EFP

From Fanlore
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Archive
Name: EFP - Erika's Fanfiction Page
Date(s): 2001-present
Archivist: Erika
Founder: Erika
Type: Fan Fiction Archive
Fandom: Multifandom
URL: https://efpfanfic.net/
EFP site logo
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

EFP is possibly the largest Italian-language fic archive. It hosts both fanfic and original writing.

Some fanwriters active on EFP later became professionally published authors, such as CaskaLangley/Eleonora C. Caruso, Savannah/Virginia De Winter, and Lara Manni, later revealed to be a pen-name of established journalist and writer Loredana Lipperini.

It also has a connected forum, where users can talk about fanfiction and create challenges/contests with a judge and EFP-correlated prizes.

History

EFP was born from a personal page dedicated to Neon Genesis Evangelion called "Erika's NGE Page", hosting fanfics from Erika and other Italian authors, as well as translations, in its section "Erika's Fanfiction Page", manually uploaded by the webmaster and later expanded starting to host fanfics of various other works. It soon started to become too big to manually upload every fic, so, trying to emulate fanfiction.net's automated system, a new website was created and EFP was born. A big surge in users came in 2004 with the growing userbase of the Harry Potter fandom and with it a lowering of the userbase's median age and several complaints from concerned parents who found on the website non-con, incest, and violent fics. Erika, after the complaints, was forced to put more restrictive rules and restrict Explicit stories only to registered users and limit certain adult themes.[1]

Rating

EFP Uses a color-based rating system similar to the one used in Italian television: Green, Yellow, Orange and Red.

Categories

A breakdown of the types of fandoms on EFP in 2020
A breakdown of works by fandom type on EFP in 2020

EFP features both a large number of categories for anime and manga fandoms as well as a large quantity of works in those fandoms. One Direction and Harry Potter are also popular. Overall, EFP features 2,776 fandom sections out of which 2,773 contain fics. There is also a section for crossovers.

One distinctive feature of EFP is that it splits comics and cartoons into three media types, adding a European comics/cartoons section to the American comics/cartoons and anime/manga sections common on English-language archives. This section contains fandoms such as Miraculous Ladybug, Winx, W.i.t.c.h., Huntik, Angel's friends, Code Lyoko, and others.

EFP is also interesting for splitting video games and role playing games into separate sections.

The original works section is distinctive for its use of the Italian genre term 'giallo'. From Wikipedia: "In the Italian language, giallo is a broad term that can be translated as "crime novel" including any literary genre involving crime and mystery, with all its sub-genres such as crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery or thriller-horror."[2]

Each EFP category includes a somewhat controversial subsection of top stories called "Storie Scelte", which features works "which distinguish themselves in a positive way in their content or the skill of the author". These are hand-picked by the staff either autonomously or from a pool of user suggestions. As per the FAQ, the staff doesn't always read the suggested stories in their entirety.

Fanfic

  • Anime & Manga (116,924)
  • Books (87,537)
  • Musical Artists (84,839)
  • TV Series (62,037)
  • Movies (16,342)
  • Video Games (12,870)
  • Actors (8,301)
  • American Comics/Cartoons (8,136)
  • European Comics/Cartoons (2,361)
  • Role Playing Games (1,389)
  • Crossover (659)
  • Theater and Musicals (326)

Original

  • Romantic (26,673)
  • Poetry (20,139)
  • Introspective (13,957)
  • Dramatic (9,466)
  • General (9,010)
  • Fantasy (7,167)
  • Supernatural (5,754)
  • Nonsense (3,731)
  • Horror (3,303)
  • Historical (2,309)
  • Comic (1,798)
  • Comedy (1,516)
  • Science fiction (1,463)
  • Adventure (1,382)
  • Fable (1,236)
  • Noir (679)
  • Action (586)
  • Giallo (552)
  • Epic (523)

Big Fandoms

Examples of popular fandoms on EFP include:

  • Harry Potter (56,626)
  • One Direction (45,380)
  • Naruto (20,100)
  • Twilight (8,539)
  • Glee (8,085)
  • Dragon Ball (7,531)
  • One Piece (7,136)
  • Axis Powers Hetalia (6,143)
  • Sherlock (BBC) (5,082)

Rules

EFP has rules both about things that could get the site in legal trouble and about matters of taste. Overall, the rules are trying to allow art, even art with heavy and graphic topics but avoid pure erotica/porn:

"Non sono vietate le descrizioni di scene di sesso, anche molto spinte, purché si eviti la volgarità."

Descriptions of sex scenes, even very extreme ones, are not forbidden, as long as vulgarity is avoided.[3]

"scene di natura erotica o sessuale che si spingano in territori che possono urtare la sensibilità generale non sono adatte ad essere pubblicate in un sito aperto ad un pubblico di tutte le età. "

scenes of an erotic or sexual nature that go into territories that may offend the general sensibility are not suitable to be published on a site open to an audience of all ages.[4]

EFP prohibits:

  • Stories that are "excessively vulgar".[5]
  • Stories that objectively upset ethical or religious sensibilities[6] This includes slash about religious figures and stories intended to offend religious figures.
  • RPF about non-famous people.
  • Fic of works by Patricia Cornwell, P.N. Elrod, Raymond Feist, Diana Gabaldon, Terry Goodkind, Laurell K. Hamilton, Robin Hobb, George RR Martin, Dennis L. McKiernan, Robin McKinley, Irene Radford, Anne Rice, and Archie comics.
  • Unattributed quotes of pro work, e.g. unattributed song lyrics
  • Unauthorized quotes of other people's fanfic, unauthorized sequels to other people's fanfic, unauthorized translations of other people's fic, etc.
  • Blog post type material and meta
  • Chatspeak unless it's in the context of two fic characters texting/chatting/etc., but even then the site urges restraint
  • Allcaps
  • Excessive use of smileys in the body of a story
  • Frequent grammar errors
  • False advertising, like marking a story 'slash' or 'yaoi' to try to get more readers when this content is not present.[7]
  • Javascript, video embeds, image embeds wider than 500px and other things that mess up people's browsers.
  • Sexual content about minors under the age of 14 and sexual content about minors and much older adults (but only if there's an "erotic element")
  • Sexy incest content, which includes adopted siblings but does not include cousins since cousin-cest is not incest under Italian law.
  • Explicitly described sadomasochistic content, but bondage is okay, and alluding to sadomasochism is okay
  • Bestiality, meaning actual nonsentient animal/human. Catgirls are fine.
  • Necrophilia
  • Fic about Italian celebrities, sports RPF, stuff like incest or making a celeb a rapist/murderer/etc. in RPF.
  • Porn about historical figures like Alexander the Great, Socrates, or Dante Alighieri.

Adult stories are locked and can only be accessed by people with an account who have marked themselves as adults.

The site does not consider interview or chatlog-style fic to count as proper stories. Asking readers to vote on future developments in the reviews is prohibited.

The site strongly suggests warning for spoilers, not doing your html in MS Word, and putting a disclaimer at the top of stories. For RPF, disclaimers are mandatory.

Translators must make a different account for every author they translate.

Controversies

  • Moderation is inconsistent, with some stories in clear violation of the rules still up. This has often meant that when a fic does get deleted, authors take it personally, e.g.: Thorkigate.
  • The rules have often been deemed too vague, with what exactly constitutes "vulgarity" ultimately up to the discretion of the staff.
  • Many think the rules regarding disallowed content are prudish.
  • EFP has often emphasized spotlighting quality and promoted the idea of fanfiction as a stepping stone towards pro publishing. Some found this pretentious and a reductive view of fandom.
  • In spite of this, there used to be a somewhat popular perception of EFP being synonymous with amateurish and bad writing as opposed to AO3 or journal sites.

Meta

References

  1. ^ Storia (da fan) della Fanfiction in Italia "History of fanfiction in Italy from a fan" Extract from Eleonora C. Caruso. Nerdopoli - espressioni di una comunità in evoluzione. Effequ. ISBN 9788898837533. {{cite book}}: Invalid |display-authors=1 (help)
  2. ^ Wikipedia article on Giallo, accessed 12/27/2020.
  3. ^ Google translate
  4. ^ Google translate
  5. ^ the EFP rules page: "storie eccessivamente volgari, che per il loro contenuto potrebbero stare bene solo in un sito pornografico/per soli adulti". Accessed 12/27/20.
  6. ^ the EFP rules page: "storie che possano turbare la sensibilità etica/religiosa in maniera oggettiva." Accessed 12/27/20.
  7. ^ Yes, this is literally the example in the rules. From the EFP rules page: "aggiungere avvertimenti fasulli (come 'slash' e 'yaoi' in storie prive di tali contenuti) per attirare più lettori." Accessed 12/27/20.