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It looks primarily useful if you’re submitting magazine pieces or shorter fiction, from what I can see. I think, unless you’re submitting dozens of articles and short fiction monthly, following them on Twitter is probably a better plan than paying for a membership. A 7-day free trial isn’t enough time to properly evaluate their services, in my opinion, and while $5/month or $50/year isn’t a lot, it’s significant if you can’t deduct it as a business expense. For me, since I write mostly longer fiction. I’m not sure I need a service to help me track submissions or check on open calls. If that ever changes, though, they do seem reputable.

In a burst of nostalgia, I tried to find my way back to the first ever “net” fanfiction I read. I chanced upon it after my little ones were asleep and I couldn’t manage that feat as well. A google search on Severus Snape led me to SnapeCast which then had featured fictions. This was LONG before all the books were out. The one that trapped me involved a piano playing Snape who actually managed to lead the children to safety in the fiction’s version of the final battle. I can’t remember the title. I can’t find it again. But I began to wonder about my fellow AFF members. How did you fall down the rabbit hole?

It’s been ages, but I believe that the first time I came across fanfictions was all the way back to the Geocities days. Back then fansites were a big thing, and they sprang around like we’ve got wiki pages these days. And while most of them offered some basic information of certain series, along with the occasional image, there were a few that had fan made stories set in the same fandom. I must admit that this caught my attention, and a quick search later led me to some of the biggest fanfiction archives at the time. Some of them are still around today, but the majority of the smaller ones are all but abandoned.

Well, what might be the last few chapters for a while were just posted. Internet is gone after tomorrow for the move, so hopefully that returns pretty quickly, but eventually I will be back (even if it involves cheekily using other internet sources...)

Yes. This is what I’d do. Stay with the main group, with how they saw/heard/felt the smaller group’s possible death. Have it affect them fear and grief. Make sure they are running by the seat of their pants and guessing. But have some guesses be way off, and they get injured/take losses because of wrong guesses. They don’t know why they hear a distant tank and keep wondering when it will catch them. but the tank is helping them indirectly. The main group has sparse and confusing input and IS hearing actions of the smaller group, but they don’t know. This might be tricky, and a grid/timeline with major actors and sound/sight/evidence that crosses groups. I did a bit of this for my first real fanfic and had a spreadsheet with three hero groups and a villain in a magical gate maze/prison. But I swapped POVs between three characters and it was a nightmare to write. I’m attached enough that I can’t judge anymore if it worked.

That was one possibility I explored, but then I leave out a bunch of stuff, like the small party trying to figure out what’s happening, where the small party’s manipulating the events in the main party. (They’re even having to sacrifice people of the main party, to help resolve the overall crisis, it’s that dire that there’s no other choice – I basically pushed the situation that close to total defeat.) It’s like the proper solution is a “choose-your-own-adventure” choice to the reader, follow the main party, or follow the small party, both are compelling stories, and both have main characters.

Could always just leave small hints that it’s been them all along. That way when they do show up, it’s a surprise, but it’s not Deus Ex.