Quills & Ink
For pages with similar titles, see Quill and Ink.
| Archive | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Quills & Ink |
| Date(s): | 2005-April 2014 |
| Archivist: | Rhapsody and others |
| Founder: | |
| Type: | |
| Fandom: | Lord of the Rings, multifandom |
| URL: | http://www.quillsandink.com/ (Wayback Capture, 2005) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Quills & Ink is a fanfiction archive focused on Lord of the Rings fanfiction and fanfiction about other Tolkien works. It also hosts fanfic from a few other fandoms such as Dark Angel, Firefly, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The X-Files. The Quills & Ink website included both an archive and forum; the archive was built using eFiction software. Quills & Ink also included a subgroup called Imedhuir, the Sindarin word for "Valley of Dark Dreams," which was "an adult Tolkien/fantasy writers group created by a group of our more bored but talented members."[1]
Similar to many other Tolkien archives in the 2000s, Quills & Ink used a splash page as its homepage that warned about potential adult content, including slash fanfiction, and invited visitors to enter only if they were comfortable with such content. The homepage in April 2005 read as follows:
Welcome to Quills and Ink, a website intended to serve as both a fanfiction archive for various fandoms, original work, and also as a community for writers. The archive and the forum at Quills and Ink is geared towards an adult audience, which means that some of the content will be rated "R" or "NC-17" as defined by the Motion Picture Association of America. You will likely encounter content including, but not limited to, profanity, sexual interactions of both het and slash genres, and other content the site administrators feel is not suited for minors. We have registered Quills and Ink as a site containing adult content, in order to make it recognizable to home computer software filters for adult sites.
We strive to ensure that all stories and forum discussion are labeled with the appropriate warnings, rated with the appropriate level, and that slash content is clearly marked and separated from het content, for those who wish to read one but not the other. If you feel that a story or forum topic has not been labeled or categorized appropriately, please contact us at [email protected].
Thank you for visiting and we hope you enjoy our site.
By choosing to enter this site, you are stating that you are of legal age to view adult content.[2]
Typical for Tolkien fanfiction archives at the time that hosted a range of stories rather than focusing on a single genre (slash, genfic, or het), Quills & Ink reassures potential readers that content will nonetheless be separated or sortable by genre and that potentially offensive content can be avoided and identified their site as specifically aimed at adult visitors.
Forum and Submission Guidelines
According to a 2005 copy of the site's guidelines, "The main number one Golden Rule of Quills and Ink is to have fun and enjoy yourself."[3] The forum guidelines and rules for interacting with other members on the site strongly emphasized not stoking drama or bringing personal conflicts onto the site. Flames, trolling, pseuds, religious preaching, and excessive vulgarity were not allowed.
Quills & Ink was a moderated archive where stories had to be approved by a Submissions Panel:
All stories must be reviewed and approved by the Submissions Panel. We will return a decision to you no later than one week after the story is submitted. An acceptance/decline notification will be emailed to you, at which time you may request that the panel's comments to be sent to you. Even if your story is declined, please know that we appreciate all submissions made to us and will be happy to see improved stories resubmitted for archiving. If you are in need of help with your story, please visit our forum and view the writing threads. Also many of our administrators, moderators and members will be happy to help you.[3]
Although relatively open to a variety of stories, Quills & Ink didn't not allow everything. Similar to many archives in the early-mid 2000s, the following stories were banned:
- Stories using an AU label to cover lack of knowledge about the canon
- Mary Sue stories
- MPREG (male pregnancy) stories
- MST (Mystery Science Theater) stories
- Song parodies
- Stories involving underage characters in sexual situations
While rape, noncon, BDSM, and abuse stories were allowed but "will be looked at closely. Those stories using these subjects gratuitously will be rejected. Stories incorporating them sensibly into the plot of the story are acceptable."
The archive did allow several genres that were often banned on Tolkien fanfiction archives at the time, including Girl Falls into Middle-earth stories (though noting that "Those that feature teenagers who giggle a lot and talk about how kewl the canon characters are will be declined"), PWP, crossovers, original fiction, and RPF (real person fiction), though the site stopped accepting RPF sometime before 2007.[4]
The site's guidelines were originally written with a humorous tone and included rules such as "No peeing on the carpet" and "No feeding the moderators."[3] By 2007, the guidelines had been simplified considerably, which included removing the humorous items from the list.[4]
References
- ^ Quills & Ink Homepage, Wayback capture 7 March 2008.
- ^ Quills & Ink Homepage, Wayback capture 5 April 2005.
- ^ a b c Quills & Ink, Guidelines, Wayback capture 15 April 2005.
- ^ a b Quills & Ink, Guidelines, Wayback capture 29 April 2007.