Fandom Meta

_hannelore - Fandom Logic: You Are Not a Unique and Shiny Nutshell In the end, this isn't about being a snowflake or a nutshell or someone's latest bedside read. It's about being you and being honest. Intent is all. Fandom is your playground, your wet dream or whatever you like it to be. It's cliche, but authors who quit writing after their first rejection or artists who threw their materials away at the first bad review probably never produced anything again. It's not about getting a thicker skin, it's about what you want to take with you to craft your next piece. Have at it.

shadowkat67 - Intellectual Property Law and the Fan - A Primer Fanfic is a foggy area copyright wise, but then so is intellectual property law. People do not agree and US Copyright Law has been changed several times – there’s the 1976 Act, the amended act of 1978, and again in 1988 with the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act in 1998 (or Mickey Mouse Protection Act)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act, the World Copyright Act), The WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996, The European Copyright Directive and finally the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, – which was the most controversial and went through multiple drafts before being signed by the President on October 28,1998.

sunhawk - blurring the lines of fandom So what's my over-arcing point to this ramble? That there is a line. That the line of ethics where fanfic is concerned is very different for different people. But that point of no return I mentioned exists, and it is not crossed by one action but by many actions over time. And people should be aware of that, should always keep in mind that there is no place in this universe where one can escape from the consequences of one's actions. The Internet gives us a lulling illusion of being a place to do and say whatever you like. Certainly that premise holds up to the one-time experiments of random trolling of messageboards and livejournals. But the moment you take away your transitory existence on any website and you try to continuously interact with any given online space, that freedom is no longer yours to abuse.

monanotlisa - Re: on-line fanfiction The other day, I read a post -- yet another rebuttal of fans complaining about the dearth of the pairing(s) dearest to them as opposed to an over-abundance of the pairing du jour using the analogy of a cake buffet, the basic argument being, IIRC, that those who complain about too much cheesecake and not enough strawberry cake should simply put more strawberry cake on the table -- if there was indeed so much cheesecake one couldn't spot the strawberry cake behind all of it, it'd be even easier and just require a bit of re-organisation.

As much as I liked the very image -- cake! Cheesecake! -- it still struck me as incomplete.

veejane - What to Do When You Can't Win An Argument It happens to everyone. You manage to start an argument with a brainiac, somebody who doesn't lose their temper, post nonsense, or rely on weak evidence. You're in danger of losing! What to do??

Never fear. [info]veejane is here to remedy your situation. Just print out the handy-dandy list below and keep it next to your keyboard for the next time you need to win an argument and can't do so on your own merits. 20 real, proven strategies, employed by real sockpuppets you've seen on the internet, can help you be a winner every time.

rionaleonhart - My Problem Would Rock Your World Apparently, BBC America have been stripping a lot of things out of their airings of Life on Mars to make room for adverts. I mention this just so any Americans who may be watching it will know. From what I've heard it seems that Gene's characterisation suffers a lot, which makes me sad.

lozenger8 - The Great Debate: Character Versus Plot... I tend to think that fandom in general is mostly character-centric anyway. The number of times I've seen fan fiction writers state that they have difficulty with plot could feed a small army of flying monkeys. They then usually go on to say that they think they have a good grasp of characterisation, though. (I say it myself - because it is true.) I also think that in some cases it might not be possible to separate character and plot as neatly as is necessary to say that you prefer one over the other. I could look at an episode of any program, but especially Life on Mars and discuss the bare basics of the plot, but it has little meaning without the characters who promote the action.

bryley_james - Hot Button Topics with Mystery Writers In my chats with mystery writers this weekend at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a few "hot button" topics came up...mainly because I was tackling them on my blog and they wanted to thank me for bringing them into the open. I asked them why, if they share my views, they don't say so publicly. The answer across the board was the same: fear. They're afraid of getting lots of angry emails, losing sales, and awkward encounters with fans at signings and conventions.

Anyway, here are some of the hot-button topics that emerged in our conversations

Specific Fandom Meta

( Cut for possible Spoilers for the Fandoms: Harry Potter )

On Plagiarism and Consequences

laguera25 - The HP Fapapalooza Continues You can't have it both ways, HPfen. Either you want consequences, or you don't, and if you do, you don't necessarily get to choose what those consequences are. As far as sanctions go, the possibility of not being invited to Phoenix Rising to speak is tame. It's hardly an excommunication from fandom. It just means that if they want to go to the con, they have to pay their own way, and they will no longer be treated as exalted BNFs. That's it. It's not a threat to their life or liberty, and all the flailing about fandom intruding into real life rings histrionic and rich to me. As far as I know, neither Cassie nor Heidi are in danger of being fired over this, and nobody is going to kick in their doors and wrest their Fandom Membership Card from their clutching grasps while children weep and husbands look solemn and grave.

mike_smith - Plagiarism: A Test. I've always found this[some jerk on ff.net, who simply copied the story in toto and replaced the characters with those of some other fandom] rather odd, since I wouldn't think that characters are so interchangeable that this technique would make any sense. Indeed, whatever trick Claire was pulling, it wasn't clever enough to keep someone from spotting it, and one eagle-eyed reader is all it takes. Similarly, I can't see how having Xander delivering lines written for Wolverine could come across as anything but forced and bizarre. Unless, of course, fanfic plotting in general is so homogenized that virtually any set of names can be attached to the same basic premises.

On Reading, Writing and Criticism

sevenmes - [ESSAY] How To Write: Dialogues Seasoned writers pride themselves on the rule 'show, don't tell'. That was what I tried to teach her. Speak the dialogue. Feel the dialogue. Show the dialogue. Those are my dialogue guidelines. Even though I'm not a native English speaker, nor a writer with an amazing gift for dialogues, I still try to follow them.

pir8fancier - My ideas on writing Below are several epiphanies that I have had during my tiny, insignificant writing career that I hope will help you. I struggled and bashed myself unmercifully until there was light so that you don't have to. [...][Y]ou're writing for you. Write what makes you happy. This should be fun, and if it's not fun, there's something wrong. Your material should give you a hardon. I mean this. It should get you off. You should be your most avid fan (and harshest critic).

shiv5468 - On reviews Anyway, the point is that I don’t tend to review fanfic any more. For two reasons, mainly. The first being that people tend to cry and sulk if you give them less than unconditional praise, and there are very few people whose work I like that much. I wait to be invited to give proper feedback.

And the other is that there are only so many ways you can say, “OMG squeee, at last, something worth reading in the pit of voles… now crack on and update soon.”

kennahijja - Concrit, Feedback, Public Reviews… that stuff I honestly don't have much patience for the "omg!praise only" crowd – because they're responsible for so intimidating half of fandom that those of us who *want* concrit are left wondering how much of the feedback we get is 'honest praise', and how much is polite omission of the things that sucked to 'spare our feelings'.

On the other had, giving someone feedback still feels like a one-on-one semi-personal thing to me. Not really confidential, since it's posted publicly and people can browse reviews before reading a story. But it's basically aimed at the author and focused on the fic, not on the reviewer.

askerian - On AUs... [A] good AU keeps the characters as in character as possible and manages to translate the important background bits into something equivalent that works in the new setting but still produces something of the same effect on the character's personality; or manages to explain the changes in behavior from canon in a believable way : "what might have been". The AU that fails as an AU is the one that keeps the same person, with similar hates and friendships, when none of the stuff that molded them in canon happened in this universe, or that changes their defining characteristics so much they might as well be an OC.

minisinoo - Crafting the Hook:
a pragmatic writer's guide to snaring reader interest Not every novel begins quite so dramatically in the very first sentence or three, but I think it's extremely valuable for the author (whether of pro fic or fanfic) to consider how to open his/her story. In the current environment awash with paperback novels, publishing wisdom says you get between 3 paragraphs and 3 pages (more often the former than the latter) to interest a reader. This applies to fanfic no less than to published fiction. If you can't grab a reader by that point, the reader puts the book down and tries something else (unless really desperate). That's the hard, cold, brutal truth.

titti - [untitled]minimisoo has a very interesting post on how to create an interesting beginning. To use her examply, yes TV shows give you teaser, BUT they start with 'Previously on'. The 'expository lump', as she calls it, is for me the previously on. Now that I know when the story is set, what's the current situation in the magical world (or the SG world, or whatever other universe), and where the starting point is, you can hook me with the question and the puzzle. However, the question and the puzzle will mean nothing if I close that window the second that I read that first question.

spritesam - Searching and Lost - Criticism and Reviews and Recs: How Not All Feedback Is Created Equal I am not a reviewer; I state that freely and with the awareness that I have only left a handful of reviews out and about on the internet. This is not because I don't appreciate the stories that I read, but rather I feel inadequate to meet the requirements of public reviewing. Having discovered fandom on fanfiction.net, I quickly discovered that many authors only wanted certain feedback or had expectations of certain feedback. Most of the time, reviews consisted of fangirl/boy squealing about the author's brilliance, originality. ... Constructive criticism on spelling, grammar, canon, plot, accuracy, and other storytelling elements were often ignored. In one case, a reviewer recommended that an author consider using a beta to catch those pesky mistakes. The author responded by lambasting the reviewer and promising that no beta would ever desecrate their sacred fanfiction a la Anne Rice. Other authors received feedback and concrit with much more grace and with genuine appreciation for the writer-reader interaction.

Links, Polls, etc

airinshaw - Fic musings I know that different people have different things that annoy them in fic. Something that I don't mind will make another person so annoyed that they will stop reading.

So! What annoys other people? What is your fic-pet-hate. And I'm not talking bad!fic here - I'm talking about a perfectly good fic that will include this and suddenly you are irritated or kicked out of the moment.

Any pairing, anything. I'm curious.

midnitemaraud_r - [untitled] Can somebody please occasionally draw Remus without the humongous glaring facial scars?

Yes, yes, I may as well have said "But won't somebody think of the children!!" I personally don't think of the children else I wouldn't write and post smut. But...I know scars can be sexy, and I certainly don't balk when they're on the rest of his body somewhere, and yes, it also helps to easily identify that it's Remus and not some random brown-haired guy, but... but...

*wibbles*

No. Really. Is it only me?