You know what’s really disturbing to me? The culture that seems to have sprung up around fanfiction. Writers spend weeks and months working on a story – I think my record is six months on A Place For Us To Dream. And so many times readers expect to just be given a chapter even if they don’t give anything to the writer in return.
I’m going to date myself a bit here, but I’ve been reading/writing fanfiction for ten years. And when I first started it was a wonderful community. There was an unspoken rule – if you read/enjoyed it, you review it. You take thirty seconds to tell an author who probably spent anywhere from three days to a week writing that chapter you just enjoyed to tell them you enjoyed it. Even if it was as simple as “Great chapter, can’t wait to see what happens next!”
Writers spend so much time on stories, and then they post it because they have this thing that they’ve invested so many hours into and they want to share it with the world. They know how they feel about the story, and they want to know how other people feel, what other people think.
And when you read it and don’t review, you know what message you’re sending that author? That they’re not worth your time, or you didn’t enjoy their story. So why should they keep posting it? Yeah they might continue working on it in their own time, for their own enjoyment, but you might never see another chapter again because you couldn’t be bothered to take thirty seconds out of your day to tell them how you feel.
I’ve written stories in eight different fandoms, ranging from very small to very big (I’ll openly admit I wrote Twilight fanfiction once. Once. It was an Alice/Jasper story and haters can hate all they want but I’m still proud of it). I took a break for a few years because I fell out of fandoms during college, and when I came back apparently it’d become the norm to just greedily consume writing without telling writers how you feel. And that is one of the saddest things in the world to me because fanfiction is where I really started getting serious about writing. It’s how I’ve honed by skills and become the writer I am today. And that was largely in part because of all the support I got when I was an itty-bitty thirteen-year-old writing crappy W.I.T.C.H. fanfiction.
Everyone keeps saying “reviews don’t matter, you should just write for yourself.” Well, you’re wrong. Reviews make or break fanfiction. Reviews tell writers whether it’s worth their time to continue posting that story online or whether they should keep it on their hard drives and never share it with the world.
Kill the attitude that reviews don’t matter. Start telling writers you like their stories. And if you don’t, if you all just continue to be invisible readers? Don’t be surprised when that writer disappears.
replace “writer” with “artist” and it’s the same scenario where people just don’t want to share shit but they want it, demand it, consume it, but when it comes to a creator asking for feedback and comments and attention there’s a sudden silence or worse than that, creators being called selfish for wanting that or actually charging money to create. there’s this intense discourse that comes with fan made stuff and then the reception and reaction.
me watching rvb season 1: tucker? isn’t that church’s weird friend?
me watching rvb season 13: church? isn’t that tucker’s dead friend?
A brief history of fandom, for those on here who somehow think tumblr invented fandom:
- 1960s: with the advent of Star Trek, fandom moves into the public sphere for the first time with a television in almost every home, creating a large group of people all excited about one thing. Beforehand, fans mostly had relationships with the author, not with each other. Obviously there were groups and conventions prior to Star Trek, but many pop culture scholars agree that Star Trek was the beginning of an independent, interactive, saturated fandom culture centered on one show, and set many precedents for how many modern fandoms act.
- This means in the coming years: conventions, mailing groups (both public and private), fan magazines, and fanfiction presses.
- Yeah this pretty much remains the deal until the internet gets put into every home in the 90s.
- EXAMPLES OF BIG FUCKING DEAL FANDOMS, 90s EDITION: X-Files, Xena, Star Trek, Star Wars, ASoIaF, The West Wing, Buffy
- So with the internet, this really cool thing happened: Geocities. And then Yahoo groups. Early fanfiction archives. Back in the day, fandoms had to create their own private spaces. This made fandoms on the internet smaller and less accessible than fanzine operated ones. However, since fans on the internet didn’t have to pass through an editorial board to publish their fic, it was the beginning of the democratization of fandom.
- USENET. Which will probably be confusing to anyone who wasn’t actually on Usenet during it’s height, but feel free to Google.
- In 1998, fanfiction.net was launched to compete with the hundreds of independent, fandom-oriented fanfiction archives. More democratization, although fanfiction was marketed on how many reviews one had. You had to, like today, “break into the market.“
- In 1999, Livejournal was launched. Fans created communities and their own private journals which was like woah, we have our own places to store our own fic? And can cross-post them places? However, with Livejournal came a new incarnation of the internet-based BNF: big name fan. Since communities had moderators and posts could be friend or community locked, people could easily gain social capital.
- See also: Cassie Claire and misscribe.
- On the other hand, authors like George RR Martin get Livejournals.
- Around this time was also the rise of forums. Again, moderators had a lot of power, as did certain users who would rise to the position of moderator. People rapidly gained and lost power, causing quick turnover in these parts of fandom.
- In 2002, due to legal concerns, fanfiction.net bans NC-17 fanfiction.
- Adultfanfiction.net is created to fill the void. For years, 13 year olds would pretend to be 18 to enter. Including myself.
- In 2005, fanfiction.net, again due to legal concerns, bans “choose your own adventure” and songfics.
- In 2007, Archive of Our Own is launched to further democratize fandom in response to fanfiction.net’s and LJ’s new stringent rules, offering writers a cleaner format, kudos, hit counters, and bookmarks. However, many older fandoms have not made the move.
- In 2007, tumblr is launched. It would take until 2010 for it to reach saturation on the internet, meaning that most fandoms which lived and died pre-2010 exist(ed) on Geocities, Yahoo Groups, independent archives, ff.net, etc.
- In 2009, Geocities is taken offline. Thousands mourn because they never backed up really old fic that they liked.
- In 2012, most major broadcasting companies have caught on to the fact that tumblr has democratized fandom to a degree of anarchy and mob mentality, and utilize it, since tumblr is unmoderated.
And that’s what you missed on FANDOM BEFORE TUMBLR, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Never forget that when Caboose was acting strangely, Sheila’s main worry was that the others would think he had been infected with the Omega ai.
Never forget that when Simmons got kicked out of Red Base, Sheila let him come live with her- even though he’d been insulting her.
Never forget that when Tucker, Donut, and Tex went to go save their friends, Sheila packed them all lunches for the trip (she doesn’t have hands???).
Also, never forget that when both sides were leaving behind a member of their team, the Blues left Sheila- meaning they think of her as part of the team, not just a vehicle.
And never forget that when Sheila started acting odd, Church asked if she was okay in a tone that suggested more than just being worried that she would kill him again.
Oh, and don’t forget that when Wash met Sheila and talked to her like she was ‘just’ a computer program, Caboose came to her defense and wouldn’t let him continue until he remembered his manners.
You also shouldn’t forget that time that Epsilon was trying to get information from the Pelican and referred to Sheila as “an old friend” and said that she was helping him.
And you really shouldn’t forget how happy she was when she was dating Lopez (”You tell him, Big Daddy!”) or that Lopez once sang a love ballad to her and it was really really adorable.
Just whatever you do don’t forget Sheila. She’s important, okay?
Why don’t you just save your colour schemes on a separate ps file and just whip them out when you need them? You can organize them however you like that way
i do that sometimes (i did actually make myself a 256 colour palette w all the colours organised and stuff once) but i have so many colours and not enough time basically
WHY ARE COLOURS SO HARD