It feels a bit like I've come full circle
Nov. 7th, 2026 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enchantedsleeperThe other day, I was perusing the #AO3Down hashtag on Twitter/X to see what people were posting, and came across this gem from WikiHow:
Which was absolutely wild to encounter (also, the first sentence is just such an "Oh no. Anyway!" tone 😅) because I had no idea that WikiHow had quizzes (since when?) but also it seems like while everyone else is trying to bring back AO3, WikiHow is apparently bringing back... Quizilla?
Quizilla and its fannish quizzes were my gateway into fandom - I started off taking personality quizzes as my story characters and then realised that there were quizzes on this site I'd stumbled across labelled with 'Yu-Gi-Oh!' and 'Dragonball Z' and some other names I didn't know, and they appeared to be not quizzes but... stories? I spent hours reading them 🥺 Only a few months later, a friend told me about Fanfiction.net and the rest is history. WikiHow is very obviously trying to position itself in that niche, what with the courting AO3 fans and the "draco x hermione" in their graphic.
(I know Quotev has also been around for some time, though is it still frequented by many people? It seems like an obvious alternative but I haven't really seen it mentioned).
So between that and the fact that everyone is apparently now going back to posting their fic on fandom-specific archives (I've now seen more lists of non-AO3 fic sites than I can keep track of, although here are a few in case anyone wants them: [one] [two] [three]) (caveat that I don't know if they're all still active or just online), it feels weirdly like coming full circle in a way. xD My biggest surprise is finding out there's not one but two still-online-and-somewhat-active archives for Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman?? It makes me wish I'd done more with that one fic I wrote two chapters of in 2011.
Incidentally, for any gems you come across in your travels, fannish newsletter The Rec Center is looking for recs of fics not hosted on AO3 (note, no self-recs and no Google Drive/Dropbox type fics) and rec community Fancake is having No AO3 November instead of their originally-planned theme. (They also say no WIPs, no self-recs and no locked fics - that last is a bit unfortunate for SquidgeWorld where fics are member-locked by default and so you have to actively unlock your fics, and many people don't). After opening this morning's Rec Center I read a very well-written 17.5k The Pitt/ER crossover fic on DW and then discovered the author had posted some 70 fics for The Pitt and have been raiding them all day xD
Even if things sort of reset after this (although I expect it's not likely to be smooth or straightforward), this is still something we had: the challenges that people have run, the lists that they circulated and the sites that people began posting to, the comments that were left on fics that might not have otherwise been read had AO3 not gone down. This happened, and that feels incredibly important to me.
Which was absolutely wild to encounter (also, the first sentence is just such an "Oh no. Anyway!" tone 😅) because I had no idea that WikiHow had quizzes (since when?) but also it seems like while everyone else is trying to bring back AO3, WikiHow is apparently bringing back... Quizilla?
Quizilla and its fannish quizzes were my gateway into fandom - I started off taking personality quizzes as my story characters and then realised that there were quizzes on this site I'd stumbled across labelled with 'Yu-Gi-Oh!' and 'Dragonball Z' and some other names I didn't know, and they appeared to be not quizzes but... stories? I spent hours reading them 🥺 Only a few months later, a friend told me about Fanfiction.net and the rest is history. WikiHow is very obviously trying to position itself in that niche, what with the courting AO3 fans and the "draco x hermione" in their graphic.
(I know Quotev has also been around for some time, though is it still frequented by many people? It seems like an obvious alternative but I haven't really seen it mentioned).
So between that and the fact that everyone is apparently now going back to posting their fic on fandom-specific archives (I've now seen more lists of non-AO3 fic sites than I can keep track of, although here are a few in case anyone wants them: [one] [two] [three]) (caveat that I don't know if they're all still active or just online), it feels weirdly like coming full circle in a way. xD My biggest surprise is finding out there's not one but two still-online-and-somewhat-active archives for Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman?? It makes me wish I'd done more with that one fic I wrote two chapters of in 2011.
Incidentally, for any gems you come across in your travels, fannish newsletter The Rec Center is looking for recs of fics not hosted on AO3 (note, no self-recs and no Google Drive/Dropbox type fics) and rec community Fancake is having No AO3 November instead of their originally-planned theme. (They also say no WIPs, no self-recs and no locked fics - that last is a bit unfortunate for SquidgeWorld where fics are member-locked by default and so you have to actively unlock your fics, and many people don't). After opening this morning's Rec Center I read a very well-written 17.5k The Pitt/ER crossover fic on DW and then discovered the author had posted some 70 fics for The Pitt and have been raiding them all day xD
Even if things sort of reset after this (although I expect it's not likely to be smooth or straightforward), this is still something we had: the challenges that people have run, the lists that they circulated and the sites that people began posting to, the comments that were left on fics that might not have otherwise been read had AO3 not gone down. This happened, and that feels incredibly important to me.
no subject
Date: 2026-11-07 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-11-07 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-11-08 05:35 am (UTC)Quizilla!! Also my first foray into online fandom. :D Although, I only made tests, did quizzes and tests and started writing some really bad original fic once, rather than reading people's fic on there. Still, I miss it, it was fun... Always happy to see someone else remembers it. :)
no subject
Date: 2026-11-08 11:42 am (UTC)LOL did not see WikiHow as the second coming of Quizilla, neat to see!