My New Site

I found the new site I was looking for. It seems to have very good rules about posting (no ludicrous story limits, like not writing about magic) and doesn't appear to require beta readers or validation (which makes me happy) and has an apparently open policy about fandoms (you can define your own, but Green Gables and Charmed already exist, which is nice).

I am going to stay at HP Fandom (http://www.hpfandom.net/eff/viewuser.php?uid=4145) and Forever Fandom (http://www.foreverfandom.net/viewuser.php?uid=32408) because it seems a bit pointless deleting all my stories, but I am also reposting some of the stories, and adding the new ones to the new site -

http://archiveofourown.org/users/angelholme

So - enjoy.

Current State of Affairs

So - pretty much everything is on hold until at most April 30th.

All the posted stories are marked Complete (yay!), except for the three that are on-going stories (Max Boyce, Smartest Witch and Music Appreciation).

The Western Sky Series 3 is being written, but is now on hold until after Script Frenzy. The same for A New Dawn : Enemies and Nineteen Years Later (version 2.0).

I have also started doodling "Twlight over Ingleside", but so far all I have is the opening scene (see later for something that just occurred to me) and a vague idea of what could happen. But there is no plot - not even the idea of a plot - so that is really not going to be ready any time soon. (And even if it is, I am not certain there are any sites I can currently post it to. HP Fandom is out, because it is not an HP story (unusual for me, I know), and ForeverFandom doesn't have a Green Gables section (and while it is a Twilight Crossover, there is only one, maybe two Twilight characters, so I suspect that it won't qualify).

There is FF.Net, but since I swore blind I would not go back there, I guess I will have to find somewhere else.....

Anyway - "The Princess Husband" is going to be my main focus for the next 54 days (except for five days when my beloved comes to visit) and it will be posted after that, then normal service can resume!

New Site News.

Hi.

I am posting this way in the future to keep it at the top of the page. To find recent posts, please scroll down.

The main purpose for this is to tell you all my HP stories can now be found at
http://www.hpfandom.net/eff/viewuser.php?uid=4145
and all my other stories (along with most of the HP ones) can be found at
http://www.foreverfandom.net/viewuser.php?uid=32408 (however this does not include The Silent Trio nor The Western Sky, though I do plan to change that)

I have also started posting on a new site - http://www.ficwad.com/author/69837 - for both my fanfiction stories and the original stuff I have written.

I have abandoned Fanfiction.Net after the March 22nd Debacle, and the refusal of the site-admins to even acknowledge they screwed up, even though a fair number of users think they did.

Maybe if they fix the problem they caused, and promise not to do it again, I would feel happy about returning. But until I can be sure that the site will let me publish my stories as I want them to be seen, I am not going to risk putting any more stories on there.

Another new site

I have started posting some of my original stories at http://www.ficwad.com/author/69837. This is mostly in an attempt to get away from FictionPress.com - a site that is run by the same ass-hats who administrate FanFic.net, but also an attempt to spread the original fiction to more people.

But I am also posting one or two HP stories there - the ones I think people will like. And Lost In Middle Earth seems to be going down well. Which is nice.

The Silent Trio Rises Again

I have started copying my "magnificent octopus" across to a new site. It was originally on two sites - http://www.hpfandom.net/eff/viewuser.php?uid=4145 and the festering evil that is ff.net. However in the week following the M22 Virus (as I am going to call it from now on), the first four Silent Trio stories were mutilated, and the first four chapters of the fifth.

On a side note - the reason it was only those that were violated was because Chapter 5 of "Harry and The Curse Of Exum" was the first one written directly on to the computer (Glinda), rather than hand written then typed up. Because of this, I changed the separator I used (xoxox, rather than a set of dashes. This was down to Open Office translating the series of dashes as a horizontal line, which pissed me off no end. I guess if I hadn't been pissed off, the M22 wouldn't have affected me, but that's the way the cookie gets eaten).

So - anyway - after the M22 Virus was let loose, and just short of four and a half stories were mutilated, I ended up deleting them, and it meant they only appeared on http://www.hpfandom.net.

But now that Series 1 of The Western Sky is almost complete (I am about to start writing Act 3 of the series finale), I thought I would start copying Silent Trio to another site, to spread the joy, so to speak.

At the moment, Part 1 (Harry and The New Girl) and the prologue to Part 2 (Harry and The Hufflepuff) are there, and I plan to copy two chapters per day until the six stories are complete, then do The Western Sky one episode at a time.

I also have a fair bit of work to do on Lost In Hyrule, but I am going to start that once TWS is complete, and possibly 19YL is continued, if not finished.

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.