FIC AWARDS RULE! Especially if I win everything!
Recently The OC fandom walked in the grand tradition of all fandoms and had its very first fan fiction awards. And since history is always bound to repeat itself, a day after the award winners were announced, wank occurred!

shelbecat organized the awards, and posted on LJ, FanFiction.Net *and* TWoP. But mostly on TWoP. Shockingly, all the authors from TWoP won, even though just skimming over the entries I'm thinking a lot of the LJ stories should have won just on the basis of, like, SPELLING.

Here is shelbecat's confirmation of the obvious (that fanfic awards are basically popularity/visibility contests.) Non-wanky in and of itself, but along comes missdeviant, who won an award and still thinks the whole awards process is mega-wanky, and so were the results, which, yeah, had some pretty unreadable non-LJ-based "winners."

She adds that this is not a slight toward shelbecat herself, but shelbecat tells missdeviant what she can do with that disclaimer.

But along comes mswalter, who co-wrote or singlehandedly wrote the majority of the "winning fic" and surprisingly has no problem with the awards at all! In fact, she finds them quite fair, unbiased, and an accurate representation of quality fic in the fandom! LOL Here is the post where she plays the "I'm a professional writer so I know what I'm talking about" card, calls the generalizing LJers haters, and then makes the generalization that LJ writers for The OC are big on really minor things like grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting, spot-on characterization and excellent dialogue, but suck at plot.

Here it is in all its wankerrific glory incase it is BAHLETED:


First things first: I love fanfiction awards. I get that they are often fucked up _ the "wrong" stories win, the voting is skewed, the best stories are overlooked, it's mostly a popularity contest, blah blah blah. I still love them. I think it's fun to see which stories get noticed, and to see which way the popular vote goes.

The Citrus Awards are no different. I was totally flattered to be nominated, and thrilled to win. I didn't agree with all the winners, but hey, that's just my opinion.

There's been a lot of "discussion" on LJ today about these awards, and a lot of that chatter has been pretty revolting. Many writers whose work I admire and respect have come across sounding like complete idiots. And I'm not talking about making bitchy remarks that may or may not be directed at me. Hey, they've got every right to air their opinions and I'm a big girl.

But to summarily ridicule an entire contingent of fanfic writers _ after admitting that they haven't even read most of the stories _ well, that's just stupid. And the thing is, I think they're wrong. Not morally/ethically wrong _ again: opinions, freedom of speech, blah blah blah (although to dismiss the awards as a whole, and in effect the person who organized the whole thing _ all kinds of fucked up) _ but just wrong about the stories themselves.

There's this assumption that the LJ writers are just straight up better than the writers at ff.net and from TWoP. And the truth is, I used to buy into it. A lot of my favorite OC writers are on LJ, and I've friended them here because I want to read their stuff (despite their ginormous egos, which I used to find more endearing than annoying _ they're good! they deserve the egos!). But are they really better than everyone else?

It's true that looking at mechanics and, for the most part, characterization, yeah, the LJ contingent is generally better _ sometimes *a lot* better _ than the rest of the OC fanfic community. The writing is clean and mostly error-free, the dialogue is crisp and real, the characters are believable. But when it comes to plot and story? Yeah, not so much.

For what it's worth, I'm a writer and editor by profession (not fiction _ newspapers) and I've worked a great deal with non-published fiction writers (plus written quite of bit of my own, not that that matters, since none of you have seen it and I'm sure it’s all crap). My point is, I feel like I know what I’m talking about here, and I certainly know what makes a story good for me. And one of the most important qualities in fanfiction, or any sort of writing, is telling a story that actually grabs my attention and makes me want to read more. With a lot of the LJers, I love their style and I’m insanely jealous of the way their words come to life, but I don’t give a shit about the story they’re telling.

Notice I say "a lot". Because I think some of the LJ writers do know how to tell a kickass story *and* work the gorgeous writing technique. Hackthis’s Telegraph Avenue positively rocked both worlds (which was duly noted in the Citrus Awards). And obviously many of the writers I read here have produced some very memorable stories, even if I find much of their writing repetitive and unimaginative, plot-wise.

Meanwhile, many of the TWoP/ff.net writers, for all of their misspellings and misplaced commas and mixed up verb/noun agreement, know how to tell a story that grabs readers and thrills them. They pump up the drama and the angst, they create these wild plots, they throw a million different curves at their readers. And you know, I love them for it.

I think what bugs me about all of the discussion going on here today is that it just uniformly lauds a small contingent of LJ writers, while dismissing as worthless not only the other writers who were nominated, but a whole league of *readers* who simply prefer the TWoP/ff.net stories to what’s posted here at LJ. Because they prefer a story that excites them _ poor grammar and all _ to one that’s extremely well written but doesn’t really go anywhere.

Anyway, just my opinion. Congratulations again to all of the winners (which ha! I almost spelled “whiners”), and especially to [info]shelbecat, who is my hero for the day.

*

(To which I said on missdeviant's LJ: I think if you've got four original characters and two canon characters all in the same fic that are utterly indistinguishable from each other, no matter how "pumped up" your plot might be, it might be more productive to buy a tape recorder and just tape yourself masturbating.)


The cherry on the wank sundae comes by way of mswalter's writing partner, maudgonne, who gets passive aggressive and all MOST of you accepted the wonder that was these fan fiction awards and did not act like a stupid ungrateful biatch. MOST of you. Thank you so much, those among you who are nonstupid. *huggles*

Excellent.