persephone_kore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
persephone_kore) wrote2005-12-04 02:46 am
persephone_kore) wrote2005-12-04 02:46 am
Speaking of archiving...
I feel like plugging The Ink Pen, a Harry Potter fanfic archive.
I'm not sure how I first heard about it. I was thinking Ciircee told me about it, but what I actually remember is her prodding me to submit there, and I'm pretty sure I remember wandering through while it was still in the stage of, erm, not having an archive yet. I remember hearing something about when the people building it were asking people with Really Good Fics to let them archive there as a core, so that they would actually have something in the archive instead of asking people to submit to a complete unknown quantity.
So... what's so great about it?
Philosophy, mainly. Part of what attracted me after Ciircee's aforementioned nudge was poking around the forums and discovering that one of the admins was using that line about being open-minded but not to the point your brains fall out as a description of the archive.
Me, I'm definitely not of the opinion that writing canon-compliant fanfic is inherently uncreative (hey, I've seen it said!), but neither do I really go in for the opposite idea that the only worthwhile fanfic is missing-moment, predictive, and perfectly in line with one's best estimation of author intent, or possibly an AU in the strictest sense. So an in-between sort of archive struck me as an appealing idea.
As it turns out, TIP's policies involve G-R rating, 500+ words, and vetting for overall reasonable quality, plus a caution to the effect that if it seems likely JKR would be appalled by your content, this archive may not want it. (Personally, I read this as "If your fic would make JKR rethink being friendly to the idea of fanficcers....") They're multi-ship but treat teacher/student and "multi-creature" ships with more caution. (I'm not totally sure whether that last one refers to cross-species with multiple nonsentient partners or something else.) Canon is to be taken into account, but interpretation may vary wildly (I think).
There is also the very nice phenomenon that apparently whoever approves your story for display will often try to leave you a bit of feedback.
And they've got somebody working on their own forum/archival software system, or something like that, which is rather neat.
It feels cozy and friendly, though I can't quite say why.
Delightfully, they have it set up to handle cowriters! ...Only two at a time, but still.
Now... to be fair, there are some points to warn people about before they head over.
Their bookshelves for pre-HBP and pre-OotP fic are labeled "AU." Oh, well; it is how a lot of people use the term, even if some of us would prefer to have it reserved for intentional AUs.
There are a few technical issues, which I think are supposed to be fixed in the next version of the software; the one that bothers me the most is that while you can browse the assorted bookshelves, the "list of authors" link doesn't work.
It's quiet and sort of slow-paced, currently. I think this is mostly because it's still relatively small in terms of both admins and members; the forums aren't terribly lively and there aren't that many reviews, and since the mods read everything you upload before it's approved to appear, your updates depend on how busy they are.
Responding to reviews is a little unwieldy. I think this may be because the forum and archive registrations are separate? (Or I could be confused.)
...Still, even with a few inconveniences, I'm warmly fond of the place and I plan to gradually get all my HPfic up there. (Well... probably not most of the drabbles. ;) Of course, I don't seem to have them even on FF.net....)
At some point, I feel I should go through and look at all the bookshelves, read and review as much as strikes my fancy, and generally catch up with what's already there. I would feel more at home myself because of the participation, have a better feel for what kind of stories are on the archive, might get attention for my own stories, and would perhaps be able to offer to set up some category-type threads in the forums. (The submission process asks for genre information, but I'm not quite sure where it's used, except perhaps to give the mods a hint as to what to expect. My fics don't fit too well into FA's romance/humor/dark/long system, but I do like the ability there to advertise on the forum in threads categorized by things like setting and character.)
I'm not sure how I first heard about it. I was thinking Ciircee told me about it, but what I actually remember is her prodding me to submit there, and I'm pretty sure I remember wandering through while it was still in the stage of, erm, not having an archive yet. I remember hearing something about when the people building it were asking people with Really Good Fics to let them archive there as a core, so that they would actually have something in the archive instead of asking people to submit to a complete unknown quantity.
So... what's so great about it?
Philosophy, mainly. Part of what attracted me after Ciircee's aforementioned nudge was poking around the forums and discovering that one of the admins was using that line about being open-minded but not to the point your brains fall out as a description of the archive.
Me, I'm definitely not of the opinion that writing canon-compliant fanfic is inherently uncreative (hey, I've seen it said!), but neither do I really go in for the opposite idea that the only worthwhile fanfic is missing-moment, predictive, and perfectly in line with one's best estimation of author intent, or possibly an AU in the strictest sense. So an in-between sort of archive struck me as an appealing idea.
As it turns out, TIP's policies involve G-R rating, 500+ words, and vetting for overall reasonable quality, plus a caution to the effect that if it seems likely JKR would be appalled by your content, this archive may not want it. (Personally, I read this as "If your fic would make JKR rethink being friendly to the idea of fanficcers....") They're multi-ship but treat teacher/student and "multi-creature" ships with more caution. (I'm not totally sure whether that last one refers to cross-species with multiple nonsentient partners or something else.) Canon is to be taken into account, but interpretation may vary wildly (I think).
There is also the very nice phenomenon that apparently whoever approves your story for display will often try to leave you a bit of feedback.
And they've got somebody working on their own forum/archival software system, or something like that, which is rather neat.
It feels cozy and friendly, though I can't quite say why.
Delightfully, they have it set up to handle cowriters! ...Only two at a time, but still.
Now... to be fair, there are some points to warn people about before they head over.
Their bookshelves for pre-HBP and pre-OotP fic are labeled "AU." Oh, well; it is how a lot of people use the term, even if some of us would prefer to have it reserved for intentional AUs.
There are a few technical issues, which I think are supposed to be fixed in the next version of the software; the one that bothers me the most is that while you can browse the assorted bookshelves, the "list of authors" link doesn't work.
It's quiet and sort of slow-paced, currently. I think this is mostly because it's still relatively small in terms of both admins and members; the forums aren't terribly lively and there aren't that many reviews, and since the mods read everything you upload before it's approved to appear, your updates depend on how busy they are.
Responding to reviews is a little unwieldy. I think this may be because the forum and archive registrations are separate? (Or I could be confused.)
...Still, even with a few inconveniences, I'm warmly fond of the place and I plan to gradually get all my HPfic up there. (Well... probably not most of the drabbles. ;) Of course, I don't seem to have them even on FF.net....)
At some point, I feel I should go through and look at all the bookshelves, read and review as much as strikes my fancy, and generally catch up with what's already there. I would feel more at home myself because of the participation, have a better feel for what kind of stories are on the archive, might get attention for my own stories, and would perhaps be able to offer to set up some category-type threads in the forums. (The submission process asks for genre information, but I'm not quite sure where it's used, except perhaps to give the mods a hint as to what to expect. My fics don't fit too well into FA's romance/humor/dark/long system, but I do like the ability there to advertise on the forum in threads categorized by things like setting and character.)
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Ot sounds terrific- just about what I've been looking for- I don't mind seriously weird crackfic once in a while, but most of it isn't funny, or entertaining- just annoying.
I'll check it out as time permits.
Speaking of which, I fully intend to get back to reading and reviewing your fic, but I got pulled away by RL stuff. (My son got his 4 month inoculations and felt lousy for a few days, and now I'm fighting a sore throat.)
Sorry about the delay!
May I make a request?
Add links to your various archives in your userinfo- it makes finding your fiction a lot easier! (I keep losing my bookmarks, or things get forgotten in the shuffle.)
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I suspect that it's just not sufficiently well established (or navigable) for anybody to go there to find new fic regularly, and there's not much in the way of searchableness set up yet, which means people aren't likely to browse so much. *frowns thoughtfully* FA probably is the best so far for actually being able to find things, and it helps that the forum and review boards are integrated.
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That's a good idea, about putting links in userinfo. Somehow these things never seem to occur to me, or I get overtaken by shyness. (Also, everything's sort of scattered... Hmm.)
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I'm thinking that what with having a comparatively late start and still working out tech details, TIP's not a very likely candidate for people to use as their only place to put a fic. On the other hand, once I ever get caught up there, it'll be really nice to have a single page I can point to and say, "There are my HP fics!" instead of "Well, here are my HP fics written with Drea, and there are the ones with Alan, and here are the ones with just me..." or "Here are the ones with just me... here is the one that's supposed to be funny... here are the ones with Alan, some of which are a sequel to one of the ones with just me... here are the novel-length ones with Drea... here's a romantic one with Drea... here are the rest of the ones with Drea...."
...Although if the new archive system allows searching/sorting by genre or number of chapters as well as actually making the author list work, I'll be thrilled.
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Have you seen the new FA 'story pages?' They give all of an author's works on one page, whether they are TDA, Riddikulus, AT or Schnoogle. I don't know about joint authors though - perhaps there are still separate pages for each collaboration. I really like the new set up - it's definitely better to have all your fics (in my case) on one page.
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Anyway, the composing in plain text is the relevant part here. In that section of fandom, you didn't generally submit to archives; archivists generally initiated the process. If you wanted to make it easier for them (or in some cases if you preferred it to having your fic put up as a text file), you might do your own basic HTMLing for them.
It was someone from that first circle of fandom acquaintance who put me on to NoteTab, which really is very nice indeed. It has a "Modify document to HTML" feature that puts in the basic required code and inserts paragraph tags, which was always the really tedious part before; you do however have to do your own italics or bold if you want that. And that would definitely be daunting for a 150K+-word novel!
I think FA was being slow last time I went and looked there, but I'll have to check out the story pages. That is nice.