Rodo's Journal

This article by dodger_winslow with the title Angels V2.0 (spoilers for 5.08) reminded me of something that has confused me for quite a while: the assumption that angels in Supernatural don’t have a free will. It shows up in fanfic a lot. Now, this might have to do with the fact that I am not religious and certain religious assumptions generally just confuse the hell out of me, but I’m not sure it’s just that.

( Cut for Spoilers (Season Five) )

In conclusion: I really don’t think that the angels have more or less free will than the humans in Supernatural. Or did I miss something? If so, please explain it to me in the easiest way possible. I am that dumb when it comes to Christianity.

Okay, so I posted a story a few days ago that probably only a few of you noticed. I got reviews, and they're generally positive. The review that spawned this post was positive too, but since it was the first of its kind that I received, I felt the need to talk about it. See, the story was 1200 words long. And the reviewer critized the following:

1. You're only writing short stories to avoid criticism. Translation: You're afraid of playing with the grown-ups (but you don't have to be, I swear!)
2. Your short stories are so great, but they're just short stories. Translation: You're wasting your talent on X when you could do Y.
3. You'd get more reviews if you only just wrote longer stories, simply stretch the material. Translation: Why are you doing this? It's totally pointless because nobody appreciates you!

Okay, so my translations probably aren't that accurate, and I didn't exactly quote her review either. But it's what I got out of it, and it reminded me of something I've heard before: Why are you writing fanfic when you could write a real book? ( The answer, of course, is because I want to. )

Okay, the obvious answer to this question would be: “Because not everybody in the world knows English and the AO3 is meant to be for everyone”, and that’s a good answer. It’s not the only answer, though. I know people who never learned English in school. I also know people who have difficulties learning languages and thus never really understood English. But generally speaking, I’m from a country where many, many people learned English in school (it’s compulsory for everyone in my state, for example), where many advertisements are in English, just like shop names, product names and many, many more. In theory, all these people should be able to navigate the archive.

( However, being surrounded by English all the time evidently doesn't mean people understand it. )

Please do not link to this post in newsletters.

Warning: As per skuf’s wishes, it’s more informal and also more straightforward than my meta usually is. PS: I hope I managed to write about the topics you people were asking about.


( i “loser” canon characters who become fanon heroes (223 words) )


( ii sex-god!draco in fanfic (248 words) )


( iii fannish entitlement (252 words) )

☞ There are some things that you just don't expect on a Saturday morning. A pneumatic drill next to your flat at 8am is one of them. I'm currently waiting for the paracetamol to kick in.

☞ skuf is looking for participants for her Mini Meta Fest.

☞ logovo posted about what the term "aca-fan" might (not) mean.

☞ Supernatural owns my soul. I've spent the last days in a Supernatural-shaped bubble and I hope I can stay there for a bit longer. Reality is so extremely unfunny.

☞ A Supernatural fic rec: And I Wake Up Blind, Like My Dreams Were Too Bright by strangeandcharm. Vaguely Dean/Castiel, but mostly narrated from Jimmy's PoV as he tries to help Castiel, who lost his memory and is stuck in a mental hospital thinking he is human.

You know, I actually wanted to work on the Albus Dumbledore/Gilderoy Lockhart fic that is all It was dead inside's fault today. But then I got sidetracked by the latest plagiarism wank. Funnily enough, I was reminded of the problem a few days ago, so I wrote a meta post about plagiarism.

I'm not a lawyer or a law student (I only had that one course about copyright), and I probably did make mistakes. Please correct me if you find them or if you have something to add to the list.


( Plagiarism, What It Is And What It Isn’t, An Idiot's Guide )

( Here be Torchwood and Supernatural spoilers, enter at your own risk. Contains: my thoughts on character torture, RTD's writing ability and a TV Tropes link )

Lastly, a few (spoiler free) quotes on the matter that I liked:

"I MEAN, CONSTANTLY GETTING JERKED AROUND BY SOMEONE WHO ACTS LIKE THEY'RE JOSS WHEDON AND DOUGLAS ADAMS ROLLED INTO A CHUBBY LITTLE GAY BURRITO OF AWESOME BUT ACTUALLY MAKES ERIC KRIPKE LOOK LIKE A FUCKING SAVANT?" by seize ⁴

"Russel said it was his intention to give his fans a punch in the gut. Then he was surprised that many of his fans didn't like being punched in the gut? What did he expect?" by zyna_kat on fandom_wank ⁵

And now I'm hopefully off to clean my flat for tomorrow. Argh! I hate cleaning!

The current debate about warnings really disturbs me. I haven't experienced sexual abuse and/or rape. And I have a problem with triggering content. No idea why, but certain topics can cause panic attacks and nervous breakdowns. It's been that way since I was six. I had my first nervous breakdown then, after watching a documentary on how the world is going to end when the sun will expand in five billion years. To this day, I have problems with this topic (and please don't ask about it in the comments either, trying to explain will mean I have to think about it in too much detail, which is not good), and with certain other aspects of astrophysics. I don't expect a warning for that, but that's a very specific trigger.

( Cut for length and TMI )

I would like to avoid these topics, and so do other people, for various reasons, not all of them triggers, but still valid. I know it's hard for people who don't feel like their life is a Spießrutenlauf to understand this, but we are doing everything we can to protect ourselves, and we're not infallible. We need help for this. So please, warn for the most common subjects, and if you don't, state that visibly (not everyone looks into a profile before reading a story).

In fact, if something is warned for, I might even read it if I feel well enough, because that way, I can ready myself for the subject. Which helps more than you can imagine.

Yesterday, someone posted a rant on fanficrants. The ranter's point was that a) the fandom doesn't need fanzines anymore and that b) the prices on them are very unreasonable, especially considering that you can post/read fanfic online for free. This post is the tl;dr version of my not very organized thoughts on the post and the discussion:

I am rather new school when it comes to fandom, but that doesn't mean I don't understand the appeal of zines (even though I don't own a single one). In fact, I wish I had the money to buy them, because zines have some advantages. Fanfic on the internet disappears very fast, compared to non-net standards. Give it five years and many URLs will be invalid, the authors decided the fics were crap, or the fandom suffered from a wave of cease and desist letters. When you buy a zine, you get to choose how long you want to keep it, not the person hosting and/or publishing the stuff.

( Cut for length )

First of all: This is all lian's fault. And the fault of the anonymous person who so generously gifted me with two months of paid time (♥) at DW. This is also a follow-up post to my last post about fandom and language, in a way. It's also my first poll, so please tell me what I could have done better.

Note: For the purpose of this poll, I won't define "fandom" or "(language) fandom". I'll leave that up to you.

( Follow the fake cut to DW )

A lot of other people have already written about why they will (or won’t) move to DW. This post is about my reasons, which are not limited to the question “Why DW?” but are also about “Why not LJ?” and “Why not IJ?” (even though I will not abandon my IJ, don’t worry). Anyway, I would prefer it if you followed my posts on DW if you have an account there. And I would prefer to follow your posts there as well.


( Why DW? )


( Why not LJ? )


( Why not IJ? )

The topic of this post is one that has been on my mind for years, and this certainly isn’t the first attempt to write it all down. This post is about my very subjective experience in fandom, which, I believe, is not quite normal. I suppose all of you who are multifannish know at least to some degree what I am talking about, because essentially, I am talking about being in two fandoms at once. But while most people experience two fandoms as two different things they’re interested in, for me, it is the same thing, in two languages.

So I suppose this is where I should introduce myself: I am a German and German is my first language. I didn’t really start learning English until I was ten (so I am not really bilingual). I started writing fanfiction when I was seven. I discovered fandom when I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it. Buying the new issue was more fun than Christmas. I discovered online fandom when I was nineteen, googling Harry Potter and finding Animexx. A few months later, somebody posted the translation of this really great Harry Potter fanfic (or so I thought at the time – it was the Draco Trilogy), and I started reading it in English.

( That was five years ago, and since then, I spent time in English and in German fandom. )

This post is also available on Dreamwidth

*sigh* I'm behind schedule, and I kind of lack a proper topic for this week's meta (I can only think semi-properly because I'm on ibuprofen anyway), so this is what you get instead:

Archiving Fic on Blogs

I just spent half the day organising my fic on my DW account, for various reasons:

1.) The import helper does not change the links at the bottom of a chapter that leads to the next one. I had to do it manually, because otherwise people would have ended up on IJ instead.

2.) I revamped my tagging system. I added genres, ratings, warnings, pairings and several story tags.

3.) I used all that to finally put a sticky post at the top of my journal with links to (almost) all of my stories and various tags.

( And that, of course, reminded me of how ill equipped journals are for fic archiving. )

Apologies for the mistakes I probably made. As mentioned above, my brain is not fully functional at the moment.

I almost forgot that, according to my posting schedule, I have to post today. Constant headaches and Turn Coat will do that to you. I still haven't finished the book yet (stupid headaches!), but I really like it so far. Jim Butcher even poked fun at the horrendously wrong German he used a few books back. (Die Lied der Erlking? Really, what was he thinking?) And he mentioned Bremen while doing so! Seeing Bremen mentioned in foreign fiction always makes me ridiculously happy. (sevilemar, I hope I didn't wake you up with my text message full of squee, if I did, sorry.) I have an idea for a drabble to ficlet sized story based on that.

Other than that: #amazonfail is extremely unfunny. I think a of the books on my shelf are amazonranked. And others are by authors whose other books are. One of those books, Gender Trouble, I bought for university and a lot of the authors Judith Butler quotes are affected as well, it seems. I bought them all via Amazon. Well, I'll look for other alternatives now. Which I guess they will notice because so far I bought most of my books on Amazon.

A few links:

• A list of the books. (It's more or less impossible to keep track.)


• Mark Probst's post, in which he quotes Amazon's response to his question.


• Copperbadge's post, including a link to a petition and the Amazon Rank definition by smartbitchestrashybooks.

Okay, I think I found my topic for today's meta (I'm keeping my schedule, see?): long stories.

Not stories that are long, mind you. Stories that feel long (not necessarily the same thing). A good story should make you forget time. It should suck you into its world until you wish the story would never end. I've read quite a few stories like these, and I love them. But there are other stories too. Stories that promise to be these amazing stories that you wish would never end, and then ... they just don't. They get longer and longer, full of stuff that is totally unnecessary, that deters from the purpose that is just plain boring to read. These are stories that I wish were betaed by those competent people who know when a story might be better off being shorter. I know I told an author once to cut a few scenes. Am I just an exception or do other people really not mind these stories?

Anyway, I will list a few stories that felt too long for me, and why:

( List under the cut )

I'd like to know about your experiences and theories about this as well, because I don't think I'm the only one who hates feeling that reading a story becomes some sort of chore that I only keep doing because I really used to love them. And is there any way to tactfully tell the authors that their beloved hydras really aren't as lovely as they seem to think?

Note: This is probably not very well thought out (I'm running on caffeine). I also apologize if linking these examples hurts the authors. I will take out the links if it does, just leave me a comment.

Ich bin jetzt schon eine ganze Weile auf fanfiktion.de. Seit Herbst 2004, um genau zu sein, also anderthalb Jahre nachdem ich das Fandom über Animexx entdeckt habe. Über lange Zeit war es nicht mein Hauptarchiv, aber seit ich einige meiner Sachen nicht mehr auf Animexx posten konnte und ich es dort generell nicht mehr so gut fand (aber das wäre ein Thema für einen anderen Post), ist ff.de quasi mein Hauptarchiv. ff.net taugt schließlich nicht wirklich als Alternative für Deutschsprachiges und mit anderen Seiten konnte ich mich auch nicht anfreunden. Findet außer mir noch irgendwer, dass myfanfiction.de vom Layout her zu myspacig ist?. Außerdem ist „Depression“ kein Genre, und es ist auch mit Sicherheit nicht das, was sie im Blurb angeben.

Aber nun zum Thema. Die Punkte sind nicht vollkommen durchdacht und wahrscheinlich würde mir noch mehr einfallen, wenn ich etwas länger darüber nachdenken würde:

( 8 Kritikpunkte zu ff.de, ohne besondere Reihenfolge )

Wahrscheinlich bin ich einfach zu verwöhnt durch InsaneJournal, LiveJournal und meine eigene Webseite, bei denen ich (größtenteils) machen kann was ich will und mich nicht mit dämlichen Beschränkungen herumärgern muss. Außerdem zeigt das OTW-Archiv, dass diese Optionen durchaus technisch umzusetzen sind.

English:

Well, needless to say, I haven't been well. I hope I can sort it out some next term. I at least managed to go to a doctor and got a note which allowed me to take a break from university. And I handed in a homework today which I hope will find its way to the lecturer (secretaries at my university always get ill when students have to work on a deadline) and that she will be okay with ten pages plus bibliography instead of ten pages including bibliography. *sigh*

( Fic Progress )

Deutsch:

( Ein neues Rating auf ff.de )

Lately I have been unable to find any new fics I want to read. So I decided to look up all the fics I stored on my computer before I could spend all my time online. They are mostly from 2004 and before, and my archive is in pretty bad shape. I'm trying to make them look presentable, but it takes ages *sigh*.

( It follows a tale of lost fandoms, lost writers and lost history )

Some of you may have heard of it, some may not. The Fan History Wiki now uses a bot to integrate ff.net user data into their database. Some people approve, some don't. I don't approve, but not because it collects the information of people who are totally clueless. It's free information after all.

I have a problem with it because it appears that I actually managed to learn a bit during my studies. I study journalism, in case you don't know, and I am not very attentive most of the time, but the concept of News values still stuck somehow. I know a Wiki is not journalism, but AFAIK it's supposed to be an encyclopedia, which should only include information that is in some way relevant to a number of people.

The bot, on the other hand, clutters the Wiki with a lot of information, most of which is irrelevant. An example: Author A wrote five fanfictions, has a profile on ff.net and never participated in any fandom discussion or was in any way involved in a scandal (plagiarism, wanking, etc.). Information on Author A does not become relevant, at least in my opinion, until A is involved in anything that might be of interest to a larger number of people. I know that the Wiki argues that the inclusion of these articles is meant to be preventive (in case A ever gets involved in a newsworthy event) but the chances of this are rather slim, which means the wiki is full of information nobody needs.

This sheer amount of information might also lead to a lot of confusion. For example, I tried to look up my user names, and it came up with a match. I used to be called "Doro-chan" not so long ago, and I suppose people might go looking for me using that name. But the Doro-chan listed there is not me. We've been confused before, because we're both German, both active in the Harry Potter fandom, and of course, because we both had the same name. On some sites, I was Doro-chan, on others, it was her. Consequently, people got confused, because they assumed "Doro-chan" was the same person on all sites. I assume that mine is not the only case of more than one person using the same alias. And if living people confuse us, what about a programmed bot? It does not provide any other information but username and stories, plus links, and I think the information thus collected cannot be trusted. It doesn't even know the German umlauts, for starters.

The Wiki also states that it wants to create "the first comprehensive fandom directory that anyone can edit"^[1], which is an awesome idea. I just don't think it should be part of the wiki. Linked? Sure. But I think the Wiki should not be used as a fandom directory. The two would benefit more if they were seperate.

Confessions of a Reader

As some of you might have noticed, I don't comment much. On anything. I know that this is generally considered to be a bad thing in fandom, but I can't help it. I just refuse to comment when all I have to say is "Well, it was good", because for some reason people don't appreciate comments like that. I've often been told that I am just not enthusiastic enough when I try to tell people that their stuff was... well, good.

Another reason why I don't comment much is that most of the time, I simply don't have anything to say. Yes, really. It's nothing personal, I just can't come up with something witty or thoughtful enough to add to what you, dear reader, already said in your post. So don't feel insulted if I don't reply to your posts most of the time.

I guess this is the reason why I always feel slightly insulted when people de-friend me because I didn't comment enough. I can understand it if you de-friend me because you're not interested in reading my journal, God knows I don't write nearly as much as I would like to, but because I don't comment? Sorry, I just don't understand it. But maybe that's because I don't expect anyone to comment on my journal, friend or not.

And even though I do write, I still spend most of my time online as a reader. A reader who is not worth much, in the eyes of some, because I don't comment. So I have a proposition for you: If you want to know if I read your story/entry/whatever, and if you're a paid user, why not put a poll at the end of the post, asking your readers if they read it, and if they liked it or disliked it, while still encouraging them to comment?