icarusancalion

I didn't post this weeks ago when I was buried under comments and RL, but the more I read about FanLib and ff.net, the more enthusiastic I become about fanarchive.

We need a new doorway. While I've never been against ff.net and I've often sent new writers there to test their wings unobserved in a giant fanfiction warehouse, I think we definitely need a new doorway to fanfiction, one that's run by fanfiction writers. So here's the announcement I neglected to post before:

(This announcement is being forwarded from the fanarchive community on LJ.)

A group of fanfic fans is forming to set up a nonprofit organization for collective fannish projects, including building a central fanfic archive. We are setting up shop in the fanarchive community on livejournal, located here:

http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/

A couple of big updates have been posted today (Monday June 4), including the basic outline of our organization structure and our call for volunteers. If this sounds like something you would be interested in, please stop by, give us your thoughts, and sign up for announcements!

Here are the two posts:

The Organizational Structure
http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/5634.html

Willingness to Serve
http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/5913.html

If you don't have an LJ account, you can subscribe by email with this handy free service:

http://www.rssfwd.com/

All you need to do is paste in the following URL:

http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/rss

(If you use an RSS newsreader, you can use that same URL to subscribe to the news feed.)

You also do not need an LJ account to make comments on posts -- please just remember to put your name/pseud somewhere in your comment, so everyone knows who is talking, and include your email address so others can reply to you directly if you want.

If you would like to catch up on the last week or two of discussion, a helpful summary post is up here:

http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/5406.html

Thank you!

-- astolat (otherwise known as shalott)

Come on in, the water's warm.

The CEO of Six Apart speaks: Well we really screwed this one up.

They recognize they suspended journals that should not have been suspended. Now we'll see what they do to fix it.

In the meantime, my name at Greatest Journal is the same as the one here.

Interesting fun facts about FanLib:

Someone told me the 40 Highlander stories they have are all by the same author. Curious, I checked out the Stargate Atlantis stories.*

Two-thirds, 87 of 137 Stargate Atlantis fics, are by the same two people.



* Yeah, FanLib made its advertising money off me today -- and may I add what a pain in the ass it is to click through stories ten at a time? This is the most awkward, difficult to use site.

News Item: scarah2 let me know that FanLib requests your ff.net password and email to upload stories. I set up an account and checked this out.

It's true.

This is a violation of basic internet security. I don't know the security and bandwidth implications for fanfiction.net.

FanFiction.net has posted the following notice: "May 22nd, 2007 -- The login process has been enhanced to prevent 'bots' from attempting to access your accounts. Please note to never share your email and password combination with anyone."

Drawing on the FanLib discussion, I have to say that I was invited to archive my fanfiction on FanLib back in March.

Hi Icarus,

I saw some of your Stargate fan fiction online and really enjoyed your writing. I work for a brand-new fan fiction website called FanLib.com and my colleagues and I want it to be the ultimate place for talented writers like you. In case you're wondering, FanLib's not new to fan fiction. Since 2001, they've been producing really cool web events with people like CBS, Showtime and HarperCollins to bring fan creativity into the big leagues (see below for some links).

We're impressed by your writing and impact in the fan fiction community and we value your opinion. That's why we're inviting you to be among the first to experience FanLib.com. As a member of our Beta Team (not like "beta reader" but "beta software" that's still in development), you'll get an exclusive peek at what we're doing before we open the site to the general public.

Feel free to take a look around, upload some fics, maybe read and comment on a few. Do as much or as little as you like. On FanLib.com, you'll be able to connect with other first-rate writers like yourself, exchange ideas with the site creators, and get some of the fun stuff we're giving away to celebrate our launch.

Don't worry, you won't get spammed. We're not selling anything. We just want you to try the site and hopefully give us some feedback.

You'll need to use this special individual login to access the protected site:

http://beta.fanlib.com
Username: Icarus
Password: ****

(This is just to access the beta site and is separate from your site registration.)

We look forward to having you as a founding member. Together, we can create the greatest fan fiction site the web's ever seen!

Best,

Naomi
FanLib Beta Launch Coordinator
FanLib.com

Well, ain't that fine and dandy. I was "personally selected" because of my great writing. Why did that sound like a credit card offer? (Bring fanfiction to the big leagues? Really. You're going to what -- publish it? Hmm. Just looks like another archive to me.) I scanned through the possible places they could have gotten my name at random.

Remember. I'm an author who posts everywhere. If anyone's going to turn up on a random search, it'll be me.

Then I remembered the Gen drabble I posted at, aha, Gateworld. Gotcha.

Curious, I checked FanLib out. At the time, they had only four authors on the archive. Three were so-called "Multi-Fandom Authors." There was something strange about these authors. First off, I'd never heard of them. Okay, okay, I don't know every author in fandom, and I'm certainly out of step with the immense Harry Potter fandom. But Stargate Atlantis, while prolific, hasn't been around that long, and they wrote slash. You'd think I'd at least run across a multi-fandom author on sga_flashfic. Huh. Odd. I let that go.

Then each author had exactly two stories in each fandom they wrote for. Now, usually how an author becomes multi-fandom is they are a little obsessive. They'll go through phases where they write massive numbers of stories in a fandom and then flit to another fandom that they'll flirt with for a while. But, hey, maybe they were only uploading their two favorite stories.

Then I read some of the stories. They weren't bad. Whoever wrote them definitely had taken some creative writing classes. But they had that kind of awkwardness and close ties to canon that you see in an author's first story in a fandom. All of them. They started slow and uncomfortably. One had Rodney flipping a coin (and described the coin in vast detail) a reference to "Rising," in a Rodney/Carson story. I dunno. They felt forced.

They didn't reference fanon at all. It was like these authors existed in a vacuum. A multi-fandom author is usually connected to fandom in some way.

I decided that the owners of FanLib had hired some interns (okay, "hired" for an intern implies pay) to write some "fanfiction" stories to seed their archive. It annoyed me.

Then I was annoyed at the "bright colors!" and "bold stars!" layout. What is this, kindergarten? They didn't even know the average age of a fanfiction writer. The site seemed marketed to high school students. I contemplated sending them a scathing (if politely worded) email on how poor their market research has been, but I decided I didn't want to help them.

But here's the weird part: of those four authors, only cpt_ritter is still around, and cpt_ritter wasn't one of the "multi-fandom" authors. Once they got their archive started, they pulled their "seed" authors out.

Now I'll post my stories anywhere. I've joked that I'll staple them to telephone poles. But even I draw the line here. These guys were dishonest and manipulative. I don't trust them.



ETA: I agree with astolat: It's time for a truly all-inclusive multi-fandom archive. Now there was one called The Archive At The End Of The Universe. Let me see if that's still in business.