So ends the week of hell.

It's now 3:39am, although really it's only 2:39am (British Summer Time, don't you know?)

And the week of hell is over. The M22 debacle is now behind me, and at least two people have followed me over to the new site. Which is nice of them.

I wonder if I could set up a mailing list? Maybe I'll think about it, but for now (well - for tomorrow) I am going to start on 1x11 (the second part of the Back To School Two Parter, and the one featuring something I have been thinking about for a while) and continue with Lost II (although that is proving harder than it did when I was hand writing it. Should I go back to hand writing it? Maybe)

I want to continue with 19YL, but it is proving a nightmare to write. The in between parts especially.

Anyways. WOH-M22 is done. Which is nice.

It's done. And I do feel kind of bad.

I have now purged ten stories from the ff.net site, and marked 19YL and TWS as complete, even though it is patently obvious they're not.

And I feel bad about this. Not because of the purging and departing the site thing, but because of the reasons for it.

A few years back (2000/2001) I deleted all my stories and set up my own site because of a rule change - FF.Net banned song lyrics, which was just utterly ridiculous (and not just in my opinion - there were hundreds of complaints, and the site www.fanficauthors.net was one of the new ones that appeared because of the ban).

And if they had banned something this time (like writing Harry/Hermione fics) then I would have felt equally good.

But there is nothing forcing me to move, other than the fact I don't trust the site admins any more. I don't have any problems with the site itself, just those who run it.

Anyway. It's done. I am now going to make HPFandom the Primary HP site (which given that I am only really writing HP atm makes it the primary site) and ForeverFandom the primary other story site.

As to what happens with fictionpress I don't know, but since I haven't updated there since Augst 2007, I am not sure I care all that much.

10 hours, 30 minutes.

Given that a large number of people before have complained, and heard nothing from the support staff, I hold out little hope they will reply before the deadline expires.

And once mid-day comes by - that will be it.

I am kind of holding out hope that they will do something, but it's not a lot of hope.

Random FanFic.Net theory

Ok - so someone in the forums posted a question - "What is wrong with custom scene breaks anyway?"

Which is a really good question, if you stop and think about it. What is wrong with people using dashes, xoxox, -oOo- and so forth?

Well - I had an idea about it, and it is somewhat conspiracy theory ish, but eh - this is my blog so what are you going to do about it (grin)?

They just introduced a voluntary beta-reader system. For those of you who don't know what a beta-reader is, it is someone who proof-reads a story - not only for spelling and grammar and punctuation errors, but to suggest changes and revisions etc.

I don't use them. Mostly because it's my story, and I don't see the need for someone else to edit it for me. Although, the one time I did try it, the story came out better than it was (and I changed the way I write a little after that as well). My Amy did the beta-reading, and she doesn't have anywhere near enough free time to do it any more, and I would not impose upon her anyway (cause I am a sweet, thoughtful boyfriend!)

There are some sites our there that INSIST on stories being beta-read before they are posted, because they have some pretensions to being "classy" and "above the rest of the net", when clearly, as I said, they are just pretentious, jumped-up arrogant twats. (I realise I didn't say that but you get the idea).

At the moment, FF.Net doesn't have a mandatory program. However they have just introduced this system, and it is in beta-testing (which is pretty much the same as beta-reading, but for software), so I suspect they don't want to force everyone to use it, in case something goes wrong (Which, given what they did last Saturday, seems unbelievable, but might be true)

But what if that is their agenda? The WikiPedia entry for FF.Net says that "Quality Control is one of the many issues associated with the archive. Stories can be posted regardless of editing or proofreading, and the quality of the work is dependent entirely upon the individual writer"

I have never considered this an issue. Yes - there are some stories that have really bad spelling, and really bad grammar and really bad punctuation (though I am not one to talk, according to some of my reviews), but this is a fan based archive where people are not paid to write stories. I would be shocked, stunned and not a little amazed if every story was written perfectly with no errors. Even I (and I know this will be hard to believe) have been known to have the odd error in my story.

But what if the site admins are getting annoyed with the criticisms? What if, with this funky new beta-system, they are going to eventually force everyone to have their stories read before they can be posted? It would cut down on the grammar/spelling/punctuation issues and so on, and would also cut down on the number of "invalid stories" (the rules about what you can and cannot submit would make The Third Reich think that the sit admins were too right wing).

"But what does this have to do with the scene breaks?" I hear you ask.

Well - they all come down to one thing - conformity. Making every story look more or less the same, so that the site will be a tidier place. And then people might stop comparing it to other sites. in a negative way.

As I said, this is a bit conspiracy theory ish, but I don't think it is off-the-wall (well - not entirely off the wall. I think it is still hanging by a thread).

I have to admit, the March 22nd debacle notwithstanding, I like the site. Why? Because it is not beta-read, because you can submit stories how you wish, because there are no rules about what you can and can't write for.

Do you know how much sites that say "You can only write Harry/Ginny stories" bug the living crap out of me? And sites where people will bitch and moan at you if you don't stay in Canon all the time? (What the hell is the point of writing fanfic if you can't screw with canon once in a while? Get some fucking perspective already!)

Anyway - that's my theory about the scene breaks.

It's not just me :)

Having read a few comments in a forum, it turns out it is not just me that is pissed off.

There are, it appears, discussions about boycotting ff.net completely, with everyone who this has affected moving to another site.

This has been a turbulent 24 hours, hasn't it?

The choice

I have already made my choice. It is now up to the site admins to see whether I implement it or not.

I have written a "final chapter" for The Western Sky, explaining why the story is being suspended on Fanfic.Net, and, come Saturday/Sunday - if there is no response from the site admins, I will post it, and that will be that. I will download the stories I don't have copies of, and then remove them from the site completely. Mostly because I am not having people read them without scene breaks, because it is just wrong.

I will lose the comments, but I can't see a way round it. I am not fixing 49 chapters, especially if I wil have to do all this again in a months time when they cotton on to the "xoxox" thing.

Noon on Saturday is the deadline I will assign in my head. That will give them over 48 hours to respond to the e-mail I sent.

Okay - I think I have made my choice already

We do not support dash or other character based section/scene markers

Does this mean that all the stories where I have used "xoxox" to break up scenes are going to be modified as well?

Because that accounts for all the chapters I didn't mention in the previous post (Exum, Coming Storm, Lost In Middle Earth, Deadly Silence, Nineteen Years Later, Western Sky etc). And I am damn sure I am not re-editing every chapter I have written.

One day. If I don't have a response by Saturday morning, then I am stopping writing, and (quite possibly) removing all the affected stories. (Which would include the whole of Silent Trio, but I will leave Western Sky because I want to write a last chapter to explain why I'm doing it).


This is bad, bad day.

FanFiction.Net - Stupid or Incompetent?

March 22nd, 2008 -- Summary of upgrades/notes since the last update:

1. We do not support dash or other character based section/scene markers. If you wish to create a separation in your chapter, please use the officially supported horizontal line feature in our document editor or in your favorite word program. Using unsupported section markers will only make your entries less compatible to future upgrades. You can create the horizontal lines in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice by typing 3 or 4 consecutive dash/hyphen keys and then hitting enter. The site will correctly recognize these scene breakers when you upload them.

You wouldn't think that this innocent little news post would be such a disaster, would you?

But, it turns out, that nearly ALL of my stories no longer have scene breaks in them. Because they applied the above change retroactively, and modified every chapter that used "-" as scene breaks by removing said scene breaks.

And, it turns out, it's not just mine. After reading a few of the other stories, their scene breaks have gone as well.

And, just to compound this error, it is not just a case of the breaks not being displayed. They are gone in the original chapters as well. So that if I wanted to put them back, I would have to remember where the scene breaks come, and edit them accordingly.

And, if that wasn't bad enough, there was NO WARNING about it. If they had said that, in three weeks time, they were going to stop people using "-" then maybe I could have salvaged something. But no - they just went ahead and did it, willynilly.


So the question you have to ask is this :- did they know this would happen? Did they deliberately, and with malice a forethought, screw up millions of chapters of thousands of stories with this change? Are they that stupid that they didn't realise how many people might get pissed off by this?

Or was it an accident? Are they just incompetent? Did they not realise this would happen, and have some way of fixing it (from backup for example)?


I have sent off an e-mail of complaint about it, and what I do next will be dependent on the response I get from that. It is not beyond reason that I might just stop using the site altogether, and stick to HPFandom, ForeverFandom and my own site (which I really should get back to updating).

I really can't believe how bad this is.

Peace Of Mind, The New Girl (8 Chapters), The Hufflepuff (13 chapters), His Dark Father, The Defence Club (15 Chapters), The Return Of Sirius Black (15 chapters), The Curse Of Exum (4 Chapters) and The Smartest Witch (7 Chapters).

That means 49 chapters I have to update. And that is just for my stories. Having looked around a few others (including someone who's written a 63 chapter story that isn't finished), I can imagine that I might not be the only pissed off person.

As for why it is only 4 Chapters of Exum, and none of Coming Storm, I will explain later.

Happily Ever After (1x09)

Easter Weekend is kind of nice, since it leads to four days holiday (for me at least. My pookie alas doesn't get the time off), and has given me time to not only complete (and post) 1x09 of TWS, but also type up all that I wrote for Lost In Hyrule while I was away last weekend. And it turns out it was way, way more than I thought - 30 1/2 pages of A4 (prologue plus three chapters).

They are all typed up, but I am not going to start posting them until TWS is complete, as LIH is going to act as an inter-series special - a made for TV movie type thing. But, before you start wondering if I am spoiling the end of Series 1 by telling you that Harry and friends end up in Hyrule, the answer is no. The special will be entirely AU from the series, just because it will be fun.

As to what happens at the end of Series 1 - well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?

Finally! 1x07 and 1x08

Nearly 24 hours after they were finished, the two new episodes are finally posted.

And I realise I say this a lot, but I think I am going to try to get back to a regular posting schedule now. Maybe write two or three nights per week (starting next week, since I am away for the coming weekend), and update on a given day. It might get complicated, especially if I am going to finish Lost In Hyrule by the time Series 1 ends.

I guess we shall see what happens....

Ok - maybe I am not *that* good

I was all ready to post the story at lunch time, but I managed to leave the memory stick plugged in to the computer at home.

So it will have to wait for tonight.

(Growl)

God, I am good

Episodes 1x07 and 1x08 are done, and the third act of 1x08 came out exactly as I wanted it. I know it is somewhat arrogant to blow my own trumpet, but it really is quite good :) Even the ending, which frustrated me for a good while, turned out pretty well.

And 1x08 contains another teaser trailer for Lost In Hyrule (Which I think now is just a working title). And given that I am going away this weekend, I might actually be able to get it started.

All in all, a good day.

An idea I think I can use

A picture of Harry, dressed in a green tunic, riding Buckbeak across an open field.

A picture of Ginny and Sally, both dressed in armour, sword-fighting in a city.

A picture of several Gryffindor students, also dressed in green, fleeing through a forest, pursued by a giant shadow.

A picture of Ron and Harry hugging.

A picture of Ginny throwing her head back in laughter, as Harry and Sally look on in fear.

A picture of Luna, Cho, Ron, Pansy, Susan and Remus stood in a circle, surrounding Harry.

A picture of Sally, Harry and Ginny superimposed on an image of three golden triangles. At the top of the screen, we see the words “COMING SOON”

The Western Sky

So - I finally got some more written. I have been spending the week trying to re-create a virtual rubik's cube (I did it a while back, and lost the code. Then I did it again, and lost the code. To give you some idea, this is version 4.0). I have almost got it completed, but I have completely forgotten how to solve the top side when you have two pieces that need swapping. I can do three, but not two for some reason.

So, because I can't do that, and I figured out how to write the rest of Episode 7, I went back to The Western Sky, and nearly finished Act 1 (and the only reason I stopped is because - well because it is 1am and I am going to bed) and I know how I can finish it. And Acts 2 and 3 should be easy. However, I am going to also write Episode 8 before I post 7, so that I can post both together, since it is nigh on a month since Ep 6 was posted (but no one left reviews, so I have no idea if anyone read it or not).

I am away for work again, and I might cave and buy a tiny DVD player, and possibly Series 3 of Voyager, so that I can write more TWS while I am in the hotel (Since I can only take one laptop, I can't write while DVDs are playing, unless only want to listen to them). If I do do that, then I think I can get through Ep 9 and 10 (9 is fairly simple, and 10 should be kinda fun. But not as much fun as 8 and 11). And once I am done with 10, there are only four episodes left in Series 1. Whoop!

Lost In Hyrule?

TWS and 19YL are not really going anywhere. Well - that's not true. They are going places, just not very quickly.

And last night, as I was falling asleep, I had an idea about a new story, the next part to Lost In Middle Earth.

Set in Ocarina of Time, it would have Harry and Hermione (again), or possibly Harry and Luna, staring as Link and Navi, with various other HP characters as members of the Hyrule cast, including Zelda, Darunia, Saria, Impa and company, as well as the Big Temple Bads and (well duh) Ganon.

My biggest problem is not the casting (although I have no idea about that), but how to tell the story. Do I go through each Dungeon, or just do the highlights of each? (Finding the fairy slingshot, fighting the boss etc).

I will give this more thought, and maybe write one or two chapters, just to see how it goes. Plus I have to work out the cast before I start. Though I am pretty sure that Ron would be Darunia if Harry is Link, and even if it turns out there is a female link (Minnie or Luna), Ron could still be the Goron leader.

So - what do you think? Can I do it? Should I even try?