I have been asking ao3 authors how they joined and who else to ask!
@anxiouspotionofgloom suggested you!
How did you join ao3? And who else should I ask?
It took me a while to remember, but I'm pretty sure the first time I visited ao3 was for a Miraculous Ladybug fic back in 2017 or so (when duty and desire meet - fair warning, it hasn't updated in a few years, but it's so good guys). I came across one of the illustrations for it on Pinterest and followed it to the fic and was immediately obsessed. I hung out in the MLB tag off and on for a bit, but only occasionally - I didn't even make an account at the time, just manually checked back every few months to see if WDADM had updated.
I came back to ao3 a couple years later on a quest for Zutara fics. I think this is when I finally made an account, but it was still under the username I used for a lot of my social media back then 😅 so any of my irl friends could have immediately recognized it as me.
I started getting into hermitfic in 2023 or maybe early 2024 - I've been watching Hermitcraft since season 5, but wasn't in the fandom/fanlore side of things until recently. When I started getting into hermitfics was when I changed my username to purple-nightfall.
Thanks a bunch for the ask! <3