Salon post: September 28

[jenett]

Hello!


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Topic of the week
Things are gearing up for the annual Yuletide small fandom fanfic exchange (they're processing nominations now, and requests will open the 10th of October).

Do you read fanfic? Write fanfic? Do Yuletide or other exchanges? (You can see past recs I've liked in this tag of mine.)

What I've been up to
This week has been a bit of a trudge - I had migraine issues until Wednesday night, my coworkers have been out sick (and I might be coming down with The Dire Plague, I can't tell yet.) So.


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Comments

[author_by_night]

Do you read fanfic? Write fanfic? Do Yuletide or other exchanges?

I very occasionally dabble in fanfic. I hardly ever read it anymore, though. It used to be my life, but... the sort of fanfiction people write isn't really my taste. Which I realize makes me sound like an uptight church lady, so let me reiterate that I'm not! I really don't even care what other people write, it's just not my thing. Fic tends to focus on the sex, and I'm more interested in exploring the ins and outs of the various canon universes via fanfic. All that aside, I also find it hard to find the good stuff. Then again, fests seem to be safe, it's mostly Ao3 that I've had trouble.

Ao3 seems to have a strictly anti-constructive criticism culture, so I imagine that might be part of it. On the other hand, I'm actually glad. Fanfiction.net could be awful back in the day. I had friends leave because people were horrible to them. I mean... looking back, yes, some of them had fanfics that could've been way better if they'd had beta readers. But man, some of the comments were awful, and even some of the "nicer" ones were still clearly biased in what they wanted to read, criticizing the pairing or how the fic ended rather than the actual quality of the story. So I'd rather Ao3 lean nicer than meaner. Besides, fanfiction.net wasn't exactly the bastion of quality either, so it's not like people being blunt did anything other than hurt writers' feelings. So yeah, especially given how many young people I think use Ao3... I'm okay with fics not being pristine if it means there are fewer people flaming.

As far as fests go... I sometimes participate in them. I've never done Yuletide, though. But I've just left a bunch of prompts for the Interhouse Comment Fic Fest (Harry Potter), and a comm called rt_morelove (Remus/Tonks, Harry Potter again) has a holiday fest that I usually participate in. I've also been working on and off on a few fanfics. Eventually I will finish and publish them. Or maybe not. I once finished a five chapter fanfic in a day, and I kept it to myself. (It wasn't really anything worth posting. It was just for fun. And that's the thing, first and foremost, I write fanfic because it's fun.)

[jenett]

Have you checked out the Worldbuilding Exchange? (It's run for two years, in the spring, and I've loved both writing for it, and the range of stuff it's produced: here are my posts about it.)

I feel like "This is the site where I post the fic" is not the right place for constructive crit unless someone explicitly encourages it - it's too weird to get comments from random people, at random times about a fic you may have written years ago.

(I mean, I've gotten kudos twice in the past couple of weeks on a fic I wrote in 2011, and a couple of enthusiastic comments on that one in the past couple of months.)

And that's without factoring in the fact that a lot of supposed concrit is actually really misguided (the "Why didn't you write the story the way I wanted it to go" or "You did this thing wrong" when in fact the author is right and the commenter is wrong about key points of canon.) And a lot of that can be really destructive to people writing and sharing more good stuff, so on the whole, I'm glad for a culture of 'the shared with the general public stuff gets squee and amiable comments'.

But I do think people seeking out constructive crit in their own process is really valuable, and I sort of wish there were more ways to workshop that with some guidelines but more than just 'find a beta or three'.

[author_by_night]

Ooh, interesting.

The thing is that with fanfiction.net, there was definitely a constructive criticism culture, and a lot of people did welcome it. But you're right, the way it can be handled is misguided. Case in point, fanfiction.net having so much hostility.

I actually did go to a Harry Potter website where fics were workshopped, although it was very strict. I maintain that they really helped me learn to write. I don't think there are really sites like that anymore, though, at least not for fanfic. (And even with all they did in terms of helping me be a writer, I have to say, there were ways in which the site was on the other end of extremes. I miss it for the quality writing and feedback, but I don't miss certain things about it.)

r "You did this thing wrong" when in fact the author is right and the commenter is wrong about key points of canon.)

I got that in the Harry Potter fandom ALL THE TIME, even from beta readers. The problem is that there was this huge gap between each books, so a lot of time for people to form fanon and headcanons they just assumed were canon.

[finch]

A friend of mine got "correction" comments the other day about formatting on a ff.net fanfic that was old enough to be in middle school.

[author_by_night]

Yeah, unless the person said they wanted concrit, or you're their beta reader, just let it go.

[batrachian]

I've been tangentially involved with Yuletide for a few years, but never wrote more than the minimum for participating (and ended up defaulting last year because my story ideas just wouldn't gel).

I'm still following the community for announcements, but am deeply unsure about actually trying again this year.

The fact that the chat space moved from irc to discord is also a contributing factor.

[finch]

I, too, defaulted last year. I need to write an NYR and that is just not gonna happen right now so... guess I'm not doing it.

I'll confess I like Discord better than IRC lately but that's mostly because I don't feel completely isolated when I'm not able to get on the desktop computer. XD

[batrachian]

I'm entirely unsure whether I'd be required to write a NYR. Which is another data point.

Discord as a voice chat, I don't mind, but the accessibility of text logs is...no.

I can't get to irc on my phone, but that's entirely due to Verizon being controlling [redacted]; the client is lovely.

[jenett]

There's always writing treats, if you feel inspired by someone's prompt. (And I think that counts for NYR if it's of sufficient length, but I'm not sure.)

Someone has put together a database tool that lets you search: it'll pop up in the community when we get there, or I'll try and remember to link to it.

[finch]

I read a lot of fanfic (even my current novel is Winter Tide, one of the large and excellent body of recently published Lovecraftian fic) but I don't write it much anymore. I kinda miss it, but I'm not writing much of anything at the moment, so I'm not sure if I miss it more than I miss other writing.

[jenett]

Winter Tide is SO GOOD.

[julian]

I sometimes read fanfic when I'm really into a show/book series, but I don't write it, m'self.

Since I like to follow authors and/or the tastes of my friends, I tend to pay attention to a) recs, and b) post-reveal info, in terms of Yuletide. Just post-reveal, I rely on recs/enthusiasm. Other exchanges, ditto, but less so.

As for what I'm up to, I had a cold that I mostly slew via Vitamin C, Zinc, and rest (I've still got the remains), and period-related migraines yesterday/earlier in the week, but I'm going up to New Hampshire for the weekend, woot.

[jenett]

Boo, cold and migraine, but yay New Hampshire.

(I swear, there's half a dozen nasty things floating around here. I may or may not be coming down with one of them.)

[jazzyjj]

I tried to get something up on Ao3 a few years ago, but they warned me that it violated their ToS and to take it down. That site just seems to be rather cluttered but it is pretty accessible with Apple's built-in screen reader for the Mac. It doesn't look like they have a mobile site. I'll have to test out more sites on my iPhone one of these days, which would be good practice for me since this is my first mobile device that is actually accessible in that it talks. I've had great luck writing on Dreamwidth though. I started sort of a fanfic entry of my own awhile back for a local writers workshop, but due to a rather hectic schedule I put that on the back burner. But I think I'll return to it soon.





Other than that, this week was very good. Last weekend I went up to Milwaukee to help celebrate my niece's 6th birthday. It was a lot of fun. Then on Wednesday of this week most of my building mates and I attended an annual Sukkot celebration. The back story there is that a former next-door neighbor of mine worked at a local Jewish day school, and a co-worker of hers who also happens to be Jewish invited all of us to their house for a Sukkah party. So it became a yearly tradition, and it is always so much fun. The first year we did it, we also went to the sukkah that was put up at the local Jewish day school. I'm not Jewish, but I enjoy cultural things like this.

[silveradept]

Yes, I do read and write, although I'm generally late to the game compared to everyone else I know that has done it, and mostly work with exchanges, out of a likely misguided belief that I don't have original ideas. (Exchanges tend to give prompts, but they leave a lot of the details up to the writer to generate, so there's still plenty of ideas and creativity going on.)

Yuletide's emphasis on very small fandoms often produces a wider range of possibilities for me to work with, and I think that it tends to make my writing game better by working in something I really enjoy, but that they're isn't a whole lot of material already made in. I'd say, in my limited materials available, the two times I've done Yuletide so far have made the best works that I've put together.