Writing Archive for Forum

[AquilaTempestas]

Hi all!

This is an idea I've been considering for sometime now, but I won't go ahead without support as that would be pointless.

I know most of us ave accounts on FanFiction.Net and Archive of Our Own (and other writing sites), but I was wondering how many of you would be interested in our own writing archive, and how many would actually support it? By support, I mean registering, uploading, and reviewing? I think we could use it in response to our challenges and such here, and I think it'd be cool to have our own personalised site.

This does not mean you can't share links to other external sites - I just think it would be cool to have something that is about us. Yes, it will mean you may not get some stat boosts on your main places, but at the end of the day, those places are still gonna be available anyway.

We can choose our fandoms. We can choose the genres. We can have both original and fanfiction. We can even choose our own ratings and such.

I really do need feedback on this so please reply.

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[Wizarmonfan]

I'd be down for that. I don't mind at all. I like the fact that we can have original fiction and fanfiction.

[Sakura Alexia]

I wouldn't mind it to be honest, I am not a really good reviewer but I'd have plety of things to contibute with.

It just means one more place to upload stuff to.

[RykerDavis]

I am game. 

[Apollomon X Stingmon]

Sounds like a good idea

[AquilaTempestas]

So I need at least ten people who are keen to commit to this idea.

We could use it for our reviewing exchange sessions as it's much easier to review something from the very beginning than look at a full piece of work on FFN/A03.

 

[RykerDavis]

I like the idea of having an archive for writing and I am game.  But I do have a concern.  Right now, the fandoms on this board are not very diversified. It's not a bad thing and I am not complaining. But most of the people that comment regularly only comment about two fandoms  Pokemon or Digimon.  Thats not to say that's all that the people here write about, but it is what comes up in almost all of the topics.  And topics outside of these fandoms don't really get a lot of traction.   How do we keep it from becoming stilted and fandom lopsided?

[AquilaTempestas]

1 hour ago, RykerDavis said:

I like the idea of having an archive for writing and I am game.  But I do have a concern.  Right now, the fandoms on this board are not very diversified. It's not a bad thing and I am not complaining. But most of the people that comment regularly only comment about two fandoms  Pokemon or Digimon.  Thats not to say that's all that the people here write about, but it is what comes up in almost all of the topics.  And topics outside of these fandoms don't really get a lot of traction.   How do we keep it from becoming stilted and fandom lopsided?

A valid concern.

I think every author should list all the fandoms they write for (even if it is just one story) and all the fanfoms they will read.

That way I can tally them.

[darkened-storm]

3 hours ago, RykerDavis said:

I like the idea of having an archive for writing and I am game.  But I do have a concern.  Right now, the fandoms on this board are not very diversified. It's not a bad thing and I am not complaining. But most of the people that comment regularly only comment about two fandoms  Pokemon or Digimon.  Thats not to say that's all that the people here write about, but it is what comes up in almost all of the topics.  And topics outside of these fandoms don't really get a lot of traction.   How do we keep it from becoming stilted and fandom lopsided?

I would argue that we do have a fair bit of diversity, it may just be that we don’t necessarily share it here, we may have other outlets for that. 
 

I think that if the people using it approach it with an open mind then it could serve as I nice way to showcase MEMBERS work and a good way to see what other members are up to

[AquilaTempestas]

Please add your member profile here so I can keep track of the fandoms people want:

 

We also need to decide on genres - what do you think is needed?

[Nocturna]

I'd look at stuff like FFN and other fiction sites for genre ideas, but I think the main ones would be like fantasy, family/friendship, romance, angst/tragedy, parody and all that. Really depends on what people write, I don't know what everyone does but I know you write fantasy, and I do love some crack and hurt/comfort. 

 

Maybe to stop genres getting too convoluted, we could have a tagging system like AO3 or some kind of extra description outside the summary to note popular tropes (like enemies to lovers, Canon divergence, etc) that aren't genres in themselves but give a tiny bit more context as to what readers should expect.

It'd also let you put warnings beyond 'this is rated T' so there's more freedom to write overall but no one can accidentally stumble upon something with a graphic suicide scene or other things that might be genuinely triggering. 

Would this kinda thing be possible? 

[AquilaTempestas]

22 minutes ago, Nocturna said:

I'd look at stuff like FFN and other fiction sites for genre ideas, but I think the main ones would be like fantasy, family/friendship, romance, angst/tragedy, parody and all that. Really depends on what people write, I don't know what everyone does but I know you write fantasy, and I do love some crack and hurt/comfort. 

 

Maybe to stop genres getting too convoluted, we could have a tagging system like AO3 or some kind of extra description outside the summary to note popular tropes (like enemies to lovers, Canon divergence, etc) that aren't genres in themselves but give a tiny bit more context as to what readers should expect.

It'd also let you put warnings beyond 'this is rated T' so there's more freedom to write overall but no one can accidentally stumble upon something with a graphic suicide scene or other things that might be genuinely triggering. 

Would this kinda thing be possible? 

Yeah, the genres sound decent.

As of now I'm thinking (open to change though!).

• Crime & Mystery (detective work type stories or ones about mysterious murders and the like)
• Fantasy (elves, dwarves, dragons, magic, vampires, werewolves etc)
• Horror & Thriller (not to be confused with supernatural fantasy - this is all about gore and making your readers feel horrified)
• Romance (self-explanatory but stories where the main plot is the romance)
• Sc-Fi (apocalypse, dystopian, aliens, space ships)
• Drama (angst, hurt/comfort, tragedy - basically stories where lots of dramatic events happen to your characters)

For warnings, I'm basing it loosely off the Australian movie classifications guide. It'd be something like this (open to suggestions of course)

• G - General Audiences - Harry Potter! Pokemon. They're safe.
• PG - Parental Guidance - some slight suggestive themes so something like Family Guy, Futurama, The Simpsons level or your standard superhero movie
• M - Mature - Think of video games like Assassin's Creed - there is violence, there may be some profanity, but nothing too hardcore
• MA - Mature Audience - contains violence, gore, ... something like Game of Thrones. No shying away from sex, violence, profanity etc.

[Zadien]

1 hour ago, Nocturna said:

I'd look at stuff like FFN and other fiction sites for genre ideas, but I think the main ones would be like fantasy, family/friendship, romance, angst/tragedy, parody and all that. Really depends on what people write, I don't know what everyone does but I know you write fantasy, and I do love some crack and hurt/comfort. 

 

Maybe to stop genres getting too convoluted, we could have a tagging system like AO3 or some kind of extra description outside the summary to note popular tropes (like enemies to lovers, Canon divergence, etc) that aren't genres in themselves but give a tiny bit more context as to what readers should expect.

It'd also let you put warnings beyond 'this is rated T' so there's more freedom to write overall but no one can accidentally stumble upon something with a graphic suicide scene or other things that might be genuinely triggering. 

Would this kinda thing be possible? 

I second this. I don’t want to accidentally wander into a suicide fic or anything remotely grim or dark. Life is grim enough for me and i don’t find those stories cathartic to read as some others do. If I choose to read a romance I don’t want the ending to be some big tragedy, or a cheating story. So I feel some sort of tagging is necessary. Just to make sure that the audience doesn’t get something they hate and then can’t review. It defeats your purpose. Like rated T is fine but rated M - what is the rating M for? It could be for sex and I’m fine with that, if it’s for graphic violence or something, then I wouldn’t want that and I don’t want to avoid all M rated stories because there’s a possibility that there’s something I don’t want to read in there. 

[AquilaTempestas]

About warnings, what would you like to see as tags?

For example: something like Gore = Detailed descriptions about mutilation, decapitation and the like.

[Nocturna]

Sexual assault is definitely something I feel needs a warning. That kind of stuff can be shocking to suddenly come across, so having some kind of warning so a reader can prepare themselves (if they don't wanna fully avoid it) would be useful.

There's different forms of sexual abuse though (including coercion, physical assault, etc) so might need a real clear 'overall' tag. Maybe 'sexual violence'? Or a general 'nonconsensual' tag, I dunno. Just feels necessary. 

[Sakura Alexia]

I recall an old site I wrote on had colors for ratings.

Green = G

Yellow = T

Orange = M

Red = E

Sorta like archive but without annoying letters just a little colored square.

As genres I this we could make a sort of soft/fluff one for cuter kind of stories, again it used to be a thing on there.

Warnings I think things like violence, non consensual sex stuff, maybe even politics or religion, some people can be sensitive to that, for stuff like racist behaviors and all, character death is also a thing.

Extra tags for sorta "special" stuff, there was alternative universe, crossovers, canon divergence, what ifs.

I can't recall more at the moment.

[RykerDavis]

4 hours ago, Sakura Alexia said:

I recall an old site I wrote on had colors for ratings.

Green = G

Yellow = T

Orange = M

Red = E

Sorta like archive but without annoying letters just a little colored square.

As genres I this we could make a sort of soft/fluff one for cuter kind of stories, again it used to be a thing on there.

Warnings I think things like violence, non consensual sex stuff, maybe even politics or religion, some people can be sensitive to that, for stuff like racist behaviors and all, character death is also a thing.

Extra tags for sorta "special" stuff, there was alternative universe, crossovers, canon divergence, what ifs.

I can't recall more at the moment.

I know I tend to stay away from 'underage' tag because I got stuck with a story about adults with children. But then I went to write a story about teenage romance and was yelled at for not using the underage tag because the characters were under the age of consent. (A Glee pairing) Multiple triggers for a tag is a good idea.  But we run the risk of a convoluted tagging system that gets out of hand like Ao3. Which is most of our complaints about Ao3.    

I know I am being a wet blanket but the more triggers we add the more stuff that is going to be found that triggers.  A good character is going to have flaws and sometimes those flaws leave us uncomfortable but that is what makes a character real and not one dimensional.    When I think of the mother of uncomfortable characters I think of Sue Silvester of Glee. (IMHO they over did her) She would have had every trigger tag in the world in any story she was in.  Which means the trigger portion of the fic would be longer than the summary.  How do we balance that out?

[AquilaTempestas]

Yeah, warnings are a bit of a tough one. I think I'll go with the key warnings first - like self-harm, character death, explicit sex, graphic gore and violence - and then if we feel more warnings are necessary, we can add them as we go along. We don't want to go too overboard with tags to a point it just gives too much away about the story. I think if you are dealing with sensitive topics (like rape and suicide), it's important to warn in advance.

As for the archives itself.... Progress is being made! I'm planning on opening it n the 16th of January, 2022.

Here's a few sample screenshots to give you a general idea (you can choose between these two skins in your account details - Enchanted (purple) or Frosted (green) ).

 

[AquilaTempestas]

Okay. Just some more information to add.

Make sure you have your review alerts on otherwise you won't get an email alert in your inbox when you have received a review

1. Go to Account Info
2. Click Edit Preferences
3. And tick 'contact for new reviews'. You can choose to have the other options enabled if you wish 
4. In your inbox, check to make sure reviews are not appearing in JUNK MAIL. If they are, you will need to unblock emails coming from either aquilatempestas@hotmail.com or notifications@tazlandarchives.com.

If you are having trouble formatting your work, I'd recommend copying your text, and pasting it into Word or Google Docs and just hit the remove formatting button. If you are still having trouble, just ask me and I will fix it for you.

I really hope everyone who writes joins up and takes part in supporting one another when you have the chance. This archive will only succeed with support from you.

Also, try not to upload everything at once. Space it out. Pace yourself. That way people can keep up to date with reviewing and such and not feel overwhelmed.

If you have questions, please ask me - either by replying to this thread, sending me a  message here, or contacting me over Discord.

 

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