Organization for Transformative Works Elections

 I first became aware of AO3 (Archive of Our Own) last year, when I started dipping my toes in the shallows of some of the fan fiction I was most familiar with.  

Then there was the wonderful moment during the Hugo Ceremony at DublinCon when AO3 won the Hugo for Best Related Work, and the lights went up on the audience so that everyone who had written fan fiction on the site or been involved in AO3 stood up - because this Hugo was for all of them.

After that, I started writing fan fiction again, after a break of many years (I used to write Star Trek fan fiction for fanzines like Starship Excalibur, when the original 79 episodes were all the Star Trek that existed).

I've been having fun - I changed the ending of The Flashing Blade, which has been bugging me for nearly 50 years, so the hero chooses the right girl; I turned Lord Peter Wimsey into Lady Petra and wrote about her experiences in the Great War; and I tried to make sense of The Saint's timeline in the Roger Moore series.

I also wrote a story that brought together all the fictional jewel thieves in Europe with The Champions, set Liz Shaw and Kate Stewart on a new path to keeping the Earth safe after UNIT was defunded, and wrote a few little Aziraphale and Crowley scenes (they are such fun to write!).

I've also read some awesomely good fan fiction, and some that might not be technically very good but which was obviously written with love (I'd put some of my own fiction in the 'technically not very good' category - the main thing for me was having fun writing it), and I've started following some of the authors on Tumblr.

And, since I was using the site, I sent a couple of small donations when they asked.

So I was delighted to be eligible to vote in the elections for new Board members.  Reading the bios of the candidates, I learned a lot about what goes on behind the scenes to keep the site running.  There are hundreds of volunteers organising, translating, tag-wrangling, dealing with legal issues, and more.

AO3 is part of the Organization for Transformative Works, which also covers Fanlore, Transformative Works and Culture, Fanhackers and Open Doors.

It's nice to be able to vote for something positive.