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

[sydney-lynne.livejournal.com]

I totally agree that D/G needs its own self-uploading archive. The limiting resources in this situation are: a) money to host an archive that can be large (for both fics and art) and not rating-restricted, and b) someone (or multiple someones) who can code self-uploading archives. I HATE submitting to anyone who has to pre-approve my writing because it's slow and annoying (it took like two months for RS to approve my fic), which is why I have no fics at FA, even though I could probably pull them off my LJ and submit them to AT after some proof-reading. I actually like the portkey system where you send them a writing sample to prove you're sufficently responsible not to post utter garbage and then you can upload yourself. But yes, in summary, you are so right, as usual.

[sarea-okelani.livejournal.com]

Yeah, basically I'd like for there to be a D/G-centric Portkey. Only w/o any other ship restrictions.

*wistful sigh*

[sydney-lynne.livejournal.com]

*bemoans our lack of representation in the (rich and/or powerful) higher ups of fandom hierarchy* Think if we had a better archive system that the D/G ship would get a little more respect? Portkey is actually the only archive I still go to anymore because I'm so disgruntled with the others, but D/G just doesn't get the same respect as H/Hr there. Woe.