[ there's no home for you here ]

[winterlive]

not for the first time, i wonder: why is it impossible to have a community that outright focuses on good fic? anthologies of selected works of fiction are published every damn year; what's so wrong with doing it for fanfic?

what if it were moderated by a small panel of people, maybe three people, whose job it was to allow or disallow what was posted there? it'd be unpopular at first, because some people would scream elitist bitchery and most people would listen to that, so it wouldn't even be all that much work. the moderators would obviously have to be people of brass and class, but i wouldn't even care if they were sockpuppets so long as they had good taste in fic.

how easy would it be to, when somebody new gets into SPN, just point them to the community? you want good fic, there it is, fly and be free.

there's only one thing i would want, and that's the ability of posters to delete or edit their own stuff. i considered yuletide for all of ten seconds before i found out that they won't take your stuff down later, even if you ask them. whoo, unacceptable, at least to lil ol me.

is that so undoable? bah. i'm sure it is. god knows we'd all rather open a vein than offend someone, even if the offense taken is totally unreasonable. *hands*


ETA: since this posting, maygra has decided to formulate a project. the parameters of this project are radically different from my little whine session here, and i assure you that she is taking every opportunity to consider the impact of her structure, process and presentation. her guidelines will be available soon for public review, so please withhold judgement on that project until you see them - things have really changed quite a bit. :)

Comments

[tabaqui]

I love this idea. I would submit for sure, even knowing i have only a fifty/fifty chance of being accepted. AND i would read for sure, because oh dear gods, some of the fic out there....

I would almost volunteer to read/approve but i'm not 100 percent confident in my ability to sort out what i 'like' - i.e., that hits my buttons - and what is *literarily* good. If that's even a word. Heh. But yes - i love the idea, and damn the wank. Some people are damn good writers. Some people suck balls. Life is tough, face the truth of it.

I *would* like there to be some effort for the judges or whatever to be maybe *not* so involved in the fandom that they drift toward accepting/reccing only their friends, you know? Cronyism raising its ugly head...

But yes! I support it! :)

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

craziness, tabi! but i'll let you know how it all shakes down. :D

[opprobrium.livejournal.com]

Taste is objective. What we really need is a master archive with a solid tagging system in place. Then it could be narrowed down by pairing/time/episode-relation/length/tense/rating/au/hole-that-gets-plugged accurately. Because I may think a victorian double-penetration fic is well-written and awesome, but someone with class and brass may not.

Good idea, but you can't place value on a fic unless you've written it yourself. Plus, I've seen too many authors who start out basically rehashing bad romance novels grow into themselves with practice and constructive feedback. A bar like the comm you're proposing would seriously impede creative evolution.

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

i realize that there are a lot of comments here to go through, but maybe i can sum up.

through a lot of conversation, i've discovered that what i actually want is a community dedicated to people who are interested in celebrating literary fiction and improving themselves artistically. i want a place i can go where, even if something is technically a PWP, it is going to have substance behind it. it is going to say something meaningful, original, relevant about the characters portrayed. it's not about value judgment. i have no interest whatsoever in rating or ranking. i just want a place - one place - for things that are solid.

now, sometimes i just want raw porn. but there are lots of communities for that already. nobody's done anything like this for supernatural before.

[opprobrium.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. This would be a magical place indeed. I too would like to know that the time and energy I commit when sitting down to read a fic is wisely invested. However, you can't argue that the fics wouldn't be chosen on perceived value. That's the crux of it; this panel would be segregating some excellent fic, but the selections would still be limited to their value-based scope, resulting in new and unconventional writers receiving little or no recognition.

Anyways, agree to disagree. I will continue to get the majority of my fic from recs, so I guess I'm just perpetuating the value-based system. If this community does come to fruition, I hope that there will be a warning for newbies to read the archive with a grain of salt.

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

maygra's devised a double-blind system whereby those reviewing an item for posting don't know who wrote it.

further, the idea here is actually to give new and unconventional writers a WIDER audience - i very rarely stray from my flist when reading fic in supernatural, and perhaps 90% of my flist espouses the same opinion. i can't read in the fandom anymore, it seems, and that's awful. i love the show, i would like to read fanfic about it, and with this comm i can feel a little freer to give things a chance that i might not ordinarily.

but y'know. nobody's gonna hold a gun to your head, man. :)

[essene.livejournal.com]

*licks you a little*

YES please!

[mona1347.livejournal.com]

I think that a semantic choice could potentially cut down on the wank-magnet-ness of the whole thing.

If the mods/overlords/whatever called it a "Weekly/Monthly/Etc Electronic Fanzine" instead of "an archive of the bestest, vetted by Us" (or something, you know what I mean), the whole concept takes on a slightly less 'elitist' tone. It's a small, possibly rotating group of people who ask for fic-submissions in order to e-publish (on the comm) a regular grouping of submitted fic they've personally thought is excellent. Then readers, like readers of rec-lists, who've decided that they 'trust the judgment' of this zine's maintainers, can be reasonably assured they will find a quality 'product' there.

I dunno. Y/N?

[mona1347.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm in any way implying that wank won't be generated. This is not my first BBQ.

Just...possibly less wank based on the historical 'fanzine' cultural aesthetic, as opposed to that of 'archives'.

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

as you read through your flist, my darling monaface, you will find that this suggestion was so bang-on as to have influenced the entire project.

it's called an "anthology" now, and is focused on literary fiction as opposed to "good" fanfic. :)

[mona1347.livejournal.com]

OH YAYE.

See, sometimes I even have GOOD ideas!

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

<3333333333!

[lacesforalady.livejournal.com]

Question: would fic be accepted based on style/grammar/strength of plot, or on subject matter? If a mod is going to turn down a [hypothetical] really fantastic fic because it's Wincest, or dark, or squicks that person in another way, is that ok?

I mean, if I was modding a community like that, and someone gave me a really good Daddycest fic (my biggest squick), I would still review it and accept it, but that's not everyone's way of doing it.

Basically- how detached/objective are you expecting mods to be? What's your criteria? Will people be required to set aside their squicks?

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

pretty damn objective, i'd say. i know there's talks of giving panelists an opt-out if there was something they just couldn't possibly do - i, for instance, would be a HORRIBLE judge of daddycest because it squicks me out so hard.

if i were paneling, which i am not. :)

[winterweathered.livejournal.com]

Honestly? I would appreciate this kind of community. I would also be totally willing to be one of the "readers" or moderators or whatever. I don't think I would be okay with my own stories being put there, regardless of whether they were "accepted," because I have issues with patting myself on the back. However, I have no problem telling other people they're awesome.

[winterweathered.livejournal.com]

(Also, I'm adding you and maygra to keep up with this stuff.)

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

awesome. double awesome. i'll put your name down on the list of people who should receive information on it when we send it out tomorrow. :)

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

It should be obvious that there would be no fics in the community by the people in the choosing board, right? Even when the author would be skipped in the voting process, the fact that she would be in the board could effect the decision making.

If the choosing would be blind, this would still mean that the board people would be ordered not to submit their stuff at all because otherwise the authors could knowingly vote for their own fic.

Sorry if I sound aggressive with this, I was just like, of course this is clear to all, and then thought, what if it isn't?

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

all submitted fic gets put through the admin person. admin has no vote on what fic gets posted and what doesn't. admin strips out all the author's identifying information and then chooses panelists out of a set, randomized rotation. if an editor can't be impartial (like, because they're the ones who wrote it), admin would swap them out for a different editor. if admin wants to put one through, she puts it through a different admin person.

any staff member can submit fic and have it be as anonymous and impartial as anybody else, all the way through.

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

1) you would have to present the com as a zine, the "good fics only" description would not cover it since there are no universal guidelines to "good"; it would be always be a matter of subjective taste.

2) You might have problems receiving the best fic. The best writers might not be interested in joining something this elitist.

3) Loose guidelines to the submission board would mean too subjective choosing, strict guidelines would mean cutting off all new innovations in fics. You couldn't win in either way.

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

perhaps not surprisingly, maygra took the whining i posted above and completely revamped it to get it to something that would be workable as a community. her procedures aren't even posted yet.

i do know that she doesn't plan to aim for the very best of the best fic - that really does seem elitist - but rather just a selection of good stuff, like recs lists do.

her guidelines are both exhaustive and focused on making admissions. i'd recommend you read them over once they're posted, if the subject interests you.

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

I will gladly read the admission guidelines when they are published. I'm always interested when someone writes their TOS', community rules or admission guidelines. Fandom always focuses on being as fair as they can, so it's always interesting to seek differences in fandom guidelines and corporate guidelines (think lj, who *still* hasn't published their abuse team guidelines).

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

you'd be most welcome. the guidelines will be visible for anybody, and when they're up, they'll be announced. :)

[thornsilver]

I'd say that rec communities and rec pages fill this niche. Don't they?

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

1. HEDGEHOG. *cuddle icon*

2. they don't, not for what we're thinking. the project as it's currently shaking down looks like kind of a recs list/'zine hybrid. it's more interactive than a recs list, and more community-based than a 'zine, but pulls together the best parts of both - we hope. :D