For the past couple of weeks, I have continually been getting kudos from guests on an X-Men drabble I wrote mostly as an angry response to the release of X3 back in 2005. I posted it to AO3 along with those other old fics I deemed good enough for back when I first got my account a decade an a half ago, and before this onslaught it had about 250 hits or so. As of right now, that drabble has kudos for 48 guests, as well as two registered users. Obviously there is some sort of bot thing going on there. But I am extremely confused as to its nature, or intentions. There have been no accompanying comments, no scammers popping up with offers anywhere within the time period, no explanation. Purchased the extended edition of the original Baldur's Gate, which I've gotten the impression should work well enough on a modern PC, tonight, so I'm definitely playing it sometime. When, of course, remains in question. Juneteenth as a federal holiday still remains uncancelled, and all the logistics people have put everything into place for the holiday, but that still doesn't mean much...
~ Hamsters (did not go well) ~ Gerbils (MUCH better, I was breeding them and trading the litters for food and bedding) ~ Turtles (most of these were a few days at most, just 'moving rocks' I found and brought to my yard until the moved on. We did have a snapper, found on a railroad track at about a silver dollar size. Raised him to salad plate size before I took him to be rewilded) ~ Fish (some mine, most my wife's)
Never kept snakes, but often played with wild ones. Only had birds as a small!Asp, a pair of 'keets named Silly and Loudmouth. Frequently wound up with bold squirrels that were quick to importune for snacks when I ate outside. A polite raccoon once took up residence near my yard, and would actually leave our trash alone as I kept the food scraps separate for him.
There was the skunk at my battalion that hated strangers, but never once ran from us that lived there or sprayed at us. We didn't feed him, but treated him as a mascot and pest deterrent (the two-legged strange men type).
We have also "babysat" fawns, several years running, as our yard became a preferred nursery with the does. And this year we of course had the litter of foxes.
Title: Assorted Graphics For SeaweedWrites's Fics Recipient: SeaweedWrites Author: REDACTED Verse: BBC Sherlock Warnings: There is a bottle of whiskey in the first graphic in case that should be warned for and mentions of suicidal ideation in the third graphic
Oddly, I've never read this one before. It made its way into the same bucket as The Wizard of Oz during my childhood: I'd seen the movie, so I didn't need to read it.* (I did read the several dozen Oz books that came after the first one! But not the first one, because I'd seen the movie and that was good enough.**) But with Pride and Prejudice, it was even more pronounced: I hadn't seen "the" movie; I'd seen a good dozen or more of them! And read a bunch of tumblr-meta about the book. And... And...
And the book proved very familiar! I knew all of the beats, and many of the famous passages! But every once in a while there'd be a scene that I couldn't recall having seen in any adaptation--for instance, the one with Miss Bingley trying to annoy Mr Darcy into giving her attention as he writes letters. A delightful scene! That I couldn't recall ever having seen adapted! So there was definitely more nuance and detail on the page than I had osmosed over the decades.
And yet not that much more detail. I think this is the first time that I've ever read the book after seeing a movie adaptation, where I discovered I already knew what was going to happen on pretty much every page.
Still worth reading! Austen's prose is a delight, as always. And of course I was reading specifically for Colonel Fitzwilliam, who is mostly Character Not Appearing in the adaptations anyway. But for a book I'd never read before? It felt eerily like a book I had read before.
Alexandre Dumas (trans. by Anonymous), The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-1846)
Exactly the opposite experience! I knew there was a long imprisonment in the Chateau d'If, and thought I knew that he eventually dug his way out with a teaspoon, but that was it. Everything in here was new to me. phoenixfalls, who has loved this book since childhood, quizzed me early on as to what I thought the book was about. "Adventure novel," I said. "Lots of swashbuckling and swordfighting and shit."
Spoiler: Unless I have forgotten something, there are exactly zero swordfights in this novel. Also, no swashbuckling to speak of, unless we count the intellectual swashbuckling of masterminding a multiple-decade revenge scheme with an absurd number of moving parts. Very sexy of him, that.
I read this as part of a one-chapter-a-day read-along, and enjoyed that experience very much--well, until I neared the end, and said "fuck that" and read six chapters a day until I finished it. (The read-along is still winding up as we speak.) I will say that even at a chapter a day -- which is a good clip! -- there was a section in the middle when there were Too Many Characters*** to keep track of, and I was fighting for my life to keep sorted who was whose daughter, engaged to whom, and also what everybody's name was now. At one point I had to put it down for two weeks to read another time-sensitive thing, and when I picked it up again, I needed to use SparkNotes to get myself oriented again, I was so lost. How the hell people managed when this was serialized weekly, I have no idea.
All in all, a very satisfying read. I'm a bit meh about Edmond/Haylee at the end, but there's something appropriate about the Revenge Twins pairing off to figure out what one does after successfully prosecuting one's revenge. I'm a little worried that in all of Edmond's masterminding, he didn't do any retirement planning: this is absolutely a guy who is going to go nuts in six months because he didn't take some woodworking classes before he retired. (I propose that he get Faria's manuscript published, and then go on a lecture tour, promoting and defending it.)
I'm not quite in the place where I want to start right over at the beginning again, but I do very much miss reading a chapter every day at lunch. And I am curious to know what it looks like on a second read, when one knows what Edmond is about.
The 31st anniversary isn’t usually the one where people get introspective about the nature of marriage and stuff — we tend to like big round numbers for a reason — but last year on this day Krissy and I were in Venice doing all sorts of touristy things and I really didn’t have the time or the inclination to spend my time in Italy on a laptop (and not even a laptop; I took my iPad with me). This year for our anniversary we’re going to Versailles, but it’s the one in Ohio and it’s pronounced “Ver-SAILS,” and we’re going there for dinner at a nice restaurant there. So as it happens I have some time today to muse on the nature of matrimony.
I’ve spoken before of the things that Krissy and I have done to make sure our marriage stays strong over the years, from simple things like saying “I love you” a lot — and I do mean, a lot, I don’t know any other couple who says it as much as we do — to more complicated things like continually checking in on each other, not taking each other for granted and making sure both of us are getting our needs met by the other. This is stuff I think most married folks can do, and should do, in the way that works best for their own relationship; basically, the understanding that relationships, even (and maybe especially) the good ones, are still work and ought to be tended to, instead of just being taken for granted.
But the other thing is I think Krissy and I both got lucky in finding the person best suited for helping us become the person we were hoping to be. And yes, at least initially that absolutely was luck; when Krissy spotted me on a dance floor she could know nothing else about me other than I danced like I wasn’t worried about being judged for it, and when I first laid eyes on Krissy I knew nothing about her other than she was the sort of beautiful that could make people walk into walls because they were looking at her. These were good things, sure. A fine start, and enough to get us to go on that official first date three weeks later. But ultimately not a lot to go on.
I still think Krissy is beautiful, and she still enjoys my dance stylings, but it’s everything else that really sealed the deal. It became clear to me that not only was Krissy smart, she was in many ways smarter than I was, with a far better sense of how to actually navigate the day-to-day world in a successful fashion. She was (and is) a direct-line and decisive thinker where I had and have a tendency to overthink and be discursive. None of this is news to long-time readers here, of course; I’ve talked about this before. But what I don’t think people understand is what an actual revelation it was for me to see something like that in action, inside the context of my actual life. I was not — and this is putting it extremely charitably — raised in a situation where order and executive function were common, and it was something I struggled with myself, and, no surprise, still do.
To see someone who just naturally had it, and used it like it was no big deal, well. It was like watching someone perform actual magic. And this person was willing to use it! For me! And us! Together! Aside from the actual fucking relief of having someone in my life actively being stable and sensible and reliable, and also loved me, there was the practical matter of how much potential this opened up for our life together; that I could, and was allowed to, focus on things I was good at, that would end up benefitting us both. I often say to people, here and elsewhere, that I have the career I have because Krissy is my partner, but I genuinely don’t think people understand the extent to how that is true. I would still be a writer, to be sure. I would not this writer, with these books, and this life.
And what about Krissy? Well, I was funny and clever, which is not to be discounted, even if, as we all know, there is a fine line between “clever” and “asshole.” She also saw I was talented — I had a skill that I both used and continued to develop, and an ability in it that was more than just standard issue. On top of that, I was (and still am!) ambitious, which Krissy saw as a plus. Just as I saw potential in what she offered to me in terms of stability and reliability, she saw potential in what I offered to her in the desire to do bigger things, and saw where she fit in with making those things happen.
Equally if not more importantly, Krissy figured out that I didn’t need to be trained out of any bad habits when it came to our partnership. My own particular brand of masculinity was and is not one that required me to petulantly stomp my foot about how I was the man in the relationship, damn it, and therefore was the one in charge of whatever it was a dude was meant to be in charge of. I could write a whole series of posts — and maybe I will one day — about how much of “masculinity” boils down to “I don’t like being argued with and if I don’t get my way I will explode,” but for now, suffice to say that this is not a particular neurosis of mine. Krissy saw, I like to think accurately, that I valued her for every part of her, which included her decisiveness and initiative. I did not need to be told that Krissy should be allowed to cook across the whole range of her abilities. She did not ever have to diminish who she was because she was worried my ego couldn’t handle it.
So, these are the things that we figured out early about each other. As we continued, it turned out that we helped each other build on all of these things. We have never argued about “who is in charge,” not just because that was not an argument worth having, but because the way our skill sets fell out it’s literally never been an issue. To put it extremely generally, when it comes to our lives together, I handle strategy and Krissy handles tactics, because that’s how our brains work best. Strategy without tactics is useless; tactics without strategy is pointless. It’s not about who makes decisions. It’s about, when we make the decision, how do we make it happen.
None of this happened because we knew from day one about any of this. It came from paying attention to each other, valuing and trusting each other, and building on what we’ve done as we’ve gone along. We got lucky when we met that these things about us were already there, and we liked them about each other. But then we did the work together, every day, so that these things we liked were given space to develop into things that would let us build a whole life together, across four decades now. It would be simplistic and wrong to suggest all of this happened without hiccups or snags or occasional misunderstandings along the way, of course. We are both human beings. But the deep well of love and trust that we can draw from helps a whole lot when that’s happened.
I don’t think any of us can help if we get lucky when it comes to drawing a partner who helps us be our best self — I think Krissy and I found the right person for us almost entirely by random and had the good sense to go with that. I do think everyone can look at the partner they have and ask “how can who I am and what I do make their life better, and our life better?” Because, you know, I have faith there is an actual good answer for everyone there. You have to find it. And then you have to do it. And then keep doing it.
And keep asking it, because life changes. Krissy and I are not the people, or in the same circumstances, in our 50s as we were in our 20s, 30s, or even 40s. Every step of our life we wanted and needed things from each other and, so far, at least, we’ve figured out the ways to make that happen. It’s work! It never stops being work! And the reward is having a life that only you two could have made for each other. There was no guarantee that at any step along the way we couldn’t have fallen out of step with each other. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes when that happens the best thing is to call it and move on separately. That’s all right! For us, it keeps working. We work to keep it working.
This is where we are, 31 years into the marriage. I spend a lot of time letting Krissy know how wonderful I think she is, and how much I value the life we built together, and how much I’m looking forward to continuing to do that, for as long as we get to. She’s the best thing to happen to me, and I keep trying to return that favor. I’ll keep doing it. She’s really great.
Title: Holmes and the Reticent Witness Recipient: EdosianOrchids901 Artist: REDACTED Verse: Granada Holmes Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes Rating: gen Warnings: none Summary: Holmes questions a witness who is strangely silent.
Shows: SGA Rec Category: Teyla Characters: John Sheppard/Teyla Emmagan, Rodney McKay, Evan Lorne, Jennifer Keller, Todd Categories: F/M Words: 12,259 Warnings: no AO3 warnings apply Author on DW:saraht Author's Website:SarahT on AO3 Link:when I came I was a stranger on AO3 Why This Must Be Read: This is Vegas!John, set after canon, with Teyla central and playing a crucial role. SarahT often writes John/Teyla, leaning into Teyla being close to a Wraith queen, and in this fic she's darker and a bit more traumatised than in canon. Rodney also features, trying to persuade John to join the team, and in this AU, Lorne is the military commander of Atlantis. It's well written, with great characterisations of John and Teyla in particular.
I'm about to tell you a story you won't believe. Like all my stories about things that actually happened, it actually happened.
There was a storm coming in, which is not at all unusual during an Indiana summer. A tornado warning had been issued for Kosciusko County, which is the nearest county to our west, so I went out to take some pictures and video of it coming in. The two photos you see here were only enhanced a little--all the light in the sky was from the lightning.
I headed out back wearing sweats and slippers. I figured, what did Mother Nature care? She'd smite me, or she wouldn't. When the storm got closer we went inside to watch the various weather people, while I sent Facebook messages out on my and the Fire Department's Facebook pages. My small attempt to help.
Here's the YouTube version of the video, if it can't be opened here.
Since I'm no longer active as a firefighter, weather has become a spectator sport, and like any good spectators we had a snack. Rice, chicken, beans, and cheese.
Hm ... I just now noticed the two photos that came out anywhere near good are almost exactly the same, even though they were taken minutes apart. Sometimes night lighting just isn't good to me.
We'd been watching the national weather channels and local radar, then went to local channels as the storms grew closer. Then something crawled across my hand.
My mind instantly went to one thing, and one thing only: Spider.
But it wasn't. Even as I shrieked and threw the bowl into the air, my mind said, Bee. Oh, okay.
And then, because naturally my hand came slapping down, accompanied by bits and rice and beans, it stung me.
I'm allergic to almost everything nature provides, with the exception (thank goodness!) of food. I'm allergic to spider bites. I've had reactions to mosquito bites, when I get enough of them at the same time. Pollen and mold are my sworn enemies. However, allergy doctors do not normally test for bee sting allergies, unless the patient has had previous reactions. I haven't been stung by a bee since I was a teenager.
But they assumed I was allergic, because of, well, everything, so they gave me an EpiPen to have close by, just in case. It was in the house. Somewhere.
The bee was all black, and crawling on the floor, and I dispatched it with extreme prejudice because I don't like pain. Then I had to decide what kind of bee it was. "What did it look like?" Emily asked.
"Um, a black smear across the carpet."
"Well, there's something still crawling down there."
It was an earwig, which I also dispatched, while keeping one eye on the TV. What the heck? Was the bee carrying an earwig? But no, the answer soon presented itself: They'd hitched a ride on my slippers when I came in from the back yard. Looking for shelter, but all they found was death.
This kind of bee, according to my sources (um, Google) tends to nest in yards and has pretty much the same venom has a honeybee. In other words, I was about to die in a most dramatic way, while a storm raged outside.
At least I managed to catch my bowl, with most of the food still in it. The cheese held everything together, as usual.
But I didn't need the EpiPen. I had, as I usually have, a localized reaction, instead of systemic. The spot on the inside of my finger turned red, swelled, and my whole hand itched for awhile. As I write this, three days later, my finger is itching like crazy, but otherwise all is well.
That's more than can be said for Illinois and Indiana (and other areas), which, like the bee, got smeared under Mother Nature's giant foot. Tornado touchdowns were confirmed in two surrounding counties, but all we got was a thunderstorm warning, as the storm was starting to lose power. It was still pretty darned photogenic, as the weather has been, lately.
Still, I think next time I'll take all my pictures from the porch.
Weather is a common theme in many of our books. Check them out here:
Title: The Full Extent Recipient: flowing_river Author: REDACTED Verse: Granada TV Show Characters/Pairings: Holmes & Watson Rating: T Warnings: N/A Summary: Holmes ordinarily attempts to conceal his frequent aches from Watson, but today he does not succeed. Can Watson convince him to rest?
Title: All Nature Newly Washed and Fresh Recipient: gardnerhill Author: REDACTED Verse: Merrison & Williams 1989 radio series (Coules) Characters/Pairings: Holmes/Watson, Harold Stackhurst, Maud Bellamy Rating: Gen Warnings: None Summary: In June 1921, Watson is thinking of publishing again for the first time since the beginning of the war, while Holmes is struggling with a meteorological incident.
So, while I do LIKE dogs, I long ago recognized I am not a dog-energy person. Hilariously, I was usually the first one allowed by the bitches into the kennels to count pups, and also the one that nursed at least one litter through a bad disease, keeping all four alive. I was around dogs a lot:
Cricket, Lady Bit, Romeo, Juliet, Napoleon, Josephine, Champ - uncle's Pepe, FiFi, Nina-Dog - Granny's Rocky, Maggie, Goldie - Aunt's Other assorted pooches I didn't interact with as much at other relatives.
Momma said we had a dog when we first moved to Keesler, but I don't remember it at all. As an adult, I have been personally responsible for these:
Kelly, my beloved Bull Terrier/Black Lab mix, went through a very delayed puppy phase once she realized she was SAFE with us and we figured out first owner was military as a uniform was the only thing that ever riled her to temper. Cocoa, my beloved Cocker Spaniel/Irish Setter mix, who literally died the same week we lost my late partner. Kara (LoIsLana), the fighting chihuahua (called that as they are the largest of the breed) we got for K as a gift, and the only pedigreed dog I personally paid for. Sasha (bear), the very mixed Chow-something that I never really fully bonded with.
Not all books fit the mold of the genre they’re in. For Alethea Kontis, she wanted to write romance without the explicit parts, wanted to write a YA book that wasn’t dumbed down for kids with no attention span and no literacy skills. Well, she did it, and she did it her way, in her newest novel, Thieftess.
ALETHEA KONTIS:
This post is for the smart kids. The rebels. My fellow goonies.
This essay marks my FIFTH time as a guest on The Big Idea—I am now a proud member of the Whatever Five-Timers Club! Please remind me to make sure John and Athena mail me my membership card.
The last time I was featured on Whatever was in 2017. The Before Times. An Age of Innocence. Social media was less commercial, Gen AI was a dream of the future, and the CDC’s playbook was positive the next great pandemic would be influenza. I went to conventions back then. I knew what K-pop was, but I didn’t know K-dramas existed. I didn’t speak any Korean, Portuguese, Croatian, or Arabic. I had never been to Asia or Africa. Storm chasers were other people, and the topic of a movie I loved once upon a time.
Back then, I wrote books that were publishable.
I joke because it’s both horrible and true. My books are too long. Too clever. Too smart. Too subtle. Too bloody. Set in the wrong time period. Set in a country where I wasn’t born. Contain protagonists who are the wrong age. Contain far too many difficult/archaic/polysyllabic words. Contain too many complicated characters from too many different cultural backgrounds.
In the current capitalist climate, picture books need to have TENSION. Romances needs to have SEX. Middle grade novels need to be FAST PACED and also SUPER SHORT because no one has an attention span anymore and 10-year-olds are intimidated by thick books. Plus, thick books are expensive. And for the love of all that is holy, do NOT write any more Young Adult Fantasy. Ever.
I cried after the call where my agent told me that last one.
She’s not my agent anymore.
Honestly, it’s a miracle I was even traditionally published in the first place. A handful of excellent people had the privilege of being able to take a chance on me, and for that I will be forever grateful. These days, no one can afford to take a risk. I get it.
But I can’t afford to stop writing. So I didn’t.
In late October 2023, I got the rights back to the Woodcutter Sisters books. The series of my heart. You remember them: they read like a mashup of The Princess Bride and a non-Disney Once Upon a Time. Yeah. The YA Fantasy ones. Got awards and stuff. There were seven Woodcutter sisters, all named after the days of the week. I got to write Sun-Fri. Harcourt orphaned me before I could tell the Pirate Queen sister’s tale. My working title was Thieftess.
Thieftess has a listing on Goodreads. As of this writing, there are 2 reviews. The first laments the news of my publisher dropping the series. The second was posted by someone so excited to announce that the series would be returning that THEY WROTE IN ALL CAPS. Both of these entries delight me to no end.
Freedom is a beautiful thing. I consciously took advantage of mine this past decade. I lived, defiantly. I chased storms, learned other languages, traveled the world, and made hundreds of new friends all over that world. And I quietly, constantly, kept writing in the background.
In a way, my series being released from my trad publisher was a mercy. I wasn’t sure the committee would let me get away with all the things I wanted to do in the rest of the books anyway. And when it came time to finish writing Thieftess—eleven years after I started it—I embraced my tiny rebellions.
In nutshell, Thieftess:
is a YA-Appropriate Romantic Pirate Adventure Fantasy
is far too optimistic
is too long (for a traditional YA)
has too many characters
has too many chapters (it reads like a web novel)
switches POV without announcing who is speaking instead of a chapter title
has chapter titles
has maps
features pirates who get drunk, die, kiss, kill, and steal, but there’s still no sex
stars a female protagonist in her late 20s (but so was Alanna of Trebond, eventually)
The book also contains a million Easter eggs, but so did Enchanted. Heck, so did AlphaOops. That’s a very on-brand Alethea thing. But the rest is my rebellion.
Here in 2026, joy itself is a rebellion. Kindness is a rebellion. Naps are a rebellion. Poetry is a rebellion. Smart books that trust their readers are a rebellion. Reading prologues and epilogues is a rebellion. Writing in cursive is a rebellion. Writing your own emails is a rebellion. Leaving your phone in the other room is a rebellion. Going outside is a rebellion. Speaking more than one language is a rebellion. Quoting Shakespeare is a rebellion. Imperfection is a rebellion. Daring to fail over and over again is a rebellion.
Finishing this absolutely gorgeous book that took me eleven years to write—and then releasing it into the world—is my rebellion.
When I originally took @princessalethea as my screen name on LiveJournal (remember LiveJournal?) it was because my role model was the feisty leader of another particularly infamous rebel alliance. I mean to carry on in that same fine tradition.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go write a book with a bunch of sex in it. Because I’m still broke.
language_escapes and I spent a year making it, and a very good year it was. She turned down co-author credit, but I maintain this vid never would have happened with out her.
"Something Good" is ten years out of date now; that's especially apparent when I re-read the commentary. It's been good to see how many more versions of Holmes and Watson have come by in the interval. I'm particularly happy to have female and non-white Holmeses coming out of Korea and Japan: both of those were thin on the ground when we made the vid.
At the time, I thought of this vid as my masterwork, and despaired of ever making anything so good again! Mostly at a loss for what to do with myself, I kept on making things, and I'm happy to say there's been plenty of good stuff in the interim. Good stuff, new fandoms, and new fannish friends. There were even a few more vids!
So here's to language_escapes and all my fannish friends, new and old, and a hundred years (plus ten!) of Holmes and Watson walking arm-in-arm.
Here at the Scalzi Compound we’ve been having a lot of work done: New garage/barn, new porch railings and entirely new back deck. The good news is all of that work is just about done, with only a couple of small things yet to be done. The bad news is that all the construction trucks, pallets and tractors did a number to parts of our yard, turning its previously relatively smooth surface into a festival of ruts and uneven bits.
This will not do, so Krissy had the landscaping company we use come out, dig out the ruts, regrade and then reseed the lawn. This means that for the next few weeks there’s probably going to be this big brown patch in the yard (which I assume will be covered by straw, etc; I guess I’ll find out by the end of the day), but after that everything will be fine. This is a bit of cosmetic work that’s actually been a few years in the making — parts of the redone area have been uneven for a while now — but it was the ruts left by the construction vehicles that made Krissy decide now was the time.
(Well, that and the fact that, inasmuch as we’re already having so much else done — and have budgeted for it — the additional expense of this can just get rolled into all of that.)
It’ll be nice to walk on that part of the lawn without possibly tripping, and also, inasmuch as this is the last piece of (intended) work at the house for the year, it’ll be nice to not have other people’s trucks and construction vehicles around. I like what we’ve done with the place, to be sure. I’m looking forward to being able to enjoy it.
Kraith Collected, a collection of Star Trek zines set in the Kraith universe, is importing a copy of the zines’ fanworks to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).
Kraith Collected is a series of works in the Kraith universe, a series of Star Trek: The Original Series fanfictions, many originally published in other zines. Each volume contains works by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and other writers whose works went through several rounds of edits to be given a number in the Kraith chronology and become part of the official Kraith universe. There are also two pieces of meta, Kraith Creator's Manual and Understanding Kraith, which describe the Kraith universe.
The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) is to assist publishers of fanzines to incorporate the fanworks from those fanzines into the Archive of Our Own. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with publishers who want to import their fanzines and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Kraith Collected to import a copy of the fanzines listed above into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the fanzines in their entirety, all art in the fanzines will be hosted on the OTW's servers and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.
We will begin importing works from Kraith Collected to AO3 after July 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the task. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collections in the meantime.
We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.
All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.
Please contact Open Doors with your creator pseud(s) and email address(es), if:
You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than the publisher has a record of.
You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
You would NOT like your works copied to AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the fanzine collections.
You are happy for us to preserve your works on AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
You have any other questions we can help you with.
Please include the name of the publisher or fanzine in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account the publisher has a record of, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with Kraith Collected to confirm your claims.)
We're excited to be able to help preserve Kraith Collected!
- The Open Doors team and Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.
This is a fanfic journal. I'm interested in a wide variety of fandoms as well as in meta- and theoretical discussions; see my interests list for specific fandom categories. Comments, critiques, recs, reviews, and the like are always welcome.
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