Here’s another birthday present for Richard Armitage fans
I was told last week that DF was going to put at least one new admin in place, and I’ve heard anecdotally that someone is now answering applications to read the site. Yay! I’m really delighted about this because several months ago I wanted to write a post about some older fanfics, but couldn’t because I couldn’t guarantee any new fans would be able to see them. I wrote a fair number of messages to different people behind the scenes and something finally seems to have moved. So yay! again.
Dreamer Fiction is an older fanfic website devoted specifically to Richard Armitage fan fiction. For years, before A03 and wattpad were a thing, DF was address #1 for this stuff in the fandom. For reasons that had to do with stuff that happened in the fandom early on (disputes over openly visible racy fic), access is by password only. You can apply for access here. You used to have to be able to show you were 18 or have someone on the board vouch for you; I don’t know if they are going to continue those rules or not. But I encourage any fanfic lovers who haven’t been there to request a password and check it out. Let me know if I can vouch for you.
Yay! Yay! Yay!
Me + Richard Armitage 
I may. But I’m used to AO3 since I can both read & post. Thanks for the info though, Serv.
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With a password, you can read and post on DF. There’s a lot of stuff there that will never make it onto A03. I’m not going to stop reading A03, but there’s a lot of great stuff on DF.
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As Serv said, as long as you’re a member, you can post and respond to your heart’s content. I tend to post there 24 hours before and discussion is much easier there than AO3 and CERTAINLY Watty (which insists on reformatting everything I post. It takes me longer to clean up what they did than it did to tag it!) There’s some great stuff there that is pre-Ao3!
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To some extent, A03 was set up to hamper discussion. It was created after a serious of blowouts at LiveJournal and one of the problems at LJ was perceived to be that it was too easy for commentators to bully writers.
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Great news! Had only talked with Guylty about DF yesterday, and how utterly sad it is to not to be able to find sb who still feels responsible for this treasure anymore..
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They were having some severe communication problems. I really hope this means they are sorted out.
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I always have found DF easier to navigate than either A03 or Wattpad. I’m hoping this means a resurgence because I love a good fanfic and am always looking for new stories
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I like the A03 chapter paging better, but I never had a problem with the way DF organized it, and DF reflected the state of the art in forum posting at the time (proboards).
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I was a moderator there some years ago – before my RL got insanely busy and I came to fear that I’d miss a problem if it came up ( not that it ever did because they were such a nice bunch of people). I’m sorry to hear they’ve been struggling. There was some brilliant fanfic there and a really supportive atmosphere. I’ll try and log back in soon.
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Four or five of us are still writing and posting our stories on Dreamerfiction- a couple of us on a weekly or monthly basis. The site hasn’t got heavy traffic but is very welcoming and supportive. And, as Servetus said, the quslity of the fiction in its archives is fantastic and pretty much exclusive to the forums.
It’s certainly worth joining. Get ready to spend hours delving into its big collection of stories inspired by Richard’s gallery of characters. It used to be even larger, but a good number of fics were pulled down sometime ago and are now available as published ebooks/ paper books.
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I remember enjoying your writing Lilianschild.
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I’m still working on both my Lucas and Guy WIPs. I’m itching to post a new chapter soon, but my tutoring and Cambridge training takes most of my time and leaves me quite strained.
The quality of the fic still being posted is amazing- Jayarjay and JennyS’, to mention some of my all-time favourite authors.
By the by,I’m glad you remember me although my moniker there isn’t lillianschild but lexie171170. And I certainly do remember you; you’re missed!
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I knew you under both names Lillian/Lexie so I think we must have chatted in more than one forum. I’m glad you mentioned it though as I went looking for you yesterday and wondered why I couldn’t find your writing under The Lillianschild moniker.
I spent a happy half hour yesterday looking at the site and vowing to reread some of the stories.
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I didn’t realize you were a mod! Cool!
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I had an accident and had to spend several hours a day lying down. DF was a Godsend at a time when i was in pain, lonely and bored. I used to lie on my back with a laptop propped on a pillow on my stomach and I think they asked me to mod as i was so active for a while. But once i went back to work i felt such a fraud because i really couldn’t spend the required time on it, so i reluctantly resigned. Sometimes life gets in the way of things i would really like to do – and this thread has reminded me that reading RA fanfic is one of those things!
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Well, I’m glad you recovered 🙂 Now you can combine health and fanfic!
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Very interesting. Thank you.
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I have some favorite fics there that I love to go back and read once in a while. 🙂
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Yeah — repository of the best Sparkhouse / Standring stuff, for sure.
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Thank you, I had never heard of this website. I just applied for access.
I usually go to AO3 for stories. I saw some good stuff on Wattpad but there’s something about the app that puts me off, I can’t really explain what.
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Wattpad is murder to post at (at least for me) – they assume the writers don’t space when they should so they add to it. They totally screw up my formatting and the site won’t let me post an unpublished draft and then go back and fix it and release it. Not will it let you delete something that’s a mess. The last time I posted there, it took me almost an hour to fix the mess they made. And discussing it with their ‘staff’ is a lesson in futility. I won’t post at Watty anymore because of it.
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Wattpad will to me always be the site where a group of fans bullied a great author off because they didn’t approve of how she was writing John Porter. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t great stuff there (CarlyQ’s story about the Doc and Regan was a fave), but simply that the forum allowed that and none of the other venues where I read fanfic would have permitted it.
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On occasion, someone will tell me they don’t like the way I write a character. I tell them to write their own. You know where the ‘x’ is. Then I get accused of just wanting sunshine blown up my behind. It’s amazing how many people don’t under the difference between ‘constructive criticism (what they THINK they’re giving) and out and out bashing (what they are giving) I’ve learned to just thank them for reading and move on and if they continue, ignore them. I’ve only had one that I had continual issues with and I was able to block them. (This was at Ffnet)
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Good for you!! I tried to sign on when you directed me there for Manna From Heaven and emailed admin for a password and never heard back.🤦♀️🤷♀️
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Try again. It seems like they’re trying to catch up. Some have, I guess there’s a backlog. There is some AWESOME stuff there you won’t find anywhere else.
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Zee yes they replied this afternoon and activated my Acct! Thanks for any positive vibes you may have sent out! 😀😉
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This was a campaign with a small group of people who insisted that a story was so wrong it was dangerous encouraging others to vote the story down. Admittedly I enjoyed the story despite the fact that not every moment of it was 100 percent realistic, but it was sad to me when the poster pulled her stuff down. The story can still be read elsewhere (I think maybe on C19?).
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I’ll have to hunt it up. I hate it when readers can’t be adults. If you don’t like something, x out of it and move on. That’s more like a personal vendetta.
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with a little digging I found the story elsewhere: https://melaniegoldmund.weebly.com/very-very-carefully.html
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A purged version is also available on C19: http://c19.proboards.com/board/469/zelofheda-stories
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That sounds very frustrating. I’ve never tried to post there, I only read, and I don’t much like the app’s layout and design.
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I find it NOT very user friendly, either as a writer or a reader. When I first started posting, I didn’t have a problem, but then they ‘updated’ the site and made everything horrid. I don’t even bother anymore.
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In a way, it was a victim of its own success — it was supposed to be a safe place for fan fiction authors to fly under the radar and talk to the likeminded, and it was that. We weren’t supposed to advertise it but it was supposed to spread by word of mouth. It eventually became so under the radar that new people weren’t learning about it anymore. Hopefully that will change now.
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The very first chaRActer fanfic I read was on Dreamer Fiction, about Lucas North, called The Dancer (iirc) Over the years I simply haven’t had the time to read much there, but I would love to revisit that particular story.
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Same here — there are some really great older stories there that are deserving of attention even apart from my own wish to keep going back to some things.
I have this weird partiality for this story called “Overnight Therapy” that is essentially a Mary Sue just cuddling and feeding Lucas. All Khandy’s originals are there. And of course, FedoraLady’s stuff.
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I feel bad that I didn’t think to find a new admin sooner. I honestly thought DF was no longer relevant or wanted or maybe that’s just me projecting my own feelings about the place…either way, I’m delighted there is still interest. The new admins are enthusiastic and doing a great job, I just host the place as part of RAnet and I’ll continue to do so now that I see it’s still wanted. For many years DF was a haven of creativity and was very important to me, it’s how I forged some early friendships and it’s good to know the writing will continue to be read.
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My take: I think what’s confusing about this situation is that the raison d’etre for the site has apparently disappeared because the fandom has changed and because the social media world is very different — it’s no longer a significant intra-fandom political problem to publish certain kinds of things, and even if it were, there are so many places to go with those things now that even interested parties don’t see them all (let alone people who are bothered by them or just don’t want to see them in their favorite venues). But as you say, I don’t think interest in the material has fallen, especially as new fans appear, and if that’s where it is, people will still want to go there. (It’s a bit like all those fanvid sites that have now disappeared — the host is not as relevant as it was due to tech changes but people still want to see the vids.)
I never published most of my fan fic (what I did publish is scattered through this blog), but I appreciated that there was a sort of commonality of assumptions and purpose about the writers and discussions there.
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Ali, despite its apparent idleness,we definitely owe you a debt of gratitude for creating and maintaining this haven for both authors and readers of RA fiction.It’s continued to be my go-to fiction repository for the past seven years and a nice community to share my work with.
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That’s lovely to hear, thank you.
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A friend of mine requested membership almost a week ago and hasn’t heard back. She tried to send another request, but the system told her the name was taken and she needed to validate the account. She’s not gotten an email… where can she go to have another validation notice sent to her?
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with a little digging I found the story elsewhere: https://melaniegoldmund.weebly.com/very-very-carefully.html
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I would go back to that main address and ask for a different screenname — then explain when she hears from the mod. http://www.dreamerfiction.com/forum/
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Thans Serv. I have been reading WP and AO3 and I think I have just about hit the ones that have decent writing so it is nice to find another place where I can go and read some more. Thanks so much. You give us such great information. 🙂
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The quality varies there, too, of course. But even stories that are not as complex can be interesting for other reasons.
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For the sake of completeness — I just looked at the forums. It doesn’t look like Armitage Army or Richard Armitage central still have active fanfic threads, but C19 surely does: c19.proboards.com. I know all of them hosted fanfic back in the day.
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If you mean there aren’t any new fics lately on either forum, then you’re right. However, the subboards devoted to them are still there.
I post my updates on AA, RAC and C19 after sharing them on DF, AO3, FFNET & Wattpad. I haven’t been sharing new chapters in quite sometime because I have very little time left in my hectic schedule to devote to writing, so it’s coming as slow as molasses.
Really lovely fic on C19- mainly NS stuff and some wonderful Guy fiction from way back. AA has a wondeful Lucas story that has become canon for me after Series 9; it’s called “The Phoenix Project” by Therapne.
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By the way, the fiction I mentioned has a good dash of John Porter thrown in,
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yeah, I looked through the most recent few pages of new and refreshed topics and there weren’t any updates relating to fic. You’ve definitely got your bases covered!
I think the issue with C19 was that it was limited to PG-rated stories, no? I seem to remember an RH story appearing on C19 and then on DF in unexpurgated versions.
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Yes, Proboards doesn’t allow posts that are rated above PG-13. C19 has been the only one to let authors offer R-rated chapters or unexpurgated versions of posted chapters via PM- notably Lady Aline, whose Guy fiction was really good but dealt with sensitive issues. Do you remember “The Bear” and “The Demoiselle”? This is a practice that was discontinued a few years ago, as far as I know.
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Thanks for your efforts on this. Do you know if they are going through the backlog of those of us who applied to get on? Or would you suggest applying again?
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It might be worth-trying again. The new administrators have started vetting new members; I’ve just noticed a two-day-old member already browsing the threads,so the process seeems to have sped up.
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I’ve just confirmed twenty-three new members have had their accounts activated since this blog entry was made.
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Interesting. Presumably they would have received a notification email? I haven’t seen one yet.
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If you don’t see one in the next few days, I’d suggest signing up once again.
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OK thanks. I put my request in at the beginning of April, so I’m wondering if they’re working backwards from the most recent.
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Oh wow mine was in mid July so that would be really backlogged then.
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You haven’t heard yet either?
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No nothing I just thought I was forgotten🙄🤷♀️
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I know I’ve said this before, but I’d give it another try 🙂
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Seems like the way to go.
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They told me they had cleared the back log so go ahead and try again and they will see your request immediately.
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Sounds good. I’ll do that. Thanks.
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This is fantastic news!!! What a birthday present, indeed.
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Perhaps it will draw a few more hesitant people out into the open with their stories, too.
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