Area 52

[nialla42]

For those of you who were into Stargate slash fanfic, you're probably familiar with the fic archive Area 52. It went offline in 2017 and no one has been able to contact the site owner about moving the archive to AO3.

So someone did the next best thing and created a bookmark list, which shows nearly 12K items. The links are external and will take

Comments

[spikedluv]

Wow! That sounds like a lot of work. Kudos to them for taking on the project.

[nialla42]

I don't know how many were involved, but just getting the links together and getting them into AO3 would take a lot of time. Looks like they also tried to tag them in AO3 system as best they could too.

[superbadgirl]

ah, the memories.

[nialla42]

I was into fanfic before Stargate, but the Stargate era was when I started spending more time with it than pro fic. So many great authors in the fandom, and it's going to be fun to go back and read some of the "classics" and see how well they hold up.

[superbadgirl]

I am horrified by my own fic from those days and am glad I stuck mostly to gen. My slash attempts would have been dreadful.

Ah, SG-1 was my indoctrination into fandom. It was great and also scarring. Wanting to be a BNF and then finding out most of the BNFs were either mentally unstable or complete assholes...

[nialla42]

I came into SG-1 fandom when it was still doing the first run on Showtime, then in syndication a year later. I didn't even know the show existed until I was visiting a friend for a con, and she had Showtime. I think it was in season two by that point, so I found season one eventually and caught up with DVDs.

Back then, there were a lot more message boards run by various BNFs, or fans who might not be that, but saw a niche pairing or whatever and ran with that as their theme.

Once Stargate Atlantis came around, fandom was migrating to LiveJournal. At the time, it was amazing, because even though you had moderators of comms, it wasn't anything like message boards. You didn't have to join a comm, you could post your opinions in your own journal and follow like-minded fans.

I sometimes wish OTW would make something like AO3, but instead of fanfic, have it focused on fandom meta and discussion. Technically, I think you can post them on AO3, but since it's so fic oriented, I don't think some folks would be happy about that idea.

[archersangel]

i recall hearing about this a while ago. there was some talk on if it was OK to either move them to AO3 or just list them without the author's permission.

[nialla42]

They can't do an Open Doors migration without the site owner's approval. They can do a list of bookmarks as long as it's linking to the original site, or to AO3 itself for authors who've already moved. They're also offering to help authors move fic if they're not up to doing it themselves for whatever reason.

I went through my old fic bookmarks and grabbed anything that was on Area 52. I've been randomly searching for some of the stuff I bookmarked ages ago on AO3 if it's no longer at the original site. Found quite a bit that way, but there's still a few fave authors I can't find anything, or at least not their older works.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Impressive!

[nialla42]

Just from an archiving perspective, it's very impressive.