RatCreature (
ratcreature) wrote2005-11-16 05:41 pm
Entry tags:
HP archives
Sometimes I really yearn for the more or less centralized fandom infrastructure like I was used to in The Sentinel.
I'm reading the results for a poll about HP fic archives and recs, and there was a question on which archives one regularly visits, including also an open option for people to fill in archives not listed.
I hadn't even heard of (let alone visited) many of the archives people mentioned, and ended up googling a whole bunch. And okay, it's understandable that I didn't know all of them as most are pairing specific, but not for my favorite pairings. And I know of a bunch of other archives that didn't appear in that poll too, and when I looked up the ones I didn't know, I found yet more archives. Some rather small, others quite large. I get that HP is really, really huge, and that specialized archives may be practical for fans with strong pairing preferences, and yet -- I'm not an OTP person in HP, I have read and enjoyed stories with most of those pairings, and some I even read quite frequently, but I'm not even aware of all the archives.
Surely there don't need to be *four* (or maybe more) Harry/Ginny archives? I'm not much into pure H/G romance stories, but if it's an interesting action/adventure story that's also a H/G romance for example, I like that pairing fine, certainly more than some others. And yet I knew of only one of those archives appearing in the poll (PhoenixSong), and otherwise mainly read H/G stories at The Sugar Quill and Fiction Alley. Now I know that there are several other Harry/Ginny archives, namely Sink Into Your Eyes (which apparently is so widely known that the poll author only listed it with its cryptic acronym SIYE in the poll), Written with a Quill, Sealed with a Kiss (which still seems quite new?), Simply Undeniable (also for Ron/Hermione), and The Broom Cupboard (that one seems to be a message board rather than an archive, though people listed it as the latter).
Personally I think that kind of thing, where you have half a dozen or more archives for a single pairing, is really inconvenient. What is wrong with having larger archives with good search functions? I get that huge archives in fandoms like HP are a lot of work, and that hosting costs are probably a factor too, but that's why archives can be group managed, no? Why do people found the fifth Harry/Ginny archive or the fourth Snape/Hermione archive? I just don't get it. It's not like more archives equals reaching more readers, at least for me it's rather the opposite, I'm not likely to regularly check multiple archives, much less multiple archives for a single pairing.
Other HP archives I didn't know about: Checkmated (for Ron/Hermione), Magical Theory and Fire and Ice (both for Draco/Ginny), Dark Sarcasm and Whispers (both for Snape/Hermione, whereas I only knew of Ashwinder for that pairing), Apparition Point (I couldn't figure out if that's in any way specific by browsing the site briefly), Portkey (Harry/Hermione), The Quidditch Pitch (seems to be for romance, but not pairing specific, and accepts het, slash and threesomes), Hand Me My Robes (seems for explicit het, not pairing specific), Malfoy Slash Archive (I only knew of the Malfoy Family Archive), Thin Line (for Snape/Sirius), Godric's Hat (for gen), and the list goes actually on for a bit more... also, there's a Snape MPreg archive?!
Unrelated to the sheer number of archives, am I the only one annoyed that (some) HP archives tend to name their categories in fairly cryptic ways? So that they have to include an explanation sheet what those categories are?
I'm reading the results for a poll about HP fic archives and recs, and there was a question on which archives one regularly visits, including also an open option for people to fill in archives not listed.
I hadn't even heard of (let alone visited) many of the archives people mentioned, and ended up googling a whole bunch. And okay, it's understandable that I didn't know all of them as most are pairing specific, but not for my favorite pairings. And I know of a bunch of other archives that didn't appear in that poll too, and when I looked up the ones I didn't know, I found yet more archives. Some rather small, others quite large. I get that HP is really, really huge, and that specialized archives may be practical for fans with strong pairing preferences, and yet -- I'm not an OTP person in HP, I have read and enjoyed stories with most of those pairings, and some I even read quite frequently, but I'm not even aware of all the archives.
Surely there don't need to be *four* (or maybe more) Harry/Ginny archives? I'm not much into pure H/G romance stories, but if it's an interesting action/adventure story that's also a H/G romance for example, I like that pairing fine, certainly more than some others. And yet I knew of only one of those archives appearing in the poll (PhoenixSong), and otherwise mainly read H/G stories at The Sugar Quill and Fiction Alley. Now I know that there are several other Harry/Ginny archives, namely Sink Into Your Eyes (which apparently is so widely known that the poll author only listed it with its cryptic acronym SIYE in the poll), Written with a Quill, Sealed with a Kiss (which still seems quite new?), Simply Undeniable (also for Ron/Hermione), and The Broom Cupboard (that one seems to be a message board rather than an archive, though people listed it as the latter).
Personally I think that kind of thing, where you have half a dozen or more archives for a single pairing, is really inconvenient. What is wrong with having larger archives with good search functions? I get that huge archives in fandoms like HP are a lot of work, and that hosting costs are probably a factor too, but that's why archives can be group managed, no? Why do people found the fifth Harry/Ginny archive or the fourth Snape/Hermione archive? I just don't get it. It's not like more archives equals reaching more readers, at least for me it's rather the opposite, I'm not likely to regularly check multiple archives, much less multiple archives for a single pairing.
Other HP archives I didn't know about: Checkmated (for Ron/Hermione), Magical Theory and Fire and Ice (both for Draco/Ginny), Dark Sarcasm and Whispers (both for Snape/Hermione, whereas I only knew of Ashwinder for that pairing), Apparition Point (I couldn't figure out if that's in any way specific by browsing the site briefly), Portkey (Harry/Hermione), The Quidditch Pitch (seems to be for romance, but not pairing specific, and accepts het, slash and threesomes), Hand Me My Robes (seems for explicit het, not pairing specific), Malfoy Slash Archive (I only knew of the Malfoy Family Archive), Thin Line (for Snape/Sirius), Godric's Hat (for gen), and the list goes actually on for a bit more... also, there's a Snape MPreg archive?!
Unrelated to the sheer number of archives, am I the only one annoyed that (some) HP archives tend to name their categories in fairly cryptic ways? So that they have to include an explanation sheet what those categories are?

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(of course, as a fan and a ex-archivist, the multiple archive thing drives me *nuts*)
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I started it out of aggravation at the lack of a good, central, basic archive like Sentinel had. I wish I had the time to sit down and figure out what broke, but I don't, and so it languishes.
Sigh.
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On some level I get the desire to have pairing specific archives, but that there are several archives for every popular pairing drives me nuts. I mean, one Harry/Ginny or Harry/Snape archive, okay, I might like one central archive better still, but I get that, but why have four or five?? And several of those with the same archiving software too, so it's not even a case of "see, I couldn't really stand the whole efiction chapter thing so I made one using the automated archive instead" or something like that.
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seriously, it's frustrating for writers and readers, i think, b/c niot only do readers have to check various archives, writers have to decide where they'll put theirs.
i yearn for the good ole centralized days!!!
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I run my own archive, Overcoming Rivalry (http://www.soulsdream.com/rivalry), for minor character het and genfic simply because I found that in the bigger archives, the level of quality was sadly lacking. I think it's the only one of it's kind, specifically focusing on the minor characters. I'm also a mod at Hand Me My Robes (http://www.handmemyrobes.com), which was started in part because it was very difficult to find het smut.
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At a big archive an interesting summary for a story with a pairing I don't read often, may catch my attention, but I'm not about to visit an extra archive for that pairing. Like, I might read Harry/Pansy if I see an interesting summary at an archive I use anyway, but I have never visited the Harry/Pansy archive that apparently exists, and I'm not about to frequent it anytime soon. The Harry/Pansy author archiving only there has ghettoized the story, and limited the readership.
I mean, it takes me only seconds to decide whether I want to give something a try or not, and if it is bad I can always back out. If the archive has categories and summaries it's easy to find what you want. I think it is faulty to think that good fic somehow gets lost amidst the mass, it's far more likely to get lost in obscure archives nobody knows about.
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The slash side of HP used to be halfway decently organized, but that seems to be falling apart (or already has), too. Thankfully, I fell out of the fandom this summer...
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I dunno, I think the HP fandom is widespread enough to warrant multiple shipping archives, because then it's more 'mom and pop' and less Wal-Mart. It is really annoying to have to troll around different sites, though. What HP needs is something like CFAN (http://www.subreality.com/cfan.htm"). Defunct and catering to a much smaller fandom community, granted, but still a nice place to gather links for further exploration.
Of course, who would ever volunteer for a non-paying job like that? *G* You'd have, like. No life, ahahaha.
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Ahah, it's true! When I was in the Tour of Duty fandom, it was so small that only consisted of - you, you guessed it - Mary Sue, 897697384-chapter fics. So my sister and I pioneered slash and created the first ToD fic archive. And before we ran away screaming in terror from the fandom, we created a tiny army of melodramatic, neurotic, psychopath slashers.
*proudly dusts hands together* Mission accomplished! *lol*
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There's this one, the HPANA Top Harry potter Sites, which is more of a listing with ranks http://www.hpana-media.com/topsites/index.php
But yeah, a centralized list of ALL the archives and sites would be nice. I had thought about doing it once but yeah, no.
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Some won't take NC-17, some only take R and NC-17. Some allow Mpreg. Some allow underage pregnancy and sex. Some of the focus on one or two pairings. Still others are built around certain pairings, but allow other stories and ships as well [It's Always the Quite Ones (http://www.quietones.org) is a good example, IMHO. It's mainly Blaise/Hermione/Draco and all possible permutations, but they allow pretty much anything not horrifically written.]
I have stories on 24 different archives, ranging from multi-fandom sites, like The Pit of Voles and the Freedom of Speech, to General HP, such as MNFF, HPFF, Character Specific, like Métamorphose [Tonks stories] and ship specific, such as Table for Three. My only criteria for joining an archive is that I don't have to pass a test to get in, owing to the fact that I'm incredibly lazy and have over 80 stories, and don't feel like having to prove myself.
So I think that sometimes there's a stupid amount of archives for pairings, but on the other hand, since many have [occasionally random] rules to them, allowing the existence of one or two- each catered to specific genre tastes, like fluff, smut, or darkfic- is fine.
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I mean, I remember mailing list splits in some of my previous fandoms where I was involved in this type of discussion (around that time when creating lists became easier thanks to OneList and such, around 1998 or so?), where a central mailing list just couldn't reconcile policy differences, but the conflicts stretched over a long time where people tried to make it work (as in many many months), because a central discussion list had advantages for the fandom, and nobody really wanted to loose that, but there simply was no way to make it work. But it's not something that was done lightly or all the time.
Obviously with archives the owners of an archive have the final say in those questions, I'm not arguing against that, after all they are those who maintain the archive, who do the work and share the expenses (and also in some cases have to deal with legal implications of being held responsible under law for content hosted at a domain they own, especially in cases of underage sex, bestiality and these thing), but legal considerations are different from mere personal preferences, and in the fandoms I was in before HP archives weren't about preferences of the archivists. It was their archive, sure, but the idea behind the archives was to be infrastructure for the fandom as a whole.
I realize that everything in HP may be complicated by sheer size, but from my perspective as a reader it is frustrating that those who are dissatisfied with an archive rather create a new one than trying to influence the policies of the older ones, and of course the reverse if also true, that it is not constructive if archive owners aren't even open to discuss arbitrary archiving policy simply because it is their archive after all. As a reader I prefer archives to be as inclusive as possible, but with a good category organization and search function. Also I think quality control more belongs to rec pages rather then trying to implement "quality control" on an archival level, where it often only leads to contention.
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Some archives are personal or only open to certain authors, where there be a test [such as Portkey] or just friends who want to share a space [I've seen quite a few of these.] I'm not a fan of archives wherein you have to email the story to the authors, personally, because giving feedback is usually harder, since the review options becomes moot.
It does get frustating, I imagine, to have to pick and choose. For me, ir's easier, since I write mainly genfic, although I do have a lot of romance pieces under my belt. However, since I tend to write rarepairs, it's also a lot easier for me to find the one or two sites dedicated to my pairs as well.
I think that one main problem might be, with the romance sites, a refusal to compromise on certain regulations. We're online; it's not as hard to say no to someone. So tantrums are thrown, and one side says "It's my archive, and you have to follow my rules, or you can leave, and the other side says "The hell with this, I'll make my own." So perhaps the blame comes from both sides.
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So, there have always been minor archives. But most of the "larger" minor archives arose in mid- to late 2001. Several of the earlier ones were directly related to spats with fanfiction.net, and, naturally, things cascaded from there. (Have a spat with your new major archive? Form your own!)
To some degree, additional archives were inescapable. ff.net used to allow NC-17 fic; then they removed it. That led to archives such as the Restricted Section, as FictionAlley also didn't allow NC-17. In an attempt not to stigmatize slash, ff.net does not have a "slash" category. This makes slash stories harder to find, and leads to the existence of slash-only archives like ISF.
There's also, quite frankly, a volume issue. How do you find anything good when there are several hundred thousand fics to search through? Somehow, another archive with "standards" seems like it makes things easier, but it really actually doesn't.
My problem with the creation of pairing-centric archives is in part a selfish one. I have a preferred pairing, and I will read anything in that pairing. However, I will also read most other pairings, and I will read genfic. So, the fact that everything is fractured everywhere means it's generally too much effort for me to keep track of things and read them.
I was actually strongly opposed to the creation of the Snape Slash Fleet in late 2001. It did end up having the effect I feared-- it fractured the Snape slash fandom into the popular pairings and the other pairings, and people became more and more ship-adherent. (Admittedly, I was also opposed to it having come out of a fandom where people were very strongly ship-adherent and had major and bitter ship wars.) Oh, well. Try to stop the tide, I guess.
It's not just the archives that split, though. Mailing lists did it as well. We went from a few "centralized" mailing lists-- e.g., hpslash, HP_Fanfiction, snapefans, etc.-- to pairing-centric mailing lists, five or six per pairing... and then people stopped reading most of the mailing lists altogether and moved on to livejournal.
What bothers me even more than the several dozen archives is the fact that so many stories are only available on livejournal.
In any case, I agree centralized archives are superior. And good search tools are necessary.
At this point, I assume people form "archives" as an excuse to collect their favorite reading material in one place so they don't have to visit twenty or thirty archives to get to it. I've considered it myself.
And, no, you're not the only one annoyed by cryptic archive names.
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Yes, exactly. It really doesn't. I don't think good stories get lost in a mass of less than stellar ones as often as they get lost to total obscurity, because they're archived only at places with self-selected, limited readership, like special archives or LJ only, and most potential readers never even find it. Whereas they might have given a story with a pairing they don't normally read a try at a larger archive if the summary sounded interesting or it popped up in a keyword search.
I think rec pages are the better place for "quality control", but if you have rec page and like to browse for interesting fic, in order to not just rec the same stories as everyone else over and over, splintered archives don't make it easier. I mean, I maintain a multi-fandom AU recs page (sadly currently neglected), so if I see an AU posted somewhere in any of the fandoms I read, I always read at least the summary and the first paragraphs and I always search archives for their AU category and browse that, but I'm very unlikely to find fiction if it's only archived in some niche.
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I have no clue whatsoever what caused the further splintering after that, as I left the fandom.
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To be honest, I don't know where to stick fic anymore either, HP, anime, or anything else.
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I mean, I'm not saying that a split or a new archive never makes sense and one should stick with the existing archives at all costs, but I also think that sometimes an existing archive with flaws is worth sticking with, even if it is not the perfect archive one envisions, because for the fandom in general it still might be better to have a central archive (or at least fewer archives) than many different competing archives which are all suiting maybe a specific subgroup better, but complicate things once you look outside the niche.
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I read all the comments and I think that we share similar thoughts about this. I wish that there was some centralized place where you can find and search for everything. I believe that having a specific pairing or type of story doesn't need so many archives, but at the same time, I rejoice in the fact that there are so many archives and so many stories. I was in smaller fandoms before HP and it didn't take long to read everything and exhaust them (Batman? Star Wars Luke and Vader fanfiction anyone? Angel and Connor fanfiction took only a DAY to clean out). :\
But perhaps NOT having a centralized place might protect the more daring types of stories from being found on smaller, hidden archives if say, JKR or her Laywers or Warner Bros decided to make it a quest to erradicate them from the net. Or if they wanted to delete ALL fanfiction.
I actually don't visit many of the other archives at all. I mean I do VISIT lots of them, probably all of them, but I only end up reading things on only a few types of archives besides my own. Of the smaller archives, I actually have only read things from:
-The Wizard's Playground, which is a HP fanfiction archive safe for children, sometimes it's a relief to read innocent things (http://hpficforkids.magnoliamama.com/index.php)
-Naice a Nilme, a LotR Aragon and Legolas angst archive, no slash (http://www.naiceanilme.com/index.php)
And Potions and Snitches, which is my own archive for Snape and Harry Gen stories. (http://www.potionsandsnitches.net/)
I guess that I am one of those people who started a specialized, specialized archive since a complete Snape and Harry archive in general, OR a really big Harry Potter archive with the Snape and Harry category (no slash) could have covered this area, but I found that that wouldn't cut it for me, and there really wasn't a big one at the time that I personally could work on and improve and make right.
I actually pondered the decision to make Potions and Snitches for awhile, and when I did decide to make it it was only because a large number of people were into it (Severitus type fics are like a huge subgenre, I'm sure you know) and there wasn't anything like it out there already. There was no Snape and Harry Gen archive, or website, or giant rec list. This Gen genre was actually big enough to support one. So when I did decide to do it, I decided that it would become a resource for the people in the fandom, that it would be the most complete Snape and Harry Gen place I could make it.
So while I want to tell all the Harry/Ginny archives to band together and make one great, giant archive already and split the costs and work, I can't for fear of being hypocrytical. XD
I actually started off in Star Trek fanfiction, going from people's personal websites before I found Fanfiction.net, and because it's so big and as centralized as you can get for all fanfiction, I'm regretably dependant on it. It's true that they have made strides with C2 groups and other things, but I still don't like the way things are there.
Of the Harry Potter large archives, I've only actually used Fiction Alley and Sugar Quill. All the others seem to have the same exact stories from fanfiction.net, too few members and stories, or have that administration problem of deleting people's stories without warning.
If I wrote non Potions and Snitches stories, I wouldn't know where to put them, it's kind of a stiffler.
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I mean, as an example, back when I was into X-Files there were quite a few specialty archives, but also the central Gossamer archive, where you'd find most of the stuff as well (admittedly not all, but a lot). I checked the specialty archives for genres I liked in particular, like the archive for Mulder as profiler stories, or the archive for novel length stories, as well as some archives for particular kinks and such, but for example if I was searching for a story, but only remembered it vaguely, I could just search Gossamer's keywords and summaries. There's no way something like that could work in HP.
BTW I'm surprised that there isn't a lot of fic focusing on Angel and Connor, ATS being isn't that small is it? Unless you mean Angel/Connor? I can see that not being common. And I totally agree that there ought to be more Batverse fanfic. Unfortunately DC fanfic is also rather decentralized, though at least with it being smaller, the approach to have indexing communities like
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Yeah I mean Angel and Connor not Angel/Connor. XD Where's the fics? i've found a few good ones. What does ATS mean? Isn't it ATV? I'm not so into that fandom, I just like Angel and Connor fics.
ouuu thanks for that link to dcfic_index. I looove Batman. *_*
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And you're right about the HP archives like hpfanfic.net and such. I think that shows that just infrastructure isn't enough for an archive to become widely used, perhaps it is not even the most important part (as archives that not that convenient to use but still very large and popular show), but that it has to be associated with a community to flourish. I don't mean that the archive site itself has to have forums attached necessarily or anything like that, but most of the major, central archives I can think of were initially archives of a central mailing list or newsgroup and then expanded from there. Even if the lists and such split later on, the archive remained central infrastructure.
I mean, the Raywars of Due South over the whole RayV vs RayK issue are legendary as ferocious shipperwars (and even years later when I came into that fandom, lists were deeply divided and the whole fandom felt like an emotional minefield where you had to navigate carefully around old grudges lurking everywhere) but Due South still has one central archive that AFAIK is used and accepted by all "sides". So archives can weather community splits, but what's much harder is to establish an archive that spans across subcommunities and forums after the fandom is already splintered or if it was never unified in the first place. I mean, some archives had some success with that, like in Farscape the Leviathan archive was IIRC established to provide a central, all-inclusive archive for all Farscape fanfic that was scattered across different archives and boards and such, and now I think it's the largest of the Farscape archives (though not the only one), but of course Farscape is much smaller than HP, and the whole "Save Farscape" campaign brought the fandom closer together.
Re ATS: To my knowledge ATS is the most common acronym for "Angel: The Series". Unfortunately I have no clue where you might find Angel&Connor fic, as I rarely read in the Buffy/Angel-verse, and the only archives I'm aware of are Buffy Fiction Archive and Slayerfanfic, which I'm sure you have searched already.
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