The Wonderful World of Makebelieve

The Wonderful World of Makebelieve or WWOMB is a multifandom archive featuring gen, het, slash and femslash fanfiction and original fiction of all ratings. It is hosted by Squidge.org, a fan created free web hosting service. By 2002 WWOMB archived fanfic in 206 multi-media fandomsWWOMBINDEX, via Wayback. (Accessed 15 Janaury 2011) and that number has only increased. By 2020, the archive was the home of more than 3,300 authors and hosted more than 34,300 stories. 
The WWOMB was associated with a multitude of different fandom specific mailing lists. In most cases all fanfiction posted to these lists were archived at the WWOMB unless there was an explicit Do Not Archive notice included with the fic. The Mailing Lists, Journals and Blogs of MakeBelieve were mostly hosted on squidge.org, Yahoo Groups or Livejournal.
The Wonderful World of Makebelieve was known as an archive that accepted stories that were not permitted on other archives. This included slash, femslash and RPF fanfiction. Authors were required to include disclaimers and appropriate warnings and ratings to help readers curate their content. 
Archivists and users of WWOMB were aware that it could be subject to C&D notices because of the content it hosted. Their submission rules highlighted that "a number of authors have requested that fans refrain from writing fan fiction based on their work" and "posting these fandoms could result in C&Ds".Submission Rules (archived link) Despite this it does not appear that WWOMB had an explicit rule against fanfiction from these fandoms. By the mid-2000s a handful of works in specific fandoms where the author had taken a stance against fanfiction were hosted on the site, and WWOMB was affiliated with at least one The Vampire Chronicles mailing list. Back in the beginning the archive had this warning at the bottom of the intro page: 
thumb|300px|WWOMB homepage circa 2010
In June 2004, WWOMB was converted to an automatic archive.Save the Archivist an announcement post by peja, 08/19/04. WWOMB may have begun using eFiction open source software package at this time, or the transition to eFiction may have been later. Changes in 2004 made the archive more accessible to creators. Writers who did not belong to a fandom mailing list, so-called orphan authors, were now able to share their works on the archive. Members of a single fandom list were now able to post in multiple fandom categories. Writers could also revise their works at any time, without the support of an archivist, and add graphics to their works.
In March 2018 makebelieve groups were moved from Yahoo! Groups to Groups.io according to the email sent to the subscribers. 
In November 2020, WWOMB was imported to The SquidgeWorld Archive, where it is hosted as a closed collection consisting of more than 2,200 fandoms and 34,000 works.Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import, squidgeworld.org. Accessed June 1, 2021.The Import from Peja's WWOMB Is Complete!, squidgeworld.org. Published November 5, 2020 (Accessed June 1, 2021). The original WWOMB site is still accessible in read-only mode, with a note on the homepage directing visitors to the SquidgeWorld Archive.
==February 2000 Interview with COCO CHANNEL==
In February 2000, Peja gave an interview to COCO CHANNEL which touched on her entry into fandom and the WWOMB archive, which she had by that point been running for roughly a year:
The interview also contained an anecdote about a minor incident on the archive involving an author who had been plagiarising:
==Fandoms & Archives==
thumb|300px|WWOMB Fandom Categories
The majority of fanfiction hosted on the archive were slash stories. Most of the archived stories have a strong western media focus and there are comparatively few anime fanfics and RPF.Archive statistics: Television [26644], Movies [2902], x-overs [2831], Comics [1961], Original Fic [1511], Anime [378], Books [589], Real Person fiction [396], Games [144]. (Accessed 13 August 2015)
The most popular fandoms on the archive included: The Sentinel, NCIS, X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, X-Men, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. There is also a large number of original fiction stories hosted on the archive.
Stories on the archive use The Fan Rated Rating System. This rating system was developed by fandom, in response to cease and desist notices to fanwriters and archives using the MPAA rating systems.
Aside from fandoms inside the main archive, WWOMB also have several smaller archives:
*BATSLASH
*THE BEASTMASTER FUQ-Q-FEST
*The Death Fiction Archive
*EMERGENCY HEART ATTACK ARCHIVE
*Heart Attack Adult Fiction Archive
*THE MPREG FUQ-Q-FEST
*The Sense-X-Angst Archive
*THE SENSE-X SHADOW ARCHIVE	
*THE SENTINEL FUQ-Q-FEST ARCHIVE
*SHORT SWEET SLASH ARCHIVE
*The Rape Fantasy Archive
*THE ROBIN OF SHERWOOD ARCHIVE
*THE XFILES FUQ-Q-FEST ARCHIVE 
*The Temple of the Soiled Doves
==Challenges & Contests==
The WWOMB challenge page has challenges for all Peja's lists; with challenges dating back to 1999.WWOMBs Speed Writing Write Off Weekend Event posted by Peja, Apr. 11th, 2009
The WWOMB monthly contest, awarded the month's most prolific author, one other random author and one random commenter a prize. Winners chose either a $10 Apple iTunes gift certificate, a $10 Amazon.com gift certificate, or one item from the Squidge.org CafePress store worth up to $20, as their prize. Webmistress Peja and hostmaster Squidgie were both ineligible to win this contest. In January 2016, the category for most prolific author was removed from the contest. The contest ran from December 2010 to December 2018, but there were times during this period when the contest was temporarily suspended.
==SquidgeWorld Archive==
In 2020, WWOMB became the first fansite to be imported to The SquidgeWorld Archive, which itself was the first fan archive to be created using AO3's open-source code. 
WWOMB exists in the archive as a closed collection, meaning that new stories cannot be added, but readers are still able to interact with existing stories via comments and kudos. The site remains live at the old URL for now in 'read-only' mode, with a note informing visitors of WWOMB's new home at the SquidgeWorld Archive.
==Fan Comments==
The multi fandom nature of the site was often mentioned in recs. 
By 2007, WWOMB was already considered a fannish "dinosaur".
Comparisons to Fanfiction.net, and later archives, were common; with WWOMB often recced as a slash centric site with more adult content, and less censorship. There was also a general impression among users that readers/commenters at WWOMB were more polite.
WWOMB is the busiest site on squidge.org, and because of the fan run nature of their hosting service, outages were (and continue to be) a semi-regular feature of using the site. WWOMB's users are usually very understanding of these outages, and appreciative of Hostmaster squidgie's work.
WWOMB's import to the SquidgeWorld archive prompted some fans to rediscover it or to revisit old memories of the site.
==Notes & References==
===Notes===
===References===
Category:Multifandom Archives
Category:Squidge.org Category:1999 Archives Category:2000s Archives Category:2010s Archives category:2020s Archives Category:2021 Featured Articles