If wishes were horses...

[sarea]

You know what D/G needs? Its own site, where writers can register and post their D/G-oriented fic. All ratings would be accepted. The rules would be, "D/G, and whatever the hell other ships you want." Portkey and Checkmated are both fine sites, but they're H/Hr and R/Hr oriented, which means that a D/G writer is in this awkward position of having two places to archive his/her fic, depending on what the subpairings in the story are. This also means that sometimes, story direction gets decided by where the story can get posted, which is not the ideal way to plan a story -- and yet, who can blame a writer for doing so?

After corresponding with the lovely bunny_wabit, I now know for sure that you can't "break" the H/Hr ship on Portkey regardless of which ship pairing you're placing the story under. And because it's an H/Hr-focused site, the reverse isn't true for the others (you can post H/Hr stories that break the other ships). That is completely the prerogative of the site's maintainers, and I respect that. Sure, it bothers me a little, but the main issue is that that means, even though Portkey is a D/G-friendly site, I can't post the whole spectrum of what I might write wrt D/G. I can only post D/G + H/Hr or D/G + no Harry romance + no Hermione romance fics. That is way limiting for me. From what I can tell of the rules at Checkmated, it's the exact same kind of limitation, only w/ R/Hr instead of H/Hr. And in fact, I'm not even allowed the option of D/G without R/Hr, which at least at Portkey would be acceptable (meaning D/G only).

I'm just throwing this out there, mainly to vent, and maybe with the hopes that someone who can actually do something about it will hear my plea. I don't have the expertise, personality, or resources to create/maintain such a site, but something like that would rock my socks off.

Comments

[ceilidh]

I totally agree, and I don't even write D/G fic. You know how much I wish there was an archive that hosted *GOOD* fics of all ratings and ships. With the standards of say, SugarQuill without the pairing restrictions. I can post at FA and RS.org and that's it, man. I can't post most of my stuff at Portkey because it has *gasp*! R/Hr on the side! :O! and I won't even attempt to post my R/Hr stuff at SugarQuill on principle. I do have one R/Hr fic at Checkmated, though. You should be able to write the story you want to write and not think 'okay, if this happens, I can't post it in such and such a place' because that shouldn't dictate your writing, you know?

I started working as an uploader for Fiction Alley, and omg it is more work than I ever figured. Way back when I was innocent I wanted to open my own archive, but omg. Omg, omg, omg. So much work. And a lot of FA's is automated. It's just When Things Go Wrong that it takes an incredible amount of work.

*sigh*

[sarea-okelani.livejournal.com]

OMG you mean the Ultimate Recommendations Site that we dreamed about so long ago? That would still rock my world, but in a totally different way. That one would have to be updated using manpower, whereas for this, I'd love an automatic archive-type thing. Even FA has to go through a person, whereas Portkey and Checkmated, you just sub your story and it's done. Harder to maintain story quality that way, but I think that's an evil I'd accept (just avoid the bad ones).

FA and RS.org is a good pairing of sites, though -- whatever you can't post at FA, you can post at RS.org. But I would dearly love for there to be a SINGLE place where I could post everything, regardless of rating. FA won't take NC-17, and RS.org won't take anything not NC-17 (or R, iirc). But this is kind of a tangent from my original rant, which was a plea for a place just for my ship, because every other ship has an automated archive and I want one too. ; )

You are brave and wonderful for taking on FA duties -- as is everyone who works there. I am so bad at managing my time that I know if I were to try it, no one would hear hide nor hair from me again.

[ceilidh]

Hee. Don't feel bad. Trio fic doesn't have an automated archive - or any archive, for that matter - other than a yahoogroup! Not one I know of anyway. Woe.