Actually, that's bit misleading.

I'm not in the middle of a beta right now.

I am, however, in the process of reviewing my collection for possible recs, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to drop out of that beta mindset and simply kick back to enjoy reading a story.





( You're killing me, people. )

Straght from hils and pimping to my flist.

vichan has created a new community.

fandom_counts

What it is: Fandom, stand up and be counted.

At the moment, that's ALL that it is. Nothing more, nothing less. Currently, there is no posting access, no rules, no interests listed.

All I'm asking is that if you consider yourself a part of any fandom, please join, be counted, and pimp.

Why? Exactly how many of us ARE there in fandom? SPN has thousands. I know HP has thousands of thousands. Livejournal has 13 million journals created. How many of those are members of fandom?

Why make this on Livejournal instead of GreatestJournal? Because LJ is the one at stake right now. Getting a body count on GJ won't help very much.

Another round of warnings on my flist and an email or two advising me there has been another sockpuppet sighting. When people start sending me email to warn me, I guess it's time to weigh in although I'd prefer to stay out of the whole thing because it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I suffer from nausea quite enough already, thank you very much.

( You probably want to avoid this post if sockpuppets piss you off mightily and make veins throb in your forehead and steam come out of your ears. )

Please don't choose to friend someone just because I did.

I write fic. I write recs. I comment on fic, art, vids. I beta for other people when asked. That's all I really do out here in the land of bits and bytes and I'd like to stay out of the wank and avoid offending as many people in fandom as I can while writing fic and recs.

OK?

Great. Hugs are on the house. Bartender, set 'em up. *hug*

ETA: I'd think about killing this post because I'm making people feel guilty for circumstances beyond their control (not my intent at all), but the discussion has been interesting.


The comments over at harlequin_sv have dropped to almost nothing the past few days. I'm sad thinking that the best the fandom can do is a maximum of 32 people commenting on a fic. That was the best count, the last fics posted are sitting at 15 or 16. Yeah, I counted, I'm like that. It isn't that I expect people to make up something nice to say if they didn't enjoy a particular fic, really not what I think should happen. It's just...I don't know... a little disappointing. That's *me* guys, not anyone else and most likely not a legitimate reaction on my part.

There were 14 writers and 15 stories. A lot of work and lovely words written for the love of CLex.

The voting is hidden so the best I can hope for is people are reading and voting, just not commenting.

*pats sad, lonely fics and tells them Mommy thinks they're beautiful*

*pets any other sad, lonely fics and tells them Val thinks they're beautiful too*

*waves hello and thanks to everyone who did read, with or without commenting*

I had a reader ask me if I have a disclaimer included when I re-write movies into CLex. They were concerned because they thought "[your] fic is almost word for word like the movie" and they were concerned that I might get into trouble.



My Reply (for the most part)

It's a valid question and I understand your concern. Quite often I use large chunks of quotes from the films, even though I change context and characters.

Every one of my stories has a disclaimer in my LJ and I try to include the same at the bottom of the fic on SSA (the archivists prefer not to have them at the top).

This is the template I use, taken from a site (that I can't remember the address for) discussing parody and copyright law.

Standard Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters herein. The characters of Lex Luthor and Clark Kent as well as any supporting characters are the property of their creators and DC Comics. Gough/Millar Inc and the WB Network TV own Smallville. Any deviations (or deviant behavior) from the originals, however, is mine. Bold is my add.

I include the movie title, production company, writer and director if I re-mix the movie. At no time do I claim sole authorship, they are remixes, rewrites, adaptions. Pick your favorite word. It's stated as such in my summaries. Beyond that, I guess it's up to the reader to decide if the idea of placing one set of fictional characters in the context of another fictional construct is offensive or correct.

I'm putting this out there and I'm willing to discuss as I may have tread on sensitive toes. Am I doing something wrong? Am I using too much of the original dialogue and should every sentence be rewritten? I consider the dialogue an intrinsic part of the movie, and I am trying to lead the reader to see/hear the same words in a different context or slant due to character change or additional motivation.

If there's an overwhelming belief that I should cease and desist, I'll have to seriously consider it.

Opinions?