Inverarity is not a Scottish village

I have mixed feelings about FictionAlley's application for a $25,000 grant from the Pepsi Refresh challenge.

I know that they've been put in a tough spot financially, and it would be sad to see FA disappear. (Though I barely visit the forums anymore... too many trolls.)

When I remember to, I do go through FA's affiliate link to buy stuff from Amazon. But I'm not sure I can really get behind a push to vote for them as "most worthy charity." Let's face it, they're in competition with animal shelters, school music and arts, libraries, and other charities that to my mind are a little more worthy of $25K.

I don't think the FA folks are selfish or immoral for applying for this grant, and I wish them luck. I hate it when people start listing hierarchies of need and saying "This cause is clearly less worthy than that one." It's not like donating money for animal shelters and donating money for starving children is mutually exclusive, or else we should all choose the one worthiest cause in the world and donate money only to that one until the problem goes away.

Still, I'm having a hard time seeing a fan fiction site as a charitable cause.

I might feel differently if they really were fulfilling their educational mission ... to help writers improve their writing skills. But it's not like they are running workshops or online classes. They haven't even updated their homepage in forever.

(Yeah, I know, that's because they've got no money. But with $25K, are we really going to see FA suddenly become a hotbed community for aspiring young writers?)

ETA: They got wanked by people thinking the same thing, but less charitably.

ETA 2: Now I am regretting saying anything. I didn't realize the whole damn Internet was going to explode with rage at Fiction Alley. C'mon, people. Someone at one of the wank threads said "This is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my forty-three years on the planet." Seriously? Seriously?

So I'm taking a wee bit of a breather, now that the rough draft of AQATDR is done. Which means I'm only skimming it now and then and revising a paragraph or two... I'll get back to serious revision once I get my next batch of comments back from my betas.

I am already looking ahead to my next writing project(s). I'll probably discuss that in a future post. (Yes, I do intend to continue the Alexandra Quick series. Absolutely. But I may work on something else before I start writing AQ4.)

Anyway, since I have been thinking about writing so much lately (my own and others'), I thought I would dredge up a topic that has been circulating in HP fandom for quite a while, and in literature in general for ages: the issue of authorial intent.

For those not familiar with the issue, in a nutshell it's this: does the author's intended meaning of a text matter, or is it only the readers' perception of it that matters? Is an author's work open to interpretation, or if the author says, "It means X," does it really mean X?

Now, in academia, you have whole schools of literary criticism and doctoral theses debating this. In fandom, you have wank. (Which, let's be honest, is the same thing. Have you ever read an English Lit PhD thesis?)

( Oh no, it's the old 'What is Canon?' debate! )

Alexandra Quick returns to Charmbridge Academy angry and in denial. Unwilling to accept the events of the previous year, she is determined to fix what went wrong, no matter what the cost. When her obsession leads her to a fateful choice, it is not only her own life that hangs in the balance, for she will uncover the secret of the Deathly Regiment.



Awesome banner made for me by JCCollier, of Mugglenet Fan Fiction. You should really read JC's story, Marissa and the Wizards.

The summary above is a rough draft. What do you think? (Keep in mind, it needs to be short. In fact, I need an even shorter version to fit fanfiction.net's measley 255-character limit.)

In other random news of randomness:

• Fandom Wank always brings the well-deserved snark, especially when it's Snapefen.
  
• I totally had the Monster Manual with that succubus picture. And you wonder why in the 1980s, mothers thought Dungeons & Dragons was going to lure their children into devil worship?
  
• WTF Netflix? I just finished the first episode of Children of Earth, and then discovered that while you can download episodes 1, 3, 4, and 5 instantly, episode 2 is disk-only! What is the purpose of a licensing arrangement like that? It's not going to sell DVDs, since I just put it in my regular shipping queue. Grr. (I'm still lukewarm about Torchwood after seasons one and two, but the start of CoE actually made me eager to see the next episode.)
  

This may be as political as I get. But it's directly related to fan fiction (and specifically, my fan fiction).

I don't write "slash." That is, I don't take characters who are canonically straight and make them gay just for giggles. I don't have anything against Harry/Draco in principle, but (a) while Draco is kind of ambiguous, it's pretty clear from the books that Harry liked girls, and (b) they hated each other! So that's why I consider most Harry/Draco slash stories to be stupid. Don't even get me started on Harry/Snape.

Also, I personally don't like most "slash" stories for the same reason I don't like PWP; I want to read (and write) a story, not just an excuse to throw two characters together for hot fictional character-on-fictional character action. Most slash stories (in fairness, most "ship" stories of any kind, slash or het) are just fluffy bits of authorial indulgence. Which is perfectly fine, for those who are into that kind of thing, but that's not me.

That said... I think the idea of having to "warn" for "slash" (i.e., "Oh no, if you read this story you might be exposed to Teh Gay!!!!) is stupid and offensive.

I'm not going to take a sudden left turn into slash fantasy, okay? But, there will be gay characters. (And any gay characters you see, I assure you, were planned from the beginning, not because I suddenly decided to make a character gay on a whim -- just in case anyone accuses me of "pulling a Dumbledore.") If that offends you, you should probably stop reading my stories now.

(Yes, this rant was directly inspired by yet another dose of stupids on MNFF, but it's not the first time I've seen the issue come up.)

The first half of this post is a brief review of a fan fiction story you may enjoy. The second half is wanky stuff for those who have an unhealthy fondness for watching Internet trainwrecks and implosions in fandom. If that offends you, skip everything after the cut.

Some time ago, I read Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness. If you've been hanging around HP fan fiction communities at all (anywhere except MNFF, which by the way I think should stop trying to pretend they're the only site where HP fan fiction exists, since I really don't think your Mugglenet overlords are paying attention anymore anyway), you've probably heard of it. It's written by thanfiction, who has accomplished the fairly remarkable feat of becoming a BNF in HP fandom after the end of the series and the fandom has begun declining. thanfiction has written a bunch of prequels and sequels and vignettes now, and the "DAYDverse" apparently has spawned LJ communities and fan fiction of its own. Pretty impressive.

DAATYOD tells the tale of Neville and the D.A. during their seventh year. It's the story about what was going on back at Hogwarts under Snape and the Carrows, while the Trio was on their camping trip.

I found it to be pretty good. thanfiction is a good writer, and the story was riveting at times, though occasionally too self-indulgent with the blood and angst and horror. It was definitely not written in the same tone as Rowling -- Snape and the Carrows do truly horrific things to the students, which are gruesomely described -- which really shows when Harry finally comes back for the final battle.

But, there's a reason why whenever someone asks for fan fiction about Neville and the D.A., this is the one that almost always gets recommended.

I stopped reading the sequel, Sluagh, about halfway through, because I thought the story was beginning to bear no resemblance whatsoever to Rowling's world. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but while I think thanfiction is a good writer, he's not so good that I'm interested in his original fiction. Also, he seemed to be trying to escalate the level of blood and grit from DAATYOD, until Sluagh became almost carnographic at times.

Anyhow....

( The rest of this is all fandom wanky stuff )

Procrastinating between doing real work and writing AQATDR, fandom_wank has once again been providing me with high-quality procrastination fodder, in the form of more Slytherfen wank.

tl;dr version: randomneses posts a couple of essays saying that Snape was kind of a jerk and that Lily really wasn't an evil disloyal bitch-harpy for deciding that being called "Mudblood" was the last straw, and Slytherfen went nucking futs all over her LJ.

( I was a jerk in high school, and so were you )

ETA: I have a small request to make of people who comment without signing in. I allow anonymous comments because I have no reason to f-lock anything here, and I've never had a troll problem. (Knocking on wood...) However, if you do comment anonymously, could you do me a favor and sign your comment with a pen name or something, especially if it's one I will recognize from elsewhere?

I'm not going to delete your comment or anything if you forget to do that (or just don't want to for some reason), but I do like to try to remember folks as best as my porous memory will allow. ;) Thanks!

It's not Harry Potter specific – I think this sentiment is somewhat universal across all fandoms. But I lurk in a lot of places where I never post, and I've come to the conclusion that every fandom devours itself eventually.

Now, a lot of angst over Harry Potter is the fact that the series is over, the fandom is shrinking (or moving on to Twilight and Supernatural -- sigh), and the volume of new HP fan fiction is dramatically decreasing, as is the number of readers and reviewers. The fandom will contract even further once the last movie is out. One by one, the major Harry Potter fan sites are starting to resemble Detroit -- once thriving communities, now being abandoned in droves, with many of those left behind turning the remains into a ruins. (I don't even post on the Fiction Alley forums anymore.)

Contrary to the more dismal predictions, however, I don't think the Harry Potter fandom will ever go away. Even the most obscure series, after all, have their own LJ communities and sections on fanfiction.net. And I like to remember the example of Star Trek, the fandom against which all other fandoms must inevitably be compared, the fandom that spawned fan fiction communities in the days before the Internet, during the long years in which there was no new canonical material being produced. (Also the fandom that gave us terms like "slash" and "Mary Sue," for you kids who don't know that.)

Time will tell whether Harry Potter takes its place as a true classic. Will our grandchildren still be reading Harry Potter? Will it be our generation's Narnia, or will it be our generation's Elsie Dinsmore?

That's probably a pretty bad comparison. I liked the Chronicles of Narnia well enough when I read it in elementary school (and was more inclined to take the fantasy elements at face value, even though I was quite aware that it was a Christian allegory even then), but even as a child I knew that the last book ended the series in a train wreck, figuratively as well as literally. (Well, for some of you vitriolic Deathly Hallows-haters, maybe that is a good comparison.)

Being in another one of my rambly moods, I'll share a few other series and authors that have influenced me. (I'm going to limit myself mostly to fantasy here, though I also read lots and lots of science fiction, too.)

The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper. Frankly, this is a better series than Harry Potter. Will Stanton is a much grimmer boy magician than Harry Potter, and this is the first series I remember reading as a child that made me sad when I finished the last book because there wasn't any more to read. Susan Cooper really deserved to have Rowling's level of success; sadly, the 2007 film "The Seeker" bore almost no resemblance to the source material, and it sucked mightily.

Suzette Haden Elgin's Ozarker trilogy. Yes, Elgin wrote about magical Ozarkers long before I did. My Ozarkers are quite different from hers, of course, but I was undeniably influenced by her, and there are quite a few overt nods to Elgin's Ozarker trilogy in Alexandra Quick.

(I've also read some of Elgin's other works; the Native Tongue trilogy is, well, interesting in the first book, kind of absurd in the second, and incoherent in the third.)

His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman. Some people have compared Alexandra to Lyra, but I didn't actually read these books until after I'd written Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle. I loved the first book, and liked the second; unfortunately, the story kind of fell apart in book three. Why do so many authors screw up their series in the last book? (The movie The Golden Compass, by the way, was really not that bad; it's unfortunate that it bombed so badly that we're not likely to ever see the rest of the series on film.)

The Lord of the Rings. I'm mentioning this one only because it would be a glaring omission. But you know what? I'll probably be pilloried by some folks, but I never actually finished the trilogy. I thought it was boring! Yes, Tolkien was an epic worldbuilder, but as a storyteller, he just did not captivate me. I'm one of those people who knows most of my Tolkien second-hand, from the movies, etc. (Also from way too much Dungeons & Dragons when I was a kid.)

Elric of Melniboné, by Michael Moorcock. Not my favorite fantasy series of all time, but I thought it was much more creative and imaginative than Tolkien. Where Tolkien mostly synthesized a lot of Germanic fairy tales and Nordic myths, Moorcock created something entirely different, including a hero who was not very nice and not very heroic, and who dies in the end. (I know Moorcock didn't invent the anti-hero, but this was one of my earliest exposures to the concept.)

I could go on, but I've run out of steam for this particular entry, and really, I just felt like posting something besides "Hey! Word count update!" (103307, btw.) Feel free to discuss your literary influences. (Has anyone besides me ever read Elgin or Susan Cooper?)

It's not Harry Potter specific – I think this sentiment is somewhat universal across all fandoms. But I lurk in a lot of places where I never post, and I've come to the conclusion that every fandom devours itself eventually.

Now, a lot of angst over Harry Potter is the fact that the series is over, the fandom is shrinking (or moving on to Twilight and Supernatural -- sigh), and the volume of new HP fan fiction is dramatically decreasing, as is the number of readers and reviewers. The fandom will contract even further once the last movie is out. One by one, the major Harry Potter fan sites are starting to resemble Detroit -- once thriving communities, now being abandoned in droves, with many of those left behind turning the remains into a ruins. (I don't even post on the Fiction Alley forums anymore.)

Contrary to the more dismal predictions, however, I don't think the Harry Potter fandom will ever go away. Even the most obscure series, after all, have their own LJ communities and sections on fanfiction.net. And I like to remember the example of Star Trek, the fandom against which all other fandoms must inevitably be compared, the fandom that spawned fan fiction communities in the days before the Internet, during the long years in which there was no new canonical material being produced. (Also the fandom that gave us terms like "slash" and "Mary Sue," for you kids who don't know that.)

Time will tell whether Harry Potter takes its place as a true classic. Will our grandchildren still be reading Harry Potter? Will it be our generation's Narnia, or will it be our generation's Elsie Dinsmore?

That's probably a pretty bad comparison. I liked the Chronicles of Narnia well enough when I read it in elementary school (and was more inclined to take the fantasy elements at face value, even though I was quite aware that it was a Christian allegory even then), but even as a child I knew that the last book ended the series in a train wreck, figuratively as well as literally. (Well, for some of you vitriolic Deathly Hallows-haters, maybe that is a good comparison.)

Being in another one of my rambly moods, I'll share a few other series and authors that have influenced me. (I'm going to limit myself mostly to fantasy here, though I also read lots and lots of science fiction, too.)

The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper. Frankly, this is a better series than Harry Potter. Will Stanton is a much grimmer boy magician than Harry Potter, and this is the first series I remember reading as a child that made me sad when I finished the last book because there wasn't any more to read. Susan Cooper really deserved to have Rowling's level of success; sadly, the 2007 film "The Seeker" bore almost no resemblance to the source material, and it sucked mightily.

Suzette Haden Elgin's Ozarker trilogy. Yes, Elgin wrote about magical Ozarkers long before I did. My Ozarkers are quite different from hers, of course, but I was undeniably influenced by her, and there are quite a few overt nods to Elgin's Ozarker trilogy in Alexandra Quick.

(I've also read some of Elgin's other works; the Native Tongue trilogy is, well, interesting in the first book, kind of absurd in the second, and incoherent in the third.)

His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman. Some people have compared Alexandra to Lyra, but I didn't actually read these books until after I'd written Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle. I loved the first book, and liked the second; unfortunately, the story kind of fell apart in book three. Why do so many authors screw up their series in the last book? (The movie The Golden Compass, by the way, was really not that bad; it's unfortunate that it bombed so badly that we're not likely to ever see the rest of the series on film.)

The Lord of the Rings. I'm mentioning this one only because it would be a glaring omission. But you know what? I'll probably be pilloried by some folks, but I never actually finished the trilogy. I thought it was boring! Yes, Tolkien was an epic worldbuilder, but as a storyteller, he just did not captivate me. I'm one of those people who knows most of my Tolkien second-hand, from the movies, etc. (Also from way too much Dungeons & Dragons when I was a kid.)

Elric of Melniboné, by Michael Moorcock. Not my favorite fantasy series of all time, but I thought it was much more creative and imaginative than Tolkien. Where Tolkien mostly synthesized a lot of Germanic fairy tales and Nordic myths, Moorcock created something entirely different, including a hero who was not very nice and not very heroic, and who dies in the end. (I know Moorcock didn't invent the anti-hero, but this was one of my earliest exposures to the concept.)

I could go on, but I've run out of steam for this particular entry, and really, I just felt like posting something besides "Hey! Word count update!" (103307, btw.) Feel free to discuss your literary influences. (Has anyone besides me ever read Elgin or Susan Cooper?)