Every time I go away from Dreamwidth blogging for a while, Dreamwidth goes and gets more awesome. I decided to nix my Premium account because even though I love the site and service, I was using it so rarely I couldn't justify the expense, especially when I've got my own domain and am often trying to post to my various WordPress-powered blogs on sites there.

The problem is, my sites are so new, so thin on content, that I don't have that built-in community.

This gets crossposted to LiveJournal, and why? Well, LJ has been around even longer than Dreamwidth, but LJ also had so so so many issues when Six Apart sold it (even before that, when Brad sold it to Six Apart). I really didn't like a lot of those changes, and I saw a lot of my fellow LJers move over to Dreamwidth. The communities sometimes followed, but not always.

I have a permanent account on LJ, which means it's not supposed to go anywhere, ever. Theoretically, all the interconnected services there are these days should mean that it's EASIER to cross-post and always stay up-to-date, but the real experience of LJ and DW are the Friends List/Reading Page, and these days, if I'm reading anything for a prolonged period of time, it's Facebook. Yes, there are fan communities there too, but it's very much NOT the same.

I never really divided my fandom self from my "real" self-- I'm not afraid to tell people who I am on Facebook or deviantArt or wherever, and I've never particularly cared about "IRL" friends or family finding out about my fandom activities.

"Judge not, lest ye be judged" I guess.

( Long-winded entry continues here... )

Dragonfayth, my site for Azureshipping (Seto Kaiba x Anzu Mazaki/Téa Gardner) fanfiction from the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom, has recently been inundated with spam. I've deleted it all, but as of right now, there's no solution for the problem as a whole.

The people behind the software aren't that numerous, and the package is pretty customized--after all, a fanfiction archive, while something hugely popular, isn't as mainstream as blogs. So it takes a while for updates to go through, patches and mods to be made, etc. And since the software is free, these people all have day jobs that take away more of their time.

I can't blame them, but I've reached the point where I'd rather pay to get a better solution, or use something else.

Since I don't really have the money or budget for hiring someone to make and teach me/maintain such a site for me, I'm stuck trying to find another solution. Finding software ready-made for fanfiction is harder than it sounds. Fanfiction.net and AO3's software is proprietary--not released to the public, not available for free. Same with FicWad, may it rest in peace. And don't even get me started on MediaMiner.org.

Most people who want their fanfiction archives use eFiction. It's been on version 3.5.3 for ages now; the supposed release of 4 hasn't happened yet, and I'm teetering on "lost hope" for it altogether.

Enter: WordPress.

I'm already using it for the new Seventh-Star Network (the main site, seventh-star.net, I'm building a What Doesn't Kill You site for my biggest fanficton project ever, and I've started making subsites for all my other sites for the various fandoms I've been involved in over the years. I've been using WordPress for ages, not just on GamingDead.com, but for sites that I've built for class projects, like Chixflix.

There are plenty of people who post their fics on WordPress.com, but making a fanfiction archive is a bit different.

I've already got a WordPress Multiuser installation setup for all my other sites; it wouldn't be a headache to set up another site with multiple authors (similar to GD) with open registration (still approved based on captcha codes to eliminate spam sign-ups), and utilize everything like making pages for fanfics, using tags for ratings and warnings, categories for...well, categories, and so on and so forth.

It's very, very tempting, but I don't know if I even want to try starting it as an experiment if it's not a good idea.

So, some questions for you:
1 - What does a good fanfiction archive REQUIRE? (For example, the ability to leave reviews)
2 - What separates an okay fanfiction archive from a GREAT one?
3 - If you have experience with WordPress, what do you think its limitations are for posting/sharing fanfiction?

I have this nifty tool on my Mac called beaTunes 3 (it's available for Windows, too!) that helps you take better care of your music and make better playlists. If you're missing information (genre, album artist), if information is misspelled, or if it's inconsistent (Utada Hikaru sings in Danish?!), it can fix it for you. It can also provide interesting information about a song, such as its "color" and what key it's in.

The color is supposed to help you organize your songs. For example, red songs tend to go better with other red songs.

This reminded me of how folks make fansoundtracks and fanmixes for fandoms, characters, pairings, and so on. There's a huge mish-mash of music out there that I never would have heard had it not been someone putting it together for the sake of this fandom we have in common!

With that in mind, I propose a challenge for myself and anyone else who wants to try and take it on.

Pick one of the following colors:

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Indigo
Violet
Magenta
Brown
Black

I will pick five songs that fit into that "color," and you will tell me what fandom to write ficlets or drabbles for them in.

So for example, if you say "Red," you might also say "Sailor Moon," and I have to find five songs that I can somehow relate back to "Sailor Moon," and possibly (somehow) explain why that song fits a "red" color. And I shall do it with fic! You can also give me other information to work with, like a character or pairings, a period of time from canon, etc. (Just don't be overly specific, otherwise it'll be like a commissioned fic or something...)

The only rule: A fandom can't be repeated with the same color.

If you do pick a fandom, please pick one that you know that I know...(as in, have watched/read), even if I've never written for it before. Otherwise it might be too challenging! :P

So, here's what we all get out of this:

Me: practice writing again, a sense of excitement
You: a fanfic or five that you've helped create, some suggestions for interesting songs that fit your fandom/character/pairing of choice! It's like a mini-fanmix!

I feel like I should recognize this name. Shame on me for not. Am I missing out?

These tend to be fun, even if I should actually be, yanno, writing fic.

Stolen shamelessly from rose_of_pollux.

( To fic or not to fic: that is the question! )

From a recent review for WDKY:

Look, you have had this story up for a while now and I have not seen an update. I don't know if maybe your lazy or what but if you don't update soon I'm deleting this story from bookmark. Your just taking way to long to do a simple update, its sad really.  I hope you don't have writers block or something, but even if you do get over it.  If your not going to continue the story please say so, just tell us that the story is discontinued.

Hope you get off your ** and write

from a soon to be lost reader

I don't know why I'm even acknowledging a review with such godawful spelling and grammar, but it's the message that counts: WDKY is not discontinued. I know I take a long time to update, but that's because--horrors! shock!--I have a real life. I've recently graduated from university, am pursuing a second degree, moved away from my home for the last five years, and am now looking for a job.

Also, yeah, I'm a bit uninspired. I think about WDKY and my other fics a lot, but I can't make myself sit down and write. The bug's just not there. I'd rather not write crap when I know that my writing can be great IF I put my mind to it.

WDKY27 is probably 75% done, but I'd rather not further extend what I've already stated is 36 chapters just because what I have done is "good enough" but is not the complete story I want for that chapter. I'm going to write the rest, and I'm going to get it beta'd, and it's going to take as long as it needs.

It sucks if I lose a reader, but honestly? I don't write to cater to their demands. I've never been that kind of a writer, and can't see myself ever becoming one.

If you, dear reader, would like to see what I have of WDKY27 so far, I'd be happy to put it up here and get some suggestions, advice, critiques, motivations, whatever. I'd love to get it done, especially since my self-imposed deadline of finishing the whole damn fic by graduation (May 18, FYI) isn't going to happen.

I'd say that getting a job is more of a priority, considering how broke I am, but I also know that having a job means having LESS time to work on WDKY, so anything I can get done would be a god-send, even if I have to work out of order, work on other fics, or even work in other fandoms to get my muse going again.

But reviews like these? Yeah, they don't help. I get guilty enough from the good reviews that actually are polite and nice and thoughtful, let alone mean ones that accuse me of being lazy or mean.

A few days ago I had a dream that I was relocating a bunch of gold chains (like the thin kinds used for necklaces) from one box to another. They were very shiny but had no pendants on them, and they were pretty tangled up. I looked up the meanings of "gold," "necklace," and "chains," but the meanings were all so mixed I don't know what to make of the dream as a whole.

Also, very much into Smallville now. Very bad, since I should be thinking of WDKY and writing the rest of that, but instead I'm reading lots of Smallville fic (well, what little "good stuff" I can find, and putting up with a lot of mediocre stuff to pass the time while finding "good" things) in-between homework assignments, NSLS stuff, and being sick.

Yeah, I'm sick. Grandpa says I have the flu, but I have yet to get a fever: just a horrible phlegmy cough, lots of body aches, and many, many headaches. It sucks, to put it mildly, especially since flu shots are impossible to find here, regular OR H1N1. Needless to say, I hope I just have the regular flu, if one at all. I've been sleeping it off, mostly, and I do feel better now than I did earlier, but the aches are still present and they make me want to just curl up in bed.

Being sick means that I feel like I'm not getting anything done, even if I should just acknowledge: I really am. I just have MORE to do. Like, I still have DeVry Web Design class homework to finish up (zip and upload, really), stories for my Senior Narrative Seminar to read/write, and 1919 and Johnny Got His Gun to read. Gaah.

So I was reading fanthropology when I stumbled across this little gem comparing the "Twilight" series to the "Harry Potter" series. In there is the exact reason why I like HP (and JKR) more than "Twilight" and SMeyer:

Twilight fans can criticize Potter for the plethora of deaths, but I'd rather have sadness that makes you grow and develop and completes a story than to completely stagnate the story so that nothing bad happens to the characters. SM could have given Edward and Bella and even Jacob a happy ending without resorting to the ridiculous.

And also, something that got me thinking about "style," and why certain books or authors with their particular style of writing, are "addictive" in nature, like you can't stop reading/can't put the book down:

Small details, minute details from the first few books became vitally important in the last several.

I like doing that with my own writing. I try and think of my stories as spiderwebs, where I'll drop a detail here, a detail there, and you won't know if it's important or not until later-- maybe not even until the next story. But I wouldn't include it if it WASN'T important, because that's a personal policy of mine. Why include extraneous stuff anyway, when it can just distract or detract from the overarching story?

Problem is, because I tend to write longer stuff, when I try and limit myself to one-shots or fluffy pieces (these days), it's difficult-- I can't make a complex "spiderweb" story with a one-shot! It's probably why I'm having such issues with ILB's fic-- the idea's all there, but when I try and translate the idea into prose, I don't know how to put it.

With WDKY26, it's similar, but not the same: see, I have the idea completely mapped out, I even have plenty of scenes written or at least vividly imagined, but I tend to think of scenes for the WDKY series out-of-order, and when I have to write in one of those scenes where the other scenes (that come before and after the scene in question) are already done, I worry about "Is the style going to be the same?" and "Is it going to read out of place?" It's not so much a matter of the scene not really being important, or me not knowing what details to drop-- often it's a choice between a lot and a little, not all or nothing. So I wonder if I should drop Detail A or Detail B here, or maybe both? How to do it? And then I get to thinking "WHY is Detail A or Detail B so important anyway? Is it worth including here when it won't get explored fully until # chapters later?"

Back to that article, I'm shocked by how many people misspelled "Stephenie Meyer" or various other elements of the "Twilight" series, e.g. "Cullen's" when they're talking about the whole family, and not a particular character's possession of something. I wonder if bad fiction breeds bad spelling?

That said, I think all the people that believe that "Twilight" is a richer/more complex plot than the "Harry Potter" series are living under a rock. Yes, the "Harry Potter" books are long, and there are many more of them than "Twilight" books, but it's the HP books that are still being discussed and examined; it's the HP books that have little details that spring up to great importance later on in the stories.

Not so with "Twilight," where Meyer takes the details she establishes in the first book and throws it away in the second or third or fourth one. And the Volturi are evil, not good, not different. They EAT CROWDS OF TOURISTS. They see themselves as the god-overseers of all vampires! WTF!? People are trying to say Voldemort is a wooden, stereotypical villain character because he kills and likes to kill, but how is that any different from the Volturi? Besides, at least Voldemort had follow-through; the Volturi in "Twilight" were like neutered vampires-- all this build-up of them being so scary and fearsome, but in the end, Bella just stood there and stared them down and THAT WAS IT. The decision to do that rather than having an epic fight only did two things: it made the Volturi look pathetic, and it made Bella even more of a Sue.

( It goes on. )

But I'm still questing to find out what my "style" is. I think you can only "learn" to write (well) by reading a lot, and so I am. I'm examining a lot of what I've read and trying to figure out what I liked and why. Fiction, non-fiction, fanfiction... anything goes.

I like JKR's writing because she makes every detail vital. Even heroes aren't perfect and don't try to pass themselves off as such, not even to their mentors, classmates, friends, etc. In the end, you have to know what really matters most: those people you cherish. You only have one life to live, and it's worth living to the fullest because of that.

I'd like to think that in my writing, my heroes and heroines have similar attitudes and personalities in that they come across as human and therefore relatable. Not just "I want to be him/her! OMG!" Even in series with a fantasy-twist, I've always liked exploring the more "human" element: the drama and the angst, the romance and the comedy that come as part of everyday life, the life without the magic.

Life is a great story just waiting to be told, isn't it?

 Cleric Preston by Klaus Badelt from Equilibrium (Rating: 0)

Spam-posting today, sorry. Trying to force myself to study, and it's not that easy to do.

Give a gift; tell a story. - vilify's got several prompts to choose from; all you have to do is comment (you can comment anonymously, and IP logging is off-- you don't even need to be a LiveJournal user to do this!). Write at least one paragraph of non-fiction text relating to the prompt. Share your story.

(This is kind of a meme, but kind of not. It's just something that encourages participation, so if you like memes, consider yourself tagged.)

guardian_kysra, I wonder if we could do something like this for a holiday fic exchange? Obviously, in our case, it would be fandom, not non-fiction, but we wouldn't specify anything but a word or a phrase, and let anyone pick/choose from them and respond to them. We could ask people who were going to participate to give us 3-5 prompts, so that everyone would stand a chance of getting at least one story for "their" prompt.

(Obviously, the problem with this concept is that without specifying a fandom, some prompts might inspire fics for a fandom that the prompt-creator has no part in. So maybe we could have a master list of "allowed" fandoms or something, fics that everyone might enjoy?)

Not that I will, but IF I DID, any "Twilight" series fics I write would have the following plots (or answer the following questions):

* Why Bella is in love with Edward

* Bella acts more like a normal teenager: when she decides she might like Edward (note: not "irrevocably in love with" yet), she opts to try some very teenage ways of "getting his attention" as well as testing his limits around her (once she discovers the truth about him, but maybe before she confronts him about it/he tells her), including trying to seduce him.
- Does Bella even know she's doing it? Ohhh yes, especially when (by accident -er, happy chance- or some actual THOUGHT), she discovers he's stalking her in her bedroom at night.
- She also teases, which may end up answering the question "How do vampires get hard-ons?" My ideas of tease are not like fandom's, I would think, but then again, venturing too far into that fandom is like walking into the Jaws of Death, so....

* Bella had dreams of a career once... and watching [cable] TV reminds her of them. What does Bella consider being -despite being a vampire, or before, or...? (This one would obviously depend on which book/movie it took place in or between.) Bella as a CSI? A chef? A therapist? (If Carlisle can be a doctor, why couldn't Bella feasibly find a job? Or would her youthful appearance be her downfall in getting one and keeping one -at least, a live, in-person job where she DIDN'T travel, MIGHT be out in daylight, etc.?)

Fic, in this case, is not to show what wasn't seen in canon, nor does it exist to take some fascinating characters and put them in another universe (whether that's another canon or another universe altogether). It's to answer questions or explore characters in ways that SHOULD have been done in canon.

( Twilight, thematic messages, and Meyer's injections of LDS lore into the books )

You know what would be awesome? If there was a site (or if FFnet did it) where people had their fics and you could add your real-time commentary as an overlay-- a'la Nico Nico video.

Because seriously, the commentary I'd be leaving on the FFnet section of "Twilight"? So much more worth my time than an actual well-thought out REVIEW in that fandom. I'd get lambasted if I even tried to give what I consider true concrit (which, in my mind, is not a synonym for "endless praise,") and I know it's not worth the effort. But quick-play commentary with full anonymity? I'd tap that. Somebody, make it happen!
Such an idea might come back to bite me in the ass, but I think overall it would help people improve and give those readers who never review a chance to say just WHY they don't usually bother, whether or not they've got more than the usual "LOL UPDATE PLZ" one-liners.