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Date Posted: 20:13:01 09/12/02 Thu
Author: JanewayFan
Subject: Re: When the fanfic disappears
In reply to: andrewsfan 's message, "When the fanfic disappears" on 12:43:02 09/12/02 Thu

"As a reader do you feel a vested interest in a story or author that you've read?"

ABSOLUTELY! If the writer is very good and I get hooked into the story from the get go. I get furious when I discover that I will be forever left hanging when a writer just decides to pack it in.

I just love Gina Dartt. She has always treated her fanfiction as if it were her professional full time job. She completes what she starts and she always treat us with respect as if we were paying her for her J/7 stories by finishing them.

I no longer read anything that is a To Be Continued... It's not worth the disappointment of being left hanging.

"As a fan how do you deal with the loss of an author or a site or a story?"

I get sad to lose a good author. But I am very grateful that I downloaded the stories. Although there are several sites that have copies of the now defunct site so sometimes you luck out & can get it anyway. a good site for that is:
The Infinity Complex
www.fortunecity.com/village/jett/404/

"Is there an underground of folks who have downloaded stories and pass them around when a site disappears? Should there be?"

I don't know if there is an underground, but if there is I have a hard drive full of over 200 stories (Backed up on Zip Disk, soon to be burned onto a cd) that I would be willing to pass along to a reader who expressed an interest in a particular story that I happen to have.

Great questions AF.

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Replies:

[> [> Re: When the fanfic disappears -- Chris, 02:45:23 09/14/02 Sat

It's a bit late, and I think I'm getting punchy, but I'm sitting here grinning happily, because I just had this image, set not too far in the future, of some bright-eyed, twenty-something graduate student, writing her PhD on, perhaps, "The Post-Xena Fanfiction Boom," or something, tracking all of us down, desperately trying to archive the lost stories, sagely realizing that an artifact of our history (not to mention some damned good literature) is about to be lost! OK. Yeah. Like I said, it's late.

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[> [> [> Re: When the fanfic disappears -- Anik, 06:55:58 09/14/02 Sat

you know Chris... this is happening already.

Tehre are Xena fanfic Ph.D. works in progress, and there is many a doctorate on sex and gender and Seven of Nine and why the hell she never got her captain.... on the series, that is ;-)

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[> [> [> [> Re: When the fanfic disappears (and PhDs) -- Michele, 13:32:41 09/14/02 Sat

Actually, I'm one of those PhDs, though I'm far from twenty-something ;-). It started out as an exploration into one thing, ended up as an exploration that involves fan fic - life rarely takes you exactly where you think it will... I have developed a real appreciation of fanfic stories, though, and am always sorry to see a site disappear. That said, I counted the stories on my hard drive last night, and found over 250, which gave me real pause. After all, here is the work of so many people who do this just for the love of it, and yet many of these pieces will eventually get lost to the readres because eventually many of the sites will change or get taken down by their authors. Kind of like oral histories- if you don't capture them while the people are alive, you've lost them forever. In this case, if you don't capture the stories while the web site is alive, you've lost them forever. Makes me think there should ba an archive dedicated to preserving, for the long term, fan fiction as a cultural phenomenon, making it accessible to future readers and, yes, doctoral candidates like me. Hmm...

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[> [> [> [> [> Re: undergrounds -- stranger, 07:45:55 09/15/02 Sun

Definitely a great idea... the underground... the dark places where lost fanfic lurks... the recesses of a fandom.. the.. uh.. ok too many little blue pills ;P

Of course there are things to consider like getting in touch with the authors for permission and stuff... but the good thing is that plain text doesn't take up much space or bandwidth... it's definitely do-able.

Massive project, but do-able :)

p.s. Congrats on the re-opening, oh OBB :D

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[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: undergrounds -- andrewsfan, 12:51:52 09/15/02 Sun


The reason it's underground is that permission is not being asked. The readers decide what to keep and exchange.


Glad to see you again stranger...um, don't be a stranger. *g*

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[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: undergrounds -- stranger trying not to be, 07:00:15 09/16/02 Mon

D'oh! Yeah, that would be the whole "underground" bit... now I'm embarrassed :D

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[> [> [> [> [> For the love of it - one reader's view -- andrewsfan, 13:08:14 09/15/02 Sun


If all fanfic is written out of love than why do fanfic writers remove stories from the web? If one tires of writing or can't do it anymore, why remove what you have created? Why not post an explanation as to why the site isn't being updated or that a story will never be finished and leave it for all to enjoy. If every story is conceived because of love than wouldn't that product of love be proudly displayed until hell froze over or the web vaporized?

I don't see fanfic being written purely for love. Some do love it. They are forever proud of their "children" even if the "child" isn't the best or brightest. However, some write for pleasure, some for the challenge, some for adulation, some for amusement. For some writers, fanfic is like a sexual conquest. The pleasure ebbs, the challenge wanes, the adulation disappears, the fun is gone and the site is pulled. Technical glitches aside, that's why stories disappear.

I understand burnout or loss of interest. I understand why stories don't get finished. As a reader, I don't understand the closing of sites or the pulling of stories just because of a change of heart. When I closed this message board I could have deleted the content or the entire forum. But why? Just because I couldn't moderate did that mean that others still couldn't stop by and read the past discussions here? Some brillant, some not so brillant but why take it away? I'm not really looking for answers to those questions. Just want to get folks thinking. As you can see, it's a bit of an issue with me. *vbg*

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[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: For the love of it - one reader's view -- Lara, 17:09:13 09/15/02 Sun

When I "left" writing Xena fanfic, repositories had been created. So I bequeathed my XWP fic to one.

There isn't such a place in the Voyager-verse (yet, though that seems to be the direction this thread is heading), so an author leaves and since a site, even a small free one, takes effort and maintenance, they close it down. A repository is a major monetary (and time) undertaking; no less than a coalition of fans -- certainly never just one fan -- could maintain such a site for long. Webrings suffice for a time... linking small, free site space willing to house fic along certain themes... But those die away. Creating a repository, and publicizing it throughout the fandom, seems to preserve the movement.

It is a testament to the strength of the Xena fandom that they thought about this question early and a group got together and have dedicated themselves to the preservation of XWP fic.

The Royal Academy of Bards (www.academyofbards.org) contains ALL willingly submitted XWP fic, general, alternative, uber, poetry. It even maintains artwork stores, has an authors' "playplace" called The Sandbox, where themes in the fanfic are discussed among chosen authors.

It's been a year since Xena went off the air in the US, and three years since the inception of the Bard Academy. Longevity this isn't, but it was formed with the hopes of still being around in 20 years.

If "we" (determining who "we" comprises later) have been as vastly impacted by Voyager, do we have a vision of what we'd want to preserve? Do we just preserve J/7... or include J/T, T/7, only same sex, only mature stories? Do we have an open submission policy, or a board of selectors?

There was/is "Infinity Complex" but the organizer didn't always ask permission to archive stories, and got a bad rep among the writer population. I was cautioned when one of my stories showed up there that I might want to write and tell them to take it down, linking only.

I'd rather, if we started an anthology site, that we be as public as possible, pass the word, take all the precautions, get permission. And that still leaves the question of WHAT to preserve, as I've begun to list above.

Well, that was a little more than my two cents... Call it a nickel's worth of input,

--Lara

PS...
I have no talent for webmastering, but I'd be willing to be a member of the board of selectors/editors, so that what we preserve really is good and representative of what we'd want people to remember about "Voyager".

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[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: For the love of it - one reader's view -- andrewsfan, 22:25:37 09/15/02 Sun


Lara, that's interesting. I was thinking about how the fandom could preserve the stories. I hadn't thought about how the stories could be used to preserve and perpetuate the fandom.

Just for the sake of conversation here - If an archive existed for J/7 only what should the criteria be for stories to qualify for possible archiving. (I'm asking everyone.)

With regard to the closing of individual sites -

For those who do run websites on "free space" - if you decide to close up shop, is it that hard to just leave the stories up and say that the site has closed. Once you close it, what is there to maintain? Eventually, it may disappear but until then the stories are available. Any techie types who can explain the logistics of abandoned websites.

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[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: For the love of it - one reader's view -- Lara, 06:05:11 09/16/02 Mon

In the beginning... abandoned sites remained for quite some time, but if a person concludes service, changes their web address, ISP, etc, these days, then a lot of those free site spaces are "swept" within a month automatically by the host company's computer program.

I had space on AOL when I was a member there several years ago. My site was still up a year later, but AOL has now cracked down so much that a member's webspace is deleted within three weeks of the end of subscription.

Of the public webspace companies: Yahoo deletes as soon as you delete your email address. Geocities is now a member of the Yahoo family, so same goes. Tripod I'm not certain has gotten quite so fanatical.

Lara

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[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: For the love of it - one reader's view -- Lara, 19:23:18 09/20/02 Fri

AF wrote:
>>Just for the sake of conversation here - If an archive existed for J/7 only what should the criteria be for stories to qualify for possible archiving. (I'm asking everyone.) <<

The criteria should be anyone who wants to submit to the "library" -- if they are willing to submit to some simple editing. I'd suggest that the site create a categorization scheme and edit then post by category.

That there be a search engine for searching by keywords and author. That way people who frequently post to lists "I seem to remember a story that had X and Y and Z" would have a way to search the database for that story they can't remember.

PS - OBB, I *really* like being able to see the whole thread at once. My Palm even likes it as I can grab a whole thread and read it at my leisure away from the computer. Just like a good J/7 story. *bg*

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