History

Hello, colleagues, associates, friends and lollygaggers!

Welcome to my first effort to shorten my public profile on www.fanfiction.net

Here you will see some general history of the Sonic the Hedgehog section, some information about me, and maybe a few rants or stories I deemed unnecessary for the regular old bio.

I suppose, I should begin with some past issues. If any of you are curious about history of the Sonic the Hedgehog section, read on.

The first Sonic stories seem to have huge popularity among writers, new and old. One of the most intriguing findings on the last page should be NetRaptor's What if Metal Sonic ran on Windows 95. In fact, this dinosaur (ironically) still lurks on the site and keeps posting new content. That authors belongs to veterans of this site, thanks to whom we got the franchise on the site.

Everything pretty much turned out like in Eden. As the site got more popular, less talented people came and took an active role in the domain's growth. Funny, but they were more productive than veterans, despite their production being only second-rate. It didn't take long for the website to attract new waves of members. They turned out to be ignorant of Sega's first games and Sonic's glory on earliest consoles.

These writers knew Sonic for games such as Sonic Adventure and then Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Some came thanks to Sonic comics or cartoons. Admittedly, I watched Sonic Underground as a kid. Should tell you that even Sonic looked different back then. A truly tiny mammal with a large head.

Being faster on the keyboard than older writers, these people helped FF.net's Sonic section grow up to 4000 stories. The number was going to hit 6000 with new successful 3D titles, the mentioned adventure games. But it did not happen.

Instead of moving up, the number of stories shrunk. You might ask how is that possible, but it wasn't a glitch in the system. It was a time when The Author Alliance formed. This bunch of teens (with preteens in their ranks) was like a storm for the site. These guys (and gals) were responsible for removal of almost 3000 stories in the Sonic section alone! It started in a pretty funny way with some friendly ties and a knack for criticism. Soon, criticism turned into little witty flames and other means of ridiculing authors, whose work they found inappropriate. At its peak, this group would go on raids, aimed to remove all low quality stories. You can plainly see, that just a few people is enough to eradicate thousands of fictions.

Because these stories were removed, vengeful victims decided to strike back. Metaletemon27 took the lead in trying to battle the 'evil flamers'. Spies were sent to The Author Alliance's private forum, which was unavailable to the public, and things were turning out like in a soap opera. Eventually, personal abuse reports were sent to battle the group. Unfortunately, they were intercepted, along with a response from the site's owner that nothing will be done. The Alliance then threatened all users with a concept never before seen on fan fiction. An automatic abuse report program. It also got the administrator's attention, and GTAJake, one of the group's core members, received a message from the site's administration. The owners said they would not try to 'prevent more creative ways of reporting', provided the servers are not damaged in the process.

Ironically, it was all a scam. What the team did instead was provide the administrator research that the site's members saw no difference between script (allowed) and chat (not allowed) formats. As a result, script was banned. Every story that had at least two lines of scripted text was removed in the blink of an eye.

All good things exist in moderation, though. As time passed, the alliance members got busier and it was eventually disbanded. During the times even the members considered 'silly', they do admit they've had a lot of amusement. During interviews, it was noted that Metaletemon's ultimate defeat was a prime example of their influence. With the use of elaborate research, The Alliance (which dropped the 'Author' part) provided evidence to a claim their greatest hater was, too, a flamer. Information leaked that the user had multiple accounts, some of which had no more than destructive criticism.

I was but an aspiring young writer during this war. Funny, but I happened to be too far from the front, unlike my friends, who've had significant popularity among soap lovers. That is, until Blue Dragon X admitted he was partially responsible for removal of a story I wrote. Oh well, that was a fun ride.

Eventually, they all left the site, to appear only on sporadic moments. These moments were often the fault of yours truly. First, when my criticism reached a few groups that disliked critics in general. Then a return was made during a certain fictional overlord's arrival. Hogfather's claims that he dominated the site for years, and statements that he has more awards, abilities than hundreds of authors together, caused quite a ruckus. In fact, the ruckus was greater than the previous sentence. His downfall was most...amusing.

What happened next? I've gotten too busy to watch, and the people I intended to interview were intent to show only not quite relevant information.

Now, however, I'm back to document what is happening. If you are reading this, you probably know this already.

Good luck!