ContactThe RulesF.A.Q.AvatarsThe BSV-Team


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The Rules

Before posting, please be aware of the following things:

  1. This is a Spuffy site where all fics feature Spike as a VAMPIRE.


  2. Other pairings/slash are allowed as long as Spike/Buffy are the main characters.


  3. No real people fiction. By "real people", we mean living people who did not give you consent to use them in your story. Using a historical figure, or a friend of yours who agreed to be in the fic, is fine. As are minor apperances of others. You want Jackie Chan to run across the screen? Fine. But don't make him a major character.


  4. Make sure you place your story in the appropriate category. While we previously required all fic to include biting or bloodplay, we now accept non-bitey fics. We ask that a fic be placed in the appropriate non-bitey category if you are not yet certain of the direction it will take.


  5. Use the appropriate warnings and ratings for your story. This is important especially if the story contains scenes that may disturb some readers. A warning about a character death can be left out if it would be too much of a spoiler, but problematic content like rape or torture must be mentioned in a warning.


  6. Stay in character. Characters within the fictions should be easily identifiable as the characters we know and love from the show. This means that characters should act and sound like those portrayed on the show.


  7. All fics must be beta'd or fairly error free. Not all fic posted will be accepted. The Bloodshedverse has little tolerance for stories where even the most basic concept of punctuation and grammar are ignored or ones that leave the reader questioning the actual plot and sequence of events. A beta list is available and you will be asked to correct your mistakes and/or have your fics beta'd if they do not meet with the required standard.


  8. Do not post plagiarized fic.


  9. Writers under the age of 17, please do not post NC-17 fics.


  10. Chapter length should be at least 1000 words. If your chapters occasionally run short, that is fine. However, if you chronically post chapters that are less than 1000 words in length, the entire fic will be deleted. If posting a standalone fic under 1000 words please place it in the drabble category.


  11. Please make sure your fics are correctly formatted. You must have the proper spacing between paragraphs. This means double-spaced. This doesn't always happen automatically when you load a chapter so please preview your chapters and fix if required. Any fic (or chapters) without correct spacing between the paragraphs may be deleted. The HTML-cleaner has been supplied to help with spacing.


  12. Don't spam. As long as your story-submissions are still being validated manually by the moderators, please don't submit more than one chapter at a time. Meaning, don't submit the next chapter until the previous one has been validated.

If you are not already an author archived on the Bloodshedverse, please be advised that this is not an open forum. New fiction and authors are screened and may be deleted if found not meeting the site standards. These rules may seem harsh and bordering on rude, but they are posted for a reason.


F.A.Q.

Where is ...?
  1. I'd like my friend XYZ, who also has an account at the Bloodshedverse, to be able to post my stories for me.
  2. Someone asked me to post their stories for them. They have set the necessary permissions, but where do I select for whom I am posting?
  3. I'm about to post a challenge response, and I saw that all the responses are linked on the challenges site. How does that work?
  4. I want to delete my account at the Bloodshedverse, but can't find that option.
  5. How can I change the title of my story? (Or the settings for review notifications and whether the information shall be carried over to the next chapter.)
  6. I received a review of insulting content, is there a way to delete it?

Changes

  1. I'm missing the Read Whole Story feature you had previously with the Efiction version of the site.
  2. I can't find the options Notify for new reviews and Carry over chapter information in my author's profile anymore.
  3. I'm missing the Categories section from the old site.
  4. I'm missing the Favorites feature from the old site.
  5. I'd like to put a picture in my summary, and I know that was possible on the old site. Why does it suddenly ignore my html-tag?

Is there a problem?

  1. I'm not receiving any emails from the Bloodshedverse. I know I should at least be getting review notifications, but the Contact Member option doesn't seem to be reaching me either.
  2. I submitted a challenge, but it doesn't show up in the Challenges section. What did I do wrong?
  3. I'm a new author and just submitted a story, but it doesn't show up. What happened?
  4. I edited the latest chapter of my story, but it doesn't show up as updated?
  5. I just created a new account, but I can't log in.
  6. I accidentally deleted a chapter/story and when I put it back all my reviews were gone. Can you get them back?
  7. The HTML-Cleaner doesn't work for me.
  8. I edited my settings, but my changes don't show up.

General

  1. I'm not an author, but I'd like to have an account at the Bloodshedverse. Is that allowed?
  2. What do the bracketed numbers behind the thread titles in the Forum box on the main page mean?
  3. I wrote an All Human story; since the Bloodshedverse doesn't archive those, can you maybe suggest a good site that does?
  4. Whom do I contact if I have a question/problem?
  5. What's up with the ghost (Dennis) picture on the main page?
  6. Is there anything else I need to know about the forum?


I'd like my friend XYZ, who also has an account at the Bloodshedverse, to be able to post my stories for me.

In the section My Account you can allow others to post for you with the feature Set Permissions. Your friend will be able to post new stories/chapters for you, as well as edit them. However, they CANNOT delete your stories. Only you or an administrator of the highest level (Owner) can do that.

Someone asked me to post their stories for them. They have set the necessary permissions, but where do I select for whom I am posting?

Once someone has given you permission to post for them, a new option will appear in My Account: 'Manage another's stories'. Here you will find a list of everyone for whom you are allowed to post stories. Just select the person you want and you will be led to a page similar to your own posting area. (Only missing the delete option.)

I'm about to post a challenge response, and I saw that all the responses are linked on the challenges site. How does that work?

When you post the first chapter of your story, you will see a drop-down field Challenge. Here you can select the challenge to which your story responds and it will be linked automatically. Note: This option is only available on the first chapter. If you want to change it later on, you need to edit the first chapter.

I want to delete my account at the Bloodshedverse, but can't find that option.

Only admins of the highest level (Owner) can delete accounts to avoid accidents. Please contact Diabola and ask her to delete your account.

How can I change the title of my story? (Or the settings for review notifications and whether the information shall be carried over to the next chapter.)

To edit any of the above mentioned information, you have to edit the first chapter of your story. In all the later chapters those fields will be disabled.

I received a review of insulting content, is there a way to delete it?

Yes, you can notify an admin/mod about it and they will make the final decision on whether it will be deleted or not.
 
Should you receive such a review, go to My Account -> Manage Reviews or My Account -> Manage unanswered Reviews and find the review in question. Next to each unanswered review you will find a link saying Report. Click the link, put the reason why you would like the review to be deleted in the Comment box and send it off.
 
As soon as an admin/mod is available they will check the review in question and either delete it or remove your notification should your request be unreasonable.
 
Note: From the moment you reported the review until the admin/mod made the decision the review will not show up in the public section of the site.

I'm missing the Read Whole Story feature you had previously with the Efiction version of the site.

Since this feature resulted in fewer reviews, we opted not to add it with the new version of the site. If you would still like to view a story in its entirety, that option is still available once a fic has been marked complete. You can find this under the Entire Story feature.

I can't find the options Notify for new reviews and Carry over chapter information in my author's profile anymore.

Those options have been moved, you can now select them when you submit a new story. This seemed the ideal place for them, especially if an author wants different settings for his/her different stories.

I'm missing the Categories section from the old site.

Stories by categories can now be accessed via the Search feature. Just select your preferred category from the list and hit Search. (Listing all those options separately would make the menu too big and hard to navigate.)

I'm missing the Favorites feature from the old site.

You can find that feature at My Account -> Manage Favorites. Here you can select your favorite authors and stories. If one of the selected stories (or a story by a selected author) is updated, or one of your favorite authors submits a new story you will receive a notification via email. No one will know who your favorites are, so there is no danger of making an author feel un-appreciated. If you are an author, you will not be listed on your own list. Furthermore, if you already selected an author, their stories will no longer be listed either, as selecting them in the stories category would only lead to you receiving two emails for the same update. If you remove the author from your favorites list, the stories will be open for selection again.

I'd like to put a picture in my summary, and I know that was possible on the old site. Why does it suddenly ignore my html-tag?

It is no longer allowed to use pictures in summaries, to keep the layout of the story-lists uniform. Pictures and banners are still allowed in the story header itself.

I'm not receiving any emails from the Bloodshedverse. I know I should at least be getting review notifications, but the Contact Member option doesn't seem to be reaching me either.

To reduce the problems with people replying to those emails - and thus sending an email to a non-existent address - the header-information of the email has been changed. Sadly, many spam-filters consider emails that claim to come from an address other than the real one as spam. Please check your spam-folder to see if that is what has happened to your email.

I submitted a challenge, but it doesn't show up in the Challenges section. What did I do wrong?

All challenges have to be validated first. Just give the admins/mods a few days to empty the validation queue and your entry will show up. If after a few days, it is still not visible, it may not have met the criteria for the site. We know it's up to the writers to do the actual writing, but all challenges should at least be spell-checked.

I'm a new author and just submitted a story, but it doesn't show up. What happened?

Story submissions to the Bloodshedverse are admin/mod checked. If you are a new author, your first few stories/chapters will have to be approved by an admin/mod before they will show up in the archive. This is necessary if we want to keep up the quality of the fiction we host. Don't worry, once we can be sure that your writing meets the site's standard, your account will be set to auto-validate mode and your stories will show up as updated as soon as they are posted.

I edited the latest chapter of my story, but it doesn't show up as updated?

Your story will only show as newly updated if you add a new chapter, slight changes on an already posted chapter will not bring your story to the top of the list again. If your changes are really heavy and you believe people will need to re-read it to keep track of the story, you always have the option to delete the old version and post the new one instead. Be aware that deleting a chapter will also delete all the reviews already left for it. If your changes are really major, this shouldn't bother you as those reviews wouldn't be about the new content anyway.

I just created a new account, but I can't log in.

Your account needs to be activated first. You will shortly receive an email containing your personal activation link. Click the link and your account will be activated so you can log in. Should you not get the email, please check your spam-folder. If it is still missing, please contact an admin/mod and ask them to check if you entered the correct email address. (The activation is needed to make sure that you were using the correct email address; otherwise some stranger might use your email address to create havoc, leading to, in the worst case, you being banned from the site.)

I accidentally deleted a chapter/story and when I put it back all my reviews were gone. Can you get them back?

Sorry, but no. The chapters/stories are saved in files with numbers, and the reviews link to those id-numbers. If we kept the reviews of a deleted chapter/story, we'd risk them being linked to a different story if the id gets used again. Plus, they would take up a lot of space in the database that can be put to better use.

The HTML-Cleaner doesn't work for me.

Unlike the rest of the site, the HTML-Cleaner relies heavily on Java-Script. Sadly this still creates problems on some browsers/systems. We are looking for a way to make it work without Java-Script, but that's not yet possible.
 
The integration of a real online-editor into the site is in progress. We will need some time to verify that it works correctly with all browsers, but once that is done you'll be able to edit your posts online in the same way as you're used from your local text-editor. You will also be able to copy and paste directly from the local Office application of your choice, and hopefully even to upload whole files (at least MSWord files).

I edited my settings, but my changes don't show up.

Profile:
You probably tried to use a forbidden character. The rules are as follows.
  • Username: min 3 character - upper/lower case characters, numbers, whitespace, underscore, point and hyphen
  • Password: min 3 character - upper/lower case characters, numbers, underscore, point and hyphen
  • Website: allowed is everything that can appear in a normal URL
  • Birthday: 4 numbers, followed by a hyphen, followed by 2 numbers, followed by a hyphen, followed by 2 numbers
  • Email: allowed is everything that can appear in a normal email-addy. Must contain an @.
  • Avatar: allowed is everything that can appear in a normal URL
Story:
This is a problem that sometimes appears with stories that made the last move with the BSV. Please contact Diabola, tell her which author and which fic, and she will fix it.

I'm not an author, but I'd like to have an account at the Bloodshedverse. Is that allowed?

Sure! We love our readers as much as our writers. Having an account and logging into the site gives you access to more features than just posting stories. Some benefits of having a user account are:
  • You can choose to be notified if an author responds to your review
  • You can mark the authors and stories you like best as favorites, and receive email notifications when that author updates.
  • You can choose a different skin as your default skin. Hopefully we have one that is easy on the eyes. If not, please request a color preference.
  • The forms will automatically have your name and email address
  • You will be listed on the monthly birthday list
  • You can choose for others to post your stories for your, and vice versa, without requiring you to share your email address and log-in info.

Please be advised that your registrations will not be subject to deletion because of any database size limitations. If we get too large, more space will be purchased.

What do the bracketed numbers behind the thread titles in the Forum box on the main page mean?

They show you the number of posts in that thread. In addition, their color lets you know if the thread has been updated since you last looked at it - a red number means new posts.

I wrote an All Human story; since the Bloodshedverse doesn't archive those, can you maybe suggest a good site that does?

Try our partner site, Sweet Temptation, a great archive for all-human/fantasy Spuffy fiction.

Whom do I contact if I have a question/problem?

If it has to do with the management of the site, the validation of your story or the rules, your best option would be either Diabola or one of the moderators. For technical questions (something doesn't work or you get an error-message.) contact Diabola.

What's up with the ghost (Dennis) picture on the main page?

Dennis has been around on the BSV pretty much since the beginning. It all started with the first tag-board, which occasionally acted up - something it still does by the way. When people were wondering about the double-posts, someone mentioned it had to be Dennis playing one of his games with the visitors - and that's what it has been ever since. Something doesn't work the way it should on the BSV? That's Dennis haunting us again.
 
So after more than two years, we decided it would only be fair to give our site-ghost his very own place of honor. It would be boring to just have him sitting there though, so we convinced him to make himself useful and announce the holidays for us.
 
Thanks to the amazingly talented and generous Selene, he will even dress for the occasion.
 
I'll give you a short list of which holidays he knows so far, and if you want to suggest a new one, feel free. Based on: Gregorian Calendar, Northern Hemisphere, BSV time.
  • The Australian holidays start sixteen hours early, when it is midnight somewhere in Australia.
  • Christmas starts on the 24th, because Christmas Eve is heavily celebrated in some European countries.
  • All dates are based on Wikipedia; please report any errors.
  • The holidays are listed roughly in order of date. Roughly, because not all of them have a definite date.
  • The pictures are mostly based on suggestions by the people who requested the holiday in question to be added. If you have any complaints, let me know.
  • The holidays listed here are the ones suggested by our readers. If it offends you that some specific holiday is missing, well, if you let us know we can always add it.
  • Graphics by Selene: Imbolc, Mardi Gras, Saint Patrick's Day, Beltana, Easter, Cinco de Mayo, Litha, Fourth of July, Lammas, Mabon, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Melbourne Cup Day, Christmas, New Year's Eve
  • Graphics by Diabola: Australia Day, Valentines Day, ANZAC Day, International Talk like a Pirate Day, World Zombie Day, Rememberance DAy, Hanukkah, Yule

Is there anything else I need to know about the forum?

Most parts of the forum should be pretty straight-forward and need no explanation - at least I hope so. But here are a few tips regarding the parts that might get confusing.
 
If you see a button New Thread, that means you can start a new thread; if you don't see it (i.e. people who aren't logged in won't have that button in the Wishlist section), you aren't allowed to post there.
 
Same goes for the Reply button at the bottom of a thread. If you see a button saying Closed in its place, the thread has been closed by an admin and further posting is not permitted. (That will happen, if i.e. a discussion turns nasty or a question has clearly been answered but people continue to spam the thread with comments, creating confusion for the person who asked the question.)
 
You can only delete your post if it hasn't been answered yet, but you can edit all your posts at any time. Admins are able to delete the posts of others if deemed necessary, but even they can't delete the first post of a thread (to get rid of that they will have to delete the whole thread). They cannot however, edit your posts, so don't worry about anyone putting words in your mouth.
 
Some parts of the forum are member only, meaning you have to be logged in to see them. So if a friend tells you about a thread and you can't see it, make sure you're logged in.
 
Categories open for everyone are everything in General, Awards, Fiction and Support. Writing is read-only for non-members and there is a member-only version of the Bloodshedput in BSV Internal.
 
If you aren't logged in, your post will show up as Guest and the name you entered will be signed where a regualr members signature would be.
 
If it says moderator below someone's name, that means they are moderators for the Forum. Those moderators are not neccessarily the same as the moderators who validate stories and manage Challenges or Betas. They are, however, the ones who keep an eye on what's happening in the forum, and have the ability to close, delete or move threads if they deem it neccessary.
 
I hope no one feels left out by part of the forum being members only, but an account at the BSV is free and we don't send out spam, so it's not like you can't simply register. Having the users signed in opens the option of someone sending you a private message via your profile, and stops people from causing mischief under another's name.
 
Other than the general internet policy of "be polite", there are very few rules for the forum. Mostly we have some guidelines how posts should be handled in a specific section, but those will be listed in the upper-most thread of that section (Read before posting).


Avatars for the Forum

Some of our members were kind enough to offer icons for the use as avatars for the forum. So if you don't have any appropiate icons yourself, or no webspace to store them on, feel free to pick on of the icons below. Just copy the link from the box below the icon, and put it into the avatar field in your profile. If you want to use one of these icons somewhere besides the BSV, please check with the artist if they are ok with that. Please don't hotlink them from any sites other than the BSV though. Thank you The Space Between, GoldenBuffy and Always_jbj for those awesome collections.

by The Space Between
































































by GoldenBuffy























by Always_jbj

   


The BSV-Team

Owner:Diabola

Founder:Bloodshedbaby

Graphics:Bloodshedbaby
Selene
Always_jbj

Moderators:
(General)
Diabola
Bloodshedbaby
Spikeskat
Always_jbj
Slaymesoftly

Moderators:
(Forum)
Diabola
Akaelalee
Athenewolfe (Special mod for the Awards Section)