h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

sorry to be dragging up a subject that's been dropped for 3 years, but seeing as the article was still generating comments 5 years after being published i hoped no one would object if i added a few extra late thoughts...

i had two things to address. neither is really about the article per se, they were just tangential thoughts inspired by the article that might add a different perspective

first;
"It is a fact that sex scenes in books, films and TV are frequently appallingly written; the same is true of fan fiction"
“As a disclaimer, I have never, _ever_ read a well-written sex scene anywhere. It is possible that no such beast exists”

ok, admitedly a lot of sex scenes are poorly written or poorly handled, especially in fanfiction were there's no enforced editing to weed out the most appalling ones. but i do also wonder if the extremity of that statement is just your perception. people take in and process the world differently. i personally can't watch a sex scene on tv without discomfort, embarassment or mild nausea but i do enjoy written erotica. for some reason i connect well with the written word and it just works for me. maybe you're just the opposite? maybe something about written sex scenes causes a disconnect for you and makes it unpleasant and uncomfortable.


second;
"There are two common definitions of slash fiction, each paired with a definition of gen fiction.

1. Fan fiction incorporating intimate/sexual encounters between characters of the same sex.

2 Fan fiction incorporating intimate/sexual encounters between characters who do not have, and never have had, such a relationship in the canon material.

While the nature of broadcast television means that examples of the first definition are almost always included in the latter..."

due to the lack of mainstream media depicting homosexual relationships, is it possible there are more well written slashfics than het ones? i've wondered this for a while but have no convenient way of confirming or debunking the idea. since i read femslash almost exclusively i can't speak for the het or even m/m slash, but i've noticed there are a number of notable and extremely prolific writers of lesbian fiction (some of whom are published) in the fanfiction communities i frequent. if the mainstream media refuses to write the relationships you want you're more likely to write them yourself. also, it seems to me a lot of good lesbian writers enjoy fanfiction because it provides an appreciative (and receptive) audience. not to mention a lot of uber xena fics are, for all practical purposes, original works if they later decide to try for publication...

(to clarify: when i say lesbian author i'm refering to an author who writes for a lesbian audience, they needn't actually be lesbians... or even women)

since i'm looking at this from up close and personal i can't take the objective step back to know if it's true or not but the logic seems sound to me. if you're an unestablished lesbian author it's easier to build a fanbase (and hone your skills) writing fanfiction in a femslash friendly online community than to try selling something targeted to a minority to the general public.

i'm in no way implying all femslash is well written, i'm just wondering if maybe it's closer to the 90% rule of rubish than the 99% one, since the internet is picking up some of the slack where mainstream media is lacking.



*shrug*
just a thought

Oh it's nice to see someone here!

It's interesting what you say - and who knows, you could be right.

I have heard that there is now a booming market for m/m fiction (of a non fic type) and a couple of fanfic writers have gone on to sell a few books, which is good. So you never know - there is most likely a market "out there" for f/f novels.

"there is most likely a market "out there" for f/f novels."

why the quotes on "out there"?


upon further thought, i think it's mostly the xena fanfiction archives that seem to collect (or create) publishing authors.
the xena franchise is very fanfic friendly (http://www.xenaville.com/cast/missy.html for example), and has lots of wonderful subtext

while i was writing that last reply and contemplating the author list at the Royal Academy of Bards, my brain temporarily exploded when i discovered Geonn, from Area 52, was listed there.

i don't usually see crossover in the xena and sg1 fandoms...

ps: how do you make words into links?

I wrote "out there" because I always like to separate cyberspace from RL (at least in my own mind)



Words can only be links in entries, not in posts, unfortunately. But since I'm rubbish at GuideML I'm not the right person to ask.

Area52... haven't been there in yonks, I really must have a mosey around and see what's what.

how long is a yonk?

a little bit less than an eon.

I have to say - as a veteran of 43 fanfics, largely in the Terry Pratchett continuinuinuum - that sex is bloody hard to write.

I've tried - Lord knows, I've given it my best shot - but the more it looms on the horizon, the more I have to say that the God, Terry Pratchett himself, was right to retreat quietly from the bedroom at the moment two of his characters began to get it on together, allow the door to swing gently but firmly closed, and return to the chosen two after the Disc had moved for them... images of waves washing on the beach, trains going into tunnels, et c, optional.

I took two occassional and under-developed Pratchett characters and made one gay and the other lesbian because it seemed perfectly right and logical for them to be this way. But after a painful session of trying to write lesbian sex without it turning into drooling male fantasy (it's out there somewhere as a glorious failure) I discovered the actual mechanics of it were best underplayed, in favour of the character's personal motivations and emotional/ego drives. (As well as the ongoing conflict of her being a teacher at an upmarket girls' school who necessarily has to keep it discreet and off school premises. To balance that and answer well-directed criticism about singling out gay teachers as being somehow more prone to temptation, I made one of her best friends a highly sexed hetero who has similar professional conflicts concerning good-looking sixth-form boys).

Terry Pratchett has even created a gay subculture in the Discworld: he invented an as-yet under-developed nightspot and cabaret called the Blue Cat Club, which I have imagined is like a discreet establishment for gay men in Sixties London, prior to legalisation and knowing it exists on tolerance and the fringes of legality. (Although Police Chief, Sir Samuel Vimes, has said that his Watch has got far better things to do than raid gay bars and police morality - in Ankh-Morpork that would be like seeking to climb Mount Everest from a position at thre bottom of a trench thirty thousand feet below sea level.)

I've never even tried to write gay male sex.... just creating a range of gay characters, drawn from accross the "Canal Street" spectrum, at the Blue Cat and letting them speak for themselves in a hopefully Pratchett voice was fun enough.

The beauty of TP is that the world he creates is so beautifully and fully realised that it has the luxury of including all those under-developed locations, characters and scenarios which are a positive gift to the fanfic writer.

And as for "Good Omens" - well, an angel and a demon having been on earth for all of its seven thousand year old history (the Creationists were right, btw) is a total gift. So far I've had them as deck-hands on Noah's Ark (all Noah remembered was a white dove and a raven) and furthering the education of the young Adolf Hitler in pre WW1 Austria. More will follow!

I suppose my motive for doing this is curiosity - to flesh out those people and situations and see where they leads - as well as practicing for writing legitimate original fiction of my own which I could publish for money with a clear conscience.

Feedback helps - it's gratifying to know I have a loyal fan following out there!

I'm on FanFiction.Net under the pen name of "A.A. Pessimal" if anyone's interested. Feedback gratefully received!