So you see, we started this site with the thought that we could provide guidance to newcomers and maybe information to experienced reader about their next read.

But so far we – and especially I (I’m studying to become a teacher, so education is a topic for me)  – neglegted the basics.  Some may need it, some others don’t, but I hope it will be a helpful thing at least for some.

So I try and start with the very beginning. What is fanfiction?

Fanfiction – a definition (by Fiora): Fans of a genre (e.g. Jane Austen, Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings) write additional chapters to their favourite movie/book etc., write a sequel or a prequel.  Another possibility is the of rewriting a story, when the fan thinks that a certain storyline was pretty interesting but neglected or a whole new storyline is introduced with new characters, which adds greatly to the development of the whole thing or simply adds a new dimension to the whole.

What I consider quite special about the Austen fanfition universe is the canon. Very often in fanfiction it is absolutely reversed and the hero ends up with a character that may mirror the authoress (because most authors are female) or that are extraordinary in a certain way. In Austen fanfiction, or to be more precise in the Pride & Prejudice universe the two main characters almost every time end up together. There are very few fanfiction out there where Darcy and Elizabeth do not marry…

But that are just some of my personal observations…

Last but not least, some Austen fanfiction sites. All in a nutshell…

Some of them quite popular, some very little but all of them very rewarding.

AHA (or Meryton.com) – A Happy Assembly is the board where the stories are posted and can be commented on, there is also a Reading Room, where certain authors have their finshed stories and where you do not have to register. Also a part of AHA is the pdf site where a lot of fanfictions are available for download.

DWG – Derbyshire Writers Guilt, the fanfiction section of austen.com. There are 3 parts. The Fantasy Gallery for modern stories, the Epilogue Abbey for Regency set stories and the Message board, where the unfinished stories are posted (and later put in the Fantasy Gallery or the Epilogue Abbey)

Mrs Darcy – Excellent site with many writers that contains many extras beside the fanfictions.

Pen and Ink – Small site with some very delightful fanfictions.

Austeninterlude – A collection of some very talented writers including Abigail R and Lucy (to name just two of them)

Scotch and Sirens with the forum 50 miles of good road

Firthness

Tilneys and trapdoors – Site that includes many non P&P fanfictions and some very good crossovers.

FishWilliam Works – Lucrezia’s fanfiction site

Austen Underground

General  fanfiction sites:

ff.net

Foreign language:

Jane Austen Fanfiction Archiv (German!)

ff.de (General German FF Archive)

Of course, this list shows personal preferences, I would never pretend otherwise… but I hope you will not mind. An even better list can be found at the JAFFIndex. To be admitted you can ask and get the passwort by the owner Victoria.

Otherwise I hope you will find this a bit useful.

Comments are – as always – appreciated

Absolutely fair wind here in Germany

Today was a beautiful day in September and I enjoyed being in my parent’s garden very much. But enough of me, there is a wonderful fanfiction on AHA - Fair stands the wind (Regency/AU/T) by MaxineB – that I enjoy very much, too.

Elizabeth Bennet meets Captain Fitzwilliam Darcy as he visits his friend Mr. Bingley in Hertfordshire. In constant worry about her father’s health she finds a friend in the Captain and he too has a troublesome life she is able to lighten up a bit…

It is Alternate Universe and Darcy as Captain in the Navy a delightful thought, isn’t it?

It’s a good read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This time it’s from a short piece called The Avenging Angel written by Margaret C. Sullivan, the webmistress of Tilney’s and Trapdoors. It’s sort of a missing scene from P&P2 (the BBC-version from 1995) where Darcy has a “confrontation” with Wickham.

Wickham gasped, hunched over his writing-table, but could not resist a parting shot at his old enemy. “I will enjoy spending your money,” he said.

Darcy put on his coat, picked up his hat and gloves, and turned back to Wickham, his hand on the doorknob. He regarded the beaten, broken form of George Wickham, unable to comfortably stand but still defiant enough to manage a sneer. Darcy smiled at him, a cold smile that his future wife would never see. “It was worth every penny,” he said, and went out to the waiting carriage.

I love this portrayal of Darcy’s dark side Sometimes you simple have to be ungentlemanly and Wickham totally deserved this. I think I’ll blog about Margaret C. Sullivan’s most popular story “The Firstborn” later on. Until then discover Darcy’s dark side in this little ficlet.

BTW: After making keeping anonymous persons from commenting we also had to install CAPTCHA in order to keep the spam bots from posting. We have approximately 30 spam comments over night – that’s too much. Did I ever mention that I hate spam?

I think I will be eternally grateful to Fiora for recommending this gem to me! It took me a while to read it, because I dreaded starting it and not being able to finish it in a rush (it is pretty long, over 200,000 words). I read a great part of it on a 4-hour-train-journey and I feared that with my constant chuckling (because I didn’t dare to laugh out loud) I made quite a spectacle out of myself. Each time I looked up (which wasn’t very often) the woman in the other seat gave me quite an odd look… Luckily I didn’t read most of the funniest bits in the train, because at time I really had tears in my eyes from laughing!

One hilarious scene after another! So incredibly creative! So well-characterized original characters! I must admit I developed a little crush on two of her original male characters, namely Ash and Miles (or more formally Colonel Horatio Fitzwilliam, Viscount Ashbourne, Heir apparent to the Earldom of Matlock, Grandson of the Duke of Hollingbury and Miles Carlon, Earl of Upton *g*). I totally love this story!

Other persons we know from P&P are completely out of character (OOC), namely Lady Catherine and George Wickham and I simply loved what Shemmelle made with the former. Additionally, it’s not a D&E story, at first it is (and they end up together – this story is totally angst-free IMO) but they more or less play a secondary role in the second part of the story, where the story focuses more on Kitty and Annabelle, the Colonel’s younger sister, a character Shemmell created.

Another character I also love is Sir Christian (Mary’s love interest), I think each story should have such a rake – and these two were simply an adoring couple with their constant bickering

Another thing: The quotes at the beginning of each chapter, Shemmelle quotes almost everything or everybody, the Marquis de Sade, Limp Bizkit, Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Smashmouth, the Lord of the Rings movies, Brighton and Hove Tourist Website, Pirates of the Caribbean, An Ideal Husband and so on and so firth – and they are all strangely fitting! Even Fight Club is included in the story with a quote “You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” and the annotation: Line from Fight Club. Miles is well a little ahead of his time.

I guess I should stop with my praises now and highle recommend you to read Shemmelle’s Marriage is a mistake every man should make. It is available at Firthness and DWG.

As we were yesterday literally flooded by spam we sadly had to change our settings regarding the posting of comments. As of now everybody has to fill out name and e-mail and as this is today no way of spam protection one of us has to approve of the first comment of an author, afterwards you are free to comment as much as you choose

We would have liked to remain with our very liberal comment settings, where spam was an issue but we could stil deal with deleting it manually but sadly that’s not possible anymore

Please let us know if you have any problems with the new comment settings – don’t forget, we have a contact form

And we changed the HG link in our link section, it now points to the HG mainsite as Amber, the admin of HG, announced that the forum is most likely gone for good and if it returns it will probably start from scratch. *sigh* So many good stories lost. I guess I haven’t read more than 10% of them *cries*

Without any attempts to blognap… I’m continuing this category. Here we will just present finished FFs so it is save to read

One of my all time favourites is Rainy Days by LoryL. It is a ff to read on a bad day to relax and come down.  Low angst, so it soothes me really when I had a bad day…

During a walk Elizabeth and Darcy have to seek shelter because of a downpour. Being in so close proximity without anyone else they really talk with each other and perspectives begin to shift…

The characters are for the most part very lovable and especially Lady Matlock is a true delight! Darcy is… perfect, really I would marry him if he weren’t fictional.

If you haven’t read it so far than I totally would recommend this for your next rainy afternoon.

You can find it here as a pdf-download. Enjoy!

Today’s marketing lecture, the topic: The chances of specialised stores as a means of diversification from huge power stores (hopefully I got the translation right…) My lecturer asked for examples, we came up with florists and antiquarian bookshops amongst others. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied with the answers (maybe not special enough?) and asked:

“Does anyone here know what a modiste is?”

And who was the only one in class who knew the answer?

Hah! I knew that sometime in the future all the Regency fanfictions with descriptions of visits from Caroline Bingley or Lady Matlock or Elizabeth Darcy to her favourite modiste would come in handy! My fellow students were quite impressed that I actually knew the answer (I don’t know if my prof was either) but I didn’t reveal the source of my knowledge

I almost had a heart attackt when two days ago I tried to access the Jane Austen category at FF.net via my bookmarks and the error message “The page you are looking for does not exist. (3) book JaneAusten” It took me five minutes (after the initial shock) to find out that they had apparently created separate sections for all her books, so there no longer is a JA-category. It’s not a bad idea altogether, however, instead of making the obvious choice and putting all the fanfictions into the “Pride and Prejudice” category as (my guess) appr. 95% of the stories are P&P-stories, they put them into “Emma” category (which is the first alphabetically, maybe this explains the absolutely dumb decision). And now it’s a total mess, some have changed the categories of their books, but with more than 1,200 stories for the JA-category and with some of the authors no longer being active it will never be clearly divided into the separate book sections. As I’ve mentioned, it’s simply chaotic.

I don’t know what made them take such a decision. At least the reactions I’ve read are totally negative and users such as dontstealmyvitaminies have added polls to their profile page and are bothering the admin team to reestablish the old order.

I personally think that the admins won’t change anything soon – but I’ve a very negative opinion of FF.net and maybe they manage to surprise… We’ll have to wait and see…