All of my sites have now moved to my own domain -- www.alara.net. We're also on a new server, hosted by Thomas Carpe at Carpe-Diem Business Internet Services. I have basically unlimited hard disk space on this server, so I may very well expand my stable of archives yet again.

I now have enough sites dedicated to Marvel's mutants that I've decided to link them all to a single main site, rather than requiring everyone to go to the Happy Happy Text-Only main page.

As with all my pages, Crossroads X and its subdivisions are mostly friendly to Lynx and graphics-free. I have pages specifically dedicated to graphics, and before long I may even put up thumbnails for them! Wowzers! :-) There is also at least one page on here which is an EZBoard site, and therefore very ugly under Lynx (I think it's still reachable, though...) But for the most part, my pages are designed to be accessible to everyone on the Internet, even those with primitive or text-only browsers.

These archives highlight some of my favorite Marvel characters. All archives are reasonably inclusive; that is, I try to get every story featuring the highlighted character, not just the stories I like.

Alara's Now Rather Spiffy Magneto Page: I confess to a love/hate relationship with Marvel Comics, and most of my conflicting emotions center around this guy. On the one hand, they created him and made him a fascinating character in the first place; on the other hand, they are continuing to do their best to ruin their fascinating creation. So I turned to fanfic to get my Magneto fix. Here's the fanfic and reviews of fanfic and info and stuff I've collected and HTMLized thus far.

Alara's Mystique Page: Mystique is my second favorite Marvel villain.

Chuck Amuck!: Okay, I admit it. I'm also obsessed with Marvel's Charles Xavier. And he's not even a villain. I have no excuse. :-)

Cyphered Text: A page dedicated to Douglas "Cypher" Ramsey, a New Mutant who, unfortunately, is still dead.

These archives present stories that are related by a theme. Theme archives are exclusive; that is, they only include stories that I like, and which are on the highlighted theme.

Otherwhere: The Elseworlds Archive. Features stories (from all comics, not just Marvel, although Marvel's X-Men dominate it) of characters in other places, other times.

Last Update: 1/1/2001

Darkest Heart: New! The Villains Archive. Covers multiple fandoms, not just comics, but the largest and most detailed page is the comic book villains'.

Alara's X-Book Fic: This mini-archive is where all of my own stuff is stored. I started to find that primarily using my character archives for my own work, and hiding my subpage under my "Aleph Press Page", was straitjacketing... I've written two Common People stories and one fic which mentions Xavier, Magneto and Doug Ramsey but doesn't have any of them as characters, so it qualifies for none of my archives. Instead of using story summaries, on this page you'll find author's notes describing why I wrote a story or what I was shooting for.

Interactive Sites

The Orphan Ideas Board: Have a really cool idea you'd like to see written, but you don't have the time, or the background, to do it justice yourself? Come to the Orphan Ideas Board and put your orphan up for adoption. Looking for an idea for a fanfic to write, and the creative muse is just plain tapped out? Check out the Orphan Ideas Board and see if any of the ideas there appeal to you.

Other Specialty Sites

XXY: The Genderswap Universe: What would the Marvel Universe be like if all the mutants-- but mostly none of the humans-- had been of the opposite sex? Find out here.

These archives feature X-Men stories that are not necessarily related by anything other than meeting certain quality standards.

Shifting Sands: This site was founded by Darqstar to be a huge repository of generally high-quality fanfic. Since changes in personal circumstances forced Darqstar to give up the archive, I have taken it over. Submission requirements have changed since Darqstar was in charge, so check them out if you'd like to submit.

Coming soon: an archive of Stuff Alara Likes. In the meantime, here are my favorite fanfic URLs.

CFAN: The Comic Fan-Fiction Authors Network: The comprehensive index of all comic book fanfic sites containing material rated PG-13 and under. (That is, works intended for all ages or for 13-year-olds and up.)

Beyond The Code: Like CFAN, but for fanfic sites featuring material rated R and above (that is, works intended for adults.)

Fonts of Wisdom: Now one of the biggest archives out there. Contains a huge selection of Excalibur and New Mutants fanfics, but has quite a sizable lot of general X-Men, of generally high quality.

X-Writers: Home Page: Quite possibly the best shared world site out there. Breaks from Marvel continuity at a specific defined point and never looks back, with mostly very high quality stories that are almost all better than what Marvel did instead.

X-Men Slash Central: Dedicated to slash fic (a genre featuring same-sex relationships both canonical and non) about the X-Men mostly, though Alpha Flight tend to pop up too. This is the only centralized archive of slash fic dedicated to X-Men that I know of. Some stories are sexually explicit, some are not.

Eros and the Heroes: A site dedicated to superhero erotica, currently almost all X-Men and Gatchaman, with a couple of Batman. The focus of this site is on well-written, well-characterized stories, not mind control orgy fests.

I'm not the only wacko who maintains archives dedicated to specific characters. These archives are by no means a complete list of all character archives-- you have to go to CFAN for that-- but I'm listing here the archives dedicated to characters I particularly like, or archives with a particularly high ratio of high quality fanfic, or archives dealing with severely underused characters.

Alykat's World: Includes Down-Home Charm, a great Rogue page, with a nice layout and an excellent selection. It also includes sites I've visited less but still look quite spiffy-- The Danger Playpen (X-Babies), Stars and Garters (Beast), and (un)frozen (Iceman).

The Dayspring Archive: Alicia McKenzie's Cable page. This writer has nearly single-handedly made me change my opinion on Cable from "utterly useless waste of ink" to "potentially interesting character."

queenB's Hive: This includes a site dedicated to Cecilia Reyes, Under the Knife, and a very tiny archive for Maggott, Jawelnofine.

The Itty Bitty Archives, originally founded by Kaylee, which cover Scott Summers, Logan, and general X-Men of high quality.

Project: POLARIS: A Polaris page. Hasn't got much fic, but what it does have is generally quite good.

The Scarlet Witch Homepage: Could seriously use more fic... but I like Wanda, so I'm listing it here. :-)

Siryn: The Woman Behind the Voice: I have to admire the dedication of a person who loves a character that most other people completely ignore. This is Red Monster's site with more info on Theresa Cassidy than you can shake a stick at.

The Wildways: Probably the only Spiral site on the web. Some very nice stuff here.

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