Some AntiSpammer Ideas

Hey all,
So I've done a thing where new members will have randomly generated passwords emailed to them rather than being able to choose their own. According to Lyndsie, this will help to weed out spammers-- believe me, we're still working on a more elegant solution. Real members will need to submit a support ticket to get their correct password. It's NOT an ideal or complete solution by any means, but for now, this could be a good stopgap measure. Because I will not, OH HELL NO I WILL NOT, allow this site to turn into a spam review graveyard like some other fanfic sites that have been around awhile have done. NOT here. NOT now. NOT on my watch. No no no. ;) More updates soon.

Progress against spammers, yay!

Hey all,
I talked to Lyndsie, and we have a PLAN!! We're going to reset a couple of things so that members who register will get their passwords a different way... they'll probably need to request them, so it will be very easy to weed out the Spammers of Doom. I don't know exactly how this will work yet, but we are ON EET. More updates soon. :)

Deep Fried Spam Curds

Hey all,
Believe me, I KNOW how frustrating the spam issue is. I'm still trying to find out what can be done. If I had the money to throw at this-- I guarantee I would. If I win Powerball after all, then it'll get fixed right away... it's kind of hard without buying a ticket of course. ;) But if worrying about this was enough to fix it, it WOULD already be fixed!!!

... so why the title? My sister actually ate deep fried Spam curds at the Minnesota State Fair in August, and I don't think I'll ever be able to forget it... no matter how hard I try.

Of Icky Spam and Ickier Spammers

Hey all,
As you may have noticed, we're having a spam problem. :P Spam members = spam reviews = spammy ickiness. I really hate to shut down autoregistration when it wasn't working for the longest time and then we finally got it to work over the past few months, but that may be what needs to happen. I'll be talking to Lyndsie about this. But for now, if you see spammers or spam reviews, PLEASE let us know!! Post here, post on our FB page, or message me. Thanks, and together, we will defeat the Spammers of Evil! :)

ETA: And btw... NEVER CLICK ON SPAM. That's why they keep sending it. Because somebody always does.

The FFN D/G Exchange is COMPLETE!

Time to r and r! Nominations are due on the 27th, and voting, I THINK, starts on Sept 1st. Remember, one of these is mine, but I can’t tell you which one. So many great fics this year… Here's the complete list

The DG Forum Fic Exchange - Summer 2017

The Secret Language of Flowers

Colour and Light
The Phoenix and Dragon
Indiscretion
The Golden Afternoon
In My Place
The Secret Life of Draco Malfoy
As It Should Be
Booze & Hoots
Lucidity

Waiting for the Sun
Night of the Phoenix
Malfoy's Patented Daydream Scheme
Little Wonders
Skin
Decoee This

News on the D/G Fic Exchange!

OMG I DON'T EVEN *&^*)&^*)&^&*^!
The exchange fic is WRITTEN!!!

Okay, it still needs some editing. But it's done! It exists! It is a thing!!! I seriously thought this wasn't going to happen, BUT IT DID. It was written as the CampNaNo project, which helped. Can't they have it every month?? ;)

#CampNaNoWinner2017!

ETA: I can't post a cookie from it, because... well, for an exchange, you're not supposed to know who the authors are until the big reveal. ;) But it has Draco and Ginny in it. And they do things. And say words. And things happen. I don't THINK that gave too much away...

Summer 2017 D/G Fic Exchange Yay! :)

And... IT'S HERE! The DG Forum Fic Exchange – Summer 2017! YAY!!! (throws confetti) Longtime author Boogum is running the exchange through the FFN DG forum, and I'm working on bringing in even more authors! if you've ever written D/G... thought about writing D/G... are willing to try writing D/G... we need YOU. The link below goes to the post with all the details, so you'll obviously want to go there, but here are some dates:

April 10: prompt submissions open

April 22: Prompt submissions close. Prompt requests open.

May 6: Prompts assigned - start writing!

July 31: Final writing deadline for all fics. Stories are posted daily in the order in which they were received.

TBC: All stories posted.

TBC: Accepting nominations.

TBC: Voting period.

TBC: Winners are announced/Writer identities revealed.
Again, check out all the details right here!

Summer 2017 Fic Exchange!

Hey all,
Yes, we WILL be having a fic exchange this summer! :) But we're going to do it differently from the way we have before. This will be a joint project with the FFN DG forum group, which means we're going to do it through FFN (doing exchanges on LJ adds a LOT, a lot more unnecessary work.) Prompt picking will probably be in May with a long chunk of time to write the fics. And we can't do it without YOU, so we're going to have a lot of FIA participants! (OH yes... oh yes, we will. ;)

That's all the info for now, but more updates when there's more news.

WE'RE FAMOUS! KIND OF! YAY!

A repost from FB, but not everybody reads our page there...

LOOK AT THIS! WE'RE FAMOUS! YAY! (runs around screeching...)

Ahem. :) FIA is in an academic paper!! It was published last year, and I just found it now. Lookie lookie look. The archive is in it... there are quotes such as "Anise’s body of work is particularly vast"... (blush) READ EET.

FanFiction, Fire, and Ice: The Draco/Ginny Fandom as a Critique of Harry Potter

New poll question!

Hey all, yep... there's an actual new poll question. The last one was up for a while, and it was time for a change! What would YOU like to see on the site? Vote for your favorite answer, come back and vote again, leave comments, and... I don't know... go outside and enjoy spring. :)

Spammers and Other News

Hey all,
So I'm keeping on top of the spammers, and welcome to all actual new members! :) I think I'm narrowing down the weird problem with the occasional 404 error. At first, I thought it was the chapter length, but that didn't seem to be it... then I went through a new chapter paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word... finally identifying the specific line that was the problem. And that's what was so weird... that line was definitely doing it, but I could never figure out what the specific word or phrase or word was that kept triggering the error. So the point is, if anybody has problems with a chapter posting, just keep searching for the exact part that's causing the issue, and you'll eventually find it!! ;)

Another spammer bites the dust...

Okay, we had to get rid of ANOTHER spammer today... this one was more subtle... they left a review that *almost* sounded legit... and then included a spam link to a student-paper-writing service. No, no, no... they're gone. We are on it! And again, I really hope that we don't have to go back to registering everyone by hand.. :P

Spam, spam, icky spam...

Hey all, we just had a bunch of spam users sign up today.. >:[. Ick. I think they've all been deleted, but I'm going to keep watching for new ones. I hate to go back to turning off autoregistration, so let's hope it doesn't go that far!!

Fic submissions are open! :)

Hey all,

We're fully open again, yay! :)

All authors can now turn in fics, including those who were NOT authorized to skip the queue. While every last issue with the site isn't guaranteed to be solved, almost everyone can now get it to come up from their IP address. Please let us know if you're having any ongoing problems at all, and welcome back from the holidays!

New Submissions...

Hey all,
As you MAY have noticed, there have been some issues with the site not coming up for all IP's. You actually might not have noticed at all-- most of them seem to be fine. We think it's the same thing that happened a few years ago, where the DNS servers did not propagate evenly. So while we're still working it out, the archive will be closed to new submissions for a few more days. But it'll still be up, and you can still post fics if you are cleared to post the queue. So hang in there! :)

Weird Things With LJ...

UPDATE:
The entire DGFIAFics archive on LJ has now been backed up with the LJ utility. The NEXT thing to do is to move a copy to the FIA Dreamwidth account (and yep, there is one.) More updates once that's done. But no matter what happens with LJ.,.. we now have a complete and 100% backup of all posts and all fic exchange fics!! Yay! :)

Hey all, as you may (or may not) have seen, some strange things are happening with LJ. The only thing anybody knows for sure right now is that all of the servers have been moved to Russia (from California.) All I can tell you besides that is what a lot of people are saying... which is that this may be a precursor to the whole thing disappearing, falling apart, having major issues, etc etc etc. OTOH, maybe not. There may not be any problems at all with this. But it's important to be prepared...

So what does this mean for the FIA?? First of all, we're obviously not on the LJ servers! ;) So nothing is going to disappear. BUT... and it's a big but... and there's always that big but in the way... all of the exchange fics for all of the exchanges that FIA has EVER had... they're on LJ.

So what does THIS mean??

First of all, I'm going to back up the entire LJ archive over the next couple of weeks. Second of all, we do have a Dreamwidth account, and i'm also going to copy everything there. Third of all, if you ever participated in an exchange, and you didn't *also* post your fic on FIA, DO EET. I will be emailing people invidually also over the next few weeks.

So, the bad news: LJ might end up having some issues, for sure. The good news: We're on it! The even better news: Happy New Year! :)

More details on the whole LJ subject:
The LJ Disaster
Another one:
CONFIRMED: LJ Servers moving to Russia

Holiday Break

Hey all,
As always, we will be closing for the holidays from December 22-Jan 6th. :) If you are authorized to skip the queue, you can still keep submitting and updating fics, though. If not, just wait until January 7th. Happy Holidays/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hannukah/Winter Solstice/Buy Absolutely Everything Day/Whatever It Was Called On the Star Wars Christmas Special!

Announcing the DG Forum's Secret Santa Exchange!

Hey all, So it's time for the DG Forum's "Secret Santa Gift Exchange" on FFN, yay! Please go to the link for all the details, but basically, you just need to go to the FFN group and PM a three word prompt to Boogum. The prompt submissions close at midnight on November 11th, so do it now! You'll be assigned a random prompt in return. Then you'll have until December 26th to write your story, about 500-1000 words. I'm going to write one, and I hope that all of you do too. :)
The 2016 Secret Santa Exchange

Your Favorite Fics... Will Be Here Longer!

Hey all,
So... I just did something that, um, didn't exactly occur to me before... which is to lengthen the amount of time that new fics will be on the front fics page. Not exactly sure why I didn't think of this before. It seems like they're always gone too fast to read and review... so hopefully this will help. :) They'll now be there for 25 days.

And we're back!

I believe I have fixed the most recent issues the site was facing. Please let me know either here or in my forum post if there are still any issues.

Also, due to how I had to fix things, please especially let me know if you come across any stories where the contents of a chapter are missing. Thanks!

Updates on the site situation...

So I went in and did an admin-y thing that SHOULD at least allow people to read the higher rated fics... try and see if it works. :) Lyndsie just let me know that she's started to look at the problem. We are on it!

We don't know what's going on yet, but we're on it...

ETA on 8/22: Lyndsie just emailed me back, and we're going to figure it out! :) I was working on the next chappie of OSB, and I can't post it... (sob). So we will DEFINITELY work this one out.

Hey all,
Some strange messages seem to be showing up at the top of the page. At least they were showing up for me, and then they went away, but... there seem to be some problems with posting new fics and chapters. Sit tight. We're on it, and I just emailed Lyndsie. DON'T PANIC. Keep calm and carry on. :)

Amazing Member Art!

Hey all,
I HAVE to share this incredible fan art from the amazing Plutonium Bunny. Enjoy. :) And let me know if the size seems okay.

An author needs our help!

This page is now twelve years old! Yay! Hugs for everyone! Thank you for being with us on FIA... no matter how long you’ve been here. ;) Personally, I plan to keep this page around until the end of the universe. What makes this site special is the people involved—the writers, the readers, the reviewers, and all the members.

So I want to talk to you about one of our amazing members who needs our help. She’s Iridescent Dreamer on FIA, and Writerdragonfly on FFN/AO3. Something terrible happened in her family less than a week ago.... her stepdad was hurt very badly in an accident.

Here’s her story, in her own words.

“National Guard veteran Andrew Petty was hospitalized on June 20, 2016 (which was his son's 15th birthday) following an accident while working with sulfuric acid that resulted in chemical burns over roughly 25% of his body and inflammation in his throat that resulted in intubation for more than 24 hours.

We are asking for support for Andrew and his wife Jacqueline during this difficult time and the transition afterward.”

I’ve never posted anything like this before, so you know it means something for me to be doing it right now.

Please, click on the image above and give whatever you can. And email her with support at Her gmail address.

Please let her know that we all care. :)

That really really irritating 404 error... we're on it.

ETA on 6/20:
So the word was FOUND through painstaking searches! Guess what it was? No, really, guess.

Rolex.

(As in, "Draco was wearing a...")

So don't write fics that involve Rolexes.

+++
Hey all,
Yep, I know that horrible 404 error thing just started popping up when you try to add new chapters to a fic... I'm going to find out what's going on. Because I was about to add a new chapter of OBSaC!! So for now, here's a cookie... it's hard to find a PG-rated one, but not impossible... ;)

ETA: I think we're figuring out what the issue is-- it seems to be some kind of new trigger word on that weird list that causes the server to identify the chapter as spam. I'm still working on exactly what it was, but for now, Ch. 15 is at least up.
+++

“So what exactly do we do?” she asked. “I mean, isn’t the point of Primal magic that it doesn’t use words?”

Draco shook his head. “I wouldn’t exactly say that; words are always the tools we use to focus magic. I’m going to use the spell that I worked out after I read the book. I put it into a form which I knew even at the time I wouldn’t have been able to try; it would have needed you. It’s the best I can do now.”

“I’ve already told you that I’m ready,” she said, an edge in her voice. She desperately wanted Draco to just get on with it. “You still haven’t explained what we’re supposed to do. Will we both just… I don’t know… sit here and think about the spell?”

“No,” said Draco. “I went through the oldest books several times, and they often implied that some sort of structure would help to focus the spell if both people were involved.”

“So… there are words?” Ginny fumbled.

“A series of questions. I’ll ask, and you’ll answer.”

She nodded. “I’d better stand up, don’t you think? It’s so hard to focus sitting on this floor. I really think all my muscles below the waist fell asleep.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He stood and then offered her his hand; she grasped onto it and felt him pull her up. His palm was smooth and warm, and his fingers held hers in an impersonal way. That gave her hope. Perhaps they could get through this yet. She couldn’t afford to feel anything personal towards Draco, and if that were the entire point of the spell, so much the better.