Grabbed from wank_report.

So toft reveals that she's been interspersing her real requests for fics on sgastoryfinders with fake requests. Some of the "fake" fics actually did turn out to exist, and were found.

Is this hilarious or horrifying? Either way, there's tons of wank in the comments.

Brought to you by wank_report!

Clan Mitchell is a Dreamwidth community revolving around the fictional Mitchell family, which appears to be a huge group of people who live in the Carolinas under the administration of a matriarch named Momma, generally serve in some branch of the U.S. military, and/or operate under a general curtain of good ol' American values, get-well-pies, and care packages.

Motto: "The Mitchells will inherit the earth: the meek don't move fast enough."

From the profile:

"So ivorygates and synecdochic made up a bunch of crazy Southern relatives, and the "Fuck Canon, Fanon Makes More Sense, Dammit" club (meetings on alternate Tuesdays, free t-shirts at the recruiting tables, bring your own beer but the cookies are free) firmly believes that "Kansas, my ass" is the best way to approach Cameron Mitchell's home life, and, well, there should be more fic about these people!

Not necessarily a shared-continuity set of stories -- use as much or as little as you'd like -- but a shared-character-list and a place for people to build a shared-world. Grab a Mitchell and start writing. Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated. And probably baked for."

( It all starts with a ficprompt... )
ETA: Revenge of the Sith: cap including the offending fic.

Holy ETA, Batman: (thanks, mousie)
"When someone has put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to create an absolutely beautiful sandbox to play in (a sandbox that they love very very much), and then not only allows you to come in and play in their sandbox, but graciously opens the door and INVITES you in, you don't shit in the sandbox. You don't. M'kay? Good."

We can't stop here, this is ETA country: It's time for the public address roll, looks like. From eilan:
* slybrarian calls for fair and balanced.
* quinfirefrorefiddle & co. are appalled at F_W's lack of journalistic integrity.
* Synecdochic's state of the union, and also ivorygates is banned. Or left. Either way, she's not a mod any more.

SGA ficcer is not getting the acclaim she says she deserves. So she is going to delete her LJ. Her 560 "friends" are not fawning enough so what's the point?!

There are at least 60 comments on her epic fic's last two chapters now. I'm too lazy to figure out how many there were before she flipped out. Also she posted the last chapter only yesterday.

And the mea culpas pour in--three pages of "I'm sorry/I suck/Plz don't go."

( cut for dead links )
ETA3: BAHLEETION!! (saved pages below)

page 1, page 2, page 3, and expanded smackdown. And page 4 thanks to longtimegone! :D

I'm surprised nobody has picked up this wank from wank_report. I don't really know the fandom so I'm just going by what I could find in the links given.

Stargate Atlantis has been canceled.

Queue the wank from the fans over the announcement which can be found in the comments over at GateWorld and Joe Mallozzi's blog (a writer/executive producer for the series).

They include such gems like:

( Am I high? Did they just cancel SGA? Why???? )

And of course what fan reaction to the cancelation of a series would be complete without the 'bring back our show' petition, which can be seen here. And now there's even a LJ community dedicated to bringing back Stargate Atlantis.

But Stargate fans don't have too much time to come to terms about SGA's cancellation as it is then announced that a new Stargate series has been green-lit for production, Stargate Universe. In the announcement they mention that this series will be geared towards a younger audience and will have a 'young vibe' to it.

Not all Stargate fans take to the announcement in good graces, for example:

( I'm going to hurl, seriously. )

Meet kyuuketsukirui. She writes reviews for SGA on her LJ , and recently reviewed a bunch of stories on mcshep_match. kyuuketsukirui commits the unpardonable fandom sin of saying she's disappointed in the latest mcshep_match stories and will be posting her reviews soon.

Meet lamardeuse. She doesn't approve of kyuuketsukirui's disappointment in the stories or her reviews and says so. Many people agree with her, in the process confusing concrit and reviews. kyuuketsuikirui shows up to politely disagree. lamardeuse and her friends don't respond well. darkrose brings in a bit of Earth logic, but it's not enough to leaven out the massive amount of Unclear On the Concept, alas.

So kyuuketsukirui writes a post clarifying her position on reviews and reviews of fanfic and fandom.

zillah975 makes a post about this whole civility/reviews/concrit situation, including a thread in which anatsuno laments that life on the Nice Side ain't all it's cracked up to be. telesilla does a post too.

No responses from lamardeuse and friends. At least, not publically. That wouldn't be civil, after all.

ETA: Supposedly lamardeuse was responding to lavvyan, though kyuuketsukirui's post seems to have been the back-breaking straw.

Dearest, beloved, Fandom Wank.

I know you were looking forward to great excitement today. Some of you said words to me that indicated you anticipated fiery 'judgement' upon those who remained fresh and dewey white, those you call n00bs.

Anyway, you got today instead.

Stop anticipating things, we'll just break your hearts.

Sincerely,

Sepia P. Magpie, Esq.



PS: Use this post to reflect on how you could be better people. Or just fuck around in the comments.

Mini meta wank.

SGA fandom is race wanking - yes, again. This time it started with a review Cesperanza wrote about last week's SGA episode, "Midway," aka the Teal'c and Ronon duke it out ep.  Ces says:

"this ep is going in the waste bin, because, I'm sorry, I am TOTALLY UNAMUSED by the Ronon/Teal'c fight. I think its humiliating, and treats the characters like animals, and I'm horrified at the betting, like it's--what--a cockfight? And to me it's racialized and repulsive: I was typing to Linabean: REPULSED REPULSED REPULSED and that about covers it. I'm absolutely repulsed. I don't care if it's supposed to be a showdown like Batman vs. Superman or the Hulk vs. Thing or whatever--fact is, you had two black men beating the shit out of each other and drawing the largest crowd we've ever seen on Atlantis thus far. And like, this thing of "Ronon and Teal'c have so much in common"--they DO NOT. THEY REALLY DO NOT. They are two men with darker skin than the rest of the cast, but Teal'c is overwhelmingly gentlemanly, and they were portraying Ronon like a beast, though he totally is NOT a beast, and just--WHAT THE FUCK, SGA, SERIOUSLY."

People come by, agree and discuss.  Some DON'T (and LiviaPenn gets involved).

Then, ZZanthalinn stops by to say that Jason Momoa is Polynesian, not black, hence Ronon is too? HERE. More of Momoa is Hawaiian thread.

However, Anonymous is just "pissed off" about the fight after reading Cesperanza's review.





 

Thank you to the reporters on wank report for this one.

Jeanny Driscoll/Drymwyver is a self-published author selling her SGA fanfic, claiming that she has the blessings of MGM in an email. She’s also trying to sell her HP sequel because the Writers Guild of America told her it was okay and J.K. Rowling only holds the copyright to the first seven books in the series anyway. Bonus! She also posed as a US soldier stationed in Iraq in order to receive care packages.

Summary, discussion and links here (includes the text of the now-deleted interview) and here. The interviewer and webmaster of the site formerly hosting the interview shows up here and here and he is not happy. I highly recommend Jeanny Driscoll's and Drymwyver's LuLu pages, which include gems like "This is a romance story set in mystery, and Fantasy", "Its the year 2008 and the world's Elite in Security have formed the new World Network to rout out the enemies and terrorists in the world", along with her self-published V and Peter Pan fanfiction.

ETA: Jeanny Driscoll's LuLu page has disappeared but Drymwyver's is still accessible.

Mini wank.

Rosewildeirish is angry at SGA fandom. No, not all of SGA fandom, just the John/Rodney segment of the fandom. (Can anyone say Hth_the_First wank flashbacks).

Why?

A writer on SGA Noticeboard posted a story that made fun of Elizabeth and her obliviousness to the tru luv of John and Rodney. But in the end, Rose decides, it is all a conspiracy of the Kill Weir community.

Highlights:

"wtf, fandom. I thought you were over the spewing of hatred towards Elizabeth ages ago. Funny how it's all coming from a certain segment of the John/Rodney fans. Wonder, if it's still active, if the writers are all members of the kill weir community?

WTF. Right on the heels of TPTB booting the character - underdeveloped and used mainly as a plot device, rather than as a character - to the curb. Classy.

And people wonder why I'm so negative towards the "Soggy Anus" side of fandom."

If you don't know what I'm talking about, yay you, and if you absolutely HAVE to know, try over on sga_noticeboard. It's all been in the past few days.

Some days I just want to say "Fuck you, Fandom." I have my negativity, but I'm not trying to piss in anyone's pairing-of-choice.

I say again, classy.


Her f-list comes in to defend her points, expect for Gothphyle who posts she thought the story was a funny parody. People then disagree. Small, but amusing.

Key links threads are right here. Plus a good comment about how Rosewildeirish feels "oppressed" in SGA fandom - sometimes.

In response to the "hate" Miera_C asks for some Weir-centric fic.

UPDATE: Because Rose doesn't seem to grasp the concept of F_W, she keeps the anti-McShep comments rolling in:

Though I know I'm opinionated, loud, and uncensored enough that...yeah, there's reason. I prefer to call McShep "Soggy Anus" mostly to annoy a certain subset of fans.


AND the best yet, F_W (me) is stalking her:

I'll tell you what's amusing to me, besides the fact that the story's generating more interest than the "wank": the person had capped the page, had noted when I flocked (had it listed as "deleted"), and also noted this entry and edited to change deleted to flocked.
...

*WAVES TO INTERNETS STALKER F_W MEMBER* HIYAS. BORED MUCH? 


*~*~*

Story that started the wank is HERE.

"Soggy Anus" story can be enjoyed here.


ETA: Rosewildeirish has f-locked the entry and commented that it must be a "slow day" for wank for her post to get noticed. 

Oh well, never fear, I have it saved. CLICKY. (And yes, I have no idea how to do a screen cap, so I am doing this the old skool way *g*). 
 

Over on lj, well-meaning thisissirius tells us how to behave in fandom and tells us this in a heap of passive-agressive niceness and tl;dr.

( Common Courtesy in Fandom )

You know, I've been waiting for this to happen for a while now. SGA wank again.


( this involves spoilers for Season 4 SGA involving casting. )

As seen on clairvoyantwank!

SGA. Show of spin-off cheesy plots, space vampires, and occasionally being stranded in another galaxy but not in the really inconvenient way.

SGA Fandom. Utopia of wank, over-the-top meta, and when they can find time, buttsex.

The latest contribution to SGA's "blowing it entirely out of proportion" legacy starts on Friday, when hth, after wandering around LJ poking at links, sees something so infuriating she runs back to her LJ and posts a rant, entitled MY FUCKING FANDOM GIVES ME FUCKING FITS, part 34,849. Quite surprisingly, given the title, it contains some vitriol, to whit: hth came across a post in someone's personal journal where the person observed that an episode was likely to cause an upsurge in a pairing she really didn't like, and perhaps she'd just unsubscribe from the noticeboard for a little while until it passed. This made hth mad as all fucking hell, because the author was a McKay/Sheppard fan and McShep already owns the fandoms, blah blah blah entitlementcakes blahblah:

"And I don't exactly know where to begin, but I just -- I continue to be so fucking appalled at the outrageously self-centered, entitled, black-hole-of-need wing of McShep fandom. YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ALREADY OWN EVERYTHING. You are everywhere. Your pairing is everywhere. Are we even *on* the same sga_noticeboard? People are writing you literally a dozen or more stories PER DAY, all about your darling lovelies. YOU HAVE FUCKING WON, ALL RIGHT? Now get off our fucking backs!

I don't know if there will be a mad upsurge in Z/Q fic, but I'm pretty sure that if so, "mad upsurge"=maybe five or six stories MAX, TOTAL written by X/Q fans in response to Episode T. But your VIRGIN FUCKING EYEBALLS aren't capable of doing what we plebes do every day of our lives and PAGING DOWN your flist, past the links to the stories you don't want to read? You're too goddamn good for that? The mere knowledge that other people are out there writing their crazy Other Pairings is so upsetting for you that you have to go lie down with a cold compress until it's over?

Well, lucky fucking you -- because it will be over. If I want to unsub and come back when everybody's writing what I want and not writing what I don't want, I'll be gone for a factor of FOREVER.

And you know what? I do truly think that's what a lot of people want. I think there's a stratum of this fandom that would like people like me to just go away, because all we're doing is breathing the oxygen of the McKay/Sheppard people."

It goes on from there in about the same entertainingly frothing fashion. hth is "shocked and hurt and angry" that there's a large part of the fandom that just doesn't care about her works (yes, she writes a non-majority pairing, and just by coincidence, one the original poster mentioned not liking!), and she blathers on about being the "Loyal Opposition" and how She's Not Going Anywhere and neither are her friends, the other minority pairing shippers, and they will fight them in the streets, they will fight them in the courts, they will fight them in Congress!

With such a stirring and rational battle-call, what else could happen, if not wank? (Everything in quotation marks is her direct phrasing, after all.)

And as we all know, these days, where there's SGA wank, there's liviapenn: after getting the very first comment, she cheerfully flung herself into beating down opposing arguments to hth's rant, because hth's argument is right and just and why won't you see that it's right and just and it's right and just, dammit!

If you were here for either part of the racewank, you know this refrain. As an extra special bonus, where livia does not go, harriet_spy goeth for her. Hey, long time no see!

And speaking of the racewank, that's what this really is about, according to hth herself: oppression of a minority.

"I have a long history of sympathy with the losers; it's my bone-deep, second-generation hippie-pinko-liberal instincts coming out. I have what theologians call a "preferential option" for people who are in the minority, who feel disenfranchised, who have less power to control their environment than other people do."

But wait. It gets better.

"Interestingly, I think some of the same unfortunate things are happening here that happened in the (much more significant & painful) race discussion: the issue becomes unjustly personalized. I'm white and so are all the characters I write about, are you calling me out personally for this? Well, not really, not the way I read that conversation. And yet clearly there was no chance a lot of people weren't going to hear exactly that, just like now a lot of people are hearing "and it's the personal fault of all of you separately and individually" here when people talk about feeling pushed out of the fandom."

Yes, rally round the flag, non-McSheppers. Your cause is so much more important than you ever would have guessed! Once again, SGA fandom is crusading for social justice!

Well, crusading for social justice in between calling the McShep fans names--which merryish takes exception to, for some reason, although directing her anger against the originator of the phrase rather than going after someone who was just, uh, following the herd. And maybe most ironically, one of the supportive comments to hth's side comes from a person who really did massively freak out about encountering pairings she detests. Rationallity tries to wander in, but gives up as a bad job and heads for other parts, hoping for a better response.

Which it gets. chopchica makes a response post, and it mysteriously remains free of the wank contagion that so inexplicably infected the original rant. For some reason, none of the hard-hitting arguers mentioned above show up to explain the rightness of hth's cause this time; maybe they didn't like the feng shui, though that hasn't seemed to preturb the post's other plentiful commenters. Meanwhile, hth, realizes just how badly this is going for her and makes a non-apology post about credibility and impulsiveness and how making fandom rants is just never ever a good idea, and she feels really terrible about how all of this went.

But the glorious, glorious cherry-on-top of this sundae of spooge?

The post that set hth off, the heinous author she valiantly refused to name the name of in public because hth was afraid it would make that person look bad, was this post by eleveninches (which contains spoilers for episodes unaired in the US).

Yes, that's right: hth absolutely was losing her shit over a post from January. So much for "that's just a conspiracy theory!"


ETA: Over on Hth's second post, the comments are rolling in and the plot is continuing to thicken.

( In *addition* to someone apologizing that Hth was FW'd.... )

Do you remember the Barista, please!(™) wank, wherein we learned the terrible trials and travails of brown people in SGA fandom AUs, and the original commenter was sorry, but the main banner waver that she tagged-in so she wouldn't have to soil her hands.... Well, that guy has issues in general. (Sambo? Really?)

More importantly, do you remember the extensive post on this topic by liviapenn, which probably had several good points that got totally buried when it devolved into a discussion about racist portrayals of Characters of Color as kitties?

Good. We're relatively caught up now. On with part two, because the whole damn fandom has fallen into this fountaining explosion of splooge, and they've started seriously flinging it into each other's eyes now.

You've got your countless discussions and debates. Was it rude? Are Ronon and Teyla aliens? (Wait, what?) Why should the writer's discomfort matter? Wait, isn't this actually about class? (Apparently not.) And so on and so forth. Metafandom has become almost entirely lost to debates about the justification for pulling white people over on the information superhighway.

But in amidst all the "No, you're racist," "No, you're overreacting," "No, you're missing the point," and "No, you are" arguments and counter-arguments, something really special is going down, because permetaform has decided that all these other discussions just aren't hard-core enough for her feelings on this topic. It's time for her to show just how much she despises "the other side" in this whole affair: by defriending and shutting out of her life anyone who might have been involved with the side she disagrees with about this.

No, really. Anyone. The deleted comment in its entirety? "LOL Agreed! :D" Nor is this the only case of probable overkill; the comments are chock-full of bewildered people wondering what the hell they did that was so bad.

In fact, not only is she defriending for people making humorous replies to anything involved in the matter, she's also defriending people for doing... absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell. ltlj--that LTLJ--certainly doesn't have the slightest clue what she did, and permetaform's reply appears to indicate she just didn't hear LTLJ agonizing about her supposed faults loudly enough in public. This might be because even coniraya--remember him?--thinks she handles race well in her writing. Naturally, this produces results, if possibly not the intended ones: LTLJ makes a post bitching permetaform out from head to toe, and then deletes her LJ, disgusted with the world in general.

How does permetaform feel about this? Well, in an ETA, she tells us:

I've just come back from doing errands and ltlj's recent post was pointed out to me.

And what I'm actually feeling right now is a great huge ball of relief. Because when I first saw ltlj's name come up as associated with this mess I felt a great sense of betrayal because I'd greated respected and admired her. Finding this out was on the tail of looking at comments from people I'd respected before and just...feeling all kinds of upset and astonishment.

So yes, I jumped to conclusions. So yes, I was considerably more angry than I should have been. And yes, I should have followed up on the names as I have done with the other names instead of immediately reacted the way I had.

I sincerely apologize to ltlj for finding ill in her when there was none. I apologize for not following up and double-checking her own words before defriending. I apologize for the tone in my own comment.

I don't apologize for calling her a racist because in my post I called both everyone and no one a racist, because I believe that everybody has elements of racism in themselves to a degree. I do not level "that obscene hateful accusation" because I don't think it's useful in discussions of prejudice.

And frankly, thank you for your ranty post. It makes me very relieved to have misjudged you because it makes me very relieved that I can keep my respect for you.

This, of course, is the original edit: she's edited the post about three times since, and will probably edit more. And thus the entire, wanky saga boils down to this: one woman apparently deciding it was all an after-school special style lesson to teach her about how it's okay to have faith in things, but you still shouldn't feel shy about declaring people to be racist.

Don't we all feel like we've learned something important, now?


Note: I have ltlj's post and several different edits of permetaform's post saved, and can upload and link upon request. And at the rate permetaform is changing what she's saying, by tomorrow she may be trying to insist all she was talking about was the goodness of fluffy bunnies, so keep your own save button handy.


ETA: Various edits of permetaform's post and a saved copy of LTLJ's post are here.

On the 4th, permetaform made a new post about this. A sample:

"I realized I was being Triggered during the events of the past post, Triggering being reacting to a present situation as if the person in the present is instead the person who've given one trauma in the past."

And from the mouths of experienced wank-watchers, a groan goes up....

omglawdork writes an SGA AU story in which Ronon is a barista.

It seems that "barista" is some kind of underground racial slur nowadays. I knew there was a reason I hated Starbucks.

ETA: Parts Two through A Billion

Ah Stargate, you're always good for a wank.

Thanks to the wank report mousie for getting me started on this one.

So, some wannabe BNFs (heimedall, oparu, and angelsdee) decided to do a Shep/Weir themed virtual season 4 because they're a wee bit cranky about the direction of the show. A little birdie mousie informs me that invites to join this effort went out to a very select group of het writers who are considered amongst the best in that end of fandom. This invite was sent before the third season finale aired wherever those things air early (Canada?). Every single BNF they invited declined -- especially the ones who weren't into Shep/Weir. Some were also probably not very happy as the invite contained spoilers and the show is only half-way through the season in the States, but it's just a little personal email, right?

So this intrepid, and somewhat stupid, group of virtual season running wannabes decided to look elsewhere for writers. Elsewhere would be defined as everywhere het-friendly in this case.

( Spammage and crazy behind the cut )

ETA: Bahleeeted. Stay tuned. Caps are coming soon to a fandom wank post near you.

ETA II: melyanna, who is made of awesome, provides caps of the Intro, FAQ and Apology. Why wait for the apology to be deleted?

ETA III: ladycat found their forum. Most of it's locked, but you can still visit the FAQ, Guidelines, Advertising -- where they solicit communities to spam, Character Profiles, a Canon Guide, and Writers Aids. Anybody know where they got the content for this stuff? It would be funny if they "borrowed" it.

ETA IV: Spoilers have invaded the comments. They seem mostly casting related, but click with care.

ETA V: More big honking spoilers in the comments. Click at own risk. Also, prima found a post where oparu would like us to think she got booted from the virtual season before the sploodge tide hit. Her chief reasons involve time zones, disagreements with the other mods/organizers, being a newbie, and nobody expecting the Spanish inquisition moral indignation.

There are some changes slated for the uber-popular televisions series Stargate: Atlantis.

Spoilery information can be found here and here.

Heck, just go to the main page of gateworld.net to get the idea.

Fans get a little...well, upset about the various changes on fan forums, as predicted by certain actors a couple of months ago. This happens right?

Change on shows, especially one with characters that people passionately love or hate, brings out the fandom hysteria (and sometimes the funny)

Joseph Mallozzi, producer of SGA calls fans lemmings...well, by implication, maybe the context is stretched a little:

From his blog (does everyone on this show have a blog?)

I considered joining some online fan forum and joining the chorus blaming the producers for her sudden disappearance, that episode with the singing, and my dog’s eye condition - but ultimately decided against it because I realized it would only make me sound like a shrill and ill-informed lemming. Still, it was tempting. There’s something strangely comforting and delusively empowering about chiming in with an anonymous mob, albeit one that lacks any true insight into the reality of a situation.

So the lemmings, err fans, get a little uptight.

And I know finding wank on the Gateworld forums is like shooting fish in a small container thing..but Enjoy

ETA: the other person with my name on the forum, not me, although I'm sure she's fantastic, as anyone with that name aught to be

Fanfic writer Diana Williams wonders what happened to good manners?

Many people, some via metafandom, wander in to ask what do you mean by good manners?

Confusion, cultural comparisons, and over 140 comments result.

Ow, all that html hurt. ;_;

ETA: It appears that the discussions in this post on The Cutting Board may have been the catalyst for Diana's post.

Popular rumor states that the very best and choicest of SGA fandom wanks are kept from our besmirching little fingers by friendslocks, leaving F_W to content itself with the dregs. Sometimes a wank comes across the desk that makes you not only completely believe that, but marvel at what we must be missing.

This week's SGA explosion begins with the creation of sga_mst, a community dedicated to mocking badfic in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 format and causing enormous amounts of splooge, tl;dr, and BNF guest appearances. Well, perhaps that's inaccurate. We don't really get rains of white from the heaven until the moderators, deciding they didn't have enough members, push their fledgling creation out into the spotlight of the fandom via sga_noticeboard. There's some expressions of dubiousness about the whole thing, and then one of the moderators provides a wavering anon with a link to a discussion of the community in her journal, and the angels blow their mighty faptrumpets to signal the arrival of our main stage and the start of the festivities.

Right off the bat, liviapenn (our first guest BNF!) notices that blade_girl (community mod and our host) has a certain inconsistency going:

"I have to say, I was surprised to see you involved in the creation of sga_mst, because I do remember that we disagreed very strongly on the "remix" debate a while back.

Your argument at the time seemed to be that it was wrong and an offense against the community to create a new work based on someone else's story.

My question is, isn't that what you're doing when you take someone else's story to create a MST?"

Yes, that's right: we've got indirect wank sequel sign! But blade_girl doesn't see any conflict with her previous stated views:

"We at [info]sga_mst are using the SGA characters to perform a critical commentary of the selected fanfics, not creating a whole new fic based upon the author's material. If we were to insert our characters into the fanfics we're lampooning, having them actually participate in the plot and so forth, then I'd agree with you that we were crossing that line into remixing."

Naturally, liviapenn disagrees with that, but blade_girl continues to defend her stance and adds in that what they're doing shouldn't be considered bad; after all, not only are they keeping authors names out of it, but what they're doing a perfectly respectable form of analysis and critique.

glaelia
shows up to offer her thoughts on that argument and blade_girl responds with... well, let's just call it a traditional defense:

glaelia: "You may as well be, in this fandom, people are going to recognise the author. Or you know, they could google a few lines.

My biggest bone is that you're so cruel as to find it amusing to laugh at other people's downfalls. You're everything I dislike about fandom."

blade_girl: "You are welcome to participate in this discussion, but kindly refrain from getting personal again. I am not smearing you (or anyone else, for that matter) in this journal, nor am I going to yours and flaming you. You are doing both."

glaelia: "Perhaps I should make a community and do it there?"

Elsewhere, liviapenn continues to valiantly attempt to definitively pin blade_girl down on how this is different than the Remix challenge. After threads collapse into the resulting intellectual black hole, a single final message bobs to the surface from our friend livia:

"So in the end I agree with you: there's no point to this conversation."

Would that everyone else had come to so sensible a conclusion--people who are not anons, I mean. blade_girl continues to tout the values of criticism, noting, "In my experience, the only authors that can actually take true constructive criticism are the ones who are already pretty good." glaelia whips out the dictionary to prove constructive criticism is not being had here. blade_girl says they never said they were. glaelia says that they're really just looking for praise for mocking people. blade_girl denies that. People offer sundry... proofs, which blade_girl denies some more. Are we bored yet? Yes? Good, because we've now got incoming second mod sign.

history_gurl is on the scene and ready and willing to debate! She came up with the comm, it seems, and is more than happy--almost eager, one might say--to let anyone who wishes put one of her fics under the knife. She's also eager to defend the idea, bringing in such arguments as 'It's just like Stephen Leacock or Mark Twain' and 'other people do it all the time' both of which go over swimmingly. Liviapenn also inexplicably decides to try her luck again with this person--was she having a slow day? Final words for this round:

"Um, okay then."

Meanwhile, history_gurl also congratulates glaelia on not being one of those nasty horrible evil icky anons. Mice have such a hard reputation to cope with--especially mice who were, after all, invited to the party. (But only that mouse, it seems. How they can tell that they and their problem mouse are different, I can't say.)

Is it safe to come out yet?

Signs point to no, unfortunately. The angels, winded after this one thread of activity, distract everyone with a random sockpuppet accusation and take a quick bathroom break, and then we're back in it.

witchqueen posts asking, "Why have you created a community whose modus operandi is to steal other people's fanfic?" and history_gurl marches once more unto the breach, inexplicably not tired out yet. dracostella shows back up to wave that bloody towel remix challenge around some more. The mods get snippy in return, and we have another BNF guest appearance, as seperis drops in to say a few words which completely fail to solicit a reply, earning her the Most Bizarre Cameo Appearance of the Affair Award.

But possibly she just gets overlooked as we have the incoming mod sign blinking again: crazymadi, the third and final of the original mods, has entered the building, and guess what? She's defending the community. At this point, this almost wouldn't be worth mentioning, except for witchqueen's hilarious reply (links are hers):

"Oh, I call shenanigans. If you wanted to comment on a badfic practice in general, you would write up your own exemplars. Posting specific stories and making comments about them is commenting on those particular stories."

It's possible that I never realized how much I wanted to see someone call shenanigans in a wank until someone did. As a wrap-up to this post, amireal also drops in to say a few things, completing her self-contracted weigh-in on every single bit of SGA wank she can access. Fortunately, no one cares.

Is it safe to come out now?

Um....

Well, even the angels of wank were starting to pack up when the community, which you have to admit achieved their goal of attracting notice quite admirably, added another mod. And like all mods, this new one, aithine, had to post her thoughts about and defenses of the whole thing. Ooh, scene change! And with a new, broader stage, we've pulled in yet another special BNF guest: maygra, who feels the need to weigh in with her thoughts on the matter as well.

Heaven help us all if the SGA fandom doesn't get something better to distract themselves before the weekend, because the angels are beat and the sploogeplows are starting to break down....

David Hewlett, who plays Rodney on Stargate: Atlantis, is one of the nicer sorts of fannish celebs: approachable, inclined to provide a place for his fans to hang out around him, pleasantly geeky, and reasonably unflappable. You know what this means, of course: wank. Having previously weathered the storm of his own nudity being displayed to him (yes, it seems he is aware he has a penis), it seems the fans are determined to move on to challenging his zen with that old fannish standby: fanfic.

However, this is not his story.

It is the story of a fanfic awards site, a woman determined to talk about it, and some of the consequences.

It all begins on David Hewlett's aforementioned forums, with Icarus. Icarus starts a thread titled 'Fandom Security' which initially seems to be a discussion of steps to take to keep your real life and your fannish life from colliding, but doesn't stay to that topic for long. Amusingly, a major immediate tangent is how crazy vast parts of fandom are, and how important it is to take steps to protect yourself from people who don't understand how to be polite and sensible members of fannish society--and how to interact politely and sensibly with actors and other TPTBs. Other discussions this thread naturally launches into are such obvious topics as the OOC-ness of slash and the reasons to read and enjoy fic at all. Naturally, it starts to go wanky as early as page three, when an un-named Visitor shows up to question the wisdom of having this discussion on this forum at all:

"I maintain that certain aspects of fandom should be kept within fandom circles, fanfiction -- especially any type of het/slash fiction -- being one of them. Not strictly for legal reason, though those are still possibly a concern.

It also seems that people are still confusing this site with other fandom forums. This is not an extension of fandom in the form of an official site. It is an official site venturing into fandom space."

Pages and pages of argument ensue. I can't even begin to recap them, and really, why would anyone want me to? It's nothing particularly new. No, the different kicks in when Icarus, who is obviously a special child, decides that in the middle of this argument is a perfect time to start a new thread--this one pimping the Stargate Fan Awards, which will be announcing their winners soon. Her reasons for posting are fairly obvious--she mentions right on page one of her earlier thread that she's been nominated--and course the reaction is fairly obvious too, especially since she forgot to log in when starting the thread....

crownglass39: "Is it wise to be posting a link to such a large fanfic forum here?
I've heard authors request that people not link to their fic at the dgeek site, and this is a rather large repository for said fic. "
Vistor: "Thank you, I was just about to make the same request. This is exactly the sort of thing that a large number of us do not want posted to this site. Several authors friends are concerned about this link being here and ask that you take it down."
Hanes: "No one can edit a post created as a Visitor."
Visitor: "Ah. Right. Well played."

Icarus's reaction to all of this?

"It should be fine. It's not a direct link to any specific fic.

Many authors I know are just fine with their stories here. There's a whole fanfiction archive on Gateworld.

If anyone wants the thread edited, Hanes has a point. I was logged out mid-post and can't edit it. They can petition David. He's the only one who can remove it."

There's only one thing left to do now--it's time for it to go to LJ! lamardeuse has a poll in which the commenters feel strongly about this--very strongly, in some cases. And amireal hates it and just wants it all to go away, but with someone like this involved, I believe she may be overly optimistic:

[in response to a suggestion they just shouldn't discuss fanfic on this forum]
"It's a terrible idea. This is why we don't have gay marriage in the U.S. and two friends of mine stand to lose their kid if one of them dies, no matter who actually raised him -- because a few people are offended at the idea of two men (or two women) married to each other."

Made with the assistance of the mice of lol_meme and wank_report. They will find links for cheese. Or even just to alleviate the boredom.

Over in SGA fandom, where the men are women and the women are... also women, there's trouble brewing in the paradise that is sga_flashfic, home of possibly even more crackfic than the rest of the fandom has. Speranza (cesperanza) has come up with a new idea for a challenge: Mission Reports! It's got three different possible options, and options A and B are about par for the course, but option C is a little different:

"take another author's story and write a report of type a or b for it."

But what makes it truly special is this:

"Now to clarify about option c)--if you choose to write a mission report of somebody else's story, we'll ask you to credit them, but we won't require you to ask their permission (though obviously, you're free to do so and it's always a good idea). HOWEVER, if you want to opt OUT of option c)--i.e. tell people that they can't write a mission report of your story or stories, even with credit--please leave a comment in this post ASAP."

For those of you lost, she's basically saying that anyone can write up a story based on and remixing another author's story without needing their permission, and if you don't want to have someone do that to your story, you need to speak up now or it's assumed you're down with it.

As you might imagine, this does not go over well.

At all.

Four comments down, things get jiggy, when kyrdwyn asks the fairly sensible question:

"Also, sorry, another thought I had - are you limiting the writers we can choose from to sga_flashfic members, or is anyone who has ever written SGA fic fair game? Because if they're not on the list, they won't know to opt out, and I know a lot of writers who might like to opt out for whatever reason."

And just about everyone shows up to take exception!

You've got hth (hth_the_first):

"Right, because God forbid we write stories that make use of ideas someone else came up with. I personally write to Martin Gero before each and every story I post on the internet to clear it with him; I keep his postcards in a little file folder in my fireproof safe so that I can pull them out and show them to anyone who asks."

Sarah T (harriet_spy):

"Especially if it's a Sheppard/Teyla spin! That's *extra* gross, you know! I feel violated just thinking about it."

Livia Penn (liviapenn) hastily defending Sarah T with links:

"Er, I assure you, she was definitely just being sarcastic."

An anonmouse replying to Sarah T:

"i hope someone remixes one of your fics so rodney kills teyla."

And that's just within the first real subthread.

In the other comments, people scold, and scold, and scold, and scold--there's even preschool teacher scolding--and grant very odd forms of permission. That little condition is apparently a bigger source of concern than you'd think, because it also shows up in rosewildeirish's post on the subject, if not the countless other posts about it. But not everyone disagrees--some people think they haven't gone far enough.

And the best thing is: this hasn't even been up a full twelve hours yet. Pass along a link to the unfolding drama and get a cookie!


ETA: And at just barely shy of the twelve hour mark, Speranza freezes the original post and puts up a new post revising the rules and proceedures for this challenge. However, it's worth noting that they "remain philosophically committed to the idea that people have the right to make art based on other art provided that due credit is given the original artist".

I'd offer to take bets on whether more wank is in the offing, but I don't believe anyone around here is that naive.


Links at this point provided by just about everybody. Thanks, y'all.