Here's what's no fun: interrupting my vacation to deal with moderating my comm because some people can't seem to play nicely with others.

I'm not a totalitarian dictator when I mod; readers are totally welcome to provide suggestions and criticism when a story leaves room for improvement. However, there is a difference between helping others improve and inappropriate behavior.

Constructive criticism is a comment or review that identifies weak points and provides suggestions for improvement. The comment should be phrased in such a way that a reasonable author will get something positive out of it once they get over their initial defensiveness. Inappropriate comments are anything that is: (a) entirely negative, (b) lacking in remedies for the errors/problems/criticisms identified, (c) rude or mean about the content of the story, (d) containing any kind of insult about the writer as a person or their ability as a writer.

If you want to leave constructive criticism, there are a lot of ways to do so. I cannot cover them all here. But here are a few suggestions:

1) Say something nice about the story. Even if it is something really basic, like "I love the way you describe Hogwarts at night," or "picnics are so romantic," If you are going to leave some criticism, you should also include something positive. If you cannot think of even one small thing that is good about the story, just click away and don't say anything. The deafening silence from reviewers will tell the author that their story is not very good.

2) Communicate in "I" statements. Explain that the weaknesses you identify are your own opinion. (Note: they ARE your own opinion. Not objective fact. For real.) Say "I think that Harry would be unlikely to do X," or "I usually think of Harry as more Y."

2b) If it's a canon error or a grammar/spelling error, understand that everyone makes mistakes. Be brief and to the point. "Ginny actually has brown eyes."

3) Suggest a solution to your problem. "Instead of attacking Draco physically, I think Harry might be likely to use a spell, as he does in HBP."

4) Don't bring the author into it at all. Yes, of course some people are better writers that others. But insulting this writer is not going to help get your point across; it will only make you look like a jerk. Just try to imagine that this story sprung fully formed from the earth in this condition, and address it in a vacuum. What is on THIS page that could be improved? How, specifically, would you suggest improving it if you were beta-reading the story?

5) Don't be rude or mean. If I have to explain this, you're in trouble. Remember preschool? Don't throw sand. Play nicely with others. We are all here in fandom because we love the books (or movies, or TV shows, or whatever). This is a place for everyone to squee and love and laugh and enjoy together, not to tear each other down.

It's possible to help other writers improve without being an enormous jerk. Yes, really. It just takes a little courtesy and some common sense. It's not hard.

...If you can't manage that, please stay away from my communities. And especially when I'm supposed to be on vacation from the likes of you and your dumbass flames. It's not amusing. It's not helping. It's just making you look like an ass. Please, take it somewhere else.

penknife made a really good post the other day about fic headers, and I wanted to talk a little bit more about it here.

penknife mostly talked about headers from the point of view of a reader, saying Fic headers exist so that people can decide whether or not to read your story, because there are too many stories in the world and not enough time. She also mentioned that headers are useful to people who might want to link to your story, as in a newsletter. And since I edit a newsletter, I want to emphasize that point.

When I am putting together a news post for hpgw_otp, I'm searching lj for stories. I'm out there digging through hundreds of posts, wanting to find fic. But even in search mode, I can't always tell what posts actually contain fic, or which ones are the stories that our readers might be interested in. This is just bad marketing, people! PLEASE help out your local newsletter editor and put some information outside the cut! I assure you, it makes a big difference.

There are about thirty different kinds of information that can be in a fic header, but regardless of what you put in there, the header also serves a purpose just by existing: it identifies that your post contains fic. The header itself is a signpost to the reader, saying "right this way."

For me as a newsletter editor, there are certain things I look for in headers -- since hpgw_otp is a pairing-specific newsletter, I look for headers that say "Pairing: Harry/Ginny." Some authors leave this out because they think it's obvious to their loyal readers. I assure you, it's not obvious to everyone. If it's a shippy story, please include the pairing in the header.

Another thing I look for is the summary. In our newsletter, we try to include summaries to give our readers some idea of what the story is about. I know these are hard to write, but just some basic idea of what the story is about in a sentence or two is much appreciated, even if it's really simple, like "Summer before DH, fluff." That is better than nothing!

I meant to have an actual discussion here and instead this post was largely about me, and my wants and needs. :P But seriously, if you already have all the readers you want, then just keep doing what you're doing. But if you're part of the 97% of fandom who would like more readers and more reviews, clear identification of your stories will make them easier to find and link to -- and that's never a bad thing.

In conclusion, help a sister out. Identify your fic posts. Thank you!

HBO has a new show coming out this fall, based on the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. The show is called True Blood and it stars Anna Paquin as Sookie. Yes, I know her Southern accent is atrocious. But she's Rogue!! Bigger plus in my book. I haven't read the original books, but I am looking forward to the show. I like TV vampires. More so when they turn into puppets, but I digress.

Anyway, the makers of the show have launched a blog and forums at http://bloodcopy.com/, which seems to be tied in to some of the backstory for the show, monitoring a situation that eventually leads to the premise of the show. The info page says It began with strange mailings and a guarded website. The trail led to a world-wide community of vampires and their debate about a synthetic human blood called ‘Tru Blood’. Here at BloodCopy, we’ve formed a community dedicated to unraveling this amazing story.

What's most interesting about it to me, is that they're encouraging fans to send in video and participate in the discussions to "unravel the mystery." I think it's fascinating to see the PTB encouraging fan participation in this way and seemingly trying to encourage the development of a fandom before the show even debuts.


In other news, I've acquired a free e-book of a BSG tie-in, Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey Carver. If anyone wants, let me know and I can forward it along.

I hate the way some crossover fics read like the author decided that a certain aspect of the canon characters is just not applicable for crossovers -- secrecy. None of the characters I know and love would ever spill the details on their entire life to a random stranger they just met.

Buffy didn't tell her own mother she was the slayer for like 3 years. Harry nearly got thrown out of school for doing magic in front of a Muggle -- you don't think the International Statute of Secrecy means anything there? And hello, the entire Stargate program is completely 100% hyper-classified. Besides which, do either Sheppard or O'Neill ever tell anyone anything about themselves voluntarily, even their own teams? No. No, they do not. These people are secretive. Keep them that way in your story, damnit!

I'm frustrated, because this pause to reveal all the secrets just ruined a perfectly good fic I was reading. Harumph.

I just read a fic that I had to run over here and talk about on my own journal, both because I thought it was a really great fic, and also because I thought something about the labeling was very interesting.

First things first, the rec--

Time and Again, by wikdsushi 9 parts, complete, all linked from the first part.
The story takes place post-DH, and post-epilogue. It begins when Harry meets Severus Snape in an alley -- not the imposing, sarcastic Potions Master and Double Agent he's familiar with, but a stark raving lunatic who he's thought was dead for 20 years. Overcome with guilt for not realizing Snape was actually alive the whole time, Harry takes Snape's recovery upon himself.

wikdsushi doesn't list any pairings for the story, and I think that was the best decision, given the complexity of relationships and interactions here. I won't try to define them myself (ahem, outside the cut), but I will say that the following characters have leading roles in various ways: Harry, Snape, Ginny, Lily Evans, and a young Albus Severus Potter (though his role is not at all romantic or sexual). I don't think this is a story for OTP shippers (of any kind). Still, I felt that Sushi was faithful to the characters themselves -- her story flowed naturally from the characterizations, and nobody was shorted or bashed. Anyway, definitely a story that I highly recommend.

( more extended thoughts on the labeling of pairings for this story, and the portrayal of Ginny. Spoilers for the fic -- and in my opinion, this story would be best read unspoiled.Collapse )

ziasudra_fic posted about newsletter editing and linked to an interesting poll in skuf's journal. I hosted a little roundtable discussion on newsletter editing at PR, which was a lot of fun, but didn't end up providing me with the 9,000 new ideas I'd hoped to trick the attendees into handing over. ;) We pretty much agreed that different things work for different people and newsletters, depending on your personality and the format of your newsletter. So sadly, not that useful in a practical sense.

There's a lot of discussion in both ziasudra_fic and skuf's posts which I think is more useful, to me as a newsletter reader and an editor. One of the most interesting things, I think, are the answers to skuf's question regarding format -- the answers are pretty split. Half the people like newsletters that are all-inclusive and try to link to everything (see sga_newsletter and spnnewsletter for great examples), and half prefer the more selective type (like hogwarts_today).

When pocketfullof and I started hpgw_otp, we knew from the beginning that we were not going to be all-inclusive. Harry/Ginny fans are very active, and we are only a weekly newsletter, so we knew it would not be possible to list everything. But as time has gone on, we have made more of an effort to include more things. It's always hard to know where the right balance is, though, of including lots of things that lots of people will want to see, and overwhelming the reader's friendspage. Where's the balance? Is 5 links the right amount? 10? Is there a difference for art and fic?

In the poll, people were invited to list their pet peeves, and those are the most interesting answers, IMO. Of course we are just a small pairing-centric newsletter, so some of the complaints (not enough het fic) don't really relate to us. But a lot of them do. Some of the complaints that are relevant, many of which came up several times:
( newsletter pet peeves and discussion of sameCollapse )

So what do you think? Do any of these relate to hpgw_otp? Do they relate to any other newsletter you read? Is there anything that really bugs you about one of the newsletters you read, beyond the content? (Sorry, I only have control over the links in hpgw_otp! I can't help you if you think the links are kinda skimpy in a certain area on another newsletter. :P ) What is your take on the inclusive/selective, long posts/less variety issue? Do you subscribe to any newsletters (in any fandom) that you think get it just right? What's so great about them?

Feel free to comment anonymously if you want -- that's always ok here. :)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and state an opinion that many of my friends won't agree with.

I don't like friends-locked fanfic posts. I think they're bad for newbies, bad for fandom, and bad for the author herself. And also I find them personally irritating.

I know some people lock their fic because they're concerned about relatives seeing it on their fpage or scandalizing some poor, innocent 17 1/2 year-old. I say pffft! As for your relatives, consider getting a fandom-only journal or posting your fic publicly on a community and then simply linking to it from your journal. And it's really not your job to protect the delicate flowers of childhood from the shit we were all reading in The Clan of the Cave Bear when we were 12. But if you're that concerned, post your fic on a password-protected archive and then link to it from your journal. Now that I've defeated all objections, onward:

F-locked fic is bad for newbies because they just can't find all the fic out there. It's literally hidden from them. Some people may prefer to close off fandom to newbies, but I think we should be throwing open our doors and ushering them in. And when I say "newbie," I don't just mean some 14-year old tentatively dipping her toes in internet fandom for the first time, I also mean people who are already members of other fandoms or ship communities, and exploring into one particular area for the first time. Don't we all want to convert new believers from the heathens in other parts of the internet, and introduce them to the wonders of our own personal obsessions? Then why lock things away?

Locked fic is bad for fandom as a whole, because what happens when that author gets sick of fandom in a year and flounces off, deleting her journal? Archives, people! The future of fandom is in big, stable archives! It's also bad for fandom as a whole because it makes fandom a cliquier, more exclusionary place, where you have to know the right people to get the good crack fic, where reading stories by a certain author means you have to identify her as your friend, where fiction is not something that's open and easily accessible to all.

I shouldn't even have to explain this, but locking fic is bad for individual authors, too. It's crap publicity. A reader might see your name mentioned all over their flist and on every recs list, but when they click on your name and see "friends only," they just don't want to take that extra step and commit. And why should they, especially if there's not even a preview of a few stories there? Why on earth would they want to commit to friending you, when all your fic could suck donkey balls for all they know of you? Basically, a reader has to be dedicated and determined to go through that when there's plenty of easily-accessible fic out there on lj.

That's not all, though -- f-locked fic is also just plain irritating to me, personally. Besides promoting cliques and rigid dividing lines in fandom, concealing new stories from interested passers-by, and driving readers away from your stories instead of bringing them in, it's just obnoxious. This is a fan community. In my not-at-all humble opinion, the sharing of stories and theories is the basic reason we're all here. So get over yourself and pony up! Post publicly, join the conversation, and *gasp* meet someone that's not already your fangirl.

I've participated in fic exchanges as a writer, a pinch-hitter, and as a moderator for three years. I know what goes into them from all angles, and what the mod wants out of participants. Lately, there seems to be some confusion on this issue, so I will attempt to explain. Sample emails to the mod are included, in case you don't know what to say. Many thanks to experienced mods significantowl and gmth for contributing to this guide.

( Read this before signing up for your next exchange!Collapse )

Haha, I just said I never write meta! And yet here it is -- wildly overgeneralized meta. Please jump in and tell me where you think I'm wrong. I'm doing this for the sake of discussion, to try to refine my own ideas and contribute to the conversation.

I was looking over starrysummer's post about why people like het, and it struck me how most of the responses said that actually, they like both het and slash. A lot of the people said that for them, fic pairings are more about the combination of the two characters involved, and less about the sexual apparatus. And elsewhere in the recent slash/het discussions, I've seen a lot of people say things like "I write m/m and m/f about equally, but I don't really consider myself a slasher." And so I was thinking, you know, maybe the difference between slash fans and het fans isn't just about the sexual orientation of their characters.

fairestcat had an interesting post recently about fannish spaces, and the het/slash divide, and how many general communities are run by slashers. And that's something I've noticed, too, and it's got me thinking.

A lot of people have pointed out how people who are slash fans are called "slashers" but het shippers don't have any nice and handy term like that. And I think a lot of het fans really just think of ourselves as fandomers. But obviously, slashers are fandomers too. So... slashers are a smaller subset of fandom, a group within the group. Obviously there are a lot of other little groups inside the overall category of "fandom," like HP fans and darkfic fans and writers and lurkers and Sheppard/McKay shippers and a jillion more. But I think maybe that distinction of slashers in a group of their own is an important one.

In any group of people, whether it's a church, school or online fandom, there are always the enthusiastic people, the "joiners," and then there are the people who are more content to sort of stand around and wait, and think 'hey, if we wait long enough, someone will come along and organize something.' Here's my theory: slashers are the joiners of fandom. That's a massive generalization, of course, but I'm willing to go with it.

I don't really consider myself a slasher*, but I notice that the newsletters I read are mostly edited by slashers. My communities, the meta I read, the ficathons I enter, the recs lists I read, the mailing lists I'm on... are primarily run by slashers. Why is this? Well, maybe it's not some big meaningful distinction. I've been getting the impression from a lot of the recent discussion that most of fandom is actually somewhere in the middle of the het/slash divide -- we read both slash and het, and ship both slash and het, depending on the fandom and the characters, and the distinction of who's a slasher and who's not is really one of self-identification for a lot of people. And if that's true, then... maybe it's not that all those communities are focused on m/m pairings, just that most of the mods and editors think of themselves as slashers because they're *joiners* and when they first came to fandom and encountered the slasher group, they said "Hell, yes" and JOINED it.

Then, too, it works the other way. People have said, well, if the het shippers would just set aside their differences they could be united and organized too, like the slashers. But from where I sit, I don't think most het shippers want that. If we wanted to be organized and united and all cozied up together... we'd be slashers. Instead, most of the het communities I've encountered are disorganized webs of barely controlled chaos, full of constant arguing and random unconnected websites and tiny splinter groups. But the thing is, we love it this way. Barely controlled chaos is not a bad thing, it's what people like about the het community! Ship wars aren't horrible, they're what attracted a lot of people to fandom in the first place. Even when there are het communities and mailing lists and ficathons (and there are, plenty of them), they don't link themselves up in one big network. There are subgroups, yes -- the Harry/Ginny community is somewhat linked together, as are Xander fans in BtVS. But there are still lots of factions, and they seem to enjoy bickering with each other.

So there's my (wildly overgeneralized) theory -- slashers are more together because the type of person who wants to be a part of a close-knit subgroup sees one and joins it, and the type of person who sees organization and runs screaming into chaos (or mooches around and lets organized people do the organizing) is more likely to identify as a het shipper.

And possibly, it has something to do with the sexual orientation of the characters, too. A little bit.

* About me: I read, write, and ship m/m, f/f, and m/f pairings (but write primarily het). I organize things. I like chaos but not bickering. I don't fit into my own theory at all. I am going to go eat a creamsicle.

edit, 08/07/2006: After some discussion, I've realized I should have framed my statement the other way around. A better way to say what I meant is that fannish "joiners" often become slashers, given the slash community's close-knit group dynamic. Phrasing it this way makes a lot more sense than the other way, since it's not as though a preference for same-sex pairings makes anyone inclined to organize things. Hopefully this will help clarify what I meant to say.