Echoes · from · the · West · forums

Split-infinity.org expired recently; I've submitted a request for renewal and it should be up shortly. *crosses fingers* In the meantime, don't fret if you can't access EftW! It should still be there.

_{I hope :D;;;;}.

a_mael and rroselavy.

We're very happy to have you both aboard, and look forward to working with you! :)

Current Mood:

excited

I'm cleaning out the extra copies I have on my shelf, so I'm putting the following up for sale:

Saiyuki #1 - 9 in Chinese (Enix covers)
Saiyuki #9 in Japanese (Enix cover)

Saiyuki RELOAD #1 - 4 in EITHER Chinese or Japanese (I'm willing to sell one set but not the other)
Saiyuki RELOAD #1 in Japanese (this being an extra copy)

Saiyuki Novel #1 and #2 in Chinese

Each volume is going for US $5 per, discounting shipping (estimated at about US $8 per book to the US by normal air mail).

All copies are in excellent condition. If you need more information about the publisher, I'll be happy to check and look for pictures.

Also, would anyone be interested in Salty Dog #1 and #2 and the REQUIEM movie guide ('Visual Companion)? (In Japanese, of course). Those will be going for a slightly higher asking price, but I'd like to gauge response first.

I accept paypal and credit card via paypal ^^;

As you guys know, EftW switched its code last week or so. Several changes occured.

1. Authors vs members
If you click on authors, it defaults to a page that shows people who have at least one fic on the archive ("authors"). In order to see the names of people without fictions, use the drop-down menu to select "All members".

2. My account vs account info
'My account' has been renamed to Account Info. All the revelant links are still there. The only difference is the addition of 'Add a new series' or 'Edit a series'. Serieses are ... as the name implies ... serieses. I believe they act like standard fictions, except that you can allow other authors to add to it. Otherwise, everything remains the same.

Again, I'm still debugging, so if you encounter any problems (like being unable to upload fics, formatting messed up on your fics, etcetc) please email me or drop a comment here! Thanks!

Apologies for the delay. I got eaten by grues again.

Test runs of the new script have shown that it is beautiful, and it will, hopefully, fix all those horrible problems that we're having with the existing one. *smiles* With any luck, the upgrade will go smoothly and incorporate all the new features without a hitch.

If not...

...I'm gonna be at this all weekend. And it's a long weekend in most countries too.

--

ETA: Backbone is up. Pretty layouts are not; however, everything should work just fine. I had a huge scare in the middle where it appeared that the stories had not ported to the new script (I was prepared to delete everything and manually re-upload all 429 fictions + goodness knows how many chapters, and apologize profusely for the lost reviews ^^; ) Fortunately, switchover appears to be fine. Please check out the front page for the technical updates.

All of you who expressed interest should have received an email from me. Please check your accounts. Hotmail users, please check your junk/spam folders in case you didn't get the mail. This is extremely important, so if you haven't heard from me, please contact me ASAP and leave me your email address!

While it is a self-beta job, it has been looked over by several people and is the first in my Saiyuki Serial (now at 10 chapters). Gunning has won in two different contests, so my thinking is that the spelling/grammar and content is likely okay. Yes, it is very much NC-17 but so are other fics on the site. If this is just because of lack of people available to review stuff, I'll shut the hell up and wait patiently. If there is a problem with the fic, I'd appreciate someone letting me know.

Current Location:	Puzzled & wondering
Current Mood:	Puzzled
Current Music:	radio stuff

Thanks for your enthusiastic response! Rest assured that I've received your emails (or I should have, if nothing's wrong with my mail *grin*). Unfortunately, I'm abroad at this time and I won't have internet access for the next week and a bit, so I'll get back to ya'all on that.

*gloms everyone*

Current Mood:

WOW!

April 07 2006: Looking for Staff

Are you crazy about reading Saiyuki fanfiction? Are you a grammar nazi? Do you know the difference between who and whom? Are you, like Sanzo, capable of spotting a Mary Sue from 10,000 meters? Or, heaven forbid, do you like EftW and would like to contribute to its running?

Then we want you!

EftW is looking for a ton of new people to help in the running of the site. Unfortunately, some of you may have noticed the occasional large delays in getting fics vetted, because the mods were all eaten by Grues... I mean, youkai. So we need more!

You don't have to be a grammar nazi. That was a marketting gimmick. We're actually looking for two types of moderators:

1. Technical moderators -- who can ferret out those pesky grammatical errors and stylistic pitfalls; and

2. Consultants who can give their opinion on plot and style, like whether it's witty or breaks the corniness meters; whether it's detailed-to-death, or whether it's interesting. Basically, whether you liked it!

Anyone and everyone is free to volunteer! I'm not looking for the opinions of a certain, elite group of people with Ph.Ds in linguistics -- I'm looking for the opinions of the readers -- the people this archive was meant for. The only requirement is that you must have a rapid turnaround time. Unless you're away or unusually busy, I'm looking for people who won't take more than a day to descend on the fic and tell me yes or no (no need for long, formalistic arguments, though) after the alert goes out.

I'd actually love to have as many people as possible on this team. So if you're an avid reader, please drop me an email.

I'm also looking for volunteers to assist with things like new layouts and running fanfic competitions! If you have some layout making abilities, or just some free time, please drop me a note too!

On the technical side, I am direly in need of assistance with a migration from efiction 1.1 to efiction 2.0, the streamlining of the entire stupid linebreak system, etc. In fact, if someone can recode the entire-- oh well. Nevermind that. Anyway! If you have experience working with efiction and/or you have any knowledge of PHP/mySQL, I need your help!

(They're all different pairings and most of them are one-shots with a little bit of preliminary and with most of the focus on the sexx0r. I can't remember if I pulled out anything that's worthy of a warning label, beyond explicit sex scenes, but just to be on the safe side: all of them are NC-17.)

(solaas, and karose if you're reading this, maybe you could also give me a heads up on what you think of some of the four fics in the latter category?)

( Links )

Current Mood:

tired

After all, this archive is about the readers ^_^.

First and foremost, this is not directed at any one person or any one fic. These are common issues we run into, and so I'd like to clear them out of the way first.

And today's topic is... smut.

There are several kinds of smut, and this is a field where personal preference plays a very, very heavy part. A lot of smut fics get bounced from moderator to moderator, often requiring input from 3, if not all 5 members of the panel. Therefore, I'm wondering: What do people look out for in a smut scene? (Note, this need not be a smut fic. This could be a PWP, or part of a longer fic.)

This is not so much a question of personal tastes in slash/non-slash, kinks, pairings... well, content, basically. Those are individual and are not used as a basis for assessment, usually, unless the characterization is off. What I'm wondering about is style.

Long or short? Graphic or fade to blacks? Pretty analogies, or not? Blow by blow account or key highlights? NC-17 / X fics are by far the most popular on the archive, so do you read them _because_ they're NC-17? If so, is there something in particular you look out for? Can you recommend any smut fics (preferably Saiyuki related, although since we're discussing style here, anything goes) that you think are representative of your preferences or just something that you really, really like?

For writers, do you write smut for a particular reason? For the sake of writing a smut scene? Or to prove/explore a point about characterization?

Really-Really Rusty in FF-land

...and rather desperate for constructive criticism from the younger/faster writer’s set I might add. =)