OT: Harry

LOL... I dunno.  There's usually at least two kinds (the kind they talk
about right before the parades and in the Youth League meetings, and then
the kind that people actually experience)...

For Harry Potter fanfiction, I recommend www.fictionalley.org.  For Star
Trek, I recommend www.trekiverse.org.  I do not recommend FanFiction.Net (or
as the folks at FictionAlley sometimes say, "The Site That Must Not Be
Named"); it's just very poorly managed.  I don't do B5 fanfiction, and I'm
basically over Star Wars fanfiction (though not nearly as much as I am over
B5 fanfiction); the B5 storyline has always impressed me in its completeness
(and mind, not even CS Lewis or Tolkien has impressed me with that), and I
don't really feel the same need to have things more fleshed out than they
are.  Oddly enough, I think of B5 as experiential, like reading poetry or
listening to a symphony -- I don't see any other fictionalized universes
like that, really -- and the holes seem to be just as important as what
we've been given.

Our novel (which had a name when we did it via Interactive Fiction, and when
there were more like twenty of us, but which is nameless now that we plan to
actually work towards publishing rather than our own amusement) is going to
be written with the POVs of nine major characters -- one for each of us.  We
used to do a lot of "co-writing," where two or three (or occasionally four)
people would write different segments of a chapter or section of a story,
and each would help the others edit.  The segments tended to be short.  Now
it looks like each section will be more personalized and self-contained.  We
all collaborate on where characters go and why and how they interact.  It's
basically like combing a game of Dungeons and Dragons (or other RPG) and
writing a novel.

I play a game that sounds like that, at least in terms of its oddness, with
my Star Wars line friends (http://www.liningup.net).  Each person writes
down a funny phrase or quote or whatever, then the next draws a cartoon to
illustrate it, then the third has to come up with a caption (without looking
at the original phrase), then the fourth has to illustrate the new caption
without looking at the first phrase OR the first illustration... etc.  There
have been some seriously strange results from that, and none of us were
drunk (though it WAS 4am)...

I loved Book 3, liked Book 2, liked Book 4 in most respects, and was okay
with Book 1.  There are some aspects of each that I think beat all the
others hands down (I find the storyline from 3 the most compelling, by far;
the characterizations in 3 and 2 are great; the "magic"/"otherworldliness"
factors in 1 and 4 can't be beat, etc.)  I BTW read them TOTALLY out of
order.  I started in the middle of Book 3, then read Book 2, then Book 1,
then Book 4.  Then I re-read all of Book 3, then I read them
chronologically.  From the moment that I was able to get all of them in the
same place (the first time I read part of Book 3, I was out of state, and
reading to my little brother with a copy that stayed with him) it took me
just under 20 hours to finish all four.  ^_^

I'm just thinking of all the stuff people have written in Lojban and
Esperanto.  I know there are shorter creative works (songs, poetry) in
Quenya, and that there are literary journals for Elvish and Klingon both.
Fanfiction exists in spades for LOTR and Star Trek (though a distressingly
large amount of it is author-insertions wherein the inserted character is
perfect and sleeps with Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir, Faramir, Spock, Kirk,
Picard, and/or Data).  It seems like the ultimate tribute to geekiness and
fanboyism and general obessiveness and author-love would be writing
fanfiction in the appropriate constructed language.  And with those
languages (unlike Huttese, or Wookiee, or Romulan, or...) other people have
enough understanding and fluency that they could follow along.  Of course I
also would be thrilled to see Harry Potter fanfiction in Latin.

Finally, I can tell you don't read much fanfiction.  ^__^  C&D = "Cease &
Desist"  Go to http://www.chillingeffects.org for all the information you
could possibly want, and ten times more just for fun.

For a long time, Paramount was going after everyone with a Star Trek fansite
(especially fanfiction) with lawyers and pickaxes and nasty threats to ISPs.
This may explain the dearth of Klingon fanfiction, though I'd like to think
it's because Klingons are too busy disembowling their enemies (at least the
ones who are WITHOUT honor) to insert themselves into scary Picard love
stories.

I wonder how you'd render "fanfiction" in Andrew's IAL thing.  Ygrde, or
whatever.  How about... "noun writing pretend devotion"?  Hmmm...

Sarah Marie Parker-Allen
lloannna@surfside.net
http://lloannna.blogspot.com
http://www.geocities.com/lloannna.geo

"There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even
though the end may be dark."
-- J.R.R. Tolkien

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of Jan van Steenbergen
> Yes, even in the Elvish Soviet Socialist Republic there exists
> only one kind of
> socialism and at least three kinds of fruit :)
>
> I know little about the phenomenon of fanfiction, but I know there is some
> pretty good Babylon 5 stuff around.
>
> How does that work? I have written several stories with friends. Together
> behind the computer, one writes a few sentences, the other.
> Especially after a
> few bottles of wine, the results can be quite surprising. I
> remember one story
> about a man visiting the doctor, that ended up in Hitler
> participating in a
> game show.
> I know, I know. But I wanted to "do" them chronologically, that's
> why I started
> from Book One. BTW Everybody says that Book Two is the worst of
> all. I must say
> that I like it (and both movies were great).
> I will read your fanfic as soon as I find the time.
>
>
> I haven't the faintest idea. Somehow I think it's not very
> likely, since such
> an undertaking required some very good knowledge of the language you are
> writing in. OTOH, in the case of Klingon I wouldn't be surprised.
>
>
> What is C&D?
>
> Jan
>
---
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