Chapter, Story, Series. Get it? Got it? Good.

Archivists? Oh, archivists? Lesson time!

Let's start off with something simple, shall we? After all, associating concepts is a remarkably good way of learning.

"A Day With The Beavers" is a chapter in the story, "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe". Simple enough, right? Now, stick with me, this next bit is confusing. "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" is a story in the "Narnia" series.

Astonishing. You actually agree with me. So why do you insist that fanfic is different?

No, this is not a multi-chapter story. No, really, it's not. This is a series. This over here, this is a multi-chapter story. Kindly stop branding it as a series. And this one, just down here? This is an individual fic. Yes, I know it has the same characters as this other fic. Yes, yes, I know, they're both of type X. Yes, they're both by author Y. They're still individual fics. Stop marking them as multi-chapter stories, or even worse, series.

It's a simple enough concept. A chapter is a part of a single story. A story tells a single coherent narrative, with a clearly definable Beginning and a clearly definable End. And a series can contain multiple stories. Yes, even if it directly refers events that happened in previous story. Shock horror, stories that are contained within a single series are actually related to one another.

... no, that's not a series. That's a kumquat.

Maybe we should start over with something simpler. How do you feel about finger painting?

This rant brought to you by the Committee for Sane Fic Archiving.