Oooh, YouTube videos? What's the idea behind that? That could be an interesting way to branch out our little corner of fandom!

idreamofdraco @ Aug 04, 2013 06:15 pm

Well, here's MY idea, anyway... ;)

I've worked with a lot of different programs to make motion graphics vids in the past, and I've been really thinking about a couple of ideas that would be fun to do. I'm also doing a lot of work with Poser and Vue now, and I have my own version of Draco and Ginny figures. :) I've done content creation and mockup book covers with them, but something I haven't done much of yet is working on character animation in Poser. But that can be done, and it often turns out really well. The Desert Rose series is a good example.... I've had some problems with links in the comments, but the URL is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_4FMwUBdJQ

Anise @ Aug 04, 2013 06:39 pm

Ohhh, so animating fan fiction? That sounds AWESOME. And time consuming. But AWESOME.

idreamofdraco @ Aug 04, 2013 07:24 pm

Ooooohhh!! Anybody else feels like doing some happy dancing and pinching some cheeks or is that just me?? :D

Maybe you could have a contest every month or so where readers submit their challenges and fic ideas on fb or twitter and one is randomly selected and then Bam! Greatness! :) über excited for the podcasts too! You can have polls every once in a while and have the community decide which title is going to be recorded .. I think having polls overall would be very exciting and would receive a warm welcome back from my part :) you could also use youtube to have meet the author videos, sort of like short interviews to get a glance of the behind the scenes.

Anyway you have my full support for all to come.. I love this site and I'm glad for all that's happening!

Gio x

sweet gurl @ Aug 05, 2013 10:18 pm

I'd love to see the continuation of the Featured Stories section - for months it held the same three fics (and I'm so glad they've finally changed!).

I'd love to see some new authors. Maybe with a challenge revival we could get some new authors!

SempreEadem @ Aug 06, 2013 07:06 pm

I really love the contest/challenges idea, and I've talked with a couple of other people who have said the same things about fb and twitter integration. I agree that we kind of need to get with the program of social media... someone else did have a fb page, and I've seen it, but I'm still trying to find out who even started it. It WILL be found out. :) Polls are good. I think that they make people feel more involved... and some fansites are still VERY active. We can do it too. :)

Anyway, I'm organizing all of the ideas, and things will really start happening in September (after I get back from vacation and having visitors here.) I'm going to try to get a podcast up before that. :)

Anise @ Aug 07, 2013 09:14 am

I'm an admin for Draco Malfoy + Ginny Weasley group on facebook. www.facebook.com/DracoMalfoyGinnyWeasley. I rave about this site on there all the time. The only thing is I think a lot of people on the site read only Spanish. I don't think I've seen any stories in Spanish on here but I could be mistaken.

bigreader @ Aug 08, 2013 04:06 pm

@bigreader Do you think there is interest in having fics in Spanish here? I was always curious, never really got the ball rolling on the idea. It's funny because me and Mynuet both speak Spanish.

FYI there are some drabbles on the Spanish board in the Forums.

Lyndsie @ Aug 08, 2013 05:18 pm

These sound like some really great ideas Anise, I can't wait to see what you do to revamp our ship.

For the podcast bit, maybe you should look at doing a series - some authors doing writing workshops/interviews about how they go about their fics (inspiration, characterisation, plots, etc)? And if writers on the site have specific questions for whoever is being interviewed in each episode they can post them to the Facebook/Twitter.

haniqua @ Aug 08, 2013 06:10 pm

Also for RPG's like E Pur Si Muove to get going again - and for them not to be blocked to the internet peasants (AKA people who refuse to use livejournal).

haniqua @ Aug 08, 2013 06:14 pm

Bigreader: YAY! I've been trying to find out who the admins are there. We'll have to talk some more about that soon.
I speak terrible Spanish. Probably not very helpful there... I really need to get back into speaking it, too, because a good 1/2 of the population where I live is Hispanic. But I love the idea of having more fics in Spanish. Our world is very multicultural. :)

Haniqua-- I love that podcast idea. :) IDreamofDraco has been talking about taking over some twittering.

I honestly don't know anything about the RPG other than its existence, and that it's been around for a long time. I've always liked the IDEA of LJ... an alternative to FB or
Google+ or those other zillion things out there, and not as many ways to get in trouble with privacy issues... but I just don't see enough people using it at this point to put a lot of new energy into it. YMMV.

I'm still trying
to find out how to revive the old fic challenges there, but I don't know... okay, some opinions about this point would be good. Should we get them started up again at LJ, or just start over somewhere new?

Anise @ Aug 08, 2013 06:32 pm

Why not have the first challenge here - maybe in the forums with an announcement on the main page? If this challenge takes off then work out where to host the next one - maybe with a poll to give all the users a voice and you guys control of the site options.

SempreEadem @ Aug 09, 2013 08:47 am

Brief answer: That sounds like a good idea. :) I'm just not sure what's going on with the LJ thing to begin with, and I've never tried to run a challenge before. (HELP WOULD BE GOOD. Any volunteers? :) So maybe that's the way to go. I'll email Aphrodite about it this weekend at the latest, and maybe we can actually have it start in September.

Anise @ Aug 09, 2013 09:27 am

Welcome Welcome Welcome! I think you'll be wonderful.

sarfisushi @ Aug 10, 2013 05:41 am

I just thought of something. If when you logged in you went back to the same spot it would be a lot cooler. That's about the only thing I'd really want to change. I love this place! I'm not so sure about the Spanish thing any more though. I've only had one 'like' on the subject.

bigreader @ Aug 10, 2013 11:05 am

What about including a tumblr account to modernize this site? I've seen a lot of fandoms using this medium to promote the ship. And maybe that way you can revive the artwork aspect without having an actual 'art board' for those who'd like to see one return?

Gio

sweet gurl @ Aug 10, 2013 08:40 pm

Can we have scoring system for fics? Like from one to ten? I find it very useful for searching for the best fanfics at the other sites, plus gives you an idea how good the story is likely to be, and allows lazy reader to contribute as well:)

Marinka @ Aug 10, 2013 09:14 pm

I love the idea of a Tumblr. I used to follow a couple DG blogs, but they don't post anymore. I see lots of other HP ships with active blogs and communities, and I think we can really fill a DG void in HP fandom if we can get into the Tumblr scene as well.

idreamofdraco @ Aug 11, 2013 11:48 am

looking forward to all the many interesting & exciting things, that going to happen, soon!! I would to see podcast on D/G stories, I have fic on my Ipod nano, filled with HP fanfic stories.. It doesn't matter to me, what fic is on the site. But, how about stories, that post-Hogwarts fic, would love to see my favorite couple, with these various characters: Narcissa, Tonk, Charlie & Bill W., Severus, Pansy, Blaise, Prof. M, Hermione, Padma, Parvati, and many other ones, too.

msm_2011simonebb @ Aug 11, 2013 06:48 pm

This might be a little out there (or maybe it's been done already, I'm not sure), but what about doing polls for turning some of the more popular fics into audiofics? There have been times when I get so engrossed in a fic and my eyes start straining from staring at the screen for so long that I wish there were a "books on tape" version.

Although I've got a horrible voice for reading/singing/etc, I'd be willing to help out voice chapters or help put together files or something else to help. I did part of one of my own fics a couple years ago using a headset and Audacity (which is free).

MargretKelley @ Aug 12, 2013 01:32 pm

Great minds really do think alike. :) (ducks to avoid thrown objects)
I was thinking about Tumblr too. To be honest, it's not my favorite blog platform-- I really prefer Wordpress-- but a lot of people do use it. If I were going to put some work into an FIA blog, I would rather do WP, to tell the truth... I have hosting through Dreamhost and there is SO much more functionality... wonderful idea about the art board through that, btw... but Tumblr might bring in more people.
I also like the fic rating idea. Marinka, where exactly would you want to see that?

And the podcasts ideas are GREAT. That will definitely happen, even though it probably won't be right away.

(goes off to check something)

On Wordpress, www.dracoandginnyblog.com is available. :) ETA: Okay, here's an idea: use Tumblr to repost WP material and also to get people from the community involved again. ??

Anise @ Aug 12, 2013 06:02 pm

Next to review field would be good, so it could be done for each chapter, and then you can see number of stars next to the study title when you do a search. Siye has this scoring system and it works pretty good both for the reader but also for the writer as well.

Marinka @ Aug 13, 2013 12:11 am

Next to review field would be good, so it could be done for each chapter, and then you can see number of stars next to the study title when you do a search. Siye has this scoring system and it works pretty good both for the reader but also for the writer as well.

Marinka @ Aug 13, 2013 12:11 am

I love the idea of a blog for this site! You can maybe even have authors write guest posts! Like story cookies, behind the scenes, interviews, and things like that (and maybe that could be an outlet for the ofic support you'd like to include).

Tumblr then can become a regulated 'fangirl' site where the members that cannot write a paragraph of fiction to save our lives can contribute to community in more ways than just reviews and the forums. And don't get me wrong, I love the forums but they have become antiquated to today's standards. The were fine back in 2006 but let's face it, nobody wants to write a post there and then wait for a millennia to get an answer when you can just tweet something and hashtag it to potentially get an answer within minutes.

I think once there's enough traffic the tumblr page can become pretty self reliant (I don't think that's the word I'm looking for but I think you get my point). You can have the submission button open to accept new content and people would just have to reblog something to promote it and comment on it and that could just open the gate to a ton of traffic. I think that's where you could host the polls, contests, featured stories, most popular story of the week, etc. and authors could promote their work there as well, and maybe even adding to it by having related art or things like that.

And maybe having different platforms will lift some of the weight carried by this one.

I was thinking, one way of bringing people in (to the dark side *evil chuckles*) could be by hosting a monthly contest were you can have the great artists of the intrawebs participate by submitting their DGartwork and then the community can vote and comment on it and the winner gets to have their art as our banner on tumblr and have one post to promote their art across our platforms. It's so easy to change the appearance of a tumblr blog with just a few clicks that I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch. And maybe we can even help out a starving artist out there.

I think right now the focus should be to increase the traffic to replace the people that have outgrown the fandom and have unfortunately left us.

Gio

sweet gurl @ Aug 13, 2013 11:43 am

These are wonderful ideas! I completely agree that we need to have a Tumblr blog-- the time has more than come for that. (This means that I need to REALLY learn how to use Tumblr instead of just having a page there and never doing anything with it, which is pretty much the case right now. :P The specific ideas are wonderful, too.

That having been said, though... I *also* want to attract a different demographic, and these are the people who would use the separate ofic forums. I'm actually a good example of what I'm talking about. A year ago, I decided to completely give up on fanfic of all kinds ("this is ridiculous, I've more than outgrown it, la la la".) The idea was that this would give me the time to go back to writing original work. Yay! Except that it didn't work out so well... and I realized that without continuing to write fanfic, my creativity in other writing would not be supported.

These are not likely to be the thirteen-year-olds (although they could be, if thirteen-year-olds are working seriously on original fic.) And I honestly think this is going to become a huge new section of all fandoms in general. We will be in the lead! :) But, yes... the Tumblr blog needs to happen first, I think. (And Marinka-- I think that's a great idea, but that's a Lyndsie question. I'll forward it to her in my next email.)

Anise @ Aug 14, 2013 06:16 am