A03 stories I covet

[whitewriter]

With all this trouble finding my old fanfics that I loved, (despite the joys of trawling the archives) you'd think I'd have learnt to archive my own reads for easy finding later on in life -- Albiet I didn't ever think I'd come back to fanfiction, seeing as I'm back here once I feel like there's a high chance there will be a third time. I read these in early October. Better late than never. I could have made my life easier also by having an AO3 acct and saving stuff I liked as I go... I'm doing this as I trawl through for these two:


All the choices we've made by Leiascully

Explained for me that huge gap between IWTB and S10/11 and mapped out (could have) happened in those 7 years. It's bittersweet but lovely. Slow burn. Addictive read. I don't think I got past the one about the Taurus, I don't think I realised there was a series within the series. The first two, Visitor and Resident are the main courses here, and the others are where Leiascully revisits the paradigm she created.

Score card: 

Characterisation of canon characters: A

Characterisation of original characters: none

Story line: A-

Smut: B- 

Overall writing: A

THIS ONE. FOUND IT.

Terra Firma series by Malibusunset

It's romance, AU and has delicious original characters.
It explains the original end of the series (S9/William) and then goes into a beautiful tangent of M and S's relationship for the next 20 years, right into their 60s (so its long... have I mentioned how much I like longfic? ... surely I have). Not all is smooth sailing and it gets so hauntingly beautiful when S returns to the lighthouse of the beginning of their relationship and 'discovers' herself ( and M's place in her life ) as she has a ?midlife? crisis of sorts. Almost achingly realistic, I enjoyed this massively.

Score card: 

Characterisation of canon characters: A

Characterisation of original characters: A

Story line: A

Smut: A

Overall writing: A

Comments

[wendelah1]

Your link for leiascully's series should be: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1037546

I really love "Visitor" but they're all quite good. She's a fine writer and has only gotten better over the years.

[whitewriter]

Thanks! I've fixed it.
There are some real gems at AO3 aren't there. It's nice that there are new archives still being added to. Shame that there isn't a gossamer 2.0 but it seems the owners have moved on...

PS. love your display pic today <3

[wendelah1]

Thanks. It was my first LJ icon and for a time, my only one.

Thank heavens, the owners of Gossamer are still hosting the archive on their own servers (and paying for it) but they haven't allowed updating for nearly a decade. When geocities, etc. went down the Internet Archive saved some sites and some stories. Some have been moved wholesale to AO3. Fanfiction.net is still updating. There is new XF fic being posted first to Tumblr, though I find that site near impossible to navigate now. Some have been moved to other fan sites. Old as it looks (geocities vintage), this links list is still useful because the hosting was moved. X-Files Fanfic Specialized Archive Links. On the other hand, it appears Fugues Fiction Archive is down again and there are some stories there which are not hosted anywhere else. I don't think it's backed-up by the Wayback machine.

Have you considered reccing at fancake? The current month's theme is "favorite fanworks."

[whitewriter]

When I think of all the things that are lost due to time re: to XF fandom, I find it insane how much is still available, that was around since the mid 1990s -- and it still looks.... the same (like, why wouldn't it...). Makes you think: if there's anything you need to.

I wanted to know how much running Gossamer would cost and i found this on fanlore:
From 1998 to 2003, the Gossamer administration server was hosted behind a residential ISDN line by Chael Hall, paid for out of his pocket. From 1998 to 2001, this line cost approx. $200/month, during 2002-2003, approx. $90/month. In 2003, the Gossamer administration server was moved to a commercial dedicated server ($90/month) https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Gossamer_Project

If it's approx $100 a month thats $1,200 a year... not exactly cheap.

Fancake looks really cool! Hadn't seen it before. The last time someone recommended an x-files fanfiction on there wasn't even that long ago. Sept 2020 <3