rodo's journal

This article by dodger_winslow with the title Angels V2.0 (spoilers for 5.08) reminded me of something that has confused me for quite a while: the assumption that angels in Supernatural don’t have a free will. It shows up in fanfic a lot. Now, this might have to do with the fact that I am not religious and certain religious assumptions generally just confuse the hell out of me, but I’m not sure it’s just that.

( Cut for Spoilers (Season Five) )

In conclusion: I really don’t think that the angels have more or less free will than the humans in Supernatural. Or did I miss something? If so, please explain it to me in the easiest way possible. I am that dumb when it comes to Christianity.

Okay, the obvious answer to this question would be: “Because not everybody in the world knows English and the AO3 is meant to be for everyone”, and that’s a good answer. It’s not the only answer, though. I know people who never learned English in school. I also know people who have difficulties learning languages and thus never really understood English. But generally speaking, I’m from a country where many, many people learned English in school (it’s compulsory for everyone in my state, for example), where many advertisements are in English, just like shop names, product names and many, many more. In theory, all these people should be able to navigate the archive.

( However, being surrounded by English all the time evidently doesn't mean people understand it. )

☞ There are some things that you just don't expect on a Saturday morning. A pneumatic drill next to your flat at 8am is one of them. I'm currently waiting for the paracetamol to kick in.

☞ blnchflr is looking for participants for her Mini Meta Fest.

☞ logovo posted about what the term "aca-fan" might (not) mean.

☞ Supernatural owns my soul. I've spent the last days in a Supernatural-shaped bubble and I hope I can stay there for a bit longer. Reality is so extremely unfunny.

☞ A Supernatural fic rec: And I Wake Up Blind, Like My Dreams Were Too Bright by strangeandcharm. Vaguely Dean/Castiel, but mostly narrated from Jimmy's PoV as he tries to help Castiel, who lost his memory and is stuck in a mental hospital thinking he is human.

( Here be Torchwood and Supernatural spoilers, enter at your own risk. Contains: my thoughts on character torture, RTD's writing ability and a TV Tropes link )

Lastly, a few (spoiler free) quotes on the matter that I liked:

"I MEAN, CONSTANTLY GETTING JERKED AROUND BY SOMEONE WHO ACTS LIKE THEY'RE JOSS WHEDON AND DOUGLAS ADAMS ROLLED INTO A CHUBBY LITTLE GAY BURRITO OF AWESOME BUT ACTUALLY MAKES ERIC KRIPKE LOOK LIKE A FUCKING SAVANT?" by seize ⁴

"Russel said it was his intention to give his fans a punch in the gut. Then he was surprised that many of his fans didn't like being punched in the gut? What did he expect?" by zyna_kat on fandom_wank ⁵

And now I'm hopefully off to clean my flat for tomorrow. Argh! I hate cleaning!

Yesterday, someone posted a rant on fanficrants. The ranter's point was that a) the fandom doesn't need fanzines anymore and that b) the prices on them are very unreasonable, especially considering that you can post/read fanfic online for free. This post is the tl;dr version of my not very organized thoughts on the post and the discussion:

I am rather new school when it comes to fandom, but that doesn't mean I don't understand the appeal of zines (even though I don't own a single one). In fact, I wish I had the money to buy them, because zines have some advantages. Fanfic on the internet disappears very fast, compared to non-net standards. Give it five years and many URLs will be invalid, the authors decided the fics were crap, or the fandom suffered from a wave of cease and desist letters. When you buy a zine, you get to choose how long you want to keep it, not the person hosting and/or publishing the stuff.

( Cut for length )

A lot of other people have already written about why they will (or won’t) move to DW. This post is about my reasons, which are not limited to the question “Why DW?” but are also about “Why not LJ?” and “Why not IJ?” (even though I will not abandon my IJ, don’t worry). Anyway, I would prefer it if you followed my posts on DW if you have an account there. And I would prefer to follow your posts there as well.


( Why DW? )


( Why not LJ? )


( Why not IJ? )

*sigh* I'm behind schedule, and I kind of lack a proper topic for this week's meta (I can only think semi-properly because I'm on ibuprofen anyway), so this is what you get instead:

Archiving Fic on Blogs

I just spent half the day organising my fic on my DW account, for various reasons:

1.) The import helper does not change the links at the bottom of a chapter that leads to the next one. I had to do it manually, because otherwise people would have ended up on IJ instead.

2.) I revamped my tagging system. I added genres, ratings, warnings, pairings and several story tags.

3.) I used all that to finally put a sticky post at the top of my journal with links to (almost) all of my stories and various tags.

( And that, of course, reminded me of how ill equipped journals are for fic archiving. )

Apologies for the mistakes I probably made. As mentioned above, my brain is not fully functional at the moment.

Okay, I think I found my topic for today's meta (I'm keeping my schedule, see?): long stories.

Not stories that are long, mind you. Stories that feel long (not necessarily the same thing). A good story should make you forget time. It should suck you into its world until you wish the story would never end. I've read quite a few stories like these, and I love them. But there are other stories too. Stories that promise to be these amazing stories that you wish would never end, and then ... they just don't. They get longer and longer, full of stuff that is totally unnecessary, that deters from the purpose that is just plain boring to read. These are stories that I wish were betaed by those competent people who know when a story might be better off being shorter. I know I told an author once to cut a few scenes. Am I just an exception or do other people really not mind these stories?

Anyway, I will list a few stories that felt too long for me, and why:

( List under the cut )

I'd like to know about your experiences and theories about this as well, because I don't think I'm the only one who hates feeling that reading a story becomes some sort of chore that I only keep doing because I really used to love them. And is there any way to tactfully tell the authors that their beloved hydras really aren't as lovely as they seem to think?

Note: This is probably not very well thought out (I'm running on caffeine). I also apologize if linking these examples hurts the authors. I will take out the links if it does, just leave me a comment.

English:

Well, needless to say, I haven't been well. I hope I can sort it out some next term. I at least managed to go to a doctor and got a note which allowed me to take a break from university. And I handed in a homework today which I hope will find its way to the lecturer (secretaries at my university always get ill when students have to work on a deadline) and that she will be okay with ten pages plus bibliography instead of ten pages including bibliography. *sigh*

( Fic Progress )

Deutsch:

( Ein neues Rating auf ff.de )

Today, I got two anonymous comments on two of my stories (Well, one HP fic and the essay about male pregnancy). They weren't flames, they were just rather critical and not exactly polite. I didn't mind that at all. What I did mind very much was the fact that I had no way to reply to the criticism, and that really bothers me. Generally, I reply to all comments I receive to say thanks, to reply to questions asked and to respond to criticism, and to these two I wanted to respond really bad. I am even thinking about disallowing anonymous commenting on my fics now, to avoid something like this happening in the future.

I assume both comments were written by the same author. One of them, the one I got on my essay, made it clear that the person didn't really read my essay but just wanted a place to rant about mpreg. Not all that unusual, most of the readers react that way to it. This one, however didn't even understand that I didn't intend to write a "What is good mpreg?" essay but rather one about the phenomenon and why people write it. It's more about the authors and readers of mpreg fic and less about the fics themselves.

The second comment criticised the first sex scene I ever wrote. I agree that it's not a good sex scene and that I could have done a lot of things better. However, the commenter focussed on the mechanics of sex, which, as I learnt on fanficrants, is different for everyone. The statement "anal sex without lube hurts like hell" is not true for everyone. I really want to tell this to the person, complete with links and all, but I just can't. That's really frustrating.

I always thought the main problem with anonymous comments were flames, but I think they are much easier to deal with. You can get them deleted, or you can delete them yourself (depending on the site). This is something different. Am I silly for reacting this way?