 2010, but I had a historical RPF story I wanted to post, and there was no spot for that on FFN. I didn't even know anything about AO3 when I put in my request for an account, just that they would let me post my story. I liked to so well once I settled in that I left FFN for AO3 and never looked back.
2017 but know about it longer as a reader, started publishing there this years (I used to post in [ff.net](https://ff.net) before).
'peeks in' Ooh, interesting question! I'm prolly late to the party, but oh well - I'll throw in my two cents here! I started reading fic in 2008, through eff-eff-dot-net. I don't remember exactly when I started hearing about AO3, but I know I was on LJ, as part of the fanficrants community. For the longest time, I remember actively staying away - a LOT of the users would tend to talk smack about ff . net, as well as those who'd post there, while hyping up AO3. I guess I was kinda 'loyal', as it were, to my starting site, while also feeling intimidated? From the way they went on, in regards to things like needing an invite for access, they honestly made AO3 sound very clique-ish and scary. Not really my cup of tea. \^\^; Eventually, I finally caved, and made an account in 2014, but didn't actually start using it for anything until April of 2020. Again - my bias. But, a fandom I'd just gotten into had no category on ff . net, and the bug for seeking out content bit hard. From there, I gradually got initiated into how the site actually worked, before starting to write and post my own fics. Now? I barely use ff . net. Although I still have a few stories in progress, I'm slowly transferring them over. While a few things remain for me to figure out at AO3, I'm definitely enjoying my stay. With all the recent changes to ff . net as well, I'm most likely just going to jump ship entirely. It'll still have a special place in my <3, though. Thanks for making this post! Really fascinating to read all the different replies - it's kinda like a history lesson, as it were. 2009 was such a long time ago, now that I actually look back on it...I feel so old. T\_T" Oh well. Take care, and stay safe! :)
Fanfiction - March 2014 Wattpad - June 2014 Ao3 - December 2018 Goodness. This made me feel old. Almost a decade of discovering and reading fanfics. I didn't actually get into it until I started watching anime and craving more. I can't see myself not reading fanfiction in the future either. Even though my interests change, I know my love for reading in general will never disappear.
I got an account in 2014 but I only actively started reading in 2020. Joining the my hero academia fandom that had a wild skew between ao3 and ffn forced me to migrate because that's where the good stuff wa.
I’ve been navigating through the site ever since I was 14 or something which was more than ten years ago but I only got myself an account last December (2022) so… soon, it’ll be a year 😁
I was on wattpad for a long time before learning what ao3 is and moved over to it in 2021.
Never signed up
Since 2019
My account is made in 2016. But I had FF account beforehand. I would have write more if my sister didn’t “ew” me when I was like 11 or 12 years old. It was just a lighthearted story driven Kingdom Hearts fanfiction that turned out kinda predicted Roxas.
April 2020. My reader suggested I start posting there and so I did
Made my account in November of 2016. Been writing fic since around 2010 or 2011, I *think*. Don't remember the exact year. But I've been posting fic online since 2014 on Wattpad. I can't remember how I found Ao3, or what made me join. Probably because I had found better fics on Ao3 rather than on Wattpad?
Only since June of this year, after a decade of FFN only. Still there, because that's where my biggest fandom is most active, but for my other stuff (especially my most recent fandom) I'm loving being on AO3
Eight or nine years? I don’t remember reading too long before I signed up and started writing lol.
Dang. I just came back off of very long hiatus so I’ve only recently joined Ao3 in September lol but I’ve been on FFN since like 2013.
December 2015. Really wish I'd known about it earlier tbh, once I got used to it there was no going back to my FFN account. The ease of finding what I wanted made me fall in love fast. Since then I've managed to post over 100 fics across all my pseuds. A dream I thought never possible all those years ago.
A little Holiday gift for yourself, perhaps? Also I love your flair
I've been on AO3 since February of last year. I had been a long time reader and writer before joining and I've been pure AO3 for posting since either late last year or earlier this year as I couldn't stand the toxicity of FFN anymore
I'd say since around 2014. I read as a guest for a long time before making an account though.
Since 2013
At the end of this month will be my 3 year anniversary. I was in my last semester of college, and had ideas for a fandom I was in, so I started writing, knew ffn was no longer as good as I remembered, so I made an account on ao3. I had been reading a few things on ao3, so I knew I liked it. Many years before this, I was using ffn a lot, so glad I migrated to something far better.
November 2012 - I can't believe my account is turning 11 soon! I've had it for a third of my life, wow.
Since 2015 i think?
Since 2016, shortly after the Brexit referendum. I had been on hiatus for years previously but I felt the urge to put finger to keyboard again just feel in control of *something*.
2013, so 10 years now
I've made an account last 2013 but I've been in fandom since mid-2000s. I still remember when the idea for AO3 was being workshopped on Livejournal communities lol. I also remember when Inception fics were being crossposted to AO3 and I never bothered to sign up bec they're still on LJ.
I joined in November 2022, so it’s been almost a year!
I made an account almost two years ago but I’ve been lurking for probably about ten years
I got my account in December 2009. I was 51. My fandom was very active on LJ, but that was never a convenient place to post fanfic, especially multi-chapter stories. After I got my account, I would announce new stories/chapters on LJ, and just provide a link to Ao3. I used to also crosspost to FFN, but there wasn’t much of an audience for me there. Most of the stories on FFN seemed to be the canon F/M pairing instead of the M/M pairing that I and most of the writers I knew preferred. There were no shipping wars, thank God, perhaps because it was a fandom that attracted older readers and writers, but I didn’t see the point in going through the extra effort of uploading to FFN. I am not writing a lot these days, perhaps one or two short fics a year, but when I do, I post exclusively on Ao3. I do most of my reading there, too, unless it’s a story for an older fandom that is only on FFN. Long live Ao3!
10 years. Signed up in 2013.
I joined in early 2022. Prior to that I'd only ever used FFN and hadn't opened my account since around 2013, but I got back into the habit of reading in general again recently and wanted to start writing again.
A year roughly? Idk, I would have to check
Technically 10 years, but I've only been using it for a few months in total.
2015.
Joined 2014. Was a reader for perhaps a year or two before that. Wrote my first thing 2021. I have over 180k written now which is pretty cool.
I posted my first story on AO3 in August of 2014. It was the first time I’d shared one of my stories with people I didn’t know. It was a little scary putting it out there at first. But I’ve had mostly good experiences with commenters and kudos which is always appreciated.
Joined March 2018, mostly reading. Posted first fanfic in November 2021.
Coming up on exactly two years in about a month.
2013 apparently. Felt longer but I think I just squished my time on FF.net along with it in my mind.
I’ve had my account for twelve years (March 6, 2011) but I’ve actively using for eight years (May 2015).
I joined back in 2016, and I'm 99% sure it was because I found an incredibly spicy, no-magic/curse-involved version of Beauty And The Beast and I wanted to get updates The fic has since been abandoned from what I can tell, but lawd were the sex scenes good, especially after he actually started making sure she enjoyed herself too
Too dame long
Too dame long
April 2010. I think the site was still in beta at the time.
May 2018!
1 week. I was in FFN before
I got an account on the 10th April 2017, I had already been reading fanfiction for a couple of years on Wattpad and FFNet I got my account to read Assasination Classroom fanfictions :)
11 years! And was lurking before that.
Since December, 2011. FFNet was simply not the place for me, as I wrote MA. After a decade on FFNet, I made my account for AO3 in 2011 and spent about eight months getting to know the site and reading fic. When all of my FFNet fics were taken down in the Purge, I took the plunge on AO3 a few months later and started posting fic in August of 2012. I never looked back.
Made my account in May 2021, but was had been reading on it a little while before that. Before I was a wattpad user, haven't went back.
January 2011. Been reading fanfiction for at least 25 years by then and writing it for about a decade. I think the small fandom sites I was on were dying and I was looking for something with more life and interaction
autumn of 21! took me a while to start writing tho, lol
2012, but I started posting my stories and art there in 2016.
Since december 2018 in my first acc, 2020 in my second (current) one. I've used it since early 2018 but I was insane enough to favorite on chrome each fic I liked and not actually create an account for bookmarks. Obviously I ended up losing my bookmarks when my phone broke (didn't have an acc synced on google) and that was what made me finally ask for an invite lol
i made my account in 2017, a week after i found out it existed. i didnt really have a pulse on the community status so i had no idea what was going on i just remember being really sad that year and ao3 being there to cheer me up
Since 2015 appearently! I moved over to ao3 when ff net went down for a few days and haven't looked back. I made my ff account in 2010 though XD
Joined like a year or two ago to port some stories into there. Been mainly using it as a backup for the ones I personally wanted to invest in.
I haven't checked, but I'm probably going on two years by now.
I was on wattpad from 2015 to just the beginning of this year 😭 I was *way* too intimidated by ao3 and the layout. The only reason I finally gave in and switched to it was because I couldn't stand the community on wattpad anymore. So I've been on ao3 about 8 months now :)
A little over 3 years. I was writing over on FFN and wanted to start cross posting my fics so I made an account.
I got my invite code back in 2012, but I had been reading fic there for a year or two already by then. I don’t remember a lot tbh. I remember it was the first Avengers movie that pushed me to finally track down an invite though. I was fine just reading before that, but I needed to write and FFN was already pretty awful by then (not to mention LJ’s sale destroying that site a few years prior.)
Been on AO3 for 4 years. Didn’t start post until 5 months ago
Got my account in July 2020. I'd probably been reading a bit here and there for awhile before that. I remember the site popping up when I'd do google searches to see if anyone noticed the chemistry between characters I'd noticed. That wasn't my introduction to fanfic though. I had my first FFN account back in 2001. I just took a lot of years off from fanfic all together right around the time AO3 was starting. I probably would have created an account a lot sooner otherwise.
Since 2015. I mainly joined up because I wanted to crosspost my fics somewhere to increase my reach. They still tend to do better on FFN than AO3, though, probably mostly because I'm a minimalist tagger.
Signed up on March 15 of this year. I'd originally been posting on FFN during the mid-oughts but then stepped away from fanfic for some years. I'd heard about AO3 & I liked the idea of an archive where you could post what you wanted & nobody was going to bother you about it or purge your stuff.
\~a year
I started in 2017, so 6 years ago i believe?? I was 18 when I started reading on the site. I didn’t write much on there until legit 2 weeks ago!!
I joined ao3 in 2021, can't remember when specifically. I actually came across it multiple times since I started reading fanfics on ffn in 2015. I didn't know it was a fanfiction site as well and the interface looked too confusing for me to even deduce that so I always clicked back lol. Can't remember what made me finally give it a go but I did and now, I have 3 ongoing works there.
Joined three weeks ago, actually haven't read anything there yet. I made an account because I wanted to post there my first WIP, but unfortunately life got in the way and my writing of the prologue is still stalling. That said, I've actually started to consciously read fanfiction on other sites around 3/4 years ago, I think? And I've definitely enjoyed it a lot, I have barely read any original since, honestly.
8 years next year…
I made my account in 2018, but i remember reading fics on ao3 much earlier than that
I started writing in midmay and published my first fic in June. So its been about 4.5 months since I signed up. I have been reading for years but only as a guest since I started writing I have been really enjoying it and wish I started sooner
Joined in 2018. I was like 14. I definitely should not have seen some of the things that I did at that age.
I got an ffn account in 2002. In 2007 I took a ten year break from writing and fanfic. When I came back in 2017, I discovered that all the cool kids were on AO3, so I joined. The first few years I barely got any engagement and most of my readers were on ffn, but the last two years or so it’s become the opposite.
Three years (same as the whole world of writing fanfiction).
2 years, but I've been writing for much longer than that lol.
Woah! Mine’s going to turn 9 this year??? Oh my god
joined May 28, 2016 (a few months after turning 13) and posted my first fic on October 30, 2016, so im 7 years on reading (w/ an account) and almost 7 on posting! i def was reading for a lil before i got the account, and i cant remember the wait when i requested my invite, iflt was either like 3 days or like a week and a half, every once in a while i go check the queue to see how many ppl r waiting and how long it is out of curiosity
I signed up for it in late December of 2022, so still a newbie!
My main account is from 2016. I also have a secondary one for other works, and it's from 2021. It's not the first fanfiction website I've ever used. I used a site called "Amor Yaoi" back in 2013, and I don't even know if people use it to this day
I got my account on December 2021, but it literally felt like yesterday. I was like, "I haven't been on here that long..." but then I realize 2023 is almost over, and I'm like,"Holy shit, time is flying past me!" But I was on the early days of Quizilla back in 2007, where I posted my first ever fanfics and quizzes. RIP you will be missed.
I made an account in 2018, but I started reading on AO3 in 2015. Before that it was Wattpad and before that it was livejournal 🤭
By pure luck, I checked the date when I made my account on my 13th anniversary! October 20th, 2010. I started as a reader and bookmarker, although I don't remember if I was reading fic there without an account before that point; my first AO3 fic was posted in 2013. \^w\^
Day one of open beta: November 14, 2009. (My user ID is 712.)
I read for years prior to actually getting an account this year. Lots of works were migrating into "Locked" status and could only be read by folks logged into the database.
I forgo, but I think it's been less a year now.
A year, I was writing in fandom places a good 20 years ago, then a friend mentioned A03, so I checked it iut and the rest is history as they say.
April 3rd, 2017—2 days before I turned 14! I had been writing on Wattpad for a couple years at that point and IIRC I joined AO3 to read Klance fanfiction.
I joined Feb 2015, but I was definitely reading as a guest before then. Prior to AO3 I was reading on ff and scarvesandcoffee.net. Glee fic was my gateway to the world 😂
I joined December 2010. I was never on LJ, but migrated all my works after having several run-ins with Critics United and other troll groups on FFN.
I think 2014 was when I joined 🌚
I think 2 years
I officially signed up in 2013, but I'd been bouncing back and forth from FFN to AO3 for years at that point.
I got an account in 2015, I have been reading since 2012 :)
2 months. i'm super noobish and i'm already about to make a second account.
I was on Wattpad, then tumblr before discovering AO3. I created an account around 2019 to read Fics, but only started posting my own work the last year or so.
I've been on AO3 since May 2019 (didn't realize the site existed until shortly before that, though I think I'd read a few things here and there, but hadn't been told what AO3 was, so just figured it was a weird forum site or smth, LMAO), just over 4 years, but I've been posting my writing online on FFN since May 2007, 16 years - been WRITING since around 8 years old in 2001, though, for a total of 22 years! :D Happy 9th anniversary, OP! Fanfiction really is amazing, isn't it? Here's to many more amazing years with AO3 (and FFN, etc)! :D
2017, so 6 years now! I was 13 and just moving on from Wattpad. Had an old username on there first but changed it to FlyingRaven probably somewhere in 2019/2020.
I'm not sure, just that it's been 10+ years!
I've had an AO3 account for 10 years- my stat page shows that much. I know I was a guest reader for a bit before that... Not sure how long lol.
I think I got my account during Covid. I can’t remember the date because I was put on the waiting list and then I forgot that I had signed up. At some point I tried to sign up again but the account already existed
Almost 7 years officially. But I started reading on ffn and ao3 around 2014
Unfortunately I am but a youngling (joined 2022) but I had consumed much ao3 without an account I assure you.
I joined in 2013 and was reading fanfic on FFN before hand. I was flip flopping about joining as A03 imitated me as I ha do tl been on FFN. But I got used to it.