Meep! Rebecca, was that an archive?

OK, I am completely and totally ignorant about all this. I thought an archive was just having something stored somewhere (by strict definition, I suppose it is) - and a rec is something along the lines of what I got in email from the nice lady who thought I should try my hand at original fiction.

I am a dope about protocol, I don't want to step on anyone's toes, and anyone who likes my stuff is worthy of cookies in my world. Tell me what's what, someone?

And it occurs to me, that last paragraph is how I feel about Bureaucracy, too.

Meep! Rebecca, was that an archive?

I was just being silly. That was archivage, in the strictest sense, as in, I'm hosting your story on my website. (And I *would* love to build you a personal archive, as I have for FayJay, for example, if you happened to want to keep [link] and your fic life separate, or you wanted someone else to do the coding and maintenance work.)

But archiving someone else's stories generally means you have a site that's thematically focused (dark Dawn fic; or Giles/Anya fic; or Wishverse fic), and you find a evil-Dawn-in-the-Wishverse-after-Giles-and-Anya-have-gotten-together fic and it's really good and you email the person and say, Hey, can I host your story on my e-D-i-t-W-a-G-a-A-h-g-t site?

(There's also people, I guess, who have an archive for things they just like a whole damn lot. I haven't seen much of that, though-- it's less useful, certainly, from a reader-end standpoint.)

A rec is a public statement of recommendation. There are recs sites, like the lovely PolyRecs, where specific people or teams of people maintain lists of stuff they think ought to be reccomended; and rec lists/threads, like BetterBuffyFics or our Fan Fiction thread, where anyone who's a member can post a rec of a story. And recs don't have to be uniformly positive. Many times I've said, "This is kind of good. The second half is better than the first" or "This is okay, except her Cordy voice makes me grit my teeth with anger" or "I don't usually like this author, but this story is worth a few minutes of your time". It's not always "This is AMAZING!" But a rec is a "recommendation" (after all) and is intrinsically, I feel, a go-read-this sort of thing-- if I post something in order just to talk about it, or make fun of it, I'm not necessarily endorsing it, I'm not necessarily "reccing" it.

Feedback is a private response to the author of a story, saying what you thought. (Not *always* private-- things like LJs, or this thread, facilitate my being able to say "Needfire ROCKS" to you quite publicly; but I'm of the old-fashioned sort who believes it's Not Really Feedback unless it's a private email. LJ comments &c are only sort of semi-feedback, damn it.) Like recs, feedback can range from "I loved your story" to a six-page letter that examines the fic in depth. They're not always necessarily completely praise; but my feeling is they're generally mostly positive. 'Cause, why go so much to the effort for something you hated?

Huh. OK, I'm beginning to weave my way through the bits and pieces of how this thing works.

See, my history is almost completely in the mainstream publishing realm; so I'm used to reviews (magazine, newspaper particularly because I wrote rather a lot of those for the SF Chronicle back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), and things like publicists who don't do their jobs, and whatnots. It's only recently I've got into the electronic aspect of publishing at all. Is it OK to have more than one site to which, say, I could with permission attach a link from my own website? Since I'm up on yours and also on shrift's, would a third locale be OK? What's the protocol here?

Oh, I think feedback is likely the same in both new and old-school, with one difference that may or may not be personal: feedback is something I tend to ask of betas and WIP editors, rather than the intended end readers. After it's off the desk and into the jetstream, where I can no longer immediately change it, it becomes "reviews" in my head.

It's only recently I've got into the electronic aspect of publishing at all. Is it OK to have more than one site to which, say, I could with permission attach a link from my own website? Since I'm up on yours and also on shrift's, would a third locale be OK? What's the protocol here?

Shrift's archive is a bigass automated archive, which means anyone who comes along can post their things there. Pensioner being on my site was a more personal thing, because I coded it by hand, and I had volunteered for it to you directly.

If you wanted to join a fic list, like the Glass Onion or Silverlake, they'd archive the fic you posted, too. That's a degree of personalization there, because the lists are like (hypothetically, at least) the communities you belong to. Just like spikesbitches.buffistas.org.

Basically? Archive-fidelity isn't necessarily. You want to have a conception of how personalized the archives are, though. My Fay archive (to use that as an example again) I started because I'm devoted to Fay; and I'm the one who coded it and maintains it. Shrift, otoh, probably doesn't personally know most of the people who are archived on her site. Her archive is more of a public-resource thing. (And we all thank her for it!) Your own personal archive is something you have much more control over (I think of people's personal archives as something like their HQ).

Er. Does that make at all sense?

After it's off the desk and into the jetstream, where I can no longer immediately change it, it becomes "reviews" in my head.

But the vast, vast majority of fandom will call those feedback. Just so you know.

Yup, indeed it does, Rebecca. So, post-pub reviews are still feedback in fanfic terminology, and basically, anyone who offers to host me on a personal basis is doing it because they like my work. Yes? Do I have that right?

Yes ma'am.

And you don't have to take them up on it. If you think their site looks like shit, and all the rest of the fic there is so bad you cringe to even think about being next to it? You can say no to that, too.

Knowledge, she is my friend. Who says you can't teach an old cat new tricks?

Speaking of which, I was just settling in to add some bits to "Needfire", courtesy of both Deena's and Bev's readthroughs. The weather just broke (storm central, rain and howling winds) and I am about to be a good cat mama and go down feed the sick outdoor kitty in the basement (Bill the Cat, that is) by hand. Tomorrow we shove little tiny pills down his throat and probably get shredded in the process.

But between cat, and my husband's car accident earlier this week, and catering this con party tomorrow, I've barely got any writing done the past few days and it's driving me bonkers.

Theo, this is a longish post because I have so damn much invested in Magneto. It's a thing. Anyway, I adore the elegance, the formality, of the writing. It seems sparse, but it's descriptive. It strikes me as being structured much like Magneto - or any elderly gentleman - might think. And the Magneto you give us is extraordinary. Which, really, he would have to be.

But they underestimate how much metal is present in tiny things, like the staples in a magazine, or the eyelets on a visitor's shoe.

Shouldn't he be able to use the iron (and copper and magnesium, etc) in a person's body against them? I've always thought that he should be able to suck the heme from a person and have them suffocate. But this is a comic argument, and nothing against the story.

A man's reach should exceed his grasp, Magneto tells himself.

How much do I love this? A lot. Really. It sounds just like him, doesn't it?

Besides, there is a certain style involved in strolling out of his prison that he can't entirely resist.

This - the sheer fucking arrogance and whimsy of the man - is perfect.

more subtle ravages of fighting for his survival on every level, including stealing food from the hands of those too weak to fight back.

And this is what one must never forget when dealing with Magneto - he has witnessed what humanity can do to those that are outsiders. Witnessed? No. He has been dealt it, and been forced to deal with it. May I say that the above is one of the more intense descriptions of life in a concentration camp I have read?

As has happened every dreaming night of his life, Erik relives the guards dragging him away from his parents, sees their faces, hears their voices pleading and his own screaming, feels the rain beating down on his face and the mud sliding beneath his cheap boots, the flex of his nascent power beating ineffectually at the bars and gates.

My own personal nightmare is being separated from my family. The scene in Schindler's List that spoke to me most viscerally about the horrors of the camps was when the children were taken from their parents. It struck me in the gut when I watched X-Men. It struck me again, here.

Magneto hardly ever dreams of the liberation of his final camp. He had been in the final stages of typhoid, and had hardly the strength to lift his head from the pillowless bunk when the American medics arrived and triaged him to a hospital.

Ah, but my memory tells me that canon has Erik and Anna (his soon to be wife) escaping from a camp. I do not know if this has been overturned, but I do know this was given as his history at one point.

[link]

I posted my LotR Aragorn-Eowyn story to Glass Onion. It seemed a good start. But the format got weird on my copy, so I had to go through and edit--and I didn't notice the fucking typo in the very first bloody word! Tey instead of They!!! Arghhh!!! So there it is, my very first story, with a tyro's mistake. Hell of a first impression that'll be.

Oh, curse you all, you talented folk. I've skimmed through the past, what, 500 posts - I wanted to skip, because I know that I just. don't. have. the. time. right now...but so many lovely pieces of writing are to be found here that I couldn't bring myself to do it. As it is I'd far rather be able to savour them properly and feel wretched for readiing so swiftly - but that's an hour gone just playing the catch up game. Grr. MUST get on with my wretched essay now. Grr.

Wonderful the range of genres here - most especially enjoyed Theo's Magneto piece (for obvious reason) and if Ple doesn't continue with her Wes/Andrew I'll track her down and lick her into shape. Eh. (eyes glaze over momentarily)

Um. Yes. Oooh - lovely Fred/Faith, also. Um.

I'm very envious of you all, though. My life at present doesn't seem to involve having time to read, let alone write. I've got all these poor stories sitting on backburners and it's not of the good, really. Colour me jealous.

Funnily enough I just got a request to archive Wild Again, my maiden voyage into fic writing. Funny, that - it feels such a long long time ago.