sarajayechan, 2003-12-18 09:21 pm UTC

	bubba_ray 2003-12-17 09:34 pm UTC (link)
	Ok I was looking :: is suitable chastised :: (Reply to this)(Parent)

	rann 2003-12-17 10:11 pm UTC (link)
	refuses to look upwards (Reply to this)(Parent)

	yadda 2003-12-17 10:59 pm UTC (link)
	Hey, that text is blocking my view of her boobs! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

rann, 2003-12-18 01:33 am UTC

sarajayechan, 2003-12-18 09:21 pm UTC

yadda, 2003-12-18 11:06 pm UTC

	eljuno 2003-12-17 11:18 pm UTC (link)
	What's a face? (Reply to this)(Parent)

dunc
2003-12-18 06:34 am UTC (link)

The worst fanfic I ever read was one of the first for my segment of fandom on the internet. It is still unmatched in the 'pure crap' department. (Not that I've done a whole lot of looking.)

AND it inspired (by way of 'I can do better!') one of my absolute FAVORITE fanfics, which in turn inspired other favorites. I guess you can say, in my little group, we DID have a golden age. But there's a difference between one mailing list and fandom as a whole.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

bubba_ray
2003-12-17 09:33 pm UTC (link)

A 'golden age' of fanfiction? damn I must have blinked and missed that... or maybe it was before the age of the internet? When ff.net existed in dead tree form?

The ancient history of fanfiction must look something like that

45323 B.C. First proto literary piece of fiction appears in cave paintings
45323 B.C. (two hours later) First proto fanfiction appears in sub standart cave paintings
45323 B.C. (another three minutes after that) First proto fanboy rants about how the good art of fanfiction is lost.

(Reply to this)

	stubbleglitter 2003-12-17 09:47 pm UTC (link)
	I remember fandom and fan writing in the early days. The fanfic writers LOVED their fandoms. Um, we ALL love our fandoms, fool, or we wouldn't be IN them. What we hate is the people in our fandoms. Big difference. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	iczer6 2003-12-17 09:58 pm UTC (link)
	I'm guessing we don't love them enough because we aren't shooting newbies on site, and making sure the authors write fics that fit our tastes. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	darkrose 2003-12-17 09:58 pm UTC (link)
	Is that like the Golden Age before fandom_wank when everyone in fandom was nice to each other and we all held hands and sang "Kumbaya"? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	yadda 2003-12-17 10:08 pm UTC (link)
	I still miss the campfires. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2003-12-18 06:03 pm UTC

snacky
2003-12-17 10:18 pm UTC (link)

::nods::

I believe we were all holding hands and running through fields of daisies, too.

Gee, do you remember when no one ever had flamewars or disagreements, people loved both slash and het, the Devil hadn't tempted us yet with RPF, and every fic had excellent characterization, perfect spelling, and consisted of *everyone's* favorite OTP?

Then came fanfic.net, and boybands, and the LOTR movies, and

fandom_wank mockity mock mocking all over the place, and just see where we are now!

Good times.

mariagoner, 2003-12-18 01:37 am UTC

thebratqueen, 2003-12-18 03:25 pm UTC

iamtheenemy, 2003-12-18 06:49 am UTC

puipui, 2003-12-19 09:19 am UTC

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2003-12-22 09:13 pm UTC

darkrose, 2003-12-18 08:09 am UTC

	smo 2003-12-17 11:00 pm UTC (link)
	Mmm, smores. (Reply to this)(Parent)

virago
2003-12-17 10:32 pm UTC (link)

>>My personal experience is that the people who have the brains and stamina to register on a hosting service, create an index page, make everything into working html, and submit themselves to search engines and fan links pages, also have the brains and stamina to write readable fiction. >>

Stop it, you're making me laugh. No really, stop.

>>It was elite when we published in fanzines that were typed on electric typewriters, xeroxed at great expense, and distributed to members of the specific fandom via US Mail. Also, these fanzines used rather brutal editors to moderate what the heck went into them.>>

No, that's when WHAT YOU SAW was screened. Crapfic was still written, but it didn't make it outside the notebooks it was written in. That does not change the fact that it existed.

FFN/the net/whatever did not automatically make fanfic worse; it just made EVERYTHING, even the dreck, more visible. Granted, FFN has grown to encourage crapfic with its teenie circle-jerks, but it's just naive to insist that crapfic didn't exist before then.

When I was ten I was making up Mary Sues in my head, and this was a decade before I ever saw the internet or knew what a Mary Sue was. It still existed, whether or not I posted it on the internet. The quality was still bad, you just didn't see it. Sturgeon's Law has always been in full effect.

/wankyrantymode

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	smo 2003-12-17 11:18 pm UTC (link)
	To this day, I thank the [insert deity here] that there was no internet when I was a teenybopper. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

virago, 2003-12-17 11:28 pm UTC

ecchaniz0r, 2003-12-18 02:00 am UTC

Speaking of Mary Sue....

croik
2003-12-17 11:26 pm UTC (link)

Now that you mention it, wasn't the original Mary Sue a Star Trek creation spread through fanzines? I thought it was something like that, which, if it's true, kinda destroys the idea of "fanfic was good when there were only a few of us." ^^;;

Fanfic is such a tricky thing. I've seen really good fics with only a few reviews, and some with hundreds, and bad fics the same way. And even when you find fanfics that have been posted in an archive or on their own page, that doesn't mean they're any good. All fandoms have that huge mega-fic that everyone seems to like except me ^^;;

My strategy for finding good fics is following authors that I like, or asking my friends who have the patience to read through piles of fanfiction to point out the good ones ^o^

ingrid, 2003-12-18 12:06 am UTC

kookaburra, 2003-12-18 12:21 am UTC

calluna, 2003-12-18 01:18 am UTC

kookaburra, 2003-12-18 09:34 pm UTC

yadda, 2003-12-18 11:09 pm UTC

(Anonymous)
2003-12-18 01:04 am UTC (link)

FFN/the net/whatever did not automatically make fanfic worse; it just made EVERYTHING, even the dreck, more visible. Granted, FFN has grown to encourage crapfic with its teenie circle-jerks, but it's just naive to insist that crapfic didn't exist before then.

No, I think what they were insisting was that before sites such as FFN the worst crap didn't have an audience beyond the author and a couple of friends.

smo, 2003-12-18 01:41 am UTC

ecchaniz0r, 2003-12-18 01:59 am UTC

smo, 2003-12-18 02:38 am UTC

virago, 2003-12-18 07:59 am UTC

(Anonymous)
2003-12-19 08:13 am UTC (link)

Ahhh. I am suddenly reminded of my first fanfic back in about 1993 I suppose. It was hand written on paper. It was smutty. It circulated my school like a bad case of flu. I wonder what happened to it. I bet it was a Mary-Sue, but I was only 13.
On another matter, I really wish people wuldn't mock bad spelling so much. I am a really bad speller. Doesn't make me stupid. Trust me on that one. And I can't spell check because my shitty computer can　barely handle English letters (it's Japanese) and I would write fanfic in Japanese but it would hurt my brain and I just don't know enough smutty words (though I feel a project coming on).Hmmm　

virago, 2003-12-21 04:48 am UTC

	morganya 2003-12-17 10:59 pm UTC (link)
	My favoritest part is the authors complaining because feedback isn't written to match their exacting standards. Jesus Lord. What do they want, a New York Times book review? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ataniell93 2003-12-17 11:54 pm UTC (link)
	Someone once went and looked me up on LJ to complain about that exact thing. I didn't even write anything obnoxious, like "Please have X and Y get together," I just said, "Oh, good, you wrote more!" because I really was pleased that she'd updated. And she was really RUDE, too. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

morganya, 2003-12-18 12:51 am UTC

kannaophelia, 2003-12-18 03:37 pm UTC

iczer6
2003-12-18 12:33 am UTC (link)

Hell yes that attitude has really been bugging me lately.

I'm also getting irked by people who write long ~~wanky~~ essay like replies to fanfiction who are annoyed because apparently the author didn't fall at their feet in worship .

I can understand being annoyed when your good intentions are thrown back in your face, but some of these folks act like they expect to greeted with offers of oral sex, and first born children whenver they leave a review.

morganya, 2003-12-18 01:01 am UTC

zannechaos, 2003-12-18 05:36 am UTC

	dawnswalker 2003-12-17 11:07 pm UTC (link)
	I like how she went back and totally changed the entire post. "I realized there was no point to this ~~because people weren't agreeing with me~~, so I changed it!!" (Reply to this)

iamtheenemy
2003-12-18 07:14 am UTC (link)

::raises hand:: OK, future high school English teacher here.

This kind of elitist attitude has really been bugging me for quite some time now. It pisses me off when people complain about what kind of fanfic is written, as if you should have to submit an application before joining a fandom.

Yeah, I know that some of the stuff is awful; unbetaed Mary Sues with drastic flaws in characterization. But a lot of those are written by fourteen year old kids that aren't particularly worried about whether or not the Draco they wrote matches the Draco JKR wrote. Eventually their writing will mature or they'll give it up or whatever, but fuck. At least they're writing at all. Even if it's misspelled and full of internet speak, at least they're trying. You can't say that these people aren't allowed in your fandom. I mean, really. Fourteen year old girls aren't allowed to be Harry Potter fans? Because they don't write deep, introspective Snape fic they're unworthy? Fucking pisses me off.

If you don't like it, then don't fucking read it! Fanfic is supposed to be entertaining, and since these people are getting reviews telling them to continue, they are obviously entertaining someone.

I wouldn't go near FFN with a ten foot pole, but I think it's a good way for people who want to write but maybe aren't fucking Vonnegut to get a chance to post their stuff. Maybe the zines had better fanfic back in the good old days or whatever, but now you are able to go online and find a huge variety of fic in any fandom with almost any pairing. Yeah, the majority of it might be bad, and it might get frustrating to sort through, but a lot of it will be good and worth the effort. And you can get it without waiting for the mail to arrive.

And is anyone else sick of the obnoxious people who mock teenyboppers by utilizing 25 exclamation points and various numbers at the end of sentences? So tired.

Get off your high horse. I like to point and laugh and mock, but I won't say I'm better than anybody else. If you see a summary of a fic WrItTeN lIkE tHiS, then skip it instead of harping on it and spending your valuable time trying to reform the author. Some people aren't trying to change the world through fanfic, they're just satisfying their need to enjoy and be interactive in their fandom.

/rant

Steph

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	iczer6 2003-12-18 07:51 am UTC (link)
	WORD. Wordy McFucking Word man. (Reply to this)(Parent)

lemone, 2003-12-18 10:17 am UTC

prettyamyrose, 2003-12-18 08:49 pm UTC

smo, 2003-12-18 09:58 pm UTC

prettyamyrose, 2003-12-19 01:43 am UTC