Welcome to Open Doors!
The Open Doors project of the Organization for Transformative Works is dedicated to preserving fanworks for the future.
Once the Archive of Our Own is fully up and running, we will be happy to help maintainers of typical fanfic archives preserve or backup their collections by transferring the contents of their archive into the Archive of Our Own. We plan to collect these stories under the name of the archive from which they came, as well as to set up automatic redirecting from the original URLs if desired and whenever possible. Other fannish projects that cannot be integrated into the Archive may also be preserved as special collections, resources permitting. Both kinds of projects are featured below.
For further information, or to inquire about Open Doors hosting a project you are associated with, please contact us.
Current Collections
Multifandom Projects
The Foresmutters Project
- The Foresmutters Project is the first test case for the Open Doors project. Foresmutters is a bibliography and collection of some of the stories from the very earliest days of recorded slash, principally Kirk/Spock from the mid-1970s. It's a tremendously valuable resource for the K/S fandom, which is still active today, and for historians of fanworks. We are hoping to grow this collection. If you or someone you know wrote K/S in the 1970s or 1980s, please contact us; we can find someone to help you transcribe or scan your fiction.
Fandom-specific Projects
Missed The Saturday Dance (Stargate Atlantis)
- by Zoetrope
Missed the Saturday Dance is a multimedia World War II Stargate: Atlantis AU by Zoetrope; it includes stories, audio, art, and video. John Sheppard/Rodney McKay NC17. This story has won many awards and is a fan favorite for its worldbuilding and seamless integration of art, audio, video, and story elements.
Kista (1986) and Demeter (1987): two novels (Star Trek)
- by Jane Land
Kista (1986; 267 pages; click to save zipped .pdf, 87.1 MB) was described by the author as, "an attempt to rescue one of Star Trek's female characters from an artificially-imposed case of foolishness." In it, Chapel still loves Spock, but their developing romance is allowed to be complex, with Chapel being more of a rounded person than she was allowed to be onscreen (as well a doctor!) Demeter (1987; 305 pages; sequel to Kista; click to save zipped .pdf, 101.5 MB): As Henry Jenkins and John Tulloch wrote in Science fiction audiences: watching Doctor Who and Star Trek, "Demeter places [Spock and Chapel's] relationship within a larger social context, dealing more directly with how women are treated within the Federation." The plot "concerns the threat a group of intergalactic drug-runners pose to Demeter, a feminist space colony, a world where women have lived without any contact with men for several generations." Uhura also plays a large role in this novel, commanding the all female mission to Demeter; Robin Reed argues that this novel is important "within the context of second wave feminism, specifically: the creation of the 1970s feminist utopias (which often featured a lesbian separatist culture, sometimes though not always on a separate planet!)" (Reid, "'A Room of Our Own:' Women Writing Women in Fan and Slash Fiction," ICFA 2009.) Our thanks to Dr. Robin Reid for organizing the preservation of these works.
For More Information
For more information, please see the Open Doors section of the FAQ.
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