I have committed fanfic
Jun. 15th, 2026 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](/%20https://www.npmjs.com/package/ocr-https-www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjones It is a long time since I've written fanfic. However, I've have been having plot bunnies recently, and one side effect of the 30 Days of Blake's 7 meme was that something got shaken loose for a vague thought I've had for quite a long time, and I finally knew how to write it. I have done so. By hand. With a fountain pen and paper.
Anyway, having transcribed it onto electrons, and reminded myself in the process why I do not use Dragon for actual composition of stories (it took me longer to monitor it and say "correct that" every couple of paragraphs than it would have to just use a keyboard), I have an accurate word count - almost exactly 13,000 words written over the course of two weeks. So nearly a thousand words a day on average, although it varied wildly on how much per day (there was one day when I probably wrote close to two and half thousand).
So now I just have to come up with three names for walk-on characters that currently have [X] type placeholders, and send it off to a couple of beta readers. And then wonder what to do with it, because there are no zines anymore; and relatedly, what pseud to use, because I had one pseud for stuff that first appeared on dead trees and another for stuff that first appeared on live electrons, and there are no zines any more, but people started associating the former pseud with the blood-on-the-floor stuff and the latter with the cute and fluffy stuff, simply because that's how it played out with what went where when there were zines.
(Yes, I know AO3 exists. I have issues with OTW's views on whether it is appropriate for random people to copy the entire text of someone else's zine reviews on an unrelated site into Fanlore without bothering to mention this to the author, let alone ask permission to do so. Some day I will have the time and spoons to send a take-down notice for each and every one of the many stolen reviews.)
Anyway, having transcribed it onto electrons, and reminded myself in the process why I do not use Dragon for actual composition of stories (it took me longer to monitor it and say "correct that" every couple of paragraphs than it would have to just use a keyboard), I have an accurate word count - almost exactly 13,000 words written over the course of two weeks. So nearly a thousand words a day on average, although it varied wildly on how much per day (there was one day when I probably wrote close to two and half thousand).
So now I just have to come up with three names for walk-on characters that currently have [X] type placeholders, and send it off to a couple of beta readers. And then wonder what to do with it, because there are no zines anymore; and relatedly, what pseud to use, because I had one pseud for stuff that first appeared on dead trees and another for stuff that first appeared on live electrons, and there are no zines any more, but people started associating the former pseud with the blood-on-the-floor stuff and the latter with the cute and fluffy stuff, simply because that's how it played out with what went where when there were zines.
(Yes, I know AO3 exists. I have issues with OTW's views on whether it is appropriate for random people to copy the entire text of someone else's zine reviews on an unrelated site into Fanlore without bothering to mention this to the author, let alone ask permission to do so. Some day I will have the time and spoons to send a take-down notice for each and every one of the many stolen reviews.)
(no subject)
Date: 2026-06-16 08:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-06-16 07:42 pm (UTC)I have used it intermittently for 26 years, it has been the only way I could do my job for the last 15 or so, and I think it is a marvellous thing, but there is absolutely no way I could use it for composing fiction.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-06-17 03:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-06-18 10:28 am (UTC)U remember the fun of trying to match OC names Iof which I could always think up heaps) to the style of the names already in the series in question (which brought me to a stop oh so often. My Chinese fantasy drama is even worse for this because they take the meanings of Chinese names seriously.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-06-18 07:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-06-19 01:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-06-22 09:21 pm (UTC)"I have issues with OTW's views on whether it is appropriate for random people to copy the entire text of someone else's zine reviews on an unrelated site into Fanlore without bothering to mention this to the author, let alone ask permission to do so. Some day I will have the time and spoons to send a take-down notice for each and every one of the many stolen reviews."
It sounds as though the folks who posted the entire text of your reviews violated Fanlore's own copyright policy. ("Do not include excessive amounts of original media in Fanlore.")
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlore:Copyright
In addition to their DCMA process, Fanlore has an informal process for asking for removal of works whose appearance at Fanlore violates fair use.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlore:DMCA_Policy#I_am_a_copyright_owner_and_I_don%E2%80%99t_want_my_work_displayed_on_Fanlore
(On OTW in general: I donated an archive to Open Doors, and Open Doors did their best to track down each and every writer, to see whether the writers wanted their fics at AO3, through the email addresses that the writers used when posting their fics to the associated list. Open Doors even had me digging into the archive's e-mail list to try to find missing contact info.)
"And then wonder what to do with it, because there are no zines anymore"
There are fanzines around, though they're rare; I've seen notices for them at Tumblr (back when I was reading Tumblr).
Alas, there aren't many alternatives to AO3 these days; fandom has become frighteningly centralized. There's SquidgeWorld Archive, which has solid fandom credentials, but it doesn't get much traffic, and you probably won't be reassured to know that the archive will go to OTW after the current moderator dies. FanFiction.net is still around, but traffic appears low there too. Adult Fan Fiction is alive, but it's difficult to get past its age verification (the trick is to click the "try again" link, and then try again), so I imagine that traffic is low there too. All the other active multimedia fanfic archives I know of have commercial ties. There's a lot of fic circulating on social media/network sites, including Dreamwidth. And every now and then, someone will post fanfic at their website.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-06-23 07:23 am (UTC)When I first opened an account the policies included a "no commercial use" that was strict enough to suggest that even linking to my profic website in my profile could be enough to get me banned if someone decided to report it. So I found it more than a little hypocritical that my own material was seen as fair game to be used, even as a tiny, tiny contribution, in the "we are archiving fandom history, please donate to us".
Thanks for the up to date info. :-) I do have my own fanfic website, which was supposed to be the online archive of my zines but which is moribund because of the years of barely being able to use a computer at all. I may revive my personal fanfic LiveJournal, which has also been moribund for so long I can't even remember whether I imported it into DreamWidth.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-06-24 08:12 pm (UTC)Ack, I'm sorry about your woes with Fanlore.
I understand the practical need for AO3 to stay noncommercial, but its ToS has become so convoluted, it's a headache to get through.
Hope you're able to find a place for your fic!