The alt.comics.fan-fiction Archives

Archive
Name:	Hawk's Archive / The alt.comics.fan-fiction Archives
Date(s):	June 1995 - August 8, 1996
Archivist:	Hawk
Founder:	Hawk
Type:	Fanfic
Fandom:	X-Men
URL:	joeshaw.bevc.blacksburg.va.us/pub/fan-fiction/
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The alt.comics.fan-fiction Archives was an archive for X-Men fanfiction. According to the Comic Fanfiction History Project:

"June 1995: Hawk's X-Men Archive opens, creating the first big X-Men archive on the web, accepting all X-Men stories posted on ACFF until June 1996. The first story archived was RubyLis's "End of Innocence".

While ACFF posted comics fanfiction other than the X-Men, Hawk's archive only saved the X-Men stories. Another site, called the "Ultimate Fan-Fiction" site, maintained by Peter Gallacher, auto-archived all stories posted to the group.

On August 8, 1996, Hawk posted the following as an explanation for why she was closing the archive:

The archive, as of today, is closed.

This was. in many ways, a very hard decision for me. In other ways, it was one of the easiest decisions I've ever made.

I have enjoyed creating and updating the archive, but it has gotten to be too much. When I first started it, in June of 1995, I worried about 2, maybe 3, stories a week. Now, I have to worry about 5-10, sometimes more. While I could somewhat keep up with it while I was still in school, I can't do it while working 40 hours a week, and having other things that I need to do. If I could do this as my job, I would jump to do it in an instant, but as a hobby, it's taking up too much of my time, as well as getting to be rather expensive...

...Authors need to write fan-fiction because there's a story that they feel that they *have* to write - and they should put it out to as many people as they desire. But they should not look at places like alt.comics.fan-fiction as only a holding place until I pick up your story. Acff was around before I started my webpage, and it's going to be around long after the archive has been forgotten. And I take insult that some people seem to feel that the readers on acff don't matter as much as people who read a web page - each and every reader is as important as the next, no matter where you find them. I don't mean to sound so depressing about keeping the archive. There were many good times. But... I've broken. I've had enough, and I'm not going to look back. I'm still going to be around acff, and, in fact, I might start writing reviews of stories. I've wanted to do that for a while. I'm also going to continue to post the FAQ. Maybe I'll now have the time to update it on a more regular basis. I'll also still post stories to alt.comics.fan-fiction for those people for whom I've already promised to post. But I'm not going to take any other new stories to post, unless you're a friend.

For all of you who enjoyed the site, I am very sorry. I wish there was a way to keep the site up, and keep everybody happy. But unless someone takes it as a full-time job, that's never going to happen. I can't imagine anyone paying someone else to keep an archive of fan-fiction on the World Wide Web. If you really need your fan-fiction fix, you're going to have to go and subscribe to either acff, X-Writers, or Untold-L, or take your chances with DejaNews (http://www.dejanews.com). That's it, folks. I just want to end with a thank you - thank you to all who bothered to read this till the end *grin*, for all of you who, over the past year, have complimented me on the site, and to all of the authors who have made the effort on the webpage more than worthwhile. The "good" authors more than outweighed the "bad", and I enjoyed every moment that I dealt with them.

Hawk

The archive changed locations from joeshaw.bevc.blacksburg.va.us/pub/fan-fiction/ to http://www.blarg.net/~hawk/fanfic.html. It is unknown when the FTP site was taken down, and while frequently referred to by X-Men fans active in the '90s, there are unfortunately no traces left of Hawk's archive online. Hawk herself remained active on ACFF, posting the group's FAQ and lists of archives and answering questions to the list as late as 2008.