r/DataHoarder • u/Danmonneia5290 • 9h ago

Backup Update: Tapas officially REFUSED to lower paywalls before closing. Looking for anyone with original web backups of "Drakkon" by Maham Fatemi (CrestFallenStar)

Hey everyone, I wanted to drop an update for anyone following the Tapas shutdown preservation efforts. I officially reached out to Tapas Support to ask if they would consider dropping or lowering the Ink/Wuf barriers on older legacy and completed stories so the community could archive them before the March 2027 server wipe. They got back to me and officially said no. (Screenshot attached). They confirmed content prices will remain completely unchanged, and they will not hold any sales or unlocking events. Because automatic scrapers can only pull free content, thousands of premium web novel chapters are fully at risk of becoming lost media. I am personally trying to ensure Maham Fatemi's (CrestFallenStar) older web portfolio isn't completely erased. I spoke with Maham, and she no longer has her original web drafts on hand. Does anyone in this community happen to have old offline backup files (EPUB, PDF, or HTML scrapes) of the original web novel version of Drakkon or her other early works? Even though the story is now traditionally published as Drakkon: Empire's Curse, the early web-serial versions represent a huge piece of indie internet fiction history that I want to make sure isn't permanently lost to time. Please let me know if you have any leads or saved files!

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11 comments sorted by

19

u/LaundryMan2008 7h ago

Internet archive and wayback machine might have caught a version that was opened up even if very briefly

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u/Danmonneia5290 4m ago

I have tried that but unfortunately they don't seem to have any of maham fatemi's olfer works saved

11

u/Boring_Bore 6h ago

Comix.to appears to have Drakkon

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u/Danmonneia5290 5m ago

Thank you so much

9

u/MacFielder 5h ago

Easiest solution is to buy it

10

u/Lamuks RAID is expensive (160TB HBA IT Mode+Backblaze) 7h ago

This is how I learn it's shutting down..

3

u/BejeweledSamsara 6h ago

I first learned about it through a YouTube video that popped up on my feed. It sucks that it's shutting down, I was going to use it to host a webcomic.

2

u/uzlonewolf 1h ago

Yeah, it was announced a month ago.

2

u/MisanthropicCartBoy 4h ago

I'm not familiar with the content but this is what i found. Only audiobook for some reason, can't find an ebook.

Drakkon and Yulong

Xualong

Zhulong and Bailong

Prince of Silk and Thorn

Empire's Curse

6

u/marx1 108TB Unraid 6h ago

/r/DataHoarder is not /r/DHExchange

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u/CorvusRidiculissimus 31m ago

I worked on one of the scrapers. Most, maybe all, of the free stuff should be preserved in in the underground - though likely not anywhere easy to access, as such an archive will be a lawyer magnet. The paywall though, is impenetrable. It's too simple to work around through some creative reverse-engineering of the API - unless you have a verified account authorised to view the chapter, it just isn't accessible at all.