Welcome to 2022, EF.
For a fandom of a show that will turn 25 in just a couple of short months, our archive is busier now than it has ever been. And thanks in no small part to the pandemic, we have had two back-to-back banner years in terms of community engagement.
As we look toward another year of continued growth, some changes are coming to the administrative team, among those saying goodbye to Elysian Fields founders angelic_amy and Megan. We are endlessly grateful for the environment they helped create and the many years they dedicated to the site, which included time, money, and labor. They will be memorialized on a forthcoming History of EF page and have been assigned Elysian Fields Founder recognition in a new profile tag. Incidentally, all members may now choose to associate as an Author, Reader, or Lurker. All you have to do is visit Edit Bio/Personal Information under Account Info.
Amy drafted a letter to the membership for us to share. Please find it below.
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To the Elysian Fields community,
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Amy, and I am one of the Founders of Elysian Fields. A group of five of us had a dream of creating a place for Spuffy fanfic to be posted (when so many of great old archives were closing up), and to build an accepting community, something that we have strived towards ever since.
To kick start building the archive, we sought and received permission to upload a back catalogue of fanfic from authors we knew personally, who were no longer active in fandom. This was an epic task, but one the few of us who did the uploading were proud of as it built the foundation of the site. And then we opened up to new submissions and the community was ‘born’.
Our responsibilities were shared across a moderating team that changed over the years (with the exception of Megan and myself), but my main focus, my niche area of responsibility, has always been organising and running the site events. Something I loved and something our EF community has always embraced. I’m proud of that, and how the wonderful authors, artists, betas and commenters have collectively made these events so successful.
It has been a great joy in my life to be part of our wonderful archive for the last 15 years. But all good things must come to an end. Leaving my position as admin is not entirely my choice, but I do so knowing the EF community has grown and thrived in small part due to my efforts, recent and past, and that is something I am proud of.
Thank you to everyone who has offered support, kindness, or enthusiasm over the years, I cannot express how much it has meant.
Yours in Spuffy,
angelic_amy
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If anyone has any questions or concerns about these changes, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We are, as we said, forever grateful to the many years both Amy and Megan have given us, and we wish both of them nothing but the best.
--The Mods on January 04, 2022 02:46pm 42 Comments
Thank you Dark for your kind words and your friendship, it’s much appreciated.
Thank you both so much for your enormous contributions to this beloved corner of the internet! I hope all is well for you personally and we get to continue to enjoy your presence around here ❤
Thank you for all the work and time you have put into this awesome site! Your efforts have not gone unnoticed and are so very much appreciated!
Thank you for all you’ve done. This site is wonderful.
Thank you for building such a wonderful community! I have absolutely binged this site since finding it, and I was so happy to find a thriving, active space to participate in. Know that you are appreciated and you will be dearly missed! I am beyond grateful for what we have here. ❤️❤️❤️🥰🥰🥰❤️❤️❤️
Thank you Amy and Megan for years of work and love. Your contributions are many and without you EF wouldn't exist. Thank you for creating this place. I've not been around much lately but hope I can get active again and keep up the standards you all set and make EF a place that goes on forever.
Kathleen
Amy and Megan, thank you so much for creating this wonderful place, building this amazing community and persevering for so long. I wish both of you all the best, as youv'e given it to us.
Thank you for creating this amazing community! I found EF during the pandemic and it has been such a joy!
"They will be memorialized" - "not entirely my choice" - this is fairly ominous language. You've got me worried, is someone dying? I hope not, but...
@Cosmic Tuesdays: no one is dying or anything dire. The language is not meant to be ominous. Thanks for caring, though!
Phew. What with the pandemic going on, these things are easy to worry about. Especially people stepping down from their positions unexpectedly with language like that - after two years, you get to be wary of surprises, especially vague ones.
Thank you so much for all your hard work and commitment, it's wonderful to have this amazing community to get away from every days problems. Hope you'll still hang around even if not as mods. 😘
I will also thank you both for your work and the creation of this amazing place.
Thank you both so much for everything you've done. I've only been a member for a couple of years, but EF has quickly grown into "my place" online. Once upon a time I was part of a fandom-specific archive like this one that was also a message board, but it closed down in 2005 after the show had ended in 2002, and that was the last time I felt like I had a home online/ in fandom till now. Other than a brief flirtation with LJ before it died and took my next fandom with it, I haven't had a fandom home ever since... till EF. The fact that you've all have gotten together to make this place one of the most welcoming and community-minded online homes is a greater gift than you know. Especially with everything going on in the world, having a place to chat with/ share fic with like-minded people has been imperative in my life (especially considering the hostility out there between ship wars and everything else). Such a boon, to have a place like this to go to; it's really the only place I spend much time on the internet anymore except for googling things. Thank you for everything you all have done. Because of you and your co-admins, I have a place to call home online again for the first time since about 2009.
Amy and Megan, you and your companions have been heroes. This site is more than an archive, it is a community. Thank you so much for everything. Hope you'll still be around, and may your future journeys be fruitful!
Thank you for creating such an online treasure. I know we all have very little idea of the amount of work, time and effort and hours you have generously donated to give this site to us and you are truly appreciated. This site helped me through a very difficult time a few years ago and I don’t know where I would be without it!
love and thanks to you both!
I'm a relative newbie to BTVS & EF, but I am incredibly thankful for this community and thus grateful for all of those who have made it what it is, but especially those who had the original vision and put in the remarkable work to create this space in the first place. We will forever be indebted to that labor, and I thank you. I'm also very glad to hear that the site will be getting a 'history' page, because we should definitely honor the past that has brought us to the present, and provide that context to anyone new joining in.
I'm fairly new to the Buffy fandom and I have to say EF has been a godsend. Being part of a fandom that started in the early days of the internet makes finding older content a process to say the least. I came across many fanfic sites that were out-dated, hard to navigate, and with broken links, and I had to learn really fast how to get the most out of the Wayback machine. And then I found EF. And not only did I stumble across this fantastic archive, but also this very active and enthusiastic community. Being here has jump started my creativity (as a banner artist) after a long period of being "blocked" and has been great escape from the past 2 years we've had. So thank you Amy and Megan for founding this site and for all the labor and love (and money!) you've put into it. You've truly given Spuffy fans a gift <3
Thank you for all your work, Amy, Megan, and all the other mods. <3
Thank you, Amy and Megan! I want you to know how much you’re both appreciated. I’ve known Megan since early in fandom and know how kind and generous she has always been in fandom from organizing different things like fic round robins for dying fans to supporting others with their creativity to being empathic about people’s struggles, including my own. I love your fics, too and am sad to see them down. Amy, I have very much appreciated how hard you’ve worked on organizing all the challenges over the years. I can only imagine how much work that has been. Hope you both know that you’re loved and appreciated and how much of a loss having you as mods will be. I’m very sorry that this was not entirely your choice. Wishing you both the best.
*not having you as mods will be.
Amy and Megan, thank you so much for being part of the creation and continuing existence of EF!! You will be missed as mods, but we'll always be grateful for what you and this site have given us.
Amy and Megan, thank you for your labor of love on this site and all your years supporting the Spuffy community. I've been a lurker for many years and just this year tentatively ventured into the writing side. This community is so supportive and welcoming and you both have been a large part of establishing and fostering that. I hope we will still see you both here!
Wow, big changes! Thank you to all the mods!
Thank you Amy and Megan for helping to create such a special place ❤️
Thank you everyone for your kind words and support, I’ll pass your comments on to Megan. I’m not sure how active I’ll be as an author/contributor considering the circumstances, I need some time to not be sad visiting the site and I’m not sure how long that will take. Once again, the member support is much appreciated.
Thank you so much for realizing the dream of many and providing such a welcome little place for a community that would otherwise get lost between the cracks of time and space! EF has been my solace this past year and a half and I want to thank you!
Amy and Megan, we don't know each other but I'll never stop being thankful for this website and everything you've done for it and for us. I hope you'll always know that you've brought so much joy to so many people.
I don't know the reasons behind these decisions, whether they're external to the site or not, but what I hope and wish for you is that you might manage to maintain good memories of this adventure. We all owe you so much.
Amy & Megan, thank you for everything you've done for EF over the years, for your friendship to me, advice, and the joy you've brought this community. Without you founding EF, my life would be a lot different. It all means a lot to me.