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Date Posted: Mon, Nov 17 2003, 17:15:02
Author: Catseye
Subject: [OT-ish] What to do when friends discover fanfic?

Fanfic in general, I mean. Not specific fics.

Anyway, two of my friends have recently discovered its joys. Friend A has been sort-of-writing for ages, but never put her stuff up for public display before - we used to coauthor stories back when we were at school. Today she e-mailed me to say her personal site has been 'updated, a bit.' It's got links to some of her fanfic, and 'Coming soon!' promises for more.

Friend B has never expressed any interest before, and surprised me a lot by sending me a link to some crossover on ff.net a while ago. Turns out she's pretty new to fanfic, and I've been sending her links and stuff to get past the what's-a-Mary-Sue? stage. So now she wants to start writing herself.

Which is good news, sort of - potential beta readers for my stories! Real people to e-mail fic recommendations to! Thing is, though, it's going to go both ways, and they'll expect me to read all their stories and tell them what I think, and so on.

Now, they're both good friends, and I love them dearly. But - well.

Friend A's old fic, which she's apparently planning to put up on her new site, is not exactly brilliant. I don't mean this as an insult, since my stories from the same time period weren't any better, and we cowrote a lot of it. But, if she's thinking about posting it to online fic groups like she says she is, I'm going to need a tactful way to make constructive suggestions, and... erk. She might post that horrible Mary Sue series we cowrote. She might, oh God, <i>put my name on it</i>. Aaaagh.

Friend B has never written any fic, and I'm hoping that bombarding her with links on useful stuff that she asked for might have helped. But, well, when I sent her a Mary Sue litmus test, she replied to say it was really funny but - and I quote - "I know I'd end up writing one of those if I did an original character, because it'd be so <i>boring</i> if you made them ordinary." And she thinks I'm being unreasonable to grumble about fics written in script form because the authors freely admit they can't be bothered writing descriptions.

I can't very well criticise Friend A's fic, since I told her it was great at the time and, heh, I wrote big chunks of it myself. And I'm not going to be able to criticise Friend B's fic, since we had a conversation yesterday about reviewing fics where she said that constructive criticism - and yes, she used the phrase 'constructive criticism' - was 'mostly just mean, because what's the point of hurting an author's feelings?'

So now I have to find a very tactful way of giving constructive criticism. Or, I have to let them post their fics on public archives and risk them getting ripped apart. And if I don't decide something fast, there might very well be Mary Sue fics out there with my name on them.

Suggestions? Orders to stop assuming the worst of my good friends? Demands to throw them in at the deep end and let 'em learn the way the rest of us did? Nice bottles of whisky to numb the pain when online friends e-mail me to say 'That blatant self-insertion with your name on it... is that a parody, or what?' Anything? Help...

-- Catseye (who, until recently, firmly believed that Friends Don't Let Friends Write Mary Sues)

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