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

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

You know, Kirixchi's got a self-uploading site going, so we know someone with the know-how. I could do it on grey-space, but only on a limited basis, since I've only got a finite amount of space. Still, the only limitation is money to pay for the hosting.

[sarea-okelani.livejournal.com]

I have an extra computer that's not being used. Not too long ago, I had great hopes that I would be able to use it as a server (this was when I was looking for Web hosts). However, due to stupid Verizon and their non-static IP assigning, I can't use it as a server.

Still, even if we could do all this, I'm not sure I really want to. I meant it when I said I didn't have the personality for this kind of thing -- maintaining a site like that would probably totally stress me out, as I would have no time to write and I'd probably start hating people, in general. "People" as a collective are already on thin ice with me, so I don't think I want to risk it. <g> And that's without the expense concerns. I guess I just figure that H/Hr and R/Hr are so beloved that some fans started Portkey and Checkmated; surely that exists for D/G? Though, given the lack of a site until now, I guess not. Sigh.

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well, thus far I have never had problems running a site or dealing with people in this sense, simply because I take on the mindset of an empress. And if it was self-uploading, the actual maintenance wouldn't take all that long, especially if the job was shared by more than on person.

I think I may start thinking about this seriously. It'd be nowhere near the size of PK or CM at first, if ever, but it'd be something. Let me check how much space I'm allowed to use up at grey-space... If the graphics are kept to a minimum, probably a lot of text files could be fit there...

[fearthainn.livejournal.com]

There's at least one automated archive script that is used a fair bit in other fandoms. I think RS.org uses something similar, but the one I'm thinking of is used by the Smallville Slash Archive (I think) and a couple of Due South archives as well. It's a self-uploading thing, as well as creating text files...whoever is uploading has to format in a specific way to get their HTML, but that's not really a big deal. I'll have to look ad see if I can find more info when I get home. :)

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a plan. This weekend I'll poke around and see what I can see about how to set this sort of thing up, and then we just may be open for business.