After the Fact

Archive
Name:	After the Fact
Date(s):	2002-2003 (Wayback dates)
Archivist:	dtg
Founder:	mailing list: Mary Kleinsmith, Vickie Moseley
Type:
Fandom:	The X-Files
URL:	http://after-the-fact.tripod.com/about.html (Wayback) The stories are sorted by episode.
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After the Fact is an archive for post-ep fanfiction.

It all started one cold winter's evening, after Christmas, but not yet New Year, 2001. Vickie and I, talking for the first time in quite awhile, were lamenting the state of the X-Files fanfic we both know and love. So many of the writers we both knew and loved had lost heart. And those that hadn't were floundering for subject matter.

Somehow, Vickie, being the queen of "The Rest of the Story" fanfiction, and me, being one of the biggest fans of it, got on the subject of missing-scene stories. To be honest, I couldn't tell you now who proposed the topic first, who came up with the idea for the list (probably Vickie) or anything else, but soon we were talking about our own list. A list where writers would be encouraged and challenged. And, best yet, a list where the readers and writers would be encouraged to not just write or read, but watch old tapes and DVD's of episodes.

Before we knew it, we were the proud parents (okay, Vickie was the parent, and I was the weird spinster aunt) of a brand new mailing list. We based it on all the things we loved in fanfic, and thought others might as well. Missing-scene, post-ep stories on a challenge basis, with an open door to MSR and UST. An episode would be announced on Sunday, and stories would be posted for that episode during the week, with any story able to be posted if it took a little longer than the week assigned. But would anybody be interested? Would it take off? Would we have more than a dozen subscribers?

Vickie assigned me the task of alerting the lists, since I'm on a few <g>, and I did my best to write an introductory description that would tell people what the new list was all about. On December 27, 2001, the invitation went out over the lists while we waited with bated breath. Imagine our excitement when we looked the next morning and already had 22 members! Now, we're at over 130, and we're even more excited than ever!

We figured if we were going to be parents of the list, we should send our own stories first. Those two were quickly followed by some great fic based on the pilot from the other writers on list. Not long after the list officially opened, Deb (aka dtg) was wonderful enough to volunteer to be web mom, keeping an archive available of all the stories for each episode - a rather daunting task, believe me! But she jumped in with both feet, creating a beautiful web page and officially joining us as co-moderator on the list itself.