Fannish Friday: Dearly departed websites

[lirazel]

Since Tumblr seems to be on its way to a slow and agonizing death and I will miss it terribly, I am reminding myself that many a website has gone the way of the dodo and we're all still here, having fun and making art and friends and shitposts.

My own personal Lirazel's Rule of the Internet is: anything you want to last will surely disappear, and everything you most want to disappear will stay findable forever.

Anyway, tell me about a site that has disappeared that you think is a real loss to the either the internet at large or yourself in particular!

Obviously, Livejournal pre-Russian-overlords belongs on this list, as do specific LJ communities that we lost in various strikethroughs (I am ridiculous, so I most sorely feel the loss of the original fandom_wank).

Two sites that I personally don't feel the need to revisit but am sad are no longer out there are Checkmated (a Ron/Hermione archive where you had to apply to get your fic accepted and mine was and I was SO proud) and All About Spike (a Spike from BtVS archive). I know the fic from the latter has been saved on AO3, but it's sad to me that the site itself isn't there! You lose a lot when you can't see the original design/layout/etc.

Now, many sites are available through the Wayback Machine, which is absolutely wonderful, but many people don't know about that, there are broken links for various things, and I'm not convinced that the Internet Archive will be able to continue forever.

Comments

[shipperslist]

Regretsy! It was awesome and for some reason, it had a special relationship with Finland. 😁

[lirazel]

I hadn't ever heard of this but I just looked it up and I am torn between thinking that kind of snark site is kind of mean and also thinking that, well, these people decided to sell their wares, so.... (I won't lie, I bet it was hilarious!)

[shipperslist]

Oh, it was often mean but like you said, these people decided to sell their wares. In my mind, it's a bit like cake wrecks. Sometimes hideous creations deserve to be called exactly that.

[lirazel]

You're not wrong!

[landofnowhere]

The Young Writers Club! A Web 1.0 site for young writers online, founded by a girl in Turkey with help from her computer science professor who acted as webmaster, which attracted a vibrant international community, and was a supportive community for me when I was 12-14.

[lirazel]

That is SO sweet and exactly the kind of thing that makes me nostalgic for 1.0!

[elisi]

All About Spike was the single best organised archive ever. :'(

[lirazel]

It was a good place!

[elisi]

I am fully in denial about Tumblr. It's a ridiculous place, but it's where all the discourse happens.

[lirazel]

I think it'll end up being like FFN, where it still continues to exits, but it's messier and messier and fewer and fewer people use it. I don't know what will replace it.

[elisi]

Ideally they'd all come to dreamwidth.

I was going to say that maybe we'd get a fanversion (like we got AO3), but then realised that that's what DW is, more or less. Just less... messy.

I know wattpad exists, but am unsure how it functions.

MEH. Stop sucking 2025!

[rekishi]

Delicious 😭

[lirazel]

OH MY GOD DELICIOUS WHY DID YOU REMIND ME???

(I will probably not ever recover from that one in particular. I'll be on my death bed at 92 talking about it.)

[rekishi]

I take no responsibility, you provoked it 😂😂💜

[lirazel]

That's true, I was asking for it! Amazing that I was so traumatized by it that I had blocked it from my memory entirely!

[rekishi]

It really is tragic, I still miss it!

[lokifan]

GOD, A HEARTBREAKER.

[dollsome]

Only now am I recovering from LJ, okay! The universe can't take Tumblr too!!

[lirazel]

Right??????

[sawthefaeriequeen]

The Sugar Quill! I got so many good book recommendations there, and lbr, I have come to accept that my Favorite Harry Potter Thing Ever is not actually the books themselves but After the End by Arabella and Zsenya. Thankfully someone put it up on FF.net, and there's a PDF floating around.

This made me check if Go Fug Yourself is still around, and thankfully, yes. They are a lot less funny than they used to be though, or maybe we're all just older.

[lirazel]

Oh that was a good one! The infrastructure of HP sites were SO good.

I have come to accept that my Favorite Harry Potter Thing Ever is not actually the books themselves but After the End by Arabella and Zsenya

This...kind of makes me want to reread it...

They are a lot less funny than they used to be though, or maybe we're all just older.

I really think our senses of humor have changed a lot from the early aughts.

[sawthefaeriequeen]

Honestly, the only big flaw it has is that it's way too het. Couples getting together left and right, all het. Although, there IS lovely subtext between Remus and Sirius. I'm normally just a casual shipper of them, but I don't think I've ever shipped any version of Wolfstar so hard, not even their book ones.

[annapeace]

Well it hasn't actually disappeared but I do miss the original iterations of Facebook. Back when it was actually about making friends and getting to see updates from distant family members. Now it's full of spam/scams and I guess it's useful if you need marketplace?

[lirazel]

Yeah, that's an understandable reaction!

[pauraque]

This is a more recently defunct site, but I miss the Friends of Captain Awkward forum. The modding was kind of intense, which I'm sure is how the mods got burnt out, but it helped me a lot when I was learning how to set boundaries.

Nothing against the person with fond memories of Regretsy, but the creator of that site did something very transphobic and refused to apologize or reconsider, and when I complained about it on Twitter she personally told me I was wrong and didn't know what I was talking about because HER gay friends thought what she did was fine, so that was the end of me ever looking at Regretsy.

[lirazel]

I've read the Captain Awkward blog but haven't seen the forum, though I can guess how helpful it would be! I'm glad you had that resource!

YIKES!!!!

[pauraque]

So I actually meant to say what April Winchell did, but I was so out of it I didn't quite realize that I hadn't.

transphobia

She and a male friend appeared at a Halloween event where her friend dressed as Chaz Bono and she dressed as "Chastity Bono." This was in like 2011 so Chaz had only recently transitioned. When informed that the costumes were in poor taste, she doubled down and claimed it was okay because her gay friends thought it was funny.

[lirazel]

Yeah, that's not a good idea. Especially the doubling down!

[duskpeterson]

I miss Yahoo Groups. I had some of my best conversations there. I've never understood why the fanfic community abandoned it wholesale.

[lirazel]

It was a good time, wasn't it?

[duskpeterson]

:)

[lokifan]

I miss LJ, of course, and definitely fandom_wank! And I wouldn't be going there now but this post made me realise Skyehawke is gone, which definitely seems like a shame to me.

[lirazel]

We've lost so much!