that's difficult to answer in full, and I don't think I'm the right person to provide a full history of it. I was around for it from reasonably close to the start, I think, but I was more of a reader/bystander than an active participant. but I can try to give my perspective on it

as a literary genre, ES began with twitter mini fics that usually depicted the perspective of an archetypal 'victim' or 'doll' figure in order to explore abuse, unhealthy, unequal and/or particularly emotionally involved relationships, and other related themes - trauma, codependency, etc. often, this figure was contrasted with another, the 'abuser' or 'witch'. a certain narrative voice was often characteristic of ES fics: poetic, symbolic, emotionally driven, melancholic, often lacking much dialogue and not providing straightforward emotional catharsis. over time, a rich mythology and symbology grew up around a lot of ES concepts, dolls and witches in particular. these were often initially personal to a particular writer, but would tend to proliferate through the space as fics and writers became popular. in a similar way, ES was quite prone to trends, where particular ideas or dynamics would be 'discovered' and then that new territory would be energetically explored by participants. moths, combat dolls, and incest would be examples of those trends - and mech pilots, of course, if we're still calling it ES at that point. often, though, trends would lead to certain ideas becoming watered-down or 'cutesified' somewhat, which could be frustrating, depending on your perspective. at one point, for example, dolls became very little-coded, which was a mixed bag if you identified with the original dolls-as-victims idea

as a community, ES was very loose and diffuse and overlapped with large segments of wider trans twitter. in that sense, 'Empty Spaces' wasn't at all a single or definite thing. that said, to my mind it had a very definite origin point with the users @badend_doll and @maybeelse. there might have been others, but as I remember it, ES basically owes itself to those two women. I would also describe ES as being very warm and generous - people rewarded writers with their time and praise, and were quite to share one another's work. it was also very open to new ideas, motifs and perspectives, although sometimes particular writers suffered from feeling themselves to be 'on the outside' if their ideas didn't catch on or if they didn't vibe with current trends. and when I say that ES was prone to trends, I don't mean that in a dismissive way. to me that stemmed from people's excitement to write and create and riff on each other, which was wonderful. ES was also refreshingly open-minded regarding experiment styles and taboo subjects. as you can probably tell, on the whole I feel very warmly about it

on both counts, what stands out to me most about ES is that it was straightforwardly by and for trans women. the community was visible composed of trans women, writing with and for each other, and their writings also deliberately spoke to the transfem experience in complex and crucial ways

finally, to speak to what 'happened' - at a certain point, the collective energy started to dwindle a little bit. some of the shine fell off, and as things diffused a lot of writers ended up preferring to keep doing their own things, individually. without trends, their work was often more personal and esoteric. this was also around the time that twitter went to shit, so people also just... left. ES isn't really 'dead', though. it lives on in a thousand blooming flowers, and even if it's not as singularly recognizable anymore that's partly because so much of what it birthed has simply become part of the air that's breathed in many transfem spaces and communities. that's life, not death

anyway! that's a whole lot of rambling, and maybe not exactly what you were asking for. but to me, that's what Empty Spaces was like