lyssie | I've seen this before...

But I feel the need to... rant, I suppose, about Stargate fandom, and the ridiculous things 'required' to describe a fic.

In fact, it makes my head hurt.

Seriously. You have to warn if there's character death, if there's a pairing, you have to let people know if it's fluff or drama or angst. There's stupid terms like 'whumping', 'smarm' (which means FAKE, btw, NOT 'schmoopy friendship'. Stupid fuckers), and the SG: Atlantis people have taken fucking amalgamated pairing names as their new favorite words.

Then there's the 'POV' designation I've seen. This confuses me. Are you talking about the episode, 'Point of View'?

No. Apparently, it means you're telling the story in first person, or from one person's POV

....

What next? "Second Person", "Third person", "Present past participle"?

Apophis fucking Sokar, people. It's fanfic. Stop categorizing it so pointlessly!

This is why I miss comicbook fanfiction. There were no labels, other than who was in the story. It was simple. It was EASY.

Sigh.

And how do you know if something's 'Hurt/Comfort' as opposed to 'torture' or 'angst'? Is there a little 'Guide to Stupid Generalizations and Categorizations'?

Hrm. I'm so spoiled by comicbook fandom.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I gotta say, we were all totally spoiled by comicfic. No death warnings, sometimes no pairing warnings, a generalised age-bracket type warning. That was it. *wistful sigh* Y'know, when you could be surprised.

Any fic group I've ever been in has had clearly written classifications in an FAQ somewhere. I don't think I've ever found them overly picky or stifling. Some of them have a very good reason for being there. If someone wants to know if there is rape in a story because it'll bother them to read it, I can respect that. They might have a good reason.

The other thing is that in a really densely populated fandom, there's so much to wade through that I like to have some kind of starting point so I can scan down the list and find all instances of a type of fic I want to read.

It does get under my skin when people try to sound all edjamacated by using literary terminology, and getting it wrong.

The term 'hurt/comfort', by the way, is as old as classic Trek fic. And... aww, 'whump' is one of my favourite words. ^^;

Oh amen. I cannot agree with you more. I've never seen so many damn categories and labels as there is in the SG-1 fandom. Spoiler warnings... of course that makes sense, but sheesh. While I appreciate some of them, especially when I'm in the mood for a certain type of story, many of them are just totally useless and only cater to the fans who aren't prepared to approach a story with an open mind. Meh.

I do like labels, because some days I'm just not up for whumping, ya know? But if you choose not to label, I'm not going to complain. If I don't like a story, I can always go onto the next one. Character death? Nice to know ahead of time that there is one, but again, not required. Again, you kill of Jack and I sob? Well, I'll go find a fluffy, happy fic and make myself feel all warm and fuzzy again. SG fandom seems less organized than X Files. Ephemeral and Gossamer's guidelines were pretty much standard for all stories in that world, so there was standardization of the terms. Haven't found that to be so with SG.

I think that the longer I've spent in fandom, the less need I have for labels. It's good when first starting out and getting to know the lay of the land. But they should always be the author's prerogative. I'm not going to gripe because they're not there, or I get into a story and it's not what I was expecting. Really, if no labels, I should be prepared for anything. I read at my own risk. Still, I do like it when the author labels. Let's me know what to expect.

Now, author's notes at the start? Keep 'em short. Save thanking everyone and your dog until after I've finished. Yet long and overly effusive notes that contain lots of grammatical errors and misspellings act as a warning and I save myself the time and skip that story.

And of course, after I whump on grammatical errors and misspellings, I then post a comment that says "you kill of Jack" when it should be "kill off Jack." ::groans::

Please don't kill off Jack. Unless it's the good sex that does him in. Can be from Sam, Daniel, Teal'c, but please, not from Maybourne. ::shudders::

*cuddles*

*wants*

Fic: Title
Author: Lyssie
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Character death. Sex, lots o sex. Bite me.

*giggles* And Kari. Which scares me, endlessly.

*g*

Oh, when can we read this????

rar. Okay, so it ate my previous comment.

But the only warnings OutsideTheLines ever required were for sex, and/or slash. After that, as long as you did the G-R ratings, no one cared. (You could label them by telling us who was in the fic, but putting a general 'DC', 'Marvel', or 'X-Men' was also ok. And no one really *pressed* the issue, as far as I know).

*smooches and runs off*

...death by Maybourne sex!

...no.

Ew.

*clings*

You suck for even putting that image into my head.

...erm... I'll try?

*goes back to putting scotch tape on Jack and Sam*

Erm... You are the Phoenix! Fire and life incarnate! Go... eat broccoli people.

It'll make you feel better. Really.

Y'know, when you could be surprised.

*nod* I do like some labels when I'm hunting for something specific, but when there aren't any, I just know I may be in for a surprise and sometimes I *like* to be surprised.

I'm working on a fic that has a couple of things that squick some people, so I know I should label, but I just hate to because it's short and the surprise is everything in a fic like this. *sigh*

Bwahahahaha!!! I am evol. Fear me!

Here, have some Nutter Butters. And it's morning, so that ugly image is wiped away by the singing birds and pretty sky.

I think what Lyss is getting at, is the fact that it gets ridiculously specific. At least compared to what she and I used to see.

Erm. Example. I have a fic which *does* involve rape and other unpleasantness. 'Warnings' on said story go: This story is rated R for violence, language, and adult situations.

Were this SG-fic, it'd look more like (and bear with me while I try to think up the comic equivalents here...)

Spoilers for issues 1-60 of X-Force and 1-40 or Cable. Angst, Domino/OC sex, rape, violence, swearing, misuse of handguns. Original Character death.

(Okay, I'm getting sarcastic now... but I think you get the picture).

At that point, why would anyone even *read* the story? You've been told where it's going.

There should be a guide book. I'm just a poor, naive teenager. I get confused easily. And we're all hormonal and stuff.

I've seen this before...

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