My Flight of the Heron fic on Squidgeworld.org

[regshoe]

I think I've mentioned my frustration with AO3's canonical tag for Flight of the Heron before, but a bit of backstory for anyone unaware of it: the canonical tag at the time I got into the fandom was 'Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster', which was the fandom tag which people had used on works posted over the previous several years; it was changed to 'The Jacobite Trilogy - D. K. Broster' shortly afterwards, which I believe is bad for various practical and sentimental fannish reasons. There seems little prospect of it being changed back fully, although many thanks to isis for your recent help with efforts to get it fixed as far as is possible.

Well, I will never acknowledge the Hanoverian usurper as the rightful king the current canonical as an appropriate way to categorise FotH fanworks, and so I will continue to raise my glass over the water bowl when I toast 'the King' at the dinner table tag my own fics 'Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster'—this is still synned to the canonical tag, so works using it will show up in the fandom list as normal. Again a note for those unaware, you can do this too if you like.

(Silliness aside—for what might seem like a fairly unimportant and pedantic bit of stubbornness, I love this fandom and it genuinely does make me sad to see it categorised wrongly!)

However, I've recently found another way to have my fics listed correctly. I was vaguely aware of Squidgeworld/WWOMB as an older, pre-AO3 fanfiction archive which switched to using AO3's (open source) code and site format a few years ago but which does some things differently; it turns out one of the things it does differently is still categorising Flight of the Heron correctly, as 'The Flight of the Heron [Public Domain]' (following the site's usual system for book fandom tags). Thus I've decided to copy my fics over there, where they can now be found here—along with hyarrowen's fics, which are excellent and always worth a re-read. Look at them all nice there :D :D

Hopefully some day in the future, the rightful King James will return and there will be peace and joy in the land the AO3 tag will be properly fixed. But it's nice to have an alternative in the meantime; and nice in any case to be able to evade problems with any one site by having multiple options.

:)

Comments

[friendofthejabberwock]

Huh, I don't think I've ever heard of SquidgeWorld! I'll have to have a look around. All your little Jacobite asides here are very funny. :D

[regshoe]

Heh, they entertain me... :P And the site seems like a nice place to have a look round!

[sanguinity]

*watches regshoe scribble out "Jacobite Trilogy" in her prayer books and write in "The Flight of the Heron" instead*

The majority of what I've posted over there actually uses A Gleam in the North as source material, and I have at least one Keith/Ewen premise in my head that is based on The Dark Mile, so it actually makes sense to me to tag my stories "Jacobite Trilogy". But selecting a hill to die on is a deeply personal choice, and I would never deny you your chosen ground for your final stand. ;-)

I thank you for the Squideworld link -- I didn't know they were the hosts of the Jinjurly archive, and I had no idea they did fannish image hosting, either (which is always something I seem to be in need of, despite my not being a fanartist.)

[regshoe]

*watches regshoe scribble out "Jacobite Trilogy" in her prayer books and write in "The Flight of the Heron" instead*

1) XD

But 2) no, see, actually I don't have to do that, because the prayer books most original copies of Flight of the Heron don't have 'Jacobite Trilogy' in them, that's exactly why it's so bad, who'll go looking for fic under a name that's not in their copy of the book in the first place, etc. etc...

But selecting a hill to die on is a deeply personal choice, and I would never deny you your chosen ground for your final stand. ;-)

Thank you ;D I mean, I would argue that just because one can write fic using material from two or all three books still doesn't make them a trilogy, but never mind—anyway, the important thing is a Keith/Ewen idea based on The Dark Mile sounds excellent—I look forward to hearing more about it :D

And yes, it looks like a really useful site—web hosting, image and podfic hosting besides the fic archive. Good stuff to be aware of, regardless of anything else!

[sanguinity]

Heh, I was thinking that fic would be the prayer books, with The Flight of the Heron being the Bible. I obviously didn't set that comment up well enough.

The Dark Mile: For post-canon everybody-lives AUs, I tend to place Keith as Ewen's factor at Ardroy; the bit where the villain publicly embarrasses Ewen by planting some "stolen" cattle among his herd would be particularly interesting for their relationship, I think, if it had been Keith's job to know how many cattle are in the herd and where they came from, and thus it had been Keith's alleged negligence that had led to Ewen's embarrassment.

Of course, when it comes out that the whole thing had been a frame-up, Keith, who up to now had been somewhat contemptuous of inter-clan politics, will be MORE than happy to break some skulls over it...

[luzula]

Ooh, that's an interesting idea! *looks forward to it*

[sanguinity]

I am flattered by your confidence in me. :-) There are other projects I have to finish first, and then we'll see how it goes.

[luzula]

Sorry, I didn't mean to put pressure on you! : ) I fully understand having a lot of ideas and projects on the go (as well as RL, obviously).

[sanguinity]

The number of things I want to make vastly outstrips my wherewhithal to get them made. It's also a story we're all very familiar with, I think...

[luzula]

Ha ha, yes, very familiar.

[regshoe]

I am certainly familiar with it too!

[regshoe]

Heh, I was thinking that fic would be the prayer books, with The Flight of the Heron being the Bible.

Oh, I see! I like that analogy, then :D

And ooh, that is a very interesting idea! I love the thought of Keith with an established role at Ardroy being drawn into the clan conflicts of the post-Archie's-betrayal situation—yes, there's a lot of potential there...

[sanguinity]

I think so! I'm particularly interested in seeing how they deal with Ardroy being in jeopardy because of Keith's alleged error. That's gonna test a relationship...

[tei]

YEAH. I get that there are reasons for the canonical tags being the way they are (though I don't understand them because I simply have not bothered to) but my fandom has a similar pet peeve, and I do wish that there was some way to. IDK! Democratically decide tags :P Some sort of plebiscite system for tag canonization. I'm sure that would be entirely impractical and start the absolute worst wank. STILL.

I keep meaning to put stuff up on Squidgeworld! I had decided to use it to "unpack" and archive all of the (rather many) one-shots I posted as "chapters" instead of as their own works on ao3, thereby essentially making them unsearchable. Not that being on a completely different site would really fix that. But hey. I want to use it!

[regshoe]

I mean, the exact position of the line between 'totally independent works with separate fandoms' and 'continuous series with a single fandom' is complicated and ambiguous, and I totally understanding AO3 having a single straightforward default policy to cut through the issues that causes—but you'd think it wouldn't hurt to allow people actually in the fandoms affected to appeal with explanations of why that isn't appropriate in our particular cases and get our tags changed to something that actually serves the fandoms in question. All of which is to say, I know, right??? Sympathy. <3

That sounds like a good idea! I think it's a good thing to have my fic up in different places anyway, just on general principles, and this is being a good opportunity to explore that.

[hyarrowen]

Butting in to say that Shakespeare has a combined tag, and there are tags for the individual plays as well. If that can be done for Shakespeare, why not other fandoms? Especially when people will look for fic under a particular title... as we keep mentioning to the wranglers and in other places...

[garonne]

Haha, I love your asides!

I also very much dislike the fact that 'Flight of the Heron' has been synned to 'The Jacobite Trilogy', especially since AO3 already has a mechanism that could have been used in this case. 'The Jacobite Trilogy' could be a metatag, with 'Flight of the Heron', 'Gleam in the North' and 'The Dark Mile' as subtags. Then everybody could tag with and filter on any of those four tags, as they prefer. I guess there must be some good reason the AO3 tag wranglers prefer not to use that option, but I can't guess what it is :D

And there are practical consequences: 'Flight of the Heron' doesn't appear in the autocomplete dropdown anymore, and it won't appear in the list of nominated Yuletide fandoms that people may browse through to find fandoms to offer that they have a passing familiarity with.

[regshoe]

'The Jacobite Trilogy' could be a metatag, with 'Flight of the Heron', 'Gleam in the North' and 'The Dark Mile' as subtags. Then everybody could tag with and filter on any of those four tags, as they prefer.

I think that would be a great solution! And what's even more baffling is that there are examples of structurally similar related fandoms that do exactly that—e.g. Tolkien's legendarium and Shakespeare's Henry IV parts I and II both have sub-tags and meta-tags.

The worst practical consequence IMO is just that it isn't in the main list of fandoms—people who've read FotH and go looking for fic won't find it under the title of the book they've read and won't know the canonical title which Broster didn't use! However, I don't think that's true about exchange tagsets—I nominated it under the correct title for both Yuletide 2020 and the most recent round of Hurt/Comfort Exchange, and in both cases it appears in the 'books' section of the tagset as you'd expect.

[garonne]

However, I don't think that's true about exchange tagsets—I nominated it under the correct title for both Yuletide 2020 and the most recent round of Hurt/Comfort Exchange, and in both cases it appears in the 'books' section of the tagset as you'd expect.

Oh, good! Very reassuring.

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

I'd never heard of Squidgeworld, but that does sound like an excellent solution to the wily machinations of the Hanoverians...I mean the canonical tag system on AO3 :P

[regshoe]

I think it's good to broaden fannish presence across website, in any case, and yes, it'll do as a solution for now :)

[hyarrowen]

Apart from anything else, it's a stable site, unlike others I could mention.

*touches wood*

[hyarrowen]

Did you get a nice surprise in an email from Squidgeworld this morning? I did!

[regshoe]

I did indeed! How nice of them :D

[luzula]

Hee. I do agree that the old tag was better, but I'm not sure that I would be ready to plot an armed rising in this cause. : D But perhaps you will be satisfied with parliamentary machinations and drinking toasts in private...

[regshoe]

Huh! I shall repair to the 'White Cock' inn and plot my stratagems... :P