Who's talking about me?
Jun. 3rd, 2003 01:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Today my friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chuck_melville talked in his live journal about being surprised to find people talking about him as a furry artist or quoting him on their own home pages. Meanwhile, my friend genebreshears noted in his live journal that he considers IRC, chat rooms, and mucking too time consuming. He has too many other things to do. These two things reminded me of something that I wanted to talk about.
I concur with Gene, in that I don't muck or chat. You could make a very good case that I only play Everquest to chat, and that's partly true. But I've only logged in once or twice in the last two months, and anyway it's not quite the same thing, as I can only talk to other people who are also subscribed to the game.
Anyway, my tale is this. I've submitted two stories to the Fan Fiction Mailing List in the last two months. Usually I get a few comments back from other people that are subscribed to the list, but it's been more than a year since I've submitted anything, and I suddenly realized that, over the last two or three years, things in anime fan fiction (and probably in any fandom) have changed.
My first clue was when someone wrote to me about the first story, and mentioned in passing that he'd decided to read it because "everyone was discussing it" in some IRC chat channel.
Well, naturally I know that when you throw stuff out on the web, even this little journal of mine, anybody at all might read it. I have no control over who sees it and who doesn't, and what they might think of it. And I was well aware that the FFML has, or at least used to have, a subscription list of around 1,000 people, so a story posted to it could have quite a large audience within the first few days it appears.
(And I won't even begin to contemplate what happens when I post a story to some of the other story sites I've used, such as fanfiction.net or RAAC).
But I was surprised to realize that a group of fans (no idea how many) apparently were getting together every night and talking about the latests fan fiction stories they'd seen. These people who I didn't know were talking about ME, or at least my story.
This idea was further driven home the next time I published a story to the FFML. Just a few weeks ago, I published a story which, I freely admit, had a very high "suspension of disbelief" factor. Probably too high, in retrospect, as at least half the comments I got back said they really couldn't swallow the central premise. Mind you, we're talking about a universe (Ranma 1/2) where a splash of water can change your sex or turn you into a little black pig, so I like to think there's a lot of room for silliness, but whatever. Live and learn.
Anyway, one person wrote to me to tell me how awful and unfunny my story was. His review mostly could be condensed down to "I didn't like it", which is not really much of a review in my book. Plus he used a lot of strange phrases like "You needed additional funny." Overall, I was more amused by his "review" than bothered. You can't please everyone, and several people had written saying how much they enjoyed it and how much it made them laugh.
But the disconcerting part was the opening sentences, where he said "I was sent your fic after hearing it discussed several times in various chatroom forums. I was curious at such a fic that produced such controversy."
What controversy? I can only guess (whether the central plot idea was at all believeable, I assume). It's a truly weird feeling to realize that people out there that you don't know and have never met are not only talking about you, but perhaps arguing, forming negative opinions, etc. It's a very small insight into what it must be like to be in the media, where everyone has an opinion of you despite never having met you.
Of course, any controversy over what I wrote would have vanished a day or two later, replaced by the next sensational fic, but still, it was kind of creepy. It's one thing to have people write to you directly or write to the FFML criticizing your story, but I'd never realized that my stories might be the topic of discussion in other forums, essentially "behind my back" as I will never know what was said.
Gene gets some of this as the editor of our fanzine, Tales of the Tai-Pan. People form weird opinions of him based on the reputation of our zine, or things they've heard about our group, or based on his editorials, sometimes taking single lines out of context and going off on weird tangents. I don't know how often people might gather to discuss the stories we publish, or the authors, or the art and the artists who draw it, but the potential is there. Our circulation is quite small, but the people who read our zine share common interests, and might meet up at cons, or in chat rooms, or mucks, or usenet, or whatever. I certainly wouldn't know about it.
Anyway I didn't really have a point to sum all of this up with, just the realization that, when you put yourself out on the web or otherwise in print, you have no idea what it might lead to. You lose control of your creation the second it's published. You have no say in what other people think of it, or how they react to it, and in most cases you will never learn.
So. I listened to Blind Guardian's "Nightfall in Middle Earth" today, and I've decided I like it. It's a retelling of the Silmarillion, in the form of operatic power metal. The band is from Germany, so think Scorpions crossed with Queen and with some medieval touches and little bits of spoken-word drama added in. It's overwrought and over-the-top, but fun stuff nevertheless.
chuck_melville talked in his live journal about being surprised to find people talking about him as a furry artist or quoting him on their own home pages. Meanwhile, my friend genebreshears noted in his live journal that he considers IRC, chat rooms, and mucking too time consuming. He has too many other things to do. These two things reminded me of something that I wanted to talk about.I concur with Gene, in that I don't muck or chat. You could make a very good case that I only play Everquest to chat, and that's partly true. But I've only logged in once or twice in the last two months, and anyway it's not quite the same thing, as I can only talk to other people who are also subscribed to the game.
Anyway, my tale is this. I've submitted two stories to the Fan Fiction Mailing List in the last two months. Usually I get a few comments back from other people that are subscribed to the list, but it's been more than a year since I've submitted anything, and I suddenly realized that, over the last two or three years, things in anime fan fiction (and probably in any fandom) have changed.
My first clue was when someone wrote to me about the first story, and mentioned in passing that he'd decided to read it because "everyone was discussing it" in some IRC chat channel.
Well, naturally I know that when you throw stuff out on the web, even this little journal of mine, anybody at all might read it. I have no control over who sees it and who doesn't, and what they might think of it. And I was well aware that the FFML has, or at least used to have, a subscription list of around 1,000 people, so a story posted to it could have quite a large audience within the first few days it appears.
(And I won't even begin to contemplate what happens when I post a story to some of the other story sites I've used, such as fanfiction.net or RAAC).
But I was surprised to realize that a group of fans (no idea how many) apparently were getting together every night and talking about the latests fan fiction stories they'd seen. These people who I didn't know were talking about ME, or at least my story.
This idea was further driven home the next time I published a story to the FFML. Just a few weeks ago, I published a story which, I freely admit, had a very high "suspension of disbelief" factor. Probably too high, in retrospect, as at least half the comments I got back said they really couldn't swallow the central premise. Mind you, we're talking about a universe (Ranma 1/2) where a splash of water can change your sex or turn you into a little black pig, so I like to think there's a lot of room for silliness, but whatever. Live and learn.
Anyway, one person wrote to me to tell me how awful and unfunny my story was. His review mostly could be condensed down to "I didn't like it", which is not really much of a review in my book. Plus he used a lot of strange phrases like "You needed additional funny." Overall, I was more amused by his "review" than bothered. You can't please everyone, and several people had written saying how much they enjoyed it and how much it made them laugh.
But the disconcerting part was the opening sentences, where he said "I was sent your fic after hearing it discussed several times in various chatroom forums. I was curious at such a fic that produced such controversy."
What controversy? I can only guess (whether the central plot idea was at all believeable, I assume). It's a truly weird feeling to realize that people out there that you don't know and have never met are not only talking about you, but perhaps arguing, forming negative opinions, etc. It's a very small insight into what it must be like to be in the media, where everyone has an opinion of you despite never having met you.
Of course, any controversy over what I wrote would have vanished a day or two later, replaced by the next sensational fic, but still, it was kind of creepy. It's one thing to have people write to you directly or write to the FFML criticizing your story, but I'd never realized that my stories might be the topic of discussion in other forums, essentially "behind my back" as I will never know what was said.
Gene gets some of this as the editor of our fanzine, Tales of the Tai-Pan. People form weird opinions of him based on the reputation of our zine, or things they've heard about our group, or based on his editorials, sometimes taking single lines out of context and going off on weird tangents. I don't know how often people might gather to discuss the stories we publish, or the authors, or the art and the artists who draw it, but the potential is there. Our circulation is quite small, but the people who read our zine share common interests, and might meet up at cons, or in chat rooms, or mucks, or usenet, or whatever. I certainly wouldn't know about it.
Anyway I didn't really have a point to sum all of this up with, just the realization that, when you put yourself out on the web or otherwise in print, you have no idea what it might lead to. You lose control of your creation the second it's published. You have no say in what other people think of it, or how they react to it, and in most cases you will never learn.
So. I listened to Blind Guardian's "Nightfall in Middle Earth" today, and I've decided I like it. It's a retelling of the Silmarillion, in the form of operatic power metal. The band is from Germany, so think Scorpions crossed with Queen and with some medieval touches and little bits of spoken-word drama added in. It's overwrought and over-the-top, but fun stuff nevertheless.
