Seriously! That’s crazy money for a soft drink! Is it at least real sugar and not high fructose corn syrup?  

I’m very glad it worked!

I’m going to email you new links. I’ve had some success with asking members to revalidate and reset the password.

I’m not sure why it’s an issue, but from time to time, the archive acts up. I know it logs me out when I go from place to place—I have to log in when I use my lappie at my lake place, and when I get home, I have to log in on the desktop, but usually, I can just open the dropdown menu and click the LOGIN option under my pen name.

I am so very sorry, Des. I lost one to kidney failure, and my heart goes out to you both.

Dear gods, man! You’d best keep us posted as to the results, although I imagine it’s going to make one hell of a photo album. 

I was the daft bugger’s responsible adult. The prelude was gruesome, and I was desperately grateful that he was anesthetized for the procedure, because I think it would have been a race between me and his doctor as to who murdered him first otherwise. 

We don’t allow Patreon here, exactly because there’s no way for us to be sure that members are only receiving donations for original work.

It is a clear and distinct violation of copyright law for anyone to profit from copyrighted material without written permission from the copyright owner. So, a toy company can make a Harry Potter game, as long as they receive permission from JK Rowling, but if someone sells Harry Potter merchandise without having obtained that permission, the lawyers will swoop in, and generally the person violating copyright law gets to pay their lawyer and the copyright owner’s lawyer, substantial fines, and possibly could receive a jail sentence based on how much they earned.

The same thing applies to fan fiction. If someone sets up a Patreon on a fiction archive, and publishes both fan fiction and original work on the archive, there’s no way to tell what the patrons are donating for. The patrons might think they’re doing the author a huge favor by donating, so the author can work on that fan fiction they love so much, and if they mention in a review that they donated for that reason, well. I would not want to be in that author’s shoes when the copyright owner finds out.

@Desiderius Price Exactly, whereas the late Anne Rice had a firm of lawyers who hunted down anyone who dared write fan fiction using her property. She wasn’t above personal harassment, either. Her estate has not changed that stance, either, so anyone thinking that her passing means her work is fair game might think again.

And then there’s public domain, which is probably the least understood concept among fiction archives. 

I’m ridiculously conservative when it comes to the fair use provisions of copyright law myself. I do write fan fiction for somewhat obscure fandoms, but one fandom is the property of Wizards of the Coast, and they are relentless in protecting their copyright.

As far as original fiction goes, I either submit to a publisher, or put it up here for free. It’s just simpler that way.

@Deadman I’m hoping that this new site you found isn’t allowing payment for fan fiction, but only for original content. Payment for fan fiction crosses all sorts of legal thresholds, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone stick a toe into those waters. There’s a very good reason lawyers are compared to sharks...

Hey, good to see you again!  

I’m still hoping for an archive dragon.  

It depends, I think, on the theme you use for the forum, but we do have a kitty!  

And we have a forum kitty now!  

Thank all the gods we don’t have to deal with Yule decorations in stores, although it might be nice not to see Christmas decorations until after Yule…   

Christopher Bean, Toivo, Aino, Matti… I still miss each of them.

@manta2g    

@Wilde_Guess That may explain it. Chrome did away with the yellow triangle, giving us only a lock or the Red Triangle of Fear.

I stopped using Firefox a while back because it was a resource hog on my older desktop, as well as prone to sudden crashes and dramatic restarts. I don’t know if it works better now, honestly, but since I use MS Win 11, it might not matter which I use.

@Wilde_Guess This is why I’m not the coder, nor do I play one on television.  

I’m only getting the error message/warning when I open those specific subdomains. If I open any other subdomain, the url is prefaced with a lock symbol, which means the subdomain is secure. Keep in mind our forum is a separate entity from the archive, and the archive is actually 22 separate databases for the various subdomains, so the ssl certification has to be done for each database individually, as I understood it.

SSL has been enabled for some time, @Desiderius Price

The issue is currently confined to Cartoons and Final Fantasy. The error is shown as an expired security certificate. I’ve posted the information for @manta2g and @DemonGoddess so they can file a ticket with our server host.

I haven’t encountered any issues thus far with the forums, but if this is a genuine expiration, all our subdomains and the forum should be tripping the warning. They are not, however, so for now I would avoid Cartoons and Final Fantasy until we hear from an admin.

Hopefully it’ll work. Drivers are quirky...