Master and Apprentice (Star Wars: TPM archive)
| Archive | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Master and Apprentice |
| Date(s): | 21 May 1999 - present |
| Archivist: | Lori |
| Founder: | sockii |
| Type: | slash fanfic |
| Fandom: | Star Wars: The Phantom Menace |
| URL: | https://www.masterapprentice.com/ http://www.sockiipress.org/ma/warn.html (Wayback, 1999) AO3 collection |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Master and Apprentice is the main Phantom Menace slash archive, and is associated with the master_apprentice mailing list. It contains fanworks focusing on the ship Obi/Qui, as well as the characters Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Anakin Skywalker.
Founded in 1999, the archive is still online today but is no longer actively accepting fic, having moved to the Archive of Our Own in 2014 as part of the Open Doors Project.
Master and Apprentice explicitly signposts itself as containing adult material, and visitors to the site are required to confirm that they are of legal age to view such material. The page giving this warning features a quote by Keelywolfe:
"A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away, George Lucas created Star Wars. And he looked at it and saw that it was good. And all was right in the world. But then, we saw that Obi-Wan doth look upon Qui-Gon with lust, and that Mr. Lucas was not likely to include that in the next movie, so we said screw it and wrote it ourselves, even though we do not make any money off of this. And all was right with the world." -- Keelywolfe
The archive was a member of the Jedi Grrls webring, SW Slash, the Slash Fan Fiction Ring and The FanFic Archives WebRing.[1]
History
Sockii founded the archive in May 1999.
Sockii was the archive creator, owner, and moderator until November 2001. She asked for someone that had a technical background to take over, since the archive was running on a unique Perl script database. Lori took over as moderator and archive owner from 2001 to 2019, and then it was transferred to squidgie.
In 2003, Lori published a fundraiser fanzine - Master and Apprentice Archive Fundraising Zine - to raise funds for the archive's operating costs. The zine consisted of original content and was distributed on CD in support of the archive. In 2005 there was another very short-lived fundraiser featuring Fuumin's fanart.
As of January 2011 the archive had over 4,200 stories (individual fanwork chapters are counted as separate "stories" on Master and Apprentice). There is also a small gallery of fanart as well.
For more on the birth of this archive, including the joys and hassles, see A funny thing happened on my way to my birthday..., a 2009 essay by Sockii.
On March 1, 2014, the stories were imported to Archive Of Our Own, in the Master Apprentice Archive collection. The collection has over 1,100 works.
Rules & Guidelines
1. Underage explicit fiction (under 15) was not accepted at the old archive and will not be included in the collection here. If you add it, it will be removed by a moderator.2. No RPF was accepted at the old archive so please don't include it in the collection here.
3. Crossover stories with characters other than Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan but played by the same actors are, however, quite welcome, as are 'alternative-universe' scenarios.
4. Character focus. Submitted stories must contain Qui-Gon and/or Obi-Wan and/or Anakin, or they will be turned down. No Qui-Gon/female, Obi-Wan/female, or Anakin/female erotic/romantic stories will be accepted, unless the story also contains a strong slash theme relationship.[2]
Controversy
In January 2000, Sockii created a CD as a fundraiser for the archive. It was a copy of the archive at the time. The CD contained 2179 stories and was in an interactive web browsing format, with stories indexed by title and author. It also contained the author bios. Permission had not been asked of the authors before the CD had begun mailings. A few authors were unhappy that distribution in a different format had not been cleared with them.
In 2009, Sockii described the controversy:
The fandom went through typical growing pains as different subjects and content was being explored, but then our archive was having growing pains, too. Erik’s server was not all that stable, leading to sporadic downtime and a lot of headaches on his end. He put up with a lot helping me out with the site, for someone who wasn’t even in the fandom. At one point, in 2000, he thought it would be a nice idea to burn CD copies of the archive to make available to users through the mailing list. It was welcomed as a good “backup” to the unstable site, and he charged a nominal fee to cover his materials and time — I think it was $7 or so. No one raised a single complaint the first time around with this, and I think he mailed off something like 100-200 copies of the disk.In 2001, the server difficulties were getting worse. Erik was getting frustrated, and I, myself, was getting a little worn out from listmom and archiving duties. While at this point we had a group of 5-6 assistant archivists, it was still demanding a lot of my time, and my interest in the Qui/Obi was…drifting. By that point I had been distracted by some other Bright Shiny Fandoms — Brimstone in particular. Erik decided to do a second run of the archive disks, at $10, because he was about ready to give up trying to work out a solution for our hosting woes.
That’s when things got ugly. One morning I woke up to several outraged emails from authors who had long been absent from the fandom, demanding that their stories be removed from the archive, not included on the CD, “or else”. Later that day I found out Erik and I were being subjected to ugly accusations of profiting off people’s work, that outrageous things were being said about us all over fandom chat channels (one reason I still avoid “chat” to this day). We defended ourselves and actions while of course agreeing to remove any stories that people did not want included, but were then told, point blank, to “Fuck off” from the community and archive we’d spent all those hours, days, months, years into maintaining.
And we were both only too glad to oblige at that point. [3]
The label for the jan 2001 CD shows that the CD is formatted for PC computers
By the fall of 2001, the CD was formatted for both MAC and PC computers
Page 1 of the index from the CD, click for larger version
page 2 shows that you can also search by genre
page 3 explains the rules of the archive, as those who were receiving a copy of the CD may not have been able to access the site online
Years later the website had the following statement:
Once upon a time (2000) there was a CD of the archive. There were many issues with permission with that CD and a question of use of the profit that came from it. Because of those issues the CD is no longer available. Please don't ask the archiver(s) for one. If there is a another CD it will only be with the explicit permission of the authors - but don't hold your breath. [4]
In 2005, the new archive owner created a second fundraiser CD with artist and writer permission: We're Not Dead Yet.
Gallery
Banners
linking banner
different linking banner, seen at OKEBFFA
linking banner, seen at Jedi Discipline
header image from archive search page
Screencaps
warning page, 1999
main page, 2000
main page, 2003
archive, 2003
age check
Sample Fanart
The archive contained approximately 60-80 artpieces. Many of them were uncredited in the gallery. An archived version of the gallery can be seen here.
References
- ^ Master and Apprentice,via Wayback: 1999. (Accessed 21 November)
- ^ Master Apprentice Archive Profile on AO3
- ^ from A funny thing happened on my way to my birthday... (2009)
- ^ Does anyone know the source of this quote?