The AO3 Problem

With AO3 being the current juggernaut of the fanfiction world, I'm glad to see that it's taken some of those older archive elements and keeping them alive, yet at the same time, it still doesn't feel right. Instead of feeling like you're in an actual community of writers, it just feels like you're in a massive office, digging through individual files to find what you want to read. 

While I understand that AO3 is an "archive" rather than a social media, it's reached a milestone in popularity where peoples entire fandom lives are pretty much based there. A forum or something of that effect would be wonderful for the AO3 community, even if it isn't officially owned by OTW. 

AO3 is a place of our very own, just as the name says. It's a place where we can store all our works in a secure, convenient environment, a place where we can truly have freedom of fiction without fear of having works reported or randomly taken down. But it lacks emotion. It lacks energy. It lacks community.