Beta Readers (and why I can't get one)
Most ficcers don't know how easy they've got it. At least when it comes to beta readers.

Consider: a beta reader, who is somebody who will go over and make suggestions about your stuff before it gets released, maybe even editing it, not only has to have a decent sense of grammar and story. He also has to know something about the characters or universe which you are writing, or in which you are writing.

Now, for most ficcers, finding a beta reader is relatively easy. Why? Because most fic is written about stuff which is currently popular. You can find beta-ers in X-Men, X-Files, Xena, Buffy, Harry Potter, LXG, and probably any current series or movie out there.

OTOH, if you're writing about Supergirl (the Kara Zor-El version), the Shadow, the Marvel heroes of the Silver Age, the original Captain Marvel, or Magnus, Robot Fighter...tough luck, Chuck. You can introduce newbies to those characters, and many times they'll be glad you did it. (It's happened to me, more than a few times.) But just try and find someone to beta who's familiar with those characters. Mostly, ficcers are Gen-Xers, and they don't have a lot of first-hand knowledge about pre-1985 characters.

That's not to lean too hard on them. God knows, I don't know a heck of a lot about the Marvel Universe post-Secret Wars I, or the post-Crisis DCU, or much of anything about Image. (I sometimes wonder if even Image knows about Image.) We write what we know, and we know what we are exposed to. Before my pop-sensibilities calcified, I was exposed to about 20 YEARS worth of pop...and I'd done research into stuff going back at least 20 years from my starting point. Also, I kept up with the few things that were still interesting to me.

So I've got a few things to build from. I'm also assured that not too many people will be building with the same materials. They don't know them. ;-)

Beta-readers? Oh, yeah, I was talking about beta-readers.

Another big problem I have is that betas usually aren't fast enough for me. When I finish a chapter, I want to post it. Betas can take a darned long time to look over a chapter (after all, it IS their time, not yours), and that puts a drag on the mechanism. Sure, it'd be fun to have another person's feedback on my story before I post it. But I've heard ficcers complain so often about "I wanna post, but I have to hear back from my three beta-readers first!" that it seems counter-productive to me.

But, arguably, there are a lot of folks who need it. If their grammar skills aren't up to par, if their plot or characterization stinks, somebody needs to lance those particular boils and let them know about it. For others, I think it's just a crutch for insecurity. (I think this is good, really good, good enough to post, but I can't be SURE until I hear back from a beta...)

Without going all Frazier Crane here, I'm confident enough in my skills to feel that I can get by in most cases without a beta. But it would be fun.

I did have the best beta-reader in the world, once upon a time: TransformerMan, who originally housed my Supergirl stories on his site (Kara's Pocket Universe), and who read every chapter before we posted them. He had good plot suggestions, and often as not, I followed them. "Hellsister" wouldn't have been near as good as it turned out without his guidance.

But T-Man was one in a jillion. There are some Kara fans out there, maybe even a few I've engendered. Ones who would be willing, able, and fast enough to beta are pretty needle-in-a-haystack. Plus, I don't always write about Kara...my continuing work for the last year or so has been "Great Confrontation", in the same ballpark but not the same character.

And a lot of it is just me. I'm just arrogant enough to post a chapter without a beta-reader. Thankfully, most of the readership seems pretty forgiving on that point.

Still, a beta would be nice.

That's why, humph!, those young whippersnapper ficcers don't know how good they've got it.

Take it from the Old Codger, here.

And hang in there.

A view from the second floor
Mood:  happy
I'm sitting here in the second floor of my apartment complex. Haven't had a job in about 7 weeks, and I'm liquidating my comics collection to stay afloat. Stephen King's DESPERATION is playing on the TV, and I'm giving it my divided attention.

And, all things considered, I'm feeling pretty good.

There's hopeful things on the work front, for sure. I put out six work apps today and am on the verge of signing up for a course designed to help one get and keep a job. I had a good tryout with a realtor's office and, though I lost the position to somebody who had more experience, they said that I did a good job and I went back today to thank them face to face.

I also have fanfic.

It helps me through the bumps somehow.

Lord knows, I should be writing something original and trying to make money from it. I think I will, sometime soon. But there's just something about visiting your old friends from various comic book universes, maintaining their adventures when even their parent companies won't, giving them the respect they deserve, and trying to entertain people all at the same time.

In the last, I'd like to think I've been successful. And it does make me feel good to get back to the Earth of 2499 with Alan and Adam Kent and the crew of The Great Confrontation, or help Kara Zor-El and her swain probe the mystery of a long-gone Kryptonian actress who loved Kal-El in Kal & Lyla. There are others I may visit in time, but those two are my primary responsibility right now, and I enjoy them.

I'm not just doing a passion piece, a drabble, or a PWP with them. I get to tell real stories, and I think my readers have enjoyed them.

Better yet, I enjoy them. And they help keep me sane.

Ain't fanfiction a really good thing, when you use it right?

In my case, there's no question about it.

Hang in there, folks. There's lots more to come, for all of us.

The Trouble With Girls
When I started out in the fanfic community via OTL, about a year or so after I started writing it (didn't even know such a thing existed, really...I thought I was just writing Supergirl stories), I expected to see a whole bunch of action-adventure stories covering heroes from all over the comics spectrum.

Boy, was *I* surprised...

Outside the Lines was mostly X-Men Romance and Slash Weekly. Villains were only seen as lust objects. The only conflicts were romantic ones, and above all, the Pairing ruled. Mostly, it seemed to be just a workout for female hormones.

There were some talented guys online there, among them Dex, Matt Nute, Dr. Benway, and a few others. And there were some female authors, like Minisinoo, who were romance-based but who could at least make a readable story out of it. But both of them were pretty rare.

OTL tried to be an all-comics list, and featured a few fics covering other heroes (including those by yours truly). But, thanks to the limited input of the X-fan (or, later, the Batfan), we just got the same thing over and over: an X-Men or Batman romance story.

Except for the code names, you wouldn't have any idea from most of these stories that the characters had super-powers, or went out there, fought bad guys, and saved the world on a regular basis. Very few of the writers thought about what heroes really do, and still less of them were capable of writing it.

Moreover, since many girls were fascinated by male homosexuality, we got story after story in which a straight hero's sexual orientation was changed so that they could have graphic sex with another hero of the ficcer's choice (extra points if they were related, or enemies).

And they wonder why many of the Powers That Be don't like fanfic.

The problem is that superhero stories are mainly intended for males, and written by them. (A few exceptions exist, and not ALL girls are tied to the romance genre.) Most women don't understand the conventions of the form, or don't know how to write it if they do. Bereft of the romance comics that once were the staple of girl fans' reading, women who liked comics settled for X-Men. Once there, they leached out all the stuff that didn't interest them (the action and plotting) and fixated on the stuff that did (the romance).

Point out any of this to them, and they'll usually exclaim that they aren't interested in writing what's *in* the comics, they want to write what's *between* the comics. Meaning: we can't write a superhero story, we want to write a romance story with superhero names tacked on. Go away.

By and large, we did.

Anyone who was interested in more than X-Men (or, secondarily, Batman) found their home elsewhere. Dex's famous "Ship, Ship, Ship" post on his LJ covered most of the problems. But very few female ficcers could *do* anything about the problems. By limiting themselves only to romance, they produced pale shadows of the stories we saw and loved in the comics. And, like I said, if you weren't an X-fan, tough luck, Chuck. One respondent indignantly pointed out a number of non-X stories on OTL...but neglected to point out that almost all of them were Bat-stories or the products of one maverick ficcer.

Early on, I tried reading them and fitting in. But when I realized it was just gonna be the same obsessive X-Men romance story over and over again, I gave up.

I don't think that many people post to OTL anymore. And I think I know some of the reasons why.

Why I Still Write Fanfic
Mood:  not sure
I read the first two issues of INFINITE CRISIS on downloads. Don't read much DC anymore, but since this one was the sequel to the 20-years-past series that got me into fanfic in the first place, I thought I'd give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised.

Not just by the return of the original Superman, Lois Lane, and Alex Luthor from the original CRISIS. Not just by the acknowledgement that no origin or identity for Power Girl makes sense except the original one. Not just by their recognition of the Multiverse that was, once again.

Nope. It was their realization, and admission, in Geoff Johns's script, that the modern DCU has become a grim and rotten and unpleasant place to be, and something needs to be done to fix it up. Hey, I'm all for that. Anything that retcons something like IDENTITY CRISIS, or the Spectre killing Shazam, or Hal Jordan going crazy and having to be put down like a mad dog by Green Arrow, or Green Arrow turning into a mad dog and having to be put down and resurrected again...fill in the atrocity of your choice...I'm for it. As long as it doesn't mess up the new Supergirl. (Yeah, I'd be in favor of bringing back the old Kara and Peter David's Supergirl, too. Even if it got crowded.)

This, despite the bitching of anti-fanfic people like Lee Goldberg, is the reason why we need fanfic: because, whether those guys like it or not, sometimes canon people screw things up.

This is no big secret. Even the industries themselves tacitly admit it. When Gerry Conway's tragic substitute Justice League of Vixen, Vibe, Steel, and Gypsy didn't work in the late Eighties, they finally put it to sleep and promptly replaced it with a better-staffed (in more ways than one) League. When Spock's death and the destruction of the original Enterprise didn't work for the Trekkies, Paramount promptly undid both. (The fact that Leonard Nimoy changed his mind about playing Spock again didn't hurt, either.) And we can probably play this game a dozen times or so with Spider-Man.

When canon strikes out, it's time to give another batter a chance at the plate.

That's why I did "Kara and the Dreamsmith" and the Gen13 story, "Or Maybe the Story Ends Like This", among others. Are they acknowledged as canon by the copyright holders? Heck, no. But they've given some pleasure to a number of readers, and me, by providing alternate endings...I'll say it, BETTER endings...than the original.

I think one of the reasons some authors loathe fanfic as much as they do is because, possibly, of a secret fear that they do seriously screw up sometimes, and the ficcers can demonstrate, not always ably, just where they have done so. Not admitted...but I think it's there.

I don't make a dime on fanfic and never have. I don't read a heck of a lot of it because, let's face it, most of it is substandard. But I do continue to write it because I enjoy working with the characters I used to love, and using them in ways that I think honor them. Too many modern comics are written by people who don't believe in heroes, and that's one of the reasons why they don't work. Not all changes are for the good, and not all trends should be followed.

But if we can preserve our heroes, and treat them in a way that's better than what the companies are trying to force down our throats, why shouldn't we?

I think we should.

And that's why I still write fanfic.

Rumbling with the Roses
I did my first-ever video game fic (and, probably, my only-ever video game fic) last week, in the form of a Rumble Roses story. That's a game featuring women wrestlers as characters, which I picked up on eBay and whose main character, Reiko, I soon added to my pantheon of favored heroines. ;-) After playing it a bit (I'm by no means proficient at it, or any other video game), I thought about writing a story based on a couple of the characters.

Yipe. It'd be fun, but would it fly? My readership, such as it is, is used to superhero stories. I also didn't know if they'd go for a story dealing with a women's wrestling match. Also, I've mostly been "in the closet" until recently about my love for gal grappling. What would people think?

But I had the idea, and I found myself writing more of it. And when Reiko was made heroic (something all too few ficcers understand these days; you gotta put heroic qualities in your heroes), I knew there was something going on that might just work. So...I started posting parts of it to my Yahoo! group, wondering what the reaction would be.

They loved it.

Nobody was famiilar with the game that I knew of. One respondent even said that he didn't care for wrestling at all. But they loved Reiko, and they liked seeing her tested in battle and facing a problem in her personal life as well as trying not to get pounded flat in the ring.

The gamble had paid off.

I also posted to a couple of Rumble Roses sites that take fanfic, and they seemed to like it even more. I met a few more respondents there, and that's all to the good. My pal Tesub Calle also let me know she liked it, which proves the story doesn't just appeal to guys. She liked the characterization elements up front, which kept it from being "just another wrestling story", but liked the action, too.

I've also posted the thing to ff.net, where it hasn't gotten a single review. Ah, well.

At any rate, I gambled, it paid off, and I have something else to show for it. Thanks, folks. Maybe now I can get back to Great Con.

The Great Con Goes On
Mood:  a-ok
If you've been keeping up with my recent works either on the Domain or my Yahoo! Group, you're probably aware that I've been working on The Great Confrontation of late. That's a unique one of my stories, in that it's the only one (outside of a few round robins) in which I've worked with a collaborator. In this case, it was the late and much-missed Dannell Lites.

The storyline was cued by the five or so "Superman of 2499" stories that Mort Weisinger ran in the Superman titles circa 1965-66, and the fact that the Legion of Super-Heroes had to go back to the 20th Century to find a Superboy to recruit for their group, even though there was at least one descendant of Kal-El living in the 30th. Why was this? I dreamed up an answer, and seeded clues to it in a couple of stories. Then I got down to writing the story itself.

But I wanted input from a different source, one of the few persons in fanfic I knew I could work with. Dannell was one of the few ficcers in my age group. She knew what I did, and she could write about as well as anybody in ficdom. We both admired each other's work and got along together. So she agreed to collab with me on the story, and I think it worked well.

"The Great Confrontation" is set 500 years hence, but it's couched almost in the terms of a Civil War story, in tone. Or at least, that's how it's supposed to be. The Superman Family has grown quite a bit since the 20th, and, though only one may be Superman, there are many more with his powers, or close to it, and they have to keep them hidden. The last Superman had two sons, one of whom has to be passed the cape. (He also had a daughter, which provides another facet of the storyline.) But there's not only a power struggle between the sons, there's a power struggle within the family, and everyone has his or her own agenda. Put it all together, and it's going to result in...a great confrontation.

Dannell and I traded off writing chapters, with me editing hers when it came in. But her contributions trailed off, and I moved onto other things. Then, of course, came the day I learned from Steve Lightle that Dannell was dead. I set aside the story that she'd added so much to, and wondered if I'd ever get back to it. Some folks assumed I never would.

I found out a few months ago that they were wrong. I came back to Great Con, picked up the long-dormant threads, and started working again on it. My drive isn't what it was when we started it; back then, I had a goal of a chapter a week on two different fics, and met it. But I'm still writing where most of my then-contemporaries have fallen by the wayside (they got tired of writing X-Men romance stories, I suppose), so that must count for something.

The ending is in mind, and has been for some years. A lot of the plot is done, though a lot remains unresolved. It'll take me awhile, but The Great Confrontation is still running. And it'll run up till the end, whenever I manage to write that. I hope you'll be pleased with the results.

So much for that.

Because it's easier?
I hang around a lot at the Godawful Fan Fiction board. The official reviews were funny when I first encountered them, and still provoke a bit of a chuckle, but they aren't much updated anymore. What is updated, constantly, is their fairly interesting community boards, which point out what they consider godawful not only in fanfic but in "regular" media and in the Real World. The contingent tends to be a lot younger and more liberal than I am, but what the hey. Not their fault.

So the other day, someone posted about fanfic mainly being about romance, which, let's face it, most of it is. Being written primarily by adolescent and post-adolescent girls, it could hardly escape that. The poster was griped that not enough good action-adventure was being written. I agree wholeheartedly. But I've also read bad action, even though there's a lot less of it. The responses to the post were instructive.

One poster wrote that it was a lot easier to write a romance drabble than a piece in which you'd actually have to think of a plot, intro a villain, have the characters fight, etc. Another claimed that she was interested in romance, and you couldn't expect somebody to write what she wasn't interested in. Others pointed out that yes, there is crappy action fic, to which a poster pointed out that there was a lot less of it, though.

I guess the problem seems to be that when girl ficcers go to the well, they want to play Barbie, and when us guys go there, we want to play G.I. Joe. Neither one of us plays very well in the other's back yard. (Heck, when I was growing up, a guy who collected Wonder Woman would have probably had questions asked about his, um, proclivities! ;-))

But, of course, the real trick is doing what Stan Lee did: taking the best of both schools and integrating them into a whole. Action without characterization is meaningless; characterization without action is unsatisfying. Girlfic, which tends to be overwhelmingly about The Pairing, is incomprehensible to most guys, who want a super-hero story to be about what super-hero comics are about. Similarly, I imagine most girls are confounded by all the smashing and banging in guyfics. Using Wolvie or Stryfe in their original forms would probably drive them away like flies from repellent. (Oi! That kind of metaphor we can safely shelve.)

But the overemphasis on Romance can lead to some perverse morphing. Slash was probably born both from girls' curiosity about male homosexuality and the fact that, once het romance has been done and done and done, they start looking for other avenues to explore...the more forbidden, the better. Enter twincest, rapefic, mpreg, necro, the whole nine yards. None of which have a hell of a lot to do with the character they're writing, but have more to do with the ficcer's supposed POWER over the character they usurp.

That, of course, is one of the big reasons why fic has as bad a rep as it does. Some of it, sadly, is deserved.

If I had a magic wand, or even a Power Ring, I could wish that everyone doing fic would treat the characters with the respect they deserved, not distort them for personal fantasies, and not write something obscene for the sake of obscenity. But I can't.

All I can do is shun such stories, and hope most others do, as well.

So much for that.

Life, and writing, go on...
Mood:  not sure
Those of you who read my other blog (try darkmark on livejournal.com) know that I lost my mother two days ago. I'm still coping but hanging in there, thank God.

Will the writing go on?

You betcha.

It's going to be a little slow at first. I'm trying to work on the last chapter of "Wendy" and have a couple of pages done on it. The emotional roller coaster I'm on goes up and down, but friendship, conversation, downloading comics, watching TV, my cat, and writing are all good therapy.

So yeah, Wendy is going to be wound up. I hope you'll enjoy it when I manage to get it done. Beyond that, I don't know what I'll tackle next. Life is changing and that's bound to impact my fanfic hobby. (Actually, I think of it kind of as an unpaid career. I don't want to let you down, as stupid as that may sound.)

But I can't give up writing. That would be impossible.

Mom wouldn't have wanted me to, anyway. And I don't want to.

I hope the rest of you concur. ;-)

Minor Triumph
Mood:  not sure
Probably you don't have to be told what's going on in my life recently. But today, despite it all, I managed to get another story chapter done. Part 15 of "The Return of Wendy" has just been posted to Domain II and to two mailing lists. Hope it meets with your approval. I also hope I can keep it coming. Thanks for your support.

Huh?
Just went by the Domain to see about my message board and found out I've been banned from it. How that came about, I have NO idea.

Well, we'll see about another one. Eventually.