It’s Time for April Showers!

Banner by Sidhrat of the AO3 and Fanlore logos on wooden signs in a field that's being rained on.

In the month of April we hope you’ll help us spruce up AO3 and Fanlore by posting forgotten works and dusting off neglected wiki entries.

We are proud to be able to offer an archive for fanworks at Archive of Our Own and we invite you to take the time to post both new works and old works that are languishing in ancient blogs or buried in your harddrive. Add them to AO3 so other fans can enjoy them! You can even backdate them to show their original creation date, and use our pseud system to preserve old fandom aliases.

If you’re posting works, use the tag April Showers 2015 so that everyone can find them.

Or, if there’s a fanwork already on the archive that you think more people should see, bookmark it and add it to our April Showers Recs collection.

We also recognise that fandom history is far more than just fanworks – Fanlore records decades of fannish activity, from the days before the internet all the way to current events shaping fandom. If you have old zines, or fond memories of a long-ago convention, write about them on Fanlore. If there’s new drama in your fandom, or a new trend in fanart, write about those too! Fanlore is open to everyone, and we encourage everyone to edit it and add their own experiences. Fannish history is our history.

If you’d like to edit pages, but you aren’t sure how, don’t panic! There will be an editing party in the Fanlore chatroom on Saturday, April 4th at 16:00 UTC (when is that in my timezone?). Come and ask questions, familiarise yourself with Fanlore, or just chat with other editors.

There will be a second chat towards the end of the month – keep an eye on the Fanlore community on Dreamwidth for the exact date and time.

To help get you started, we’re highlighting a different fandom every day via our twitter accounts; ao3org and fanlore_news. Follow us for a daily dose of fandom!

Announcement, Archive of Our Own
  1. Namira commented: Question: would it be appropriate to post the works of a writer who's no longer alive, and if so, how should I best go about that? I used to have a page on my website dedicated to the works of the late Za Metallium, but I lost my hosting a few years ago so her stories are just languishing on my hard drive right now. Her fanfiction.net account is still up, but it doesn't have all her stories. Can I post them on my account or a new one, or is it against the rules to post another's work without permission even if she's no longer with us?
    • Claudia Rebaza commented: A lot depends on what permissions you have been given. Our Open Doors project works with individuals who are no longer able to maintain their archives so normally you'd want to get in touch with them about preserving the works you had hosted. If you created the Za Metallium archive with Za Metallium's permission they could help. But if you didn't have Za Metallium's permission to archive and host the works, then the works wouldn't be appropriate for Open Doors' assistance. The AO3 does offer a Fannish Next of Kin option for fans so that permissions are in place for someone else to maintain their works if they are no longer able to do so on their own. However this must be done jointly by the fan creating the works as well as the one who will be given the account's access: https://transformativeworks.org/news/fannish-next-kin