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Below are the 16 most recent journal entries recorded in
Ryan Skywalker's LiveJournal:
| Monday, June 9th, 2008 | |
| 2:27 am | I've actually had this account longer than the one I have over at LiveJournal which dates from March '05. In either case, it's kind of a long time. Haven't really been writing much lately... too busy with RL. It's strange that I'm actually involved with "real life" a lot and still don't have much of a social life. I guess work and semi-medical issues count as being busy. I really need to get off my ass and do something else, though. With the election coming up I'll probably get involved with the campaign a bit. |
| Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 | |
| 5:04 pm | Join <strike>the Dark Side</strike> the 9th annual National Novel Writing Month! www.nanowrimo.org My fourth year, not ninth, but w/e. It's been running since '99. |
| Friday, June 1st, 2007 | |
| 7:09 am | bleh I survived Strikethrough '07. Might be using this journal a little more, though, since it seems, well, safer. I mean, nobody on JournalFen is under 18 (or at least they're not supposed to be here) so we really don't have to worry about child molestors or people claiming other people are child molestors using JF to look for victims. No legitimate holders of JournalFen accounts are minors. |
| Saturday, December 30th, 2006 | |
| 10:16 am | Well, shit. No further message. |
| Saturday, November 25th, 2006 | |
| 4:26 pm | I am out of my self-imposed exile. :) Shiny. |
| Friday, October 20th, 2006 | |
| 3:14 pm | I finished my NaNo outline on ZuluPad ZuluPad rocks, by the way. I think my novel is actually going to MAKE SENSE. I'm shocked! |
| Thursday, October 12th, 2006 | |
| 8:31 pm | NaNoWriMo 2006 Yes, it's that time of year again, and this time, I'm writing a sequel to Crash and Burn. It will take place from 36 ABY to an undetermined time after that, in my own little Star Wars alternate universe. It's not a serious sequel because, being NaNo, it will suck. But all that counts is getting to 50,000 words. In the meantime, I might make up a cover for it or something. But I need better images of young auburn-haired six-year-olds since Allana is a main character. |
| Friday, August 25th, 2006 | |
| 6:57 am | Fic update Only 30% through Fanfic100, but this is partly because I'm writing a novel-length fic on that journal and so far I'm 24 chapters in, with 4 left to go. Written a few more other vignettes, nothing spectacular, but fun anyway. Realizing more and more that fan fiction is just like ancient authors/storytellers copying other stories and altering them to suit their storytelling needs, except that 1) we can reach more of an audience faster, and 2) there have been some copyright rules superimposed on the activity. The principle is exactly the same. Virgil writing the Aeneid is no different from a ficcer writing a tale about a character that explores what might-have-happened offscreen/offpage, except that Homer didn't have copyright laws to prevent Virgil from profiting from his work. (And Homer was dead and most likely the copyright would have expired anyway, even if it existed.) But it's the same thing. And Aeneas was a Gary Stu. So the art form of fan fiction - sometimes producing works of brilliant quality, sometimes ones that are excretable, and usually somewhere in between - is a very old one, and only the technology involved in its distribution has changed (how is this different from going from singing/telling stories to writing them down to send to other cities, I wonder? Oh, wait, it's not). And, of course, laws theoretically meant to encourage creativity by making it profitable. First, that's ridiculous; the need to profit very often stifles creativity. It encourages people to create, who might not otherwise, but it also ensures that the vast majority of the resultant works are those specifically targeted to appeal to a wide enough audience of high enough financial means for the work to turn a profit. Thus, while there might be more art in the pool, it also falls more and more into narrowly defined categories and its scope is restricted by the need to sell many copies and make money. Second, fan fiction often encourages purchase of new canon material. It usually only functions as a replacement for the canon when 1) there is no new canon to acquire, thus making it a moot point, or 2) the individual is so poor that s/he cannot afford new books/comics/movie tickets, and thus will not be purchasing the originals anyway. There might be a tiny few who choose to save money by reading fic instead of watching or reading the originals, but this is more than offset by those who buy new books specifically BECAUSE of fan fiction, books they wouldn't have otherwise. Case in point: me. My era is the NJO and I own the entire NJO series, with the exception of the e-book Recovery. However, my passion for writing and encouraging others has led me to rush out and buy new books as soon as they come out (Dark Nest trilogy, except TJK which I bought late, and now Legacy of the Force). Otherwise I might have waited for them to hit secondhand stores, which damage author and publisher profits much more than fan fiction does. I also have discovered a 'ship I absolutely adore, and found a few other people who like it, and thus, as a means of gaining publicity for it AND to simply improve characterization/knowledge of all the characters involved, even in a gen context, I am organizing a group book reading over on LiveJournal probably to start in September. This will mean that I, and some others, will be buying books that we didn't already own, and if I get a nice bonus check in September (I probably will) I will even consider getting extra copies to distribute to those having a more difficult time. And this hurts the bottom line of Bantam and Del Rey how? The other argument against fan fiction is that it takes control of the characters away from the author. First of all, what I do on LiveJournal does not put a gun to anyone's head and make them write things in the canon that they wouldn't otherwise. Control is always with the creators; we create parallel universes with each work we do in fic. Our works are dependent upon the originals, but the reverse is not true. The original universe remains completely intact and ours branch off from it, sometimes never even meeting it and instead running alongside of it. To publish something and expect it not to affect people is dumb and doesn't say much about one's confidence in one's own work. It WILL affect others. They WILL use it as a springboard for their own creative efforts, just like you, the original author, did; you don't create in a vacuum. I have a humorous children's series semi-planned which is loosely based on a fanfic I wrote called Rescues. That one was about Jacen and his pet crystal snake. (It's rated G...) However, with the Star Wars stuff taken out and episodes added, it could be publishable as a short series, about a boy with a pet snake, or perhaps even a very small boy in a fantasy world with a pet worm. The only difference between that and Rescues, from an artistic perspective, is that it's gone one remove further, far enough from the original that copyright law will accept the work as original enough for publication for money. Also, Crash and Burn is in my head as a potential adult novel that has nothing to do with Star Wars, and would take place in a new, original universe. Again... it's fan fiction of fan fiction, and because it does not violate copyright law and Crash and Burn is not protected by any copyright (and if it was, it's mine, so nobody cares) it's publishable. Whether anybody would buy it is another issue entirely - and to be honest, I don't care. I'm not in it for the money. I'm in it to create something I see as beautiful in some way, shape or form, and to challenge readers with the concepts therein. In other words, as long as nobody is trying to profit from fan fiction of your (general you) work (except when it's so far removed from the original that it isn't obvious plagiarism of concepts or characters), STFU. We're helping your bottom line and not doing anything that hasn't been done for centuries, even millennia. Sure, we might prevent a few book purchases, but we MAKE more purchases than we prevent, by a large margin. You don't have to like it, but it's ridiculous to print thousands of copies and have people pay for them and expect them to read and do nothing. When others are INSPIRED by what you have created, that is the highest compliment one can receive. Not just imitation, but transformative imitation; being so inspired by another's work that the spark of creation is lit in oneself and one cannot help but to put the words down and create a parallel universe. Each time a person reads a book, s/he is transported to another universe - one that is colored and changed by his or her own perspective. Even the same person reading at different times in his/her life. Every reading of a book is different for that reason. And if we want to create even more universes from that, all coming back to the original that we love, why is that so wrong? Wow, that was longer than I expected it to be... |
| Monday, March 13th, 2006 | |
| 11:07 pm | Added a few more fics... I'm almost 25% (24%, actually) done with fanfic100, and got some new ideas for a remake of an older fic I did. Yes, ideas are nice. Finally turned out a semi-angsty, semi-sweet J/V (that's Jacen/Vergere, not Jacen/Viqi or Jacen/Voxyn Queen or whatever -_- ) shortfic, so I feel a little better, getting back into serious fic after my recent dry spell and lameass attempt to jumpstart my brain with mediocre humor fic. And I have a Ben fic in the works. Current Mood: accomplished |
| Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 | |
| 5:58 pm | god this weekend sucks I hate weekends. I have nothing to do. Basically I've just been doing chores and reading. Hmm. And wishing there were some active Dune fanfic communities but, alas, there aren't any that I know of, and most of them would probably be overly focused on the prequels. I stopped after the first prequel trilogy (HA, HH, and HC) and will not read the others. I don't want my series raped any more. *sighs* NaNoWriMo coming up again, and I'm getting ready for it. 1 month remaining for me to write my outlines and my character analyses and get going. |
| Monday, April 25th, 2005 | |
| 1:53 pm | Sorry. So long since updates. I'm usually on livejournal - eleventh_guard is the new address (end of March onward) and aprilnhurst58 is the old one. Most of my long fic is posted now, though I still have to post parts 18 through 24. It should take less than a month. And then I will be free to branch into a few other fandoms and styles I've been meaning to try. I have a few regular readers and don't want to disappoint or leave them hanging. Even if there are only three. :/ Current Mood: Bitter |
| Thursday, November 11th, 2004 | |
| 4:29 am | Official. My life has gotten strange. As though it wasn't strange to begin with, it's now positively freaking bizarre. Current Mood: Mildly Amused |
| Saturday, October 30th, 2004 | |
| 2:58 pm | I am CRAZY. On MONDAY I start NaNoWriMo... 50,000 words in 30 days. I can be a prolific writer when I get the urge, but that's beyond even my most inspired periods. And I am now off my medication, which means that I'm going to be my stressed-out, temperamental self. Thank god. I'm sick of feeling numb, and I need the stress, because it kills my appetite. |
| Sunday, October 24th, 2004 | |
| 2:14 am | I'll have to upload my drawings in the next few days. I actually decided to try my hand at manga drawing, and two of my attempts didn't suck. Far from great, but I managed to get a cute girl picture and an evil man picture that looked about right. *yay* (going to bed now) |
| Saturday, October 23rd, 2004 | |
| 10:51 pm | Oops, they did it again. It's going again. The goddamned POUNDING BASS that feels like a fucking HAMMER IN MY SKULL. It's not the music, it's the VOLUME!!! I'm a bit hearing impaired and it STILL IS TOO LOUD. They have 8 minutes to shut it off. I'm being generous and giving them until 11. Then I call the cops for disturbance of the peace. I slept about 2 hours last night, and not all at once. I can't do that every night. |
| 10:12 pm | Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. I am glad that the upstairs neighbors finally shut up. They were having a party with about 10 people most of last night, this morning, and this afternoon. By 6pm I had a headache THIS BIG (holds arms out) and took some generic Excedrin, and it didn't go away. But I think they passed out now and my head feels better after a couple hours of reasonable quiet. Not silence, but instead of music so loud that I could FEEL it and it sounded like it was blaring from my kitchen (which is about 6 feet away), it's just ordinary cars driving by, chitchat, and meowing cats. That's fine. Current Mood: Fixin' for a fight Current Music: Miss World - Hole |