Back to the beginning

[prillalar]

I'm finally close to getting all my fanfic into WordPress (God, AO3 will be a whole nother thing!). I've been working my way backwards by year and I'm in 1998 now. Then just a couple from 1997 and I'll be done. (The data entry, at least.)

It's been kind of a downer for a few reasons:

☞ It's so tedious.

☞ So many of the characters in my X-Files fic were dead by the end of the series. One story had Spender, Pendrell, Krycek, and Baldwin (well, he was from Millennium). ALL DEAD. (Seriously, SPN cannot compare.)

☞ I really didn't write very well in 1998.

But, mostly:

☞ The old files have so many names -- beta readers, dedications, thanks -- of people I've lost track of and, in some cases, don't even remember at all. Which I guess is normal after so long and maybe I should be more surprised by the people I am still in touch with. There are still quite a few people from that era -- my fannish cohort -- still on my flist.

Thanks for still being out there, guys. I miss those crazy days of TXF. ♥

Comments

[codyne]

I remember doing that. Yes, it was very tedious! Also, I had lost the dates on a lot of my early XF stuff, and ended up just guessing wildly when the stories were originally written/zine pubbed/posted.

Doing the AO3 thing now. The good news is, you can import story files directly from your Wordpress site, so you don't have to copy/paste, and all your formatting will be intact. The bad news is that it imports sidebars and headers and footers and all, so you have to edit out extraneous junk from the beginning and end of the file, but it's not too bad. I'm doing my AO3 import alphabetically by fandom (because it's easiest to go down the drop-down list of fandoms in the sidebar). Currently working on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. X-Files will be second-to-last, if I make it that far!

[prillalar]

I was hoping AO3 would have something like that. I can probably just make a special theme to switch to when archiving that will get rid of everything else.

Of course, what I really need is to be able to just upload a huge CSV file!

I've never forgotten that one Mulder/Krycek story of yours, the one where Mulder tracks Krycek down at a club and Krycek works him over. I enjoyed it a lot!

[mousapelli.livejournal.com]

speaking of that, I just bought seasons 8 and 9 for like $12 apiece on Amazon for their ridiculous DVD black Friday sale. I HAVE COLLECTED THEM ALL.

[prillalar]

I have not yet done that thing! I wonder if they're in Blu Ray yet.

[semielliptical]

My sister pointed out that sale to me and I also bought 8 & 9 - those were the only seasons that neither she or I owned. It satisfies me greatly to have the complete set even though I will probably never watch most of those later seasons again.

[annotated_em]

*rueful* I've spent the past day or so importing the fics from my Gundam Wing days into AO3. Most of them date from 2000/2001 and man, I was not nearly as good a writer back then as I thought I was.

I wonder where the people I ran with back then--the ones I was writing fic for and so on--are now. I miss some of them.

[prillalar]

It's humbling, I agree! I like to have everything up, but I make sure the date is prominently displayed. :)

There are some I'd like to hang with again, definitely.

[annotated_em]

Oh, yeah. I was very careful about labeling things as Very Old Fic and making sure they were all backdated appropriately. *wry* Even so, I did do a cut-off. GW is as far back as I'm willing to go--the stuff that's older than that, and it's out there, is not going up on AO3. A woman's gotta have her limits.

[prillalar]

Yeah, I think the amount of fic I archive at AO3 will be limited mostly by my patience. :)

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

Yay! All that delicious XF fic without the lock against the comment-spammers!

Gotta get around to giving you feedback on the under-appreciated Blue Screen (http://prillalar.com/fic/stories/000036.php), because there's not enough Frohike smut in the world.

[prillalar]

I so agree about Frohike! Damn, I would hit that any day of the week. And I'm so glad to hear that about Blue Screen. :)

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Oh man, now I am SO nostalgic.

Why don't we have a time machine? We could visit back then!

[prillalar]

Hee! Sometimes these things are best left in memory.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

Ditto. There are so many people in my fic notes I haven't heard word of in years....

[prillalar]

There were a couple I couldn't even remember who they were, which made me sad. But the way some people change pseuds online, they could be on my flist right now and I wouldn't even know.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

One or two people on my f'list changed their usernames, stopped posting for a while, and then seemed unrecognizable to me under the new name when they started up again, which makes me sad.

amen!

[starshine24mc.livejournal.com]

and God Bless all of you that I still see from time to time, whether it's on LJ, FB or email. XF and the fandom made such a profound difference in my life that I can honestly say I don't know if I'd be here now without it.

Plus, pretty guys, slashy stories and all that good stuff too! ;)

Cheers!

Re: amen!

[prillalar]

It was a magical time. :)

[anglopollyanna.livejournal.com]

Nobody was dead in X-Files until you saw the headstone ... and even then!

[prillalar]

True, for the major characters, dying and coming back to life was a rite of passage! When it finally happened to Doggett, I got all happy for him. :D Minor characters, though...