Hey, just in case y'all are interested, I have commited BTVS smut. [link] Title: Love Bites. (yeah, i know, so original) Pairing: B/S Rating: NC-17 Warnings: Bloodplay, bondage

I check mine. I get about 25-30 visitors a week, so it's not exciting, but I do find out some things I wouldn't otherwise know. For example, a couple of people did click through from post 6896 in this thread. And most of my visitors read from the links that appear on their lj friends lists.

I am so tired. I am so tired because I stayed up until 3am reading fanfiction.

The [spoiler pairing] scenes in the Houses of Healing in Return of the King is probably one of my favorite bits in the entire trilogy, and I was not satisfied with how the movie handled them. Altariel's A Game of Chess focuses not on those scenes but the subsequent marriage, and it's a really wonderful, quiet, sorrowful, moving portrait of two people struggling to understand each other. The language is very good -- quiet, dignified, a bit slow, as befits a Tolkien pastiche, but without the awkwardness or false grandeur that afflicts so much LOTR fanfic and so many bad epic fantasy novels.

For the Houses of Healing themselves, there's her The Fire Sermon, which is lovely but feels less complete.

Altraiel has a lot of other stories, mostly focusing on Faramir and Denethor and the Stewards of Gondor, here.

Then I read shalott's The World Turned Upside Down, a crack-addled Master & Commander AU. I have not read the books or seen the movie. I love this story. Jane Austen with genderfuck! It is the most delicious thing ever.

It's also the third [story spoiler] MPREG story I've read and liked. Clearly this is going to be my new favorite genre. I'd hang my head in shame, except, like, these are good.

I'd hang my head in shame, except, like, these are good.

t checks for pod people under Micole's bed

Question:

I'll be getting my own Web site fairly soon (i.e., within the next five years). I plan to post my own fics there, along with the fics of a couple of others, and maybe some other stuff (blog, recipes, knitting patterns, wine reviews...)

What do people like to see in a personal fic site in terms of design, organization, etc?

What things are especially common and especially annoying in terms of color, layout, etc.?

Considering that you recommended one of them to me, I don't see that *you* have any room to mock, missy.

What things are especially common and especially annoying in terms of color, layout, etc.?

Multiple clicks to get to content. Low-contrast text/background color combinations. In fact, most non-black/white text/background color combinations, which are hard to read or distracting or both.

Annoying? Splashpages for no good reason. Broken links. Color choices which are physically painful. Green text on black. Purple text on black. Too much flash. (Actually, any flash.)

Anything requiring a lot of clicks to get to content is bad. Even big stories should be in one file unless they're really huge. Make the big stuff available as straight .txt files.

I liked the old Bright Shiny Objects design, don't like the new one quite so much. But that's more a personal preference having little to do with the design issues -- I just don't like the colors.

Jintian and Melymbrosia both have nicely-designed websites. Clean, fast, user-friendly.

Considering that you recommended one of them to me, I don't see that *you* have any room to mock, missy.

I've never read any of the stories you just recommended! Unless you mean MPREG stories, in which case I freely admit to pimping Shrift's story endlessly. Cause doood, it's funny!

What things are especially common and especially annoying in terms of color, layout, etc.?

Anything animated, flashy, blinky, or otherwise visually distracting. Low contrast. Teeny-tiny fonts. Script, gothic, or other low-readability fonts. Splash pages. I-Frames (and anything else that doesn't work in non-IE browsers). Any background graphic that's visible enough to mess with text visibility. SOUND OF ANY KIND. Lack of persistent navigation (which means, umm -- you notice how the links for message center, home, and the like are there on every page, so you don't have to use the back button to get home before going anywhere else? That's good. Not having a way to find your way around, get home, or grasp where you are in the site, wherever you are, is bad).