Phantomas Studio

What Really Happened 2.0, or How Aziraphale Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving the Porn, by violet_quillEveryone should read Good Omens (it should be on the school curriculum, imo), but even if you haven't, that above is just damn funny. And yes, there should be a lot more angel/demon smut *G*

I may be in a bad mood... Ops?
(and oh, look! An icon that's not the default icon!)

Things that Piss me Off

1. "sensitive/sensitized skin" = no matter how good the story is, how great the writing, I can't stand to see this expression anymore. Ten years of fanfic have burnt it right out of me.

2. Headers. I know they are necessary, especially in fandoms where the canon source has an ensemble cast, to spare readers from genres, kinks, pairings, etc. that they are not interested in. I know that. I use headers myself. However, I do think that they reduce the story's mistery and appeal, that writers are forced to label nuances and subtleties into one or the other category, that catering in this way to the readers' needs isn't necessarily for the good of the story or the enjoyment of it. It's a catch22 situation, I realize that. Doesn't mean I have to like it.*

3. woobie Dean. Yes, yes, I know. He does woobieness so well. I just don't think that Dean is as much of a woobie as fanon makes him, that's all. Canon-wise, yes, he's got issues, big ones, he's a big cry-baby *g* but...he's got much more edge than that. He's not a VICTIM. Not in my book, anyway. I understand that breaking a character and bringing him/her to hir knees is part and parcel of the fun in writing fanfiction, but it seems to me that fanon Dean is becoming scarily monotone. (Obviously, if you like him like that, good for you. jmo.)

4. Un-caring John. Yes, he was harsh, canon-confirmed. Fine. Make him an ogre. Make him uncaring, brutal, and as tough as you like. Than go on and explain to me why Dean practically leaped to hug him in Shadows, and why Sam hugged him as well, in the way he did. Explain to me how come these two guys have such sense of honour, loyalty, right and wrong, protectiveness towards the weaker. Where have they learn to be so noble, uh? From whom? Can't have it both ways. We all agree that he wasn't the best father possible, but I wish writers didn't turn him into a bad guy just because they need one.

5. People that don't leave comments to what they read/watch. If they have the time to read, they damn well have the time to say 'thanks, I liked it!'. It takes probably all of three secs. Doesn't have to be a full-on concrit 4000 words feedback report. And if you don't like what you read, well then, silence is fine (unless, of course, one has the time to email the writer and offer constructive comments as to why that particular story didn't work that well for them).

6. Either is Wincest, or it isn't. Brotherly love is not the same. There is a BIG difference there. Next time I see a header/warning saying: 'oh, it's wincest, but not if you don't want to' I'm gonna scream. Sam and Dean love each other. That's a fact. And they're brothers, which should make for a specific dynamic, a shared, familiar past, that very smallest of community that's family, with its own lore and tradition. A writer/vidder want to make them lovers, fine by me. But make your decision and stand by it. Subtext isn't in the air, it's interpretation, it's grabbing at clues and highlighting them. Do the work, don't hide behind the brotherly love and try to reach out ot as much audience as possible.


ETA: just to be clear, I'm not referring to any specific author/story/vid, nor I'm complaining about the comments I receive when I post something, I'm very happy with that, thankyouverymuch. I'm just really grumpy and I've been wanting to say the above for a while :)


* I don't remember really how it was in HL, my first fandom. I was in it more for the fans interaction and the discussion of the show than the fanfiction, even though it's in HL that I wrote my very first fanfic story. However, I do remember very well in Pros how we didn't have headers/disclaimers, and such. Sometimes, yes, for death and/or rape, or BDSM, but it wasn't a rule: it was more via the recs and discussions of the stories that it was known if a story had something specific in it. Headers and warnings slowly became the norm during my time in fandom, and especially with the transition to LJ/web. But, I just can't imagine reading The Same River by Helen Raven with the same wide open, mesmerized, 'oh wow' eyes if there were headers before it: AU/SCIFI/Major characters death-suicide/angst, etc etc. I just knew, going in, that it was a much discussed story, edgy and challenging. And it took my breath away. Because I knew VERY LITTLE or close to NOTHING about it. Not every story was/is to my liking, of course, and as I wrote, I use headers myself, as a reader, as a writer. I still don't like them. *is stubborn*

I am utterly thankfu and grateful to all those fans that go to public events, conventions, premiers, and so on, and report back, with anedocts, pictures and what have you. Many fans will never be able to go to these places, see the actors and actresses they're fannish about, because they live in other countries, because it'd be too expensive, because their health does not allow it. What have you.

I wouldn't approve of fans keeping a bad behaviour in such public events, but there are degrees of bad behaviour and degrees of reaction.

Reporting fans to people outside fandom should happen only in the case of serious instances: physical harm, theft, stalker behaviour and such criminal acts. Everything else speaks of rightneousness to me, and childish ways of making oneself noticeable to TPTB.

I'm starting to NOT like fandom at all.
And to finally believe that never was Fandom to begin with.

A very interest meta on incest-pairing and their sub-textual raison d'etre.

The author has a specific take on the issue, and it expands on it in the comments - it's worth reading those, too. (ignoring mine since I haven't had any coffee yet today and my brain isn't active yet at all).

Incest and the Adolescent Fantasy

Posted my John Meta for Something Wicked in spn_heavymeta, HERE.
Only one left to revise and post, yay me.

While trying to make a decision concerning RL (well, decision is made, actually, I just need to find the guts to follow through), what better distraction than:

a) managing to push a mysterious sequence of keys on the keyboard so that all of a sudden I'm not logged in in Semagic as phantomas but as another one of my pups (? How did I do that? Does any of you know how to do that that quickly?)

and

b) thinking about Supernatural and making a balance of six months in the fandom - after all, six months IS a symbolic date in the show.

As I already established in my previous active fandom The Professionals -  still very much a huge love of mine, btw, and somehow related to SPN and to what I'm going to ramble about - and as far as I know, something that happens to many, the first moment in a new fandom is the I Will Read Everything And Anything..for days. Weeks. Months.

After that, though, I start to filter/choose/focus.

In part, it's a spare-time issue. After that first rush of Falling In Love with Shiny Fandom has passed [if it ever really passes is a discussion for another entry], time simply starts to become an issue again and one realises that there are friends to talk to, RL to take care of, food to buy and cook and consume and so on. Cats to pet, etc etc :)

That's the general idea. What does it mean for me and my love for Supernatural fanfiction? What have I chose in SPN fanfiction to focus on (mostly - it's never an absolute, always a continuum) ?

( cut to spare Flist )

In each episode of SPN we get to see the Family of the Week, apart from the Monster of the Week.
This is my take on what each family stands for in relation to SPN and the theme of family.

From Woman in White/Pilot up to Bloody Mary.
Part II asap

( Family of the Week - Part I )

Mostly, I've been thinking about canon and fanon (or canon vs. fanon).
I'm very much intrigued to witness how little canon details get used, transformed, enhanced or ignored by writers (and it can be for a million reasons, of course, for ease of writing, for not remembering it, and what have you). I don't mean these observations as critical in a negative way, I'm just observing (I'm probably the first to tweak details to my own liking :), but as I said, it's fascinating to see how fanon builts on itself from writer to writer.
Also, spoilerish for the season finale.

( Randomly, SPN thoughts behind this cut )

Can't get to my email in any way. Is it because of the 6-6-6 thingy? Shouldn't Yahell be safe from Damian&Co? (and how lame is it that there's a remake of that, too?) I owe emails and tags. :(

Health-wise: still swollen and drugged, and I hate liquid food, though sipping icecream is not that bad (just so you won't think I'm a wuss, the wisdom tooth wasn't in the normal position, so the extraction has interested the whole lower arc (arch?) of the jaw, hence chewing=big no-no. I can still speak with my teeth closed, at least for a while).

A Supernatural related question:
John says in 'Salvation' (iirc) that he never arrived on time to save anyone. We know that he saved Sammy, trusting him to Dean's arms. We know that Max Miller survived his mum...but couldn't they be the only exceptions?
If John never arrived to save anyone, does that mean that all the families involved are supposed to die?

Nothing says that the Demon's plans for Sammy involved him being alive. Maybe it was his soul the Demon wanted. Maybe what he does, after the blood baptism with the mother's blood, is to kill the baby he wants and steal their soul/their powers so that they become little black souls, destined them to possess some poor human according to whim and need.

In any case, I was just wondering if Max and Sam weren't the exceptions to what the Demon usually did, according to John's statement that he never arrived in time to save anyone. Ideas?

Written by temaris (full entry HERE).

White space, I've called it, the story in the margins, the subtext that isn't always just about finding the slash, but sometimes about finding the second story, read without reading, imagined in the description of a smile and the casual insults of people who don't need to be polite, and found in the small things. You know, the ones that are rather more important than you might at first glance think.

I can write PWPs and JustSmut and nonsense, but that..that...the white space, that's what I sometimes seek, when I really put my mind to it, when writing fanfiction isn't just a fun way to pass the time or please a friend, when I really care about what comes out of my pen, about what my fingers type on the keyboard, when I want not only to tell a story, but THE story, that's what I look for, that's what I cherish in other writers' fictions, when I find it.
That white space. :)