fabrisse

I love Archive of Our Own. When fanfiction moved from fandom specific archives to Livejournal, I thought it hurt fanfic. The ability to comment directly was wonderful, but the ability to find stories was much more difficult -- especially if you didn't have fandom specific friends or the fiction vaults were closed communities. Now, most of my fandoms were open communities, but I did have trouble finding them originally. Fanfiction.net is easy to find, but it's badly organized and, well, there's a reason I've heard it called "the pit of voles."

Archive of Our Own (AO3) has helped. It's not fandom specific, but I find searching for fandoms there far easier than it is on either LJ or at Fanfiction.net. The interface is reasonably intuitive. It allows cross-fandom collections which was not possible on specific archives and isn't supported at Fanfiction.net, either.

AO3 is connected to The Organization for Transformative Works. This body helps with some of the more interesting legal issues that can crop up when people write stories based on existing canon. Since I've long maintained that Euripides' "The Trojan Women" is "Iliad/Odyssey" fanfiction (the events are presented from the point of view of otherwise minor characters and it takes place during a time between Homer's two stories -- if that's not fanfic...), I think we're continuing in an old genre. And while most of us aren't up to Euripides standards (or even Jean Rhys' standards), fanfiction is a way to hone writing skills, increase close reading of canon (even if that canon is a TV series), and develop critical thinking.

Both places are asking for donations right now. I'm contributing $10 every other month to AO3 in memoriam for thamiris who was a terrific writer and defender of the value of transformative works. I hope, if you can afford it, my friends will also donate to one or the other.