You poor, poor, canon-freaks.

[ladymirth]

I fancy myself a canon-freak. That is, I like to read fics which ship canon fics and which stay true to canon content and intent. 

But I hope and believe, that I am not as far gone as these poor people. 

If it were a painting, I would have called it "A Company Of Inverterate Sneerers Attempting to Converse Intelligently With the Single Brain Cell They Share Between Them". And prop it up in a modern art museum for people to gawp at and go WTF?.

It is amazing to me that so many people could spend so much time in fandom and still be wholly unable to grasp its sub-culture. Once I would have raged at them. Later, I would have cried for them. Now, I look at them through the eyes of compassion and tolerance. I am Zen. 

I promised myself that I was not getting into the whole Cassandra Claire plagiarism issue. For these situations was the term "beating a dead horse" invented. But I must have my say once, so look out for it tonight. 

As to the fandom_wank community at Journal Fen that they refer to as their "be-all-end-all" fandom resource, I can only say that these are probably people who follow The Jerry Springer Show and read The National Enquirer. Journalfen is a fan community that is about as civilised as YouTube, and fandom_wank is the equivalent of a troll country club, populated with self-professed "wankers", designed to plague people who dare to be a bit weird out of their community. it should be re-christened the You Are Weird And Deserve To Be The Humping Post For Our Witticisms society. 

This quite seals it. I really should post that step-by-step guide to understanding fanon sub-culture and their ethics I have been compiling in my mind,lest some post-DH fresh fanfic hunting newbie fall into the clutches of fandom imperialists like these and become similarly stunted. Fan-wisdom is a hard-earned specialization after all, and I have learned much since those first days when at the age of fourteen, one of my first few tenatative hits on Mugglenet turned up a Harry/Draco fic and my brain all but shut down in canonical panic.  

Of course, I have become a slash fan since that time. Nevertheless, I have not visited Mugglenet since. 

ETA: 

arielchan informs me that the members of fandom_wank are not in fact self-professed wankers. The laughers reportedly prefer to call themselves "Wankas" while it is the laughees that are termed Wankers. I call that screwy. 

Also, that one of FW's motto's are "We Eat Our Own". Srsly. Can't say fairer than that, I suppose. [Bad username or unknown identity:       ]

Comments

[arielchan.livejournal.com]

populated with self-professed "wankers"

Actually, the wankers are the people being laughed at in the post. The people making the posts at FW and laughing at them in the comments are Wankas. The only time these two are one (in an ideal world) is on i_wank.

Of course, that doesn't stop some of the even less mature members from trolling the target journals, nor does it stop FW members from being idiots in other ways. But, as one of the FW mottos says, "We eat our own."

I don't hang around the community much these days, but I've had my membership at JF since I was 17, almost exactly a full year before I should have been allowed it by the TOS.

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

Oops! My bad. Thanks for pointing it out. =)

Uh, no offence to Journalfen. Um, that's a lie, actually, I do detest that community but I don't mean to hurt your feelings if you like it. Heh.

[annabtg.livejournal.com]

I would like to direct you to this post of mine, where I've dealt with the subject of what I consider acceptable and what unacceptable in fanfic:

http://community.livejournal.com/7thyeartrain/1675.html

There's an interesting discussion in the comments, too.

You know I'm a canon-freak myself - I only read and write canon. I don't really consider fanfic something that twists the original universe beyond recognition. But others do, and my solution to this is to try and stay away from them.

My pet peeve, however, is people who, after violating the universe they're writing in like there's no tomorrow, have the audacity to pretend they're better than JKR.

Well, how about NO.

See ya,
Anna.

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

I can't possibly disagree with the gist of what you say, but I don't think you're speaking on the same issue that I am. You address the reader's right to choose what they read. I am addressing the writer's right to choose what they write.

However, some of the commentators did touch upon some of the issues I was talking about. I am going to take those and make a post about it. It will go up in a few minutes, so keep an eye out for it.

Thanks for bringing the post to my attention! =)

[annabtg.livejournal.com]

Well, it's because I think that the reader has more of a responsibility. "Fanfic" is a very flexible term - does it refer to anything written with a certain degree of respect towards the original, or is using just the names of the characters enough? Similarly, characterization is often subjective.

And, at the end of the day, it all comes down to this: You can't tell a fanfic author "hey, don't make Draco into a Goth". If Yvonne Connell could make Clark Kent a drug-addict and come out with a brilliant and plausible story, this proves that what you can do and what you cannot do in fanfic is a very, very gray area, and you can't set guidelines that go "you can write this, you can't write that".

So it really all comes down to how much you can tolerate reading. ;)

♥

Anna.