There are many arguments that fanfiction is bad.  The problem with them is they don’t actually hold up if you know anything about logic. I tall basically boils down to this: ‘I hate it because I’ve sampled very little.’

It’s fine to have an opinion.  Not everyone likes chocolate ice cream.  But why is the reason ‘I don’t like it’ a reason to turn others away from it, especially when our argument becomes ‘Ice cream is bad!’

Not only is there an obvious difference in having an opinion and hating an entire kind of food, but it’s a logical fallacy you’ve been taught since elementary school, if not kindergarten.  Your opinion does not mean right or wrong, reason does—and it applies to you as well.  If you can tell someone that one type of writing is bad and that is how the universe works, it means they have the same right otherwise your argument dissolves into a selfish tantrum.

There is no objective reason to hate all fanfiction; those who do not use their imagination or the rules they learned about writing will write poorly whether they write something original or a fan story.  Publishing and being popular cannot be the end-all-be-all to writing hobbies and careers, as that would mean Twilight and Eragon are the epitomes of good writing.

Again, taste is subjective and perfectly fine to have, but to say that yours determines the rules of an entire art medium does not only show that you do not understand logic, but ethics as well.  There is no reason to read fanfiction you are not interested in, even if that includes all of it. No one will force you b gunpoint to read fanfiction, just as no one will threaten to kill your lover to eat ice cream.

Don’t like it? Don’t be an idiot

If you don’t like it, don’t be an idiot

There’s something about finding out random strangers happen to appreciate a fandom that drives people into rages they’d be arrested for if they were in public.  Here’s a news flash that shouldn’t have to be news: throwing a temper tantrum and insulting people does not make you smart or a better person.  Being smart and acting like a better person does.

Basics

Don’t let the basics of writing slip you by, especially when your rage is directed at something as silly as a show or book.  No one is even going to read what you write if you can’t prove you’ve passed kindergarten with the way you type.  Yes, people make mistakes, but intentionally writing like you’re three will just tell people to treat you as if you’re three.

You don’t like it is not enough

For some reason, it’s an easy thing to forget that just because you don’t like something, it’s not a reason to force others not to like it.  You’d easily say that someone who hates someone for their orientation, sex, gender, skin color, religion, or national origin should be called a jackass.  Yet, when you demean someone for something even more petty, you forget that doing so makes you even more of a jackass.

If you think that ‘because I don’t like it’ is a reason something should not exist, then someone else has the same right to believe what they don’t like should not exist.  Imagine a stranger coming into your home and changing your TV channel and saying ‘ don’t like that, so you shouldn’t watch it.’  You’ve justified that kind of behavior by demanding your opinions are the only right ones

Be objective and give proof

If you want to show that something is wrong with a show or story, you don’t just need a reason, you need to back it up.  You need facts to prove your statements.  People miss things, people don’t notice them, people don’t learn them, people forget things, people confuse things, etc.  But they won’t believe that happened unless you provide proof

You also need to approach things in an unbiased manner.  They are going to like fandom no matter what.  What endears is to them will stick with them no matter what you say.  Just as it’s easy to doubt a statement without facts to back it up, it’s easy to doubt facts if they are used to back up something biased. 

Use real logic

 Don’t let yourself fall victim to idiocy that looks like common sense and intelligence.  Be careful about logical fallacies.  Anyone with half a brain can figure these out and when they are spotted, they destroy the credibility of everything you say.

The reason they work is because they twist words to look like they make sense at first.  Take for instance, a hasty generalization.  You say that all fanfiction is bad and list reasons.  Someone you complain to notices there is at least one fanfiction in existence that does not qualify.  They wonder why they should believe anything you say if your list of reasons is now a complete lie.

Don’t evade

Don’t pretend questions asked or statements made by others has no merit due to the fandom they like.  It is not mature, it is cowardly.  If you are trying to convince someone of something, you are trying to educate.  A teacher answers questions.  They point out the answer with reasons why it’s the answer.  They point out flaws in statements and say why they are flaws.

How much would you trust a teacher that never answered a question you had?  Perhaps their wording was strange, perhaps you were confused, perhaps you didn’t quite get it yet.  Would you think they are good at teaching if they never helped?

 

Do your research

            As bad or unintelligent as you may think a fandom is, there will always be a smart fan. People are often smart in different areas of intelligence.  For instance, many people can use intelligence to analyze stories and explain why they are bad, but are not smart enough to type properly.

If you think something is wrong, make sure it is first.  One example I’ve encountered many times is about applying science to the supernatural undead.  A fresh male corpse has the possibility of impregnating a living female; similarly, female corpses have been known to give birth to live babies.  Added to those, most myths of supernatural undead beings involve their virility and fertility. These facts don’t show that a fandom is good or bad, merely that they can prove an argument right or wrong.

However, if your argument is wrong, you are not going to look intelligent—especially in the age of google.  You are going to look like someone kicking and screaming and might as well be doing so about the sun going around the earth.

Guilty pleasures

Opinions and facts are very different things.  You can prove things with facts.  Facts require knowledge. You can’t prove something with an opinion.  Opinions don’t require knowledge. These are very separate things.

Just because they are separate concepts does not mean they can’t apply to the same thing.  No matter how smart you are, you can still laugh at a cat and poor spelling. You don’t have to like everything because of facts. In fact, you don’t like things because of facts, you like them because of your opinions.  Knowing more about something doesn’t change your opinion, it’s your opinion about those facts that add up.

In the Star Wars original movies, the story tends to downplay feminism.  Leia abandons helping an entire galaxy’s safety and rights to rescue her loves.  Knowing that doesn’t change your opinion; your opinion on how feminism is portrayed either outweighs your opinion on the rest of the movie or it doesn’t.

Give fans the chance to still like the fandom you hate.  Educate them and let them appreciate it. They can know everything objectively wrong about it and still like it; they can still look at something the way one looks at cat with poor writing. 

Be polite

            No matter what you can prove, no one will care if you’re mean about it.  Consider what you’re being mean about: a TV show, a movie, a comic book, a prose book, a series or mix of them.  You are not fighting to aid cancer victims; you are fighting to point out something wrong in fiction.

Even if you are angry, don’t be.  No matter how important it is to you, your goal is not to piss someone else off.  It is to communicate.  If you ware walking by and mention a fandom you like, are you going to bother listening to the stranger who turns around and screams obscenities at you, or the one who is polite about butting in and mentioning something?

Even if they are a jackass, you still look like a jackass for stooping to their level.  Other people can see your argument.  You aren’t going to look any smarter with your obscenities, insults, or cruelty. You will look intelligent telling others in a calm, polite, and intelligent manner. 

Have a sense of humor

Laugh at fandoms, whether you like them or not.  Enjoy flaws in ones you like, in ones you don’t.  Enjoy the awesome parts of both.  Don’t stew in hatred.  Sit back, relax, point something out, and enjoy life.  Don’t let it pass you by and make sure to find humor in things.

Humor is a wonderful tool for communication.  It exaggerates, is mocks, it twists, and it is there for the enjoyment of both those who do and do not like a fandom.  It is a bridge between you and those you are communicating with.  Use it to your advantage, don’t burn it and curse when you’re hurt or ignored by it.

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Your principle called: Of Fairies and Fairness


This month, it will have been ten years since I graduated high school.  It will have been ten years since I left a very liberal and intelligent (as high schools go) institution that was forced to explain evolution as ‘something you can choose to believe happened; it will still be on the test.’

The teacher was already pressed for time, so merely said ‘some people don’t’ believe in it.’  It was only later that I learned she was supposed to have told us about the Christian creation myth and spend an equal amount of time on telling students about both.

To some, this was instituted out of fairness.  To others, this was about teaching children what was ‘right’ and that families of the students would encourage them to make the most ‘mature’ decision of what to follow.

There are several problems with both of these; one of those problems being me.  I was not raised Christian.  In fact, it was not until after I went to college that I knew anything significant about the religion.  All I understood was that some people believed in God and Jesus.  I was Wiccan at the time, previously having ascribed to a philosophical version of the religion of the Greeks (no, really).  One Godmother was Celtic in faith and the other took faith from various tribes native to California.  I was raised among all of these.

In all fairness, all religions in my family should be taught to the rest of the class.  If it would be wrong to exclude how the first woman was created from the rib of the first man,  it would also be wrong to exclude how the first woman was forged in order to torment the Titan that gave fire to humans.  Both  hold religious significance to at least one attendant of the class and to discriminate against a minority, be they Greek or Christian in faith, would be unfair.

When it comes to what is right, both contain as much logic in terms of science, which is none.  But if ‘right’ means ‘moral’, there is still the same problem.  Which creation myth holds the best moral?  In Christianity, women are told to serve men and endure pain as punishment.  In Greek, women are a punishment for men.  Neither is kind and demands eternal subjugation and pain on half the population because of what one person did millennia ago.  Is evolution kinder than either of these, favoring individuals purely as those who pass on genes and behavior until their influence or family line dies out?

Is biology where we should teach children morals?  That is, if conflicting views would teach children morals in the first place.  Should we give different accounts of whether World War II actually happened and ask children to decide on their own which to believe in (it should be noted that a large majority of my modern history class could not recall who Hitler was when asked, out of spite of being educated in the first place)?

Of all the things to put pressure on a school to teach instead of—or at least far more than—in the home and with family, why add morals?  Especially to a class that teaches organ function and how the krebs cycle works?  Do morals belong in school?  Do they apply to how plants make oxygen?

I really wish someone had taught me the answer to this ten years ago.

 

Writing Mistakes You Make and Don’t Even Know it–For Those Who Don’t Write

 

Just because you don’t write doesn’t mean you don’t need to know the basics about writing.  If you’re going to be working with a writer, you need to know what to look out for from them and how to tell them when the slip up.  But more importantly, if you’re going to be working with a writer–technical, nonfiction, fantasy, script, whatever—you need to learn to respect them in order to keep doing what you’re doing.

For those of you who think writing is easy, it is.  For those of you who think writing professionally is easy, you’re not going to get far.

Most people consider the visual parts of a story to be not only the most important, but the writing to be unnecessary.  This may surprise you, and it should, as the main ingredient in telling a story, is the story.

All good stories rely on the execution.  Audiences need to know why a princess needs to be rescued, why no one else in the story should rescue her, and why they should care in the first place.  Good writing changes a summary into either something interesting and bad writing makes us wish for something better.  God art just goes hand-in-hand in good writing; it does not replace it or do the same job.

Just because your art is considered spectacular, with hair flying everywhere, each strand delicately inked and beautifully colored, you’re still just going to be making a shampoo commercial without a good writer.

Many (amateur) artists wonder why getting into an industry is so hard, when the writing seems so obviously bad. One person even said ‘All [comic] writers do is copy lame manga scripts over and over again.  The artist does the real work.’ There’s a reason people like this have a hard time getting into an industry and staying there and why they shouldn’t: they don’t know how an industry works.

No matter how much social networking was used to get their job, all writers have had to have a resume behind them to get where they are.  They needed a solid education, and many samples of writing in different genres and formats to show what the can do.  What will do, however, is usually write what someone else wants.  A writer is not hired to write what they want, when they want, and demand it be made.

A writer, just like an artist, is hired to make what they are told to. Different jobs can have different margins of creativity, but if there is a demand for ‘copies of lame manga’ then writers will be told to do it, whether they want to or not.

Artists that somehow adamantly want to remain amateurs wonder why a writer would do such a thing in the first place.  Probably to pay rent, the same reason an artist (illustrator, inker, letterer, cinematographer, choreographer…) needs to as well.  It’s a way to stay alive and in employment until something you like comes along.  Those aren’t common.

It is true that there have been arguments between writers and artists.  These things happen.  But neither person, based solely on their job, deserves more or less respect than the other.  To make a move, everyone needs to make a story be a story.  Without the visuals, the story, no matter how well written, won’t be told. We need lighting to see; actors to convey actions, thoughts and emotions; choreographers to keep us interested in how people move and what the movements convey, and thousands of other people working together.  Assuming you’re more important is the role of someone who should keep their hands off the set and thus ignored by the real workers.

Not green and white

 

A lot has changed in recent years and writing is no exception.  Movies, books, graphic novels, and even music have changed many times over recent decades and people have been impressed by this.

Or are they?  Just as there have been many objective reasons why new things have changed art for the better, there are objective reasons why changes have worsened art.

So how does one change things, then?

One could analyze all was that an art form has evolved, track the cons and pros of each change and subject all pieces that have changed it to objective scrutiny and read as many arguments for or against the piece in order to deduce the worth of a certain change in a medium.

Or you could not waste time and don’t bother… thinking about it, not changing it.

Change best come form a need for it.  When an art piece changes the medium in a good way, it shows the need for the change doing the best with the potential of actual art.

Will Eisner changed the way most people view comics.  It is because of him that it was necessary to use the term ‘graphic novel’ as a separate kind of book than a comic.  But the reason people viewed comics as a potential to show a story of an impact, drama, length and as a medium aimed almost entirely as adults was because he showed us that a graphic novel could be good.  Before him, comics were short strips, a page or three at most of silliness and goofiness aimed only at children.  The reason we believed comics could be graphic novels was because he gave us a great story that many adults liked and were interested in.  His change was good because it was needed in order to make the piece.

Changes done when the art is not up to par or don’t even need it are what rub people the wrong way.  Take the Stargate movie.  Not all, but most people didn’t like it because it relied too much on special effects and felt there was not enough on a story worth their time.  It was a flop and it is still nearly universally known for sucking.  Stargate the movie was followed up by ten season of Stargate SG-1 as well as many spinoffs of that.  The shows have a huge fan following, and the sets are almost as cheap as those in Xena (for the record, I liked a lot of Xena; it was just obvious they kept reusing the same plastic armor).  Stargate the movie didn’t need the effects. The change of the effects themselves and how much the effects were used failed and aggravated people because they were given a story they didn’t like.  There was no potential shown for the story and thus they felt there was no potential for the effects.

Change should come from the need for it; actual progress in both art and tools.  Don’t think to yourself what to change, how to change it, or even why.  These will come to you when you need.  Focus on your art as much as possible and seek change it you find there is not way to show it at its best without change.  Progress comes for necessity and understanding.

You’re principal called: Carma

 

Hybrids are all about the environment, aren’t they?  We consumers wanted better for the environment and finally we get a car that does just that while looking like a rejected computer mouse.  What better way to show the power of the consumer?

How about an electric car?  One powered completely b electricity where the power to charge it isn’t too outrageous and it looks like a normal car and has one single engine?

You’re probably thinking I want free hookers carrying ice cream, too.

While I do, electric cars are not a fantasy, merely something withheld from the consumer (although the hookers and ice cream often seem more easily attainable).

But then, why would you want an electric car when you have a hybrid?  For one thing, you’d have a lot more space.  An electric car would have one battery and engine, not two and not one powered by the other.  For another, less gas and better mileage.   While Hybrids are notorious for not having good mileage, electric cars had great mileage compared to how much was needed to charge them.  Not to mention the blended in with the traffic better than the hybrids, which still look silly and annoy pet owners and joggers (both of the have fewer emissions than hybrids).

For those curious as to why I have been using the paste, it’s because it’s the correct tense.  Electric cars have been available to the public before and not that long ago.  In the 90’s California passed a law, requiring lower emissions form cars.  In response, several car companies sold a few hundred purely electric cars to customers.  The contracts for the cars required that the cars had to be returned within a year and that there was no possibility of keeping them beyond that period of time.  Despite massive protests form more than just the owners (over both wanting to keep the cars and to buy more), the cars were discontinued the next year and it took ten years to get a clunky, double-engine car that still required gasoline and looked like an ugly vacuum.

Unsurprisingly, the companies have been suspected of surrendering to different protesters: oil companies against California’s laws, combined with perpetuating the thought that people didn’t want purely electric cars.

So, consider it: automobile companies have been bailed out by the government and instead of offering the customers what they want out of desperation, they turn to oil companies or the government instead of realizing what they could have done with car designs they already had that would have changed the face of the automobile industry.  Meanwhile, those who have been dreaming of cars running on electricity have been taught that such things are as likely as unicorns.  The government, wanting to aid the companies, makes no demands for even research into electric cars.

What could have changed the world and put the car companies a permanent place in history was tossed into the proverbial trash bin in favor of short term gifts form oil companies.

Let the crime fit the punishment then: let is forever be known of their preference of unkindness over the profits fame and defeating their own allies could have brought them. Help spread the word about what could have been and condemn the choice.  If they chose not to be heroes, help make them villains.

A friendly sweaty place

 

For those of you that don’t know; for those of you who do; for those of you haven’t a clue; I’m going to describe an incredible thing for you. This friendly sweaty place isn’t hard to find; infact, it exists all over the world, in nearly every country. It exists every night for brief periods of time and draws in people from miles around. It’s my favorite place in town.


The first time I found the sweaty friendly place I think I was 12 years old. There it was in the dark; waiting, something just for me. I was in a stadium called the War Memorial in Rochester Ny. In hind sight its kind of an ironic arena to find out about this place. There were thousands of people around. Lurking. Flirting. Smoking. Smuggling. But only a few of us were in the sweaty friendly place. Only a few of us sharing the feeling of being alive…together.


Its a strange thing, the sweaty friendly place. Gravity works differently inside. Up, down, left right, forward, backward, they tend to stop making much sense. They seem to blend together; then they stop mattering at all. Your brain says step forward. You pick up your right foot and some how slide 4 feet backwards; diagonally, in some direction you’ve never traveled in before. At first it feels strange; then, as you adjust to your new surroundings it becomes enjoyable. Humans imitating Brownian motion. Sometimes you end up upside down. If your lucky… on a real good night in the sweaty friend place you can float; high above everyone’s heads.

Sound travels in a rather interesting way in this special place too. Your sense of hearing is intact and you are aware of it; however, it doesn’t register the same way. If you take just one step away from the sweaty friendly place all returns to normal. Conversations. Transactions. Jokes and observations all come flooding back at once. Then step back inside and all external stimuli melt away for the remainder of your stay. It all becomes white noise. Background.

I have visited sweaty friendly places all over the Eastern seaboard. My particular favorite place to take it in is down in damp and dank basements. Unlike the ones in daylight or in public, the sweaty friendly places in basements tend to draw everyone in; even the unwitting or unwilling. Everyone becomes a single entity. We not only occupy the sweaty friendly place; we become it as it throbs and flows around like a tide.

You collide with people on all sorts of levels. Physical. Mental. Emotional. A fist bursts through the upper levels of the sweaty friendly place. A symbol of our unity; our common belief. You can see the forearm above the elbow only; it’s owner somewhere down below. The muscles are rigid with passion and coated in the sweet sweat of the others. It then jerks spastically and fades from sight only to be replaced by some other limb. A foot. A finger pointed with desire. A hat floats by. Oh wait, that’s my hat. I’ll find it later. 

It doesn’t look like it from a few paces away, but I assure you it is a sweaty friendly place. It may seem scary at first, but, it grows on you. A knee might slash your lip. You might lose track of your hat for a while. You may catch the eye of a stunning young woman as she slides by. So why not give it a try? If I ever see you in the mosh pit I’ll try to say “hi.”

Who died and made everyone stupid?

 

We’ve all heard about the recent shootings.  A congressman died.  Or was it a congresswoman?  Yesterday someone mentioned the teenager who died, but I thought it was a toddler.  Was a gang involved, or am I thinking of the two teenagers who died?  Which one was paid?  Then again, I thought the victim didn’t die.  Are we talking about Reagan?

It took someone else being worried for me to think about the most recent shooting-which likely wasn’t the most recent on by the time I had heard of it. To me, people being killed and the news using it as a headline was normal.

But when I realized someone was worried—not a renewed usual worried not chronically worried—I decided it was time to sit down and contemplate things in the world.  Soon, though, I realized no one, no matter the side, no matter the theory, no matter the amount or lack of sympathy, came to the same conclusion as I had.

I used to be able to tell the moth by the major tragedy on the news.  I was raised to set my day around watching the news.  Knowing the name of the last senator who was killed or had killed was more important than knowing the senator of my own state.

In my high school a boy was hired to kill a man.  The boy was hired by the man’s wife and daughter.  The boy failed, but demanded money.  When they refused to pay him, e killed both of them.  The boy and daughter went to m high school.  A memorial was up for two days.  No one mentioned the killing.  In my senior year, a group of students died because they were driving drunk.  They had crashed into another car.  What happened to the passengers in the other car wasn’t even on the news; more people were dying somewhere else.  A teacher threatened to fail me for contemplating the memorial.

Just as she wanted, I learned death was something you walked past.  It was there.  It happened. This was normal.  It’s normal for the latest death—whoever they may be—when you read this post.

The problem did not lie there, not exactly.  The problem was that no one treated this latest killing as normal.  I watched news shown thought the nation.  The whole school saw the memorials. They were labeled as to what they were and who they were memorializing.  Somewhere out in the world are other people who have been taught to just walk by.

And yet, we’re still just trying to walk by.  Everyone has a passing remark on who to blame and then moves on.  We are not allowed to question our fear.  We are not allowed to turn it into empathy.  Fear can only turn into blame, which is nothing but anger.  We are becoming closer to what caused the death we fear because we are told no other path is right.

We all need to understand the sorrow of the victims, of the real questions that have answers, and what those answers are.  Making up answers without looking at each individual situation and pointing fingers, including at people who are insane, will only result in the same situation you fear.

Crazy people killing others is not new.  Angry people killing others is not new.  Finding out how to deal with someone who is angry or insane—or both—before anyone has to suffer, including them and their own family, would be.

No news station is going to tell you how fragile life is or how important a loved one is. No news station is going to ask how to stop showing what they show.  If you’re tired of hearing about such things, though, maybe its time you asked who can figure out how.

Writing Mistakes You Make and Don’t Even Know it–Character Sheets

 

Shortcuts are great.  It’s always better to do something simple and have more time to make the product look even better, doesn’t it?

Writing advice here is meant to help simplify things.  This advice is here to cut down on pitfalls so you can focus on the good parts of writing. However, one pitfall is mistaken to be a shortcut; the habit of using it should be stopped immediately and fixed.  The mistake is to use character sheets. Continue reading →

Musings: On Riding the Tech Wave

 

The feeling of surprise and joy washed over me.  It took about a half an hour, but I finally found the way to activate the drop down menu on the web site, in order to post a submission.  The site design was classy, sophisticated – I admit.  However, the GUI tricks were new to me, and for one of the pencil-paper generation, definitely not intuitive.  I began to wonder – Why do I feel happiness when I muddle through the techno-gizmos of the early 21st century internet, when others are overcome by (understandable) frustration? Continue reading →

Writing Mistakes You Make and Don’t Even Know it–You’re a Princess

 

When is it appropriate to call someone a ‘demon’?  How about ‘evil’?  Some sort of cruel sexist swear words with several cruel adjectives modifying it?  What about pretentious?

What makes a person deserve such labels?  Under what circumstances does saying this about someone make you look good and the person who you are insulting look bad? Continue reading →

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