I was planning on letting this news come out at MZ's pace, but since this
has been brought up, I guess I get to break the news: 

Megazone will be retiring from moderation of raa.creative.  New
moderator(s) are under consideration.

There was a fanfic panel at AX, which I attended.  It featured R-Type
(Larry Mann), Gryphon (Ben Hutchins), Megazone, Ryan Matthews, and for a
few minutes at the end, Misa-chan (Marisa Price (sp?)).

Among the covered topics:

1.  The state of raac -- the possibility of an unmoderated alt group or
some such, as well as the reasons why alt groups don't propogate well any
more, and the role of this mailing list as a place for alternatives were
all briefly touched on.  Zoner announced his retirement, and said that
some applications for moderators were in his mailbox.

2.  The distinction between what is fanfic and what is original fiction.
Ryan Matthews's definition (fanfic is that which violates someone else's
copyright or trademark) seemed quite on-target, although from what I
understood, the definition in place for raac is broader (original fiction
in an anime style is accepted, I believe (see Battle Shark for an
example)).  Discussed the legal status of fanfic (and doujinshi (sp?)) in
and outside of Japan (e.g. enforcement usually involves the
copyright/trademark holders taking action against people when they don't
want that work distributed, on a story by story (or author by author)
basis (note: I'm not a lawyer, so don't believe my words on this matter)).
MZ said that there have been offers to print UF and sell--one of the
stated this didn't happen was that doing so was asking for trouble.

3.  UF history and origins.  I won't write them here--I think that
somewhere (or, perhaps, in several somewheres) this history is recounted.

4.  The deleterious effects of Real Life upon fanfic writing.  (The
consensus was: yes.)

5.  Tips for fanfic writers.
    a.  WRITE THE WHOLE THING FIRST. -- That way, finished work gets
        posted, and you can even go back and change stuff to make later
	parts work better.
    b.  If you have a partner, you can write 'til you're tired of writing,
	and then foist it off on your partner.

Hm.   I'm sure I forgot something, or several somethings.  That's what I
remember at the moment.

Anyway, one more thing:  people have been asking about archive
mirrors.  Well, there already are mirrors (they're just pretty obscure).
Here are some sites which have (or mirror) the raac fiction archive:

	ftp://ftp.std.com/archives/anime-fan-works/
	  Main site -- the "big" one, IMO.
	ftp://ftp.eyrie.org/pub/anime/
	  This site has a bunch of other fanfic, as well (specifically,
	  a bunch from rec.arts.comics.creative and SuperGuy)
	ftp://ftp.eyrie.net/pub/anime-fan-works/
	  NO, ftp.eyrie.org and ftp.eyrie.net are NOT the same -- this
	  one's dedicated to #eyrie! (which includes the UF crew)
	ftp://unilab.dfci.harvard.edu/pub/anime/FanWorks/
	  I think that this is most, if not all, of the anime content
	  on this server.
	ftp://ftp.usacomputers.net/pub/Anime/FanFictions/
	  A general anime archive which includes fanfic.

There are more (at least one more (mostly) complete mirror exists), plus
miscellaneous partial archives (as well as HTML versions and so on of a
number of different sites).

Anyway, that's my report for now.

bryan

--
Bryan K. Ogawa  II Infinitum  <><  On this account I speak for myself.
<bkogawa@netvoyage.net>       SDG  http://www.netvoyage.net/~bkogawa/