Bao Turns the AO3 Outage Into a Live Fanfic Writing Session on Twitch

INDEPENDENT — Bao, an independent streamer on Twitch, opened her Just Chatting stream by declaring the outage of Archive of Our Own, the fanfiction site known as AO3, a personal disaster. She said she reads from the site every day, that it was down, and that it could stay that way for about a month, with a stripped-down version possibly returning sooner. Her answer was to write fanfiction herself, live, and she roped in a collaborator she called Fream to work with her in a shared document.

Before the writing began, the conversation turned to Bao’s own habits. She said she had come to feel like a “normie,” that her life was more colorful than before, and that she was drawn to doing more in-person-style streams than virtual ones. She said she sometimes thinks about stopping live streams and only uploading videos, and that she liked the idea of not having to worry about being perceived. Chat teased her about graduating from the community; others told her to do what is best for her.

“I figured, why don’t I try a hand at being an AO3 author?” — Bao, on how the stream began

The project itself was part exchange of fan art, part brainstorm. Bao and her collaborator traded images over Discord, laughing at the artwork and at a file that was slow to send. They then collected a pile of characters for the story, and chat joined in with suggestions that ranged from Waluigi and Pregnant Link to Sephiroth, Samurai Jack and PS2-era Kratos. The plan was to write a rough draft of the plot, then add a randomly picked character and tag as they went, with deliberately cringeworthy author’s notes.

Later, they read aloud an opening in which a Sasuke scene collided with an original character, then used a random picker to choose whom to self-insert next. It landed on Bao, who accused her collaborator of hating her. Near the end, she and another voice on the stream joked that they had sped through twenty years of Tumblr in two hours, and chat kept pairing the finished story with the movie “The Boss Baby.”

Bao said she might skip streaming the next day because of a concert, but expected to be back on Halloween weekend, tentatively Saturday. She plans to dress as Rick Sanchez and mix cocktails. She signed off by raiding another channel.