pittwitch

Yes, but Rick Deckard is too busy in Los Angeles to work here as well.

I prefer my characters to switch roles, and none of my characters is exclusively a top or bottom. You're absolutely right in it being both unrealistic and outright boring. I couldn't enjoy just one position for the rest of my life, so why would I write that?
And emotional depth is what makes a character memorable. Men feel emotion, although certain societies expect men to pretend that they don't. Granted, I draw the line at the ever-sobbing perennial bottom (if I cried every time I had sex, I'd worry!), but I applaud you for letting your male characters show emotion.
As far as the little whiners who want their uke/seme pairings that never vary, I say let them read a good boy-love manga since I'm quite sure they need pretty pictures to get the point of what they're reading anyway.

You've mentioned that you write in HP. No offense to anyone and I'm not trying to offended (as I, too, write slash in that section so...) first you need to take into account that those that read in HP tend to be much younger and haven't exactly learned that there is more to 'bottom and top' than what they see and/or read on the internet. I've had them do this to me too (usually more in Supernatural though since i make the one no one sees as such the 'bottom), i come back with the example of oral sex. The one giving is tending to be seen as the bottom. When, in reality, it's not. the person with the organ in their mouth is the top because said organ is also surrounded by teeth. That rather switches it around. Oral sex, giving and receiving, is a rather neutral act, not seen as bottom or top because of many factors. The bottom is the one that controls what is done and pleasurable, or painful, sensations that are caused on the so-called 'top' in the situation. The same goes for many other acts like it. There is no real 'bottom or top' in anything unless you are doing a D/s or BDSM situation of some kind and the line is made very clear who is what. Other than that, they are interchangeable.
As for the emotions... again, I mean no offense, but a great many in some fandoms, especially the ones that cater to those that are younger, don't 'get' the emotion thing. Emotion is a hard thing to convey in so many things, be it fanfic or original. In slash, it seems to be harder than in het because so many don't understand one very undeniable 'truth'; males and females react differently to emotional things and show emotion a different way. For example, a 16 year old Harry is not going to run out of a room screaming and crying when confronted with something. Yet I've seen it portrayed that way more than i care to enumerate here. They also don't realize that how beings were portrayed in the books is very different than they were in the movies. Nor do they take into account, using something you said you write, that characters like Sirius were not as well developed as ones like Hernoine or Ron. Sirius was a rather minor character in both the books and movies, with little character development as opposed to other ones that were more of a 'main character'. So how you portray them is your interpretation of what you saw/read. Nor is it right, wrong or indifferent. When there is no real background of development you have to create it to have a good story. Just because yours doesn't agree with what they interpret doesn't make it wrong. OOC, in the case of the more minor characters, is in the eye of the beholder. They just tend to get pissy when you don't do things according to the way they see the world and, for those, stick up your middle finger and tell them to spin on it.
All in all, it comes down to one thing... It's your story to do with what you want. If they don't like it, they are free to shut the page and move on. Their reviews, too, can be easily deleted here. Beyond that, consider the mentality, roll your eyes and move on!

I agree with BW. In this arena, the popularity of the fandom, pairing, kink, etc., really does affect the number and quality of reviews.
I try to be a good reader and review when I am drawn to click on a story, no matter the fandom or pairing, but sometimes readers just don't know what to say.

Hey, your porn is exceedingly well written. Occasionally the stuff of nightmares, but damned good!

She's on to us! Quick, grab the porn and run girls!
*Flees*

Dear gods of all that is sacred! Are you kidding? It's already WAY too easy to copy/paste things. I, as a writer, do NOT want to make it easier for someone to steal stories.

Dear gods of all that is sacred! Are you kidding? It's already WAY too easy to copy/paste things. I, as a writer, do NOT want to make it easier for someone to steal stories.

Taking off my staff hat for a moment, and speaking just as an author, I would not be terribly comfortable leaving any of my original work up here if it were made easy to download it. My fandom stuff, well, it would be irritating as the hells to find it published elsewhere under someone else's name, but it's not something I could ever have published on my own for profit anyway. My original work, though... I'd be devastated. Seriously. Some of my oneshots in Originals are "outtakes" and character development bits for things I'd like to submit for publication.
I understand that the vast majority of people download something to read with no nefarious intent, and would no sooner plagiarize than they would kick a puppy. I know nothing's foolproof, and a determined thief can copy and paste just as well. I just don't see the point of a fiction archive making it easy for people to steal, not when that archive hosts original works.
That's strictly my opinion as an author, mind you, and it carries only as much weight as that of any other user here.

JayDee's is the only one I know ... sorry.

If the entire Celebrity subdomain vanished mysteriously overnight, I would not mourn. The few times anything on this site freaked me out badly enough to make me walk away from my computer and go off to chain-smoke half a pack of cigarettes on my terrace in the middle of a blizzard has been while I was sweeping RPF fics.
Not a dig at RPF writers, but it's a form of fandom I don't seem to be able to grasp.
And JD, I'm sorry one of your fics was used in that manner.

Yes, shame on the admin for that brief summary telling folks what happened. What they needed was something like a professional writer would put, like old dexy's statement as, uh, admin/host of her own site: "I knew how petty and evil-minded the admins over on AFF really are."
Wait, what? Surely not! Based on your statement about how admins should act on their sites I expected to see nothing more than "I am no longer with that site." Now, I know little of these things but from what you've told us that doesn't seem terribly professional does it? Almost, well... petty? Gosh! Petty! Yeah, we'll go with that. Maybe... and this is just speculation, you understand, maybe stating a user is removed for ToS violations, and listing the violations - much like we see in clubs and such - without adding personal ad hom attacks... maybe that is the professional way to do it?
I'm just being snarky.

We were recently contacted by a well respected British publication about appearing in an article supporting Fan Fiction since we are one of the largest Fan Fiction communities out there. The following is his email to us:
I would love to have some of our more established, long term, articulate Fan Fiction Authors who are currently active (Perhaps even an Originals author as we don't JUST do fan fic) speak with him. If this is something you are interested in, please let me know via a forum PM. Alternatively, if you have not signed up for the forums, you can always send me an email at admin@adult-fanfiction.org with your pen name/link to your profile and contact information that you would like to be provided. I'd appreciate, but not require, a brief statement as to why you would like to represent the site.
I'm expecting a large response (I mean who doesn't want to be quoted in an article!) so please understand that so he is not overwhelmed, I'll be sorting through the responses and sending only a handful on to him. I will be looking for someone who, as I mentioned above, is currently active in the archive, well versed and well spoken and has been with the site for a decent amount of time.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm so excited for the recent popularity and acceptance of fan fiction! If you have a chance, make sure you check out PBS's Idea Channel episode on YouTube talking about it! They'd love for our users to sound off in the comments!


Edit: Okay! So, I've got the short list created ... of 18... I still gotta whittle down, but at least I'm getting somewhere! Please understand that due to the sheer volume of applications, it is just not a possibility for me to respond to each of you individually. It's been a pleasure getting to understand a bit of why you do what you do and I can't even begin to express how blessed I feel to have such a supportive group of people!

I will admit that both DG and myself are extremely blunt in handling things, though I tend to be the more temperate of personalities. I do remember the interaction as well as your response to it. Was it blunt? Yes. It was, and she did also mention that she read it first thing and was trying not respond with at the same level the complaint was sent in. Not saying it is an excuse, but Rogue did copy and paste pretty much what you had sent, though the one we received was much harsher in tone. Could she have waited to send a response until she'd taken more than a moment to calm down from the tone of the 'request'? Of course but hindsight is always 20/20.
We are constantly having to defend ourselves against unfounded accusations of bias, removal, etc. We have multiple layers of staff to ensure that our policies are enforced fairly. I do random spot checks, as does DG to ensure that it is unbiased. Everything is documented in a secure portion of our forum, including screenshots as well as in a secure database on our server. Any actions we take can be backed up. However, because we administrate the site, we are constantly questioned and berated. Now, I'm not saying that we are always 100% right, but when we are wrong we don't have an issue admitting it. It has happened.
I'll give you an example: A long time author of the site was fairly friendly with the staff my former head admin Jaxxy had in place and made a decent connection with DG as well. The previous staff didn't moderate well, there were documented incidents of favoritism. I hate to admit that it happened in my absence, but it did, I can't change that. Due to a combination of the lack of proper moderation and favoritism, my staff has had the unfortunate burden of correcting those issues. This author felt that due to her seniority on the site and her online friendship with DG that she should continue to receive a free pass when she messed up. We had to issue numerous warnings through out the tenure of the new staff and her responses became more vitriolic to the point that if there was an issue with the story they wouldn't even handle it.
When we instituted our RTE for uploading stories, she threw a hissy fit. Now, did this cause issues with some old uploads? Yes, we knew that and we were working hard on a fix, but we had a choice - Improve our posting abilities and work to fix the glitches it caused or stay in the stone age. We decided the best way to go was to move forward and work to fix the old stories. Authors had a choice to correct it on their own or wait for us to manually resolve the issue. Unfortunately, as this author was not the most tech savvy, instead of asking for assistance, she would continuously bash us for the same ease of posting system that you enjoy, both in her stories, on her personal site as well as in our Shoutbox.
Time progressed as it does and after one too many warnings, I made a decision after consulting with DG that we would institute a 2 week ban. We do not have a hard and fast rule for removing anything other than stolen stories, minors or ToS violations not corrected in a 5 week time period and this was our first incident of having to take action against someone who was an adult and even old enough to be my mother. We reviewed the history, we reviewed the conversations, and after a lengthy deliberation we decided that since our normal process had not affected a change in behavior, we would put in the temporary ban. A polite email was drafted, explaining why and detailing the infractions that lead to this point, however we were then bashed across her page and encouraged her fans to come after us.
The ban was lifted at the end of the period and she was allowed to continue posting with the understanding that the next infraction would be her last. She managed to follow the rules for almost a year before she decided that she was leaving and decided that it no longer mattered if she broke the rules. The funny thing was, we weren't even the ones to catch her - one of our users did and reported it to us before we had found it in our sweeps. As she had already been warned about the consequences, we confirmed the issue and removed her immediately. This brought down more lies, more vitriol with out even a way to defend ourselves. Her readers berated us, harassed us, etc.
While this is certainly the extreme of what we deal with, it's also an excellent example. A large majority of our users do follow the rules, for which we are immensely thankful, but there are always that entitled few that cause issues. Thankfully, it's lessened, though we deal with in in waves.
You had the misfortune, for which I do apologize, of coming in at a time period where my staff was extremely overloaded with the incoming authors from FF.Net. We were all over worked, and DG the most as she is the main source of technical support for the site. When approached in the manner in which we were, it is very easy to take it personal and point out what she did.
I've said it many a time, and I'm sure many have heard it from various influences, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. A simple, "I thought I had corrected my disclaimer after the warning, but I awoke to find the story hidden today. Is there something I still need to correct?" would have garnered a completely different response. The other side of things as well is that in a text based environment, things can easily be taken out of context as you do not have facial expressions or tone to help convey the meaning behind them. You may not have meant to come across as you did initially, she may not have meant to come across that way, etc etc. We tend to overlay our current emotion to text and make assumptions that with body language and inflection we may not normally make.
We truly are friendly people, always willing to help, but we also appreciate it when we are treated with basic human courtesy and people are willing to help themselves with the numerous self help tools we have provided. When reading staff interaction with other users, please make sure you are looking at it from both sides. It's always easy to side with the person not in authority because you can share a camaraderie of little people standing up for themselves, but not as easy to take a step back and view it from the opposite side. We aren't trained/paid customer service reps (well, I am in real life, but that is beside the point) - We are living, breathing, emotional people too that do this for free out of the passion we feel for the site.
And yes, this is extremely rambling, but hopefully it conveys what I mean it to convey. Welcome to the site!

There goes my planned "Remus giving Minerva head" scene.
Just messin'. Good luck with your requests!

XD I might have to write it after all. Skjaldr would so do it, probably on a dare, lol.
I'm not thinking about him strutting about to "Stayin' Alive", no, I swear...

There was actually a review I left over on FFN once:
"Please leave your beta's (parenthetical) comments out of your posting. Thank you."
You're right - it's somewhat akin to those TV chase scenes on horses - "Branch!" and the rider wonders "what the hell?!" and WHAM! he's off his horse and in the dirt.

Trollfic.

on the spelling for grey, you'll find horsepeople ALSO spell it grey, not gray.

I was just reading a story on this site - no point saying which one because it applies to many. We get a chunk of the writer chatting about the story, then the chapter, then another chunk apologising for the writer's shortcomings.
It detracts. If the end of the chapter is particularly good, it can ruin it.
Maybe it is just me. I am the person who never wants to watch the programmes about how films were made. I leave the DVD explaining all the ins and outs in the box. I want to lose myself in the story, not have it explained to me.
So my plea is this. If you as an author cannot resist writing about the chapter, separate the commentary from the body of the chapter. The site allows you to put in a horizontal line. Please use that or something similar.
Give people like me a chance to know when to start and, more importantly, to stop reading.

Anytime, she's one of my favs! Anger Management is one of those must read hilarious ones that everyone who likes that kind of thing will adore!

Indeed. Main reason I stopped reviewing!

I used to post on FFN myself, and when my fiction went past the point of heavy innuendo, I came here to publish it. Obviously, I like it here, and although I did pull my work from FFN a while back voluntarily, that was for other reasons not related to content ratings.
But I did read the ToS, and I did agonize over whether or not my innuendo crossed the line. I have teenagers of my own, and I decided that if I wasn't comfortable with them reading what I wrote, then it didn't belong on FFN. Part of being a writer is being able to actually read the rules.

It was pretty clear earlier this year, when I looked at joining, what their TOS were; this is why I came across to AFF and joined that.
Sure, you could take a punt on them changing their rules to incorporate MA, but you backed the wrong horse, and this is where you ended up.
No sympathy for anyone who broke their rules and is now whinging because they couldn't stick "adult fan fiction" into Google.

FF? Enforcing their ToS?
THE MAYANS WERE RIGHT!
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