iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

How awkward! thought Annabel. Here she was, playing soft music and lulling Egbert's Papa into opening his pocketbook for their wedding, and now it turned out Egbert was pre-contracted to marry a High Court Judge. #GirlsOwnCC

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Katharine Parr over here coughing meaningfully in 'exactly *who* made several important translations / reimaginings of theological classics and also had to talk Henry down from an *arrest warrant* because he got it into his head she might be a heretic?'

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The kind of thing you open and stare at and then start researching what your ancestors used to do with old Spiritualist pamphlets or feed sacks or moss. (Any of which would apparently be welcomed with open arms by the Conservatives as party leader, judgjng by how Kemi Badenoch is doing)

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Britannia Shield sounds like some kind of awful 1940s monthly sanitary product equivalent of Izal medicated toilet paper.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I have had several recently from the alleged ghost of Hilary Mantel and one telling me how few ratings one of them has on Goodreads. Joke's on them: I never look at my reviews or ratings and was pleasantly surprised it was that many.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

At present if I was travelling in another country and encountered the far right, I'd be frightened and angry but also feel a bit relieved to be reminded that it's not just a stain on my particular nation's soul and we're all in it together. But obviously I'm not German and can't speak for them!

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

#amwriting You broke up with him, said Kettler. It was complicated, said Wizard Furnibull. It's still bloody complicated, said Kettler, unless him being trapped in an egg-shaped portable universe with a mechanical kobold from another plane of existence is what wizards think of as simple.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There was a sudden arrival of 'American cookies' in bakeries and shops in the early 90s here. They're about 4 to 6 inches across, crisp edge, slightly squishy in the middle and come in plain, chocolate, various kinds of chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin but I have no idea about their authenticity!

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

What did you make of this week's 'American style cookies'?

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I feel as if it has probably already been chucked through a portal under a hedge to a parallel dimension and I hope whatever lives there has limbs that can make use of my Snag tights order.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Evri: we've got your parcel Me: why does this sound like a hostage demand

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It was very bad. There were novelty sombreros.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Fourteen, on the way to work experience in a blue high necked calf length sundress, two men walking in the other direction said 'do you give blowjobs?'

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I was just thinking 'oh I bet actual Americans will have something to say about this!'

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

'And when that blighter who broke my heart returns from the Crimea', thought Pearl, 'I will stab him once in the ribs and once in the goolies, just like I've been practicing on the knitting'. #GirlsOwnCC

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Aaaaaaah we found each other again in the post-apocalyptic badlands of the 2026 internet! I am so pleased to see you!

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The sockpuppets! So many sockpuppets!

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I just remembered the Open Source Boob Project. *thousand yard stare* fanlore.org/wiki/The_Ope...

fanlore.org

The Open-Source Boob Project - Fanlore

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

OMG YES I remember writing a FFVII parody ('I suggested to My Angel that we get couples therapy to work through the issues with his mother. He said nothing but went out and killed the Midgar Zolom') but it didn't get any traction.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Strikethrough. Unfunnybusiness. Frank the Goat. The Livejournal Advisory Board Elections. Squee, squick and everything in between. All those moments lost in time, like tears in rain.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

His wife? A horse. Not as far as I know the beaded dead horse. This came from a bloke who posted to a polyamory community about his 'stallion mentality' and how his wife was fine with it but his other partner wasn't. It gradually became apparent that he was a zoophile.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Beading a dead horse / pony: misspelling by someone defending themselves on the Fandom Wank community, I think? There were icons. My hed is pastede on yay: originated with badly traced Elijah Wood fanart which was how people amused themselves before AI.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Addendum: I realised that I could have evoked this era way quicker by just bringing up some of the era's catchphrases, so, with apologies to those too young to remember who could have lived their lives without encountering any of this:

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If replaced by a younger model, the wife should hand over the documentation on how the professor likes things and depart without fuss.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Would FanLib launch today? Maybe... but I'd be looking under the hood to see whether there was anything in the terms and conditions about training generative AI.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

... later to have its serial numbers filed off to publish as Fifty Shades Of Grey.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Eventually FanLib sold up to Disney. The world moved on. Supernatural introduced Castiel, played by chaos gremlin Misha Collins. Barack Obama became president and people began writing RPF about him. The Twilight series ended and the fic 'Master of the Universe' by Snowqueen's Icedragon began...

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It also speeded up the creation of An Archive Of Our Own, aka AO3, which Michela Ecks promptly said wouldn't last.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Some people did try FanLib but they were put off by its insistence on showing pages containing an inconveniently small amount of text, interspersed with too many ads. In this if nothing else FanLib were ahead of their time.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Fandom looked up from writing Wincest and... somehow... hosting fanfic on quiz site Quizilla and arguing about how the Golden Trio would get back to Hogwarts in time for the final Harry Potter book for long enough to respond with a resounding 'Pttttthhhhhhhbtttttt'

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I do not think this association helped FanLib in the eyes of fandom in general but they were digging their own gravex quite competently on their own. They offered 'write a scene for an upcoming episode in this mainstream drama fandom, we own your work, you might get a raffle prize if you're lucky!'

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

She was also considered slapdash about verifying her sources: I have no idea how true that is in general but I do know that she once accused a late friend of mine of pulling strings to get a BNF a book deal when, as the friend pointed out, if she had those contacts she'd have used them herself.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

And their cheerleader, a fandom person known variously as Michela Ecks, Laura Hale (no, not the Teen Wolf one), purplepopple and partlybouncy, who was known for her attitude towards monetising fandom (she was for it, which gathered her a lot of heat with veterans of the Zine Wars).

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

They were some irrelevant tech bros one of whom copy-pasted a spectacularly whiny 'I'm just a person & I was up all night with my toddler and why are you tearing me to shreds and I am taking this very personally indeed' screed across communities on LJ at 2am (I'm surprised he isn't President by now)

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Who on earth were these people with their strange, tone-deaf advertising, their myopically US-centric viewpoint, and their apparent expectation of a warm welcome that was really not forthcoming?

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

But it was mostly Livejournal and its various code forks and clones (deadjournal, insanejournal, and specifically journalfen) where the resistance to Fanlib rallied.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Tumblr had launched the year before. Wattpad had apparently launched but I was not aware of it. There was fanfiction dot net, known for legacy reasons as the Pit of Voles, and then there were various fandom-specific archives and social spaces. fanlore.org/wiki/The_Pit...

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Yes, sites plural. I was mostly involved with Livejournal, which at that point was being run by a bunch of people called Six Apart about whom all I can say is that whenever a tech billionaire does something particularly sociopathic I think 'Hey... at least it's not Six Apart'.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Anyway, along came FanLib, a hopeful startup who wanted to give fan writers the opportunity to 'colour within the lines' (which was more or less how they put it in their investor brochure) or to 'join a new thriving community' as they put it in spammy messages to popular authors on fanfic sites.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

People said 'synergise' a lot in 2007 and I'm sorry. They also often said 'thinky thoughts' and I'm also sorry about that.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Someone who had bought a fan site for... I want to say Winnie the Pooh? but please correct me here if you remember it better than I do... tried to expand into Lord of the Rings fandom and 'synergise' the two and received the online equivalent of a rubber band across the nose.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

And hey, I get it. Servers aren't cheap. Running a fan site exposes you to loons, grifters, and people who care passionately about some minor nitpick and will never, ever let it go. People move on with their lives and keeping the Highlander-Sentinel MPreg Crossover Vault going is less of a priority.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

FanLib were not the only ones doing this, they were just the most brazen and public about it. There had been a couple of sales of fandom specific fic archives to people who saw them as a money making opportunity.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

And were repelled by an army of angry fans armed with Super Soakers ful of anti-locust spray.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The dotcom crash had come and gone years earlier and the world financial crash of 2008 had not hit yet. And so, as inevitable as locusts, the 'let's monetise fandom!' bros came crawling onto the scene.

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The Big Name Fans who had become celebrities in their own right a couple of years earlier had mostly grown up a bit, calmed down a bit, and generally were behaving less like the Real Housewives of FanFiction.net, or at least doing it less publicly.

fanfiction.net

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

...and small, agile mammalian fandoms were poking their noses out and whiffling in the fresh air. (I mention Harry Potter because of its omnipresence at the time, but trans rights are human rights & I choose not to give more money to someone who is unfortunately never going to spend it on therapy)

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