Ah HA!

[blamebrampton]

FANFICCERS!

Worried about lack of reviews?

Sad that everyone is reading everyone who is not you?

Depressed to see teenagers who don't know how to spell frottage and cannot accurately gauge the bendability of the average penis with thousands of ffnet reviews while your finely crafted and beautifully edited masterpieces are lucky to garner 23?

FRET NO LONGER!

THE SECRET IS REVEALED!

''People say it isn't good quality but you have to remember Fifty Shades started as fan fiction and as fan fiction you have to have action,'' Hayward says. ''You have to have a sex scene in every chapter because that's how you get your reviews. The amount of people who review per chapter shows popularity, that's how your ratings get up. In fan fiction every chapter has to give you something to keep you reading it.''
(From an SMH interview with Amanda Hayward, the really rather brilliant publisher of the not as brilliant book.)

So there you go! You lot who've been telling me to porn it up were right all along! (I mean, obviously I'm not going to, but that's for the best. The Bad Sex Awards longlist is already inches thick.)

I thoroughly recommend the article, which is interesting and respectfully written, without being actually nice about bad writing. It includes this gem from The London Review of Books' Andrew O'Hagan, which I had previously missed: ''It's not that Fifty Shades of Grey and E.L. James's other tie-me-up-tie-me-down spankbusters read as if feminism never happened: they read as if women never even got the vote.''

Comments

[kath-ballantyne.livejournal.com]

To me a story is important. I know I had discussions with lots of people who weren't interested in gen. Even if there wasn't actual on the page sex they wanted the romance/relationship stuff or they wouldn't read it but I read fanfic for the same reason I read books and that is to immerse myself in a wonderful story and roll about in the characters. So to speak.
Doesn't mean I don't enjoy a PWP on occasion but if it's not in character then it doesn't mean anything to me.
I want to know why the characters are where they are and why they're doing what they are doing.
I enjoy AUs too and I'm amazed that people can change something fundamental about a character so they do end up acting in a way that would have been out of character in canon but you can totally see that it would go that way.


I discovered internet fandom when I was 17 (ah dial up at $2 an hour an it taking hours to load a pic. Sounds like my satellite internet). Came at a great time for me socially, not so much academically but if I wasn't going to be able to sleep anyway then staying up and reading fic and chatting on a message board to people who are still my best friends today was a good way to spend the time. Finding people I had stuff in common with rather than just going to the same school with changed my life.

I am amused that people are like women are reading porn in public! E-readers mean that women can read stuff without other people knowing it's dirty. *rolls eyes* Since the age of 17 when I had to print out the pages on my dot matrix printer I've been reading fanfic in public. It was perfect for long train rides. I've never had anything over than second hand phones after people have upgraded but as soon as they became capable I've been reading on their. I know hundreds who do. It's funny that mainstream is only now realising it.

It's a darn site easier now. Much better than carying a folder of fanfic and listening to tapes on your walkman when you had to change the batteries twice between Newcastle and Sydney and then it usually chewed your tape up.

[oakstone730.livejournal.com]

I believe Stephen King is credited with that quote. Very apt.