monday evening misc

[mamajoan]

Hee, my chiropractor says she waved to me at the anti-war rally on Saturday. But I didn't see her.

musesfool and blunaris journaled about the start of the baseball season. I was going to do same last night, when I watched the first official game (Rangers/Angels), but decided to wait till after Red Sox Opening Day.

Alas, the Sox lost in particularly pitiful fashion to Tampa Bay (hell, losing to Tampa Bay is pitiful right there), but I'm still excited about the start of the season. Insert eloquent paean to baseball here ... I'd love to write it but I'm too tired to be erudite right now.

(I'm sad that I can't listen to / watch games from work when they start early, but I'm also morally opposed to paying MLB for streaming audio, dammit. I tried bringing a radio into my office but it couldn't get any reception, alas. Then I very briefly considered shelling out to stupid MLB.com, but it just wouldn't be worth it for the small amount of time I'll be at work while a game is on.)

Can't WAIT for next Friday when mom and I will be going to Fenway Park Opening Day!! Just hope it doesn't snow! ;)

Just got an email from someone who found my Bad Fanfic! No Biscuit! site and wanted to whine about why it says that real-people-fic is evil and wrong. I wrote back politely (I hope) to say that I don't want to get into that argument because it's pointless; neither of us is going to change her mind. RPF is Just Plain Wrong in my opinion and it's one of the very few things that I'm not willing to reconsider or cut any slack. (Please don't flame me over this; it's my opinion and I'm sticking by it but I'm not going to argue it with anyone. BT,DT.)

In case I haven't been depressing enough lately, here's an article from the Washington Post about some US soldiers who fired on a van containing fifteen Iraqi civilians, killing ten of them, including five children. And here's a post from Plaidder explaining why it's wrong to castigate the individual soldiers but also wrong to just shrug and say, "It's war, these things happen."

In other depressing news:
* according to this article from The Independent, "the Pentagon confirmed it was authorising use of "non-lethal" gases of the type used in last October's disastrous Moscow theatre siege – a move that has already provoked accusations of hypocrisy by a country that claims to be at war to prevent chemical weapons being used."
* The New York Times reports that soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division have named two of their outpost camps after major oil companies Exxon and Shell.
* The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights release a report on the erosion of civil liberties in the US since 9/11/01. (The link goes to a PDF of the full report. To read just the summary, in plain HTML, go here.)

And just in case you haven't had your full daily dosage of throat-choking, stomach-churning irony, Yahoo News reports that fleeing Iraqi civilians gave food to US marines who had been rationing their meals due to being cut off from their supply routes.

OK, enough depressing shit for one day. Or at least one post. ;) Time to go eat some dinner, stare blankly at some TV, and fall into bed. Man, am I tired. Note to self: go to bed early tonight. Choir rehearsals start up again tomorrow night, and you want to be at least moderately fresh. Well, okay, let's not be overly optimistic; you want to be conscious. ;)

Comments

[munoz.livejournal.com]

Fanfic. What a bizarre universe that is. I had no idea it was so complicated. And "beta" is just a very weird concept. I mean, in the normal world, they're just editors. Your web site is scary: it makes me fear all fanfic. Because, really, if bad fanfic is as bad as you make it seem, good fanfic can't really be all that great, can it?

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Well, the beta-reader concept arose back when the only people who really used the internet were geeks, and it seemed natural -- even witty and clever -- to use a software-development term for editing fanfic. And in a sense it's more accurate than "editor" would be, because a good beta-reader isn't just editing for grammar, sentence structure, and plot holes, but is also evaluating whether the story "works."

As for quality of fanfic, it really varies wildly from fandom to fandom, as well as within individual fandoms. Some fandoms attract the squealing-teenage-girl type of fan, who will write gushy flowery romantic fanfic where the characters admit their Twue Wuv to each other and skip through a meadow holding hands. Others attract slashers, who will write all kinds of kinky boy-boy (or sometimes girl-girl) sex stories, and will put the characters together in every possible combination. Every fandom attracts its share of fanfic writers who are actually serious about the show *and* about writing, and who will turn out beautifully-written masterpieces.

So, in short, yes, good fanfic can be great -- but the percentage of good fanfic that gets written is extremely small in comparison to the percentage of horrible fanfic. (And then there's a fair amount of just mediocre or okay stuff too.) The ratio of terrible to wonderful is a lot higher than in the world of novel publishing, since, obviously, fanfic doesn't have to get anyone's approval in order to get "published." Anyone can write a fanfic and post it on the web; in order to get a book published you have to go through at least one, usually several people. (Of course, lots of crappy novels still get published, but you take my point. There at least *is* a screening process.)