General writing fiction discussion thrad.

[Obsidian Fire]

^^That is the ultimate fate of all fandoms. Eventually, they all boil down into self inserts, OCs and Shipping. Some fandoms devolve into this fairly quickly; while others take a long time to get there. From what I've seen, fandoms that put out gen fics tend to last longer then ones that don't. And the FFVII fandom has had a better, longer run then most.

IE: I haven't taken a look at the FFVII fandom that's not on TLS in months because the majority of all the stuff currently being produced is all OC and shipping based.

 

[Skan]

Tumblr's a place for a certain type of fandom community. There are certainly people on Tumblr, but I'm not sure you're going to find what you want there. A lot of the interaction will boil down to reblogging pretty pictures or shoutboxing to your Tumblr friends. Think Facebook for fandom.

TLS is the only non-Tumblr-esque, semi-active FF7 fandom hub I've found in the past year. Most my FF7 fandom interaction happens through this site or over email with a few friends.

If you're looking for a way to advertise your fic, I think Tumblr might be the only place to do it. Even then you might not be seen, because Tumblr is a very fast-moving site. (I've noticed, however, some people -- hmm, how do you put it? -- hanging off popular folks on Tumblr to get more followers and mutual likes/reblogs. It's like high school cliques again!)

 

[Octo]

I dunno how prevalent, but like the popular LOTR/Hobbit blogs seem quite happy to accept submissions or link to peoples fics if you message them. Dunno about the FFVII blogs cos I don't follow any

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

(I've noticed, however, some people -- hmm, how do you put it? -- hanging off popular folks on Tumblr to get more followers and mutual likes/reblogs. It's like high school cliques again!)

So true. I have a grand total of 148 followers which is like 145 more than I expected (but then I once had three subscribers to my youtube channel when i didn't even have any videos posted!), so nobody's going to get far on my coat-tails.

But I see no reason why you shouldn't approach it like a marketing exercise. The Gap does. You won't be the first - and the fandom for Vincent is a lot bigger than the fandom for Tseng. Just start following a few big Vincent fans and make some friendly reblogs of their posts, and find some interesting fan-art of your own to post, and then they'll start following you and hopefully reblogging the links to your fic.

Off-topic: damn auto correct for constantly changing reblog to reflag

 

[Dawnbreaker]

RPs aren't too bad. I just find they break apart after a period of time. I was in a FF RPG group a few years ago, and while I had a good time of it, we never did half the stuff we talked about, nor kept in contact after it all fizzled out. That said, it was a decent platform to get feedback and promote awareness of the fic, so there's that, at least.

Off-topic, the short story I submitted to the creative writing class has come back with positive reviews. Even better, they helped me identify areas I could improve upon. The bad news is that they want to see more of it, but since it's part of a novel, that would necessitate breaking out pieces that might not go together in a short story. I'll figure something out, of course.

 

[Skan]

^^That is the ultimate fate of all fandoms. Eventually, they all boil down into self inserts, OCs and Shipping. Some fandoms devolve into this fairly quickly; while others take a long time to get there. From what I've seen, fandoms that put out gen fics tend to last longer then ones that don't. And the FFVII fandom has had a better, longer run then most.

IE: I haven't taken a look at the FFVII fandom that's not on TLS in months because the majority of all the stuff currently being produced is all OC and shipping based.

I did start an FF fanfic rec blog on Tumblr for gen, rare pairing, minor character, neglected character, and really old fics that people have forgotten about or overlooked.

You can guess just how raving popular it has been so far.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

^^That is the ultimate fate of all fandoms. Eventually, they all boil down into self inserts, OCs and Shipping. Some fandoms devolve into this fairly quickly; while others take a long time to get there. From what I've seen, fandoms that put out gen fics tend to last longer then ones that don't. And the FFVII fandom has had a better, longer run then most.

IE: I haven't taken a look at the FFVII fandom that's not on TLS in months because the majority of all the stuff currently being produced is all OC and shipping based.

That's...very sad. I'm not sure I'm willing to accept FF7 as dead. Also it makes me kick myself because I wasn't producing any fan stuff while I was in school and I just kind of took for granted that the FF7 fan community has been existent since the game came out and would always be existent. I guess the newer compilation additions breathed life into it when it would have died the first time around and gave it the appearance of being immortal because of that. But now the newest compilation titles are older now than the OG was when Advent Children came out.

I hang around on DA mostly, and while there are some FF7 groups that one can follow to be alerted to some fan art you maybe haven't seen before, a lot of it seems to be cosplay. Not really a whole lot of people talking about FF7, nor is there a good place to do so.

So true. I have a grand total of 148 followers which is like 145 more than I expected (but then I once had three subscribers to my youtube channel when i didn't even have any videos posted!), so nobody's going to get far on my coat-tails.

But I see no reason why you shouldn't approach it like a marketing exercise. The Gap does. You won't be the first - and the fandom for Vincent is a lot bigger than the fandom for Tseng. Just start following a few big Vincent fans and make some friendly reblogs of their posts, and find some interesting fan-art of your own to post, and then they'll start following you and hopefully reblogging the links to your fic.

Bleh okay I guess I'll give it a try and see if I can avoid the urge to stab myself in the eyeball. Give me your tumblrs yous gaise. And some FF7 fan stuff to follow I guess.

I did start an FF fanfic rec blog on Tumblr for gen, rare pairing, minor character, neglected character, and really old fics that people have forgotten about or overlooked.

You can guess just how raving popular it has been so far.

Well, why don't we just make our own then? Seems to be enough people here willing to read and write fanfiction.


Also, I think this may have been lost in my edit before:

Pop quiz, guys: "Naivety" or "naiveté"? And also do you speak American English or British English because I think that might be relevant to this question?

 

[Octo]

Pop quiz, guys: "Naivety" or "naiveté"? And also do you speak American English or British English because I think that might be relevant to this question?

I speak British English and use the former, plus its easier to spell and I don't have to go hunting for the 'é' on the keyboard - I just copypasted there

 

[Ghost X]

All I know is whenever I spell naive in a word processor, it always puts two dots above the i .

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Here's another pop quiz: "That's so cliché!" or "That's so clichéd!"

(Just a real bugbear of mine).

 

[Obsidian Fire]

^^"cliche" in American English and I don't bother adding in any extra symbols.

 

[Fangu]

In Norwegian it's spelled 'klisjé' so I have to put that ´ in there - 'cliché'. I don't think writing 'clichéd' is any more wrong that writing 'cliché' as languages always adapt new words, but I still use 'cliché' because that's what I grew up with (just spelled differently). So I'd never write 'that's so clichéd' because it sounds wrong in my ears - I still think of it as a French word. And, 'naïveté'.

As an occasional Swedish word speller, I know where to find that ¨. (I use it to separate blocks of text in my fics too ) Plus, the ´ and ` are frequently used (at least the first) in Italian, which I studied for 3 years.

I guess I have respect for those things because people tend to use our ø quite creatively and that always looks so odd to me - like, 'løve'. Haha. Not only does it read odd to me since I read the o as ø, but also that word means 'lion'.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I used to speak English, now I speak Canadian.

From what I recall of my English speaking days, "cliche" is a noun and "cliched" is the adjective. So you can say, "That story is nothing but one cliche after another," or you can say "What a cliched plot." It comes from the French cliché (masculine noun), which means cliché, of course, but also means a photograph negative you can print from, which suggests its original connotation was something like "copy".

But Merriam Webster tells me that in North American "cliche" can be both noun and adjective, so I just have to suck it up, I guess. It just grates on me whenever I hear cliche used as an adjective.

 

[Skan]

I've never heard anyone use "clichéd" in my life. Looks weird, sounds weird.

 

[Ghost X]

According to the internets, cliché is a past participle, like passé, so you wouldn't add a d to the end. I am merely being a parrot here, I don't understand any of this stuff .

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

According to the Larousse French dictionary, it's a "nom masculine". Obvs the french don't add -d to the end to make it past tense, but the English did to turn it into an adjective via the same rule that says a past participle can function as an adjective:

" the locked door"
"the hidden treasure"
"the bullied child"
"the cliched plot"

and so on.

 

[Clement Rage]

Hmm... my reflex is 'cliched'. British English.

I did start an FF fanfic rec blog on Tumblr for gen, rare pairing, minor character, neglected character, and really old fics that people have forgotten about or overlooked.

You can guess just how raving popular it has been so far.

Where?

^^That is the ultimate fate of all fandoms. Eventually, they all boil down into self inserts, OCs and Shipping. Some fandoms devolve into this fairly quickly; while others take a long time to get there. From what I've seen, fandoms that put out gen fics tend to last longer then ones that don't. And the FFVII fandom has had a better, longer run then most.

IE: I haven't taken a look at the FFVII fandom that's not on TLS in months because the majority of all the stuff currently being produced is all OC and shipping based.

I'm not sure it's devolution so much as the default state. The hard part is telling the difference.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

Here's another pop quiz: "That's so cliché!" or "That's so clichéd!"

(Just a real bugbear of mine).

According to my brief Googling, cliché is the noun and clichéd the adjective in English, with confusion arising from "cliché" being the past participle in French. So, speakers of French tend to reason that they can just use the word in English as they would in French. It seems that doing this is more permissible in American English than British English, because we're a bunch of bastardizing bastards anyhow.

Still, I would consider it "proper" to use "cliché" as a noun and "clichéd" as an adjective only, but not think twice about writing "That's so cliché" in a character's dialogue as people tend to speak improperly. For that matter, I might still write that in my own written dialogue (i.e., internet chatting) and not feel too guilty about it. But in narrative, "clichéd" for sure.

When I looked up the proper use of naivety vs. naiveté, it seemed as though "naivety" is correct in British English and "naiveté" is correct in American English, but honestly I grew up (in Boston) thinking that the word was "naivety," and "naiveté" just sounds so very pretentious to me, like we're borrowing the French version of the word just to sound fancy when we already have our own version in English. I'm not sure if I grew up thinking it was "naivety" because of residual cultural influences that England tends to have in New England more so than other parts of the US—for example, until recently it was a perfectly acceptable variation of the Boston accent to say "bath" like "bahth," like the British would, instead of like the A in how an American would say "apple"—or because I was just illiterate and wrong.

Moreover, I feel like written things should stick with either American English or British English and not cross the two as a matter of convenience and whim. If I see a story refer to a "color," then I consider "practise" a misspelling, not a valid stylistic choice of spelling the word "practice."

Still, "naiveté" just looks so...snooty to me. Does anyone else also feel this way?


Okay fine, so no one wants to give me their tumblrs? Well here is mine, where I guess I will post and repost FF7 fan shit to the abyss of an empty internet: http://ravynnenevyrmore.tumblr.com/


@Lic: I think the cat is my new favorite Turk.

 

[Skan]

Here are some FF7 tumblrs I know of:

level99challenge: Lots of screenshots from the original game.

vii-lights and tormentedchaos: Both reblog a ton of pretty Final Fantasy graphics. I dunno if it's worth following more than 1-2 people for graphics, personally. It all comes around eventually, anyways.

If you're a Vincent or fanart fan, I guess crimson-sun.

@ Clem: ff-ficrec (and here is my meticulously organized tag page).

Updates only once or twice a week to avoid spamming. I'm trying to keep the distribution even across the fandoms, but I'm already running into issues since I have a gargantuan fic-rec bank for FF7 and FF8, but very little for FF5 (which is, tbf, a tiny fandom), FF6, FF10, or FF12. So if anyone has recs for those fandoms, feel free to toss them my way.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Sorry, I didn't realize you were asking for tumblrs.

Mine is (I'm sorry to say) http://reglissenoire.tumblr.com
because some utter wanker had already taken licoriceallsorts™, and for some reason - maybe my latent Canadianess? - I thought the french version of black licorice would be a good idea. I regretted it almost immediately, of course. Pretentious, moi?

Yeah, so... lots of pictures of Turks. Some fic recs. Some LOTR dwarf stuff. Occasionally cats being cute. Not much else.

Thanks, Ravynne; I am always happy when people like my cat. I have a picture of that cat somewhere that Crim drew.

 

[Skan]

Speaking of coattails: Lic, you're too kind. You literally tripled the followers on the rec blog. It used to just be my brother and some spam blog.

I am a marketing disaster, as you can see. XD

@ Ravynne: I sent you a PM through DW. My "personal" Tumblr is a hodgepodge of crap (both FF and non-FF), and I don't really use it to interact. If you follow the graphics blogs, then you're probably getting a lot of what I'd reblog anyways, so it'd just spam up your dashboard.

 

[Super Mario]

Man I'm troubled for about 2 months now. My old RP has closed due to inactivity and inability for my teammates to write anything anymore. I may come to the realization that some of my stories are best produced by my own terms rather than sharing a storyline with others. T___T

I have 4 stories now to tell, 2 taking place in the same universe. But it's only a matter of venue and where could I even post some for others to see and enjoy you know? I can write, but I am normally not enjoying it without the reviews of an audience.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

Man I'm troubled for about 2 months now. My old RP has closed due to inactivity and inability for my teammates to write anything anymore. I may come to the realization that some of my stories are best produced by my own terms rather than sharing a storyline with others. T___T

I have 4 stories now to tell, 2 taking place in the same universe. But it's only a matter of venue and where could I even post some for others to see and enjoy you know? I can write, but I am normally not enjoying it without the reviews of an audience.

I feel the same about my FF7 stuff. But a universe with no existing fandom is even harder. That's why I proposed that we all form some sort of like write-and-review story club or something, so that at least we can be assured of having a small audience for what we labor on.

And to that end, like I've said to others: I'll read (and acknowledge) yours if you read (and acknowledge) mine.

 

[Super Mario]

Now I'm starting to like you. :B

I wanted to post some here, I experimented with a Godzilla 2014 POV fic but got no reviews for it to show how to improve it. Hence my reluctance to start one here. My other four stories are fantasy, modern time travelling sci fi crime mystery (shifts between 1930's, 40's 1970's, space 2013, 2012 with most of the action in 2010), sci fi fantasy (takes place as stand alone) and a space opera (taking place billions of years ahead of my time travelling story).

 

[Skan]

If you're talking about original stuff: you might wanna check out workshops like Critters.

Also, summer workshops like what you get at Clarion West are good for fantasy/sci-fi speculative fiction and will come with an audience. Problem is you need to apply. (Also you need to have the time/money for it!)

And read limyaael.

Reviewing in general is down from a few years ago. I still think FF7 is pretty healthy compared to the other fandoms I keep track of, which only seem to get fics during Yuletide. Reviews? Psssshawww.

My own suggestion is to find one or two buddies who really enjoy your stuff and share things with them over email. It takes a lot of the pressure off posting for a wide audience and puts more pressure on just writing for a small audience, which is, imo, a healthier way to approach things. Dunno if that makes sense?