About Us

Who We Are

We are the first and only all-Caryl fanfiction archive and community!

Our intention is to provide a safe haven for Caryl fans. To paraphrase the words of our founder, Ravenesque, we believe there is a great need to foster community around our ship, gathering all our fantastic fanfiction in one place so that anyone seeking it out can find it easily. With this site we hope to foster that sense of safety within our own community, support for writers and readers with the inclusion of the shout box and chat room, a beta service, a moderated service that helps those entering the fandom to improve their work and thus improving the reading experience of all Carylers that want to read quality fanfiction. What we are about is acceptance and support, love of Carol and Daryl, Melissa and Norman, and hopefully a place where our detractors can recognize that this is not their space to impose upon.

Our History

Nine Lives was created at the start of 2014 as a safe-haven for Caryl fans to find fantastic fanfiction.

When Nine Lives was first conceived, the Caryl fandom had been on the go for over two years, growing with each passing season of The Walking Dead, and moments of deliciousness between Daryl and Carol. However, the infamous "slow-burn" of their relationship was driving many to frustration and people sought out the comfort of fanfiction to fill in the blanks or advance the story at a faster pace.

As the amount of readers and writers grew, so did the desire to have a Caryl-only spot to read these glorious texts. This was especially true as other ships started to arise in the fandom; ships that a Caryl fan may accidentally stumble on whilst reading what they thought, or hoped, was a Caryl fic. Things got heated and many started to become discouraged. It was in order to prevent this happening, and to create a community and haven for the Caryl fans, that Megan (Ravenesque, formerly Peta2), Fairies Masquerade and Atoizzard got together to create Nine Lives. Thanks to Megan's experience and influence in the Spuffy fandom, Susan from the Spuffy Archive Elysian Fields kindly agreed to host Nine Lives on their server.

So in January 2014, Nine Lives went live.

In the years since Nine Lives opened, it has grown tremendously and changed a lot. However, one thing remains the same and that is the ethos behind the site. Nine Lives is the place where Caryl fans can come to enjoy (or post) the best that Caryl and McReedus fanfiction has to offer. It is a community where readers and writers are here to support and encourage their fellow Carylers, and help us all get the best experience out of this ride we call fandom. Be it multi-chapter AUs, fluffy drabbles, angsty post-episode fics or wild and crazy smut, here your every desire for Caryl (and McReedus) can be explored and delighted in with like-minded fans.

Meet The Staff

Fairies Masquerade - Owner/Archive Administrator Emeritus (Fairies Masquerade is currently not involved in the day-to-day running of Nine Lives)
I've often thought it'd be fun if my life were a musical - perhaps a beautiful cross between Chicago, Little Shop of Horrors (except with the alien invading plant being friendly and awesome instead of wanting to literally devour humanity), the roller skating parts of Xanadu and the parody of "Puttin' on the Ritz" from Young Frankenstein - and given that I work in theater, the likelihood of a song-and-dance number spontaneously erupting around me is actually pretty good! When I'm not lurking in the bowels of a theater (trying to find who took my opera mask - I mean wut), I occasionally pretend to write.

Subversivegrrl - Archive Administrator
subversivegrrl is the offspring of a family of itinerant giraffe trainers and amateur lexicographers. She sometimes writes. More often she stares in abject terror at the computer screen. In her spare time she enjoys arranging scraps of paper into stacks.

Ikkleosu - Archive Administrator
Ikkleosu is a 40-year-old Scottish personage with chronic illness, chronic forgetfulness and chronically bad typing. She was likely shipping the doctors in her delivery room and has continued to be a UST addict for life. She loves facts, hummus, Irn Bru and Caryl.

TarasCarol - Archive Administrator
40 year old, hot-mess mom of two, with a memory span the size of Rick Grimes' pea pods. Between playing chauffeur/jungle gym/referee and finally remembering to switch loads of laundry so they don't reek of mildew, I sometimes read and write Caryl fanfiction. Caryl is my first experience in fandom and also my first experience writing fanfiction. Aliases include: Angst Monster, Destroyer of Feels and Queen of crack!ships.

silversundown - Tech Coder

"Coding junkie and potential indie game developer--someday, coffee and chai tea addict and midnight writer of caryl fic, she also spends unrealistic amounts of time prepping for the inevitable wolf/dog zombie apocalypse."