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http://smsdubina.ru/ –
ласковые смс

Writing about Jack Sparrow may not be everyone’s idea of a good hobby, but my brother-in-law makes model airplanes and I haven’t seen anyone question the value of that.

ABSOLUTELY. I’ve been writing fanfic for ten years, and I’ve been an aerospace engineering student for three; you haven’t seen scorn until you’ve seen an aerospace engineer’s reaction to a short story about Doctor Who. And yet somehow, calculating by hand the angular acceleration of an imaginary spinning top sitting on an imaginary wing is supposed to be some kind of great help to society. I just don’t buy the rationale behind the GIANT STIGMA that fan fiction has. Even many writers scorn it, as you pointed out!

Anyway. As far as searching through loads of dreck to find gold (in case Aero Kitty comes back to check this post for hints), that’s why people have recommendation communities and awards sites. And it helps if you get into a fandom after its heyday but in time for everybody to remember the classics.

But I guess in the end, one transcendental piece of fanfiction, for me, IS worth a few hours of dreck. That’s just a different price. And I pay for spec fic magazines in stores, but none of them have ever grabbed me — or taught me — the way a lot of fanfiction has.

Ulysses = pure and unadulterated crap

The only reason Ulysses ever got ‘popular’ in terms of selling copies was because of the hype. Most people I know have not read their copy. Fanfic gets crap because of a bad reputation from people who don’t, generally, know anything about it. Ulysses *should* get a bad rap but no one is game enough to admit they couldn’t read more than 20 pages without going barking mad…

And I don’t write fanfic!

So thank you for this.

I have used every one of your rebuttals in trying to defend my enjoyment of fanfic to doubting associates, and often the scathing disapproval of professionals in the field.

I have only to walk through any Big Box Bookstore in the land, and I can come out with seventeen hundred published fanfiction books, many of which will be simply dreadful. There are entire shelving units devoted solely to fanfiction, and nobody’s calling those actors ‘talentless hacks’, although, as you’ve notes, with some of them it would be a warranted accusation.

As you might have guessed, I write fanfiction. I also write other types of fiction, but there’s an element to #1 that I’d like to expound upon here; writing a good story is a very VERY different thing to getting that story published. Those two tasks require vastly different skill sets, and temperaments, and there are some excellent writers who just do not have the thickness of skin, or self-confidence to shove their way through the brutality of the publishing industry. Posting one’s fiction on LJ or any of its clones, and linking it to comms of like-minded readers, one may get the occasional flame, or disagreement over character dynamics or plot structure, but one doesn’t get a form letter dismissal. As a writer, you know how discouraging those can be, especially when half the time the rejection is not based on the merits of the story, but on whether the publisher’s marketing department knows what to do with it or not.

Many times, good, talented fanfiction writers are just writers who don’t want to join the great rejection circus and have their hearts broken there.

Anyway, thank you for this article. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m happy to see it in print after all these years of official scorn.

I’ve guess I’ve been doing fic for thirty years now. My gateway fic was Star Trek, the original series. My friends and I would sit around the library pit at Graveraet Middle school and grow our own, passing it around with giggles, sighs and moans of despair. If they were really good, we’d act them out. I was always Kirk.

When I got married, I kicked it for a while. Kids’ll do that to you sometimes. But we got our first home computer in 1993 and I started diddling with usenet. Around that time, I wrote a Quantum Leap novel and stuck it in a drawer.

A few years later, and I was heavy into LiveJournal. Oh, I go for Facebook and MySpace, to to be with the in crowd, but LiveJournal is where I spend most of my time. One day, someone on my flist posted a link to a YouTube vid.

It was a pirated scene from the new Doctor Who. I really dug it, I mean *really.* Kind of lost myself for a while in a frantic search for every bit of video I could find. Started dreaming about the Doctor and talking to him in my head. Became a shipper. Yeah. I’m telling you, it happens.

Then, one fateful day, someone rec’d a really good Doctor Who fanfic.

Fanfic.

The word reverberated in my head. I was reading the google hits before I knew it and, still in a daze of remembered joy and passion, hope, excitement and realistic expectation of some dig-my-eyes-out-with-a-spoon badness, there I was at Teaspoon.

I probably do about one or two hours of heavy fanfic reading every day. And, of course, there’s the writing. My escasy and agony.

I knew I’d gone over the edge when I’d started rec’ing fic to my kids. I’m sick I tell you.

But my husband and I are still together. He’s a good guy, listens to my snippets without rolling his eyes too much. Even does the Doctor when I batt my lashes at him (but lets not go there.)

Yeah, I suppose I should get a life. You know, instead of a fantastic life.

I have read a ton of awful fan fic (Mary Sues of every flavor, dialogue that looks like it was cobbled together from “Dick and Jane” and…well…”Dick Does Jane”…you get the idea). But I have also read some spectacular fan fic that makes me remember why I liked a particular character or show in the first place. Sometimes I’ve found myself disagreeing with a show’s writers and producers as to where a show “should” be going, and what the characters “should” be doing. (Granted, I don’t have to worry about pleasing the widest audience possible, I’m just worried about an audience of one…me.) In those cases, I have searched for and found some really wonderful fanfic where the author and I seem to share a common view and I can get into his or her version of a character or series. Some of the fanfic authors develop amazing character backgrounds and new scenarios that are more interesting to me than what the show or series is coming up with. I’ve also found that it’s a great way to connect with other people that are interested in the same fandoms. When I find a story I really like, I try to email the author to say thanks for posting, and we usually end up swapping messages back and forth. So it’s a great way to g33k out about a favorite fandom without facing complete ridicule by friends and family ;0)

That all being said…there are still a lot of baaaaaaaad fanfics out there. Be careful where you step ;0)