WIPs and Lemons (two fanficcy resplies)

[heiditandy]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "malaprop2000" 
<malaprop2000 at y...> wrote:
> So is a WIP no longer a WIP when:
> 
> The author posts regularly for several chapters. Then the time 
between
> posts gets longer and longer until the author hasn't posted 
anything
> new for over six months?
> The author posts numerous excuses mostly concerning real life 
getting
> in the way of the fic.
> The author posts rewrites of previous chapters instead of new 
words. 
> The author has a Yahoo group on which she/he:
>    *Posts snippets of chapters that never appear in full
>    *Complains that she/he is too busy answering fan email to write
>    *Defends his/her work in long e-mails
>    *Is protected by the group mods who lecture anyone who asks if 
the
>     fic will ever be finished.
> 
> (If this reminds you of the Mirror of Maybe or Pawn to Queen, 
right in
> one. Please no debate on the merits or demerits of either.)

It's a little like me, too. I have an unfinished fic which I do plan 
to finish in November, when I can take a bit of a leave from 
FictionAlley operations, and once my son's school's Scholastic Book 
Fair, which I'm running, is over - and, well, I haven't uploaded a 
real chapter since August. 

August 2001. 

On June 21, I did, however, post everything I'd written before OotP 
came out to my LiveJournal, and provided a link to it from my 
schnoogle.com reviewboard, so where I wanted the story to go *is* 
out there - I'm just trying to mesh my thoughts on the fic with my 
thoughts on OotP and move on from there. 

> 
> But the thrill of waiting is gone. So ... have I defined when a 
WIP is
>  dead or dying? Anything to add? Or am I just a curmudgeon who 
doesn't
> understand the artistic temperment?

I think that right now, a lot of people who had WIPs that take place 
after 5th year's end are still a little shellshocked over the whole 
Sirius thing, and have spent some time trying to figure out where to 
take the story - i.e. go completely AU or try and synergyze as much 
as possible. 

But let me also recommend that you take a look at FA's "List of 
Completed Novel-Length Fics: 
http://www.fictionalley.org/fictionalleypark/forums/forumdisplay.php?
&forumid=85 - it doesn't include every completed fic on FA, as 
people have to post when their fic is completed, but it's a good 
start, and lists about 200 completed fics hosted on FA and 
elsewhere. 

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "msbeadsley" 
<msbeadsley at y...> wrote:
> Thanks, Shaun! This is absolutely facinating; my sweetie is going 
to 
> volunteer at a local anime con art show this weekend (and I may do 
> some, too); we were just talking (less than a week ago) about an 
> uninformed and independent but oddly shared perception we have 
that 
> anime is very sensual/sexual: all those great big puppy dog eyes 
and 
> flippy little skirts. Although we are both pretty ignorant of 
anime, 
> we are very involved in the local SF con scene (and there is a lot 
of 
> crossover).
> 
> Does anyone (besides me, I mean) suspect that there's a connection 
> between the banning of "lemon" fanfic and a perception that there 
is 
> something (and I have *finally* come up with what I think is a 
subtle 
> way to phrase this) "Lolita" about it? Or am I *too* OT?
> 

It's possible that within the Anime fandom, that's the case, but it 
shouldn't be the case in HP - not as an absolute, that is. A lot of 
people write lemons involving characters who we've met in canon as 
grownups - there's tonnes of Sirius/Remus lemons, for example - and 
even the ones involving those who are currently 16 in the books have 
consistently been "aged up" so they're grownups in the stories. Yes, 
there are a lot of Hermione/Snape or Hermione/Remus or Harry/Tonks 
shippers out there - and I know at least a few who are 16 and 17 - 
but there're comprable numbers of, if not excessively more, people 
who write Harry/Ginny post-marriage lemons, or Sirius/Remus fics, 
etc. 

Personally, I despise FFN - and I have ever since they said that 
they were going to apply their ToU differently to different people, 
with no basis for doing so, and my disgust for them only grew in 
Septmeber 2002, when they closed the site for 36 hours or so, 
starting on September 11, claiming it was in memory of those who 
were killed, but when they went back up, they'd changed the 
structure of the site so that NC17 fics were no longer uploadable or 
searchable. And while I don't read NC17 fics much myself, the fact 
that they were taking what was, for many, a day of mourning and 
lying about what they were doing was so indicative of what they 
think of their users that I just pushed them to the side of my mind 
like the idiocy that they are. 

They have no obligation, imo, to host anything they don't want to - 
and to be honest, they have no obligation not to lie or cheat or 
steal (and yes, I consider radically changing one's ToU when you're 
taking money from people to cover services a form of cheating & 
stealing), but in the same vein, nobody has an obligation to give 
them the time of day either. 

Heidi