FictionAlley

Fiction Alley was an archive for Harry Potter fan fiction that was created by Heidi Tandy, Flourish Klink, and others. In July 2018, it was announced that FictionAlley would be moving to the Archive of Our Own as an Open Doors Project.FictionAlley is Moving to the AO3 (announcement at AO3) (Accessed July 19, 2018)FictionAlley is moving in with An Archive Of Our Own (announcement at FictionAlley)
FictionAlley was formed in the summer of 2001 to be a "community in which no person would be unreasonably censored or senselessly banned." A Bit About FictionAlley
While it was officially launched July 22, 2001, its Yahoo Group FictionAlleyWriters and Artists began on July 6, 2001. See Timeline for some other more specific dates.
The archive originated out of Schnoogle, a site that was created by Heidi Tandy and Cassandra Claire."Schnoogle.com started life back in February, 2001, as a site that Cassie and I made for fanfic-ship buttons - things like Sirius/Cordelia and Ron/Pansy and Metis/Ton Riddle. When we started Schnoogle, and thought it would be a little site for novel length fics by members of HP for Grownups, we thought we'd save 35 bucks and keep using the domain name. Oh, we were *fools*.) -- 1606Re: Please help me!, post by Heidi, January 4, 2003 • FictionAlleyWriters and Artists Yahoo! Groups 
The archive is divided into four different so-called houses: Schnoogle for novel-length stories of all genres, TheDarkArts for stories with darker themes like angst, AstronomyTower for romance fanfic and Riddikulus for humourous stories. Each house is associated with a color of one of the houses from the book series: Schnoogle has a green theme, TheDarkArts is blue, the AstronomyTower is red, and Riddikulus is yellow.
It also has an extensive set of forums for discussion of the characters, locations and individual books and movies as they came out, called Fiction Alley Park. The Park is notable among fandom forums for content requirements: members are only allowed to make "one liner" posts in a few specified places, correct capitalization is expected and spelling and grammar must be readable. These requirements allowed the site to claim educational motivations for the forums which aided the site in gaining non-profit status.
It has a Yahoo Group: FictionAlleyWriters and Artists, which was launched July 6, 2001. It is public and can be seen and searched here. This site was originally called "FictionAlleyWriters"; Artists was added roughly a year later.
==Some Homepages Through the Years==
File:fictionalley2003cover.jpg|the 2003 cover—see here
File:fictionalley2004cover.jpg|the 2004 cover—see here
File:fictionalleyfifthbirthdaycover.jpg|the 2005, "Fifth Birthday Cover"—see here
File:FictionAlley.jpg|screenshot of the 2009(?) Homepage
==About==
=== From the Current Site: "A Bit About FictionAlley"===
 
===From the Current Site: "A Guided Tour of the Harry Potter Fandom by Flourish" ===
===A 2011 Description of FictionAlley ===
In 2011, one of FictionAlley's founders gave an extensive interview at Slashcast. The interviewer is emmagrant.
Some excerpts are below:
==Founders/Staff==
One of its founders is Heidi Tandy from fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World who registered the domain name on July 4, 2001.
Another early staff member was Flourish Klink; she joined FictionAlley at the age of thirteen.
"Who started FA? A whole bunch of people! There were about 20 people, including Maddy, Narri Patters, Colin, AngieJ, me [Heidi8, Cassie, Simon, Alex, Carole Estes, Starling, Priscilla, Jana, Yael, Viola, etc. Amber and then Jason came on about a week later to help with technical things." Heidi8: *Since someone asked..., February 27, 2004
See more at Opening Posts: Public Introductions and Who's Who.
===An Undated List of Staff===
Extremely limited and incomplete list/descriptions are below.
Elves: Who to blame for FictionAlley: (FictionAlley has various "team-members". The profiles below belong to the coders (who get fics ready to go online), uploaders (who actually put the stories up for public consumption) and park mods (who keep everything in FictionAlley Park running smoothly). We also have a slew of E-Mentors, who post their profiles here - their job on FA is to meet & greet the site's newbies and give them an introduction to FA and the fandom."
Mods and Other Staff: Other Staff (offline).
===From 2006===
From A Bit About FictionAlley:
 
==Some Additional History==
===Timeline===
* February 2001: Cassandra Claire and Heidi Tandy registered the domain name Schnoogle. Another source cites this as March 3, 2001. "Two years ago yesterday, Schnoogle.com was registered by heidi8 and thegraybook for 'shipper buttons. Wow. It didn't become a fanfic archive till that summer, but still. Wow." -- by [[Heidi8] at How things change; how they stay the same. (March 4, 2003) 
* June/early-July 2001: The archive was technically planned in June/early-July 2001 and to be launched in mid-July beginning with Schnoogle and the authors: Cassandra Claire, Lori, Rhysenn, AngieJ, Penny & Carole, heidi, Barb LP, Yael, Gwendolyn Grace, Flourish, Viola, George Weasley’s Girlfriend, and Al."Welcome to schnoogle.com. novel-length fanfiction July, 2001. new chapters & stories are coming soon from Cassandra Claire, Lori, Rhysenn, AngieJ, Penny & Carole, heidi, Barb LP, Yael, Gwendolyn Grace, Flourish, Viola, George Weasley’s Girlfriend, and Al. -- the original Schnoogle site The rest of the fic houses were to be launched at the end of July, hopefully on July 31st, which is Harry Potter's birthday."Schnoogle is going to be the first of the FictionAlley sites to go
up - we have an ideal soft launch date in the next week or so (:
crosses fingers) and the other houses should launch shortly
thereafter. If everything goes as we hope, at least a skeletal
version of FictionAlley should be ready to go up on Harry's 21st
Birthday." -- Hail and Well Met
* June 22, 2001: Cassandra Claire's Fanfiction.net account was deleted late in the evening on June 22, 2001; fans began commenting on it June 23, 2001.
* July 4, 2001.: Heidi Tandy registered the domain name of "FictionAlley" on July 4, 2001.
* July 6, 2001: Its Yahoo Group (FictionAlleyWriters and Artists) was active beginning July 6, 2001.The Yahoo Group's first message was: "I've decided to post the very first message on this group because... well, because I can. Wow, I recognize everybody on this list. How long is *that* likely to last? In any case, I think a central archive for HP fanfic is a great idea and I hope that it turns out to be more of a pleasure than a burden for those involved. (I don't think there's any way to avoid it feeling like a burden sometimes.) Dare I ask a couple of questions? 1. What's the ETA on having FictionAlley.org up and running? I'm not trying to rush anyone, I'm just curious. 2. What's the policy on the fics being archived at FictionAlley? Is it going to be wide open like FF.net, or is it going to be a more discriminating archive where only fics of a certain quality will appear? Cute name for the site/group, by the way. Took me a while to get it... duh. After Diagon and Knockturn, you'd think I'd know better by now... Thanks to everybody involved in this project, and I wish you all the best, -- Rebecca J. Bohner (a.k.a. R.J. Anderson)' -- Hail and Well Met, July 6, 2001 -- Heidi Tandy's reply: "Welcome to all of you - you writers of novel-length fics (or fic arcs, which can count too)
We've set this list up as an informational place, where you can learn
more about FictionAlley.org - which we hope will be the central Harry
Potter fanfiction site. We're still in the process of setting up the
backend and the site's policies, so we probably won't have answers to
all your questions yet...but things are moving along among the
SchnoogleMods.
"Schnooglemods? What's that?"
Well, here's the situation. FictionAlley is going to be the OverSight
for the archive - and there are going to be 4 houses - one for novel-
length fics (Schnoogle.com), and (most probably) one for romance, one
for humor and one for darkfics (mystery, romance, etc.) - the other 3
houses will not be "novel-length fics", though.
We've looked over sites from other fandoms, like the Star Wars site
at www.fanfix.com, for organizational inspiration, we're perfecting
our HTML and database skills and we're putting together a menu of
excellent resources and treats for the readers and writers.
Schnoogle is going to be the first of the FictionAlley sites to go
up - we have an ideal soft launch date in the next week or so (:
crosses fingers) and the other houses should launch shortly
thereafter. If everything goes as we hope, at least a skeletal
version of FictionAlley should be ready to go up on Harry's 21st
Birthday.
At the moment, we're trying to keep the number of authors low, so we
can get everything up & working with a limited number of fics - and
we are going to have technical standards (minimum length of chapters,
minimum length of completed fics, requested spell-checking and
Lexicon-checking (in other words, spell the words the way they are in
the book wherever possible)) since at least in the immediate future,
all the fic-uploading we do will be by hand.
We're still working on the exact policies, and will post them here
shortly.
FictionAlley should be at least 83% fun - yes, everyone will likely get the occasional UnFun flame, but on any given day, visiting FictionAlley should not be something that stresses you out :)
Happy to see you here! heidi"
* July 11, 2001: Schnoogle.com is launched."Wednesday, July 11, 2001. The BETA version of Schnoogle.com is now up and running. Wowee!" -- schnoogle.com
* July 22, 2001: FictionAlley was launched at 11:56 and the first story posted was Draco Sinister 15."We are ready to rumble! We'll be open at noon today! :) Also, testing the new archive layout. --Flourish. -- schnoogle.com"Draco Sinister 15 is up! And the site is running! And there was much rejoicing!" -- Flourish schnoogle.com
* August 7, 2001: Yahoogroup called "ChapterOwls" was created."We've set up a Yahoogroup so you can get ChapterOwls for each of FictionAlley's houses with one subscription. Visit ChapterOwls and click on JOIN. ChapterOwls are sent to subscribers every day, to announce new authors, stories and chapters." Posted by heidi tandy" -- schnoogle.com
* August 18, 2001: Cassandra Claire removed all of her fiction from FictionAlley."She's put them up on the web in a pdf file for people to download before they go (address below) She sent this message out to her Yahoo group. "Hi guys,
 I've removed all my fanfiction from Fiction Alley, because I am leaving the Harry Potter fandom. There was a time I thought I might continue writing fanfiction, but I've realized that my original fiction doesn't allow time for that, and that my paying fiction career has to come first. I'm grateful to all my readers for their support over the years. Because I don't want anyone to be caught short by this (I announced it several weeks ago, but I do realize not everyone reads my blog!) I have created a page that houses PDF versions of all three parts of the DV series here: www.heidi8.com/dt Feel free to download them so you can have them for the future if you so desire." -- 27171Re: PoU: Draco Series, August 18, 2001
* In late August 2002, Stacey (Phat Phat Kitty, phatgirlfics) resigned from Fiction Alley.Stacey was a BNF, and supposedly a member of Inner Circle. In June 2002, Cassie Claire dedicated an installment of The Very Secret Diaries to Stacey on Stacey's birthday, two months before Stacey resigned from FictionAlley. A fan in 2003 recounts Stacey's departure from FictionAlley: "Hmmm, basically Stacey walked out of the fandom without warning, and all the mods at FA.org scrambled a bit to get used to not having her around. Most people resent her for not being responsible and such, and some unpleasant words were exchanged. Aja is calling Stacey a stalker, and all the fandom big-people are now a bit paranoid about each other, and calling each other psychos. *shrug* I tend to keep myself out of it after Sinead left. -- Hydy: comments from July 31, and October 19, 2003.
* May 5–6, 2002: On May 5, 2002, the "New York Times" published Harry Potter and the Quest For the Unfinished Volume, an article which included an interview with Heidi Tandy and information about "FictionAlley." The next day, the moderators of FictionAlley announced that they were accepting a proposition from Warner Bros. that the website become an affiliate with the giant entertainment company.They would also become an affiliate with Amazon.com.
* In 2003, FictionAlley launched a new chat room for its users.
* July 17–20: Nimbus - 2003: A Harry Potter Symposium
* August 2003: the archive uploaded its 20,000th fic/chapter.
* April 2004: FictionAlley was nominated for a WEBBY Award.
* Fall 2004: FictionAlley was incorporated as a non-profit in the USA.
* 2004: FictionAlley introduced The Knight Bus, a section for the posting of "real life" events for fandomers, and began a revamp of the fic hosting system
* Spring 2005: FictionAlley was nominated for a Prix Ars Electronica Award.
* 2006: FictionAlley launched HarryPotterWiki, the first wiki to blend information about the Harry Potter book series' characters, places, magic. and things, with fan theories, stories, art, vids and music.
* 2006: FictionAlley launched SpellCast, a podcast that focused on fan-events and fan creativity.
* July 2006: there were 10,000+ authors and over 30,000 fics.
* July 2007: FictionAlley was a sponsor of Sectus in London.
* August 2–5, 2007: FictionAlley was a sponsor of Prophecy in Toronto, Canada.
* July 2010: there was an extensive downtime at FictionAlley.
* July 2015: Heidi Tandy blogs about and links to Positive Fandom.Announcement Positive Fandom by FictionAlley + HP Alliance and Positive Fandom on HP Alliance
* July 19, 2018: The Organization for Transformative Works announces that FictionAlley will be archived on AO3 as part of its Open Doors project.
==Some Firsts==
===Some Historical Screenshots===
* July 9, 2001 cover by Starling and Priscilla; WebCite
* 
* July 2002 cover, Magsby ; WebCite
* 
* 
* 
* 
==Some Timing Regarding History==
===Leveraging FanFiction.Net's Downtime===
FictionAlley cleverly capitalized on FanFiction.Net's persistent and extensive downtime in 2001 to entice readers to its newly-opened site.
From an exchange on Google Groups in October 2001:
===The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Incidents===
FictionAlley was formed in the summer of 2001 to be a "community in which no person would be unreasonably censored or senselessly banned." 
Many fans felt the site's creation was a response to Cassandra Claire's deletion from FanFiction.net."The Cassie Claire plagiarism debacle went down on June 23, 2001. Her account was deleted late in the evening on June 22, 2001, but the wank hit the fandom on June 23, 2001. I would know. FA opened July 22, 2001. To the best of my knowledge, there were no existing plans for FA to be accelerated. Now, proof thereof is hard to come by, but idlerat was told FA was founded because of Cassie Claire, and Flourish, who did a large portion of the coding, was on staff at ff.net until a bit after Cassie's account was deleted, when she left in a huff." -- . See Draco Sinister. See The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle.
In 2001, Flourish Klink wrote about this connection: "Many felt that Cassie had been treated unfairly; others realized that they did not agree with the terms of service. For others, this was the straw that broke the demiguise's back, causing vague plans for an HP archive modeled after the X-Files' Gossamer site to grow into inspiration to create fansites by and for the Harry Potter fandom. FictionAlley is one of those sites." "So you've heard a lot about the controversy over fanfiction.net? Well, obviously no one person can tell the whole story, but for a short recap: A fairly "famous" fanfiction author, Cassandra Claire, was accused of plagarism. This accusation was reported to the fanfiction.net staff. They did not e-mail her and warn her that she was about to be removed, nor did they inform her of the accusation. When she was removed, it was a huge surprise to the fandom. In the aftermath of the accusations and counter-accusations - that fanfiction.net was being unfair, that Cassie had done no wrong - many authors left fanfiction.net. Many felt that Cassie had been treated unfairly; others realized that they did not agree with the terms of service. For others, this was the straw that broke the demiguise's back, causing vague plans for an HP archive modeled after the X-Files' Gossamer site to grow into inspiration to create fansites by and for the Harry Potter fandom. FictionAlley is one of those sites." -- A Guided Tour of the Fandom by © Madeline "Flourish" Klink 2000, 2001 Essays © their authors. Plagarism will not be tolerated"
Heidi disputes the idea that there were only "vague plans" for the site that became FictionAlley. She stated in 2002 that "FA wasn't born because Cassie was blacklisted from ffn," but the planned site was adapted into a general fic archive "because many authors were disapointed with FFN's management and the incredible amount of downtime they suffered last year.""[visservoldemort]: Perhaps I'm paranoid but this reminds me of the incident that occured directly before FictionAlley's creation, when FF.net booted Cassandra Claire without prior warning. [Heidi]: Why? There are no similarities whatsoever. None. What do you see? [visservoldemort]: How unfortunate it would be if the same set of circumstances led to both the birth and demise of FictionAlley. [Heidi]: Apart from the fact that they're not the same set of circumstances at all, FA wasn't born because Cassie was blacklisted from ffn. We registered Schnoogle, with plans to use it in connection with an archive of novel length fics, last *March* - and our original EZBoard for the Park was registered last *February*. We did decide to host non-novel-length fics because many authors were disapointed with FFN's management and the incredible amount of downtime they suffered last year, but to say that it was born because of what happened to Cassie is inaccurate." -- FAWA Re: Fiction Alley Announces New Affiliation, discussion, May 8, 2002
Other fans debated the extent to which plans for the site changed after Cassie's banning from FFN and whether FictionAlley really could be considered to have been "in the works" before that point."The common story that the release of the archive was "accelerated" due to the deletion of Cassandra Claire's fanfiction isn't quite correct. It appears that, prior to her account deletion, individual fans had plans to develop their own fansites to host fanfiction. However, after her account was deleted, they decided to work together and create an archive with a much wider scope. Thus, the existence of Fiction Alley as a large collaborative archive resulted from the deletion of Cassandra Claire's account from FanFiction.Net. To my mind, this is not the same thing as the archive "being in the works" and its release being accelerated." -- The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle -- Part IX through Part XI, Avocado, August 8, 2006
See Cassandra Claire: A Notable Member.
See The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle.
==Some Money History==
===Beginnings: Schnoogle.com and the Desire to Save $35===
In the beginning of 2003, Heidi Tandy wrote:
===Fundraising and Direct Contributions===
==Some Firsts==
Nominated in April 2004, it was the first fanfic site to get a nod in the Webbys.
===First Fics and Members===
"Who wrote the first fic to be posted here? Heidi! Me! We uploaded my fic, Surfeit of Curses, first, to test things. But seriously, among the first fics on FA were fics by the authors [ Maddy, Narri Patters, Colin, AngieJ, me, Cassie, Simon, Alex, Carole Estes, Starling, Priscilla, Jana, Yael, Viola, etc.] When the site launched, we had about 30 authors on Schnoogle and when the other three sites went live a few weeks later, we were probably pushing 100 writers." 
The first list of authors on the site is: "Cassandra Claire, Lori, Rhysenn, AngieJ, Penny & Carole, heidi, Barb LP, Yael, Gwendolyn Grace, Flourish, Viola, George Weasley’s Girlfriend, and Al." Welcome to schnoogle.com
"Who was the first member of FA? Techno Guy Paul is the first registered user here on the boards, but the first "member" of FA is probably RJ Anderson - she was the first author who wasn't also a mod. Catlady is also one of the early members, as is Penny. Gwen was originally just an author, but came on board very early on." 
A July–August 2001 Wayback link to: the authors and stories, click in "Fanfictions" on the toolbar.
=== Moderator Posts: June 2001===
Another bit of history, June 2001: 
===Opening Posts: Public Introductions===
From July 6, 2001, the first post to the sites Yahoo Group, FictionAlleyWriters and Artists, was by Heidi8: 
One of the first posts to the forum was Cassandra Claire: 
Other first posters who made introductions, along with Cassandra Claire and Heidi8:
* Simon Bradford
* yael
* Alicia/Sue
* R.J. Anderson
* Al
* Lori Summers
* AngieJ/Ebony
* Narri
* Rhysenn
* A.L. Milton
* Carole Estes
* Katrina Germann Re: FictionAlleyWriters Re: Intro / "Pen Name" question : Cassandra Calire, July 6, 2001
==Discussions About Submission Policies and the NC-17 Rule==
In 2002, a fan wrote in a LiveJournal comment:
ivyblossom, the journal owner, replied:
In 2004, Heidi8, FictionAlley's founder, commented on 'Elite' archives?, a post discussing fiction archives and their policies:
=="Houses"==
* Schnoogle - hosts all novel length fanfiction
* The Dark Arts -
* Astronomy Tower
* Riddikulus
* Artistic Alley
* Fiction Alley Park - the message board community
* HP Ink Pot - hosts essays written on the fandom
* Harry Potter Wiki
==e-Mentors==
From a March 2003 post: 
==Controversies==
===Cassandra Claire: A Notable Member===
Cassandra Claire was an early member, and The Draco Trilogy was posted there after it was removed from Fanfiction.Net. The fifteenth chapter of Draco Sinister was the very first fic posted to FictionAlley. July 22, 2001: FictionAlley was launched at 11:56 and the first story posted was Draco Sinister 15.: "We are ready to rumble! We'll be open at noon today! :) Also, testing the new archive layout. --Flourish. -- schnoogle.com
Cassandra Claire's fic page link to the last chapter of Draco Veritas was posted in August 4, 2006 and now leads to a FictionAlley page which says: 
Cassandra Claire's fic page on FictionAlley has been excluded by the Wayback Machine.
In 2018, Flourish Klink said: 
See The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle.
See The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Incidents.
===FictionAlley and Warner Bros. and CafePress===
This topic touches upon fandom and profit, copyright and other legalities, fandom and visibility, and more.
FictionAlley had been fundraising beginning a few months after it was created,"We've been fundraising to support FictionAlley since late 2001..." -- as the monthly costs soon became more than could be handled out of pocket by its owners. See Some Money History.
On May 5, 2002, the "New York Times" published Harry Potter and the Quest For the Unfinished Volume, an article which included an interview with Heidi Tandy and information about "FictionAlley."
The next day, the moderators of FictionAlley announced that they were accepting a proposition from Warner Bros. that the website become an affiliate with the giant entertainment company.
Shortly after, the FictionAlley mods agreed to let Warner Bros. put links to their for-profit sites for fan to buy merchandise, with "FictionAlley" getting some of the commissions.
This sparked much conversation around the issues of fandom and profit, Warner Bros.' often adversarial history with fandom, the possibility of a large, for-profit company dictating content (example: no slash, levels of explicitness), getting too cozy with TPTB in terms of visibility, and others.
 
See more at FictionAlley and Warner Bros..
====Some 2002 Responses by Fans and Mods at FictionAlley ====
Five days later, the mods gave some details, and also announced they would also have links to Amazon.com on the site. This announcement met with almost complete silence.
====Some 2004 Responses by Heidi Tandy====
====Some 2008 Responses by Heidi Tandy====
In 2008, Heidi Tandy explained: 
====Some 2013 Responses by Heidi Tandy====
Heidi Tandy also commented on these affiliations in 2013:
==Fan Reactions to the Move to AO3==
When it was announced in July 2018 that FictionAlley would be "moving in with An Archive Of Our Own", many fans reacted with joy and nostalgia to the news. Some collected fan reactions from the AO3 announcement post:
==Further reading==
===Meta===
* a link to 50 fan essays posted between 2006-12 to HPinkpot, a section at FictionAlley
===News Media ===
These articles mention "FictionAlley":
* Harry Potter and the Quest For the Unfinished Volume by David D. Kirkpatrick, "New York Times" (May 5, 2002)
* The New Powers That Be: Harry Potter, the triumph of fandom, and the future of creativity. by Laura Miller, "Slate" (September 11, 2015)
* Harry Potter Alliance Uniting 5,000 Fan Creators to Fight For Fair Use and Copyright (August 28, 2015)
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Harry Potter ArchivesCategory:Harry Potter Communities
Category:2000sCategory:2010sCategory:2018 Featured Articles