hello world.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

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[sarken]

Just last night, I was having some major nostalgia for the old LiveJournal/Dreamwidth-based multifandom porn battles.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

lolol yessss

[sarken]

I've thought a few times about maybe trying to run one on AO3 -- keeping it as simple and close to the original format as possible by using the sign-up form's description field rather than tags -- but I know it just wouldn't be the same.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

oof yeah. I can't actually picture how that would work, but if you ever decide to dive in and give it a shot, I'll definitely sign up!

[sarken]

My dream is to one day have prompts/sign-ups be searchable on the Archive, but I think if you told folks to format their prompts like Fandom, relationship, prompt and do one per line, you could probably make the prompts into a CSV and import them to Google Sheets to make a nice, searchable list. It would be annoying to do, but probably not any worse than compiling them from a DW comment section (which I never volunteered to do because it sounds excruciating 😆).

Of course, all of this would mean you can't use AO3's Claim/Fill functions in any meaningful way, but that wasn't part of the original experience, so it's not a huge loss, imo.

Now that I've said all this, I've realized it's not the prompting phase that's my issue, but the filling stage. I think what I'd miss with a porn battle on AO3 is the experience of posting a fill in a comment (so much easier than posting a work! so much less pressure to create something refined!) and of scrolling through pages of fills (it's just too easy to skip to what you want on AO3 and miss stuff you wouldn't ordinarily consider) and replies to the fills (which explains the odd urge I had to say that doing it on AO3 felt like it lacked the same sense of community -- seeing the replies threads = feeling of community that isn't equaled by seeing Comments: # in an AO3 work blurb).

So now I'm glad to have a better understanding of what really made the Dreamwidth porn battle experience so special to me, but sad I don't think it can be reproduced!

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

Hmmm yeah, I see what you mean. It wouldn't be the same. Even if you posted a work for each prompt and put them together into a series and the fills were in the comments and threaded, you could still just dive into one prompt/work without seeing anything outside of it.

damn :(

[wolfish_willow]

Oh man, so much fun!